A Red-Rose Chain

by Seanan McGuire

  “Humanity is a mask that we are particularly well-suited to wearing,” said Rhys. “Wings and hooves and tails are untidy. They mark their owners as bestial, and while they may find a place in some Courts, they have no place in mine. It’s our duty to stay within the lines drawn by our lost lord and ladies.”

  “Really? Because it was good enough for Oberon, you know. He had Cait Sidhe in his Court.” And Roane, and Swanmays. “Pretty sure he banged a cat, even, since that’s where the Cait Sidhe came from.”

  Rhys made an expression of distaste. “There’s no need to be vulgar.”

  I glanced to the table where Quentin and Tybalt sat. They were pushing food around their half-empty plates in a way that I recognized from my time with Gillian. She’d been a toddler when we lived together, and she had been an expert at moving food around her plate without letting it get anywhere near her mouth. I looked back to Rhys.

  “Do you think Tybalt is bestial?”

  The King of Silences paused, pursing his lips. He clearly knew that whatever answer he gave me, I was going to relay it to my fiancé; he just as clearly didn’t want to start a second war, this one between his Kingdom and the Court of Cats. I raised an eyebrow, waiting for his answer. Come on, I thought. Show me how much of a bigot you really are. Hating changelings affected me personally, but it was almost accepted within Faerie: it was the sort of bigotry that no one would question, especially not when it was coming from a King. Even looking down on the Cait Sidhe was generally accepted.

  But there are limits.

  “I think he is a fine monarch for his own Court,” said Rhys finally. “I have heard little of the Cait Sidhe of San Francisco that would lead me to think them anything other than the very best and brightest among their own kind. Do I think their kind should mix with the rest of the fae? No. I’ve never made any secret of my desire to keep Faerie pure. Please don’t take this as my attempting to discourage your marriage—”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” I said.

  “—but the mere fact that you are part human means I can’t be as against it as I normally would be. Your blood is already tainted. It doesn’t need any help from me.”

  I stared at him. “Are you real?”

  Now it was Rhys’ turn to blink at me. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Are you a real person? I thought no one really talked like this. My blood isn’t ‘tainted.’ I got it from my parents. My father loved me. Why shouldn’t he have helped make me? And if Tybalt and I have kids, they won’t be tainted either. They’ll be our children, and we’ll love them no matter what their heritage looks like.”

  “Really.” The false Queen leaned forward, fixing me with her pale gaze. “Can you truly look at me and say that you won’t pick the humanity out of your babies like a bad line of embroidery, leaving them to grow up immortal and slow, heir to all the glories Faerie has to offer? Overly mixed blood can lead to complications of its own. Will you hold your babies in your arms and condemn them to in-between lives, neither Cait Sidhe nor . . . whatever you are? Tell me lies, October. I promise to pretend that I believe them.”

  For a moment, I didn’t say anything at all. Finally, I said, “I am not here to discuss my future children with either one of you. If Tybalt and I decide that we’re going to have kids, we’ll have these conversations the right way: with each other, in private, as a family.”

  “You can’t even lie to me.” The false Queen leaned back again, radiating smugness. “You’ll save your children from growing up the way you did, the way I did, and you’ll continue to pretend that Faerie is healthy. But we’ll know the truth, won’t we? You and I, we’ve always known the truth.”

  I looked at her for a moment before turning my attention to my plate. I picked up a fork and speared a chunk of potato, the thin gleam of Walther’s counterspell covering the hot fat and rosemary that the potato had been cooked in. I’m sure it was delicious; Rhys wouldn’t have employed any cook who couldn’t handle something as simple as a potato. I didn’t taste anything at all. I was a sea of rage and disorientation, and I didn’t know how to make it stop.

  Arden should never have sent me to negotiate for her. Sweet Oberon, I hoped this was part of some incredibly clever plan on her part, that while I was away she was bolstering her defenses and finding ways to stop Rhys’ army at the border, because more and more, I was sure that nothing I did was going to make a difference. I was going to tie myself into knots, and nothing was going to change. This war was going to happen no matter what I did.

  “Is my hospitality not to your liking, Sir Daye?” Rhys’ question was mild, but it had teeth, and they were poised to bite. “I’ve promised not to try to change your mind magically. Why does it look as if you aren’t enjoying your food?”

  “Sitting with people who think I’m inferior just because my father was human tends to spoil my appetite,” I said. I forced myself to lift my head and meet Rhys’ eyes. “How can you be this cold? We’re all part of Faerie.”

  “Ah, but you see, some of us were born to this great and ageless land, and others stumbled into their places by mistake.” He leaned over and speared a piece of pale white melon from the edge of my plate, looking at it contemplatively before he popped it into his mouth. He swallowed, and continued, “Some of us don’t understand how to honor hospitality or show the proper respect, even when we’re treated better than we deserve. You are an inferior creature in a world full of superior beings, and you can’t even seem to acknowledge that the rest of us are making an effort with every day that we allow you to draw breath.”

  “I don’t think Oberon would agree with you.” It was a small, almost pitiable statement, but it was all I had left. Oberon had given us the Law, and the hope chests. Out of all the Three, he was the one who had looked at Faerie and realized that we needed heroes. If anyone would have understood that Faerie needed to be what it was, and not some sterile, perfect mockery of itself, it would have been him.

  Rhys smiled indulgently. “But, you see, that’s the difference between myself and our missing Father. He believed Faerie could be balanced, that there was a place for everyone. I believe he was wrong—and since it seems I remain while he is gone, I must assume that I was right.”

  I stared at him. For once, I couldn’t think of a damn thing to say.

  The problem with arrogant assholes is that all too often, they’ll take silence as agreement. “You understand, then,” said Rhys, his smile widening. “I’m so very glad. It’s going to make the rest of this process ever so much easier.”

  I frowned. “Process?”

  “Yes. You see, my lady was indulgent with the Mists, and look where it got her. Deposed and dishonored and treated as a traitor to a land which she only ever strove to improve upon. It will not do. It will not stand. I know you have come here to plead the case of the Mists, and while you have done poorly, you have navigated these waters better than I expected you to.”

  “See, I know you think you’re complimenting me, and yet somehow I still feel insulted,” I said.

  “That’s because you are smarter than your breeding justifies,” said Rhys. “Please understand, I do not harbor you any specific ill-will. Changelings have their place in Faerie. Someone should remain belowstairs, otherwise, what value will it have to be above them? But you represent the decay and dissolution of the Mists, and I am afraid I’ll be sending you home as a failure. The war is going to happen, Sir Daye. Unless you are prepared to negotiate the surrender of your regent and her people, your work here is done.”

  I stared at him again. I hadn’t been expecting to change his mind—not once I’d seen Silences, and the way that changelings were treated in his Kingdom—but this casual dismissal didn’t seem to fit with his earlier demand that I bleed for him. “I thought . . .” I began, and stopped, unsure how I could continue that sentence without locking myself into a promise I didn’t want to keep.

  H
is smile widened still further, until I began to worry that his head would come unzipped and split in two. “Oh, you mean you actually want to prevent the war? I told you how you could do that. How you could call it all off with a single word. All you need to do is tell me ‘yes,’ and all of this can go away forever. It will be a bad dream that threatened your precious Arden briefly in the night before wisping away into nothingness.”

  All I had to do to save countless lives was die. I picked up my napkin, making a show of touching the corners of my mouth, and stood. “Your kitchens are superb,” I said. “All praise to your chefs. If you will excuse me, it seems I have packing to do.”

  Then I turned and descended the dais, trusting Quentin and Tybalt to follow as I made my way toward the door. I didn’t look back.

  I didn’t dare.

  EIGHTEEN

  QUENTIN AND TYBALT CAUGHT up with me in the hall outside the dining room. They moved into the flanking positions that had become so natural for us, and we continued through the knowe as a small, tightly contained wedge.

  We were halfway up the stairs when Tybalt spoke, asking, “Did he request your death again?”

  “He made it clear that there’s no other way I’m going to broker peace between Silences and the Mists,” I said. My voice was strangely thin, like I was being strangled. I forced myself to swallow, trying to chase some of the tension away, before I said, “I don’t think we’re going to accomplish anything more here. But we need to try.”

  Tybalt looked surprised before he nodded, understanding chasing his confusion away. If we left Silences now, Walther would have to come with us. He wouldn’t be able to finish working on his current countercharm for elf-shot, and his family—and May, and Madden—would sleep out their hundred-year terms without anyone coming to save them. War would disrupt everything. Even if the Mists managed to win, which was something I wasn’t sure of, it would be years before Walther could get back to work on the project. Rhys could do anything he wanted to his hostages in the meantime, as long as he came short of killing them, and if he saw that he was losing, even that barrier might come down.

  It was now or never.

  “Our window of hospitality lasts for three days, so unless we’re actually being kicked out of the Kingdom, we have two more days of protection,” said Quentin.

  “You’ll forgive me if I don’t put much stock in our ‘protection,’” I said. “May’s asleep for a hundred years, and the King already tried to arrest Walther once. I’m not really feeling safe he—” My sentence devolved into a squawk as hands reached out of the wall, grabbed my arm, and yanked me into darkness.

  Not absolute darkness: we weren’t on the Shadow Roads, but in a narrow passageway lit by a single hanging globe of pale white light. Its glow revealed Marlis’ anxious, tightly drawn face. She pressed a finger to her lips, signaling for me to be silent, before leaning to the side and thrusting her arms through the apparently solid wall a second time.

  Pain transformed her face from anxious to agonized, but she didn’t make a sound. She just leaned back, pulling Tybalt through the wall. He had his hands latched around her forearm, claws extended and piercing her flesh. There was so much blood. The smell of it filled the space, hot copper mingled with the ice and milfoil smell of Marlis’ magic. I reeled, buffeted by the sudden desire to taste it, to know her life and her allegiances all the way down to the core of me. I had never felt anything like that before. It was terrifying. Tamping down that harsh, almost irresistible need took everything I had—at least until Tybalt looked wildly in my direction, pulled himself away from Marlis, and wrapped his blood-streaked arms around me.

  “I thought I’d lost you,” he whispered, mouth close to my ear. “Did she hurt you?”

  “No, but you hurt her,” I said. “I’m okay. I’m fine.”

  “Please, quiet,” begged Marlis, and it was hard not to take a small degree of satisfaction from the obvious pain in her tone. She shouldn’t have grabbed me and, more, she shouldn’t have surprised Tybalt. We were all tense. She was lucky she was getting away with nothing worse than flesh wounds.

  Marlis turned to thrust her now bloody hands through the wall again, and stopped as Quentin stepped through. She blinked at him. He glared at her before dismissing her as completely as a member of the nobility could, turning toward me and Tybalt instead.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. “I’m sorry I didn’t realize what was going on faster.”

  “Is this another kind of servants’ hall?” I asked.

  Quentin nodded. “It’s a shallow standing illusion, like the kind we use to hide the mouths of some knowes, only it’s designed to remain static and buffered from the dawn, so it doesn’t take regular recasting. Coblynau work, probably. It’s usually part of the heating system, since air moves through but light doesn’t.”

  “Sound also moves through,” hissed Marlis, shoving between us. Her left arm was cradled close to her body, and the smell of blood was getting stronger. “Please, be quiet.”

  “If you wanted us to be quiet, you shouldn’t have pulled us through a wall,” I whispered. “Why didn’t you just come to our quarters?”

  “Because I would have been seen. I’m sorry I had to intercept you this way, but I needed you to come with me, and this was the only method I had of contacting you without endangering us all.”

  Right. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but startling Tybalt is absolutely a good way to endanger yourself,” I whispered. “Your arm needs medical attention.”

  Marlis glanced at her wounded arm like she was seeing it for the first time. Then she shook her head, a small, wry smile creasing her lips. “Time was that bleeding in these halls would have been a signal to the Cu Sidhe and the Cait Sidhe and the Huldra that there was something wrong. Now it’s just an inconvenience. Come with me.” She turned on her heel and walked off down the hall.

  Tybalt, Quentin, and I exchanged a glance. Tybalt raised an eyebrow, apparently leaving the decision of whether or not to follow entirely in my hands. Swell. I do so love being the one who has to choose to follow the maybe-ally, maybe-enemy people down dark hallways.

  “Root and branch, I hate my life sometimes,” I muttered, and stalked after her. My skirt snagged on the heel of my shoe. I grabbed the fabric in both hands, yanking it upward until my knees were exposed and my walking was unimpeded. I might not have looked very dignified, but I wasn’t going to eat floor.

  The light from the single globe faded behind us, only to be replaced by a dim glow from up ahead. I could make out Marlis, but barely: she was more shadow than woman, sketched on the fabric of the world. The light grew brighter as we walked, and Marlis continued to move up ahead, never coming fully back into the light. It was enough to make me nervous, but it was too late now; if we exited these narrow hallways, I didn’t know where in the knowe we would reappear. With my luck, it would be inside King Rhys’ private chambers, or worse, in front of his guards. We’d find ourselves arrested for treason a second time, and this time, it would stick.

  Marlis stopped walking. She was easily twenty feet ahead of us by that point, and it took a few seconds before we caught up. A large door blocked the hallway, barring us from going any further. There was no knob or keyhole: its only feature was a gold plate set where the peephole should have been. Marlis turned, studying the three of us, before peering down the hall behind us, eyes narrowed, like she was looking for signs that we were being followed.

  “Sir Daye, I apologize for placing demands upon you, but I understand that you are skilled at the art of wind-reading,” she said, in a low, deferential tone. “Can you please taste the air, and tell me whether we are alone?”

  I blinked at her. “I’ve never heard anyone call it that,” I said. Then I closed my eyes and opened my mouth, breathing in deeply as I looked for signs that we weren’t alone.

  Marlis was still bleeding. That made things harder: I’d be
come so attuned to blood that forcing my way past it was virtually impossible. But Quentin was next to me, and he was Daoine Sidhe. I’ve spent most of my life in the company of the Daoine Sidhe, often while trying to convince myself I was one of them, and I could find that bloodline through anything. Once I had him, it was easy to find Tybalt, and to breathe deeper, confirming that no other bloodlines or magical signatures appeared in the hall. I opened my eyes.

  “We’re alone,” I said.

  “Good,” said Marlis, and turned to press her bloody hand against the gold plate. The metal seemed to pulse, drinking in her blood as fast as it smeared against the door. Marlis pulled her hand away. There were no traces of blood remaining on the gold plate.

  “Nice trick,” I said.

  “This one’s better,” said Marlis, and blew on the door. It opened, seeming as insubstantial as a feather, even though I could see that the wood was thick and sturdy, and probably weighed at least fifty pounds. She flashed us a quick, satisfied smile, and I saw Walther in the bones of her face. Until that moment, the fact that she was his sister had been somewhat academic, but now I could see it, and see the woman she would have been if her Kingdom hadn’t been taken over by someone who was determined to grind her and her family beneath his heel.

  “Come on,” said Marlis, and stepped through the now-open door, leaving the rest of us with no choice but to follow if we wanted to keep her in sight. And I very much wanted to keep her in sight. I needed to know why she’d risked herself to bring us here, and what she was hoping to achieve.

  Although it wasn’t like losing sight of her would have meant actually losing her. I could have followed the smell of her blood for a hundred miles, and always known exactly where she was. That was a little bit disturbing, if I allowed myself to think about it too hard, and so I tried not to think. I just followed, with Quentin and Tybalt close behind me.