And he was Tuatha de Dannan.
“If Silences was behind this attack . . .” I began.
“No,” interrupted Arden, shaking her head. She was still crying, and her face was pale. “No, no, no. I remember that war. Nolan and I were still just kids when it happened. We were in hiding, but we still knew about the war. People died. Not just on the battlefield. Poisonings and assassinations and all the things I walked away from the throne to escape. I promised my brother that we would never, ever get involved with anything like that.”
I looked at her, seeing not a Queen, but a frightened bookstore clerk who had managed to wind up way over her head. I even felt a little guilty about that. If Arden was in over her head, I was one of the people who had put her there. “We don’t know for sure that it was Silences.”
“Yes, we do,” said a weary voice from the entryway. I turned. An unfamiliar Cu Sidhe woman was standing there, her red-and-white hair pulled into low pigtails on either side of her face. She was wearing a green linen peasant blouse over jeans—all she needed was a flower crown and some wire-framed glasses and she would have looked like she had just stepped out of the Summer of Love. She held up a parchment scroll. “They left this so they could be sure we’d understand their message. I don’t blame the guard for missing it. I had to sniff my way around the whole clearing before I located the admission of their crime.”
“Um, hi,” I said. “You are . . . ?”
“My name is Faoiltiarna. You may call me ‘Tia,’ as that will probably be easier on you.” The woman looked at me solemnly, her eyes large and liquid and filled with the sorrow that only dogs seem to have access to. “Madden is my brother. He was snatched from the yard of our home. We knew it must be an act of violence brought against him for his association with Queen Windermere. Cowards have always struck at brave rulers through their canines.”
Arden put her hand over her mouth again, and didn’t say anything. She seemed to have frozen under the pressure, which wasn’t the most useful reaction out of a monarch. I tried to swallow my anger. Inexperienced Queens can’t be expected to get everything perfect right out the gate. Her reign had consisted of one rebellion where she didn’t have to do much, a lot of cleaning, and a couple of parties. It wasn’t surprising that she was overwhelmed now.
“Can I see that?” I asked, taking a step toward Tia and holding out my hand.
“Certainly,” she said. She dropped the scroll into my palm, her sorrowful gaze flicking to Madden, who still hung motionless between the guards who had carried him inside. “My poor brother. He’ll have a good long sleep, and when he wakes up, we’ll be waiting to tell him about everything that’s changed in the world. May he slumber here?” She looked back to Arden. “Our mother told us when we followed her to the Mists that King Gilad had a chamber for sleepers such as this. It would be best if Madden could sleep in safety, with no need to fear the march of progress.”
“We haven’t finished opening the knowe, but if that room is here, we’ll find it,” said Lowri. Her voice was calm and even; of everyone in this room, she had the most experience serving in a royal court. “If Queen Windermere consents, we can place him in his own room while we search. He’ll be comfortable there.”
Queen Windermere wasn’t consenting. Queen Windermere wasn’t saying anything at all. She was still just standing there, frozen and silent.
I swallowed a sigh and unrolled the parchment, careful to avoid paper cuts. There was no guarantee that whoever had left us the message would be enough of a dick to poison it, but there was also no guarantee that they wouldn’t. Better safe than joining Madden in a century of sleep.
I skimmed the parchment, reading it twice over before I said, “The Kingdom of Silences is declaring war on the Kingdom of the Mists, in answer to our most treacherous and unkind act of treason. They want to depose Arden and return the ‘rightful Queen’ to the throne—their words, not mine. As per tradition, we have three days to give our final answer, or they attack.”
“What rightful Queen?” asked Quentin.
“Who do you think?” I held the parchment out toward him. They didn’t name their chosen monarch—of course they didn’t, no one ever had; no one had ever known her name—but they called her “our fair lady of the Mists” and “the Siren of the West.” It was pretty clear they intended to put the former Queen back in the position she’d held for more than a century, just like it was clear that we needed to stop them.
“But High King Sollys confirmed Queen Windermere’s claim to the throne,” said Quentin, sounding confused. “That means she’s legitimate.”
“He also confirmed the nameless usurper’s claim,” I said. “That means she can try to take it back. Your Highness, we’re not going to—” I turned toward the spot where Arden had been standing, and stopped. The smell of blackberry flowers and redwood bark was hanging in the air and the guards were staring, open-mouthed, at nothing.
The Queen was gone.
THREE
“WHERE DID SHE GO?” demanded Tia. The rising note of rage in her tone was completely at odds with her flower child exterior. “My brother has been elf-shot because he was in service to his Queen! Loyalty cuts in both directions. Where did she go?”
“Away,” I said. I had some ideas about where “away” might be, but I wasn’t going to discuss them with an angry Cu Sidhe. Not before I’d had a chance to find and talk to Arden myself. I turned to Lowri. “You’ve been with royal courts for years, right?”
“Most of my life,” she said, sounding uncertain. She looked worried, but not angry. That was a good sign. Her loyalty was to the Queen who held her oaths, not to the people who got hurt because they were in that Queen’s orbit. That might seem cold, but in the moment, I was grateful for her relative objectivity. “Why?”
“Because the Queen just went for a walk and the seneschal is down for the count. Sorry to do this to you, Lowri, but this is where you step up and show what you’ve learned from all those years of service.”
Lowri’s eyes widened. She took a half step backward, her hooves making a staccato tapping noise against the floor as the implications of my words sank in and anchored themselves to her bones. She was the only person in the room with the experience and the training necessary to do what needed to be done, especially if we were facing a declaration of war: after all, she had served in Silences both before and during the war. She knew it, and I knew it, and the only way for her to avoid it would be to break her oaths to the throne—something I didn’t think she was capable of deciding to do.
Normally, I would have felt bad about essentially strong-arming someone into taking a position in someone else’s court, however temporarily. This wasn’t a normal situation. Arden had turned tail and run. Madden was asleep, and he was going to stay that way for the next hundred years. The Mists might be an old kingdom, but Arden’s court was very young, and it didn’t have that many trained options.
Lowri swallowed. “All right, but I’m only doing it until the Queen finds someone more suited to the role,” she said.
I wasn’t sure whether she was trying to convince me, or convince herself. “Of course,” I said. “Now, what are your orders?”
As seneschal—even acting seneschal—Lowri was the voice of the Queen. That was why attacking Madden was such an effective declaration of war. Take out a random member of a royal court, and there’s a measure of “that was offensive, let’s talk it over.” Take out the seneschal, or worse, the heir, and it’s on.
Lowri took a deep breath. Then she turned to Tia, and asked, “Will you help get Madden settled until we can locate the room you spoke of? The knowe is still being reopened, but I promise you, his quarters are more than suitable, at least for the time being. The Queen’s brother sleeps in a room very much like his.”