Page 4 of Be the Serpent

The arrival chamber led into a long hallway paneled in carved friezes showing important moments from the Kingdom’s history. They change depending on the mood of the knowe. Today they were showing a lot of Court scenes, including the trial where the false former Queen of the Mists sentenced me to death. Not my finest moment.

I didn’t recognize a lot of the others, but I’ve never made a practice of studying the history of formal Court in our Kingdom. As we approached the door to Arden’s receiving room, the mystery of where Lowri was received an answer: she was right outside, polearm held to block the door.

“Halt,” she said. “Who goes there?”

The temptation to say something snarky was strong. Tybalt cleared his throat and looked at me semi-sternly, making it clear that this wasn’t the time. Party pooper. With a sigh, I said, “Sir October Daye, Knight of Lost Words, and Squire, Quentin.”

“No title yet,” said Quentin.

“King Tybalt of the Court of Dreaming Cats, and Heir, Rajiv,” said Tybalt.

“Prince of Cats,” drawled Raj.

As our wards, the boys didn’t get to introduce themselves. May, however, was an adult and expected to present herself. She smiled serenely at Lowri. “I was a member of this Court when last I entered this room on formal grounds, and I stood before your King Windermere as one of his charmaids, well known and well beloved. They call me May Daye now, and you would do well to let us in.”

Lowri paled. “You don’t have to go being all terrifying and Fetchy about it,” she grumbled, raising her polearm so we could go inside. “You may pass.”

“You started it,” said May, with her usual sunny smile. I ignored her, shooting Lowri an apologetic look as I moved to push the door open.

I’d been hoping since this was an early Court—it was barely two o’clock in the afternoon and we were already getting started, making this the fae equivalent of a six a.m. traffic court appointment—we’d have the room mostly to ourselves. Just us, the accused, and the witnesses for both sides.

No such luck. I opened the doors on a zoo.

Not quite literally. Faerie has its share of what Chelsea sometimes calls “petting-zoo people,” normally right after Raj has stolen the toppings off her slice of pizza and she’s getting ready to beat him with a pillow, but that doesn’t make us animals. Still, the room was filled almost to capacity, bodies crowding both sides. I paused in the doorway, proceeding forward only when Tybalt placed a hand at the small of my back and pushed me along ahead of him, guiding us toward an open space in front of the dais holding Arden’s throne.

As our sole Queen, she sat alone, a tall, beautiful woman with long purple-black hair pulled over one shoulder and styled with an artful twist of silver blackberry briars whose thorns looked as sharp as the real thing. They echoed the silver brambles embroidered into the purple-black velvet of her dress, wrapped around and entangling her until she looked as much statuary as sovereign. She turned her attention to me as we entered, mismatched metallic gaze implacable and unwavering.

“We’re not late, are we?” I murmured.

The question was intended only for Tybalt, but the enchantments meant to carry the words of today’s witnesses were already in place, and had apparently targeted me as soon as I stepped inside: they picked up my words and flung them around the room, filling the space with my anxiety.

Arden’s expression softened. “No, Sir Daye, you’re right on time,” she said. “My apologies. A formal Court is an overwhelming thing, and as you have just returned from your marriage journeys, it may be more than you were expecting.”

I had a deeply antagonistic relationship with our former Queen. Thus far, I’ve managed to stay on mostly good terms with Arden. I reminded myself of that as I pulled away from Tybalt and strolled toward the open space that had been so clearly left for me. The rest of my group moved to join the crowd. Impossible as it seemed, given everything, this didn’t directly concern them.

Oh, indirectly, it concerned them from fifty different directions at once, but in the immediate “were you there, do you have to testify” sense, nope. I was on the hot seat alone for this one.

Arden watched me, evident sympathy in her eyes, but didn’t speak again until I stopped before her throne and bowed. Proper courtly etiquette is one of the few lessons I learned from my mother that hasn’t turned out to be some sort of nasty trick designed to eventually screw me. I may be crass, but I can bow with the best of them, holding my back perfectly straight and my right leg extended just so, until Arden said, with warm sincerity, “You may rise, Sir Daye.”

I rose.

Her throne was the only one on the high dais, but she wasn’t entirely alone. A second, smaller throne sat on the tier below hers, slightly behind and to the right. Her brother, Crown Prince Nolan, was seated there, wearing a doublet that matched her dress, a coronet on his purple-black hair and an expression of vague perplexity on his face. He’d been asleep when all this was going down, and it had to have felt a little bit like someone trying to recount the plot of a movie he hadn’t seen, then expecting him to follow the sequel.

On her left were two ornate chairs that very distinctly were not thrones, one occupied by a man whose platinum hair was streaked with bloody red, the other by a woman whose long, straight hair started dirty blonde at the roots and darkened as it went on, leaving her ticked like a tabby’s coat, with black taking over the last six or so inches. Matching tufts of fur topped her ears. She looked almost more feline than Tybalt, which I’ve always found somewhat humorous when I stopped to think about it. She snuck me a little wave, and I cast a smile her way. Madden, the Queen’s Seneschal, and Cassandra, both the Queen’s Chatelaine and my honorary niece.

Arden didn’t have a large Court yet. She hadn’t had the time to assemble it, having held her father’s throne for just under three years. In pureblood society, that’s barely the blinking of an eye. But she did all right with what she had, and since she mostly didn’t grow up in Faerie—when the false Queen seized the throne, she sent Arden into exile in the human world, where she’d been a bookstore clerk for decades—it was pretty impressive how quickly she’d adjusted.

The rest of the crowd made up for the sparseness of the dais. One side of the room was occupied by what looked like the entire population of Shadowed Hills, including my liege, Duke Sylvester Torquill, and his wife, Luna, who was glaring daggers at me across the space between us. I didn’t quite understand why. Luna isn’t my biggest fan these days, but I’d promised to speak in Raysel’s favor, had already done so once, and was planning to do the same today. There was no way Luna knew what else I was planning to do. If she had, she would already have been attacking me.

The other side of the room was packed with denizens of the Undersea. What looked like most of Saltmist was there, as were the Roane who had formerly been the Selkies of Half-Moon Bay. Duchess Dianda of Saltmist stood toward the front of the group, in a long blue dress that reflected all the colors of her more customary fins and scales, with her oldest son by her side. Neither her husbands nor her younger son were in evidence. That was too bad, even if it made sense—Peter couldn’t hold a two-legged shape long without aid, and it wasn’t comfortable or easy for him even when he had the help he needed to get there. I still wasn’t sure how he’d been able to attend my wedding. And I wouldn’t have come either, if I’d been Simon, knowing what this Court was intended to resolve. I’d still been looking forward to seeing them, and maybe talking Simon into coming back to the City for a burrito after all this was concluded. Even if things dragged out all beyond reason, we should be done before dinner.

I focused on Arden, taking a deep breath. She inclined her head.

“You may speak,” she said.

“Forgive me, Your Majesty, but are we ready to begin? This is a little more formal and a little less catastrophic than I’m used to, and I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to be doing here . . . ” A light titter ran through both sides of the room, more pronounced on the Undersea side. I didn’t flinch. Not knowing all the rules of this sort of thing means getting it wrong sometimes.

It had taken me a long time to realize, but the manners and etiquette my mother drilled into me weren’t designed to make me a productive member of Court. She didn’t teach me diplomacy, or how to organize a wedding, or what questions I could ask a Queen. She taught me to curtsey and demur, lessons I converted to bowing and demanding basically the day I got my title. If she couldn’t keep me away from Faerie completely, she’d been preparing me to be a servant.