Cassandra blinked. “So we leave the dishes?” she ventured.
“We leave the dishes,” I said.
We left the dishes. We walked past the relieved staff—who were at least trying not to look like they were happy we were finally getting out of their space—and into the hall, where Walther was waiting. I stopped. Cassandra stopped. An awkward silence fell.
Finally, Walther said, “I looked inside, but you seemed happy with your tea and your, you know, girl talk, and I didn’t want to interrupt.”
My heart sank. Good news would have had him interrupting us without hesitation. Good news would have had him trumpeting it from the rooftops, because good news would have meant he could go home. “What is it?”
“Do you want to talk about that here?”
No. I did not. I didn’t want to talk about it anywhere. I wanted it to go away, to not exist. I wanted my brother back, and I—by Oberon—did not want to keep my composure any longer. “Let’s go back to the room.”
Walther nodded. He didn’t look relieved. If anything, he looked sad. He really didn’t want to tell me whatever he was going to say next.
We walked silently down the hall. Either the kitchen staff had sent out some alert or the knowe was between shifts, because we didn’t see anyone as we made our way to the room where Nolan slept. Madden was responsible for organizing the household staff, with assistance from Lowri; there was no reason for me to know who was going to be where, or when they were going to be there. I still felt a little bad, like I was letting my people down on some profound level by not keeping track of them.
I was deflecting, trying to turn my anxiety on a target that was less personal and less painful, than my brother. And knowing that did nothing to make me feel better. Understanding my own mind doesn’t stop it from hurting me.
Walther went into my brother’s room. Cassandra and I followed. The table next to Nolan’s bed had become a tiny alchemical laboratory, complete with a bubbling vial of pinkish liquid propped over a ball of lambent blue witch-light. It was the sort of scene that would have seemed like something out of a dream, once, but which was becoming more and more commonplace as I settled into my new life. It was the sort of scene that left little room for hope.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, eyes on my brother as Walther shut the door behind us. “Why can’t you wake him up?”
“Alchemy isn’t the solution to every problem,” said Walther. His voice was low, his words deliberate. He was trying not to upset me. Fat lot of good that was going to do him. I was already upset, and getting more upset by the second. “I can counteract most charms and potions, if I have a sample of the original potion or know the magical signature of the person who brewed it. I can ease certain spells. But I can’t change the laws of magic.”
“So?” I whirled to face Walther. “This was a charm, you said so yourself! Fix it!”
“It’s in his blood,” he said. “It spent almost a century masked by elf-shot, aging, maturing, changing. And now it’s mixed into his body, and I can’t separate it out enough to pick it apart. I don’t know who brewed it. I don’t know what I’m looking for. Give me a year and I might be able to make some headway. A night is not enough.”
“A year will be too long,” I snapped. “He’ll die.”
“Not necessarily; we can get someone in here who understands care for long-term coma patients,” said Walther. “It’s not perfect, but . . . I don’t like telling you this any more than you like hearing it. There’s nothing I can do.”
“We could elf-shoot him again.”
“I don’t know how it would interact with the awakened sleeping charm. It could kill him.”
I took a breath to answer, and stopped as I saw Cassandra’s face. She was gazing at the air above his bubbling beaker, her eyes unfocused and her lips slightly parted, like she was focusing so hard on whatever it was she saw that she couldn’t spend the energy to keep them closed. My eyes narrowed.
“Okay,” I said. “This is what’s going to happen. You’re going to tell me whatever it is you’re not telling me, and you’re going to do it right now. In exchange, I will not have you both thrown in the dungeon until I forget about you.”
Cassandra didn’t react. She kept staring at the empty air.
Walther sighed before reaching over and touching her shoulder. “Hey,” he said. “Come back. You need to come back now.”
She jumped, giving a convulsive full-body shudder as she turned to face him. “What?”
“You zoned out for a second,” said Walther, gaze darting toward me, like he was trying to assess my reaction. No, not like: that was exactly what he was doing. I’d seen that look before, usually from shoplifters who were hoping they could put one over on me.
I wasn’t a retail employee anymore, allowed to back off and let my manager handle things. I was the goddamn Queen, and they were going to listen to me. “That’s not what happened.” Keeping my voice level was a fun challenge. I was not rising to meet it. “Something is going on. Tell me what is going on.”
“Cassie,” said Walther. His hand was still on her shoulder. “It’s your call.”
“Why do people say that kind of shit?” I planted my hands on my hips. “Now I know there’s something going on. No one makes a call about saying nothing.”
Cassandra sighed, looking from Walther to me and finally, almost longingly, back to the air above the beaker. Then she looked down at her feet and said, “I was telling the truth when I said I wasn’t an oneiromancer. I can’t move through other people’s dreams or use them to tell the future.”
“But . . . ?” I prompted.
“But I wasn’t telling the whole truth.” She glanced up, searching my face before she said, “I’m an aeromancer. I read air.”
“Air,” I said flatly.
“The motion of air. Yes.”
“Air is invisible.”
“Not to me.” She turned to the beaker again. “Not when I look at it right. Light and dust and wind, they all move in the air, and they tell me the future. It’s easiest by candlelight, but I can’t light candles in my house anymore. Not after everything that happened with Blind Michael. It upsets my youngest sister too much.”
“Wait.” I dropped my hands. “I’m trying to understand. You’re a Seer. You . . . See things. And where you See things is in the way air moves.”
“Yes.”
“Your sister is a Seer, too. She Sees things in dreams.”
“Yes.”
“But you’re both changelings.” My frustration was threatening to bubble over. “That doesn’t make sense. Seers are—they’re incredibly rare! My father didn’t have a Court Seer, because he couldn’t find one! His parents had a Shyi Shuai in their Court, but she didn’t See the future as much as bend the luck to make it do what she wanted, and maybe that’s what got them killed, since Shyi Shuai always get backlash. How the hell are you and Karen Seers? You can’t be.”
“Well, we are.” Cassandra shrugged. “Karen was the one who showed me. She didn’t know what she could do until Blind Michael took her. After that . . . it was like the dead bastard had woken her up by putting her to sleep. She watched the way I watched the air, and she started telling me how to interpret it. You want humbling? Try having your baby sister teaching you how do something that feels like it should be as natural as breathing, but somehow isn’t. I See things. My sister Sees things.”
“I . . . okay. Okay. I am going to stop arguing with reality, because it never gets me anywhere, and just beg you, please. Tell me what we need to do to wake my brother up. I need him. I need . . . I need my family back, and he’s the only one left for me to save. Please.”
Cassandra grimaced, reluctance written plainly across her features. “Can you get me a candle?”
“I have one in my bag,” said Walther.
“Of course you do,” said Cassa
ndra, with the ghost of a smile. “Will someone turn out the lights?”
“I’ve got it,” I said.
The knowe wasn’t wired for electricity, but we knew how to mimic it. Most of the rooms were lit with a marsh-charm that looked a lot like witch-light without requiring each bulb to be lit independently. I turned the dial next to the door. The tubes feeding the charm into the room went cold, and the light dimmed before flickering out, so only Walther’s witch-light provided any illumination. He handed Cassandra a candle before dousing that light as well. Everything was darkness. The starlight creeping in around the edges of the curtains cast the walls into vague relief, more an idea of architecture than anything clearly seen. That was all.
There was a brief flare as Cassandra lit a match and held it to the wick of her candle. She had sunk into a cross-legged position on the floor while I couldn’t see her, and her hair fell around her face like a curtain as she bent over the flame. It would have been easy to assume that she was staring at the fire. I took a step closer, and saw that she was staring at the air above it, her eyes unfocused again, darting back and forth as she followed the motion of something only she could see.
“The first sword didn’t come from the stone; it came from the sea,” she said, voice hollow and distant. “They called it a lake, later, when they were trying to contain its power, but it was sea-forged and sea-drawn, and its blade knew brine before it knew blood. Sharp it was, and cold it was, and unforgiving, always.”
“What?” I demanded.
A hand touched my shoulder. Walther. I tensed, ready to remind him that touching queens without permission was never a good idea. He caught my eye and shook his head.
“I’m sorry, Highness, but you need to let her work,” he said, voice low—he was trying not to distract her. “She can use the wind to scry, and that’s clear, just like Karen can walk in lucid dreams, but when you ask her to See, what you get is images and ideas. We’ll interpret them when she’s done.” Unspoken: This is what you asked for. This is what you wanted.
I forced myself to calm. I nodded. He withdrew his hand.
“She gave the sword away. She gave so many things away. Some for good and some for ill, but oh, she gave them all away.” Cassandra sighed. “So many things, and yet she can’t forsake the water. She never set the sleepers sleeping, never plumped their pillows or made their beds. Still, people came to her and asked for clever trinkets, and she had to say them yea. She never had a choice. Not since she chose once, and all her choices were taken away.”
Silence fell. Cassandra tilted her head to the side, like she was looking at something she didn’t understand. Finally, she said, “They asked and she said ‘yes.’ She has to say ‘yes.’ That’s why she hates us for asking. She gives and she gives and she gives, and we built a world on the idea that thanking her for what she’s already given is against the rules. We built a world on never being grateful, because we were entitled to everything we got. She’s the one who bottled the moon. She’s the one who refined the stars. She’s the one we have to talk to. But there will be costs. There are always costs. There have to be. It’s the only way we ever thank her. With our tears.”
She pitched forward, hands hitting the floor on either side of the candle. The motion was so swift that the wind it generated blew out the flame, casting us into total darkness. A wisp of smoke rose through her hair, paradoxically visible.
“Ow,” muttered Cassandra.
I leaned over and turned the lights back on. They trickled into life, revealing Cassandra unmoving on the floor. Walther was watching her, lips thin, face drawn.
“You okay?” he asked.
“No,” she said, and raised her head, offering him a shaky smile. “You know, I think I’d prefer to have been an oneiromancer. At least Karen gets to go to bed before she beats the crap out of herself.”
“Do you remember what you said?”
She looked at me and nodded. “I do. I don’t understand it, but I remember it.”
“Sadly, I understood it,” said Walther. “There’s only one woman I can think of who has to help when she’s asked, who resents basically everyone, and who always charges for her favors. She doesn’t do anything for free. I’m not sure she can.”
“Who?” I asked.
“The Luidaeg,” he said.
Silence fell.
SEVEN
The Luidaeg. The sea witch. The terror of the fens. The woman who had, not a week ago, stood in my place, enjoying the hospitality of my home, and told me that while familiarity might breed contempt, I should never make the mistake of thinking she was a tame monster. She would end me if she was given half the chance.
And yet. And yet.
And yet it was because of her that I’d survived to reach adulthood. Without the charms Marianne had purchased from her, the false Queen would have tracked me down long ago and put me into the ground with my parents. Without the Luidaeg supporting October, I would still have been in the bookstore—and when Nolan’s elf-shot had worn off on its own, the secondary sleeping charm would have killed him for sure. It was only the fact that I’d woken him early that had allowed us to discover it existed, much less start looking for a cure.
The fact that according to Cassandra, the Luidaeg had also brewed the sleeping potion hidden under the elf-shot, was almost beside the point. I knew she hadn’t had a choice. That was one of the things Marianne had been very clear about, back when I’d been a child and she’d been teaching me about the kingdom that would one day be mine.
“The Luidaeg is the oldest of Maeve’s daughters, firstborn among Firstborn,” she’d said, Nolan asleep with his head on her knee and me sitting on the floor in front of her, her hands moving through my hair, braiding and binding, tying elf-knots in every lock. I could barely remember my mother’s face, but I would always remember Marianne’s hands, and the sound of her voice by firelight, when she meant safety, when she meant home.
“She was born so long ago that time has no meaning; it’s a name and a number, and it barely matters, because she was happy then, my sweet girl, she was at peace. She and her sisters kept to the fens, to the places where land met sea, and they kept their own counsel, and they made their own peace. But time will have its due. She buried both her sisters, and she saw her powers bound by her father’s other wife, turned to the cause of service. She does what she’s asked, and she dies a little more inside with every gift she grants. That’s why she asks for voices and for peace and for the sound of a baby’s laughter. She charges dear not out of cruelty, but as a plea to be left alone.”
“But why?” I had asked. I’d been so young back then, and those times with Marianne had been my favorites: when she sat behind me and braided my hair, and I could close my eyes and pretend that if I turned around, we’d look alike. That I would change, or she would change—it didn’t matter—and she’d be my mother, and it wouldn’t be just me and Nolan anymore. “If she can do anything, shouldn’t she want to?”
“If she had a choice in the matter, she might want to, but that was the beauty of the binding lain upon her by Oberon’s Summer Queen,” had been Marianne’s reply. She’d tied off my braid, and finished her story with her hands resting on my shoulders. “Go to her and ask her the price of her tongue, her heart, her bed, and she’s bound to tell you. Ask her what it would cost to have your throne back, and she’ll draw you up a bill of sale. She is the answer to all our problems, if we’re willing to force them upon her. She charges dear, so dear, because she’s done so many things she’d never want to do. She’ll do so many more before that binding is undone, if ever it is. The Summer Queen wove her workings well.”
The night had been warm and her hands had been soft and I had gone to sleep not long after that, leaving her to carry me to bed, the way she’d carried my brother. Marianne had been a Coblynau, and strong enough to shift the world in its foundations if she needed it to move.
&
nbsp; I missed her so much. I probably always would.
My head exploded in a kaleidoscope of pain as I stepped through the latest—and last—of the gates I’d opened since the sun went down. This was it: I’d hit my limits. I staggered, and Madden caught me, shooting a venomous glare at Cassandra and Walther. They had been the first ones through, in part because I was afraid the gate would close before we could all use it, and they were better suited to being stranded in mortal-side San Francisco in the middle of the night than I was. I didn’t even carry a wallet anymore, much less a working BART card.
“Ardy?” he asked. “You okay?” It probably shouldn’t have been a surprise that he’d insisted on joining us when I’d gone to tell him what we were doing. I was sort of sorry he had. I appreciated the company, but a gate for four was just that much harder than a gate for three.
“Dandy,” I said, and forced myself to stand upright, grimacing as the motion set up a raucous clanging in my head. “Ow.”
“Magic-burn?” asked Walther sympathetically. His hand dipped into his pocket, coming up with a small white bottle, which he offered to me. “Here. This will help.”
“Alchemy?” I asked. I took the bottle without waiting for his answer. Magic-burn is the worst. I would have taken just about anything to make it stop.
“Close,” he said. “Aspirin.”
I laughed. Then I winced as the laughter made my head hurt worse. “Ow,” I said again, and dry-swallowed two aspirin.
Through all of this, Madden was keeping himself busy with glaring at Walther and Cassandra. “I still don’t understand why you’re here,” he said. “You could have stayed home. Safe. Let your vassals do this for you.”
“Can’t,” I said, giving him what I hoped would be a reassuring pat on the arm. “She’s going to charge for this. You know she’s going to charge for this. They’re my subjects, not my vassals—although we’re going to be talking about permanent positions after all this is finished—and I can’t ask subjects to pay in my place.”