Once Broken Faith

by Seanan McGuire

  That wasn’t going to save the handmaiden. She had killed at least two people, both of them kings. No matter how good her reasons had been, no matter how much duress she had been under, she was going to be punished. If Tybalt died, or if she had hurt Quentin . . .

  I couldn’t be sure that I wasn’t going to kill her myself.

  Kabos had been dead before the world froze. I looked back at where I’d been standing, and was unsurprised to see the crushed remains of a red-spotted toadstool ground into the carpet. Another fairy ring, and I’d leaped straight into it. I had no way of detecting them or knowing how long they’d last—or how long that one had lasted before it let me go. Long enough for King Kabos’ body to cool. Not long enough for the night-haunts to come.

  Too long.

  Neither Barrow Wights nor Daoine Sidhe could teleport, which meant that wherever Verona, her handmaid, and the boys had gone, they had gone there on foot. I looked over my shoulder to the open door before looking back to the room. I paused. The floor was polished hardwood. Like all the floors in the knowe, it was impeccably clean. So where had that length of daffodil-colored thread come from, if not the lining of Quentin’s vest?

  “Clever boy,” I murmured. Holding Sylvester’s sword unsheathed and low against my hip, I rose and started deeper into the chambers assigned to this particular pair of visiting monarchs.

  I wanted to shout for help: I wanted to bring down the roof, if that was what I had to do in order to get Quentin and Madden back. I knew it wouldn’t do me any good. The knowe couldn’t answer in words, assuming it was even interested in helping me, and the only person I would have trusted to hear her name no matter where it was spoken—April—wasn’t here. I was on my own, at least temporarily.

  There was a time when I’d only ever been on my own. It hadn’t been so long ago that I didn’t remember how it worked. I walked from the receiving room into a short hallway, which seemed extravagant even for housing intended for royalty, and paused. There were three doors, all closed. None of them looked any more or less likely than the others; all three looked like they would lead, one way or the other, to the outside wall of the knowe. Arden was fond of giving her guests sweeping views to remind them of the majesty of her kingdom, like a tour guide with some very specific goals in mind. I hesitated, looking from one door to the next, trying to decide which one made the most sense.

  As I waited, I breathed. And as I breathed, the scent of blood tickled my nose. It wasn’t mine, or Tybalt’s, or King Kabos’. It was almost buried beneath all those other layers of bloodshed, faint enough that I would have missed it if I hadn’t been forced to take my time and decide which way to go. It was coming from behind the central door. Still, I hesitated, looking toward the door on my right. This might be a trap, or it might be Quentin leaving me a clue.

  My dress didn’t have pockets. It did have hems, and I was carrying a sword. I sawed off a chunk of heavy, blood-soaked fabric, wadding it into a ball, and lobbed it in a gentle underhand arc toward the right-hand door. The fabric stopped in midair, hanging suspended for an instant before vanishing. A fairy ring. They had closed the doors they didn’t use with fairy rings. It was a logical, effective choice, and I wished to Oberon that they hadn’t thought to make it, because this was going to make an already difficult process unbearably hard.

  But Quentin—and the more I breathed, the more I knew that it was him; the blood was whispering tales, even if it was too far away for me to taste it and be absolutely certain—had been smart enough to anticipate this problem, and had left me a trail to follow. I stepped cautiously forward. Time didn’t stop. I reached for the doorknob, waiting for the world to freeze around me. When it didn’t happen, I turned the knob and pushed the door open, revealing the elegant, mostly empty bedchamber on the other side. As in the Luidaeg’s rooms, one wall had been replaced by glass panes, looking out on the redwoods.

  Unlike in the Luidaeg’s room, one of those panes had been smashed. No shards littered the polished redwood floor; the glass had been smashed outward, not inward. The smell of blood was stronger here. Quentin had cut himself on the glass. There: as I got closer, I spotted a small triangle of glass jutting from the frame, the edge of it outlined in red. There wasn’t much blood. Verona probably hadn’t even noticed it happen. As a Daoine Sidhe, she was attuned to blood, but experience had taught me that the normal Daoine Sidhe attunement was nothing compared to the appeal blood held for one of the Dóchas Sidhe.

  I plucked the piece of glass from the frame, tucking it into the bodice of my gown. It didn’t matter if it cut me; I’d heal. There was no way I was leaving Quentin’s blood lying around for anyone to find. Not given who he was, and the secrets he was trying to keep. I took one more step forward, to the very edge of the broken glass, and blanched, feeling my stomach do a slow tuck-and-roll.

  This room might not have been one of the highest points in the knowe, but it was more than high enough. The window wall looked out on an endless sea of redwoods, and the drop between me and the ground was easily fifty feet, maybe more. We were in the Summerlands, after all, where the laws of nature were superseded by the laws of Faerie, which were much more forgiving in certain ways.

  None of the people I was looking for could fly. I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath, and looked again.

  Far below me in the gloom—at least fifteen feet straight down—one of the wooden paths that Arden’s people used to move through the trees wound its way into the darkness. Verona was a pureblooded Daoine Sidhe, and could possibly have some sort of spell in her arsenal to allow them to make the drop in safety. Fifty feet was too much, but fifteen? That wasn’t out of the question. They could be down there.

  If they were, and I was hesitating here, then I was allowing them to get even more of a head start on me—not good, since I had no idea how long I’d been trapped in that fairy ring. If they weren’t, and I jumped down to follow them, I’d have to find a way back up in order to resume my pursuit. That could be the last straw. Quentin needed me following him, not running off on some wild goose chase.

  Carefully, I leaned far enough out the open window to look to either side, searching for another way out of here. There wasn’t one: the room ended in a sheer drop, an artificial redwood cliff face descending down into the misty dark. They hadn’t gone back, I was sure of that; Quentin didn’t heal the way I did, and would have still been bleeding if he’d been dragged out to the hall. There would have been some sort of sign, a trace for me to follow. They must have gone down. There was no other option.

  “Oh, this is gonna suck,” I muttered, and took three long steps back before I broke into a run, hit the edge of the room, and leaped out into the air.

  Falling is easy. Anyone can fall. Landing without breaking multiple bones is a harder problem. I plummeted through the redwood-scented green, branches whipping at my face and arms. It was all I could do to keep one arm in front of my face, preventing the branches from hitting me in the eye. With my luck, I’d blind myself before I landed, and have to wait for that to heal before I could start moving again.

  The path rushed up at me faster than I would have thought was possible, and I braced myself for impact as well as I could. I hit hard, and felt my ankle shatter under the pressure. The pain was sudden and immense, blocking out the rest of the world. I bit my lip hard enough to draw blood, rolling to bleed off my momentum. I thought I was rolling with the curve of the path until it dropped away, and I was falling again.

  Years of struggling not to die when the entire world seemed determined to make it happen had honed my reflexes to an amazing degree. My hands shot out before I’d fully realized what was happening, grabbing the edge of the path and stopping my descent. I hung there, clinging to the wood, panting, with waves of pain rushing outward from my ankle and filling my entire body. Every time I thought the worst of it was past, another wave would hit, and I’d black out for a second. Not ideal for someone who was dan
gling above a seemingly infinite drop.

  I whimpered. I couldn’t help it. I fall off things with dismaying frequency. That doesn’t mean I enjoy it, and the thought of how much more it would hurt if I broke every bone in my entire body was terrifying. At least the path had been treated with some sort of water-repellent; the wood was dry under my fingers, and I wasn’t slipping. That would have been a step too far.

  Quentin needed me. Madden needed me. Arden and the others were still back in the dining hall, or nearby, and had no idea who was behind this; they wouldn’t be prepared if Verona and Minna came back in, claiming to have been attacked. I couldn’t be sure that Minna would still willingly work with Verona, but Verona had Minna’s sister, and Minna had . . . what? She’d killed the King of Highmountain. Verona would want revenge for that. Maybe not now. Maybe not yet. I needed to pull myself up.

  “I hate everything,” I muttered, through gritted teeth, and began slowly, laboriously hauling myself up onto the path. Every time I pulled, my ankle throbbed again. It was no longer the shooting, violent pain of a fresh break, but that was a problem in its own way: the bone was starting to set, and I didn’t know whether the leg was straight. The thought of rebreaking my own ankle before I could walk was not an appealing one.

  Sometimes healing faster than anything natural is not as good as it sounds. I kept hauling, and my ankle throbbed with every motion. I couldn’t really get a grip on the wood; in the end, I had to ram my fingers between the planks and pull hard enough that the skin shredded, healed, and shredded again. I was almost there. I could topple back down, or I could pull myself up. I took a breath, tensed my shoulders as tight as they would go, and hauled, boosting myself over the edge and onto the planking.

  I collapsed as soon as I was safely on the path, lying flat with my face pressed to the wood and the wind howling around me. My ankle wasn’t throbbing anymore. I didn’t have the necessary materials to rebreak the bone if it hadn’t set right, and so I didn’t look at it; I just pushed myself back to my feet, wobbling as I went, and pressed down on my formerly injured foot, waiting to see what it would do.

  It held my weight. Something felt wrong about the way the bones fit together, something in the interaction between joint and muscle, but it didn’t hurt, and I could handle a little limp if it didn’t slow me down. I stopped, closed my eyes, and breathed in as deeply as I could, looking for the blood that I knew was there.

  The wind wasn’t helping. I crouched down a bit, getting closer to the wood. Quentin would have tried to bleed somewhere that wouldn’t be noticed or wiped away by the passage of feet. The path was a poor choice, which left . . . I turned to look at the trees around me, moving slowly, sniffing the whole time. Some of the redwoods had branches that overhung the path, making walking more difficult than it might otherwise have been. One of them slapped me in the face as I turned, and I stopped.

  I smelled blood.

  The branch would have been shoulder height if I’d been standing upright, which put it slightly lower for Quentin, who had been taller than I was for a while. It would have been easy for him to run his fingers over the fronds as they walked. I ran my own fingers through them, stopping when I hit stickiness that couldn’t be attributed to sap. They came away red. I hesitated for barely a second before I brought them to my mouth. Quentin would forgive me for violating his privacy, considering the circumstances.

  The world washed in red. My perspective shifted, becoming higher, looking down on things that should have been at eye level. I closed my own eyes, giving myself over to the memory.

  Verona is smiling. That’s the worst part of this whole thing. Toby’s frozen in a fairy ring and maybe Tybalt is going to die, and Verona won’t stop smiling. Maybe she can’t. Maybe this is the way she breaks.

  “Keep moving,” she says. The Barrow Wight girl has been good since Verona shouted her sister’s name. She’s holding Madden in her arms, his legs pinned and her hand clasped around his muzzle. I don’t think he can turn himself human when she’s holding him that way. I’ve never seen Tybalt transform when Toby was holding onto him. I’ll have to ask later, if we get through this.

  I don’t want to die. As we head down the path toward the tower, I run my fingers over the nearest leaves. Toby will come. Toby will find us. Toby will know what to d—

  The memory shattered, leaving me gasping for breath. I opened my eyes, turning until my view of the trees matched Quentin’s. Then I started walking, wobbling as I compensated for my ankle, and gathering speed as I figured out my current limits. Finally, I broke into a run, feet pounding on the redwood slats, chasing my ghosts into the night.

  Pixies flittered through the trees above me, their wings casting panes of candy-colored light onto the redwood at my feet. I kept running but glanced up, calling, “If you know which way I’m supposed to be going, this would be a great time to help.”

  Most people don’t think pixies are very smart, and maybe they’re not, as big, slow creatures measure intelligence. We have the time to stop and think about things, while pixies lead fast, violent lives. Like all fae, they’re technically immortal. Unlike most of us, they have a tendency to wind up splattered across car windshields or be eaten by birds, and so have the high birthrate and bad attitude of creatures with much shorter lives. So maybe they’re not intelligent, but they can be smart, and they can hold a grudge.

  Pixies swooped down from above, swirling around me like a wave of living leaves, their thin, translucent wings beating a maddened tattoo that only served to underscore their chiming. Then they surged forward, lighting the path ahead, showing me the way I needed to go. Verona had offended them somehow, maybe just by breaking that window: pixies could be very territorial, and protective of the places that were good to them. Whatever the reason, they were willing to help me now, and so I trusted them, and I ran, praying with every step that I wasn’t too late.

  TWENTY

  THE PATH WOUND THROUGH the redwoods like a river, looping and doubling back on itself several times, until I was grateful for the pixies keeping me on the right heading. Without them, I would have drifted off-course and fallen, and there was no easy way to get back up. Occasional stairways sprouted off the main path, ascending and descending to other levels in the tangle, but that wasn’t the same as finding my way from the ground, which seemed even farther down than it had been before. Maybe it was. Geography could be dramatic and odd in the Summerlands; it wouldn’t be out of the question for a canyon to be hidden somewhere below me, in the trees.

  I ran, and the pixies flew, until we reached a curving stairway cut from a living redwood bough. They landed there, clustering on the bannisters and lighting up the area like a Candyland dream, chiming in a constant, dissonant wave. The stairs led up to another redwood, this one big enough around to qualify as a tower. The door was standing slightly ajar. Not enough that I would have seen it from the path; without the pixies, I would have run right on by.

  “I owe you,” I said. The pixies rang even louder, startled expressions on their Barbie-sized faces. It occurred to me belatedly that I might have just pledged fealty to the local flock. I decided not to argue with it. They wouldn’t be any worse than the actual nobility, and I could probably buy them off with a bag of cheeseburgers and some open cans of Pepsi.

  The smell of blood lingered near the top of the stairs. I paused long enough to find the smear on the left-hand banister, wiped it away with my finger, and pushed the door open, putting one hand on the hilt of my borrowed sword as I stepped through. The antechamber was dimly lit, and empty. A staircase wound itself in a tight upward spiral, beginning to my right and ascending up into the dark. I took a breath, steadied myself, and began to climb.

  Midway up, the smell of blood began getting stronger. Not all of it was Quentin’s. Most of it wasn’t. I climbed faster.

  After another ten feet, I found the body. Not a human’s body: a dog’s, white fur stained with blood, h
ead lolling. He’s past helping, whispered a small, shameful voice. Keep going. If I stopped to help him, I might be too late to help Quentin. I might not be able to save my squire.

  And if I didn’t stop to help him, I would never be able to live with myself. I dropped to my knees on the step below the one where he was sprawled, reaching for him. The fur on his neck was thick and tacky with strings of slowly drying gore, but most of the blood, I realized, wasn’t his: it had run down from the red stains around his mouth. The only actual injury seemed to be in his belly. It would still be enough to kill him if it wasn’t cleaned and bandaged—the fur there was practically black—but it wasn’t enough to have killed him yet.

  I dug my fingers into his fur until I found his pulse. It would have been too fast in a human, or a Daoine Sidhe. I didn’t know what was usual in a dog. Were they faster than their bipedal companions? Slower? I just had to hope that this was normal. His breathing was shallow but steady.

  “Madden,” I whispered, leaning closer. “Can you hear me?”

  His eye opened and he whined, low and shrill in the back of his throat.

  I hadn’t realized how tense I was until my shoulders unlocked. I forced myself to smile, running my hand along the curve of his neck. “Hey,” I said. “Can you shift? I can help bandage that hole in your stomach, if you can shift.”

  He rolled his eye, which I took as an indication that he was willing to try. I moved back, watching as he shivered, a small motion that gradually spread to his entire body, becoming a shudder, and finally becoming a shift in the world. The dog disappeared, replaced by a burly man with red-and-white hair, wearing a white ruffled shirt and a pair of blue linen trousers. The front of the shirt had turned almost completely black. There was no hole in the fabric. That seemed odd for a moment, before I realized the shirt hadn’t existed when he was stabbed: the knife had gone through fur and skin, not fabric. Magic was strange, and its inconsistent rules were sometimes unforgiving.