A Red-Rose Chain

by Seanan McGuire

  “That should be enough,” said Walther.

  “Okay. Just tell me if you want more.” I turned back to face him, holding out the scalpel for him to take out of my hand. He did, and I wiped as much of the blood off my arm as I could. Problem: this left me with a blood-coated palm, which I promptly rubbed against my brand new jeans. The amount of time a piece of clothing could expect to be in my possession before being ruined was going down all the time. “What happens next?”

  “You let me work, and we both pray that I got the recipe right,” he said. He turned back to his equipment, beginning to add blood—one drop at a time—to his mashed rose petals. He must have added a powder to the chalice that would keep my blood from clotting, because it seemed strangely liquid, even for as fresh as it was, and very, very bright.

  The smell was overwhelming, a mixture of blood and roses that was so reminiscent of my mother that it sent shivers down my spine. I moved away, starting to walk a slow patrol around the edges of the dungeon.

  Each of the biers was occupied, most by Tylwyth Teg who shared a faint familial resemblance with Walther. There were a few others—a Glastig, a Daoine Sidhe, even a Tuatha de Dannan whose glossy cherrywood hair made her look more like Etienne and Chelsea than Rhys or Arden—but the Tylwyth Teg were by far in the majority. This hadn’t just been a conquest: it had been a rout, and I wasn’t sure, even now, how it had been accomplished. The Mists had possessed the larger army, but Silences had been the aggressors. How could they have underestimated their position so dramatically?

  “Walther, you remember the war,” I said, turning. “How did the Mists win?”

  “No one knows,” he said, still working. “We were fighting, and it seemed like we had all the advantages. Then we just . . . started to lose. It was like people didn’t have the will to fight back. Entire parties were wiped out without raising a finger to defend themselves. We lost half the Cu Sidhe. The ones who didn’t die just vanished. They’re probably still asleep in a basement somewhere.”

  “That’s not good.”

  Walther chuckled humorlessly. “Tell me about it. Now hush, and let me work.”

  I hushed. But I continued walking around the edges of the dungeon, marking the entrances, and the position of the biers. There wasn’t much here that could be used as cover. I was on my third circuit of the room when I heard a sound. It was faint, like a footstep on a distant, stony floor. It was loud enough to be a concern.

  “Walther, hide yourself.”

  “What?”

  “You’re a good enough illusionist to hide yourself, and you share blood with most of the people in this room; even a Daoine Sidhe won’t be able to sniff you out. Now hide.” I kept my voice low, but my last word verged on a snarl.

  Walther didn’t argue. The scent of yarrow flared in the air and then was gone. I looked over my shoulder, and I didn’t see him, or the array of alchemical supplies that he had been using to prepare his counterpotion. Good. There were more powerful people than I was in Faerie, and some of them might have been able to spot him, but only if they were looking. With this many Tylwyth Teg in one room, they hopefully wouldn’t be looking.

  That just left me. I grabbed a handful of shadows out of the air, weaving a blur as fast as I could. Anger usually made my illusions easier to cast. I didn’t have anger, but I had the burgeoning seeds of panic. I threw it into the magic, spinning and twisting the spell as fast as I could. I wanted to chant—spoken spells have always helped me to focus my magic and make it obey me more quickly—but I didn’t know how close company was. The last thing I wanted to do was conceal myself magically and give myself away through mundane means.

  The spell rose, solidified, and burst around me. I pressed myself to the wall and tried not to move more than I had to. Blur spells don’t make you invisible, but they make you damn hard to see, like those little brown lizards that infest the mortal park outside of Shadowed Hills. As long as I was perfectly still and didn’t make a sound, there was a good chance I’d be overlooked.

  Seconds ticked by. I was starting to think that I had been overly-cautious when the footsteps started up again, moving closer. I stopped breathing.

  Tia stepped into the dungeon.

  Madden’s sister had changed since I’d last seen her, in Arden’s Court, demanding strident justice for her brother. The pigtails and peasant blouse were gone, replaced by unbound waves of red-and-white hair and a long silver-gray gown that hugged her curves and erased any traces of the hippie girl she had seemed to be when she stood before the Queen. Her amber, distinctly canine eyes were narrowed, and she was sniffing the air with every step she took. Two of Rhys’ men were behind her . . . and behind them was Rhys himself, still wearing his Court finery, his hands folded behind his back like he was afraid he would touch something and dirty himself.

  Tia’s nose wrinkled as she took in the biers. “You kept them?” she demanded. She turned to Rhys. “You told me they’d been killed, all of them, even down to the suckling babes. You promised me.”

  “I told you they had been disposed of,” said Rhys. “What could be worse than an eternity of sleep at the hands of one who bears you no good will? They’ve woken once, and we put them down again. They’ll sleep forever, and each time they wake, they’ll find more of themselves missing, carved away for purposes they will never know. I have made their lives a processional of nightmares and horrors. Would you really rather that they were dead?”

  “I suppose not,” sniffed Tia. “Whatever you give them, they deserve. Bastards, all of them.”

  “I’ve kept my word to you otherwise,” said Rhys. “I even started with your brother when it came time to declare war on the Mists. Now keep your word to me. Find my enemies.”

  “I gave you the opportunity to put an arrow in Madden. I’m not sure you can claim that was a favor to me; you’d have done it for free if I’d promised you there would be no retaliation.”

  “And yet I did it because you asked me to, which makes it a favor. All I ask is that you do the same favor for me. Do what I’ve asked.”

  I didn’t dare breathe. I had been expecting treachery, treason, all sorts of terrible things, but I hadn’t been expecting Rhys to walk into the room with a Cu Sidhe by his side—not when his Court was so blatantly devoid of fae with animal traits. I’d only been thinking about Daoine Sidhe reading the air for the heritage of those present, or Gwragen looking for the cobweb sheen of illusions. I hadn’t considered the fact that they might just look for the physical.

  Tia sniffed the air, her nostrils flaring in a way that was subtly, anatomically inhuman. “Blood, and magic,” she said. “They were here.”

  “Where did they go?” Rhys sounded anxious. He didn’t like not knowing where we were.

  I didn’t have much sympathy for him. My heart was hammering against my rib cage, beating so hard and fast that I was honestly amazed it hadn’t given me away. If Tia’s ears had been as sensitive as her nose, surely she could have just followed them to me. I stayed as motionless as I could, unsure whether I should be praying for Tybalt to arrive and pull me out or praying that he would stay as far away as possible, avoiding this entire situation. We didn’t both need to get caught. Neither of us needed to get caught.

  Sweet Oberon, please get me out of this, I thought.

  Then Tia turned toward Walther, still sniffing the air, and took a step in his direction. “It’s freshest this way. Is there a secret passage? Those Yates bastards riddled their home with holes, and their Davies cronies weren’t any better. They could have dug straight down through the stone, just to give themselves another place to beat their dogs . . .”

  Two more steps and she would be on top of Walther. Walther, who was the only chance we had of unmaking the potion that powered the elf-shot. Without him, we’d never be able to wake any of the sleepers—not Madden, not May, and not the true heirs to Silences. He was so close. He could fix i
t all, as long as he could have just a little bit more time. That was all he really needed: just a little bit more time. He wasn’t going to get that if Rhys caught him. He was going to get an elf-shot arrow to the shoulder and a long sleep in this same dungeon, and the victims of elf-shot were going to sleep out their sentences, no matter where they were.

  I couldn’t let that happen. No matter how much I wanted to stay safe and hidden, I was a hero of the realm, and that meant I had to choose the greater good. Tybalt, I’m sorry, I thought, and raked the palm of my left hand against the rough stone of the dungeon wall, leaving a layer of skin behind.

  The pain was immediate and intense, followed almost as fast by the dull ache of healing. The smell of blood filled the air around me, hot and unmistakable. Tia’s head whipped around, her nostrils flaring and her pupils dilating as she scented blood in the air. “There,” she said, and pointed, so much like a hunting hound that a bubble of desperate, angry laughter tried to raise in my throat. “She’s against that wall.”

  “Excellent,” said Rhys. “Men?”

  His men reached into their jerkins and withdrew cheesecloth bags, like party favors at a wedding. They flung them at the spot Tia had indicated. I ducked away, but couldn’t avoid the cloud of pale blue dust that exploded around me as the bags burst, filling the air with the taste of evergreens and smoke. I coughed. I choked. And finally, I collapsed, hitting the floor so hard that I felt the impact all the way down into my bones.

  The last thing I saw before everything went black was Tia’s face, looming in my field of vision like a mountain. “And they call me a bitch,” she said, and spat on my cheek. I felt the dampness. I felt the stone floor beneath me.

  And then I didn’t feel anything at all.

  TWENTY

  EVERYTHING HURT. IT WAS like someone had taken my nerves and dipped them in fire ants, all of which were now industriously working to chew their way through my flesh. The pain wrenched me out of sleep, pulling me back into a world full of nothing but suffering. At the same time, the pain kept my body from listening to my commands: it was too busy trying not to writhe in involuntary agonies to do anything as simple as letting me open my eyes.

  There was a time when I would have thought that no one could endure that level of pain and survive. I had learned a lot since those easy, innocent days, back when I believed a bullet could be merciful enough to let me die.

  “This is taking too long,” said a voice. It sounded familiar, although I couldn’t place it, not quite. “You promised me this would go faster.”

  “And I told you, cur, that I am a king, and I don’t take orders from my dogs.” Rhys. Bastard. “You’ve already betrayed one master. If you want me to trust you, you will do as you are told.”

  “We need this war. You promised.” There was a growl lurking in the unfamiliar voice now, allowing me to place it: Tia. Tia? But she wasn’t supposed to be here . . .

  Wait. No. She was the reason they’d been able to find me. Memory coursed back into my body, and I gasped, just a little.

  It was enough.

  “I think she’s awake,” said a voice—the false Queen. She sounded faintly interested, but not terribly concerned. “Do you think she’s awake?”

  “She might be. Faoiltiarna, you are dismissed. I’ll speak with you later.” There was a pause, broken by a huff, and the sound of footsteps. When Rhys spoke again, his voice was closer, only a few feet away from my head. “Sir Daye? Can you hear me? If you can hear me, open your eyes.”

  I did not open my eyes. I couldn’t. The pain was too constant, and I still couldn’t get a grip on my own body.

  “Hmm. You see, the trouble with this sort of situation, my dear, is the uncertainty. Is she awake and ignoring us, or is she unconscious? It’s so difficult to tell rebellion from oblivion. But I have an idea!” His voice came closer still as he said, very kindly, very cruelly, “Sir Daye, if you do not open your eyes, I am going to put a rosewood spike through the flesh of your left hand. I will not concern myself with the placement of the bones. I’m sure several of them will be broken, and the pain will be unbearable. Now, will you do as I say?”

  I tried, I really tried. I’m proud, but I’m not stupid, and I’ve never been a fan of additional pain. My eyes refused to open.

  “I see.” He sounded genuinely regretful. I couldn’t tell whether it was sincere or not. It really didn’t matter.

  New pain exploded in my left hand, so intense that it made the old pain seem inconsequential. My eyes snapped open, my body straining as it tried to lift up into an involuntary arch, pulling as far away from the pain as it could. I barely got my butt an inch off whatever it was that I was sprawled upon. Something was holding me down, and I was weak as a kitten besides: all the strength had gone out of my muscles, leaving them limp and agonized.

  I think I screamed. It was hard to say.

  “You see, we still don’t know whether she was awake before, but she’s awake now, and isn’t that what matters?” Rhys didn’t make any effort to conceal how pleased with himself he was. Why should he? He was winning. The winners are allowed to gloat.

  I collapsed back into limp motionlessness. I couldn’t really turn my head, but my eyes were willing to respond to commands, and so I glanced from side to side, trying to get an idea of where I was and what was going on.

  Rhys and the false Queen were standing off to my left. He was wearing a heavy leather butcher’s apron, which didn’t inspire confidence about what was going to happen to me next. She was wearing white—she was always wearing white—and there were a few spots of blood on her bodice, standing out like brands against the fabric. She was smiling, her moon-mad eyes filled with delight . . .

  And Marlis was there, too. She was standing a few feet behind them, holding a wide silver bowl in both her hands, her eyes fixed straight ahead. She was wearing a butcher’s apron, which just made it harder for me to imagine that anything good was going to happen next. I couldn’t tell from looking at her whether she was back under Rhys’ control, or whether she was just playing along until it was safe to do something different. I hoped like hell for the latter.

  The room was decorated in Rhys’ usual austere style, and the walls were plain wood, easy to clean. I strained until I could see my shoulder. There were no chains or straps holding me down: just a thin string of yarrow flowers tied together with golden thread. They shouldn’t have been strong enough to keep me from moving. “Should” is a word with very little power in Faerie.

  “Amazing,” said Rhys, leaning forward. “Sir Daye, were you aware that you heal so swiftly that your body rejects foreign objects? Your flesh is trying to push out my spike. It’s quite remarkable. I wonder what part of you contains this property. I wonder whether I can bottle it.”

  “That’s not the first thing you’re going to bottle,” said the false Queen. There was a faint whine in her voice that hadn’t been there before. It was the first time I had heard her sound anything other than completely confident in her hold over the King of Silences. Her smile vanished, transmuted by suspicion. “You promised me, Rhys, remember? You promised you would get me what I needed.”

  “I will, my dear, I will, but you can’t blame me for showing interest in all the other wonderful things that we have resting at our fingertips, now can you? Healing tinctures, complexion potions . . . we have immortality, but we’ve never had indestructability. Now, with a little work and a little cleverness, we can. We can ascend to the level of Oberon himself: untouchable, eternal, never dying or suffering any of the predations of mortality. All we have to do is find the right combination to coax it all out of her.” Rhys leaned forward, grabbing something outside of my limited frame of view.

  The pain in my hand, which had faded to a background note in the overall symphony of pain coming from the rest of me, suddenly flared into bright new agony. Rhys held up a wooden spike. It was dark with blood, and there were shred
s of something that looked a lot like skin sticking to the sides. “You see? Your body couldn’t decide whether to expel it or consume it, since it was so large, and tried for both. Your healing powers are incredible, Sir Daye, but they’re not very smart.”

  “You don’t have to keep using her title,” said the false Queen. “She never deserved it in the first place, and she’s certainly not going to use it again. Are you, October?”

  “Go . . . fuck . . . yourself,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper, my lips resisting even that small command. The pain wasn’t getting any better. Aside from moments like the one where Rhys had pulled the spike out of my flesh, it also wasn’t getting any worse.

  Pain and I have an interesting relationship. I’ve spent so much time dealing with it over the past few years that it wasn’t quite as incapacitating as it probably should have been. Every nerve I had was still on fire, and every inch of my skin felt like it was being flayed, but as long as those were constants, I could adapt.

  “Human and obscene even to the last,” said the false Queen. “Can you do anything with her tongue? It could be an excellent potion ingredient, and more importantly, it would silence her.”

  “It would just grow back,” said Rhys. “I’ll save it until I need it; we know she regenerates blood and skin with the same degree of strength, but I’m worried that the rest of her organs will only be fully effective when they’re the originals. What do you think, Sir Daye? Have you experimented with your own limits? If I start removing fingers, will your body know to make more bone, or will it just patch the holes?”

  Swearing at the false Queen had exhausted me. I glared at him mutely, hoping that my face would be enough to broadcast my hatred and anger at the situation.

  “Ah. A pity. If you’d been willing to share what you knew, we might not have to test you. Now we’ll have to put you through your paces before we know what we can safely do. If you were anything else, I’d just take what we needed—but then, if you were anything else, you wouldn’t be so appealing. So I suppose there’s a consequence for everything.” He put the spike aside. “Marlis. A knife, if you please.”