Page 26 of Silver and Lead (October Daye #19)
EIGHT
D AME ALTAIR’S KNOWE WAS linked to her personal home, a beautifully maintained Victorian house in the area locals referred to as “postcard row,” a neighborhood so packed with ornate Victorians that it probably increased the property values of the entire city by several percentage points.
Almost all the houses were whimsically painted in a variety of rainbow and pastel shades, making them the frequent target of visiting tourists and their ever-ready cameras.
Dame Altair’s house was on a corner, the tiny front yard filled with a tangled riot of native and invasive flowers, culminating in the white and pink climbing rose that encircled the porch rail and was still blooming even an hour past sunset.
The faint scent of black clove and panther lily confirmed my assumption that the roses had been enchanted in some way, just a little tweak to keep them sweet and healthy and flowering for their planter’s pleasure.
Titania is the Lady of Flowers, after all, and while the Daoine Sidhe have never been great masters of horticulture, their innate flower magic is strong enough that some of them can figure out a few tricks. I carefully grasped the porch rail between loops of thorny stem.
On the step behind me, Quentin shifted his weight. I could almost hear him deliberating whether I’d yell at him if he tried to help me the rest of the way up the stairs. When he cleared his throat, I knew the question was coming.
I lifted the hand that wasn’t holding on to the rail, signaling for him to stay quiet. “No,” I said, voice firm and surprisingly calm. “You can’t help me. I need to look like a professional here, not an invalid.”
“But—”
“Quentin, I know I’m the first pregnant person you’ve really had to deal with, and I apologize for the inconvenience, but I promise you, I’m not that fragile.
I’m here to do my job. Dame Altair’s men were attacked by whoever it is that has the missing scabbard, and she was snatched by whoever’s helping the false queen.
That means talking to her is priority one, and if I want her to take me seriously, I have to show her that I can handle myself.
I promise to ask for a chair as soon as we’re inside, all right? ”
“All right,” he agreed.
He was still hovering a little closer than I liked, but he wasn’t touching me or saying anything, which was probably the best I could hope for at the moment.
At least Danny had been kind enough to stay in the car. I was trying to seem harmless and deferential. Showing up with a humanoid brick wall at my back wouldn’t do anything to encourage that impression.
“Chin up,” I said. “We’re almost there.” I was finally at the top of the stairs. I moved to position myself in front of the door,
Like the houses around it, Dame Altair’s home was painted a variety of bright colors.
Unlike most of the other houses, hers was done up in the shades of the Mists: blue and silver and a sandy gold.
The gold wasn’t a new affectation, but it was one I hadn’t seen often since Arden’s ascension.
She favored the blue and silver, with occasional strikes of blackberry purple.
It was a nice way for her to put her own spin on the royal theming, even if she couldn’t change it completely.
Nothing about the house indicated that it was a fae place.
I only knew I was at the right house because I’d been here before—but never inside, oh no, never once inside; Dame Altair might not be as bigoted as some of her cousins, but she was a pureblooded Daoine Sidhe, and they had been encouraged to look down on changelings since the beginning of their line.
She could accept that I was a knight. She could accept that I was a hero.
That didn’t necessarily mean she could accept that I was sufficiently domesticated to trust on her carpet.
She clearly didn’t have any sort of proximity wards set on the door.
Some noble households liked using those to tell them when they had company; they made it possible for their seneschals and chatelaines to open doors before anyone knocked, thus seeming prescient and all-knowing.
Since that hadn’t happened here, Dame Altair was either less concerned about appearances or—more likely—simply hadn’t thought of it.
I leaned forward and rang the bell before sinking back into a neutral position to wait.
I allowed my left hand to rest atop the swell of my stomach.
It was a calculated decision, however natural it might feel; pureblood fertility rates are so low that many of them are fascinated by pregnancy, seeing it as something unattainable and thus infinitely desirable.
She hadn’t shown any signs of that particular fixation during Arden’s court, but that could just have been the situation.
If I could convince her to treat me well because it would grant her a rare and exclusive proximity to pregnancy, that wouldn’t be the worst thing I could possibly do.
Quentin fell into place behind me, standing with a precision and rigid posture that I had never been able to master.
Etienne used to despair of me ever serving as a proper knight when he’d been training me, at least in part because he’d failed to beat the importance of standing at attention through my thick head.
Well, that was all right. I still couldn’t manage it, but at least now Quentin could do it for me.
Footsteps approached the door, loud and echoing enough that I knew they had to be intentional.
There had to be some sort of charm in play, something to amplify the sound of someone coming.
That impression was only reinforced as the footsteps slowed, the person on the other side of the door clearly taking their own sweet time about getting to me.
Under normal circumstances, I would have been more than content to wait.
But here and now, I wasn’t in the mood. The baby was using my bladder as a soccer ball.
I placed my free hand at the small of my back and pressed, forcing myself to straighten slightly.
Even that only did so much to take the pressure off my aching knees.
Quentin shot me a quick, anxious look. “I’m just saying, it’s not too late for us to go home and tell the queen you’re not up for it. I could come back later with Danny, or we could ask Etienne, or—”
The footsteps were almost to the door. “It’s too late now,” I said, with exaggerated good cheer. “I’m not fast enough to play ding-dong dash with the nobility. We’d be caught before we made it halfway down the stairs.”
The door swung open, revealing a Bridge Troll in a formal footman’s uniform, Dame Altair’s arms stitched above his right breast. He looked down his nose at us, expression unreadable.
“May I help you?” he asked.
I managed, barely, to control my flinch of recognition.
I had never actually been inside Dame Altair’s household, didn’t know most of her staff—or if I did, didn’t realize they worked for her—but I recognized that voice all the same, even if I didn’t know the owner’s name.
This was the Bridge Troll who had been with Dame Altair and the unlamented Kyle in an alley in Titania’s San Francisco.
The three of them had attacked me, thinking a defenseless changeling would make an easy target for their evening’s amusement.
Kyle had been the one to actually stab me, and had received my knife to the throat as payment for his efforts, but this Bridge Troll had been the one to hold me in place while Kyle drove his own knife home.
Bridge Trolls are one of the larger descendant lines found on land.
While there are types of fae in the Undersea who can grow to truly titanic proportions, the land has always been a little more conservative when it comes to how big the fae can get.
This one stood roughly eight feet tall, with shoulders at least three feet wide and arms like Christmas hams. He looked like he could have easily snapped me in half over his knee, and not really noticed that he’d done it.
His skin was a craggy basalt gray, looking for all the world like flexible stone; it crinkled around the edges of his eyes as they narrowed, and he frowned at me.
He didn’t have any hair, not even eyelashes or brows, and his eyes were that curious shade of pink that sometimes appears in granite cliff faces.
I swallowed, hard. Yes, the last time I’d seen him, he’d been threatening me, but that had been another world, and we’d both been different people there.
“Sir Daye on the business of the Queen,” I said, and was pleased when my voice came out level and steady. “My squire, Quentin, accompanies me. I am here to speak with your mistress, Dame Altair, on the matter of her recent abduction, and further, on the subject of the attacks upon her household.”
The massive Bridge Troll took another half-step forward, and it was difficult not to interpret that as a threat.
I was beginning to regret leaving Danny in the car.
It would have been nice to have my own living wall to hide behind.
Not that it would have necessarily done all that much good—this man was larger than Danny in every direction, and while size isn’t the only indicator of a Bridge Troll’s strength, the last thing I wanted to do was get my friends hurt.
“Did my mistress invite you?” asked the man, and his voice was the deep rumble of tectonic plates moving in the darkness, long-buried and cold.
“As stated, I am here on the business of the queen,” I said. “I require no invitation when I act in the name of Arden Windermere. Please allow us access.”
The man didn’t move again, but remained where he was as he looked at me with coldly measuring eyes. Finally, in that same deep, cold voice, he said, “I remember you.”
Crap. “I believe this is our first meeting, sir.”