Once Broken Faith

by Seanan McGuire

“Probably in one of the trees outside the knowe,” said Quentin. Sylvester jumped, looking at my squire like he’d forgotten we weren’t alone. I turned more slowly, giving Quentin a curious look. Quentin shrugged. “Hamadryads like to sleep in trees a lot more than they like to sleep in beds. Unless she brought a tree with her from Helen’s Hand, that’s where she’ll be.”

  “She’ll still have a room for her things and her staff, assuming she brought any,” I said, and turned back to Sylvester. “I’ll be honest: I know you didn’t kill King Antonio. It’s not your style. But I do genuinely appreciate you being willing to answer my questions. I’ll come to you if I have more.”

  “My offer of aid remains open,” he said. He paused before adding, “You look well, October. I miss you very much, and hope you will be able to come home soon.”

  “I miss you, too,” I said. I didn’t comment on his assumption that Shadowed Hills was home for me, now or ever. Let him have that much. No matter how mad at him I was right now, I had loved him for most of my life, and he had always deserved it.

  Sylvester opened the door to let himself out, revealing Patrick Lorden hurrying toward us, face pale and sweat standing out on his temples, like he couldn’t decide whether he should collapse or have a panic attack. Sylvester froze. So did Patrick. For a split-second, so did I.

  Then I shoved my way past Sylvester, crossing the threshold into the hall, until I was close enough to see the hazy, unfocused look in Patrick’s eyes.

  “Patrick?” I asked.

  His gaze snapped to my face, becoming clear. Then he grabbed my arms. He’d never done that before. His grip was surprisingly strong, and I had a moment to be glad any bruises would fade before Tybalt had a chance to see them.

  Then Patrick spoke. “Dianda,” he said. “It’s . . . you have to . . . please. You have to.”

  “Have to what, Patrick? Is Dianda all right?” Please don’t let her be dead, I thought desperately. She was my friend. She was my ally. More importantly than either of those things, she was the representative of the local Undersea. If she was dead, war might become inevitable.

  He shook his head, letting me go. “No,” he said. “Please.”

  “Please?”

  “Come with me.” He turned and started down the hall. He hadn’t gone more than a few steps when he broke into a run. I ran after him, and from the sound of things, Quentin and Sylvester ran after me. I might have been angry at that, under other circumstances: I might have stopped and told Sylvester to go back to his quarters and let me do my job, to remember that he was the retired hero and I was the woman Patrick had come to find. I didn’t slow down. I needed all the help I could get, and neither my pride nor my preference was going to change that. So we ran.

  The room Arden had set aside for Patrick and Dianda was a floor down from mine—something that would have seemed odd, considering I was on the ground floor, if it weren’t for the often alien nature of knowes. Knowes viewed geometry as a plaything, and were happy to rearrange it to suit their own needs, or the needs of their inhabitants. I’d have to ask Patrick how they’d dealt with Dianda’s wheelchair, after all this was cleared up and I knew she was all right. For now, I just ran, and the others ran with me, until the open door to the Lordens’ chambers came into view.

  Dianda wasn’t visible, but as I got closer, I saw the pond in the center of the room, larger than the average hot tub and recessed into the floor, surrounded by a ring of red brick that seemed less decorative and more a matter of making the area around the water less slippery. Water weeds rooted to the sides, drifting lazily and almost concealing the woman curled on the bottom, her fins spread in jewel-toned array, her eyes closed. She wasn’t moving. She wasn’t moving at all.

  The arrow protruding from her left shoulder may have had something to do with that.

  I skidded to a stop just before I hit the brick demarcation between room and pondside. The water was clear and cool and so much like the ponds in the Japanese Tea Gardens that my stomach did an unhappy flip before contracting into a tight ball of dread. No matter how far removed I was from my own time in the water, it was always going to be terrible for me.

  “We need her out of the water,” I said, and my voice sounded distant and thin, like it was being ripped away by some unfelt wind. “Sylvester?”

  “Of course.” My liege pushed past me and plunged into the pond, heedless of what that would do to his clothes.

  I lifted my eyes, not wanting to watch him wrangle Dianda’s motionless body out of the weeds, and found Patrick standing on the other side of the pond, his own eyes fixed bleakly on the water. “Patrick,” I said. “What happened?”

  “I don’t . . . I . . .” He looked up. He looked so lost, like this was one of those situations he’d never even allowed himself to consider, out of fear that thinking it might somehow make it true. “We met here. For the first time, I mean, back when Gilad was King and she was about to become Duchess of Saltmist. We ran away from this fancy banquet in her honor and ate cake in the kitchen. I thought it would be nice, romantic, even, if I brought her some cake, since we’re here again. So I left her alone. I left her alone for ten minutes. No more.”

  And when he’d returned, she had been lying elf-shot at the bottom of the pond. I glanced around the room, finding the plate of cake where it had fallen a few feet from the door. That explained the faint scent of chocolate in the air—it was possible we were dealing with someone whose magic smelled of chocolate, of course, but that was unlikely enough that I didn’t need to focus on it. Not until we’d run through all other options.

  I looked back to Patrick. “Can she drown?”

  It wasn’t as odd a question as it seemed. Of Patrick and Dianda’s two sons, only the younger had inherited his mother’s ability to breathe water. Dean could drown, despite being a mermaid’s son. To my great relief, Patrick shook his head and said, “Not in her natural form. I think . . . I think if she’d been on legs and been pushed into the water, it might be different, but she was relaxing when I left to get the cake. That’s why she didn’t go with me. She didn’t want to put her feet back on.”

  There was a splash, followed by a wet, meaty smacking sound. I turned back to the water. Sylvester had hauled Dianda out, her tail hitting against the bricks as he dragged her to dry ground. I grabbed her flukes, lifting them before too much damage could be done to the delicate scales marking the transition between flesh and fin. Dianda wasn’t going to thank us if she woke to find her tail damaged.

  “Is there a bed?” I asked, hoisting my portion of unconscious mermaid. Quentin moved to support her midsection, and between the three of us, we were able to lift her with relative ease, keeping Patrick from needing to get involved. There were a lot of things I was happy to ask him to do. Carrying his elf-shot wife wasn’t on the list.

  “Yes,” he said. “This way.” White-faced and shaking, he turned and led us across the room to a latticework door. It was more like a screen than anything else: he pushed it aside to reveal a covered balcony, open to the night air on three sides, with a large canopied bed at the center. The bedposts were carved into blackberry vines rich with fruit, and the bedclothes were the rich purple and fragile lilac of the berries and flowers that normally accompanied the vines.

  “Sometimes I really admire Arden’s commitment to her theme,” I commented, as we carried Dianda over to the bed. There was a shrill note to my voice, like part of me knew I was whistling past the graveyard, and still couldn’t stop. Dianda was my friend. Maybe more importantly . . . this really looked like a declaration of war.

  We slid her onto the mattress. Patrick leaned over to brush her wet hair away from her face, grimacing. He didn’t say anything, but I knew a small part of what he was thinking. When Merrow transformed from fin to flesh, they magically became dry at the same time. He’d probably never seen her with a pillow under her head and water in her hair. In that moment, she cou
ld have been dead.

  As if he’d read my mind, he said, “Di loves pillows. She sleeps with me in the bed as often as she can, just because she enjoys having something under her head that isn’t a mossy rock. Linens don’t do so well when you submerge them.”

  “Sandbags?” suggested Quentin.

  Patrick flashed him a surprised look. Then he smiled, the expression tinged with worry and sorrow. “Those work, too. I . . .” His gaze went to the arrow protruding from Dianda’s shoulder. “Should we be taking this out of her?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “She can’t get more elf-shot than she already is, and if we leave it there, we don’t have to worry that she’ll start bleeding. Quentin, I have a job for you.”

  My squire straightened. “What is it?”

  “Go find Arden. Don’t be seen.”

  He nodded, catching my meaning immediately, and turned to head out of the room at a brisk pace. Sylvester and Patrick both looked at me, the one quizzical, the other alarmed.

  “How much time has he spent in this knowe?” asked Sylvester.

  “Is it safe for him to go off alone?” asked Patrick.

  “Quentin was a courtier at Shadowed Hills before becoming my squire,” I said, picking up Dianda’s left wrist and studying her webbed hand. Her fingertips were scraped, ever so slightly. She must have been clinging to the pool’s edge when she was shot, and fallen backward into the water as the elf-shot took effect. “He knows how to navigate servants’ halls. If there’s anyone who can get through this place without attracting any attention to himself, it’s Quentin.”

  “Can we wake her up?” asked Patrick.

  The longing in his voice was so nakedly pure that I froze, allowing several seconds to tick past before I looked up, met his eyes, and said softly, “You know I can’t answer that.”

  “We have a cure. It’s here, in this knowe. No one knows she’s been shot. Please, can’t we just . . . wake her?”

  “No,” said Sylvester. We both turned to him. He looked at Patrick as he said, “Someone knows she’s been shot: whoever shot her. There are landlocked kingdoms represented at this conclave, people for whom the threat of the Undersea means nothing, because the Undersea could never touch them. Any one of them could have decided to make their point by targeting someone who couldn’t deliver direct retribution—the Law never forbids elf-shot, just cautions that there will always be consequences. Wake her, and whoever shot her can stand before the conclave and announce that the Mists intends to use the cure, no matter what decision is reached.”

  “We’re talking about my wife, dammit,” snapped Patrick. “This isn’t one of your idealistic stories about chivalry and heroes. This is my wife. Do you think I give a damn about politics?”

  “You never have before,” said Sylvester. “Simon despaired of you ever making anything of yourself.”

  Patrick’s expression turned to ice. “Never say his name to me again,” he said. His voice was, if anything, colder than his eyes. “I was more of a brother to him than you ever attempted to be. Do what you like, but be aware that we’re not—will never be—friends.”

  “Believe me, I’ve known that for a very long time,” said Sylvester. He turned to me, and said, “I’m reasonably sure Duke Lorden would be happier if I left. Will you be safe with him? Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “If you see Madden, ask him to come here.” Madden worked for the Queen. Assuming he wasn’t involved wasn’t just allowed, it was practically required. But as a Cu Sidhe, he had an unbeatable sense of smell, and might be able to tell me who’d been in this room.

  Sylvester nodded. “I will.”

  “Great. Don’t get shot.” I turned my back on my liege, effectively dismissing him, and focused on Patrick. “We can take the arrow out when Quentin gets back with Arden. That gives us enough warm bodies that we should be able to stop the bleeding long enough to call for a medic. I don’t want to volunteer to ride Dianda’s blood—I don’t know what the elf-shot would do to me, and I’m sure there are things she doesn’t want me to know—but there may be another way, if we wait a few hours.” Once Karen was asleep, she could enter Dianda’s sleeping mind and ask if she’d seen the shooter. It was a clunky solution, one which relied on a teenage oneiromancer being able to reliably repeat what she learned from a comatose mermaid, but it was better than Dianda kicking my teeth in after she’d decided that I knew too much.

  “We have to wake her up,” said Patrick. “If we don’t . . . Peter isn’t ready to be Duke. I can’t be Duke. I’ve only ever been ducal consort because there was never any question of my taking over if something happened to her. The Undersea won’t submit to rule by an air-breather. They have standards. If Dianda sleeps for a hundred years, the entire political shape of Saltmist changes. And by the standards of the culture that shaped her, Dianda is a pacifist.”

  I stared at him. I couldn’t help myself. Dianda was a good friend and a better ally, but her solution to almost every problem was blunt-force trauma. “Oh,” I said. “Crap.”

  “Yes.” He looked toward the door and then back to me. “Sylvester is gone. You can ask, if you like. I saw the expression on your face when I started ripping into him.”

  “Um, yeah. You two were . . . friends?”

  “Only if the lobster is a friend to the tuna—which is to say, we moved in very different circles,” said Patrick. “Sylvester was a Duke and a settled man when I met him. Dedicated to his wife, to his people, and to the idea that his brother was a fainting flower who needed to be protected. As I said before, I was more brother to Simon than he could ever have been.”

  Something about the way he said that . . . “So you’re another of the people who didn’t think I needed to know that Simon was married to my mother.”

  “I’ll be honest: I never cared much for Amandine, who always seemed to view the world as an amusement staged just for her. August was a sweet girl, but after she disappeared, your mother stopped caring about anything, including her husband. The Simon I knew died a long time ago. The man he became . . . I could see the bones of my friend in him. That was all. Nothing more, and sadly, nothing less.”

  I wanted to yell at him, to make sure he understood that I was done with people keeping secrets from me. I didn’t say anything. His wife was asleep, maybe for a hundred years, and his world was crumbling. The best thing I could do for him—for both of them—was to be quiet, and wait for help to come, and do whatever was required of me. We had a cure. We had a chance. All we had to do now was convince the world to let us use it.

  TWELVE

  PATRICK AND ARDEN WERE having a discussion, which really meant they were shouting at each other. If I’d taken that tone with a Queen, even one who was reasonably fond of me, I would’ve been waiting for the hammer to drop. Either Patrick didn’t care, or he was confident that his status as a citizen of the Undersea would protect him from anything Arden wanted to do. So he yelled, and she yelled back for the sake of making herself heard, and I stood next to the pond, feeling awkward and trying to find something that could help us. Quentin stood nearby, watching me, ready to do whatever I asked of him. I appreciated that.

  I would have appreciated a break in the shouting even more, but you can’t always get what you want in this world, or any other.

  My two big investigative advantages were blood and magic. The untainted blood from Dianda’s injury would have been scant enough to hold only a few memories, but since those memories would probably have included the face of the person who’d put the arrow in her shoulder, that would have been enough for me. Unfortunately, the shot had knocked her into the pond, and the water had carried any traces of blood away. Even if I’d been willing to drink what was effectively someone else’s bathwater, I wasn’t my mother; the blood would have been too diluted to be of any use. I’d just get a mouthful of dead skin and whatever nasty things were coexisting with those water weeds.<
br />
  The blood from her wound wasn’t safe. It was tainted by the elf-shot. Even if I wanted to invade her privacy that way, I couldn’t do it without risking an unplanned nap.

  Magic was a better target. Everyone in Faerie has a unique magical signature, and almost everyone can smell a fresh spell or casting. Historically, I’ve vastly underestimated how sensitive my own nose is to that sort of thing: magic is a function of the blood, I’m Dóchas Sidhe, and I can detect traces most people wouldn’t even realize were there. Arden hadn’t gated herself into the room, preferring to accompany Quentin on foot, so I didn’t need to worry about her blackberry and redwood signature overwriting something more subtle.

  I didn’t need to worry about any of us overwriting anything. No matter how hard I focused, closing my eyes and pacing around the room, I found no unfamiliar magical traces. There were hints of amber and water lilies around the pool; Dianda’s magic, which rose when she transformed. She must have been on two legs when she got into the water, before putting her fins back on to relax.

  I was on my third circuit of the room when I stopped, sniffing the air, and opened my eyes. There was a trace of something unfamiliar, something I’d never detected before. It wasn’t Dianda or Arden, but they weren’t the only people in the room. Turning on my heel, I strode back toward the sleeping area, where the shouting showed no signs of stopping any time soon.

  Patrick and Arden didn’t seem to notice me there, continuing to argue too fast and too loud for me to get more than a general impression of anger on his part and frustration on hers. Finally, when it became clear that they weren’t going to stop any time soon, I stuck two fingers in my mouth and whistled. The sound was high, shrill, and amplified by the shape of the balcony, making it impossible to ignore. Patrick and Arden froze before turning to look at me.

  “Sir Daye?” said Arden, a warning note in her voice. Apparently, I wasn’t supposed to whistle at the Queen.

  Whatever. I focused on Patrick. “I need you to gather your magic.”