“Tell them not to pull my tail or kick me, and I will respond in kind,” said Tybalt mildly.
“As you say,” said King Rhys, with another broad, chilly smile. He stepped to one side. His guards did the same, falling back so that their backs were to the courtyard wall. It was an eerily synchronized motion. I wondered how much time they had spent practicing to make sure that their footsteps would be perfectly in unison. I just as quickly decided to stop wondering about that. It couldn’t do anything good for my sanity.
“Welcome to Silences,” said King Rhys, gesturing to the portal.
There wasn’t really anything we could do at that point. Refusing his invitation would have been rude, and we didn’t have anywhere else to go. With another, much shorter bow, I began walking around the fountain toward the portal.
Walther stepped close enough that he could murmur, “Ever been to Disneyland?”
“No,” I replied, as quietly as I could. “Why?”
“Because this guy learned everything he knows about crowd control from the Haunted Mansion.”
I gave him a puzzled look. He laughed, and kept on walking.
Walking through King Rhys’ portal was like stepping through a soap bubble formed entirely of someone else’s magic. The urge to hold my breath was great, but I forced it aside and breathed in instead, trying to learn whatever I could about the man whose demesne we were now inside. He was pure Tuatha de Dannan, that much was clear: I could pick up nothing else from his heritage, or from the meadowsweet and wine vinegar traceries of his spell. He was also casting unaided—the magic was entirely his, and he had sustained the portal for the entire process of determining our purpose in his lands. He was strong. Not as strong as Chelsea, maybe, but strong enough to hold his Kingdom.
We came out of the portal in the lushly appointed ballroom we had glimpsed before, our feet and the wheels of our wagon clattering against the polished wooden floor. The dais in front of us held a single central throne, decorated in the same style as the fountain in the courtyard. Walther tensed beside me. Whatever else King Rhys had done since becoming King, and however blameless he may or may not have been in what had happened, he was sitting on the throne that had belonged to the original ruling family. I couldn’t even imagine how that had to feel.
There was no matching queen’s throne. Either Rhys was unmarried, or he had chosen to rule alone. There were two smaller chairs, carved from rich pine and detailed with gold leaf, that were probably intended for use by visiting nobility or dignitaries important enough to share the dais with him.
As my companions and I fell into a loose semicircle, Walther to my left, Tybalt to my right, and May and Quentin fanning out to hold up the ends, Rhys walked past us, mounted the dais, and settled in his throne. He braced one elbow on the armrest, slouching into a position as carefully calculated as the motions of his guards. As for the guards themselves, they took up places around the edges of the room, while his three attending courtiers moved to stand near, but not on, the dais.
“My staff has been notified that you’ll need to be housed and fed for the next little while,” he said. “I assume you’ll wish to have adjoining rooms for your squire and your lady’s maid, Sir Daye?” His eyes raked over my hair, mouth pursing in a way that made it clear he found everything about my appearance to be wanting.
“Yes, if it please your Majesty,” I said, with a quick dip of my head. “I would also like my alchemist to be housed as near to me as possible. He is . . . useful, in certain regards.” Let him think I was addicted to sleep tonics. Let him think I was sleeping with Walther. I didn’t care, as long as he didn’t try to separate us from each other. I might not have been very good at courtly manners, but I was smart enough to know that winding up in opposite wings would be bad for everyone’s health.
“Indeed,” said Rhys. “As for the King of Cats, we will have to arrange a room suitable for such a luminary, as I would not want to give accidental offense—”
“Then I am not rude in interjecting to tell you that no such arrangement will be necessary, nor would it be welcome if undertaken,” said Tybalt, cutting smoothly into the rhythm of the King’s speech. Rhys looked nonplussed, but not as angry as he would have been if I had tried the same trick. Tybalt reached out and set a hand gently upon my wrist, so that his fingers traced the line of my pulse. It was nothing as blatant as putting an arm around me or as crass as kissing me in front of a rival monarch, but it was more than enough to get the point across.
Rhys’ eyebrows rose. “I see,” he said, giving me another assessing look. My lack of cosmetics and clearly unstyled hair was being put into a new light: among the nobility of the Divided Courts, Cait Sidhe have a reputation for being bestial and little better than changelings. If I was screwing the King of Cats, it made sense that I’d be a little unkempt—never mind that Tybalt looked like he could appear on the cover of a magazine without changing anything but the shape of his pupils.
“Sir Daye is my betrothed, and as such, I choose to cleave to her as much as I may,” said Tybalt, a dangerous note coming into his voice. It was clear he knew how King Rhys was judging me, and just as clear that he didn’t approve. “I’ll understand if you cannot place us in the same room, as we are yet unwed, but I will be close to her, or know the reasons why.”
“I see.” Rhys sat up straighter. “I’ll instruct my seneschal appropriately. I’m sorry we didn’t have rooms ready for you. My counterpart to the South did not tell me she was sending an emissary to argue on her behalf, perhaps because she knows she has no authority to do so. But no matter.” He waved the hand that wasn’t supporting his head before any of us could object to his continual characterization of Arden as the usurper in this equation. “You’ll be shown to your rooms. My court slumbers, in the main—I was woken to receive you—and you will be summoned again when it’s time for our first formal meal of the night.”
“I thought you had to tell your seneschal about our rooming arrangement?” I said, slowly.
“His Majesty has just informed me,” said one of the courtiers. She stepped forward, offering a shallow bow in our direction. She had the golden hair and blue eyes characteristic of the Tylwyth Teg, and her expression was so composed as to be virtually blank, a perfect mask betraying nothing of her feelings. “My name is Marlis. I am standing seneschal to this court. Please allow me to escort you.”
“Sure thing.” I turned back to Rhys, bowing one more time in his direction. “We appreciate your hospitality, and will not abuse it.”
“See that you don’t,” he said. “Marlis, you will return here when you have them settled. I must speak to you.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” said Marlis. She gestured toward a doorway on the other side of the hall. “You will follow me.”
It wasn’t a request. She walked, and after the rest of our group had made their quick, final bows, we followed.
Marlis’ entire stride changed as soon as we were in the hall, going from tight and reserved to open, wide, with a heel-first way of striking the floor that made it clear she’d been trained in some pretty serious kick-your-ass techniques. She didn’t say a word until we reached the first stairway. A basket of yarrow twigs was hung over the newel post. She began grabbing out handfuls and tying them into quick wreaths, which she tossed to May and Quentin.
“Here,” she said briskly. “Put these on the wheels of your wagon, and be quick about it. His Majesty doesn’t like things cluttering up the hall.”
That certainly explained the lack of knickknacks and portraits: aside from the velvet draperies in the throne room, the knowe seemed to be entirely undecorated. “Is this an extension of that whole ‘flying on yarrow branches’ trick I’ve seen some Tylwyth Teg do?” I asked. “I didn’t know you could use it on things other than yourselves.”
“Some of us have to work for what we receive in this world, miss,” said Marlis. “Some of us have to find ways of making that work easier.” She looked back to May and Quentin. Seeing that they had looped the wreaths over the hubs of both wagon wheels, she raised her hand and chanted a quick phrase in Welsh. The smell of ice and milfoil rose in the air around the wagon, which began to lift away from the ground.