Once Broken Faith

by Seanan McGuire

  “Hey,” he whispered.

  “Hey,” I replied, and moved to help him into a sitting position. He grimaced, but didn’t make a sound. “I need you to take your shirt off.”

  That was enough to coax a pained smile from him. “I don’t swing that way, and Tybalt would murder me. He doesn’t like dogs to begin with.”

  “Tybalt will understand battlefield necessity,” I said, beginning to undo Madden’s buttons. “I need to bind your wound. I don’t expect you to walk, but if we can stop the bleeding, you’ll be okay long enough for me to deal with the Queen of Highmountain, get back to Arden, and find Jin.”

  Madden grimaced again, rolling his shoulders to help me with the undressing. “I don’t mean to be a pessimist, but maybe you’re expecting too much of yourself? I can’t stand. I don’t think she’s going to get here in time.”

  “Hope can be cruel, but giving up is worse,” I said. Revealed, the wound in his stomach looked about as good as it was possible for that sort of thing to be. It was high and off to the side, where it might have sliced into the fat and muscle of his abdomen, avoiding his internal organs. If we were only dealing with blood loss and not sepsis, I might not be being overly optimistic after all.

  His shirt was linen, sturdy enough that it refused to rip when I pulled on it. That was good. I used Sylvester’s sword to slice it into strips and wrapped them around Madden’s middle, doing my best to stop the bleeding without tying them tight enough to do additional damage. He was panting and pale by the time I was done, but still sitting upright; he hadn’t blacked out even once. Under the circumstances, I was willing to call that a win.

  “I have to go,” I said quietly. “Did she say anything about what she was hoping to accomplish?”

  “She told her handmaiden her hands were too dirty; she’d burn for what she did,” said Madden. He frowned. It was impossible to tell whether the pain in his expression was physical, or due to remembering Verona’s words. “She said if she was willing to finish this—the queen said that if the handmaiden was willing to finish this—her sister would be taken care of. The handmaiden’s sister, I mean.”

  “I understand,” I said. Blood loss was making him loopy. I wasn’t going to get much more out of him. Still, I paused, and asked, “Madden, what’s at the top of this tower?”

  He blinked, seeming perplexed. “The sleepers,” he said. “I thought you knew.”

  “Oh, root and branch,” I muttered. “No. I didn’t. I’ll be back.” I pushed myself to my feet and started up the stairs, faster now that I knew what I was racing toward—and what I was racing against.

  The tower where the elf-shot sleepers were kept was an interesting target, tactically speaking. Nolan, Prince in the Mists was definitely there; Dianda Lorden might or might not be. Either way, they’d make excellent hostages. The thought that Tybalt might have already been moved up there crossed my mind, and was promptly dismissed. Arden’s people couldn’t have moved that fast. If they had, they would have been in the room when Verona and Minna arrived.

  Or would they? I didn’t know how long I’d been trapped in that fairy ring. I didn’t know, and now two of the people I loved could be in that tower, alone with a woman who thought nothing of killing as long as her own hands remained technically, dishonestly clean. My ankle was damaged enough to make the stairs difficult. I ran through the pain, feeling things shift and straighten within the confines of my skin as my body adjusted.

  Sometimes I think the true power of what I inherited from my mother is the ability to keep running, no matter how badly it hurts.

  The stairs ended at another door. This one was closed. I tried the knob. It was also locked. Verona had anticipated someone following her. Not enough to have set a fairy ring on the threshold, which is what I would have done: I would have made sure anyone who thought they could interfere with my plans wound up a frozen, helpless bystander. Either she was cocky or she was scared. Either way, I needed to get into that room.

  Swords are not good lock picks. My earrings were silver; too soft to work the tumblers in a door this size, even if I could twist them into the right shape. I cast around for something else I could use, pausing when I saw the banister. Like everything else in the knowe that wasn’t made of stone, it was polished redwood, enchanted to remain smooth and snag free.

  “We’ll see about that,” I muttered, and retreated a few steps down the stairs, trying to put some distance between me and the door. It was a foolish to hope that I might be able to go unheard, but it was all I had at this point, and I was going to hold on to it.

  The banister was sturdy. My first blow with the sword didn’t even scratch the wood, and the recoil was enough to send me staggering back a step. Not the safest thing ever, with me near the top of a long stairway. I didn’t want to climb back up, and so I kept my second swing more controlled, hitting the banister harder. This time, the blade bit in, just a little. So I swung again and again, chipping away at the wood until it gave way, shattering along the cut I had made. I kicked the broken spot, and kept kicking, breaking off a chunk of banister about the length of my forearm.

  “Arden needs to give me a damn skeleton key,” I muttered, and settled to breaking down the chunk still further, until I had a handful of skewers. Wooden lock picks aren’t my favorite, but they’re better than nothing. I shoved the sword into its scabbard and walked back up the stairs. The door was still closed. That was actually a bit of a relief. Maybe Verona hadn’t heard me after all.

  She’d hear me soon. I crouched in front of the door, inserting the tips of two of my skewers into the lock and beginning to work. Everything else fell away, replaced by the calm simplicity of the tumblers and the way they interacted with my makeshift lock picks. Devin had always called me a natural where breaking and entering was concerned, and while I might not be proud of my roots, that didn’t mean I was going to reject the skills they’d given me. Better to be a respectable detective who could pick a lock than one who stood helplessly outside a locked door, refusing to do something I was fully capable of.

  Morality, like everything else, is often a matter of which side of the situation you’re standing on.

  The tumblers clicked open. I left my skewers in place as I drew my sword. Then I reached up, grasped the knob, and turned it. There was no point in hiding the evidence that I’d been here when I was about to show up in person.

  Verona was standing near the window shouting at Minna. Minna was shouting back. They were too wrapped up in their private drama to have noticed me, and so I risked a glance around the room, trying to get a feel for what had gone on in here.

  Too many of the biers were occupied. I blinked, bringing them into focus, and swallowed a gasp. Quentin and Walther were both there, the one crumpled like a discarded rag, the other stretched out like a king in state. They were asleep, their chests rising and falling with drugged slowness. Elf-shot. They’d been elf-shot. They wouldn’t rejoin the land of the living for a hundred years, or until the cure was administered—and Walther was the one who knew how to make the cure.

  I had a moment of sickening terror before I remembered that Siwan could almost certainly recreate Walther’s work, even if he wasn’t awake to help her with the potion. Assuming the conclave went well, they’d be awake sooner rather than later.

  Nolan and Duke Michel were on their biers, where I’d expected them to be. Dianda’s bier had been replaced by a shallow trough of water, with her lying at the bottom like a drowned maiden. It was a disappointment but not a real shock to see Tybalt lying on Dianda’s other side. The fairy ring had kept me in place long enough for Arden to move him to a place of supposed safety, and now here we were, all in danger together, one more time.

  Jin wasn’t here. Either she’d been somewhere else, or she’d managed to get away. That gave me a small amount of hope. We might be able to survive this. I turned back to Verona and Minna. They still hadn’t noticed me
. That was about to change.

  “In the name of Queen Arden Windermere in the Mists, High King Aethlin Sollys, High Queen Maida Sollys, and a bunch more nobles who’d like you to cut this shit out, you are under arrest,” I said, as clearly and coherently as I could. The urge to charge in and start swinging was strong. Surely I couldn’t be charged with violation of the Law if the decapitation was accidental.

  Verona and Minna stopped shouting at each other and turned to stare at me in wide-eyed disbelief, briefly united by their surprise. Verona found her voice first. “You,” she said. “How are you here? We left you prisoned in a circle. You can’t have followed us.”

  “Turns out the circle was pretty half-assed,” I said. “It broke, I followed. You have nowhere left to run. Come quietly and maybe the High King will be gentle with you.” That wasn’t going to happen. Whether she realized it or not, Queen Verona had signed her own conviction when she jammed an arrow into Quentin’s arm. The Sollys family might have been able to forgive her treason and insurrection, but they weren’t going to forgive a direct attack on their only son.

  “I told you,” said Minna. “I didn’t have time to set the traps in that room, not with you moving around and refusing to let me mark them. The fairy rings I scattered were weak, to prevent you being snared and stuck until someone came to free you.”

  “That didn’t stop you from killing my husband, you washed-out, death-born bitch,” snarled Verona. Her attention swung back to me. “You can’t arrest me. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “The Law may be the only crime that can carry a death sentence, but I’m willing to bet that between Arden and the High King and Queen, they’ll come up with something to punish you for,” I said. “That’s the trouble with having a justice system built on royal whims. Sometimes they work against you.”

  Verona turned to Minna. “Kill her,” she said calmly.

  I blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “No,” said Minna.

  “Kill her or I’ll kill your sister,” said Verona.

  “I’m right here,” I said. “I have a sword.”

  “You can’t threaten her anymore,” said Minna. “I know you won’t hurt her. Not as long as you want to control me. Leave my sister alone, and maybe I’ll be willing to listen to you.”

  “Didn’t you just, you know, kill her husband? King Kabos of Highmountain? Remember him? He’s dead. Maybe you should move away from her, and stop letting her tell you what to do.” I’ve been attacked and I’ve been belittled. I’d never been ignored while people argued about what to do with me. Especially not when I was heavily armed and already covered in blood.

  Covered in blood . . . “Minna,” I said, causing the Barrow Wight to look at me in surprise. She’d never told me her name. Kabos had done that, bleeding out his secrets under my hand. “Who stabbed Madden?”

  “She did,” said Minna, indicating Verona. “He wouldn’t stop barking.”

  “There’s no crime in killing a dog,” said Verona dismissively.

  “There’s certainly a crime in killing the Queen’s Seneschal,” I said. Verona turned to stare at me. I smiled. “Madden is Arden’s best friend and closest confidant. More importantly, he’s Cu Sidhe. You’re not innocent anymore.”

  Verona took a step backward. “Don’t touch me!”

  “Now you’d run? Now you’d flee? Because your hands aren’t clean?” Minna reached out and grabbed Verona’s arm, digging in her fingers until the other woman yelped and squirmed, trying to get away. “My hands were clean! My sister’s hands were clean!” Her face was starting to distort, becoming the monstrous mask she had worn when she killed the king.

  Verona wailed.

  I lowered my sword. “Let her go,” I said, softly. “She deserves justice. So do you. Let her go, and I’ll take you both to Arden to stand trial. If there’s any way to go gently on you, she’ll find it.” There wasn’t. Minna was going to die. But maybe she would be the last.

  “My sister’s name is Avebury,” said Minna. “She’s only fifteen. She doesn’t know what the world will do to you. She doesn’t know what the world demands. Get her out of Highmountain. Don’t let them hurt her.”

  “Please, let her go.” I took a step forward. “You know that an easy death is more than she deserves. Let her stand trial.”

  “Did the dog live?”

  Minna’s question was so abrupt that it took me a moment to realize what she was asking. I nodded. “Yes, but—”

  “Then so will she. What’s a hundred years, to a monster? That’s what she made of me. She could only do that because of what she was.” Minna’s face softened a bit. “She came to me after my mother died and said ‘do what I say and your sister will have the best of everything; refuse me, and she will have the worst.’ My mother died as her assassin. This ends only with an ending, not with a pause.”

  “Please, she’s mad, please,” moaned Verona.

  “This ends,” said Minna, and ran for the nearest window, dragging Verona by the arm.

  I realized what was about to happen as soon as she began to move. “Minna, no!” I shouted, dropping my sword and lunging for her.

  Her shoulder hit the glass. It shattered, and she fell through, dragging Verona with her. I grabbed Verona’s arm, hoping to pull them back. Minna turned to look at me, briefly arrested in her descent. There was sorrow in her eyes, deep and profound and utterly resigned.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and jerked me forward with all of her Barrow Wight’s strength. There was no time to catch myself before we were falling, all three of us, caught in the unyielding grasp of gravity.

  That was all we were caught in. Minna let us both go and fell with her eyes closed and a beatific smile on her face. Verona screamed, grabbing first at the Barrow Wight and then at me, like we could somehow stop her fall. I pushed her away. I couldn’t save her, not now, not with the skills I possessed; all I could do was hope that she wouldn’t suffer overly much.

  I tried to go limp as I fell, hoping it would minimize the pain of my impact with the ground, which was rushing up on me faster and faster, becoming a black sheet that blanketed my vision and blocked out everything else.

  This is gonna suck, I thought.

  Then I hit the ground, and everything disappeared.

  TWENTY-ONE

  CONSCIOUSNESS CAME ON LIKE a flipped switch: one moment I wasn’t in the world, and the next moment I was. There was no pain. That was probably a good sign. While I was pretty sure that it was possible for me to experience such profound trauma that I lost the ability to feel pain, one little fall from an impossible height wasn’t going to be enough to do it.

  I opened my eyes.

  The ceiling was redwood, spangled with the cutout shapes of stained-glass stars in blackberry purple and deep sea blue. Matching shades covered the lights, keeping them from becoming too bright. I blinked twice, and decided to skip the whole process of testing my body to see whether it still worked. Either it did, or it didn’t. There were no other options.

  I sat up. A wave of dizziness swept over me, forcing me to throw my hand to the side to brace myself. It hit a softly padded surface. I looked down. I was sitting on a bed, sheets beneath me and patchwork quilt atop me. I was also clean. There was no blood on my clothing, which had been changed while I was asleep, replaced by a simple white cotton shift with a drawstring neck. Tiny blackberry flowers had been embroidered around the neck, white on white, virtually invisible save for the tiny pops of yellow at their centers. I was still in Muir Woods, then. Arden seemed to have an almost compulsive need to spatter blackberry symbolism on everything she owned, just to make sure people knew it was hers. I couldn’t blame her for that, considering how long she’d been exiled from her family’s throne. Sure, I would have done the claiming with a label-maker, but to each their own.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I turned towa
rd the voice and found a slim, short woman with pale skin and sharp features standing in the doorway, arms crossed and dragonfly wings beating a mad tattoo in the air behind her. A sleek, short-cropped pageboy haircut framed her face in black silk, making her look like the poster girl for medical responsibility. “You need to lie back down, now.”

  “Hi, Jin,” I said, pushing the quilt back. My legs were bare, although my shift extended to mid-thigh—long enough for decency. I rotated my left ankle experimentally. It moved smoothly and without that little catch that it had been showing before. “Did I rebreak my ankle? Where were you before?”

  “I went out the window when they came in. Unlike some people, I can fly. Toby, I need you to look at me.” There was something wrong with her voice. I had heard her in distress before; had heard her struggling to save a patient who she thought was not going to willingly stay. I had never heard her sound so serious. Startled, I looked back at her.

  Jin wasn’t frowning, exactly. Her expression was one of profound and absolute sorrow. I felt myself go cold. “Toby—”

  “When did he die?” The question came out surprisingly even. My voice didn’t shake. My voice didn’t do anything. The words fell between us like stones in a wall, and part of me knew that this had always been the way things had to be. I didn’t get the happy ending, the man who loved me and the bouquet of roses in my hand. The world has never, never been that kind. Not where I’m concerned.

  Jin blinked, sorrow fading into confusion. “When did who die?”

  “Tybalt. That’s why I was screaming for you before, remember? So you could try to save him?” He’d lost so much blood. It was easy to forget that for other people, blood loss was a dangerous problem, not just an inconvenience to be fixed with Pop Tarts and protein. I’d become so accustomed to being invulnerable that I’d allowed myself to believe everyone I cared about was, too.

  Maybe if Verona hadn’t interrupted her. Maybe if she’d been allowed to work. Maybe if we’d gotten the elf-shot into his arm a little sooner.