When Sorrows Come Page 19

  Instead, he had transformed me, an old pureblood technique for getting an enemy out of the way for a while, and left me to swim away a decade and a half of my life. I’d lost everything because of Simon.

  I was still trying to figure out how I felt about the fact that I’d been the one to help him get everything back.

  Oh, it was a new everything—he had divorced my mother and immediately remarried, this time to both the Duchess of Saltmist and her Ducal consort, a move most people seemed to be regarding as purely tactical, putting him as far outside my mother’s reach as possible while he recovered from his years of abuse, neglect, and worse in the service of Eira Rosynhwyr. Sadly for my sanity, I knew there had been nothing tactical about it, at least not for Simon and Patrick—they truly loved each other, with the deep, immutable love that sometimes rises out of the deepest friendships. It might have been partially tactical on Dianda’s part. I’ve never met a woman who was as primed to fight the world as Dianda Lorden, and the chance to poke a Firstborn she’d hated for decades in the eye may have been too much to resist.

  I don’t think so, though. I think she loves Patrick enough that when he asked to bring the man he loves home, she agreed, and I think she’s learning to love him, too.

  So yeah. I try not to think about the situation with Dean’s parents and my legal father more than I absolutely have to, and I dare anyone in the world to blame me.

  We had continued walking while I didn’t think about Dean’s parents, following the thin, attenuated trail of Nessa’s magic. The hall ended, merging with another, wider hall, and we continued onward, until the trail led to a seemingly featureless wall. We stopped there, me still occasionally sniffing the air to keep myself from losing the trail, Quentin balling his hands helplessly.

  “If we were in Shadowed Hills or Goldengreen, I’d know what signs to look for in order to open this door,” he said. “I’d know how the servants hid their comings and goings from the nobility, and I’d be able to get us in.”

  “But we’re not,” I said. “We’re just in a place that has good reason to love the person we’re looking for, and probably good reason to love you, too.”

  I stroked the wall with one hand, leaning forward until my lips nearly brushed the wood. I stopped short, mostly because smearing dried blood and whatever remained of my lipstick on something clean and polished seemed unnecessarily rude. “Hi,” I said, voice pitched low. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced.”

  “Oh, Maeve! Do you have to?” groaned Quentin. “It’s so embarrassing when you do this.”

  I ignored him. No one was coming and even if they did, Faerie doesn’t actually have any taboos against sweet-talking buildings. Most people don’t believe knowes are alive, much less that they can have opinions about things, but they are, and they can. I’ve proven it, over and over again.

  “My name’s October,” I informed the wall. “October Daye. I’m standing as knight to Quentin Sollys, who you probably remember used to live here. He’s going to live here again someday, and when he does, he’ll remember who was nice to me, and he’ll reward them.”

  “Oak and ash,” muttered Quentin, putting his hand over his face. “Just hurry up and make out with the architecture before somebody sees you.”

  “Sure, kid,” I said with amusement. To the wall, I added, “You can ignore him. He’s at that age where everything adults do is embarrassing. I’m looking for your seneschal. I know she came this way, and I know she didn’t go back to her room, and I’ve been in enough knowes to know there’s a door here. If you could just open it for me, I’d be able to find her, and make sure that she’s all right. I think someone may have done something bad to her, and I’m concerned . . .”

  This was one of the rare situations where being elf-shot was the best option we could hope for. If Nessa had been elf-shot, she wouldn’t need to eat, drink, or use the bathroom. She’d just sleep for as long as it took us to find her. Up to a hundred years, if it took that long.

  It wasn’t going to take that long. Elf-shot was Eira’s creation, and it used to be the best way the purebloods had to both wage war without killing each other and reassert their natural superiority. They could put each other to sleep for a hundred years and consider it a mere inconvenience! They could come back to the world after a century had passed and slide right back into their lives as if they had never been gone at all! Even if elf-shot hadn’t been designed to be fatal to changelings, we didn’t have that option. A hundred years of slumber would leave us stranded in a world that we couldn’t recognize, bereft of the entire mortal side of our family, with no way of ever going home.

  Eira thought elf-shot would prevent Faerie from ever being anything like equal. How could it be, when one of your best weapons killed part of the population and gave the other half a refreshing nap? And maybe she would have been right, if not for my ridiculous sensitivity to the scent of magic. I’d been able to accurately identify the type of rose she’d used in brewing and enchanting the original elf-shot, and Walther was a talented enough alchemist that he’d been able to use that information to blend a countercharm that could cancel out the effects of elf-shot, no matter when it was administered. Five minutes or fifty years, it didn’t matter. If Nessa had been elf-shot, she was going to wake up.

  If she hadn’t, I just hoped she hadn’t been left somewhere that would do her damage.

  I stroked the wall again, whispering, “Please,” and there was a soft clicking sound, like a trigger pulling back or a latch letting go. I took a step back, not wanting to be in the line of fire for the former and not wanting to impede the latter. A previously unseen door swung open, revealing a narrow hall paneled in the same maple as the rest of the knowe.

  “Do you not have any other trees in Canada?” I asked.

  “Arden uses redwoods in all of her decorating,” said Quentin, and pushed the door wider, stepping into the hall beyond. I scowled as I followed him. He knew better than to take point.

  Only apparently not, because here he was, leading the way deeper into the servants’ passage. I closed the door behind me, whispering a quick, “I appreciate it more than I can say,” to the knowe. The wood seemed to warm beneath my fingers, and I smiled, hurrying after Quentin.

  ten

  The air was stiller here. Apparently, there wasn’t much service to this part of the knowe; that, or High King Aethlin’s servants didn’t feel the need to move around the knowe in secret all that often. The smell of limestone and creeping thistle was accordingly stronger. I pushed my way past Quentin, who made a wordless sound of protest.

  I held up a hand to stop him. “No,” I said. “I understand that you feel like this is a place where you can be the one to take on the danger, because you’ve worked in halls like this and I haven’t, but her magic is so close at this point, and I don’t want to lose it because I get distracted by yours.” It wouldn’t have been a problem if his body had been his own, radiating his quiet, familiar magical signature. I could tune that out easily. The signature of this new body was less familiar. It still attracted my attention.

  Frowning, Quentin stepped back and yielded the lead to me.

  I put my hand on the wall to keep myself on an even keel and closed my eyes as I started walking again, following nothing but the scent. There had been nothing consistent accompanying it; the Doppelganger had dragged her here, somehow transporting her through the knowe without being seen. That implied a level of surveillance and study of the normal patterns of the staff that was frankly unnerving and meant they might have a much bigger problem than one infiltrator and one abduction.

  We kept walking for what felt like forever but was probably no more than fifty feet when the scent of Nessa’s magic grew suddenly, substantially stronger. I stopped. Quentin slammed into me from behind, and I opened my eyes.

  “Ow,” he said.

  “Stay right here,” I said, and took three long steps forw
ard before scenting the air again.

  No limestone. Nessa’s magic didn’t extend this far. I returned to Quentin, sniffing first one wall and then the other before tapping on the left wall. “Here,” I said. “Should there be a door here?”

  “I don’t know,” he protested. “I’ve never been in here before! Maybe there’s supposed to be a door, maybe not!”

  “It feels like there should be a door,” I said, and I tapped again. The sound that came back was hollow. I pressed my palms against the wall. “I don’t suppose you can help me out again?” I asked. The wood grew cool under my hands, as if the knowe itself was saying no. I nodded, taking my hands away. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the doors in the main hall are hidden because the courtiers and nobles don’t want to think about the servants they don’t see. The people who clean the rooms and deliver the drinks have to be able to move privately and discreetly around the knowe. In here, on this side, there’s no reason to put that amount of work into smoothing out the seams. The architects wouldn’t take the time, and neither would the knowe. If there’s supposed to be a door here, someone is hiding it.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning you need to be quiet and let me work.”

  Gwragedd Annwn are fabulous illusionists, second only to the Gwragen. That’s never really made sense to me, since we like to simplify the types of magic to illusions being Titania’s purview, but the Merrow are her descendants, and they thrive entirely in the water, and so are the Daoine Sidhe, whose strength is in the blood. Maybe being descended from the appropriate member of the Three makes things easier, rather than making them likely. I don’t know. What I do know is that the Gwragedd Annwn can weave illusions so perfect they seem realer than reality, and if Nessa’s magic was stronger here, it was probably because she had been awake and cajoled into producing her own prison.

  I drew the knife from my belt, my own magic gathering around me as I stared fixedly at the wall. This time, I was going to be using my own blood to fuel the working, and I drew the blade across my palm, tensing my hand enough to split the skin and muscle beneath in a single smooth line. Quentin winced.

  “I know you heal faster than is fair, but I really wish you’d stop cutting your hands,” he said. “What happens when you turn yourself mostly human again by mistake and you don’t heal like it’s your job, huh? What happens when you cut a tendon and it doesn’t just snap back into place?”

  I shot him a quick look as I raised my cupped hand to my mouth. “But you can make a bowl with your hand, so the blood doesn’t just run down your arm,” I said. Ease of delivery is why most of the blood-workers I’ve known have focused on the hands, even though most of them don’t make cuts as large or deep as I do. They’re not racing against their own bodies to get to the blood before their skin seals up again and locks it safely inside.

  For as much as people yell at me for bleeding too much, it’s surprisingly difficult to get as much blood as I need.

  Fortunately, this cut had been deep enough to bleed considerably before the skin healed over. I lowered my head and drank as deeply as I could, tasting the cut-grass flavor of my magic in the coppery richness of my own veins. I used to hate the taste of blood. I’m still not the biggest fan, given the memories and complications it brings with it when it comes from someone else, but at least these days I can appreciate how much blood is informed by magic.

  I raised my head again, resisting the urge to wipe my bloody palm against my still mostly-clean dress as I closed my eyes and focused on the idea of the wall, relaxing as a twisting web of tangled purple and pale gray lines sprang into existence. It was nestled atop a deeper purple and polished maple macramé that looked . . . more stable, somehow, like it had been here long enough to root and settle itself. The two magics were entirely separate and distinct, which was a relief. I wasn’t going to unweave the knowe by pulling on the illusion I knew had to be keeping me from the door.

  Of all the gifts of my bloodline, the ability to unweave other people’s magic seems like it would be the most useful, but it’s actually the least helpful in a crisis because it takes time and concentration; it isn’t something I can do swiftly, not like picking out a scent or borrowing the magic in someone else’s blood. Maybe I’ll get faster with practice. Maybe I won’t. Everyone needs limits.

  I reached out with one hand, grasping the first glittering gray strand where it lingered in the air and giving it a short, sharp yank. It unraveled, releasing several purple strands to wave languidly in the air. I pulled on them, and then on another gray, and another, continuing to pull and twist and separate until the whole structure began to look frayed around the edges. This time I reached out with both hands, grasping what remained and yanking sharply.

  The spell collapsed with a sudden rush of limestone and creeping thistle, perfuming the air so heavily that Quentin gasped, finally catching the familiar scent of his childhood—what? Babysitter? Guardian? What would a seneschal have been to the Crown Prince of a High Kingdom?

  I opened my eyes. The smooth stretch of wall was gone, broken by the outline of a humble door, the kind of door that led to nothing special, closets or storerooms and the like.

  “Cover your eyes,” I said. He gave me a startled look. “If she has no illusions and the sight of her kills me, I’ll get better.” Probably. “You won’t. So cover your eyes, or my nerves won’t be able to handle opening this door.”

  He put his hands over his eyes. I reached for the doorknob, pausing at the last moment to check it for pressure plates like the one that had been on her quarters. There were none. “This is either a solution or massive stupidity,” I said, and tried the knob.

  It was locked. Of course, it was locked. If you’re trying to get someone out of the way—or to hide a corpse—you don’t shove them into an unlocked room if you have any choice in the matter. That’s not hiding someone; that’s putting them on a shelf until someone needs a roll of toilet paper and opens the wrong door.

  I sighed heavily. The problem I’d had earlier was looming again. I didn’t have my lockpicks with me, and I’d given Raj back his. I glanced at Quentin. “I don’t suppose you have your lockpicking kit with you, do you?”

  “My knight would send me to my room without dessert for a week if I didn’t carry them with me everywhere I go,” he said, and produced the kit from inside his tunic, offering it to me with a cheeky grin that was no less recognizable for being on the wrong face. I took the kit and wrinkled my nose at him, then bent and began working on the lock.

  It was a fairly old-fashioned piece of hardware, good enough for locking someone in a room and not letting them out, but not remotely good enough to stop me. In under a minute, I was bundling the tools up again and passing them to Quentin, who tucked them back into his tunic. “Sounds like your knight is pretty good at her job,” I said lightly.

  He kept smiling. “She has her moments,” he said.

  I rolled my eyes and grasped the doorknob again. This time when I twisted, it turned easily, and the door swung inward to reveal what it had been hiding.

  On the other side was a storeroom filled with racks of towels and pristine, sparkling dishes, like something out of the Bed Bath & Beyond attached to Medieval Times. Half the room was also filled with a wall of water.

  It split the room almost flawlessly, reaching from the floor to the ceiling, glimmering and clear. On the other side of the water, towels and napkins floated on a gentle current, moving around the figure of the woman who hung suspended in the center of the flood.

  I blinked. “That’s new,” I said. The water was acting as a sort of refraction device. I could tell the woman—whose eyes were closed, and who appeared to be sleeping—wasn’t wearing any illusions, but the sight of her didn’t hurt with the water in the way. She was a modern-day Medusa, wrapped in the loving embrace of her own rippling
mirror. “Keep your eyes closed.”

  “What’s going on? Did you find Nessa?”

  “Pretty sure, yeah, and not sure,” I said, reaching out with my bloody hand to touch the surface of the water. That was either the best thing or the worst thing I could possibly have done, and I had no idea which it was going to be.

  Eventually, I was going to have to learn to figure that out first, but since I’d been doing pretty well with my “be basically indestructible and refuse to stop moving forward” agenda so far, this didn’t seem like the biggest risk.

  As soon as I touched the wall of water, it popped like a soap bubble, cascading down on us and driving me back until I hit the opposite wall. Quentin, who had been standing to the side of the doorway, was merely soaked to the skin. He made a protesting noise, but he didn’t uncover his eyes, and I appreciated his obedience more than I could say.

  I coughed and spat, trying to get the water out of my nose and mouth even as I wiped my eyes. Nessa was sprawled facedown in the middle of the storeroom, not having been washed remotely as far as she should have been. I picked myself up and took a step forward, my dress impeding my motion as it hadn’t before now that it was soaked through and clinging to my legs.

  “Excuse me, Nessa?” I said. “Are you awake?”

  She didn’t move. That didn’t necessarily mean anything. My voice was unfamiliar, and she’d been abducted; if she was awake, she had no reason to make this easy on me. If anything, she had good reason to make it as hard as possible.

  “If you’re awake, please veil yourself,” I said. “My name is Sir October Daye, Knight of Lost Words. I have been invited from the Kingdom in the Mists to hold my wedding here, and you’re supposed to be the one overseeing the organization. Your quarters are full of boobytraps, including a bunch of pixie-sized elf-shot—that’s pretty awesome, considering that my groom is currently unconscious, and supposed to stay that way for a century—and a Doppelganger has been pretending to be you.” I didn’t tell her about either of the dead men. She could handle the knowledge and the guilt, if it came with any, once she was herself again.