“Yes, of course,” said Tia, not looking particularly mollified. She glared at the space where Arden had been, nose wrinkled in canine disgust, before walking over to slide her shoulders under Madden’s arm, supporting his weight. Lowri stepped clear. Tia turned her glare on the diminutive Glastig. “We are not happy. We understood the risks of Madden’s involvement with this court, and were glad of them. It’s rare that the Cu Sidhe are recognized as helpmeets and pack mates by Kings and Queens. But I speak for our entire family when I say that we assumed loyalty would be met with loyalty, not with running away.”
“I understand,” said Lowri. “We’re going to fix this.” She glanced pleadingly at me.
Much as I might want to put up my hands and say, “Hell, no, I didn’t sign on to get involved with any wars,” I knew better. Part of being who and what I am means that things like this are never somebody else’s problem. In the end, they always wind up being mine.
“I’m going to find the Queen and bring her back,” I said. “You have my word, as a hero.”
“Good,” said Tia. Her gaze flicked to Tybalt. “You consort with cats, but Madden spoke well of you despite that.”
Tybalt raised an eyebrow. “How flattering of him,” he said, voice flat.
“And on that note, we’re out of here,” I said, taking Tybalt’s arm. “Quentin, you’re with me. Lowri, you have my number. Call if anything changes.”
“I will,” she said.
“Good.” I started for the door, pulling Tybalt along with me. He came without resistance, and Quentin followed close on our heels. That wasn’t what I’d been expecting to spend my night doing—I’d sort of been planning to go home and watch some television after we dealt with the Mauthe Doog—but that just goes to show that I shouldn’t allow myself to expect things. I’ll always wind up disappointed.
I paused in the clearing outside the knowe, sniffing the air to see whether I could pick up any traces of the person who had shoved Madden though the portal. There weren’t any. How long magic lingers depends on a lot of factors, including how powerful the spell was and how much time the person using the magic spent in the area. Whoever opened the portal for Madden had done it from a distance, and might never have set foot in this clearing in their life. They’d left me nothing to work with, and that just aggravated me further. I stormed onward, down the hill and into the park.
We were almost to the exit when Tybalt asked, “Did you intend to take the arrow and its associated message with you? I assumed you had, but as you now seem too angry to be rational, I thought it bore asking before we had gotten much further.”
I looked down at the parchment scroll and unbroken arrow still clutched in my left hand, and shook my head. “No, but now that I have them, I’m going to put them to good use,” I said. “Walther’s an alchemist, and if we’re on the verge of war, I’m not going to feel bad about drafting him. He may be able to extract something from these that will tell me more about who left them here, and since we have next to no information on Silences right now, that’s data we very much need.” Walther Davies was Tylwyth Teg, an alchemist, and a chemistry teacher. He’d been a big help to me more than once. He wasn’t as fond of charging headlong into danger as I was, but if I needed lab work done, he was more than happy to act as my private forensics department. In many ways, he was more useful than an actual forensics team could possibly have been. Human police don’t know how to look for magic.
Yes. A stop at Walther’s, or at least a phone call, was definitely in the cards, after we had managed to locate Arden and get her back to her own court. If we were going to war, we were going to have our Queen front and center.
“Silences plans to march upon us,” said Tybalt. “They used to be a Kingdom in the holding of the Tylwyth Teg. It’s entirely possible Walther has ties to the area, and has simply chosen never to discuss them.”
“I don’t know that I would have discussed them, given the way their current government came to power,” I said. The War of Silences was something I had only ever heard mentioned by the older fae, usually in hushed, haunted tones. “I’ve never been there. Given the reasons for the last war, it didn’t seem like a good place for someone like me to go for a vacation.”
“I know that Silences invaded the Mists, and I know that the current King was chosen by the false Queen after their old monarch was overthrown, but I thought it was just a territory dispute,” said Quentin, stepping around a large fern that had decided to overgrow the path. He frowned at me, looking honestly puzzled. “Why would that be a bad place for you to go?”
Much as I love Quentin, sometimes it was easy to forget that he was, and had always been, a pureblood. He didn’t understand what it had been like to be a changeling under the old Queen of the Mists, or what it was still like to be a changeling in most of the world. I took a breath and paused, trying to figure out how to explain things to him.
Tybalt saved me from needing to. “King Gilad was a good man, and one who understood that the changeling children of the Courts are still precisely that: our children. They belong to us, because we create them. While he lived, the Mists were a healthy place for changelings to live—unequal, because equality has never been a priority among the Divided Courts, but still, a place where those of mortal blood could thrive. When he died, his successor began to change that. Rapidly. She reversed all the gains that he had put in place, and quickly created the unhealthiest kingdom in North America for those among us with human blood in their veins.”
“So?” asked Quentin blankly.
“So it was the abuses of the rights of changelings that caused the old King of Silences to get pissed off and invade,” I said. “The dude who currently holds the throne was put there by the old Queen because he agreed with her, and since all their sitting nobility was taken out at the same time, you didn’t get any Duchies like Shadowed Hills, where the people in power said ‘it’s nice that you’re a bigot and all, but we’re going to keep doing what we’re doing, and we don’t care what you say.’ Silences is not a safe place for a changeling to be.”
“Oh,” said Quentin. He hesitated before saying, “That wasn’t part of the history lesson I got.”
“Changelings rarely are, even though we’ve been part of Faerie practically since the beginning,” I said. “Funny thing, that.” We had reached the edge of the woods while we reviewed the history of Silences. It was late enough that there was little to no chance of finding humans there, but I still paused when I saw a figure sitting on the hood of my car. For one giddy second I thought it might be Arden. Maybe she hadn’t run as far as I had feared; maybe she was going to give us our orders and then head back to her knowe to oversee whatever came next.
Then I took another step and realized that the figure, while female, had hair that was too pale and clothes that were far too informal. Tuatha de Dannan can teleport, but they can’t change their clothes magically, as a general rule. If Arden had cast an illusion to make her court clothes look less formal, the smell of her magic would have been filling the parking lot. All I could smell were redwoods, and the sea.
Tia slid off the hood as we drew closer. “I want to come with you,” she announced, without preamble.
“No,” I said.
“How did you get down here ahead of us?” asked Quentin.
“I didn’t have any bipeds to slow me down. A dog moves faster in dense wood than a man. Your cat could have done the same, if he’d been willing to leave you behind.” Tia’s attention swung back to me. “What do you mean, ‘no’? My brother will be asleep for a hundred years. I have the right to know what the woman who claims his fealty is going to do about it.”
“Yeah, you do, but you can wait until she’s back at home before you ask her,” I said. “Arden will be here. I don’t care if I have to carry her myself, she’ll be here.” Tuatha de Dannan are good at running away—something about them being capable of bending space—but slap a blindfold over their eyes and they’re as stuck as anyone else.