Page 58 of Silver and Lead (October Daye #19)

EIGHTEEN

F OR THE SECOND TIME in as many days, I woke up tied to a bed, my arms above my head and my legs spread apart.

This time I was tied with stronger stuff than silver and yarrow; these ropes were rose boughs and thin iron wire, cutting and burning my skin at the same time.

The remaining bracelet of the pair the Luidaeg had made from my blood was still on my wrist, slowing my magic and making my healing more painful than it would normally have been.

Every twitch and tremor burned. I still tried to jerk myself free when I finally opened my eyes and realized the situation I was in.

The burn of the iron threads being pressed against the open wounds created by the rose thorns dissuaded me from trying again.

I hissed and sagged back into the bed, which was surprisingly comfortable, smelling of herbs and—from what I could tell—spotlessly clean.

The sheets were still cool beneath me, despite the fact that I’d been here long enough for the fracture in my skull to mend, even with the bracelet on my arm.

I was also naked, something I hadn’t realized until I started noticing the sheets. I looked down at myself. A top sheet was draped across me, presumably to preserve my modesty, but from the way it had settled, I could tell there was nothing else beneath it. No clothing—and no weapons.

I pulled on the chains again, despite the pain. This wasn’t good. Nothing good has ever come of involuntary bondage and nudity. I don’t think that’s a very controversial position to take.

The iron dug into the wounds opened by the rose thorns, and blood ran down my arms, too far from my face for me to get any proper benefit from it. I strained anyway, trying to reach it, to no avail.

I couldn’t repeat the trick I’d used to get away from Dame Altair.

I was tied more tightly, without the slack I needed to roll, and digging iron wires that deeply into my flesh would come with a degree of damage that my body would be hard-pressed to handle, even if my magic hadn’t been slowed by the mixed-blessing of a bracelet I was wearing.

The bed also felt like it was larger, making it harder to suspend myself in a way that gave me any leverage.

“I learn from my mistakes,” said Dame Altair.

I jerked my head around. She was standing in a corner of the spare, unadorned room; there was no wallpaper on the stone walls, and while I couldn’t see the floor, I had little doubt that it would be equally bare.

We were still in the dungeon-like space beneath Janet’s house, the rooms that inexplicably burrowed into Faerie.

“I’m sorry I tied you incorrectly back at the house.

This would all have been so much simpler if you’d stayed where I put you. ”

“What the hell are you doing, Eloise?” I demanded, using her given name rather than her title. I couldn’t sit up, and so I settled for glaring at her. It was a small comfort, but my temper was still my own.

“Fulfilling a client order,” she said calmly.

“And don’t worry about the iron in your bonds.

That’s just there to keep you from gnawing your own arm off to get away from me.

If you stop struggling, you won’t get any more of it in your bloodstream, and I have the fount that lets me treat iron poisoning.

I’ll let you use it before I let you go. ”

I gaped at her. “Janet didn’t attack you for failing her. She attacked you because she was helping you lure me out of the house!”

“Took you long enough to figure that out. But then, you were never smart—just persistent. It’s amazing how far that can get you when you’re also indestructible.

Yes, I arranged the attack, and when Dugan said he needed to get his liege out of Windermere’s custody before the sentencing, I agreed to help him.

I was never in any danger, and it all went exactly as I had planned.

Crafting a narrative of the abduction that would work in front of an Adhene without triggering their tedious need for the truth was the most difficult part.

” She smiled, slow and languid. “And now here we are.”

“You know I’m going to kill you as soon as I get off this bed.”

“You realize statements like that are just an incentive for me to make sure that you never leave that bed,” she said.

“But it won’t matter. I’ll treat your iron poisoning before I leave you, and my employer has paid me enough that I can go anywhere in the Westlands or Aztalan and fund a comfortable life for myself. I won’t break the Law.”

“Where are Tybalt and May?” I demanded. “Where is Quentin?”

“Your cat and death omen are in cells of their own,” she said.

“One of the artifacts Bucer was kind enough to steal for me sets wards against the Shadow Roads so strong that I doubt their First could tunnel through them. The cat-king isn’t going anywhere before I’m ready.

As to the Fetch, she hasn’t even tried to escape since I told her that one of my tasks was gathering as many skinshifting tokens as possible.

She worries for her little bird. What is it with your line and the shifting kinds? ”

I raised an eyebrow. “It’s not my whole line. Last time I checked, August wasn’t seeing anyone, and Gillian is a shapeshifter. She doesn’t need to date one to keep up the family tradition.” I paused then, and asked the more important question: “Did you hurt Jasmine?”

“No.” Janet shook her head. “The bird landed on the roof as we were loading the Fetch into the car, and my brother disguised us well enough that we were able to drive away without her following. Wherever she is now, that isn’t down to us.

But I may have implied to the Fetch that we would hunt the bird if we released her from our custody. Need to get paid for something.”

“And Quentin?”

“The boy? Oh. We may have hit him a trifle harder than intended while we were apprehending you—my brother forgets which of you is the unreasonably fast healer, and which is the pain in my ass. The alchemist is seeing to him now.”

“Walther’s not a healer! He’s not going to be able to fix a cracked skull!”

“Oh. Oh, no.” Dame Altair put a finger to the corner of her mouth like she was thinking very hard. “Sounds like you need to get him out of here sooner than later, and that’s not going to happen unless you agree not to fight while I take what I’ve been hired to provide.”

Janet’s obsession with raising Gillian as a substitute for the child who’d been taken away from her and hidden in Faerie, where she couldn’t reach.

Dame Altair’s questions about my pregnancy when I’d first come to see her.

The search for the only hope chest in the kingdom, and her frustration when it was nowhere to be found—meaning she knew it was real, knew it would work, and had a specific reason to want it.

If I’d been able to move my arms, I would have been clutching my stomach.

As it was, I tried as hard as I could to roll onto my side and shelter it from her with the bulk of my body.

All the action did was rock me a few inches to the left and drive the rose thorns deeper into my wrists and ankles, bringing a fresh wave of pain and a fresh cascade of blood.

She sighed. “Oh, don’t be so stupid , October.

I knew you weren’t the brightest pixie in the flock, but that doesn’t mean you need to behave this way.

You have no way out. You’re tied and taken, and all you’re doing is making it worse for yourself.

If you don’t stop behaving this way, I’ll have to take steps to prevent you from damaging the merchandise. ”

“My child is not merchandise ,” I spat.

“Maybe not in your eyes,” she said, and turned, letting herself out of the room.

“Maybe a little time to think about the situation will help.” She closed the door when she was gone, making sure that anyone who passed in the hall wouldn’t be able to hear me.

Not that it would matter: the only people who were likely to be passing in the hall were Dugan and Janet and, for all I knew, the false Queen.

No one who would be able or inclined to help me.

Every inch of me was beginning to ache. The burn of the iron at my wrists and ankles was constant and impossible to ignore: the closest human comparison I can come up with is something nuclear, like uranium.

It harms the fae through contact alone, and once it gets into our blood, it keeps doing damage.

Radiation poisoning isn’t the worst comparison I could make, really.

Iron poisoning is remarkably similar. It starts with aches in muscle and bone, progressing to swelling of the joints that can be so painful it becomes incapacitating; sometime in all of that, hallucinations and dizziness will become a problem.

Finally, it makes its victims go rigid, their every muscle locking up and refusing to respond as the iron begins shutting its victim’s organs down.

It’s anybody’s guess how painful it is by that stage.

No one’s really survived to give it a review.

How can we be allergic to iron when iron is found in almost every living thing in the world, including humans?

I have no idea. I just know that the purer the iron, the more it hurts.

When you reach what we call “cold iron,” which is iron unalloyed with anything else and alchemically treated to harden it, you’ve got something that can kill us with proximity alone.

Most fae won’t use it, no matter how malicious they are.