Page 51 of Silver and Lead (October Daye #19)
FIFTEEN
M ADDEN, IT TRANSPIRED, WOULD be able to meet us in half an hour, since he got off work in fifteen minutes, and as a Cu Sidhe, he had alternative means of getting across the city in a hurry.
That meant we’d have time to at least try to get into Dame Altair’s knowe while we waited for him, and also that I didn’t need to worry about updating Arden on the situation.
Involving her seneschal would do that for us.
Quentin pulled up outside Dame Altair’s house, turning off the engine. I stayed in my seat, scanning the cars around us for any that I recognized. To my relief, Danny’s car wasn’t there; she hadn’t suborned another of my allies. I unbuckled my seatbelt.
“You good?” asked Quentin, who had noticed my pause.
“I am,” I said, and got out of the car, joining Spike and Bucer on the sidewalk.
Bucer looked at the house like it was a giant predator and he was afraid of being swallowed.
“We could walk away,” he said. “I made a decent amount fencing stuff before I got caught, and there was some money in there too, enough for all three of us to start over somewhere else in the Westlands. We could just disappear. Doesn’t that sound good, Toby? Vanishing into the dark?”
“She has my husband,” I said, voice flat and cold. “I didn’t marry him because I didn’t want to keep him. I want him back . And even if I didn’t, she has my sister . May is mine. I don’t leave her behind.”
“I thought she was your—” Bucer’s lips began to form an f sound, but he caught himself, taking a half-step back. “Right. Okay. We go in, I guess.”
May wasn’t technically my sister by birth, for all that we both acted like she was; she was my Fetch, a death omen summoned by the universe before my first brush with elf-shot.
Before she became May and mine, she’d been a night-haunt named Mai, and the last memories she’d consumed had belonged to a changeling girl named Dare who died to save me.
Becoming my Fetch had added my memories to the ones Mai already had, creating a whole new person, with her own preferences and feelings.
And she was my sister in every way that counted.
We didn’t hide the fact that she was originally my Fetch—how could we?
—but that didn’t mean Bucer got to act like it made her less worth saving.
The smart thing to do would be to find a back entrance.
With most knowes, that was exactly what we would have tried to do.
Getting into a knowe can be like solving a riddle written by a drunkard, but it’s usually possible if you have time.
The location of Dame Altair’s knowe made that approach impractical.
The physical house that anchored her knowe was sandwiched between two other houses, without even a walkway between them.
There was a small backyard, I was sure, but we had no way to access it without trespassing or breaking into someone else’s property.
I’m not innately opposed to a little light breaking and entering, although I prefer not to do it when profoundly pregnant, but breaking into an expensive house without preparation or the proper tools is a fool’s game that I wasn’t particularly in the mood to play.
Not unless we had absolutely no choice, and I already knew of one method for getting into the knowe.
We just had to go in through the front door.
“Everyone stay close together,” I said, and started for the porch steps.
Bucer and Quentin followed me. We were almost to the top when the climbing rose that was wrapped around the porch trellis turned one massive blossom toward us. The flower opened into a fanged mouth and snarled, displaying a fine array of thorn-sharp teeth.
“Shit,” I said. “Get behind me.”
Quentin managed to oblige before the rose vines began whipping out of the foliage and slapping at us, thorns driving deep with every hit. Bucer wasn’t so quick. He bleated as the whipping vines struck him, staggering and dropping to his knees on the porch stairs.
I hissed between my teeth at the impacts, reaching up to grab the largest of the vines as it pulled back for another strike.
The rose paused, apparently confused by this action.
I squeezed harder, driving the thorns into my own palm and embedding them there, keeping the wounds open.
Blood began to drip down my hand to my wrist.
“Back off ,” I said, trying to use the magic to put the force of a command behind the words. I had no reason to think it would work, and nice as it would have been to unlock a new tool for controlling possessed flora, nothing happened.
Behind me, something started to growl. That word doesn’t do the sound justice: it was like listening to someone revving a chainsaw, undulating and primal and sliding up and down a register of notes that my throat wouldn’t have been capable of matching.
The vine I was holding tried to pull away, and this time I let go, allowing it to work its thorns loose and withdraw.
The sound got louder, coming closer, and I glanced down. Spike was standing next to my right leg, eyes fixed on the roses that had been attacking us, thorns bristling out in all directions, for all the world like a furiously angry cat.
Which, in a way, was exactly what it was.
But it was also a cutting from one of the world’s few Blodynbryd, the Dryads of the roses.
Rose goblins are technically a descendant line of Acacia, the Mother of Trees: she’s the mother of Blodynbryd, too, and when they walk in the world, they leave rose goblins behind.
I don’t know how the hierarchy of flowers works, but I know that when Spike snarled at that enchanted rose, it backed down, even going so far as to unwind from the trellis and retreat all the way from the porch.
I glanced at the exposed wood this left behind, wondering whether the illusion that shrouded fae activity from mortal eyes had gone with the roses.
We were all wearing illusions, but I’d been counting on the illusion to make us just that much harder to see while I was picking the lock on the door.
“Bucer, stand behind me,” I said, climbing the last few steps to the porch.
“I’m bleeding everywhere!” he protested, the hint of a bleat still distorting his words.
I turned to look at him. There were scratches on his arms and face, and I had little doubt that his ears were equally shredded. None of them looked as deep as the punctures on my arms had been, but even a shallow rose scratch can sting like nobody’s business.
“I’m sorry about that,” I said. “I didn’t expect Dame Altair’s security system to be based around a rabid attack rose. Maybe we can find a first aid kit inside?”
“We better,” muttered Quentin. “I just got this car. I don’t want to ruin the upholstery until I’ve had it for at least a year.”
“My little optimist,” I said warmly. “Bucer, can you walk?”
“I can,” he admitted, in a grudging tone.
“Great, then you can come and stand behind me.”
Slowly, clearly pained, he moved to do precisely that.
I reached for my lockpicks—which of course weren’t there, having been taken away along with everything else when Dame Altair poisoned and imprisoned me.
I made a frustrated sound and beside me, Spike rattled.
I turned to look down at the rose goblin, which met my eyes and rattled its thorns again, pushing its head against my thigh.
My knee threatened to buckle. “Okay, buddy, okay,” I said. “You have to be gentle with me right now, or I’m going to fall down, and it’s going to be really hard to get me back on my feet if that happens.”
Spike made a frustrated sound and nudged me with its head again. I frowned, taking a closer look at it. Some of the thorns growing along the central crest of its skull were almost as long as my index finger. I reached down and touched one of them. “Is this what you’re trying to tell me?”
In response, Spike shoved its head into my hand with more force than it usually used, driving several thorns into my palm. When it pulled its head away again, the thorns remained behind, detaching like a porcupine’s quills.
“That was a very violent way to offer me an alternative to using the Luidaeg’s shell knife again,” I said, plucking the thorns out of my palm.
There were four in total, all several inches long and flexible enough to get the job done.
“But I still appreciate it. You are an excellent rose goblin, Spike. I’ll get you a bag of fertilizer when this is all over. ”
It chirped, sounding self-satisfied, and slunk away to stand behind Bucer, blocking off any chance that he was going to cut and run.
I returned my attention to the lock. It was pretty standard, and didn’t look like it had been upgraded since the 1970s. I slid the first thorn into the lock, trying to feel the internal pins. I twisted; they shifted; the thorn broke. Swearing, I pulled the broken portion out of the lock.
Quentin looked over his shoulder at me. “Everything okay?”
“Everything is fine,” I said. “Just need to try again.”
The second thorn didn’t fare any better than the first had.
On the third thorn there was a click, and the door swung silently inward by a few inches, revealing a slice of the darkened hallway.
I straightened, sliding the remaining thorn into my jacket pocket before bracing my hands at the small of my back as I tried to catch my balance.
“I’m fine,” I said, before Quentin could ask. “Just sore. My body’s been through a lot today, and it’s still busy building another person, after all.”
“Given the way you heal, couldn’t your body do things faster?” he asked. “I hate seeing how much this is hurting you.”
The question came with a whole series of gruesome, unwanted images. I shook them away, shuddering. “Let’s just be glad my body didn’t think of that. Stay behind me and keep your voice down.”