A Red-Rose Chain

by Seanan McGuire

  May nodded. “She came as soon as I’d been elf-shot. I guess she keeps an eye on us.”

  “That’s good to know.” I paused. “Wait—have I been elf-shot?”

  “No.” May’s expression sobered, her heartbroken smile dying. “You’ve been stabbed in the heart. I know you think you’re immortal, Toby, but you’re not. Your body’s trying to fight through this. I’m not sure it can.”

  “What?” The sucking feeling in my chest. I’d been assuming it was because the false Queen had hit my lung, but my heart . . . laughter rose unbidden to my lips. “Oh, man. I never thought this was how it was going to end. That’s almost stupid, it’s so predictable.”

  May scowled and folded her arms. “Maybe you think this is funny, but I don’t. You think I want to wake up to a world where Tybalt is blaming me for letting you die, when you could have prevented it? That is not a fun world. That is a world full of bitterness and anger and dead mice in my shoes.”

  “So what do you want me to do about it, May?” I demanded. “I’m not exactly in a position to negotiate, here. I’ve blacked out from shock, or I wouldn’t be talking to you, and there’s a knife in my heart.”

  “You were starting to look for the keys to his spell when she stabbed you, weren’t you?” May’s question stopped me cold. She allowed herself the sliver of a smile. “See, I can be a smart girl sometimes. Marlis fed you some of your own blood, and you needed more, so you goaded him into hitting you. That way, you got what you needed, and you could start looking for a way out. It was a good plan. It’s not your fault she stabbed you before you could finish.”

  “Still stabbed,” I said. “Still blacked out. What do you want me to do, May?”

  “I want you to wake up,” she said. “Do what you were planning. You have a few seconds. Time’s different when you’re asleep.”

  “I don’t know—”

  “And tell Jazz I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t plan on this. I’ll see her when I wake up.” May’s smile grew, turning sad again. “Everything gets messed up sometimes. Now close your eyes, and live.”

  I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell her that this was futile, that I couldn’t accomplish anything but looking foolish in my own dreamscape while my body was bleeding out back in the waking world.

  I closed my eyes.

  The world was replaced by blackness. There was still no pain, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything: if I was close enough to bleeding out, I might have reached the point where pain couldn’t reach me. There was something incredibly alluring about that thought. I could just stay where I was, and the pain would never touch me again.

  But neither would the pleasure. I’d never see Quentin crowned; I’d miss my own wedding. I squinted my eyes tighter, blocking out all traces of light . . . until the light appeared in a glowing web of pale yellow strands, crossing and crisscrossing my body like a spider’s web. They covered parts of me that I couldn’t possibly have seen, but I saw them anyway. They were the logical extensions of each other, and once I knew what they were, I couldn’t have missed them if I’d tried.

  Two of the lines came together and crossed over my fingers, tying them down. I flexed my hands, carefully at first, and then with more force, straining against the lines. They stung where they touched me. It started out light, and then it flared into a burn. Pain flooded back into my body, like it had been invited in when I started fighting against the lines. I welcomed it. If there was pain, I still had a body that was capable of hurting: there was a chance I’d be able to make it to all the things I didn’t want to miss. I strained harder.

  Follow the lines, I thought, and then: Don’t let the bastards win.

  The lines across my fingers snapped.

  The smell of meadowsweet and wine vinegar assaulted my nostrils as I moved my hands, clearing more of the lines away. The pain wasn’t receding, but it wasn’t as all-consuming as it had been: I was starting to hear voices. A male voice, raised in anger; a female voice, raised in a plaintive whine that sounded somehow familiar. I knew these people.

  Rhys and the false Queen. If they were arguing, it was probably over the fact that I was supposed to be his undying font of alchemical providence, and she had gone and stabbed me in the chest. I wouldn’t be nearly as useful if I was dead. They might as well have stuck with my laundry.

  My eyes wouldn’t open. That . . . wasn’t a good sign. Before, it had been pain keeping my body from responding to my demands; now it was weakness, plain and simple and all-consuming. My mouth wasn’t bleeding anymore. There was nothing to lend me strength but stubbornness, and so it was stubbornness I seized upon, using it to force my now-unbound hands to keep moving. If I had hands, I must have arms; that was the logical extension. If I had arms, they were going to do what I told them to do. They were going to work.

  It was a relief when my hands touched my chest. Until I felt the fabric of my cheap tank top, tacky with blood and sticking to my skin, I hadn’t been sure the movement was anything but my own dying imagination. Slowly, with fingers that felt like so much dead weight at the end of hands that weren’t much better, I began feeling around for the knife. When I finally found it, I gripped as best I could, and began trying to pull.

  Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone got him a kingdom and a legend and a whole bunch of crappy knock-off stories. Hell, it got him a Disney movie. Me pulling a knife out of my own heart got me pain, pain, and more pain, until I felt like I was on the verge of blacking out again. I gritted my teeth and kept pulling. If I lost my grip, I wasn’t going to get it back.

  The knife moved.

  It was a small thing at first, just a shift, but it was a shift that pulled an infinitesimal fraction of the blade out of my heart. I could almost feel my flesh beginning to knit back together, moving faster to save me than my body was moving to die. I pulled again, and the knife shifted more, almost coming free.

  The false Queen had never been a fighter. Her attack had been intended to kill—there was no doubt of that—but she’d never really had the strength to drive the knife as deeply as she would have needed to. She only got it between my ribs because I couldn’t move away and luck was on her side. While she’d been able to pierce my heart, she hadn’t been able to fully bisect it, which explained why I was still alive to pull the damn thing out.

  “—attack her like that!”

  “She deserves it for what she did to me! You don’t know how I’ve suffered since that little whore put her hands on me! You’ll never understand the pain she’s put me through.”

  “She purified you!”

  The sound of flesh striking flesh covered up the sound of the knife finally coming free of my chest. It couldn’t cover the sound of that same knife dropping from my hand and clattering to the floor. There was a sickening pause before Rhys laughed, sounding utterly delighted.

  “Look at that! You didn’t exaggerate when you described how difficult she was to kill. She’s amazing.”

  I forced my hands to move again, raising them, shaking, to my mouth. I had a few seconds. That was all. Rhys would get over his delight: he would realize I was moving, which meant that his spell had broken. Once that happened, all hell was going to break loose.

  The blood I sucked from my fingers tasted darker than it ever had before. My death had seeped into it, flavoring it until it was barely recognizable as my own. I still swallowed greedily, pulling it back into my body and yanking out every last scrap of strength. I could feel my heartbeat, steady and strong and slightly frantic, like it was as angry as the rest of me.

  I opened my eyes. I reached down and ripped the spike out of my stomach. I sat up. I had been lying on a bier like the ones in the dungeon. There were channels cut into the stone to coax my blood toward the bowls Rhys had set up at the corners. I ran my fingers through one of them as I swung my legs over the side of the bier. The blood that had pooled there was still half liquid, and st
uck to my skin. Good. I was going to need it.

  “You stabbed me,” I said, eyes going to Rhys and the false Queen. She was standing so that his body shielded her from me. That was probably smart; I wanted to strangle her more than I had wanted anything in a long time. It was too bad I was also too weak to stand. “I didn’t expect that. I didn’t appreciate it, either.”

  Marlis was standing behind the pair, the heavy jeweled chalice still in her hands. She met my eyes and nodded, almost imperceptibly. I didn’t dare return the gesture. I just hoped she would take apparent disregard as agreement.

  “I am a diplomat from the Kingdom of the Mists,” I said, sliding slowly off the bier. I kept my hands braced against the stone, trying to look like I was just steadying myself, and not holding myself up completely. It wasn’t an easy balance to strike. “I am here in the name of Her Majesty, Arden Windermere, Queen in the Mists. And it is not nice to stab your diplomats.”

  “You troublesome little bitch,” said Rhys wonderingly. He took a half step forward, one hand going to the pocket of his apron.

  He was still reaching when Marlis hit him across the back of the head with the chalice. I could hear bone crack from across the room. Rhys wobbled, looking startled. And then he fell, opening a portal beneath himself as he dropped, so that he fell through the floor rather than crashing into it. The former Queen of the Mists stood frozen for a few precious seconds, eyes gone wide and pale with terror, before she whirled and bolted for the door. She grabbed it, slamming it open—

  —and ran straight into Tybalt’s open, outstretched hand. She screamed, and the sound was cut off as his fingers closed around her throat. His face was contorted into a twisted mask, more feline than human. I couldn’t hear him snarling. That was probably not a good sign. The louder he was, the easier it was to talk him down.

  “Tybalt!” I took a step forward, and almost fell as my legs tried to buckle underneath me.

  His eyes flicked to me, widening in concern. Some of the feral fierceness went out of them, leaving the man I loved visible in the face of the furious King of Cats. Then the false Queen squirmed, and his attention snapped back to her, eyes narrowing again. He tightened his grip, lifting her off the floor. Her feet kicked helplessly, finding no purchase, while her hands clawed at his arm, trying to make him let go. It wasn’t going to happen. Unlike him, she had no actual claws: she couldn’t hurt him enough to get what she wanted.

  He was going to kill her. He was going to kill a former monarch of the Divided Courts in front of me, and I wasn’t going to be able to stop him.

  “Don’t do this!” My legs were still weak, but I was standing, and that was enough for me. I half-walked, half-fell toward him, gaining strength with every step, until I was virtually running. Marlis appeared next to me, offering me her arm, and I took it. She had attacked her King for me. At this point, I would have trusted her even if she hadn’t been Walther’s sister.

  “Why not?” Tybalt gave the false Queen a shake. She moaned, the sound garbled and distorted by the pressure of his hand against her throat. “She earned this. She paid for every scrap of it. She hurt you.”

  “I got better.” I let go of Marlis’ arm in order to touch his, trying to keep my hands gentle. It was hard—I had so little balance, and the world was still so unsteady—but for Tybalt, I would try. “I always get better. You’re better than she is. Don’t do this. Don’t break the Law.”

  “No one would ever know,” he snarled. He shook her again. This time, she didn’t waste air on moaning, although her hands continued to scrabble against his grip.

  “You would know,” I said softly.

  “I have an alternative,” said Marlis.

  We both turned to look at her, Tybalt holding the false Queen off the floor and me covered in my own blood. We must have made a pretty pair, because she flushed red, taking a small step backward before straightening her shoulders and holding her ground.

  “I have an alternative,” she repeated. She dipped her hand into one pocket of her butcher’s apron, producing a small, leather-wrapped bundle. The Queen began kicking and squirming even harder, her eyes almost bugging out of her head. Marlis ignored her. Instead, she calmly unwrapped the leather, producing a short, stone-tipped arrow fletched in the colors of Silences. She held it out to me. “Let her sleep.”

  “I would rather let her bleed,” said Tybalt.

  “But the Law says you can let her sleep.” Marlis looked to the false Queen, and there was no softness in her eyes. “Believe me, this isn’t any better.”

  “Mercy rarely is.” I reached out and took the elf-shot gingerly by the shaft, careful to avoid the point as much as possible. I looked to Tybalt. “Please.”

  “She has hurt you too many times.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Don’t let her hurt me by taking you away.”

  He stared at me for a moment, instinct and intellect warring in his eyes. Then he lowered her to the floor, hand still clamped around her throat, and looked away.

  The false Queen glared hatred and fury at me as I pressed the arrow’s tip against the skin of her collarbone. “Sweet dreams,” I said, and drove it home.

  The tension went out of her instantly as the magic of the elf-shot washed through her body, driving her down into sleep. Tybalt dropped her a heartbeat later, letting her fall to the floor like so much trash. Then he turned to me, took a single step forward, and wrapped his arms around me, crushing me against his chest. He was shaking. The vibrations seemed to radiate out from his center, making them impossible to ignore, and so I didn’t try. I just put my arms around him, and let him hold me until the shaking slowed to something more manageable.

  He made a small, unhappy noise when I began to pull away, but he didn’t stop me. He knew better. I left my hand on his arm, unwilling to fully break the contact between us. I needed him as much as he needed me.

  “Where’s Quentin?” I asked.

  “In the Court of Cats,” said Tybalt. “Jolgeir handed him a stack of graphic novels and told him not to touch anything. We may never get him back.”

  “Good. That means he’s safe. Where’s Walther?”

  “Still working,” said Marlis.

  “That means we only have two loose ends.” I looked at the false Queen, sleeping on the floor, and at the room, where I had been intended to spend the rest of my life bleeding for the King’s pleasure. Then I turned back to Marlis. “Rhys ran. Where did he go? We need to find him, and then we need to find Tia. She betrayed us.” She betrayed all of Silences.

  They both needed to pay.

  “Why?” Marlis asked. “You’re free.”

  “Yeah, but he’s not.” I smiled thinly. “I have diplomatic immunity from being cut up by assholes. He broke it, even if he wants to claim that finding me in the vault was proof of treason. The High King isn’t going to let him keep his throne, and I intend to deliver the fucker to Toronto myself. As for Tia, she’s a bad dog, and bad dogs get punished. Now let’s go.”

  The room where I’d been destined to be sliced and diced was connected to a hallway that connected, in turn, to the main hall. Marlis led the way. We didn’t see anyone as we walked the halls like something out of a horror story, me drenched in blood, Tybalt still more cat than man, and Marlis in her butcher’s apron, which she had refused to remove before we left the surgery room. “I’m done hiding what he made us do in his name,” she’d said, and now she stalked ahead of us, a scalpel in her hand and murder in her eyes. If she found Rhys first, there might be a violation of the Law after all—and I couldn’t say it wasn’t earned. After what the bastard had done to her family, I would have been happy holding him down while she killed him.

  But I didn’t have that luxury. I’d see him deposed, elf-shot, and shunned by pureblood society before I’d see him dead. He didn’t deserve to turn me, or anyone else, into a killer.

  “That blow to the h
ead should have broken the skin,” I said. “If he’s bleeding, I’ll find him.”

  Something touched my shoulder. I turned just enough to see that it was Tybalt’s hand. His eyes were still fixed straight ahead, his pupils narrow slits of black amongst the green. There was a tremble in his fingers that worried me, but this wasn’t the time to ask him about it, or to do anything but keep on walking. We had to find the King of Silences. We couldn’t fall apart now.

  “So I’m thinking this isn’t where we’re going to go for our honeymoon,” I said quietly.

  Tybalt almost jumped, turning to stare at me like he had just noticed my presence—even though his hand was still resting against my shoulder, even though he hadn’t been more than a few feet away since we’d been reunited. “I would prefer something drier, and less filled with intrigue,” he said.

  “That means Disney World’s out, too,” I said. I offered him a smile. He didn’t return it. “I’m okay, Tybalt. It’s almost over.” He didn’t know how close I’d come to bleeding out. Sure, I was covered in the stuff, but that didn’t mean anything—I’d been covered in blood before, lots of times. It wasn’t always life-threatening. Not to me. As long as May didn’t tell him the false Queen’s knife had actually pierced my heart, he never needed to know.

  Sometimes silence is a greater form of mercy than the truth.

  “Is it?” he asked, and I didn’t have an answer for him.

  Marlis stopped at a blank stretch of wall. I almost expected her to walk straight through it, like she had before, but instead she reached out and touched a patch of wood, her fingers tracing the grain. “There used to be a gold yarrow branch here,” she said. “He had it removed. He had everything but the fountain removed, and he would have taken that, too, if it hadn’t been connected to the foundation of the castle.”

  “Home décor is not currently our priority,” I said.

  She shook her head. “It should be,” she said, and pushed inward.

  The wall swung open, revealing, not a hidden passageway, but an entire hidden room. It was empty, and smelled of dust and long, lonely days, hours where no one walked within it, or even remembered its existence. Marlis stepped inside. Tybalt and I followed her, his hand remaining on my shoulder right up to the moment when I stiffened, sniffing the air, and turned to point at a narrow doorway on the room’s far wall.