Once Broken Faith (October Daye #10)(102)
Or would they? I didn’t know how long I’d been trapped in that fairy ring. I didn’t know, and now two of the people I loved could be in that tower, alone with a woman who thought nothing of killing as long as her own hands remained technically, dishonestly clean. My ankle was damaged enough to make the stairs difficult. I ran through the pain, feeling things shift and straighten within the confines of my skin as my body adjusted.
Sometimes I think the true power of what I inherited from my mother is the ability to keep running, no matter how badly it hurts.
The stairs ended at another door. This one was closed. I tried the knob. It was also locked. Verona had anticipated someone following her. Not enough to have set a fairy ring on the threshold, which is what I would have done: I would have made sure anyone who thought they could interfere with my plans wound up a frozen, helpless bystander. Either she was cocky or she was scared. Either way, I needed to get into that room.
Swords are not good lock picks. My earrings were silver; too soft to work the tumblers in a door this size, even if I could twist them into the right shape. I cast around for something else I could use, pausing when I saw the banister. Like everything else in the knowe that wasn’t made of stone, it was polished redwood, enchanted to remain smooth and snag free.
“We’ll see about that,” I muttered, and retreated a few steps down the stairs, trying to put some distance between me and the door. It was a foolish to hope that I might be able to go unheard, but it was all I had at this point, and I was going to hold on to it.
The banister was sturdy. My first blow with the sword didn’t even scratch the wood, and the recoil was enough to send me staggering back a step. Not the safest thing ever, with me near the top of a long stairway. I didn’t want to climb back up, and so I kept my second swing more controlled, hitting the banister harder. This time, the blade bit in, just a little. So I swung again and again, chipping away at the wood until it gave way, shattering along the cut I had made. I kicked the broken spot, and kept kicking, breaking off a chunk of banister about the length of my forearm.
“Arden needs to give me a damn skeleton key,” I muttered, and settled to breaking down the chunk still further, until I had a handful of skewers. Wooden lock picks aren’t my favorite, but they’re better than nothing. I shoved the sword into its scabbard and walked back up the stairs. The door was still closed. That was actually a bit of a relief. Maybe Verona hadn’t heard me after all.
She’d hear me soon. I crouched in front of the door, inserting the tips of two of my skewers into the lock and beginning to work. Everything else fell away, replaced by the calm simplicity of the tumblers and the way they interacted with my makeshift lock picks. Devin had always called me a natural where breaking and entering was concerned, and while I might not be proud of my roots, that didn’t mean I was going to reject the skills they’d given me. Better to be a respectable detective who could pick a lock than one who stood helplessly outside a locked door, refusing to do something I was fully capable of.
Morality, like everything else, is often a matter of which side of the situation you’re standing on.
The tumblers clicked open. I left my skewers in place as I drew my sword. Then I reached up, grasped the knob, and turned it. There was no point in hiding the evidence that I’d been here when I was about to show up in person.
Verona was standing near the window shouting at Minna. Minna was shouting back. They were too wrapped up in their private drama to have noticed me, and so I risked a glance around the room, trying to get a feel for what had gone on in here.
Too many of the biers were occupied. I blinked, bringing them into focus, and swallowed a gasp. Quentin and Walther were both there, the one crumpled like a discarded rag, the other stretched out like a king in state. They were asleep, their chests rising and falling with drugged slowness. Elf-shot. They’d been elf-shot. They wouldn’t rejoin the land of the living for a hundred years, or until the cure was administered—and Walther was the one who knew how to make the cure.
I had a moment of sickening terror before I remembered that Siwan could almost certainly recreate Walther’s work, even if he wasn’t awake to help her with the potion. Assuming the conclave went well, they’d be awake sooner rather than later.
Nolan and Duke Michel were on their biers, where I’d expected them to be. Dianda’s bier had been replaced by a shallow trough of water, with her lying at the bottom like a drowned maiden. It was a disappointment but not a real shock to see Tybalt lying on Dianda’s other side. The fairy ring had kept me in place long enough for Arden to move him to a place of supposed safety, and now here we were, all in danger together, one more time.
Jin wasn’t here. Either she’d been somewhere else, or she’d managed to get away. That gave me a small amount of hope. We might be able to survive this. I turned back to Verona and Minna. They still hadn’t noticed me. That was about to change.
“In the name of Queen Arden Windermere in the Mists, High King Aethlin Sollys, High Queen Maida Sollys, and a bunch more nobles who’d like you to cut this shit out, you are under arrest,” I said, as clearly and coherently as I could. The urge to charge in and start swinging was strong. Surely I couldn’t be charged with violation of the Law if the decapitation was accidental.
Verona and Minna stopped shouting at each other and turned to stare at me in wide-eyed disbelief, briefly united by their surprise. Verona found her voice first. “You,” she said. “How are you here? We left you prisoned in a circle. You can’t have followed us.”