Page 15 of Silver and Lead (October Daye #19)
It was an effort not to snap that she didn’t get to decide what was and wasn’t relevant to me and the safety of my family.
I made it. No matter how impulsive I can sometimes be, I try not to yell at sitting monarchs in the middle of formal court.
It’s not a great way to stay welcome in their halls, and right now, having the protection of the queen seemed like a good idea.
“The false queen,” I said, recovering my poise and resuming my recitation.
“After Dugan woke his liege, he helped her abduct my daughter, Gillian Marks-Daye, to use as leverage against me. She was… she was human at the time.” I swallowed back the wave of grief and guilt that always threatened to overwhelm me when I thought about Gillian’s humanity.
She had chosen it, she had never wanted to lose it, and now she was more fae than I was.
“In the process of getting her back, she was elf-shot. No. That makes it sound too passive, like it just happened. That b—woman we’re here to discuss did it on purpose.
She stabbed my daughter, my human daughter, with an arrow that had been dipped in elf-shot. ”
“We are informed that the Firstborn of your line was able to save you from elf-shot when you were more human than you stand before us now.”
“She was, by changing the balance of my blood. The cost of a cure was a portion of my humanity. I was able to do the same for Gillian the first time she was elf-shot. She was born a thin-blooded changeling, mostly human but partially D ó chas Sidhe. By transforming her into a full human, I was able to burn the poison from her veins. When the false queen assaulted Gillian for the second time, she had nothing left to lose. She had nothing of Faerie left to take away.”
I managed to say all that without breaking down. Not a big accomplishment most of the time, maybe, but my feet ached and my baby was kicking and my hormones were completely out of control. The urge to cover my face and cry was stronger than I wanted to admit.
“So when the pretender stabbed your child, she intended that the girl should die?”
“Yes and no,” I said. Bahey made a sour face, but didn’t object.
“The false queen was acting under the assumption that I had the ability to restore things after they’d been removed from someone else’s blood.
She had been part Siren when she held Your Majesty’s throne, compelling and cruel.
I was forced to remove her Siren heritage in order to save myself and my allies. ”
“I was there,” said Arden, with a slight nod. “She believed you could give it back?”
“She did, but I couldn’t. That’s not something I’m capable of.
” Idly, I wondered whether this line of questioning was intended to make me more of an effective weapon for her kingdom.
Anyone who was here now knew for sure that I couldn’t give back what I’d taken—verified by the silence of an Adhene.
It was a limitation, but a terrifying one.
“As the child was human when this cruelty was committed, the pretender can’t be accused of the attempted murder of your daughter, but she still transgressed against you by involving a human to whom you were closely bonded in the affairs of Faerie. The girl survived?”
“The girl has a name,” I said, tersely. “Please use it.”
“Gillian, then,” said Arden. “She lived?”
“The sea witch intervened, binding her to a Selkie skin to save her life,” I said. “She has since been further bound at the Convocation of Consequences. She’s fully Roane now.”
“We cannot apply a retroactive accusation of violating the Law to the pretender’s charges,” said Arden, with genuine regret. “But your words are heard and held, and will be measured in the setting of her sentence.”
“That’s all I can ask,” I said, and bowed as deeply as my current condition would allow.
I teetered when I straightened, feeling my balance shift out of true, and had a moment to consider what it would be like to fall when this far along before there were hands at my shoulder and the small of my back, catching me and pushing me back into an upright position.
“My apologies for the uninvited appearance, Queen Windermere,” said Tybalt, with all the politeness his voice could hold. “I intended no offense.”
“None is taken,” said Arden, and smiled. “You have leave to escort your wife to a place where she can sit and rest. Court is not yet dismissed, but her part in it is finished.”
“Your Majesty is kind,” said Tybalt, hand tightening on my shoulder. Lips close to my ear, he murmured, “Come with me.”
I let him guide me away and down the dais steps. The crowd parted before us, allowing us to pass. I waited until we were approaching the edge of the room, where ranks of chairs lined the walls for those in need, before I turned to face him and scowled.
“That was a little high-handed of you, don’t you think?” I asked.
“Would you have preferred I let you fall?”
“I would have preferred you let me decide when I was ready to leave.”
His expression softened. “Oh, little fish. I’m not trying to take your choices away, only to keep you safe as I can while the need is so very dire. This time is near to done, and soon enough we’ll both have better things to worry about.”
That was true. I exhaled a laugh, irritation temporarily fading. “Okay, fair,” I said. “Just maybe try not to hover so much that you always know when I’m about to trip?”
“I will promise to hover only so much as my nature must demand,” he said.
I sat and he sat beside me, angling his body to let me lean against him.
He smelled of the comforting musk and pennyroyal signature of his magic.
Given his tendency to shift between feline and bipedal forms throughout the night, moving effortlessly from one to the other, he tended to have a stronger scent of magic about him than most of the people I knew.
Magic is the birthright of the fae. It lives in the blood, and it manifests differently in every descendant line.
Even the most closely related lines will have distinct abilities.
Even beyond that, all fae have a magical signature, and most are olfactory.
I can literally smell people’s bloodlines and magical abilities when I get close to them.
The more magic someone uses, the stronger the scent will be, even if they’re not actively casting spells.
As a shapeshifter, Tybalt almost always smelled fairly strongly of his own magic.
Even if he’d been in one form for an extended period of time, there was a baseline I could use to identify him.
Since every magical signature is different, I’m pretty hard to fool with an impersonator, as long as I knew the person before they were replaced.
“Where did Simon take you?” Tybalt asked, as Arden and her advisors stood on the dais and spoke in low, tight voices.
Doing this where the court could watch was theater, but it was effective theater: fae, especially noble fae, tend to get recalcitrant and argumentative when they think they’re being deceived.
This way, none of them could say the result of today’s sentencing had been a foregone conclusion.
“Little parlor where people brought me sandwiches.”
“Did you eat them?”
“I did,” I affirmed. Even if pregnancy hadn’t made me hungry all the time, it would have made me a lot more inclined to slow down and eat, because when I didn’t, I started worrying about the baby.
“I had a nice talk with Simon, too. Which reminds me—when we get home, we need to discuss something the Luidaeg said to me while you were at the Court of Cats.”
“Oh?” he asked, with sudden wariness.
I didn’t mention the other thing we had to talk about tonight.
Any anxiety he had over what the Luidaeg was offering would pale in comparison to his reaction to Arden actively trying to put me back to work.
“Yeah. We’ll talk about it when we get home.
We need to talk about it when we get home, but it’s not immediately pressing, and it’s nothing that puts me, you, or the baby in danger. ”
“Noted,” he said, the wariness not leaving his voice.
I sneezed. He sat up straight, looking concerned.
I knew he wasn’t going to be onboard with Arden’s plan for me to get out there and start looking for her missing things.
And while I wasn’t sure he could stop me, I wouldn’t put it past him to follow me the whole time, making it impossible for me to do my job.
“October?” he asked, wariness replaced by anxiety.
“Don’t worry, I’m not coming down with anything.
I’m not sure I can catch a cold these days.
It’s just the room. Even with the windows open, there’s so much magic that it’s like trying to breathe next to a department store perfume counter.
I wasn’t in here long enough before for it to really start getting oppressive.
” That, and the smell of hors d’oeuvres had flattened me before the magic could start bothering me.
“Not everything is an attack. We need to work on getting you to relax before the baby comes.”
Tybalt looked chagrined, but I never got to hear what he was going to say next, because the room went silent as if on cue.
I lifted my head. On the dais, Arden had finished her deliberations and turned back to face the crowd.
She raised her hands in an unnecessary request for silence.
No one said a word. It was so quiet I could hear the bubbles popping in glasses of sparkling wine, and the faint buzzing hum of the pixies’ wings.
“People in the Mists,” she said. “I am Arden Windermere, recognized by High King Sollys as your rightful Queen and regent.
It is my duty and honor to protect you. We have gathered on this night to discuss the sentencing of the woman who stole my throne and misled you all for a hundred years. We have established these facts: