Page 61 of Silver and Lead (October Daye #19)

NINETEEN

N EITHER MAY NOR MADDEN tried to tell me we didn’t have time for this, despite the urgency of our situation.

They took up positions by the door, standing guard.

Madden was still in his human form, teeth bared and shoulders tensed as he readied himself to attack anyone who tried to come into the room. May was just in the mood for a fight.

Walther listened to my proposal without saying a word, not blinking or even visibly breathing. When I was done, he gestured to the low bench next to his workstation. “Sit,” he said, brusquely.

“Do you think it’ll work?” I asked, feeling suddenly unsure. I sat. The relief as I took the pressure off my knees was almost obscene, even though my entire body still ached from the iron in my veins.

“I think we’re out of better options,” he said, getting a beaker from the array of flasks and vessels, and picking up one of the small knives he’d been using to dice the herbs.

“Do I like the idea of bleeding a pregnant woman who already has a mild case of iron poisoning? No. Do I like the thought of what Tybalt is going to do to me when he finds out? Also no. Do I have a better idea? For a third and hopefully final time, no. Give me your wrist.”

I offered him my arm, wrist tilted toward the ceiling.

Walther leaned over and pressed his knife against the thinnest part of my skin, bearing down until it parted.

I hissed between my teeth. Blood welled to the surface, and he drew the blade hard toward him, opening the wound wider until he could get the blood he needed.

Even without the bracelet, I was healing more slowly than I would normally have done.

That was the iron in my veins, making my magic sluggish and reluctant to respond.

Walther put down the knife, then grasped my wrist and turned it, holding the beaker underneath. Blood began dripping into the glass.

“We don’t really have the time for this,” I said. “We need to find Tybalt. But saving Quentin still comes first.”

“My favorite part of this whole horrible experience is that as long as Quentin doesn’t die, no one here’s done anything actively wrong ,” said Walther, giving every indication of ignoring my babbling.

He let go of my wrist and picked up his knife again, reopening the skin of my wrist to keep the blood flowing.

“Kidnapping is an offense, but it’s not illegal.

We could all complain to the Queen and there’d still be a chance Dame Altair could get away with nothing but a slap on the wrist. I’m not sure Arden can do anything to Janet.

Do enchanted mortals bound by the missing Queen of Faerie fall under her jurisdiction? ”

“I don’t know,” I said, watching myself bleed.

The beaker was more than half full when he finally took it away.

I quickly moved my arm so that the last drops of my blood would fall onto my dress.

I wasn’t going to swallow that much iron on purpose, but I also wasn’t leaving these people anything I didn’t have to.

Walther took the beaker and swirled its contents, beginning to chant in soft Welsh.

The smell of yarrow and ice filled the air, which dropped several degrees in temperature, and the contents of the beaker started to separate, a layer of black forming at the bottom.

When the entire bottom of the beaker was black as pitch—or iron—he picked up a pipette and began syphoning off the red from the top.

“There was more iron in your blood than I thought there’d be,” he said.

“You’re moving around better than you should be by this point.

I’m going to blame it on your magic. But Toby—magic isn’t infinite.

You’re going to run out sooner or later, and when that happens, with this much iron inside you…

I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’m betting it won’t be anything good, for either you or the baby. ”

“So I find that cure sooner than later,” I said. “Appreciate the heads-up.”

Walther gave me a withering look, then turned to begin mixing my purified blood into a mortar filled with gray-white paste.

Adding the blood turned it an odd shade of silvery purple that actually glittered as he spooned it out of the mortar and into something that looked like a pastry bag.

He looked first at me, then at Madden and May.

“Well?” he said. “Come on. I don’t want us to split up again. It ends poorly.”

I rose and followed him through the narrow doorway at the back of the room, into an equally narrow hallway that lasted for only a handful of steps before leading into a room barely big enough to hold a bed.

Quentin was there, stretched out on the thin mattress, arms at his side, not moving.

The air was substantially colder than it had been anywhere else in the dungeon—that would be Walther’s stasis spell, keeping him from getting any worse.

Walther waved a hand and the cold shattered, beginning to dissipate at once.

Quentin took a shallow, pained breath, chest clearly struggling to move.

“Toby, I want you with me,” said Walther, approaching the bed.

I followed close behind. It was difficult not to see this as a form of punishment, a way of saying “See? See what happens when you let your squire follow you into danger?”

But sadly for all three of us, I’d learned that lesson a long time ago, before Quentin was even officially my squire.

I’d learned it in gunfire and weeping, in blood on the floor and deaths that would never be undone.

Quentin knew what he was getting into when he signed on to train with me, and maybe more importantly, I knew what he was getting into.

Seeing him like this hurt. I couldn’t pretend it didn’t.

I also couldn’t pretend that we hadn’t always known this was a possibility.

He was still breathing shallowly, the skin of his face waxen and unwell. He looked like he’d aged years since we’d entered the house. That was impossible—adult fae don’t age—but the appearance was still there.

“Help me roll him onto his side,” said Walther.

We were well outside the realm of my limited medical knowledge now, which said that someone with a skull or spinal injury shouldn’t be moved unless absolutely necessary, but what he was doing wasn’t mortal medicine.

I grasped Quentin’s hip while Walther grasped his shoulder, and on the count of three we rolled him toward the wall.

I almost let go when I saw the back of his skull.

I managed, barely, to hold on, but I couldn’t stop the choked-off gasp that rose to my lips, or the rush of bile that filled my mouth until I swallowed it back down.

His hair was matted with blood, as was the back of his neck, and the shape of his head was wrong, staved in by the blow that had taken him out.

If they hadn’t been aiming to kill him, they should have been; they would probably have succeeded.

“Hold him,” said Walther curtly, letting go of Quentin’s shoulder and leaning in to begin piping the purple paste onto the injury. He didn’t rub it in or manipulate it in any way, but it still sank through the hair and into the skin, disappearing without even a hint of color left behind.

When the bag was empty Walther sighed and turned to me. “You can let him back down now,” he said. “If I did this correctly, he’ll wake up. If I didn’t, he won’t. I’ll freeze him again and try something else.”

“We’ve used my blood to heal people before,” I said, looking anxiously at Quentin as I sat on the edge of the bed and eased him back to the mattress. “Usually they have to drink it, though.”

“With the amount of iron in your system, drinking your unfiltered blood would probably kill him in his current condition,” said Walther bluntly.

I blinked, turning to meet his eyes. “Are you mad at me? Because it sounds like you’re mad at me, and I know that can’t be the case right now.”

Walther scowled. “Damn right I’m mad at you. Root and branch, October, Quentin’s lying here half-dead with a brain injury because you led him into danger. I think I have a right to be a little bit miffed!”

“He’s my squire. Following me into danger is part of the job description.”

“Did he know that? Did his parents know that? Because this is a rather excessive amount of danger.”

“You came of your own free will.”

Walther froze for a moment. “I didn’t know I was walking into this,” he said finally.

“None of us did,” I said. “We were just trying to find out why Dame Altair kept getting targeted. We didn’t realize it was a trap until it was too late.”

“Double that one,” said May. “I got jumped in my own home, which is also Quentin’s home, which means that Toby pretending she didn’t need her squire with her wouldn’t have been enough to keep him out of harm’s way.

He’d have been here whether he went with his knight or not.

Stop picking on the pregnant lady, Davies, it’s a bad look. ”

Walther turned his scowl on May, who shrugged, unbowed.

“You know I’m right, because I’m always right. I’m older than any of you, and I’m telling you, this is what squires do . They walk into danger, and if they’re well-trained and lucky, they walk back out on the other side.”

On the bed, Quentin made a small mewling noise.

Both of us snapped our eyes back to him, and I very nearly laughed out loud when I saw that he was shifting in his sleep, repositioning himself to get more comfortable.

I caught myself at the last second, leaning over to gently shake his shoulder instead.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” I said softly. “You’ve got some people here who’d really like to see your eyes again.”

Dutifully, he opened his eyes, then yawned, covering his mouth with one hand as he gave me a perplexed look. “Toby?” he said. “Where are we?”

“The dungeon under Janet’s house,” I said. “I don’t know what’s up with this place, and I don’t care so much. We still need to find Tybalt before we can get the hell out of here.”