Page 67 of Once Broken Faith

“I need a sword. Mine’s in the trunk of my car, and I can’t go outside like this.” Even if I hadn’t been covered in blood, I couldn’t afford to waste the time.

“Take mine.” The voice was Sylvester’s. I turned. He had unstrapped the scabbard from around his waist, and was offering it to me. I raised my eyebrows, and he said, “You couldn’t come armed because the nobility might take offense. The outside nobles couldn’t come armed because it would have been a declaration of war. I live here. This is my home. I’ll die here. No one, not even my queen, can tell me not to carry my father’s sword.”

“Fine,” I said, and reached out to snatch the scabbard from him. It was difficult to get the belt to fasten around my waist. Not only was I substantially thinner than he was, but my hands were so thick with blood that my fingers kept slipping and sticking as I fumbled with the buckle. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except finding the person who’d hurt Tybalt, and making them understand that they’d made a mistake. A huge mistake. Maybe the last mistake they would ever make.

I looked to Arden. Aethlin and Maida flanked her, one on either side, like they could catch their newest vassal if she fell. Maida’s cheeks were flushed, and Aethlin kept stealing glances at the blood covering the floor. They looked like alcoholics trying to choose between an AA meeting and a bender. I was willing to bet I could find the same look on every Daoine Sidhe in the room. Blood held power, and secrets, and the blood of a King of Cats was a rare treat.

“Don’t let anyone touch his blood,” I said, voice cold and angry. “He has a right to his privacy.” I’d seen too much, and I was probably closer to him than anyone else in the world. No, not probably: I’d seen his ghosts. I was the last one he loved enough to share them with.

“I won’t,” said Aethlin. “He’ll be looked after.”

“Good.” I let my eyes shift to Tybalt. They would move him soon, clean him up, and consign him to that quiet attic room where the sleepers lay, waiting for their wakeup calls to come. A day or a hundred years, it wouldn’t matter; he’d sleep through them all the same, not dying, but not getting any better, either, not without outside help. Jin would know what to do, how to put him back together. She would make sure that he lived, and when he woke up, I would be here waiting for him. Whether that wait was at the expense of my thinning humanity would be determined by what the gathered kings and queens of North America decided about the cure. If they decided not to use it . . .

Raj was going to be very surprised to learn that he was King now.

This stake wasn’t quite like the one that had hit me: it was more like a thick spear, designed for throwing. It had hit Tybalt in the chest while he was seated, and it had gone in squarely, not at an angle. That implied a hard throw from nearby. I moved to stand behind his seat, crouching and narrowing my eyes. There was no table behind us; it was a clear walkway, intended to leave room for the servants who were working the dinner. I straightened and walked around the table, stopping when I was on the opposite side from Tybalt’s place. I looked back once, aligning myself, before beginning slowly forward, my eyes trained firmly on the ground.

Here was where the Luidaeg had walked to her own seat. Here was where the servants had passed. And here . . . I crouched down.

There wasn’t much to see. If not for the perfectly polished wood of the floor, there wouldn’t have been anything. But Arden’s staff had cleaned this place so well that I could have eaten off any surface that struck my fancy, and that made the thin streaks where someone had drawn a circle of marshwater and mold all too visible. Those marks would have been scuffed away by feet or washed away by a charmaid if everything had gone as planned, leaving the spell unremarked.

I dropped to my knees, getting my nose as close to the floor as I could and breathing in deep. There was nothing there for me to latch onto, no trace of magic to follow back to its source. Despair flooded over me. I was never going to find the attacker. Tybalt was asleep, and we were all still in danger, and there was nothing I could do about it.

“Oak and ash, October, think,” I muttered, still staring at the streaks on the floor. This wasn’t a time for self-pity. This was a time for solutions. How did I usually solve something that seemed impossible?

With blood, or by asking for help. Well, blood had already done everything it could. That meant it was time to try another way. I sat up straighter, looking over my shoulder to the crowd. “Quentin, find Madden,” I said. “I need him.”

Quentin nodded and disappeared into the crowd. I turned back to the circle on the floor, trying to tease what information I could out of it. The streaky lines were thin, and the circle itself was no more than a foot and a half in diameter; it couldn’t have held someone much larger than I was, and I wasn’t sure it could have held me comfortably. We were looking for someone small but strong, capable of slinging a rosewood spear hard enough to pierce bone. There were races in Faerie who had that sort of intrinsic strength. They were dangerous as all hell. That eliminated about half the conclave, though. The centaur King of Copper couldn’t have fit inside the circle. The Candela from Angels who remained couldn’t have thrown the spear. There were answers to be found, if I took the time, and looked for them.

Trolls were that strong. Trolls, and Goblins, and Huldra, and Barrow Wights. Barrow Wights . . .

The sound of footsteps demanded my attention. I raised my head to find Madden and Quentin next to me, carefully out of arm’s reach. I straightened, pointing to the circle.

“Madden, I need you to find the person who drew this. Please.” I was starting to have suspicions. I needed them confirmed.

The burly Cu Sidhe looked surprised for only a second. Then he nodded and folded in on himself, the air shimmering for an instant before the man was gone, replaced by a white-furred, red-eared dog. Madden pressed his nose against the floor, sniffing. His ears pricked forward. He barked once, sharply, raising his head and looking to me.

“Good,” I said softly. “Fetch.”

Madden took off running. I followed close behind.

NINETEEN

MADDEN AND I WERE out of the dining room and running down the hall before I realized that Quentin was running next to me. I couldn’t glare at him without stopping or losing my step, so I contented myself with shooting him a sharp sidelong look.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded.

“Being a good squire,” he said. There was a stubborn note in his voice that seemed first incongruous, and then so familiar that I could have laughed, if it wouldn’t have made me start crying. He sounded like me. He sounded exactly like me.

“Just don’t get yourself killed,” I said, and kept running, following Madden’s lead.

The halls weren’t empty. Members of Arden’s staff were moving here and there, carrying linens or trays from one room to another. Maintenance was always a challenge in a knowe this size, and having this many people in residence, however temporarily, made the job harder. Some of these people probably hadn’t slept in days, and wouldn’t until the conclave ended. They moved aside when they saw Madden coming, and stayed pressed against the walls as we passed. Madden paid them no real mind, and so I didn’t either. We were trusting in his nose right now, and if I started to question it, we would have nothing. Better to follow this lead than to harass some poor, confused kitchen staffer who just wanted to get the dishes put away.

We ran until we reached a closed door. Madden stopped there, barking. I stepped past him and tugged on the handle, revealing the stairs on the other side. Madden took off immediately, rushing past me, onward and upward. I followed him, and Quentin followed me, and there was nothing in the world but running. It was almost nice. While we were in pursuit, I didn’t have to think about the past or the future, what had happened or what was to come. I only needed to think about where I was going, about making sure my feet hit the steps and not the empty air. If I fell, I’d get back up again, but we would lose time, and time was something we didn’t have to spare.

The stairs ended in another door. Here, Madden stopped, but didn’t bark; instead, he pawed at the landing, blunt claws making a faint scraping noise. He followed the motion with an expectant look from me to the door and back again. I didn’t have to be a genius to know what he wanted. I turned to Quentin, making a wholly unnecessary shushing motion, and reached for the door handle.

It wasn’t locked. I pushed the door gently open, revealing a guest parlor. It looked similar to the main room of Patrick and Dianda’s suite, save for the absence of a pond in the middle of the floor. Which made sense: a pond was the sort of feature most people would find more inconvenient and perplexing than anything else. The furniture was all redwood and purple velvet, and the open windows looked out on the high forest. There were no people in evidence.