Page 40 of Silver and Lead (October Daye #19)
TWELVE
T HE COUNTY OF GOLDENGREEN is seated in the knowe of the same name, which is anchored at the Fine Arts Museum at the Legion of Honor.
Being tied to a museum made it easy to explain the strange people coming and going, as long as we showed up during open hours.
When the museum was closed, there were other ways to get inside, but as they often involved things like throwing yourself bodily off a cliff, they weren’t always advisable.
They could attract a lot of mortal attention.
Also, there was the part where sometimes I just didn’t feel like throwing myself off a cliff to get inside someone else’s knowe.
The other outdoor options were normally more pleasant, but as one of them involved a rusty shed and the threat of tetanus, and the other required me to wander around the grounds for an extended period of time, touching sundials and exhausting myself, neither was really on the table.
Fortunately, as I squeezed the car into a parking space near the front of the lot, the sign on the museum door said that we had another twenty minutes before closing. I plucked a sprig of lilac off the bush outside the door as I stepped inside, Quentin and Bucer close behind me.
The guard on duty offered me a professional smile. “How many tickets?” he asked.
“Three, please.”
“That will be sixty dollars.”
Of course it would be sixty dollars. I put the lilac sprig on the counter between us, reciting quietly, “At the setting of the sun, larks and lilacs have I none, and as the moon comes into view, I gather roses, mint, and rue.”
The smell of my magic rose around us, sharp and stinging, and the man’s eyes glazed over, gaze going briefly unfocused. He reached for the lilac. “Let me get you your change, ma’am,” he said.
“That’s all right,” I replied. “Come on, boys.”
Quentin waited until the bewitched guard was out of earshot before he leaned closer and hissed, “Dean doesn’t like us to fox the museum staff.”
“I understand, but Dame Altair didn’t leave me with any cash,” I said.
“Me, neither,” he admitted.
We walked onward until we came to the narrow, unmarked door that would let us into the knowe.
Anyone without fae blood wouldn’t have been able to see it at all.
I gestured them both closer and opened the door, revealing the long, dimly lit hall of the knowe.
I stepped through, the world spinning and shifting around me, and the mortal world was somewhere else entirely, the Summerlands welcoming us with open arms.
Quentin was the last one through. He closed the door behind him, moving to help support me as I leaned against the wall and gasped for breath.
Focusing on my need for air meant that I wasn’t focusing quite so hard on my need to toss my cookies all over the hallway floor.
Things skittered and shifted in the rafters above us, and I knew that the bogeys who claimed the knowe as their territory were on their way to let someone know that we were here.
That was nice. If the bogeys were already on top of things, I didn’t need to move for a few minutes.
Bucer looked at me and frowned. “It always hit her this hard?” he asked, clearly directing his question at Quentin. I glared at him while I continued to focus on my breath.
“Not always,” said Quentin. “Sometimes it’s better, sometimes it’s kinda worse. It really depends on the knowe, and what else she’s been doing to herself recently. I’m pretty sure blood loss is a factor, but I’m not certain how, and it’s not like I’m going to start bleeding her to figure it out.”
“Huh,” said Bucer, far too speculatively for my liking.
Footsteps approached, hurrying down the hall.
I took another gulp of air and straightened up, turning to see Dean’s seneschal, Marcia, rushing toward us.
As usual, she was dressed like she’d just escaped from a 1970s commune, with a loose peasant blouse and a long, layered skirt that fell all the way to her ankles.
Her shoes were basic brown brogues, and her stockings were striped red and blue.
Her curly blonde hair had been pulled into a braid, dangling over her shoulder, and glittering rings of fairy ointment surrounded her eyes, taking the place of more conventional cosmetics.
Marcia was a thin-blooded changeling, no more than a quarter fae, and without the fairy ointment she wouldn’t have been able to perceive the knowe around her. She had too much of mortality in her to see Faerie without assistance.
“Toby!” she exclaimed when she saw me. Then she stopped, blinking, and squinted.
“Why are you covered in blood? You’re too pregnant to go around covered in blood when you don’t have to be, and you shouldn’t be getting into situations where you’ll have to be.
What’s going on? Hi, Quentin. Dean’s in his office. ”
“I’m here to make sure Toby avoids any more ‘covered in blood’ situations; I’ll see him when I see him. Toby’s here because… I’m not actually sure why Toby brought us here.” He turned to look at me, assessing. “Toby, why are we here?”
“Because we needed to be somewhere while we regroup, and this is closer than either Shadowed Hills or Muir Woods.” I straightened, still leaning against the wall, and mustered a smile for Marcia. “Hi, Marcia. Anything for lunch today?”
“Nothing prepared, but there’s fresh bread and we can make sandwiches,” she said, agreeably. “What do you mean, regroup?”
“We just got kidnapped, my family is in danger, and the hope chest is missing.” It was a blunt way to say things, but I wasn’t worried about Marcia spreading the news around, and as a thin-blooded changeling in a position of power, she was likely to be approached if someone decided to start using the hope chest to cash in.
Some changelings would pay anything to have the balance of their blood adjusted.
The thought made me feel more than a little guilty.
I could do for free what someone was probably going to start charging for, and yet I hadn’t started doing it yet.
Partially because I didn’t like telling people I thought there was something wrong with them—I didn’t, and there wasn’t.
Changelings are just as much a part of Faerie as purebloods are, and we have just as much of a right to exist. We should be able to choose how mortal we want to remain, and having someone imply that there was anything wrong with that wouldn’t help people make the decisions they could live with.
And partially because I was finally starting to feel like my life made sense.
I was going to be a mother, again, and this time I was going to be able to raise my child, with my husband by my side.
In Titania’s version of Faerie, Amandine had been open about the fact that our line existed to fill the void left by the loss of most of the hope chests, and she had never been able to rest. Her place in our society had become a constant rush from one place to another, and when she’d tried to stay home with her family, she’d been constantly besieged by requests to get back out there and back to work. I wasn’t ready for that.
Maybe it was selfish of me, and if it was, I wasn’t sure I actually cared. I wanted to have my own life for a little while before I handed it off to someone else, the way I always seemed to wind up doing.
Marcia blinked several times, very slowly, as she digested what I had just said. I could tell it was sinking in when her eyes widened and her mouth dropped partially open, leaving her gaping at me.
“Yeah,” I said.
“How did that happen ?”
“We don’t know,” I said. “Arden sent me to ask questions because someone , who turned out to be Bucer here”—I indicated Bucer with a sharp jerk of my head—“emptied out most of the royal treasury on Dame Altair’s order while we were all enchanted, and only realized after the spell broke that he’d been stealing from the crown.
But the hope chest was apparently already gone. ”
“That’s… unnerving,” said Marcia.
“It is,” I agreed.
With no one in Titania’s Faerie making fairy ointment, Marcia had been cut off from her supply, and as a consequence, had fallen out of contact with Faerie for the duration of the enchantment.
While the rest of us had been struggling through a parallel version of our lives, she had been living comfortably in the mortal world, unaware of what she was missing.
When the spell broke, she’d looked around, realized what was missing, and just…
come home. Dean had found her waiting for him in Goldengreen when he returned, already back at work in the kitchen, welcoming the residents back with an air of amiable cheer that told them everything was going to be all right.
Any maybe for her, it was. Marcia had been one of Lily’s subjects, back when the long-lamented Undine had kept her court at the Japanese Tea Gardens in Golden Gate Park.
Lily was the first one to see what Marcia was capable of, what her steady, practical presence could bring to a healthy court, but she hadn’t been the last. During my brief tenure as Countess of Goldengreen, Marcia had come to work for me, and when I passed the title to Dean, she’d gone with it, becoming a point of stability in an ever-shifting household.
He was lucky to have her. I’d been lucky too.
“You have to find it,” she said.
I nodded. “I know. But it’s worse than just the hope chest. Do you think we could go sit down and have a sandwich, and I’ll explain.”
“Sure,” said Marcia, and turned to head back down the hall.