Page 30 of Silver and Lead (October Daye #19)

The Candela turned and fled the room as quickly as propriety allowed.

Interestingly, she did it on foot. Candela are short-range teleporters, capable of accessing the fringes of the Shadow Roads.

They aren’t usually talkative, and they aren’t inclined to walk when they could be flitting through space like it doesn’t actually mean anything of any importance.

I picked up my teacup. It was light and delicate in my hand, more like it had been crafted from rose petals than any sort of ceramic or stone.

I sniffed the liquid inside, finding it sweet and fruity.

Blackcurrant , confirmed the part of my brain responsible for cataloging scents and identifying them in people’s magic.

This wasn’t magical, but it was distinct, and I would remember it if I encountered it again.

I glanced at Quentin. He had his own cup, and was emulating Dame Altair, sipping politely. I gave my cup another look.

Dame Altair was watching me. I met her eyes and smiled politely, then took my first careful sip. Sweetness flooded my mouth, with a sour undernote that tasted almost like palatable decay. There wasn’t any other way of describing it. I swallowed, barely managing not to cough.

“That’s… interesting,” I said, setting my cup aside. “Now, you visited the Lady Pilar alone? No escort or guard of any sort?”

“Mine all refused to accompany me,” she said, pursing her lips unhappily.

“Pilar offered two of her own men to see me safely home. You may want to speak with her next. I’m not sure whether they made it back to her after I was taken.

I only got home from the court a few hours before your arrival, and I haven’t had the time to go and check.

She doesn’t have anything as modern as a telephone. ”

Maybe not, but Dame Altair had a Candela; sending a message should have been as easy as deciding to send a message, and not something she needed to spend time thinking about. I was starting to get more and more uneasy about the way things worked in this household.

“Where was I—ah, yes. Roughly halfway between her home and my own, the air around us began to chill too swiftly and too sharply to be a simple shift in the weather. I moved closer to the guards, positioning myself so they would be able to defend me from whatever was about to happen, and the smell of cinnamon was suddenly everywhere, thick enough to be cloying. I staggered away, trying to breathe despite the weight of that perfume, and my vision began to blur around the edges. Have you ever been so overwhelmed by someone else’s magic that it stole your sight away? ”

“Sight, no, but consciousness, yes, and ability to breathe, yes.” I took another sip of my fruity drink, frowning a little at the contradiction between this version of her story and the one she’d given at the court.

Dame Altair nodded. “Then you surely understand why I don’t have many details.

The world spun, the air smelled of cinnamon, and at some point, I was too overcome to endure and my awareness simply slipped away.

When I awoke, I was bound in rowan and dressed in a gown I remembered from the former Queen’s wardrobe.

There were no mirrors in the room where I was prisoned.

I didn’t realize what I looked like until I was taken before the court. ”

Something about the way she was ordering her words seemed wrong, the contradictions mounting.

I frowned deeper and put my cup aside, as carefully as I could.

Not carefully enough, somehow; it sloshed as it landed on the tray, spilling its contents over the silver.

That was odd. I was usually better than that at controlling my motions.

“I’m so sorry for the mess,” I said—or tried to say, anyway. What actually came out was a garbled moan, syllables blending together and melting into a singular guttural mass.

Dame Altair smiled. “Yes, well, I thought that might be the case. You’re rather famously difficult to incapacitate, Sir Daye.

I’d heard the rumors, but I honestly thought they’d been exaggerated.

With your allies, well. You can’t blame me for believing they’d go out of their way to talk you up as a bigger threat than you are. ”

She put her own cup down and leaned forward to tap my nose with the tip of one finger.

“Boop,” she said.

I tried to smack her hand away. Like my apology, the action was a failure. My arm refused to move, no matter how hard I ordered it to do so.

Her smile grew. “You can fight all you like, but even your infamous recovery time isn’t going to get you past this that quickly.”

The edges of my vision were beginning to go gray, charring like a burning piece of paper before they dropped away to reveal only an endless, aching nothingness.

I tried to turn toward Quentin. By forcing myself as hard as I could, I could move my head just enough to see him slumped over in his chair, eyes closed and mouth slightly open.

A bead of drool was collecting in the corner of his lips.

That seemed impossibly important. It shouldn’t have been, but it did.

“Don’t worry,” said Dame Altair. “I’m not going to kill you. You’re far too valuable for that. You, and everything you carry.”

The threat in her words was clear, for all that it was unspoken. If I’d been capable of it, I would have lunged for her then. Instead, I rolled my eyes, and the char continued to advance, and the nothingness consumed me.