Once Broken Faith (October Daye #10)(57)
The longing in his voice was so nakedly pure that I froze, allowing several seconds to tick past before I looked up, met his eyes, and said softly, “You know I can’t answer that.”
“We have a cure. It’s here, in this knowe. No one knows she’s been shot. Please, can’t we just . . . wake her?”
“No,” said Sylvester. We both turned to him. He looked at Patrick as he said, “Someone knows she’s been shot: whoever shot her. There are landlocked kingdoms represented at this conclave, people for whom the threat of the Undersea means nothing, because the Undersea could never touch them. Any one of them could have decided to make their point by targeting someone who couldn’t deliver direct retribution—the Law never forbids elf-shot, just cautions that there will always be consequences. Wake her, and whoever shot her can stand before the conclave and announce that the Mists intends to use the cure, no matter what decision is reached.”
“We’re talking about my wife, dammit,” snapped Patrick. “This isn’t one of your idealistic stories about chivalry and heroes. This is my wife. Do you think I give a damn about politics?”
“You never have before,” said Sylvester. “Simon despaired of you ever making anything of yourself.”
Patrick’s expression turned to ice. “Never say his name to me again,” he said. His voice was, if anything, colder than his eyes. “I was more of a brother to him than you ever attempted to be. Do what you like, but be aware that we’re not—will never be—friends.”
“Believe me, I’ve known that for a very long time,” said Sylvester. He turned to me, and said, “I’m reasonably sure Duke Lorden would be happier if I left. Will you be safe with him? Is there anything I can do for you?”
“If you see Madden, ask him to come here.” Madden worked for the Queen. Assuming he wasn’t involved wasn’t just allowed, it was practically required. But as a Cu Sidhe, he had an unbeatable sense of smell, and might be able to tell me who’d been in this room.
Sylvester nodded. “I will.”
“Great. Don’t get shot.” I turned my back on my liege, effectively dismissing him, and focused on Patrick. “We can take the arrow out when Quentin gets back with Arden. That gives us enough warm bodies that we should be able to stop the bleeding long enough to call for a medic. I don’t want to volunteer to ride Dianda’s blood—I don’t know what the elf-shot would do to me, and I’m sure there are things she doesn’t want me to know—but there may be another way, if we wait a few hours.” Once Karen was asleep, she could enter Dianda’s sleeping mind and ask if she’d seen the shooter. It was a clunky solution, one which relied on a teenage oneiromancer being able to reliably repeat what she learned from a comatose mermaid, but it was better than Dianda kicking my teeth in after she’d decided that I knew too much.
“We have to wake her up,” said Patrick. “If we don’t . . . Peter isn’t ready to be Duke. I can’t be Duke. I’ve only ever been ducal consort because there was never any question of my taking over if something happened to her. The Undersea won’t submit to rule by an air-breather. They have standards. If Dianda sleeps for a hundred years, the entire political shape of Saltmist changes. And by the standards of the culture that shaped her, Dianda is a pacifist.”
I stared at him. I couldn’t help myself. Dianda was a good friend and a better ally, but her solution to almost every problem was blunt-force trauma. “Oh,” I said. “Crap.”
“Yes.” He looked toward the door and then back to me. “Sylvester is gone. You can ask, if you like. I saw the expression on your face when I started ripping into him.”
“Um, yeah. You two were . . . friends?”
“Only if the lobster is a friend to the tuna—which is to say, we moved in very different circles,” said Patrick. “Sylvester was a Duke and a settled man when I met him. Dedicated to his wife, to his people, and to the idea that his brother was a fainting flower who needed to be protected. As I said before, I was more brother to Simon than he could ever have been.”
Something about the way he said that . . . “So you’re another of the people who didn’t think I needed to know that Simon was married to my mother.”
“I’ll be honest: I never cared much for Amandine, who always seemed to view the world as an amusement staged just for her. August was a sweet girl, but after she disappeared, your mother stopped caring about anything, including her husband. The Simon I knew died a long time ago. The man he became . . . I could see the bones of my friend in him. That was all. Nothing more, and sadly, nothing less.”
I wanted to yell at him, to make sure he understood that I was done with people keeping secrets from me. I didn’t say anything. His wife was asleep, maybe for a hundred years, and his world was crumbling. The best thing I could do for him—for both of them—was to be quiet, and wait for help to come, and do whatever was required of me. We had a cure. We had a chance. All we had to do now was convince the world to let us use it.
TWELVE
PATRICK AND ARDEN WERE having a discussion, which really meant they were shouting at each other. If I’d taken that tone with a Queen, even one who was reasonably fond of me, I would’ve been waiting for the hammer to drop. Either Patrick didn’t care, or he was confident that his status as a citizen of the Undersea would protect him from anything Arden wanted to do. So he yelled, and she yelled back for the sake of making herself heard, and I stood next to the pond, feeling awkward and trying to find something that could help us. Quentin stood nearby, watching me, ready to do whatever I asked of him. I appreciated that.