Once Broken Faith (October Daye #10)(56)

“Of course.” My liege pushed past me and plunged into the pond, heedless of what that would do to his clothes.

I lifted my eyes, not wanting to watch him wrangle Dianda’s motionless body out of the weeds, and found Patrick standing on the other side of the pond, his own eyes fixed bleakly on the water. “Patrick,” I said. “What happened?”

“I don’t . . . I . . .” He looked up. He looked so lost, like this was one of those situations he’d never even allowed himself to consider, out of fear that thinking it might somehow make it true. “We met here. For the first time, I mean, back when Gilad was King and she was about to become Duchess of Saltmist. We ran away from this fancy banquet in her honor and ate cake in the kitchen. I thought it would be nice, romantic, even, if I brought her some cake, since we’re here again. So I left her alone. I left her alone for ten minutes. No more.”

And when he’d returned, she had been lying elf-shot at the bottom of the pond. I glanced around the room, finding the plate of cake where it had fallen a few feet from the door. That explained the faint scent of chocolate in the air—it was possible we were dealing with someone whose magic smelled of chocolate, of course, but that was unlikely enough that I didn’t need to focus on it. Not until we’d run through all other options.

I looked back to Patrick. “Can she drown?”

It wasn’t as odd a question as it seemed. Of Patrick and Dianda’s two sons, only the younger had inherited his mother’s ability to breathe water. Dean could drown, despite being a mermaid’s son. To my great relief, Patrick shook his head and said, “Not in her natural form. I think . . . I think if she’d been on legs and been pushed into the water, it might be different, but she was relaxing when I left to get the cake. That’s why she didn’t go with me. She didn’t want to put her feet back on.”

There was a splash, followed by a wet, meaty smacking sound. I turned back to the water. Sylvester had hauled Dianda out, her tail hitting against the bricks as he dragged her to dry ground. I grabbed her flukes, lifting them before too much damage could be done to the delicate scales marking the transition between flesh and fin. Dianda wasn’t going to thank us if she woke to find her tail damaged.

“Is there a bed?” I asked, hoisting my portion of unconscious mermaid. Quentin moved to support her midsection, and between the three of us, we were able to lift her with relative ease, keeping Patrick from needing to get involved. There were a lot of things I was happy to ask him to do. Carrying his elf-shot wife wasn’t on the list.

“Yes,” he said. “This way.” White-faced and shaking, he turned and led us across the room to a latticework door. It was more like a screen than anything else: he pushed it aside to reveal a covered balcony, open to the night air on three sides, with a large canopied bed at the center. The bedposts were carved into blackberry vines rich with fruit, and the bedclothes were the rich purple and fragile lilac of the berries and flowers that normally accompanied the vines.

“Sometimes I really admire Arden’s commitment to her theme,” I commented, as we carried Dianda over to the bed. There was a shrill note to my voice, like part of me knew I was whistling past the graveyard, and still couldn’t stop. Dianda was my friend. Maybe more importantly . . . this really looked like a declaration of war.

We slid her onto the mattress. Patrick leaned over to brush her wet hair away from her face, grimacing. He didn’t say anything, but I knew a small part of what he was thinking. When Merrow transformed from fin to flesh, they magically became dry at the same time. He’d probably never seen her with a pillow under her head and water in her hair. In that moment, she could have been dead.

As if he’d read my mind, he said, “Di loves pillows. She sleeps with me in the bed as often as she can, just because she enjoys having something under her head that isn’t a mossy rock. Linens don’t do so well when you submerge them.”

“Sandbags?” suggested Quentin.

Patrick flashed him a surprised look. Then he smiled, the expression tinged with worry and sorrow. “Those work, too. I . . .” His gaze went to the arrow protruding from Dianda’s shoulder. “Should we be taking this out of her?”

“Not yet,” I said. “She can’t get more elf-shot than she already is, and if we leave it there, we don’t have to worry that she’ll start bleeding. Quentin, I have a job for you.”

My squire straightened. “What is it?”

“Go find Arden. Don’t be seen.”

He nodded, catching my meaning immediately, and turned to head out of the room at a brisk pace. Sylvester and Patrick both looked at me, the one quizzical, the other alarmed.

“How much time has he spent in this knowe?” asked Sylvester.

“Is it safe for him to go off alone?” asked Patrick.

“Quentin was a courtier at Shadowed Hills before becoming my squire,” I said, picking up Dianda’s left wrist and studying her webbed hand. Her fingertips were scraped, ever so slightly. She must have been clinging to the pool’s edge when she was shot, and fallen backward into the water as the elf-shot took effect. “He knows how to navigate servants’ halls. If there’s anyone who can get through this place without attracting any attention to himself, it’s Quentin.”

“Can we wake her up?” asked Patrick.