Page 73 of Silver and Lead (October Daye #19)
TWENTY-FIVE
I T WAS TWO DAYS before we were all given a clean bill of health and allowed to leave Muir Woods to go home.
Jazz had returned before the end of the first day, feeding the cats—and Spike, who had returned from its own adventure none the worse for wear—taking care of Raysel, and calling Raj’s cellphone what felt like every half hour to update May on the state of the house.
After six hours of constant phone calls, Raj had thrown his hands up and taken the Shadow Roads to Tamed Lightning to get new phones from April, who was always happy to have an excuse to upgrade our household technology to what she considered “acceptable” levels.
With this done, he’d gone back to spending all his time with Quentin and Dean, watching them protectively.
Jin had arrived some twenty minutes behind the Luidaeg, diagnosing us all with varying degrees of iron poisoning—Madden’s hands were the worst actual injury, but I still had enough iron in my system to have killed any two of my companions.
Jin had been appropriately horrified, and all but ripped the scabbard away from May, deeming it too dangerous to be out in the world and demanding Arden secure it again right away.
The scabbard wasn’t the only dangerous thing Janet had been hoarding, and that was why, when we were given permission to leave, the lot of us returned to Berkeley, accompanied by Etienne and Nolan, to go through the cavern beneath her house.
Only May and Miranda proceeded onward to San Francisco, letting Chelsea portal them to safety.
I suspected this was also Etienne’s way of keeping his daughter away from the possibility of action, but I wasn’t going to argue with him. Not about this. Not now.
The courtyard looked the same as it always had, perfect and unchanging, save for the cats who lurked in the underbrush and sat on the porch, watching our approach with unblinking eyes.
Technically this land had been deeded to Janet, putting her adjacent to but outside Faerie.
Kidnapping a King of Cats and a Hero of the Realm sort of called her sovereignty into question, and that was without accounting for the fact that Quentin was the Crown Prince of the Westlands.
For the moment, both Shade and Arden were occupying this land.
The little chicken-legged house watched our approach without moving, shrinking down in its nest and trying to go unnoticed. Danny looked at it and snorted.
“If nobody wants to take the little hut, I will,” he said. “It’s cute.”
“And what will your Barghests think of that?” I asked.
“Probably that it looks like something fun to play with,” he said.
Dame Altair had convinced Danny to leave us behind with a combination of illusions and compulsion charms, something that the stoic, loyal Bridge Troll was taking very seriously.
He’d arrived at Muir Woods only a few hours after our rescue, and hadn’t left since.
It was a bit much, if I was being honest, but he was so desperate to make up for what he saw as his failure that none of us were going to order him away.
As a group, we entered the house. Arden’s guards promptly scattered, going to search all the rooms we hadn’t checked before, while Arden and the others followed me down the stairs in the kitchen, all the way to the basement.
The smell of blood and iron trapped underground made my nose wrinkle, and Tybalt held my hand a little tighter as we started down the hallway.
Walther made us stop at the room where he’d been held with Quentin, long enough for him to go in and retrieve some of the previously abandoned alchemical supplies, but otherwise, we made straight for the cavern, passing empty rooms and dead-end halls without hesitation.
I didn’t have Walther or Tybalt’s ability to sniff out a trail, but I had bled all through this place, and the scent was enough to guide me easily through the dark.
We stepped through the last door into the cavern and Arden started swearing, seeing the treasures of her kingdom piled up like they were the contents of a junk shop.
Her swearing only got louder as she began going through those shelves. “Some of these things disappeared while my father was King!” she said, sounding endlessly offended.
“And now they’ve reappeared,” I said. My feet had carried me back to the nest of blankets and tapestries where they’d cut Miranda out of me, a bloody horror in the midst of all these treasures. Tybalt squeezed my hand.
“Can we burn it now?” I asked plaintively.
“We can do anything you like,” he replied.
“Hey!” barked Madden.
We all turned to look at him. He was standing next to a marble plinth, unremarkable in its surroundings, topped by an ornately carved wooden box. He pointed at it with one shaking finger.
“This wasn’t here before,” he said, sounding puzzled and almost offended.
I walked toward the hope chest, Tybalt still holding on to my hand, and tilted my head to the side. “No,” I agreed. “It wasn’t. So what’s it doing here now?”
“Nasty human lady didn’t come back,” said Madden. “Neither did mean pureblood lady.”
Janet’s failure to return was news; Dame Altair’s was not. Both she and her brother had been taken captive by Arden’s guard, and were currently in custody, under twenty-four hour watch. They weren’t getting away again.
The same couldn’t be said for the false Queen. As far as anyone had been able to tell, she’d left the Kingdom as soon as her loyal vassal freed her, leaving him behind to face his fate. Not a very good boss, if you asked me.
“So who did come back?” I asked.
Madden looked to Arden for permission, then picked up the hope chest, turning it over in his hands like he thought our reverse thief might have left a note.
The smell of wild roses filled the air as he disturbed the handful of rose petals that had been scattered under the hope chest. I gasped. I knew that smell. I knew those roses.
Maybe whoever returned the hope chest had left us a note after all.