A Red Rose Chain

FIVE

“WHAT?” THE LUIDAEG’S VOICE was essentially a snarl, filled with the kind of irritation that should have earned her an apology and a quick disconnection.

It was too bad for her that I had learned to see through some of her disguises. She was never as angry as she sounded on the phone; her tone of voice was one of the few deceptions she had left, thanks to her big sister geasing her to always tell the truth, and so she always answered like she was going to kill whoever had called. Everybody needs a hobby. “Luidaeg, it’s me,” I said, sitting down on the edge of my bed. The bedroom door was closed, buying me at least the illusion of privacy.

“Toby?” The anger faded immediately, replaced by pleased surprise. “I thought you weren’t coming over until later this week.”

“I’m not, or at least I’m not planning to. I have a problem.”

She chuckled, low and dark, like bones rolling on the bottom of the sea. “Don’t you always have a problem? The day you don’t have a problem, you’ll probably decide that that’s a problem, and go looking for one.”

“I can’t say you’re wrong, but this is a real problem.” I described what had happened at Arden’s as quickly and concisely as I could without leaving anything out. It was easier than I had expected it to be. I’ve had a lot of practice at describing bad situations over the past few years.

When I finished, there was silence from the other end of the phone for several seconds before the Luidaeg sighed. “I should have seen this coming,” she said. “Silences has been a danger ever since your last Queen decided to put her patsy on the throne. Don’t underestimate him just because he’s a fool, October. Rhys always knew how to play the political game. He was going to be King one way or another. Silences just gave him a throne that didn’t require a wedding ring to go with it.”

The thought of the false Queen marrying anyone was startling enough to throw me off for a moment before I said, “I have to go. I don’t have a choice.”

“No, you really don’t. Once you put your hands on Arden, your fate was sealed.” The Luidaeg chuckled humorlessly. “Really, you just lie awake all day coming up with new ways to screw yourself over, don’t you?”

“Sometimes even I’m not sure.”

“Regardless, I’m assuming you called because you want my help.”

“The thought had crossed my mind. I also thought you might want to know that I was leaving the Kingdom. The deadline you gave the Selkies—”

“Is mine to worry about. I’ll tell you when you’re needed.” Her tone left no room for argument, and honestly, I didn’t mind.

The Luidaeg was the Firstborn daughter of Maeve and Oberon, and like every Firstborn I had ever met, she had been the mother of her own race: the Roane, shapeshifters and fortunetellers who manipulated storms and lived happily in the waves. They were almost extinct in the modern day, thanks to a betrayal by her elder sister, Eira Rosynhwyr, better known as “Evening Winterrose.” She had given knives and instructions to a group of people with more greed than sense, and they had skinned the Roane alive. Those same people’s children had returned the pelts to the Luidaeg after killing their own parents. They had begged her for mercy, and she had shown it, in her way. She had transformed them into Selkies, entrusting them with the burden of keeping her children’s magic alive.

According to her, the Selkies’ bargain was almost up, and their time in the sea was almost done. I was going to play a part in ending them. I didn’t know what that part was; I was honestly afraid to ask. But as long as she wanted to keep putting it off, I was happy to delay.

“Okay,” I said. “Got any advice for me?”

“Don’t drink the water; don’t trust the locals.” She paused. “Actually, amend that: you need a local, one you can trust. That alchemist of yours, Walther? Take him with you. He’ll help you make it back alive.”

I blinked. “Walther? He’s not from Silences.”

“Yeah, he is. He just doesn’t talk about it much.”

“And you know this because . . . ?”

“Because I pay attention. Because I remember the War of Silences. And because Silences trained the best alchemists in the Westlands. He’s Tylwyth Teg, just like the old ruling family of that Kingdom. He’s an alchemist skilled enough to keep a changeling alive through a goblin fruit addiction. He’s from Silences, sure as fish have bones. It’s going to be hard enough without going in blind. Take him.”

“People aren’t like loaves of bread at the store. I can’t just go ‘oh, I’ll take this one.’”

“Can’t you?” Now she sounded almost amused. “Figure it out. Stay alive.” The line went dead in my hand.

I lowered my phone, glowering at it. I couldn’t call her back. For one thing, if she’d had anything else to say, she would have said it. For another, poking the Firstborn when they don’t want to be poked is a good way to pull back minus a hand, and I liked both of mine. Sighing, I pulled up my address book, and dialed again.

Sunrise was at least twenty minutes away, and the campus wouldn’t be open for hours. The phone was still answered on the second ring. “Professor Davies’ office, Professor Davies speaking. I’d ask why you were calling at this ungodly hour of the morning, but maybe you’ve met me.” Walther sounded almost offensively cheerful for a man who had doubtless been locked in his lab, inhaling chemical fumes all night.

“Academic standards for how you answer the phone get lower after midnight, don’t they?” I asked.

“All human standards get lower after midnight,” said Walther. “Hey, Toby. Long time no hear. What’s up? Do you need another alchemical miracle? Because I’m warning you, I may start charging you by the ounce soon.”

“I don’t need a miracle right now, but I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. “I do have an arrow and scroll that I’m going to need analyzed. I hope your schedule’s free.” Walther was the best alchemist I knew. He’d kept me from eating myself alive when I was addicted to goblin fruit, and he’d created the power-dampening potion that had allowed us to save Chelsea when she was teleporting uncontrollably through the various realms of Faerie. He wasn’t my most frequently used Hail Mary pass, but he’d done the job often enough to be a very valued ally. “Why are you at work this late? I was sort of expecting to get your voicemail at this hour.”

“I’m working on a few private projects. Even the most dedicated grad students give up by midnight, or sometime shortly after; that leaves me the hours between two and six for getting things the way I want them. A lot of alchemical tinctures need to be hit by the first rays of the rising sun to really crystallize their effects, so I like to have them finished right before dawn. That way I can pack them in before the human students show up and why are you calling if it’s just a standard analysis? You’d normally bring that by the lab. Are you actually being social for a change?”

He sounded so delighted by the idea that I felt a pang of guilt when I had to say, “No, not really. I do need that analysis, but there’s . . . there’s a problem, and I think I also need you. Not your work, not your potions, you. Is there any way you can get out of your classes for a while? A week or so?” It wouldn’t be more. After a week, we’d either be at war, or everything would be back to normal.

Walther hesitated before saying, warily, “There’s a flu that’s been going around campus. I have grad students who can take my classes and sick time saved up for the actual time off. But you’re going to have to give me a damn good reason that I’d want to do that.”

“Silences has just declared war on the Mists.”

Walther didn’t say anything.

“Queen Windermere, in her brilliance, has decided that I would be the ideal diplomatic ambassador from the Mists. I leave tomorrow to try and make this war not happen. The Luidaeg says I need to take someone who actually knows Silences with me. She suggested you.”

Walther didn’t say anything.

“Please.”

“Do you understand what you’re asking me to do?” His voice was lower now, almost pained. “If the Luidaeg told you I was from Silences, she must have told you that I never wanted to go back there again. I can’t do this.”

“Why not?”

“Why not?” He laughed unsteadily. “Because they came for my family, Toby. They killed or arrested everyone I had ever given a damn about, and they did it because they didn’t like the way we thought. I barely got away. I haven’t spoken to my sister or to any of my cousins in years. I don’t even know if they made it out, and I can’t go looking. It’s not safe for me to talk to people from Silences, not with that murderous bastard on the throne. You’re asking me to walk right back onto the killing fields.”

“I’m asking you to help me keep the killing fields from coming here. Please, Walther. The old Queen—the one whose rulings about changelings started the first war, the war you’re talking about now—she’s there, with their current King, and she’s the one who wants us to start killing each other again. She wants her throne back. I don’t think that would be good for anybody, but I get the feeling it would be especially bad for people who have known connections to me.”

There was a long pause before Walther said, in a soft voice, “That’s low. You know that, don’t you?”

“I do.” Sometimes the high ground is reserved for the people who think honor is more important than living. “I’m sorry, if that helps at all.”

“It doesn’t.”

“I didn’t think it would.” I stopped talking, waiting for him to break the silence between us.

It stretched out for long enough that I began to think he wasn’t going to. Finally, he said, “Pick me up from my office before you go. I need time to get my kit together.”

“Okay,” I said. I felt bad about pushing him this way, but it was going to have to wait. He was going to come. My diplomatic team, such as it was, was nearly complete. “We’ll see you then. Open roads, Walther.”

“We’re going to need a lot more than open roads,” he said, and hung up.

“That could have gone better,” I said, lowering my phone and looking at it like it should have somehow warned me. Then I sighed and tucked it back into my pocket as I stood. Walther was coming with us. Ruthless as it might seem, I was willing to upset him if it meant he was going to play native guide to the ins and outs of the Court of Silences. Everyone’s lives might depend on his temporary unhappiness . . . and as I had come to learn over the past few years, sometimes ripping away the bandages was what allowed the soul to finally heal. He might come out of this stronger than he had ever imagined.

Assuming he—and we—came out of it at all.

Quentin was in the kitchen making more sandwiches when I came back downstairs. I paused in the doorway, arching an eyebrow upward. “Well?” I asked.

“My father says I should go with you, because this is important stuff for me to know and understand,” he said dutifully, looking over his shoulder at me. I kept my eyebrow raised until he sighed and added, “He also says I should be prepared to run if it’s necessary to save my own life, because he needs an heir more than I need an education.”

“Great,” I said. “I’ll ask Arden for some blood before we leave.”

Quentin paled. If there was one area in which I had not been good for my squire’s education, it was his understanding and use of blood magic. I hadn’t quite managed to pass along my revulsion at the sight of the stuff, but he’d been fostered with Sylvester, who never did very much blood magic, and then squired to me, who had a tendency to either wind up covered in the stuff or try to ignore it completely. I’d made a few efforts to get him accustomed to what would be his greatest strength when he was a King, but it was hard to keep my own prejudices from shining through.

I was going to have to try harder. I owed it to him, and to the Kingdom that would one day be his to hold. “Walther is coming with us,” I explained. “He can make blood charms. Blood from Arden will hold her magic, and by having Walther preserve it, we can keep an escape route open the whole time.” Blood from her sleeping brother, Nolan, would have been even better. Their power was roughly equal, but he had less opportunity to use his, and it built up in his veins like wine. I just didn’t think she was going to let me bleed him for the sake of our escape.

Then again, she was shipping me off to stop a war. I made a note to ask her about it.

“Make sure he makes enough for everyone,” said May. She was still sitting at the table.

I turned to look at her. “Didn’t I tell you to go pack?”

“Yes, and I stayed right here to make sure you weren’t going to try to sneak out of the house while I was distracted,” she said amiably. “I figured it would be harder for you to ditch me once you’d said that I was allowed to come along in front of Quentin. Besides, I’m a great alternative escape plan. Let them fill me with arrows while you run. I’ll catch up later.”

“What if they’re using elf-shot?” asked Quentin.

“Now that is an interesting question that I would almost like to know the answer to,” said May. An edge came into her voice, accompanied by the strange, nameless accent that she sometimes had, usually when she was talking about—or to—the night-haunts. “A few centuries ago, this woman decided she wasn’t going to let us have her husband. I’m not sure why. Someone had told her we were evil, or that we perverted the bodies of the dead or something.”

“Maybe someone told her that you ate them, sweetie,” said Jazz.

“Maybe,” agreed May. “Anyway, this lady met us standing over her husband’s body with a crossbow and a whole quiver of elf-shot arrows. She started firing at random into the flock, trying to scare us off, or take hostages if she couldn’t manage it. She was a pretty good shot, too. She hit half a dozen of us before she ran out of arrows. And not a single night-haunt fell.”

“So night-haunts are immune to elf-shot?” I asked.

May nodded. “Yeah. I just don’t know if Fetches are. Could be interesting to find out.”

Jazz punched her in the arm. “Don’t do it on purpose. I have no interest in sitting and weeping by your bier for a hundred years or more.”

“Yes, dear,” said May.

Quentin, meanwhile, had a more important question. He frowned and asked, “What happened to the woman?”

“Oh, her? She had raised a hand against us, and willingly entered our circle. We ate her.” May stood, leaning over to kiss Jazz’s cheek before she added, “I’m going to go get my things ready. Don’t leave without me!”

“We wouldn’t dream of it,” I said, staring after her as she sashayed out of the kitchen. May and I were close. Sometimes I even thought of her as my actual sister, not the result of a complicated series of choices and magical bindings. I definitely loved her. But there were still times, like this one, when I was reminded that she was unique in all of Faerie, and that there were legitimate reasons for her to scare the crap out of me.

“That’s my girl,” said Jazz. She sounded faintly amused. She pushed her own chair back, stretching, and said, “I’m going to go help May pack. I’ll probably be asleep when you leave.”

“Okay,” I said. “There’s cat food in the hall closet, and mulch on the porch.”

“I know where everything is,” said Jazz. Her amusement faded. “Bring her back safe, Toby. And bring you back safe, too. I’m not sure she could live with herself if she let you get hurt.”

“I’ll do my best,” I said.

“That’s all I ever ask,” she said, and left the kitchen, leaving me alone with Quentin.

He looked at me. I looked at him. He shrugged. I sighed, and said, “I bet this isn’t what you were expecting when you asked to be my squire, huh?”

“It’s better,” he said, with a brief grin. “By the time I’m King, there won’t be anything left that can surprise me.”

“I guess that’s a good trait, in a King.” I pushed away from the counter. “I should pack, and you should, too. Leave behind anything that might let them figure out who you are.”

He blinked at me. “You never figured it out.”

“I wasn’t looking, and I’m not a hostile monarch getting ready to go to war against the Court you represent,” I said. “For all I know, you carry a handkerchief with the logo of the Westlands on it, and seeing it would let any servant in Silences know that you’re the missing prince.”

“I think that’s the plot of a Disney movie,” said Quentin slowly. “But okay. I’ll make sure I don’t pack anything that could give me away.”

“Good,” I said. I retrieved my neglected sandwich from the counter. “Let’s go get ready to do something incredibly stupid.”

“Business as usual, then,” he said, and fled the kitchen, laughing, before I could swat him. I followed, a smile on my face. That was the nice thing about sharing my home with people that I loved: even when things were bad, I could generally find something to smile about.

Quentin beat me to the top of the stairs and was already in his room by the time I reached the hall. I paused for a moment, listening to the sound of him opening drawers. He would be done packing well before I was. Unlike the stereotype of the teenage boy living in mess and chaos, Quentin kept the tidiest room in our house. May’s bedroom was always an explosion of fabric and makeup and bright colors. And my room was, well . . .

I turned and opened the door, revealing the battered outline of my secondhand bed, rescued from being a spine-breaker only by the addition of a memory foam mattress topper, and the heaps of unfolded laundry that always seemed to sprout up around my dresser and nightstand, like strange mushrooms. Spike, my resident rose goblin, was asleep in one of those piles of laundry, curled into a tight ball with its nose resting on its spiny tail. The cats were equally asleep, on the bed.

Spike had tried to sleep in the bed with me, Cagney, and Lacey when I first brought it home. Unfortunately, being a rose goblin meant that it was completely covered in thorns. I’d only needed to roll over on top of it once to know that it needed to sleep elsewhere.

“Hey, guys,” I said quietly, and walked across the room to the closet. “Jazz is going to be taking care of you for a while, all right? Try to be nice to her. She’s probably going to be pretty stressed out.” Cagney and Lacey, as expected, ignored me.

Spike was another story. The rose goblin clambered to its feet, stretching in a languid, catlike manner before rattling its thorns at me and making an inquisitive keening noise in the back of its throat.

“What?” I asked, opening the closet and beginning to paw through my growing collection of ball gowns. I was going to need to bring them all. The irony of wearing dresses created by the false Queen’s magic to a Court where she was currently in residence did not escape me. After a pause, I also dug out the black spider-silk formal I’d worn when I went to prevent our war with the Undersea, and the silver spider-silk gown I’d worn to Arden’s Yule Ball.

“I know there’s some sort of a rule against wearing the same dress to two court functions, but it’s a stupid rule, and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t extend across Kingdoms,” I said, dumping my armload of formalwear on the bed. Spike, still watching me intently, rattled its thorns again and chirped. “Okay, seriously, what?”

“It wants to come with you,” said Tybalt, from the bedroom door.

I turned to look at him, raising an eyebrow. “Please don’t tell me you speak rose goblin now. That would be one weird thing too far for my delicate nerves to handle.”

“I do not,” said Tybalt calmly. He folded his arms, causing the red flannel shirt he was wearing to wrinkle interestingly across his chest. “I do, however, speak fluent housecat, which is a frequently nonverbal language. Your resident felines are hoping you will acquiesce to its request and allow it to accompany you on whatever journey you are undertaking, as otherwise it will pace and rattle and disrupt their sleep.”

“Right. Because my cats speak rose goblin.”

Now Tybalt allowed himself a very faint smile, the corners of his mouth tilting almost imperceptibly upward. “They have had occasion to learn, given the close quarters they once inhabited.”

“It’s not my fault I kept them in an apartment for so long! I couldn’t afford the rent on anything larger.” My objections sounded weak even to my own ears, and when Tybalt’s smile grew, so did mine. I shrugged. “Okay. So I liked my apartment. It was the home I made for myself after I came back from the pond. You know? I liked having a place that was mine, that didn’t have to be anyone else’s.”

“But it didn’t remain yours alone for terribly long.” Tybalt lowered his arms and prowled into my room, moving close enough that I could smell the lingering traces of pennyroyal and musk on his skin. It was a heady perfume, and one I had become very accustomed to over the past few years. “It began with the cats—almost immediately—and then came the rose goblin, and then May . . . however did it take you so long to realize that you were not made for solitude?”

“What can I say? I’m a slow learner.” I leaned up and forward, pressing my lips to his. Tybalt’s arms slunk around my waist and pulled me close, until my heels left the floor and I was balanced on my toes. His hands found a home at the small of my back, fingers clenched tight against the ridges of my spine. I closed my eyes, sinking into the moment. We wouldn’t have it for very long. I knew that; I always knew that. Kisses like this were meant to be stolen, captured around the edges of the things we couldn’t run from.

There had been a time when I hadn’t even been willing to admit that I loved him, or more terrifyingly, that he loved me. And now he was going to marry me, assuming we both lived long enough to let that happen.

Spike’s low keening caught my ear and caused me to finally pull away, looking down at the thorny little thing. The rose goblin narrowed its bright yellow eyes and rattled its thorns at me, clearly impatient.

“Yes, you can come along,” I said, removing my hands from Tybalt’s shoulders, where they had somehow come to rest. “Just try not to get me into any trouble I wasn’t going to find on my own, okay?”

Spike rattled its thorns and made a warbling noise before trotting out of the room, presumably to do whatever sort of preparation an animate rose bush needed to do before going on an adventure.

“You’re right about one thing: I’m not good at being alone,” I said, raking my hair out of my eyes as I turned back to Tybalt. “Even when I’m trying to go on a dangerous diplomatic mission, I wind up bringing half the Kingdom of the Mists with me. Walther’s coming, too. He knows Silences, and the Luidaeg thought it would be a good idea.”

“We worry about you,” said Tybalt. He reached out and brushed back a lock of hair that I had managed to miss. “Your predilection for racing headlong into danger has left us reluctant to allow you to wander unobserved.”

“A girl’s got to have a few talents,” I said, with a smile, and took a step backward before turning and opening my dresser. “I’m bringing a couple of ball gowns, but I figure I can probably get away with a few pairs of jeans, too. I look silly in tights, and I can’t fight in a dress.”

“Fashion is ever your nemesis, isn’t it?” asked Tybalt, sounding amused. I glanced over my shoulder to find him studying my open closet. “It’s a miracle we can make you presentable as often as we do.”

I paused, looking at him carefully. He was still considering the bed, but there was a tension in his shoulders that I recognized all too well. “You’re really worried, aren’t you?”

“I am following my fiancée, an alchemist, a half-trained squire, and a death omen to a hostile Kingdom, currently being influenced by a woman who has every reason to wish the lot of us dead,” he said, sounding oddly subdued. “A woman who, I feel I must remind you, once compelled me to tear your throat from your body.”

“Tybalt—” I began.

He raised a hand, motioning for me to be quiet. I stopped. For a long moment, silence held sway over the room, so thick with what wasn’t being said that I could barely breathe. Finally, he sighed, looking at me gravely. There were shadows in his malachite-banded eyes.

“We have not spoken of this, mostly, I feel, because I did not wish it, and you did not force the matter. You know I was under her control; you know I would die before I would harm you of my own volition. The matter, such as it is, is closed for you. I have known this since the moment you embraced me in Queen Windermere’s hall, and please do not doubt that I am grateful. All I have ever wished is your good regard.”

“That’s not true,” I protested. “You were alive for centuries before I was even born.” It was a stupid thing to say, but I needed to say something, and it was the only thing I could think of.

Tybalt smiled. It didn’t chase the shadows from his eyes. “True enough, and I won’t pretend the life I lived before you was somehow the lesser for your absence. There was no hole waiting for you to come along and fill it. I loved often, if not always well. I fought, I fled, I ruled my people, and I thought myself content. But since you have returned to us—since the waters of the Tea Gardens gave you up, and gave you back to me—not a day has passed without my considering the fragility of your smile, or the color of your eyes. You insinuated yourself into my heart like a worm into an apple, and I am consumed by you.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. I just blinked at him, struck silent by his words. Sometimes I could forget that Tybalt was a contemporary of Shakespeare, that his language wasn’t archaic because he was putting on airs, but because that was the way he’d learned to speak: all flourish and metaphor, and an anguished search for understanding.

“When the false Queen sang, all I heard was her voice; all I knew were her orders,” he said, expression all but begging me to understand. “I could no more have denied her in those moments than I could deny you now. I felt no love for her, thankfully—if I had, I think I might have died on the spot, my heart torn in two by the depth of my betrayal.”

“You did what you were compelled to do,” I said, finally feeling like I was back on solid ground in this conversation. “She was part Siren. You couldn’t help yourself.” She had been part Siren, then. She wasn’t anymore. I had ripped that part of her heritage away from her as cruelly as a battlefield surgeon hacking away a limb. I hadn’t felt bad about it then, and I couldn’t bring myself to feel bad about it now. She was the one who had chosen to use her fae gifts to turn my allies against me, and to try to hold a throne that she knew damn well wasn’t hers to have. She’d deserved what I did to her.

“But I knew.” The bitterness in his voice stopped me cold. “I knew what I was doing, even as I could not help myself. I had been pushed into the wings of my own existence, and my understudy allowed to take the stage. Don’t you understand? I wasn’t controlled so completely that I didn’t see your face as it crumpled, as my claws came away red with your blood. I could have killed you. I would have killed you. And I would have lived the rest of my life knowing that I had destroyed the woman I loved. I have lived with that knowledge, October. It was a bitter pill to swallow when Anne died, all independent of my actions. I could not have lived with it a second time. So yes, I’m worried. I’m worried that we’re walking into a situation I cannot predict or control, orchestrated by a woman who has used me as a weapon against you once before. I’m worried that when I see her face, I won’t be able to stop myself from taking my revenge. And I am equally worried that were I to stand aside, were I to let you go without me, you would not come home again.”

“Oh, oak and ash, Tybalt.” I crossed the distance between us in two long strides, putting my arms around him again. This time, I was the one to pull him tight, and he was the one who folded into me, pressing his face to my shoulder as he cried. I just held him, stroking his back with one hand and staring at the wall while I tried to sort through all the things I wanted to say—the ones I shouldn’t say, the ones I couldn’t say, and the ones that would have to be said eventually, but would do us no good in the here and now.

Finally, I said, very softly, “I don’t blame you. I made the choice then not to blame you, and I stand by it. You would never have hurt me if she hadn’t forced it to happen, and I got better. I always get better. That’s the thing you have to remember, okay? No matter what happens to me, I will do my best to get better, and I will not leave you. I love you. I love you even when my blood is on your hands. And I’m not going anywhere, you got that? I am not going anywhere.”

Tybalt didn’t say anything. He just stayed where he was, crying into my shoulder. I closed my eyes as I held him close, and hoped more than anything else in the world that I wasn’t lying to him.