Page 36 of Silver and Lead (October Daye #19)

ELEVEN

S ECONDS TICKED BY AS our standoff stretched from a reaction into a decision.

Bucer continued to stare at me, and the smell of pine and damp linen pervaded the room, making me wonder how long I’d been distracted enough not to notice that he was trying to influence me.

Not just trying but succeeding, if the fact that I’d uncuffed him even while I was considering the holes in his story was anything to go by.

I hate the fae whose magic bends toward mental manipulation.

There aren’t many of them, but too many of the ones that exist use their magic to bypass common sense and consent.

They can make people do things they would never do under normal circumstances…

like untie an enemy who shouldn’t even be in the kingdom.

Bucer broke first, of course. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“I wasn’t threatening the kid, and I won’t tell anyone.

If this is about me influencing you, I didn’t mean to.

You don’t have to want to heal, do you? Well, if I’m in enough danger—or under enough stress—I don’t entirely have to want to make people see things my way.

My magic just tweaks things so people see things the way that’s best for me.

It’s why I tell people I’m not a thief, because I’m really not.

When I look desperate enough, most people will just give me things. ”

“It’s still stealing if you cloud their minds first,” I snapped.

“Is it?” He took a half-step forward, reaching for my table leg, and for a moment, I almost let him have it.

Then I realized how strong the smell of pine and linen had become, and bit down hard on the inside of my cheek, filling my mouth with blood. The taste washed everything else away, including Bucer’s reaching magic, and I raised the table leg, pointing it more firmly at the center of his throat.

“Back the hell off, Bucer,” I said.

I couldn’t leave him loose without keeping an eye on him, and I couldn’t trust him behind me.

That didn’t leave a lot of options, but I’ve always been pretty good at improvisation.

Still glaring at him and pointing the table leg like it was a sword, I inched around him to the foot of the bed, where I grabbed the yarrow and silver chain they’d used to hold him in place.

They’d been less concerned about him deciding to break an ankle in his pursuit of freedom: his cuffs had been connected to a chain threaded through a single metal ring welded underneath the bed.

One quick pull and the whole thing was loose. I wrapped it loosely around my hand and walked back over to Bucer. “Turn around,” I commanded.

He shot me a wounded look, like he couldn’t possibly believe that I was doing this. “Toby, there’s no need—”

“Turn around .”

Either my tone or my expression got through to him, because he stopped protesting and turned meekly around, letting me wrap the chain tight around his wrists.

I kept looping until I had a secure tangle, then experimentally pulled on one of his arms, trying to see if the chain would budge. It didn’t.

“You didn’t have to tie it so tight ,” said Bucer sullenly, shooting an unhappy look over his shoulder.

“Tell it to whoever didn’t teach you to control your magic,” I suggested, planting a hand between his shoulder blades and shoving him toward the door.

He stumbled, but went willingly enough, if someone who’s been tied up with a magic-dampening chain can be said to do anything willingly.

Really, I wanted to feel bad for being so rough with him.

I just couldn’t find it in me. My history with Bucer was a tangled, unpleasant one, and while there had been flashes of friendship when we were much younger, they were so vastly outweighed by what he’d done to Gillian that it was a miracle I wasn’t already beating him to a pulp.

Not all my impulses are noble ones. I just do my best to make the noble choice when the nasty impulses make their presence known.

The hall was still empty; the entire exchange had taken only a few minutes.

That was something of a relief. The rug was thick enough to muffle the sound of Bucer’s hooves, which was an even bigger relief.

The trouble with the various breeds of hooved fae is that they’re shit at stealth.

I pushed him along in front of me until we reached the door to Quentin’s room, then knocked very lightly, barely a whisper of my knuckles against the wood.

Bucer scoffed and began to open his mouth. I shook my head, motioning for him to stay silent. He clammed up, watching me warily.

The door eased slowly open, revealing no one on the other side.

That was clever. Hide behind the door and be prepared to ambush anyone who means to do you harm.

I shifted my grasp to the front of Bucer’s shirt and stepped into the room, pulling him along behind me.

If Quentin had any big ideas about assaulting whoever came to check up on him, I could absorb the damage better than Bucer could.

That didn’t mean I’d changed my mind about trusting the man, just that I knew which one of us could shake off a concussion like it was no big deal and which would become whining, useless dead weight if Quentin cracked his goaty skull.

No attacks were forthcoming. I kept pulling Bucer until we were both clear of the door, then turned to look behind it.

Sure enough, Quentin was crouching there, a broken-off table leg in his hands and a deeply relieved expression on his face.

I made a shushing motion with my free hand.

He nodded, then eased the door carefully closed again.

Once the door was shut and we had a modicum of privacy, he turned back to me. “You’re all right! And there’s no blood on you now that wasn’t there before you left.”

“You don’t have so sound so surprised about that,” I grumbled.

He turned his attention to Bucer. “I remember you from the conclave about whether or not we’d be releasing the elf-shot cure. You’re from Angels, aren’t you?”

“Bucer O’Malley, originally of the Mists, now apparently of the Mists again,” said Bucer. “I’d bow, but your knight has my wrists, and I think she’d hurt me if I moved in a way she didn’t like.”

“Probably,” said Quentin. “What did you do?”

“Pardon?”

“Toby doesn’t take people captive unless they’ve done something to deserve it.” He shrugged. “I trust her, I don’t know you. So what did you do to make Toby tie you up?”

“I… gave information to Rayseline Torquill that led her to the location of Toby’s changeling daughter,” admitted Bucer.

“And I stole the crown jewels of Angels, and there may have been a little recreational theft when I made my way back up to the Mists, but I didn’t take anything from anybody who was going to miss it, I swear. ”

Quentin, whose eyes had been getting bigger and bigger as Bucer spoke, turned to me. “So he’s who cleaned out the treasury, right?”

“What?” squeaked Bucer.

“That’s what I’m assuming too,” I said. “Known thief who’s successfully stolen from royalty before shows up back in the Mists just as we discover that the kingdom’s vaults have been cleaned out? That’s not a coincidence, that’s a contrivance… unless he did it.”

“How could you—” Bucer caught himself mid-sentence and sighed, heavily. “Okay, so if you’re so smart, why am I tied up like the two of you? Wouldn’t I be in cahoots with somebody?”

“If you stole all that stuff for Dame Altair, and didn’t tell her everything you had, you could have been doing a little fencing on the side,” I said, watching his expression carefully.

One of his ears twitched, telling me I was on the right track.

“So you go in, get everything she’s said she wants, and grab a few extras.

But she doesn’t necessarily know about the extras, so you see them as a bonus—free money, free power.

Only when they get into the hands of people who are willing to use them against her, she figures out that you must have double-crossed her.

Am I in the right neighborhood here, Bucer? ”

He ducked his head. “I never thought you’d be the one to turn into a lapdog for the nobility.”

“And I never thought you’d be the one who could keep worming your way into their courts, but here we are,” I said. “Why were you stealing for Dame Altair?”

“She heard a rumor about a hope chest in the vault,” he said.

“Not much that’s worth more than a hope chest, you know.

Get your hands on one of those, you can have a kingdom named after you.

She wanted it, and by that point I’d already wandered up from the Golden Shore, and someone told her I was the changeling who could steal anything.

So she sent her boys to find me, and once they did, she offered me a deal. ”

I nodded as I listened. Based on the timing of when the things had gone missing, this must have happened while Titania’s enchantment was still in place. That made the question of guilt more difficult, since we literally hadn’t been ourselves under the spell.

But we’d all remembered our enchanted actions once the spell was broken, meaning Dame Altair would have known what she’d paid Bucer to do as soon as we were all restored to ourselves.

And that was months ago. Had she been waiting all this time for someone to show up looking for Arden’s missing treasures? Had this been a setup from the start?

“The hope chest,” I said. “Did you find it?”

“No,” said Bucer. “I searched the whole vault, but it wasn’t there.”

Quentin frowned. “How did you know where to look?”

“What?”

“If this happened while we were all enchanted to think we were other people, then the knowe at Muir Woods would have been sealed. So how did you know where to go looking for the vault?”