“Wait, you never looked for her?” May turned, looking at Walther like she was seeing him for the first time. “She’s your sister. You should have tried to find out where she was.”
“I spent the first twenty years after the war running, hiding, and making sure no one could find me,” said Walther wearily. “Marlis and I agreed when we split up that we wouldn’t look for each other, because it would be too dangerous. If either of us had been caught, we didn’t want to be able to give the other away.”
“Looks like she never ran,” I said.
Walther shook his head. “That’s the problem. I know she ran.”
I frowned. “Okay. Explain to me why this means we need to be on guard.”
“Because if she’s here, working for the man who took our aunt’s throne, and if he trusts her enough to make her seneschal, something is compelling her loyalty.” Walther shook his head again, harder this time. “I’m going to refine one of the potions I brought with me. You need to sprinkle it over everything you eat and add it to everything you drink. It’s the only way to be safe.”
It took me a moment, but I caught his meaning. “You think she’s drugged.”
“I think a Queen with Siren powers put a Baron in charge of a Kingdom of alchemists,” said Walther grimly. “Mind control is hard, even for the best of us, but suggestibility is easy, and so is memory suppression. Scramble things in someone’s head enough, and keep dosing them regularly, and you can bend even the strongest will to your hand.”
“Memory suppression would explain why she didn’t seem to recognize you,” I said. “How long before that potion is ready?”
“Not long,” said Walther, with an odd grimace. “It was one of the potions I was using the dawn to finish. I just need to boil off the excess liquid, flash-freeze, and powder the results. Say an hour? That should be long enough to make a supply for all of us.”
“Won’t the King be offended when we start adding things to our food?” asked Quentin. “I mean, the chefs in Quebec get angry if you ask for salt. I can’t imagine a royal kitchen ranks below a French restaurant for snootiness.”
“He might be, but he won’t say anything,” said Walther. “Silences has declared war. It’s perfectly reasonable for a diplomat from Mists to bring along an alchemist to guarantee there’s no poison in the food, since even if the King is perfectly respectable, polite, and law-abiding—”
Tybalt snorted.
“—there could still be loyalists in the Court who wanted to curry favor by being the first to kill a citizen of an enemy kingdom,” continued Walther, without missing a beat. “As long as we don’t actually say that I’m protecting you from mind control, my presence will continue to seem like a sadly necessary evil.”
“I hate politics.” I sat back down on the edge of the bed. “Seriously, this stuff was easier when I was living with Devin. If you were our enemy, we just came over and beat the shit out of you. No declarations of war, no pretending everything was normal while we plotted your death, just a bunch of street kids with knives and brass knuckles handing you your own teeth.”
“You are truly a charming example of what the Divided Courts can produce when given sufficient motivation,” said Tybalt, the fondness in his voice sapping the sting from his words.
I shrugged. “I’m one of a kind.”
“Thank Oberon for that,” muttered Quentin, while May just laughed.
The mood in the room seemed lighter now that we knew we had at least one spot where we could talk with reasonably little fear of being overheard. “Any thoughts on when Rhys is likely to want us to come for breakfast?”
“It’s a royal court, which means most people probably went to bed sometime shortly after dawn,” said Quentin. “If you figure sleeping for eight hours, and then taking an hour or so to become presentable, I’d guess they’re having breakfast right around now.”
“We’re clearly not being summoned for that, so I guess it’s not an ‘official’ meal,” I said. “When do you guess they’ll have lunch? Go nuts. Make a prediction.”
“Um, probably in like four or five hours? That gives Rhys time to figure out what he’s going to do with us.”
“Great. That means we can go out and get the lay of the land before we need to be properly formal.” Part of me wanted to crawl into that big bed and have a nap, since I rarely got to sleep once things really started moving. The rest of me knew that it was a bad idea. For me, anyway. “Quentin, why don’t you grab a few more hours of sleep. I need you fresh.”
“No nap for me,” said Walther. “I need to finish that potion before we go anywhere near the table. Don’t worry—I mix my own energy drinks.” His smile was tight but confident. He was an excellent alchemist. He wasn’t going to poison himself by mistake.
Well. Probably not.
“I have an idea,” said May. The rest of us turned to look at her. She shrugged. “I’m officially here as a lady’s maid, and the servants never get to sleep in as long as the nobles. That’s just not how things are done. So I figure if I can skip on the sleeping, I can go and get some gossip about the shape of this place before we have to discover it on our own. But, Toby, you should sleep.”
“May’s right,” said Walther. “Right now, there’s nothing you can do, and my magic isn’t a substitute for real sleep. It doesn’t restore the body the way actual unconsciousness would. We need you at your best.”
“My best still isn’t equipped for this situation,” I said.
“And yet here we are,” said May. “I’m going to get the lay of the land. Walther’s going to do alchemy. The three of you, nap, and I’ll be back in two hours to help you get ready for dinner.”
“Look at it this way,” said Walther. “You’re going to be working harder than anyone once things really get moving, so we’re not doing you any favors. We’re just equipping you to run a little bit faster when the monsters come.”
“I hate you all,” I groaned, and flopped backward on the bed.
Laughing, May left the room, with Walther close behind her. Quentin remained, standing awkwardly near the door to his private chamber. I raised my head enough to peer at him.
“You okay, kiddo?”
“Can I take Spike with me?” he asked. “I don’t want to sleep in here, but I’m not comfortable being alone in a Kingdom I don’t know.”
I pushed myself up onto my elbows. “Of course. Spike, go with Quentin.” The rose goblin, which had settled itself atop one of my suitcases, stood, rattled its thorns, and trotted over to rub against my squire’s ankles. Quentin bore the thorny intrusion with a minimum of wincing. “We’re right here if you need us.”
“Cool,” said Quentin. “Sleep well.”
“You, too.”
He stooped to pick Spike up from the floor before retreating into his room, shutting the door behind him. I looked at it for a moment, feeling obscurely guilty. Quentin had learned a lot since I’d first met him. He was going to be a good King someday, when his father chose to give him the throne, and while I wasn’t egotistical enough to think it was because of me, I did believe our time together had taught him to be better than he would have been otherwise. But it had also taught him to be cautious, and that not everything was going to go his way. He would have learned those lessons eventually. They were unavoidable. I still felt bad about the fact that he had needed to learn them from me.