Master Davies looked at the portal with dismay. Like Cassandra, he couldn’t believe this was happening to him. Unlike Cassandra, he’d been raised in a royal household, and knew better than to express his displeasure aloud.
Belatedly, I realized I didn’t remember his first name. I was already falling into the habits of queenship. And if it got me my brother back, I didn’t care.
“After you,” I said.
Master Davies paused to pick up the valise containing his alchemical supplies before stepping through the portal. Cassandra exhaled when she saw him appear on the other side, casting one last, anxious glance at my face before following him through. I went after her, and the portal closed behind me.
The servants had been here recently. The hallway smelled of wood polish and fresh blackberry flowers. Master Davies shoved his hands into his pockets and released his human disguise, adding the scents of ice and yarrow to the mixture. Mostly yarrow. He didn’t remove his glasses. I knew they were cosmetic, but they seemed to be making him feel better, and I didn’t want to push it. I was already pushing him hard enough.
Cassandra, in contrast, was looking around with open-mouthed amazement. She reached up to push her hair behind her ears, releasing her illusions in the same gesture; they dissolved in a wash of grapefruit and turpentine, revealing the tufts of black-and-brown fur crowning her dully pointed ears. I frowned. I’d never seen ears like that anywhere in Faerie, and while I might have forgotten many of the points of queenly etiquette, I’ll never forget the nights I spent with Marianne, her calm, steady voice drilling me on the things I’d need to know to recognize all the denizens of our vast and varied land. Whatever her heritage was, I didn’t know it.
Master Davies cleared his throat. “Your Highness? Where is your brother?”
“This way,” I said, and pulled my regard away from Cassandra’s ears as I turned.
The room where Nolan slept was a short distance down the hall. The lock was open; the knob turned easily under my hand. I pushed the door open and stepped aside, letting Master Davies get a look at his patient.
Nolan was exactly where I’d left him. His chest rose and fell with more vigor than was normal for a victim of elf-shot, but that was the only indication that the cure had been administered; from the way he was lying there, he might as well have still been under the original spell.
“Your Highness.” Master Davies’ voice snapped me out of my contemplation of my brother. I turned to him. He looked at me gravely. “I need a sample of your brother’s blood to determine what’s happening. Is this going to distress you? Do I need to ask you to leave the room? I will.”
He had that authority. Alchemists and healers could command monarchs in the course of treating their patients. It was a small twist in the archaic rules that bound us all, intended to protect our healers from the wrath of people like me. I stared at him, not sure whether I should be grateful that he was worried about my delicate sensibilities, or whether I should start screaming and never stop.
I settled for neither. “I worked in retail during the holiday season, and I’ve met October more than once,” I said, barely managing to keep myself from snarling. “I can handle a little blood.”
“Even when it’s your brother’s? I don’t want to fight with you, Highness, or find myself banished because you don’t like what I have to do in order to do my job.”
I took a deep breath. That didn’t do much to make me feel better. I took another one. Finally feeling calm enough to speak without yelling, I said, “I’m staying. You have my word that nothing you do in the course of helping my brother will be held against you.”
“Heard and witnessed,” said Cassandra. I glanced at her, surprised. She shrugged. “You pick things up.”
“I guess you do,” I said.
Master Davies moved toward the head of Nolan’s bed, pausing to put his valise down on the bedside table and begin rummaging through it. His hands seemed to dip deeper than the bottom of the bag. That was an easy charm, for some fae; treat the leather, spell the stitches, and produce something that was bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. Like a TARDIS doing double-duty as a book bag.
He produced an antique silver scalpel and a glass bowl barely larger than the tip of his thumb. After glancing nervously in my direction, he bent and nicked the side of Nolan’s jaw. It was a clever place to conceal a cut; if not for the fact that Nolan hadn’t needed to shave in eighty years, it could have passed for part of his normal morning routine.
The cut wasn’t deep, but it was enough. A few drops of blood welled up. Master Davies used the blunt side of the scalpel to direct them into the dish. Straightening, he put the scalpel down next to his valise and waved his hand over the blood, chanting something quick and sharp in a language I thought was probably Welsh. The smell of his magic rose again, stronger than before, chilling the room by several degrees. I shivered. Cassandra didn’t. She was staring at the air above the blood, eyes slightly unfocused, like she was looking at something I couldn’t see.
I frowned. Something was wrong here. Something was—
“Oh, oak and ash.” Master Davies’ voice was hushed. My head snapped around, attention going back to him. He was pinching the bridge of his nose with his free hand, the smell of ice and yarrow hanging heavy in the air. He looked like a man defeated.
And Nolan was still asleep.
“Master Davies?” I had to fight to keep my tone level. I nearly lost the battle. “What is it?”
“The elf-shot—” he began, and stopped, thinking better of whatever he’d been about to say. Carefully, he put the dish containing my brother’s blood down next to the scalpel and turned to face me, folding his hands behind his back. “Your Highness, the cure I developed was intended to treat elf-shot. Do you understand what that means?”
Irritation washed through me like acid. “It means my brother is supposed to wake up.”
“Yes, it does. But more, it means that I was able, with the assistance of Sir Daye, to brew a tincture specifically designed to counter a sleeping charm developed by Eira Rosynhwyr.”
“I know that,” I snapped. “You tested Nolan’s blood before, to make sure he’d been hit with a variation of the charm that your cure could fight.”
“And he was, and it did,” said Master Davies. “The problem is . . . people have been tinkering with the recipe for elf-shot since it was created. Some of them were trying to make it kinder. Others were trying to make it worse. Do you know who brewed the elf-shot that felled your brother?”
“I wasn’t exactly in a position to ask when it happened,” I said.
“Yes, of course. My apologies.” He took a deep breath. “The elf-shot itself was a standard recipe. As close to generic as you can get without changing the way it works. But it was hiding a secondary charm, something related, yet not the same.”
“A second sleeping spell?” I asked, aghast. “Can you do that?”
“Could I do that? Absolutely. It would be child’s play. Elf-shot is so dominant in the blood while it’s active that it can be used to hide all manner of things. The alchemist who brewed this spell tucked it behind the elf-shot, and keyed it to consciousness. The second spell might as well not have existed until your brother woke.”
This time, despair washed through me, chasing away the irritation. “So he’s going to sleep for another hundred years, or until you find another cure?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Master Davies. “This isn’t elf-shot, which—cruel as it is—comes with certain protections. Someone who’s been elf-shot doesn’t need to eat or drink. They don’t even really need to breathe. Elf-shot in its purest form was designed not to break the Law.”