“Gosh, Tybalt, if this is supposed to be a pep talk, you need to take a refresher course on inspiring the troops.”
He smiled. “Ah, but you see, they neglect to remember that the opposite is also true. What can destroy them cannot hurt you, for you are fae and human at the same time, and your power is not theirs to claim.”
I blinked at him, taking in his words. Then, slowly, I began to smile.
The rest of the bath passed quickly, despite the natural distraction that Tybalt represented, and soon, I was out and dry and ready to face the rest of my day. Quentin and Walther were waiting when Tybalt and I emerged from the bathroom, Tybalt only slightly damp, me clean and peppermint-scented and wearing the clothes May had grabbed for me. She hadn’t bothered to pick up any trousers, but the blouse was long enough to hang to my knees; I wasn’t worried about showing anything I didn’t want people seeing.
Walther was pacing when I stepped into the room. He stopped when he saw me, visibly relaxing. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“Damp and cranky, but I’ll survive,” I said, heading for the wardrobe. “Quentin? You okay?”
“I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to plot regicide,” he said. My squire was obviously fighting to control his voice, which seemed to be on the verge of breaking. He had mostly finished puberty, but sometimes little reminders of how young he was would find a way to slip through. “He laughed, Toby. After you and Tybalt left? Walther and I had to walk out on our own, and he was laughing. Like it was the funniest thing that had ever happened.”
I didn’t have to ask to know which “he” Quentin was referring to. I changed directions, walking over to the bed instead, where I put my arms around my squire and squeezed tightly. Quentin returned the hug with obvious relief.
“Let him think that it’s funny,” I said. “It’s going to be one of the last jokes he ever makes.”
“I still think it’s inappropriate for me to plot regicide,” said Quentin.
“So don’t.” I let him go. “Regicide is nowhere near as much fun as a good, old-fashioned deposing.” I turned to the wardrobe and began digging through my heaped-up clothes.
“Are you planning to replace every monarch on the West Coast?” asked Walther. “Not that I automatically disapprove if you are, I just need to know if I’m clearing my calendar for the next few decades.”
I paused. Was I planning to replace every monarch on the West Coast? I had never thought of myself as the sort of person who reshaped the political landscape . . . but then again, I’d been doing it all along, hadn’t I? Even getting knighted was an act of political rebellion, in its way. I’d accepted the title because I’d wanted to be safe from the sort of people who thought changelings were all disposable. But it hadn’t stopped there, and I had already toppled one queen who didn’t deserve her throne.
She wasn’t the only one in Faerie who didn’t deserve a throne. King Rhys of Silences had been hand-picked for the position he now held. Under him, changelings were worse than second-class citizens. They never had a chance. But that didn’t mean that we could just walk into his house and start questioning whether or not he had the right to keep it.
“I don’t know that we’re ever going to depose another monarch,” I said carefully. “Right now, we’re here to prevent a war, and that’s what we’re going to focus on. But when this is over, and we’re not all spilling our literal guts out on the battlefield, I think it might be time to take a trip to Toronto and talk to High King Sollys about the validity of Rhys’ claim to Silences. He was given the throne by someone who didn’t have the right to her own crown. It’s possible that a member of the old royal family could just . . . step in.”
All eyes went to Walther. I took the opportunity to pull my jeans on and tuck my blouse in, creating a faintly old-fashioned, but acceptable level of decency.
Walther shook his head. “Don’t look at me,” he said. “Even if you deposed the man, I couldn’t inherit. I keep telling you, I’m several steps away from the line of inheritance. I’d be no more legitimate than he is, and besides, I’m on a tenure track. It’s important that I stay in Berkeley.”
I blinked. “That may be the best reason for not wanting to be King that I’ve ever heard. ‘I’m going to get tenure.’”
“It’s true.” Walther shrugged. “So what are we going to do now?”
“The same thing I always do,” I said, selecting a lace-up bodice from the wardrobe and sliding it on. “I’m going to go annoy the crap out of the nobility. Now somebody lace me into this thing.”
TEN
I WALKED DOWN THE DESERTED hall toward King Rhys’ receiving room with Tybalt on my arm and Walther following two paces behind. Quentin was off with May, exploring the knowe. As my squire, he could be reasonably expected to be running around and doing the tasks I didn’t want to bother with, and as a pureblood, he was going to be in less danger than a changeling manservant would have been. I’d still insisted he take some of Walther’s powder with him, just in case somebody tried to force him to have a friendly cup of tea or something. The thought of Quentin being dosed with a loyalty potion was enough to make my skin crawl.
“I wonder how big this Court really is,” I commented mildly, looking at one of the blank walls. I’d never been in a knowe this size with so little decoration. It was like Rhys had ordered the whole thing from Castles R Us, and then never bothered to swing by the local Bed, Battlements, and Beyond for the accessories he’d need to make it believable.
“In what regard, my dear?” Tybalt’s tone was artificially plummy and tolerant, like he was speaking to a child he suspected of being slightly slow. I wrinkled my nose, resisting the urge to burst out laughing. We were almost certainly being listened to, and speculating about the size of the Court, while rude, wasn’t seditious or otherwise inappropriate . . . except in that it could be considered speculation about the size of Rhys’ army.
“Well, I know about how many purebloods there are in the Mists, not counting the Selkies or the Undersea,” I said. It was always easy to forget, embroiled as I was in the courts, how few purebloods there actually were. Humans outnumbered them by a factor of tens of thousands. Changelings could have outnumbered them, too, if we’d ever cared to pull away from our human friends and pureblood masters and become an organized force. Luckily for the status quo, most of the changelings I knew were too busy keeping body and soul together to waste their time on sedition. “Silences is a smaller Kingdom, isn’t it? So maybe that explains why the halls are so empty.”
“Silences is a smaller Kingdom, but Portland is the biggest city in Silences,” said Walther. “I know a lot of the local fae don’t necessarily take part in Court. That’s true in the Mists, too. I think what you’re seeing is just the effect of a high turnover in the higher social classes during the war. People who used to be held in good standing aren’t always anymore, and some of the nobles who managed to keep their places did so by keeping their heads down and not drawing attention to themselves.”
“Oh,” I said, and looked thoughtfully around the hall again, trying to fill in the spaces between his words. I knew people, like Walther and Lowri, who had come from Silences; purebloods who had chosen to move to other Kingdoms rather than stay where they were. But I didn’t know anyone who had chosen to move to Silences. All the mobility seemed to be in the wrong direction.
Idly, I wondered whether King Rhys had one of the still-missing hope chests. If he could turn changeling children into pureblood fae, he might be able to solve his population problem. Of course, he’d have to deal with the fact that his populace had all started out part-human, which might be a bit much for him, given his prejudices, but who knew? Maybe he could adjust.