Once Broken Faith (October Daye #10)(50)

The members of the audience began to rise and head for the exit. I stayed where I was, watching them go, studying their posture and expressions as well as I could without staring. Some of them looked annoyed; others looked frightened, or pleased, or even amused. No one was so obviously murderous that I felt like I could point a finger and say: “there, that’s the one who did it.”

Duke Michel of Starfall attempted to approach the stage, and was stopped by two of Arden’s guards, who moved smoothly from the wings to stand in front of him. The spells that shared everyone’s words with the room must have been dispelled or put on hold by Arden’s farewell, because I couldn’t hear what he said, only see his frustration as he wasn’t allowed to get any closer to the people in charge. The rest of the delegation from his kingdom was leaving. Finally, frustrated, he turned and went after them.

Of the four people seated on the stage, only Siwan rose and left with the rest. Arden’s guards closed the door after the last of the audience was out. Arden herself held her position for a count of five, shoulders locked, chin up, the picture of a queen. Then she collapsed onto her throne, curling her knees against her chest and putting her hands over her face. “I need a drink,” she said, voice muffled by her hands. “And then I’m going to need a drink for my drink, so the first one doesn’t get lonely. Fuck it, just give me the bottle and walk away.”

“I think you’re doing very well,” said Maida, sounding amused. Her gaze went to me. She sobered, amusement fading. “Sir Daye. Would you come here, please?”

I’d been waiting for this summons. That didn’t mean I was happy to hear it. I stood, brushing off my pants like that could take the smell of blood away, and walked toward the stage. Quentin followed. Technically, he hadn’t been invited, but as my squire, the lack of an explicit “come alone” meant he was allowed to accompany me anywhere I went. He was supposed to be learning by watching what I did. Hard to do that from a distance, no matter how much I might sometimes wish otherwise.

Maida’s gaze flicked to Quentin. She wanted him here less than I did. I could understand that. She didn’t tell him to go. I could understand that, too, and I was grateful. Being his mother gave her no authority over him when he was acting as my squire. Being High Queen gave her plenty of authority—it just wouldn’t have been appropriate for her to exercise it.

“Did you tell the assembly everything you knew of King Robinson’s death?” she asked.

“Mostly,” I said.

Aethlin raised an eyebrow. “It’s amazing how you can find a response other than ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a question that shouldn’t be that complicated.”

“Nothing about this is uncomplicated,” I replied. “I told the assembly everything in broad strokes; I left out the details. King Robinson didn’t smell the magic of whoever attacked him, but he heard a sound like tin foil being ripped, and he felt a small amount of disorientation. I’m wondering if we have a teleporter playing silly games.”

“Tuatha de Dannan don’t make a sound when we open portals,” said Arden.

“No, and he didn’t feel cold or shortness of breath, which means he wasn’t pulled through the Shadow Roads,” I said. “That rules out the Cait Sidhe. I’m pretty sure he’d have noticed if it had been another Candela messing with him. How many types of teleporter are there in Faerie? Roughly?”

“No one knows,” said the Luidaeg. I glanced over my shoulder. She was still seated, slumped in her chair like the bored teenager she sometimes resembled. Her apparent age was as fluid as the rest of her. It was jarring how young she could look. “If all the descendant races were still out there, it would be dozens. But some of them have died out. Some have been slaughtered. I haven’t seen an actual Aarnivalkea in centuries. They were never that common to begin with. I think the Lampads are still around. Maybe. It’s hard to say.”

“Did no one ever think to keep track?”

The Luidaeg lifted her head and looked at me. Her face was young, but her eyes . . . those were very, very old. “We kept track of our own children, October. We did the best we could. Look how well that turned out for me.”

There was a momentary, uncomfortable silence. The Luidaeg wasn’t widely associated with a single descendant race, because most of her children and grandchildren were dead, killed by merlins who’d been armed by her sister. The Roane were on the verge of extinction. The Luidaeg, in her grief, had been holding herself apart from them for centuries.

Maybe keeping track wasn’t that easy after all.

I turned back to the waiting monarchs, all three of whom looked concerned, in that “I am in a room with an unhappy Firstborn” way, but none of whom looked like they understood. The Luidaeg’s status as mother of the Roane wasn’t commonly known. For the first time, it occurred to me that Quentin would be carrying an awful lot of secrets when he took the crown. Whether that would make him a better king was yet to be determined.

“So there are options for who could have been messing with him, if that was even what was happening,” I said. “How do you want me to proceed?”

“We have a king-killer among us,” said High King Aethlin gravely. “You’re known as a king-breaker. If we don’t want people to assume that you’ve escalated—which we don’t—you’ll need to find out who did this, and avenge King Robinson.”