Once Broken Faith

by Seanan McGuire

  “Don’t speak poorly of your peers,” I said.

  He didn’t say anything. I lifted my head and he was grimacing at me. “Don’t call them my peers,” he said. “It’s weird.”

  “But it’s true,” I said, and dropped my head again. “Any one of them would be happy to tell you that you have more in common with them than I do, being a pureblood and all. And that’s before they know that you’re . . . you know.” Until the privacy spells came down, I wasn’t going to call him a prince. That was a risk too big for me to take. “To most of these people, I’m no better than a dog.”

  “Arden’s seneschal is a dog half the time.” Quentin walked across the room and sat next to me, settling with his back against the door. “I don’t think being a dog is so bad. Dogs are loyal. And fun to be with. And won’t call you names, or get mad at you for things you can’t help, like who your parents are.”

  “You are a weird kid.”

  “Whose fault is that?” I could almost hear him smiling. If I looked up, I knew he’d be looking at me, one corner of his mouth curved in lopsided amusement. He’d been with me long enough that I probably knew the man he was becoming—the man who was sitting beside me—better than his mother did.

  There was something sad about that. Blind fosterage keeps the children of the nobility safe, and when the choice is that or what King Gilad had done, failing to acknowledge his children out of fear of losing them, I could almost understand. It was still a terrible loss. Childhood is precious whether or not you live forever. Quentin and his parents would have centuries to be adults together. They should have been allowed to see him being a child.

  The smell of pennyroyal drifted into the room. I raised my head. Tybalt was standing half in shadow by the far wall. The interplay of light and darkness cast stripes across his skin, making him look like the tabby pattern of his feline form had somehow managed to carry over to his fae self. He met my eyes. Relief flooded his expression, and he took a step forward, leaving stripes and shadows behind.

  “October,” he said. “It took long enough to make my way here that I began to fear I’d waited too long, and you would already be off on your fool’s errand, clawing your way down the walls of the world. I assume you’re partially responsible for the restrictions placed upon our movement?”

  “I told the High King and Queen that we needed to lock down the knowe,” I said, and tensed, waiting for him to get mad. If the rest of the nobility was pissed about being confined to Muir Woods, a King of Cats might explode.

  “Good,” he said, continuing across the room toward me. “As it happens, no amount of ‘please stay put’ can sever cat from shadows. I’ve already walked the Shadow Roads to my own Court to inform Raj that I am under a quaintly optimistic form of house arrest and he is not to return tomorrow. I’ll remain here with the rest of you until this is over. Shade will not be attending, as we do not wish to leave all the cats of the Bay Area without firm supervision.”

  “I like the phrase ‘quaintly optimistic,’” I said.

  Tybalt smirked. “Yes, well. If I’ve already broken the wall, gone out, done my business, and come back, who’s to say your large assortment of overly entitled rabble won’t do the same? I’m sure some of them were looking forward to a lovely afternoon of tourism before the conclave resumed.”

  “Riding cable cars, looking at sea lions,” I said.

  “Maybe punching them, if we’re talking about Dianda,” said Quentin.

  “Now, now,” tutted Tybalt. He sat down on my free side, closer than Quentin, so I could feel the reassuringly solid warmth of him. I inched closer still, resting my head against his shoulder. “The Duchess Lorden no doubt has an excess of sea lions, which she can use for pugilistic exercises whenever she feels the need.”

  “How are they going to keep her from drying out?” asked Quentin. “She’s, you know. A fish when she sleeps.”

  I grimaced. “Please don’t use the ‘f’ word. She’s a mermaid. That’s different.”

  “She’ll still dry out if she doesn’t sleep in a lake or something.”

  “That’s easy,” I said, relieved to have a question I could answer. “One of the guest rooms has a private ‘reclining pool’ in it, according to Madden. They’ve put Dianda and Patrick there. She’ll just sleep in the water.”

  Quentin looked dubious. “That doesn’t sound very comfortable.”

  “Especially not for the poor, bipedal Duke.” Tybalt pressed a kiss to the crown of my head. “I am deeply grateful that you do not transform into anything unpleasant when you sleep.”

  “If you two are going to start talking about your sex life, I’m going to go help Queen Windermere’s staff make the beds,” said Quentin. I lifted my cheek from Tybalt’s shoulder and smiled at my squire.

  “You know I wouldn’t do that to you,” I said. “I want you to voluntarily show up for the wedding.”

  Quentin laughed, and was starting to reply when someone rapped on the door. His laughter died, taking his smile along with it. Tybalt and I both twisted to look at the door, like it would somehow reveal the identity of whoever was on the other side.

  It didn’t. “Who is it?” I called.

  “Sylvester. Please, may I come in?”

  I exchanged a startled look with Quentin as I picked myself up from the floor, Tybalt a reassuring presence behind me. As my liege, Sylvester could technically order me to open the door, now that he knew for sure that I was in here. The fact that he hadn’t done so probably meant he was here because he wanted to try rebuilding some of the bridges between us. That was a good thing. That was an important thing. That was a thing I’d been meaning to force myself to do for months, ever since the last time I’d been at Shadowed Hills. And it was absolutely not the sort of thing I wanted to deal with when I was getting ready to go out looking for a murderer.

  I’d paused too long. Sylvester sighed, and said, “I promise you, October, I’m not here to make you have a conversation you’re not ready for. This is about Antonio’s death.”

  “Just a second,” I said. Turning to Tybalt, I asked, “Can you please go walk the halls? Watch for anyone acting suspicious. See if anything looks out of place. Talk to the bats in the attic, if you have to. Just . . . do my job while I deal with my liege, okay?”

  “For you, the world,” he said, and kissed me, quick and glancing, before turning to stride across the room, moving toward the shadow he’d used to enter.

  I didn’t wait to watch him disappear. I just straightened my shirt, ran my hands through my hair, and turned back to the door. Quentin stood, moving to fall in behind me in the squire’s position as I opened the door for Duke Sylvester Torquill of Shadowed Hills, my liege, substitute father figure, and technically, step-uncle.

  Faerie gets confusing sometimes.

  For his part, Sylvester looked . . . relieved. The emotion in his face was more complicated than that, seeming composed of equal parts exhaustion, worry, and pleasure, but relief was the end result. Fae don’t age, but there were shadows in his honey-colored eyes that hadn’t been there the last time we’d been face-to-face, and his russet-red hair was less carefully combed than it should have been. All these were small things, things I’d been able to miss from a distance. With him right in front of me, I couldn’t ignore them.

  “October,” he said, and smiled.

  For a moment—a single, heartbreaking moment—I wanted nothing more than to throw myself into his arms and let the familiar dogwood and daffodils scent of his magic surround me. He’d been my mentor, my teacher, and my surrogate parent for almost as long as I could remember. Compared to that, our estrangement seemed to be of little consequence, something so recent and pointless that I wanted to throw it aside. I just couldn’t.

  He’d lied to me. He’d kept secrets that had caused me and the people around me to suffer. He’d done it because of promises he’d made to my mother,
and while I could respect his desire to keep his word, I couldn’t forgive the fact that he’d hurt me in the process. Some prices were too high to pay. “Sylvester,” I said, moving to the side. “Please, come in.”

  His smile died as he realized that an open door was not the same thing as forgiveness. “Of course,” he said, and stepped past me, allowing me to close the door. Before I could ask, he said, “Luna is in our quarters, resting. Queen Windermere was kind enough to provide a room with a door which opens on the garden, considering Luna’s special circumstances.”

  Luna was a Blodynbryd, a rose who walked like a woman. I nodded. “It was smart of you not to bring her along. I’m not sure she’s in the mood to talk to me. Ever again.”

  “I know.” He didn’t make apologies. He didn’t try to justify his wife’s behavior. He just looked at me, and I was struck again by how tired he seemed.

  The longer I looked at him, the worse I felt about our estrangement. This needed to end. I took a deep breath, and asked, “All right: why are you here? I don’t think it’s because you want to find out whether Tybalt still wants to strangle you. Which, by the way, he does.”

  “Congratulations on the occasion of your engagement,” said Sylvester. “Given our current circumstances, I know you won’t accept this offer, but should you like, you would be more than welcome to hold your wedding at Shadowed Hills. I would be delighted—no, I would be honored—to witness your marriage.”

  “It seems like everyone in the Mists wants to choose my wedding venue for me,” I said.

  “If Toby had her way, she’d be getting married at the city hall,” said Quentin.

  “Nothing wrong with a good civil ceremony,” I said. “Sylvester, not that it’s not nice to see you and everything, but why are you here?”

  “Because I wish to offer assistance,” he said. “Grianne is willing to help you look for King Antonio’s killer. You know her well enough to know that she’d be a valuable ally, and I would feel better knowing you had someone with you who could remove you from the situation quickly, should it turn hazardous.”

  I frowned, tilting my head as I asked, “What makes this situation any different from all the other dangerous situations I’ve walked into? If there’s something you’re not telling me, that’s really a habit that you should get out of. Now, if possible.”

  Sylvester was silent for a long moment before he sighed, and said, “Normally, you have Tybalt with you. It’s no secret that he and I aren’t friends—”

  “He tried to kill you. He used to respect you, you know. I’d never seen him bow to a noble of the Divided Courts before he bowed to you. You’ve pretty much spoiled that.”

  “It seems I’m even more adept than my brother at spoiling things, and he slumbers for his sins,” said Sylvester. There was a profound weariness to his tone. “Regardless of your lover’s hatred of me—hatred I do not contest having earned, believe me—I trust him to keep you safe and well. If I can’t fight beside you, he is who I’d choose for the position. But he can’t hold that position and sit the conclave at the same time, and with the doors sealed to keep us on the inside, I assume he can’t summon any additional monarchs of the Cait Sidhe to free him from his duties.”

  “No, he can’t, or at least he won’t,” I admitted. “You’re sure you want to loan me Grianne?”

  “I would rather loan you Etienne. Unfortunately, the doors are locked, and he’s not inside.” Sylvester shrugged. “We work with what we have.”

  “You taught me that.” I took a step back, looking around the room Arden had assigned to me and Quentin as I tried to buy a little time.

  It was less fancy than the guest quarters in Silences, thank Maeve, with redwood flooring and walls papered in an art deco blackberry pattern. The sliding door to our balcony was stained glass, worked in a riot of blackberry blossoms and bright California poppies in shades ranging from honey to wildfire. Blackout curtains hung to either side, ready to be drawn when we needed to block the morning sun. As in Silences, Quentin had a smaller secondary chamber, barely big enough for a single narrow bed. That was standard housing for knights with squires. We’d earned bigger beds and actual wardrobes for our clothing. They were still proving themselves, at least supposedly. As far as I was concerned, Quentin had proven himself several dozen times over—but until he had his knighthood, this was how it was going to be.

  “I like Grianne,” I said finally, turning back to Sylvester. “She’s always been good to me, and she doesn’t talk much. But right now, I can’t accept personal staff from a noble who hasn’t been cleared of the murder of King Antonio Robinson. Not without opening a lot of doors that I’d like to keep closed for as long as possible.”

  Sylvester looked stunned. “But I’m your liege.”

  “Yeah, and that makes it all the more important that I don’t appear to be favoring you, since I’ve been ordered to investigate by the High King, and he’s going to be watching for signs that I can’t handle this,” I said. “If I question everyone but you while I’m running around with Grianne as my backup, and I don’t find the murderer, what does that look like? Because to me, it looks like I knowingly harbored a killer while I was pointing the finger at everyone else to keep them from noticing that no one was asking you anything.”

  Sylvester’s expression deepened, going from simple surprise to something bleak and bone-deep. It was like he’d realized, in that instant, how broken things were between us.

  Faerie has always been a feudal society. Kings and Queens, Dukes and Duchesses, all the way down to the loyal courtiers and Knights, who do as they’re told and protect the honor of the households that they serve. As long as Sylvester was my liege, he was supposed to have my absolute loyalty, unquestioning and unchanging, no matter what he did to me. I was supposed to be, quite literally, his dog, incapable of biting the hand that fed me. And maybe once I had been. Once, I’d been so happy to serve him that it had been physically painful. But times had changed, and no matter how much either of us wished it, they weren’t going to change back.

  “You must question me, then,” he said finally. “I won’t ask if you believe I could do this, because I don’t want to hear your answer, but you must question me, and I will answer you honestly. I’d offer you my blood, if I thought that would help you to judge the honesty of my words.” He paused then, looking at me expectantly.

  I shook my head. “No. No blood, not yet. High King Sollys can’t order every monarch in the Westlands to bleed for me, and that means I can’t use blood evidence as the thing that proves my case. I already know you didn’t do it.” I was almost relieved that Aethlin had given me such an easy out. If I rode Sylvester’s blood, if I saw things from his side, it would be almost impossible for me to keep being angry at him the way part of me still wanted to be—the way I needed to be, unless I was ready to forgive. And I wasn’t. Not yet. Maybe that was small and petty and mortal of me, or maybe it was the most fae thing I’d ever done. For a society of immortals, they sure did enjoy holding a grudge.

  Sylvester nodded, looking disappointed but not surprised. “Then how will you determine my innocence?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I was thinking I’d, you know, ask you some questions and see how you answered them. Like who were you sitting with after I left the dining hall?”

  “Luna, Li Qin, Elliot, Grianne, and a Baroness from Helen’s Hand.” I must have looked blank, because he added, “Small, independent Barony from the territory between Silences and Evergreen. They have no neighbors for miles. Pleasant woman. Hamadryad. You don’t meet many of them with titles to their names. So to speak.”

  Hamadryads were similar to Dryads, as the names implied, but they weren’t bound to their trees in the same way. They also had a tendency to use whistles, sighs, and hand gestures as names, which worked well for them, and meant the rest of us referred to them as “hey, you.” I nodded. “I’ll confirm that with them
. Why did the Baroness come down? Hamadryads tend to take multi-decade naps without elf-shot.”

  “True, but they can’t bond with their home trees while sleeping, and elf-shot rarely waits for them to gown themselves in green,” said Sylvester. “They’d prefer to sleep when they choose, and not be enchanted into it.”

  “Fair,” I said. “What did you talk about at dinner?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “What does this have to do with anything?”

  “Humor me.”

  “Ah.” He sighed. “Li Qin’s adjustment to being Duchess, however temporarily, of Dreamer’s Glass. April’s progress as Countess of Tamed Lightning. The two have been discussing bringing Tamed Lightning back into Dreamer’s Glass, once Li Qin’s appointment becomes permanent. April cannot produce heirs, and having a second layer of protection would do them some good. Elliot and the Hamadryad discussed the best techniques for cleaning untreated wood floors without damaging them. Luna said little, and complained about the food.”

  “When the argument between Antonio and Dianda began, what did you do?”

  “We continued to eat our meals.” He frowned at my expression. “Don’t look so judgmental, October, it doesn’t suit you. A monarch—a King—wanted to brawl with a woman whose rank equals my own, who currently stands as chosen representative of another King. It wasn’t my place to interfere, and if it wasn’t mine, it wasn’t Li Qin’s either.”

  “Purebloods,” I said, resisting the urge to grab and shake him. “I’ll never understand purebloods. So you just sat there while they yelled at each other? What happened after that?”

  “They settled their differences and resumed speaking more quietly. You may wish to speak to Duchess Lorden about what they discussed after the yelling ceased. We enjoyed dessert as a group, and were shown to our quarters to freshen up before the conclave resumed. I was accompanied to my quarters by Luna and Grianne. Elliot and Li Qin are down the hall from us. I’m not sure where the Baroness is housed.”