It was only nigh, not complete, which meant I wasn’t entirely comfortable with this plan, but I could see the logic. If my presence could provoke the former Queen into doing something inappropriate, we might be able to call this whole thing off—High King Sollys couldn’t prevent his subordinate kingdoms from going to war, but he could step in if one of them broke the rules of engagement. Of course, I could get stabbed a few dozen times in the process. Sadly, as I had come to learn, sometimes being a pincushion is my purpose in life.
The kitchen light was on when I pulled into the covered parking space next to our house. We lived in a beautiful old Victorian that had been purchased by Sylvester Torquill shortly after it was constructed, and used as a rental property until the day I agreed to let him move me into something safer than my apartment. Most of the neighbors hated us in an offhand sort of manner, since we had twice the space they did, plus a parking area and a small yard—all things virtually unheard of in modern-day San Francisco. I was sure they’d change their minds if they knew how much I’d bled to earn that house.
Or maybe not. Reserved parking is hard to come by in this city.
Quentin, as always, walked ahead while I locked up the car. Arden’s promised snack hadn’t materialized, due to Madden having been elf-shot, and Quentin was probably starving. Keeping a teenage boy away from food for the better part of a night isn’t actually torture, but it can definitely seem like it to them. I followed at a more decorous pace, tucking my keys into the pocket of my leather jacket. If there was one thing living with Quentin had taught me, it was not to get between him and the refrigerator at moments like this.
May and Jazz sat at the table in the breakfast nook, polishing off the remains of what looked like an ice cream sundae the size of my head. It’s good to have goals. They were looking up when I arrived, courtesy of Quentin, who was already digging through the fridge with the manic intensity of a man who had just been informed that there was never going to be food ever again.
“Long night?” asked May sympathetically. As my former death omen, she was unique in all of Faerie: a Fetch whose existence was no longer directly tied to any one person’s survival. Amandine had somehow severed the bond between us when she shifted the balance of my blood away from human to save my life. This had left May with a copy of my original face, all soft changeling edges and bluntly-pointed ears, and a level of indestructability that even I couldn’t match. She seemed pretty happy about the situation.
We’d been living together since she first appeared. People used to mistake us for each other, but that hadn’t happened in a while. It helped that May’s style was best described as “Jem and the Holograms meets Rainbow Brite.” Her spiky brown hair had been bleached to within an inch of its life and dyed in a variety of pinks and purples, and she was wearing a tie-dyed cotton sundress. Between that and the increasing sharpness of my features, anyone who could mistake us for each other was either legally blind or had recently been hit in the head.
“Long, and getting longer,” I said. “Nights like this, I wish I still drank coffee. Quentin, can you make me a sandwich, too, while you’re rooting through the fridge like—Oberon’s ass, I don’t know, something that roots. I’m too tired to insult you.”
“Wow, you are tired,” said Jazz, May’s live-in girlfriend. She was a Raven-maid, with long black hair, warm brown skin, and eyes rimmed in avian gold. The band of black feathers tied in her ponytail held her fae nature; without it, she would have been as human as any of our neighbors. Skinshifters are somewhat odd, even by fae standards. Raven-maids and Raven-men are even odder, since they’re diurnal when most of the rest of Faerie is nocturnal. May and Jazz’s relationship was a love story about missed sleep, compromises, and working around differences. In that regard, it wasn’t that different from my relationship with Tybalt.
At least we all got along, for the most part. Not bad for a changeling, a cat, a death omen, a bird, and a prince in hiding.
“Yeah, well.” I leaned up against the counter, half watching Quentin as he emptied the fridge onto the table. We were apparently having leftover pot roast sandwiches, with mashed potatoes and cranberry jam. I’d eaten stranger. “I don’t really know how to give the short version of this, so here’s the badly edited one: the Kingdom of Silences has declared war on the Mists for the crime of unrightfully deposing our former Queen. One of their people elf-shot Madden—I have the arrow that came with the message, I’ll be taking it to Walther this afternoon. Arden tried to run. We tracked her down, things got a little heated, I grabbed her without permission, and as my punishment, she’s making me go to Silences as the ambassador in the Mists. Hopefully, we can get this all sorted out before I convince them that they should slaughter us all in our beds.”
May blinked. Jazz blinked. Both of them stared at me like this was the most ridiculous thing they had ever heard.
Finally, Jazz spoke. “They’re sending you as a diplomat?” she asked, with exquisite care. Right then, she proved that she was more of a diplomat than I would ever be. “Did you explain to Queen Windermere why that might not be the . . . smartest choice?”
“I tried,” I said. “She’s pretty set on the idea. I think she’s trying less for ‘Toby goes to Silences, smooths everything out, hooray,’ and more for ‘Toby infuriates them so badly that they can’t remember which end of the sword to use.’ It’s a terrible plan.”
“I don’t know,” said May. “I was a diplomat once—well, a couple of times, but only once that I really remember. Super-annoying ambassadors have their place, too. Sending someone you know the other side will hate keeps them from being too comfortable during the negotiations, while also letting them know that they can’t just dismiss your emissary. If they do, you can claim that they never really wanted to work in good faith, and that justifies burning a lot more stuff down.”
“And in the meantime, Arden and Lowri can get together with the local nobles and come up with a plan for getting through the war alive, if it actually happens,” I said. Before she became a Fetch, May was a night-haunt, one of the dark secrets of Faerie. They eat the dead, and because memory is hidden in the blood, they take on the faces of their meals. The night-haunts remember things that happened to people who they never really were. “If you were a diplomat, you died. How did you die?”
“Um. Poison once, and I sort of got stabbed the other time.” May’s cheeks reddened. “Maybe that wasn’t as encouraging as I wanted it to be.”
“No, it was totally encouraging, if you’re encouraging me to get stabbed.” I sighed, running a hand through my hair. “I need to call the Luidaeg. She’s going to be pissed at me for finding a new way to try to get myself killed, but maybe she can give me some advice.”
“Pretty sure her advice will be ‘don’t go,’” said Jazz.
I chuckled bitterly. “Pretty sure you’re right.”
May pushed her chair back from the table, standing. “I’ll go pack.”
“Uh, what?” I stared at her. “No, you will not. Sit your butt back down. You’re staying here.”
May raised one eyebrow, an expression so familiar that I didn’t need to wonder what it meant. “I’m sorry, but it sounds like you just told me to stay here in the Mists while you run off to Silences to get yourself killed. Is there a planet where that would work? I’d love to visit there sometime, just to see what it’s like.”