Alazne was the only survivor of Gabriel and Opal’s first litter. Her three siblings had been killed when Oleander de Merelands poisoned the meat supply of Tybalt’s Court. It had been touch and go for Alazne for a long time, but she was finally growing out of her early medical issues, and into the rest of her long, long life as a pureblood Cait Sidhe. She was a good kid.
“Sounds good,” I said. “Meet us back at the house?”
“As soon as I may,” he said. “Should you need to relocate in the interim, please leave a note of some sort. I would hate to have to go looking for you.”
I smiled. “Will do.” I stood, leaning over to kiss him quickly before I started walking toward Quentin, and away from the knowe. “Come on, kiddo. Let’s go home.” A faint waft of musk and pennyroyal from behind me told me that Tybalt was gone. It was time for us to be gone as well—time, and past time.
Quentin was quiet as we navigated the hill back down to the park, and walked through the park to the lot where my car was waiting. He stayed quiet—uncharacteristically so—as we got into the car. I cast a quick don’t-look-here and started the engine, pulling out onto the main road. I glanced at him a few times, but decided to wait until we were on the freeway. If he hadn’t at least turned on the radio by then, I would ask him what was wrong.
We reached the freeway with the silence still hanging between us like a knife on a string. I cleared my throat. “Okay, what’s wrong?”
“I don’t want to let you go without me.” His voice was very small. “I hate that you have to treat me like . . . I never wanted you to know. Not until I was ready to leave my fosterage and take my family name again. I didn’t want you to treat me differently.”
“Oh,” I said.
Quentin was the Crown Prince of North America. One day, he would control the continent. And I hadn’t known that when he became my squire. He’d been sent to Shadowed Hills on a blind fosterage, which meant that no one other than Sylvester had known who his parents were, and that none of the rest of us were allowed to try to find out. For a long time, I’d assumed he was minor nobility at best, since his parents seemed perfectly cool with letting him become a changeling’s squire and run around the Mists getting shot at and hanging out with the sea witch. It had been . . . well, a shock to discover that actually, his parents thought spending time with me would make him a better King one day.
“I’ve tried really hard not to treat you any differently,” I said carefully. “It’s been difficult sometimes. But you still have to do the dishes when it’s your turn, and I took you to fight the big black dogs without going ‘oh no, I could hurt the Crown Prince.’ Honestly, I would have wanted you to stay behind even before I knew—I would probably have insisted. It’s only the fact that you’re going to be High King someday that makes me think this is something you should see.”
“It still feels like I’m being punished for being a prince,” he said.
“Let me ask you something. If this had come up while you were still concealing your identity from me, and if I had been temporarily out of my senses enough to ask you to come along, would you have been willing to just grab your things and follow me to Silences? Or would you have called home and asked your parents if they’d mind?”
His silence was answer enough. He would have checked in. That was reassuring—it meant I hadn’t completely converted him to my particular school of “go ahead, rush straight into danger, it’s fun.” It also put a lot of past events into a new perspective. If he’d been checking in all along, the High King and Queen must have really believed in the idea of preparing their heir for anything.
“So see? The only thing that’s changed is that now I ask you to call them, rather than you having to sneak around and do it behind my back. I’ve never been happy about hauling you into danger, and I’ve never pretended to be.” I flashed him a quick smile. “I think this is a good thing. I like it when we’re not keeping as many secrets.”
Quentin smiled hesitantly back. “I guess so.” He paused before asking, “So why is Arden making you go to Silences? I mean, it’s not like you have any ambassadorial experience.”
“Funny thing: I don’t think anyone in the current nobility does,” I said grimly. “Sylvester is busy in Shadowed Hills, and he’s our most experienced hero. If we actually go to war, Arden is going to need him here to organize the troops. Li Qin is a scholar. April is . . . April is April. Even if she could travel that far, she’s more likely to accidentally start a war than intentionally prevent one. We could ask Saltmist to loan us someone, but they don’t really do diplomacy, unless you count Dianda going ‘stop hitting yourself’ over and over again. There may be some diplomats in Wild Strawberries or Deep Mists or someplace, but none of them will have seen any action since the War of Silences, when they were working for the woman who’s now trying to declare war on the rest of us.” Simon Torquill had been a diplomat, once upon a time: that was part of why he had a title but no lands. As the less martial of the brothers Torquill, it was his job to solve problems before they got out of hand and required Sylvester to come along with an army. Unfortunately, Simon was asleep, and was going to stay that way for a century. He wasn’t going to help us with this war.
Sometimes I think Faerie goes to war as much because we can’t find anyone who’d rather talk things out as for any other reason. Diplomacy is not a valued skill among the Courts. Most of our nobles would prefer to do the dance of manners and then slide a knife between someone’s ribs. It’s more fun than actually discussing trade sanctions and why it’s rude to kill your neighbors.
“Okay, I guess, but why you?” asked Quentin. “You’re . . . not really that diplomatic.”
“You mean I’m a blunt instrument being sent to do a scalpel’s job,” I said. Quentin nodded. I shrugged. “When I found Arden, she and I had an argument about how to handle things. I sort of grabbed her without her permission. So she’s punishing me.”
Quentin looked suitably horrified at the idea that I had grabbed the Queen in the Mists without her consent. He shook it off and pushed on, saying, “Maybe, but she’s not stupid. If she thought that punishing you like this would result in a war, she wouldn’t do it. So she must think you can argue your way out of a war.”
“I did it once, I guess,” I said dryly, before leaning forward and turning on the radio. “I want to think. Feel free to critique my taste in music.”
“I always feel free to do that,” said Quentin, and promptly changed the station.
He was right about one thing: if Arden wanted me to be the ambassador in the Mists, she had to think it would somehow benefit the Kingdom. It was too specific to be a punishment she’d come up with on the spot. Fine, then. How could I benefit the Kingdom? Well, I could yell at the King of Silences until he agreed not to go to war. Awkward, but potentially effective. I could try to talk some sense into the former Queen of the Mists. I could—
Wait. “Quentin, do ambassadors get diplomatic immunity?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s the only way to prevent assassinations at major court functions. Not that it actually prevents them, but it makes them less common than they would be otherwise. No one wants to deal with a dead body on the dessert cart.”
“And people say I’m desensitizing you to violence,” I said. “So here’s a theory for you: Arden is sending me because this way I’ll have diplomatic immunity, which means the King of Silences can’t arrest me on the spot. That gives everyone back here time to come up with a better plan for getting through this alive. In the meanwhile, we’re in Silences with the former Queen, who hates me. That means she’s a lot more likely to lose her temper and do something that violates hospitality.” Which I would probably survive, given my own nigh-indestructability.