Once Broken Faith

by Seanan McGuire

  I took a deep breath. That didn’t do much to make me feel better. I took another one. Finally feeling calm enough to speak without yelling, I said, “I’m staying. You have my word that nothing you do in the course of helping my brother will be held against you.”

  “Heard and witnessed,” said Cassandra. I glanced at her, surprised. She shrugged. “You pick things up.”

  “I guess you do,” I said.

  Master Davies moved toward the head of Nolan’s bed, pausing to put his valise down on the bedside table and begin rummaging through it. His hands seemed to dip deeper than the bottom of the bag. That was an easy charm, for some fae; treat the leather, spell the stitches, and produce something that was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. Like a TARDIS doing double-duty as a book bag.

  He produced an antique silver scalpel and a glass bowl barely larger than the tip of his thumb. After glancing nervously in my direction, he bent and nicked the side of Nolan’s jaw. It was a clever place to conceal a cut; if not for the fact that Nolan hadn’t needed to shave in eighty years, it could have passed for part of his normal morning routine.

  The cut wasn’t deep, but it was enough. A few drops of blood welled up. Master Davies used the blunt side of the scalpel to direct them into the dish. Straightening, he put the scalpel down next to his valise and waved his hand over the blood, chanting something quick and sharp in a language I thought was probably Welsh. The smell of his magic rose again, stronger than before, chilling the room by several degrees. I shivered. Cassandra didn’t. She was staring at the air above the blood, eyes slightly unfocused, like she was looking at something I couldn’t see.

  I frowned. Something was wrong here. Something was—

  “Oh, oak and ash.” Master Davies’ voice was hushed. My head snapped around, attention going back to him. He was pinching the bridge of his nose with his free hand, the smell of ice and yarrow hanging heavy in the air. He looked like a man defeated.

  And Nolan was still asleep.

  “Master Davies?” I had to fight to keep my tone level. I nearly lost the battle. “What is it?”

  “The elf-shot—” he began, and stopped, thinking better of whatever he’d been about to say. Carefully, he put the dish containing my brother’s blood down next to the scalpel and turned to face me, folding his hands behind his back. “Your Highness, the cure I developed was intended to treat elf-shot. Do you understand what that means?”

  Irritation washed through me like acid. “It means my brother is supposed to wake up.”

  “Yes, it does. But more, it means that I was able, with the assistance of Sir Daye, to brew a tincture specifically designed to counter a sleeping charm developed by Eira Rosynhwyr.”

  “I know that,” I snapped. “You tested Nolan’s blood before, to make sure he’d been hit with a variation of the charm that your cure could fight.”

  “And he was, and it did,” said Master Davies. “The problem is . . . people have been tinkering with the recipe for elf-shot since it was created. Some of them were trying to make it kinder. Others were trying to make it worse. Do you know who brewed the elf-shot that felled your brother?”

  “I wasn’t exactly in a position to ask when it happened,” I said.

  “Yes, of course. My apologies.” He took a deep breath. “The elf-shot itself was a standard recipe. As close to generic as you can get without changing the way it works. But it was hiding a secondary charm, something related, yet not the same.”

  “A second sleeping spell?” I asked, aghast. “Can you do that?”

  “Could I do that? Absolutely. It would be child’s play. Elf-shot is so dominant in the blood while it’s active that it can be used to hide all manner of things. The alchemist who brewed this spell tucked it behind the elf-shot, and keyed it to consciousness. The second spell might as well not have existed until your brother woke.”

  This time, despair washed through me, chasing away the irritation. “So he’s going to sleep for another hundred years, or until you find another cure?”

  “I’m afraid not,” said Master Davies. “This isn’t elf-shot, which—cruel as it is—comes with certain protections. Someone who’s been elf-shot doesn’t need to eat or drink. They don’t even really need to breathe. Elf-shot in its purest form was designed not to break the Law.”

  “So what are you trying to say?” I wanted to go to my brother, grab his hands, and hold onto him so tightly that there was no possible chance he could slip away. I was failing him again. I was a queen now. I had our father’s crown and our father’s knowe, and I was going to have our father’s failures, too, because I wasn’t going to save Nolan.

  I had never been able to save Nolan.

  “This is a more traditional sleeping spell, the sort of thing people used to cast on each other before we had elf-shot.” Master Davies grimaced. “Remember that elf-shot was a kindness once. It was a slumber people could wake up from. This is just . . . it’s just sleep.”

  “He’ll die,” said Cassandra. She sounded horrified. The emotion was so simple, so pure, that I had to blink back tears. She was as young as she looked. She was still capable of being shocked by how cruel Faerie could be. “Dehydration, starvation . . . you can’t sleep forever.”

  Master Davies glanced at her. Then he looked at me, and his expression hardened. “Maybe not,” he said. “But you can sleep for a while before you have medical consequences, and we don’t need much more than that. The charm isn’t dangerous in and of itself. It’s what it does that’s bad. Your Highness, how do you feel about larceny?”

  I blinked at him. Then, as hope dawned, I smiled.

  FIVE

  One convenient thing about spending so much time living in the human world: I not only knew the location of all the local urgent care centers, but I knew which ones were in good enough financial shape to handle a few losses. Better yet, I knew where the security cameras were. Street fae and changelings—the sort of people I was likely to be dealing with, the ones who thought I was like them, who’d never had enough interaction with the Courts to figure out that maybe I looked a little too much like our dear lost King Gilad—didn’t usually have much disposable income, much less health insurance, and sometimes they needed to be able to manage their own long-term care. I’d lifted my share of antibiotics, IV bags, and syringes over the years.

  One gate and we were inside an urgent care clinic halfway down the Bay, one where the clientele could afford discretion and the nurses could afford coffee breaks. They weren’t understaffed and overworked like the people at County. It was easier to steal certain supplies from the big hospitals for exactly that reason—chaos forgives a lot of ineptitude—but I didn’t like doing it, also for that reason. A facility that was already stretched thin couldn’t afford to lose things.

  But this was for Nolan. If Master Davies had directed me to the smallest, most underfunded clinic in the Bay Area and told me to steal every drop of morphine they had, I would have done it. My brother mattered more to me than all the strangers in California.

  As soon as we were inside, Master Davies dropped a don’t-look-here on the three of us and murmured something in Cassandra’s ear. She nodded, and they took off in different directions. There wasn’t time to wonder what they were up to. I had my own shopping list to fill. Bags of saline solution; needles; tubing. I filled my arms with my brother’s salvation, hoping either Master Davies or Cassandra had some medical training. I’ve done my share of petty theft, but I’d never been the one trying to keep body and soul together until a healer could be called.

  A healer. The thought was like a bulb coming on in a dark room. I stiffened, nearly dropping my stolen goods. Jin. She worked for Sylvester; he’d loaned her to me during the conclave, and I was sure he’d loan her to me again if I asked. I could bring her to Muir Woods and have her monitor Nolan’s condition. I could—

  I could ask her to sit there a
nd cure his dehydration, over and over again, saturating the area with magic, while Master Davies tried to mix a countercharm to something he couldn’t identify yet. She wouldn’t make things better. She could make things worse. It was amazing how fast I was falling back into the habit of thinking of magic as a cure-all, and it never had been.

  “Damn,” I muttered, and grabbed another bag of saline.

  Master Davies and Cassandra were waiting when I returned to the hall. Cassandra had an IV stand and a bag of first aid supplies. Master Davies had a brown canvas satchel that he must have pilfered from somewhere, packed full of small bottles. I frowned. He didn’t meet my eyes.

  “We should go,” he said.

  Right. If my new court alchemist—and there was really no question whether I’d be offering him the job after this; I was virtually obligated to do so—wanted to have a painkiller addiction, that was on him. It was better than goblin fruit, at least. I waved my hand through the air. The portal opened again, and we were gone, stepping back into Muir Woods.

  My head began to ache as soon as the portal closed behind us. I hadn’t overexerted myself yet, but I was on the cusp of it. “I can make one more jump tonight, and that’s assuming you don’t mind taking the bus back,” I cautioned. “I haven’t got the sort of range I had when I was younger.”

  “You’ll get it back,” said Master Davies, releasing his don’t-look-here. We were in the hall again, outside my brother’s room. That hadn’t been intentional on my part; I’d been trying to get us back to Nolan as quickly as possible. Exhaustion was messing with my aim.

  He opened the bedroom door. Cassandra and I followed him inside. For a few moments, everything was simple. Master Davies told us what to set up and where to put it; we did as we were told, hanging bags of saline, helping him run tubes from the equipment to my brother. He seemed to know what he was doing. That was reassuring. If it had been entirely up to me, things would have gotten ugly.

  “Thank Oberon for gravity,” he said, turning Nolan’s arm over and rolling up his sleeve. “If we needed electricity to operate an IV, we’d have bigger problems.”

  “I still have the generator you brought in to power the lights up in the tower,” I said. “We could use that.”

  “I don’t like using generators in the Summerlands when I have a choice.” The needle in his hand slid under the skin of my brother’s arm, so quickly that it was like a magician’s trick. Different from real magic, but reassuring all the same. “The smell upsets me. It’s like I’m profaning something holy.”

  “You’re a nerd,” said Cassandra. There was a deep fondness in her tone. He didn’t seem to notice.

  For her sake—for his sake—I hoped he’d notice it soon. Immortality is hard enough without spending it alone. “Nerd or not, whatever you need, you’ve got it. I want my brother back. You have the resources of my kingdom at your disposal.”

  Master Davies turned to look solemnly at me. “I’m not going to insult you by asking whether you mean that. Instead, I’m going to ask you to leave.”

  I stared at him. “What? No.”

  “Yes. I need to analyze his blood. I need to figure out the roots of this spell, and I need peace and quiet while I do it. So I need you to go. Take Cassie with you. She can help with anything you need that isn’t this.”

  “Yeah,” said Cassandra. Her eyes were on the air above Nolan’s arm, unfocused again, like she didn’t know what she was looking at. She was frowning. That was what really stood out. She had good reasons to be nervous—she was locked in a small room with the Queen in the Mists and the Crown Prince, even if it was sometimes difficult for me to remember that those august personages were me and my brother—but she didn’t have reason to frown like that.

  “What are you looking at?” I asked.

  Cassandra jumped, flinching away from me. “Nothing,” she said.

  She was lying. I knew she was lying, and sadly being queen didn’t come with magical truth-sensing abilities, so there was no way for me to prove it. “You keep looking at something,” I insisted. “If you know something . . .”

  “I don’t know anything,” she said. “I’m not an alchemist, and I’m not pre-med. I’m a physics major. A tired, hungry physics major who wasn’t planning to be in the royal knowe tonight, so I’m a bit freaked out right now, your, um, splendidness.”

  “Not a standard form of address, but we’ll roll with it,” I said, and sighed, running a hand through my hair. “Master Davies, we’ll be in the kitchen if you need us. Cassandra, if you’ll come with me, I can help with the ‘hungry’ part of your problem.”

  She cast an anxious glance at Master Davies before turning back to me. “Lead the way,” she said.

  There was no more reason to stay, and quite a few reasons to go. I led her to the door, and out into the hall. The last thing I saw before the door swung shut was Master Davies leaning over my brother, the scalpel once more in his hand. Then the wood blocked my view, and I was grateful.

  A hand touched my arm. I turned to find Cassandra looking at me with the sort of honest, uncalculated concern that I hadn’t seen since the last time I’d talked to Jude. “He’ll figure it out,” she said. “If there’s anyone who can do it, it’s Walther. The man works miracles in his spare time.”

  “Walther,” I echoed. She looked at me quizzically, and I shrugged, feeling sheepish. “I couldn’t remember his first name, and it seemed rude to ask when I was already asking for his help.”

  Cassandra’s laugh was bright and surprised. “Oh, that’s awesome. No, really. You’re just a normal person with a crown, not some sort of, like, mystical fairy superhero.”

  “See, that’s what I keep trying to tell people, but they keep bowing anyway.” I started down the hall, beckoning for her to follow me. “The kitchen’s this way.”

  “Great.” Cassandra trotted to catch up, rubbernecking shamelessly as we walked. I took a moment to look where she was looking, trying to see the knowe through her eyes.

  October thought—and had explained to me, at great length—that knowes were alive, capable of changing and rearranging themselves on a whim. I didn’t think she was wrong, exactly, but I thought she was discounting the work of the many craftsmen and artisans who had poured their hearts and souls into the very walls.

  If the knowe is alive, it’s because so many people bled and dreamt and spent their magic like water to wake it up. I liked to think it knew that, on some level; that it remembered my father, and my grandparents, who had done everything they could to make it grander, and more worthy of being the seat of the Mists, which had been the largest, grandest Kingdom in the West for so long.

  The hall was sparsely decorated, leaving the focus on the carved redwood walls. Panels set at eye level told the story of my family’s time in the Mists, carved in a style that was half-representative, half-symbolic. I didn’t think my grandmother had actually coaxed the moon down from the sky to light her way when she was courting my grandfather, for example, but I was sure it had felt that way, at least to her.

  They died long before I was born, victims of the long, slow dance of regicide. It was because of them that my father chose to hide the fact that he had children of his own. He knew what happened to kings and queens. I sometimes thought that they had saved my life by dying. There’s no amount of gratitude that makes up for that. But I still wish I’d had the chance to meet them.

  “You don’t do your own dusting, right?” asked Cassandra. “Because if you do, you should quit.”

  “I’m not allowed to quit,” I said.

  “Who says?”

  “October.”

  Cassandra snorted. “Naturally. Aunt Birdie is great at telling other people to step up and do their duty, but did she hold onto her County? Nope. Passed it off to the first out-of-town noble she could find.”

  “Aunt Birdie?” I asked blankly.

  �
�Toby,” she said, and laughed at my expression. “My mom’s her oldest friend. They were kids together. She’d be my godmother if we did that sort of thing. As it is, she’s the first adult I remember who wasn’t my mom or dad. When I was little, I couldn’t pronounce ‘October,’ so I called her ‘Birdie,’ and it stuck inside the family. Sometimes I forget anybody calls her anything else.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Your family lives . . . ?”

  “In Colma. We’re not sworn to any specific demesne, if that’s what you’re not asking. Mom’s thin-blooded, Dad’s half and half, and no one ever wanted us. Not until Karen started walking in dreams.” She grimaced. “A Firstborn asshole kidnaps half my siblings and half the Courts in the Bay Area start banging on the front door offering to save my sister from a life of useless peasanthood. They sort of forget that we’re not serfs anymore. We have jobs. We do stuff. We’ve been politely turning them down for years. Now that Karen’s started hanging out with the Luidaeg, maybe they’ll listen.”

  “The sea witch does seem to have taken an interest,” I said, as neutrally as I could. “I don’t know whether that’s a good thing or not.”

  “Karen doesn’t seem to mind.”

  We had reached the first stairway. I started down, Cassandra trailing behind. “You’re studying physics?”

  “Yeah. Do you, uh . . . shit. There’s no way to say this that isn’t super rude, so I’m going to go with it. Do you know what that means?”

  I smiled a little, wryly. “I may be a pureblood, but I’ve spent the last hundred years in the mortal world. I know about physics. I watched the moon landing on TV along with everyone else on my block. I even know how to program a VCR.”

  Cassandra looked at me blankly. I rolled my eyes.

  “I promise you, references used to stay topical for longer. I know how a cell phone works, okay? Does that prove I’m down with the modern world?”