Page 35 of Silver and Lead (October Daye #19)
“Oh, but I think it is, especially if you don’t want to tell me.
” I leaned a little closer. “Come on, Bucer. Spill. Why were you in the Mists? Last time I saw you, you were returning to the Kingdom of Angels. The time before that, you were in the process of fleeing the kingdom. For good reasons, too, if I recall correctly.”
“I went back to Angels after the death of King Antonio, yeah, but I didn’t stay there,” he said, watching me warily.
“His widow wasn’t as forgiving as he was when it came to certain…
little errors I had made in my past, and then the kingdom was adapting to life under a new king, with a regent who wasn’t as willing to ignore what was going on under her nose.
I was still trying to hold out when I heard a rumor that you and the King of Cats were coming there on your honeymoon, and then I figured it was time for me to get the hell out of Dodge. Congratulations for that, by the way.”
“For which part?”
“Convincing the kitty-cat to marry you. I never thought I’d see the day when that old tomcat would settle down.” He attempted an expression that I thought was meant to be a leer. It made him look more constipated than anything else.
I looked impassively back at him. Tybalt had never had a reputation as a heartbreaker, except for possibly in the literal sense; he’d always been a beautiful man, but I’d never heard any rumors about him being particularly promiscuous.
Interesting that that was what Bucer was trying to needle me with.
And he was trying to needle me. I’d known him long enough to recognize a barb when it was aimed in my direction, and even as he tried to leer, I could see the familiar tension around the corners of his eyes. He wanted to provoke me. But why?
Part of it may have been the fact that not all that long ago, he’d been an accessory to Raysel abducting my daughter, Gillian, who had been mostly human at the time, and should have been able to live her life free from the machinations of Faerie.
Bucer never touched Gillian himself. That hadn’t mattered then, and it didn’t really matter now.
“You know, when I told you to get the hell out of this kingdom, I also told you I’d never be charged with breaking the Law, because no one would ever find your body.
” I gave his lanky, chained body a slow up-and-down look, slapping the chair leg against my palm as I did, just to punctuate my point.
“Maybe you thought that because I didn’t kill you at the conclave, I’d forgotten my promises, but no.
I was working then. I’m not working now.
I’ve been poisoned and taken captive, and you don’t want to know how many bones I had to break to get myself loose.
So if you’re going to keep making snide comments and implying things you know aren’t true, maybe I should just hit the bricks. No one else knows that I’ve seen you.”
“No,” he said. “No-no-no. You need to let me loose. I know we’ve had our differences in the past—”
“You helped Raysel abduct my child ,” I snarled. “That’s not having differences. That’s inviting me to murder you.”
“Fine, fair, but still,” he said. “You can’t just walk away and leave me here.
You’re a hero now, but I remember when we were delinquents together.
We made promises then, too. There’s no way you’ve forgotten.
” He paused, and added, in a calculated tone that told me he didn’t really understand what he was saying, “Stacy wouldn’t want you to be the kind of person who forgets. ”
I went still as white-hot rage flashed through me, moving so fast that it left not even embers in its wake, just a cold resignation that burned in its own terrible way. “Bucer,” I said, forcing my voice to stay level, “what do you know about Stacy?”
“Stacy Brown. Left Home to marry that Mitch guy, just because he was tall and built like a brick wall with opinions about interior decorating. I still say I could’ve taken him in a fair fight, if he’d ever been willing to stop hiding behind being big and strong and handsome.”
I snorted and finally moved to begin using my shell knife to unlock the cuffs at his ankles. Bucer watched with wide eyes, not moving, like he was afraid that even the slightest twitch would remind me of who he was and make me realize what I was doing.
“Yeah, that’s Stacy,” I said.
Bucer wasn’t finished. He’d apparently decided that talking about my best friend was the key to my good regard, or at least the key to getting the hell out of here.
“Five kids. Which is a little excessive if you ask me, but then, I’ve never been a stud goat.
No little Glastig for me. I haven’t heard much about Stacy recently. What’s she been up to?”
It was almost nice to hear him say that.
It meant the reality of her ending hadn’t completely wiped away the story of her life.
People might still remember her fondly, as Stacy, the woman who fixed my eyeliner and never learned how to cook bacon on the stove without burning the edges, who forced herself onto a diurnal schedule for PTA meetings and bake sales.
Who loved me. In all the years we’d known each other, that was one of the only things I had never seen the cause to question.
Stacy had loved me. From the very beginning to the very end, she’d loved me.
I moved to the head of the bed, reaching for the first of Bucer’s wrist cuffs. Then I paused, pulling back.
“Hey, what are you doing? Let me out.”
“Just wondering, Bucer. What are you doing here? Like I said, last I heard, you were still down in Angels. What changed?”
“Oh, yeah. I guess we got sort of off topic, didn’t we?
I heard you were coming to town for your honeymoon, thought you might finally remember that little promise of vengeance you’d made, and hit the bricks.
Wound up on the Golden Shore. They’re nice folks there, if kind of gullible, and they believed me when I told them I’d been turfed out for having hooves and smelling like wet goat when I got caught in the sprinklers.
They set me up pretty sweet as one of the palace courtiers, and I managed to keep my hands to myself for a while, if you can believe it. ”
I made a noncommittal sound, and reached for the first wrist cuff.
“I’d still be there, but the world went all funky and wrong, and everything changed.
All of a sudden, Queen Windermere and her brother were living there, and had lived there all along.
” He watched avidly as I unhooked the first cuff.
“I didn’t know what was wrong when it happened, just that I needed to be in the Mists. So I came home.”
“Uh-huh.” There were large parts of his story that were either missing or didn’t add up.
Glastig had been as caught by Titania’s enchantment as the rest of us; he wouldn’t have known that anything had changed when it happened, just that the world was the way it had always been meant to be.
And for a changeling to seek the Mists during the spell Titania had so carefully crafted was… wrong. Something about it was wrong .
I unhooked the second cuff and let it drop away from his wrist, then stepped back as I watched to see what he would do. Bucer sat up on the bed, alternately rubbing his wrists with one hand or the other, and looked at me with wide, earnest eyes.
“Gosh, Toby, you didn’t have to let me go, and we both know that,” he said. “You would have been within your rights to just leave me here to rot. I’d thank you if I could do it without insulting you. Instead, I guess I’ll just say I appreciate how well Devin taught you to pick a lock.”
“These were barely worthy of the name,” I said. “Come on. I still need to know how you wound up here, and why they had you tied to a bed, but Quentin’s been waiting long enough for me to come back, and he’s my squire, meaning he’ll be here any minute. Kid does not do idleness well.”
“You’re still kicking around with the crown prince?” Bucer scoffed. “I’d have ransomed that kid back to his parents ages ago. You know, royalty pays pretty damn well for their children, but not necessarily for their adult claimants to the throne. Your window’s closing.”
I whipped around as fast as my perpetually unsteady balance would allow, pointing the jagged end of my table leg at his throat.
“What did you just say?” I hissed.
He put his hands up and swallowed hard, and didn’t say anything at all.