A Red-Rose Chain Read online

  “He was dropped through a portal into the clearing, Highness,” said Lowri. Her voice shook as she spoke, her accent growing stronger in her dismay. “Whoever left him for us, their magic came and went too quickly. We didn’t have time to recognize it.”

  “Why won’t he wake up?” moaned Arden. She didn’t look like a Queen in that moment: she looked like an ordinary woman, on the verge of a breakdown over the thought that her best and oldest friend had been hurt. “Madden, please. Please wake up, Madden, please.”

  “He won’t,” said Tybalt. He strode over to Arden, pushing her aside as he bent to pull Madden’s jacket open. Quentin and I followed him, although we didn’t touch Arden. He could get away with a certain amount of manhandling the Queen, since she had no authority over him. Quentin and I weren’t so lucky. Arden was our friend and all, but that wouldn’t stop her from getting pissed if we touched her while she was already distraught.

  Tybalt felt around inside Madden’s jacket, Arden looking on in wide-eyed dismay, until he hissed with displeasure and pulled out a short, almost stubby-looking arrow. The tip was damp with blood, but only the tip; the arrow had done little more than scratch Madden’s skin, based on how much blood was there. The smell of it hit me as I was walking toward him. I gasped, clapping a hand over my mouth.

  Blood knows everything. Blood is where memory is stored, and where magic lives . . . and when someone is poisoned or enchanted, the blood knows that, too.

  “As I suspected,” said Tybalt sadly. He turned the arrow in his hand, careful to avoid the point. The shaft was fletched in deep pine green and silver—the same shade of silver that appeared on the arms of the Kingdom of the Mists, in fact. That was odd. There are only so many colors in the world. Some duplication is unavoidable, but people mostly try to avoid using the colors that have been claimed by neighboring Kingdoms when they can possibly help it. There’s just too much chance of winding up with an angry monarch on your tail, questioning your fashion choices.

  “Elf-shot,” I said, voice muffled by my fingers.

  Arden’s face, which had been teetering on the edge of despair, crumbled. It was like watching a bottomless pit open in what had been a perfectly happy woman. “What?” she asked, eyes flicking to me. “No. It can’t be elf-shot. No. I’m . . . I am the queen. I became queen so that my people would be safe. Madden is my people. He’s my best people. I mean, he’s my best friend. He can’t be elf-shot. I won’t allow it.” Her voice broke on the last word, and my heart felt like it broke a little too, in sympathy.

  Elf-shot is either one of Faerie’s crueler weapons or one of Faerie’s kinder weapons, depending on how you look at it, and how you feel about hundred-year naps. It allows the purebloods to wage war without killing each other, since killing a pureblood is a violation of Oberon’s Law. Killing changelings doesn’t violate the Law, naturally, and just as naturally, elf-shot is fatal to us, because who cares if some mongrel foot soldier dies on the battlefield?

  I care. And everyone I know who’s effectively lost a friend or loved one to elf-shot cares. A century is a long time, even for a pureblood.

  Maybe my reasons for hating the stuff are more personal than I like to admit. Elf-shot killed Connor, who was my lover and my friend and an important part of my life. Elf-shot forced my mother to shift my blood away from human and toward fae, disrupting the fragile balance I had managed to build for myself and sending me into what has sometimes seemed like an inevitable spiral toward the pureblood side of my heritage. And it was elf-shot that forced me to turn my little girl human, taking her away from me forever. So yeah, I hate it. I figure I’m allowed.

  Arden was shaking her head, eyes still fixed on my face. “You’re wrong,” she said. “Why would someone use elf-shot on Madden? He’s . . . he’s the best. He’s the sweetest person in the world. No one wants to hurt him.”

  “Unless, through hurting him, they might hurt you,” said Tybalt gently. Arden whipped around to stare at him. “You know as well as I do that the throne carries a heavier cost than we would choose, if it were up to us. So often, that cost is borne by the ones we care for.”

  “Green and silver are the colors of the Kingdom of Silences,” said Quentin.

  We all turned to stare at him—even Arden, who had started to cry. Quentin was undaunted.

  “Silences is the Kingdom to the north of us, right? Their colors used to be green and red, to symbolize the evergreen forests and the roses they grow there, but when they lost the War of Silences, the Queen of the Mists—I mean the one who wasn’t really Queen, Your Highness, it’s just that we never got a real name for her, so I don’t have anything else to call her—took the red away from them. She said they no longer had the right to claim the blood of those who had died in the name of their false cause, and that they should always know who the superior Kingdom was. That’s why she made them match the silver in the arms of the Mists.” Quentin bit his lip before continuing, “I mean, I’m just saying. Those are their colors.”

  “Oh, oak and ash,” I breathed. Silences wasn’t just the Kingdom to the north. It was the only Kingdom whose monarch had been chosen by the Mists, after the War of Silences had left their ruling family broken and their surviving heirs, if any, scattered. It had been a Tylwyth Teg demesne before that. But the man who had been given the throne had been a Baron in the Mists before he became a King.

  And he was Tuatha de Dannan.

  “If Silences was behind this attack . . .” I began.

  “No,” interrupted Arden, shaking her head. She was still crying, and her face was pale. “No, no, no. I remember that war. Nolan and I were still just kids when it happened. We were in hiding, but we still knew about the war. People died. Not just on the battlefield. Poisonings and assassinations and all the things I walked away from the throne to escape. I promised my brother that we would never, ever get involved with anything like that.”

  I looked at her, seeing not a Queen, but a frightened bookstore clerk who had managed to wind up way over her head. I even felt a little guilty about that. If Arden was in over her head, I was one of the people who had put her there. “We don’t know for sure that it was Silences.”

  “Yes, we do,” said a weary voice from the entryway. I turned. An unfamiliar Cu Sidhe woman was standing there, her red-and-white hair pulled into low pigtails on either side of her face. She was wearing a green linen peasant blouse over jeans—all she needed was a flower crown and some wire-framed glasses and she would have looked like she had just stepped out of the Summer of Love. She held up a parchment scroll. “They left this so they could be sure we’d understand their message. I don’t blame the guard for missing it. I had to sniff my way around the whole clearing before I located the admission of their crime.”

  “Um, hi,” I said. “You are . . . ?”

  “My name is Faoiltiarna. You may call me ‘Tia,’ as that will probably be easier on you.” The woman looked at me solemnly, her eyes large and liquid and filled with the sorrow that only dogs seem to have access to. “Madden is my brother. He was snatched from the yard of our home. We knew it must be an act of violence brought against him for his association with Queen Windermere. Cowards have always struck at brave rulers through their canines.”

  Arden put her hand over her mouth again, and didn’t say anything. She seemed to have frozen under the pressure, which wasn’t the most useful reaction out of a monarch. I tried to swallow my anger. Inexperienced Queens can’t be expected to get everything perfect right out the gate. Her reign had consisted of one rebellion where she didn’t have to do much, a lot of cleaning, and a couple of parties. It wasn’t surprising that she was overwhelmed now.

  “Can I see that?” I asked, taking a step toward Tia and holding out my hand.

  “Certainly,” she said. She dropped the scroll into my palm, her sorrowful gaze flicking to Madden, who still hung motionless between the guards who had carried him inside. “M
y poor brother. He’ll have a good long sleep, and when he wakes up, we’ll be waiting to tell him about everything that’s changed in the world. May he slumber here?” She looked back to Arden. “Our mother told us when we followed her to the Mists that King Gilad had a chamber for sleepers such as this. It would be best if Madden could sleep in safety, with no need to fear the march of progress.”

  “We haven’t finished opening the knowe, but if that room is here, we’ll find it,” said Lowri. Her voice was calm and even; of everyone in this room, she had the most experience serving in a royal court. “If Queen Windermere consents, we can place him in his own room while we search. He’ll be comfortable there.”

  Queen Windermere wasn’t consenting. Queen Windermere wasn’t saying anything at all. She was still just standing there, frozen and silent.

  I swallowed a sigh and unrolled the parchment, careful to avoid paper cuts. There was no guarantee that whoever had left us the message would be enough of a dick to poison it, but there was also no guarantee that they wouldn’t. Better safe than joining Madden in a century of sleep.

  I skimmed the parchment, reading it twice over before I said, “The Kingdom of Silences is declaring war on the Kingdom of the Mists, in answer to our most treacherous and unkind act of treason. They want to depose Arden and return the ‘rightful Queen’ to the throne—their words, not mine. As per tradition, we have three days to give our final answer, or they attack.”

  “What rightful Queen?” asked Quentin.

  “Who do you think?” I held the parchment out toward him. They didn’t name their chosen monarch—of course they didn’t, no one ever had; no one had ever known her name—but they called her “our fair lady of the Mists” and “the Siren of the West.” It was pretty clear they intended to put the former Queen back in the position she’d held for more than a century, just like it was clear that we needed to stop them.

  “But High King Sollys confirmed Queen Windermere’s claim to the throne,” said Quentin, sounding confused. “That means she’s legitimate.”

  “He also confirmed the nameless usurper’s claim,” I said. “That means she can try to take it back. Your Highness, we’re not going to—” I turned toward the spot where Arden had been standing, and stopped. The smell of blackberry flowers and redwood bark was hanging in the air and the guards were staring, open-mouthed, at nothing.

  The Queen was gone.

  THREE

  “WHERE DID SHE GO?” demanded Tia. The rising note of rage in her tone was completely at odds with her flower child exterior. “My brother has been elf-shot because he was in service to his Queen! Loyalty cuts in both directions. Where did she go?”

  “Away,” I said. I had some ideas about where “away” might be, but I wasn’t going to discuss them with an angry Cu Sidhe. Not before I’d had a chance to find and talk to Arden myself. I turned to Lowri. “You’ve been with royal courts for years, right?”

  “Most of my life,” she said, sounding uncertain. She looked worried, but not angry. That was a good sign. Her loyalty was to the Queen who held her oaths, not to the people who got hurt because they were in that Queen’s orbit. That might seem cold, but in the moment, I was grateful for her relative objectivity. “Why?”

  “Because the Queen just went for a walk and the seneschal is down for the count. Sorry to do this to you, Lowri, but this is where you step up and show what you’ve learned from all those years of service.”

  Lowri’s eyes widened. She took a half step backward, her hooves making a staccato tapping noise against the floor as the implications of my words sank in and anchored themselves to her bones. She was the only person in the room with the experience and the training necessary to do what needed to be done, especially if we were facing a declaration of war: after all, she had served in Silences both before and during the war. She knew it, and I knew it, and the only way for her to avoid it would be to break her oaths to the throne—something I didn’t think she was capable of deciding to do.

  Normally, I would have felt bad about essentially strong-arming someone into taking a position in someone else’s court, however temporarily. This wasn’t a normal situation. Arden had turned tail and run. Madden was asleep, and he was going to stay that way for the next hundred years. The Mists might be an old kingdom, but Arden’s court was very young, and it didn’t have that many trained options.

  Lowri swallowed. “All right, but I’m only doing it until the Queen finds someone more suited to the role,” she said.

  I wasn’t sure whether she was trying to convince me, or convince herself. “Of course,” I said. “Now, what are your orders?”

  As seneschal—even acting seneschal—Lowri was the voice of the Queen. That was why attacking Madden was such an effective declaration of war. Take out a random member of a royal court, and there’s a measure of “that was offensive, let’s talk it over.” Take out the seneschal, or worse, the heir, and it’s on.

  Lowri took a deep breath. Then she turned to Tia, and asked, “Will you help get Madden settled until we can locate the room you spoke of? The knowe is still being reopened, but I promise you, his quarters are more than suitable, at least for the time being. The Queen’s brother sleeps in a room very much like his.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Tia, not looking particularly mollified. She glared at the space where Arden had been, nose wrinkled in canine disgust, before walking over to slide her shoulders under Madden’s arm, supporting his weight. Lowri stepped clear. Tia turned her glare on the diminutive Glastig. “We are not happy. We understood the risks of Madden’s involvement with this court, and were glad of them. It’s rare that the Cu Sidhe are recognized as helpmeets and pack mates by Kings and Queens. But I speak for our entire family when I say that we assumed loyalty would be met with loyalty, not with running away.”

  “I understand,” said Lowri. “We’re going to fix this.” She glanced pleadingly at me.

  Much as I might want to put up my hands and say, “Hell, no, I didn’t sign on to get involved with any wars,” I knew better. Part of being who and what I am means that things like this are never somebody else’s problem. In the end, they always wind up being mine.

  “I’m going to find the Queen and bring her back,” I said. “You have my word, as a hero.”

  “Good,” said Tia. Her gaze flicked to Tybalt. “You consort with cats, but Madden spoke well of you despite that.”

  Tybalt raised an eyebrow. “How flattering of him,” he said, voice flat.

  “And on that note, we’re out of here,” I said, taking Tybalt’s arm. “Quentin, you’re with me. Lowri, you have my number. Call if anything changes.”

  “I will,” she said.

  “Good.” I started for the door, pulling Tybalt along with me. He came without resistance, and Quentin followed close on our heels. That wasn’t what I’d been expecting to spend my night doing—I’d sort of been planning to go home and watch some television after we dealt with the Mauthe Doog—but that just goes to show that I shouldn’t allow myself to expect things. I’ll always wind up disappointed.

  I paused in the clearing outside the knowe, sniffing the air to see whether I could pick up any traces of the person who had shoved Madden though the portal. There weren’t any. How long magic lingers depends on a lot of factors, including how powerful the spell was and how much time the person using the magic spent in the area. Whoever opened the portal for Madden had done it from a distance, and might never have set foot in this clearing in their life. They’d left me nothing to work with, and that just aggravated me further. I stormed onward, down the hill and into the park.

  We were almost to the exit when Tybalt asked, “Did you intend to take the arrow and its associated message with you? I assumed you had, but as you now seem too angry to be rational, I thought it bore asking before we had gotten much further.”

  I looked down at the parchment scroll and unbroken arrow st
ill clutched in my left hand, and shook my head. “No, but now that I have them, I’m going to put them to good use,” I said. “Walther’s an alchemist, and if we’re on the verge of war, I’m not going to feel bad about drafting him. He may be able to extract something from these that will tell me more about who left them here, and since we have next to no information on Silences right now, that’s data we very much need.” Walther Davies was Tylwyth Teg, an alchemist, and a chemistry teacher. He’d been a big help to me more than once. He wasn’t as fond of charging headlong into danger as I was, but if I needed lab work done, he was more than happy to act as my private forensics department. In many ways, he was more useful than an actual forensics team could possibly have been. Human police don’t know how to look for magic.

  Yes. A stop at Walther’s, or at least a phone call, was definitely in the cards, after we had managed to locate Arden and get her back to her own court. If we were going to war, we were going to have our Queen front and center.

  “Silences plans to march upon us,” said Tybalt. “They used to be a Kingdom in the holding of the Tylwyth Teg. It’s entirely possible Walther has ties to the area, and has simply chosen never to discuss them.”

  “I don’t know that I would have discussed them, given the way their current government came to power,” I said. The War of Silences was something I had only ever heard mentioned by the older fae, usually in hushed, haunted tones. “I’ve never been there. Given the reasons for the last war, it didn’t seem like a good place for someone like me to go for a vacation.”

  “I know that Silences invaded the Mists, and I know that the current King was chosen by the false Queen after their old monarch was overthrown, but I thought it was just a territory dispute,” said Quentin, stepping around a large fern that had decided to overgrow the path. He frowned at me, looking honestly puzzled. “Why would that be a bad place for you to go?”