Page 37 of Silver and Lead (October Daye #19)

“Kid, I just went where Dame Altair pointed me. Thought it was weird at first that she had me squirming through this wormy, root-filled tunnel to nowhere, but once I got inside, it was a thief’s paradise and I stopped asking questions.

I don’t know how she knew where to send me, but she set the job, and I fulfilled it. All except for that damn hope chest.”

“And since you started your little side deals and got caught at it, Altair decided you must have been lying about the hope chest, didn’t she?”

Bucer nodded, so vigorously his ears flapped.

“She said there was no way I could have resisted such a big score, I must have stolen it for myself, and even when I offered her blood to test against my word, she just said I wouldn’t offer if I hadn’t found a way to manipulate what it would show her.

But I never found that hope chest. It wasn’t in the vault, and even after the spell broke and I realized who I’d actually been robbing…

the Queen and her brother and most of the court were missing.

I went back while everything was still in chaos, just in case I’d missed something. ”

He stopped then, and it was clear he was waiting for one of us to ask.

I glanced at Quentin, who was watching Bucer with a steady, unblinking gaze.

I decided to do something similar, and focused on picking the blood out from under my fingernails.

There was an unsurprising amount of it caught there, dried brown and flaky.

Seconds passed. Bucer finally scowled and said, “I found a plinth I hadn’t seen before, about the size of a shoebox—or a hope chest, if the descriptions I’ve heard of them are correct. I don’t know how I could have missed it, with as thoroughly as I searched the place.”

“Secondary spell,” I said. “Something designed to keep the hope chest hidden from people who weren’t meant to know that it was there.

It probably came down in the shockwave from shattering a kingdom-wide enchantment.

Really, it’s impressive that it held as long as it did.

I’ll have to ask Queen Windermere who did her warding. ”

Bucer paled. “You can’t tell the queen. She’ll have me elf-shot. She’ll get one of her magicians to turn me into an entire goat and sell me to a petting zoo. I don’t want to eat grass pellets and stand on haybales for the next twenty years!”

I raised an eyebrow. “Maybe you should have thought of that before you went and cleaned out a royal vault?”

“I don’t see any reason why I would have,” he countered. “I didn’t know it was a royal vault at the time. I thought it was just a smuggler’s cache that Dame Altair had been lucky enough to find. I thought those things were lost treasure. I didn’t know I was risking the wrath of a seated queen.”

“Speaking of seated monarchs, we’ve been standing around long enough,” I said.

“Tybalt’s going to tear this place down brick by brick if we don’t get out of here and let him know that we’re all right.

Quentin, you’re going to take the rear. Bucer, you’re going to walk very carefully, because if you trip, you won’t be able to catch yourself. ”

His eyes widened. “Hey, you can’t seriously intend to leave my hands tied!”

“You’re my captive now, and I have a lot more questions,” I said. “You don’t have any weapons, and if I remember correctly, your best move in an unarmed fight was always headbutting someone and running away. You can still headbutt anyone who tries to stop us.”

“I hate this,” muttered Bucer.

“I’m pregnant and covered in blood, and my husband is probably going to lock me in my room for the next year,” I said. “I’m not a big fan myself. Move.”

Together, the three of us eased open the bedroom door and crept out into the empty hallway. The doors at either end were still closed. I looked to Bucer.

“Which way?” I asked, voice low.

“That way’s the stairs, the other way should be Dame Altair’s parlor,” he said, accompanying each description with a quick jerk of his head to make sure I knew which door he meant. “Stairs will lead us down to the front room.”

“Stairs it is,” I said. I started toward the relevant door, Bucer behind me, Quentin behind him. Together, we crept along the hall, moving as quietly as we could. I paused at the door and sniffed the air, looking for the scent of magic.

Panther lily. Black clove. Fig. Honey. Cinnamon.

I froze, holding up one hand for silence as I began to frantically review everything Dame Altair had said to me since my arrival.

She’d been able to open this knowe with her brother’s help.

Her brother. I’d never heard of her having a brother before, but either she had one or she lied with an offhanded ease that she’d never demonstrated before.

No, her lies were the more methodical kind, formed by the space between what she said and what she implied.

She’d accused Simon, said she should have expected it after he’d shown up on her doorstep, but she’d never given any evidence that it had actually been him, had she? Nothing beyond the smell of cinnamon.

Simon’s mulled apple cider–scented magic included cinnamon, yes, but it was Ceylon cinnamon, light and aromatic and inextricably mingled with the rest of his magical signature.

This, though—this was cassia, sharper, stronger, and more aggressive.

The difference was strikingly obvious, at least to me.

It would also have been obvious to someone whose brother had magic that smelt of cassia.

Dame Altair would have known the magic she smelled wasn’t Simon’s, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t make an accusation, carefully threaded through the fact that most people couldn’t smell magic with enough precision to tell cinnamon from cassia.

They were different plants entirely. Both used the name “cinnamon.” Calling cassia cinnamon wasn’t a lie.

She had set up a situation that would allow her to accuse Simon, all without telling a single actual lie.

He was a redeemed villain in the eyes of many, but that didn’t mean he’d been forgiven in the eyes of all.

He was a soft target for a wild accusation.

It wasn’t that long ago that I would have believed her without hesitation.

I couldn’t feel bad about that—I’d had good reasons at the time—but that didn’t mean I was going to sit back and let people keep acting like nothing he’d done to atone for his past was ever going to make a difference.

“Toby?” Quentin’s voice sounded like it was coming from someplace very far away. “Is everything okay?”

I wrenched myself out of the tangle of magical signatures with a physical effort, turning to offer Quentin a strained smile. “I’m fine,” I said. “We have a lot to talk about, but we can discuss it when we’re out of here. All right?”

“All right,” said Quentin.

“Are you taking me home with you?” asked Bucer.

“Unfortunately, yes,” I replied. “If I hand you over to Arden, I may not get you back, and right now, I need you. Come on.”

I turned back to the door, exhaled to clear the last of the magic from my nose, and turned the knob.

And came face to face with Dugan, who was standing on the stairs in the process of reaching for the doorknob.

I really should have guessed it would be him.

He raised an eyebrow and simply looked at me, expression caught between challenge and stoic disdain. His throat was a ruin of uneven scar tissue, ropey and thick and never quite fully healed. That’s what slitting your own throat with an iron knife will do for you.

He was still a devastatingly handsome man for all of that—blame the fact that he was Daoine Sidhe, and they’re pretty much all upsettingly attractive—with sharp, symmetrical features and dark green hair that curled around the lines of his chin, cupping his jawline without doing anything to soften the wreckage of his throat.

He narrowed his eyes as he saw me staring at him, then smiled slyly and tapped the scar tissue on his throat with the fingers of one hand before hooking both hands through the air and pulling toward himself. The air promptly turned hot, smelling of cinnamon and cardamom.

Whatever he was casting, it was big, and probably not any good for the three of us. I had only a few seconds to react. I would have had even less than that, but he couldn’t speak, and that was slowing him down. Words shape and focus magic, making it easier to convince it to do as the caster orders.

I brought my chair leg up and then down on his wrist, hitting hard enough that I heard bone crack.

He hissed through his teeth and stumbled back a step, face going white with the pain.

I lifted the chair leg again, ready to hit him a second time.

Dugan bared his teeth at us, producing a small vial from inside his shirt.

He smashed it on the ground and was gone, slipping through a teleportation circle to somewhere else.

I’d seen him perform that trick before, and it may have partially explained where Dame Altair had gotten the idea of blaming Simon for her brother’s actions.

Simon had been the one to bottle many of the borrowed-blood tokens I knew of, creating them at the order of his former mistress.

Someone who really worked at picking apart the captive magic would find his signature in the mix, blended and buried but still present.

They could run around leaving traces of Simon’s magic, and for most people, that would be as good as a confession.

Sometimes I hate Faerie. Being surrounded by immortals means being surrounded by people who can never, ever let anything go.

Something someone did centuries ago can be a completely acceptable reason for attacking them today.

No wonder Oberon thought “hey, don’t murder each other” was the only command important enough to codify into Law.

“Come on,” I said, starting down the now-empty stairs as fast as my awkward balance would allow. “Dugan’s gone.”