Once Broken Faith (October Daye #10)(58)
I would have appreciated a break in the shouting even more, but you can’t always get what you want in this world, or any other.
My two big investigative advantages were blood and magic. The untainted blood from Dianda’s injury would have been scant enough to hold only a few memories, but since those memories would probably have included the face of the person who’d put the arrow in her shoulder, that would have been enough for me. Unfortunately, the shot had knocked her into the pond, and the water had carried any traces of blood away. Even if I’d been willing to drink what was effectively someone else’s bathwater, I wasn’t my mother; the blood would have been too diluted to be of any use. I’d just get a mouthful of dead skin and whatever nasty things were coexisting with those water weeds.
The blood from her wound wasn’t safe. It was tainted by the elf-shot. Even if I wanted to invade her privacy that way, I couldn’t do it without risking an unplanned nap.
Magic was a better target. Everyone in Faerie has a unique magical signature, and almost everyone can smell a fresh spell or casting. Historically, I’ve vastly underestimated how sensitive my own nose is to that sort of thing: magic is a function of the blood, I’m Dóchas Sidhe, and I can detect traces most people wouldn’t even realize were there. Arden hadn’t gated herself into the room, preferring to accompany Quentin on foot, so I didn’t need to worry about her blackberry and redwood signature overwriting something more subtle.
I didn’t need to worry about any of us overwriting anything. No matter how hard I focused, closing my eyes and pacing around the room, I found no unfamiliar magical traces. There were hints of amber and water lilies around the pool; Dianda’s magic, which rose when she transformed. She must have been on two legs when she got into the water, before putting her fins back on to relax.
I was on my third circuit of the room when I stopped, sniffing the air, and opened my eyes. There was a trace of something unfamiliar, something I’d never detected before. It wasn’t Dianda or Arden, but they weren’t the only people in the room. Turning on my heel, I strode back toward the sleeping area, where the shouting showed no signs of stopping any time soon.
Patrick and Arden didn’t seem to notice me there, continuing to argue too fast and too loud for me to get more than a general impression of anger on his part and frustration on hers. Finally, when it became clear that they weren’t going to stop any time soon, I stuck two fingers in my mouth and whistled. The sound was high, shrill, and amplified by the shape of the balcony, making it impossible to ignore. Patrick and Arden froze before turning to look at me.
“Sir Daye?” said Arden, a warning note in her voice. Apparently, I wasn’t supposed to whistle at the Queen.
Whatever. I focused on Patrick. “I need you to gather your magic.”
He blinked. “What?”
“I’m trying to figure out whether Dianda’s attacker used magic to get into the room. I’ve found a signature I don’t recognize, but it’s too faded for me to pick out the elements. If you could gather your magic so I can eliminate it as belonging to our suspect, that would be a huge help.” I crossed my arms and looked at him expectantly.
“Ah,” said Patrick. He raised a hand, palm turned toward the ceiling, cleared his throat, and recited calmly, “Red sky at morning, sailors take warning. Red sky at night, sailors delight.” The smell of wood and flowers rose around him, briefly unfamiliar, before the part of my mind that was an inexplicable encyclopedia of magical scents kicked in and identified them.
“Cranberry blossoms and . . . some sort of flower, some sort of small white flower with five petals that grows close to the ground,” I said. “It’s your magic near the door.”
“Yes, and the white flower is ‘mayflower,’” he said, dropping his hand and letting the magic dispel. “Dianda was having trouble with the stairs. I cast an illusion over both of us, to keep anyone from seeing and judging her based on her difficulty walking—she’s a mermaid, she’s allowed to have trouble staying on her feet for long—and let it go once we got inside.”
I paused. “Before she was shot, you mean. You released your spell before she was shot.”
“I certainly didn’t stand around waiting for my wife to be elf-shot before I dropped a simple don’t-look-here spell, if that’s what you’re asking,” he said, a dangerously irritated note creeping into his voice.
“That’s not what I mean,” I said, shaking my head. “The person who shot her didn’t leave any magical traces in the room. They could have been under a don’t-look-here, but it would have broken when they opened the door. They can’t have teleported in, or they’d have filled the room with their magic. But if I can still pick up your magic, from before she was shot, I should have been able to pick up theirs. Dianda saw the person who shot her.”
“Which means all we need to do is wake her up and she can tell us,” said Patrick, turning back to Arden.
“We can’t do that,” she said. “You know we can’t do that. My own brother is still asleep, because until the High King judges this cure acceptable, we can’t use it.”
“She’s asleep,” I said. “Honestly, until we know who did this and why, maybe that’s for the best.” Patrick turned a stunned, furious look on me. I raised my hands, palms out, as if to ward him off. “Hey, I like Dianda, and I don’t want her to spend the next hundred years napping, okay? But she’s not calm, and she could start hitting people who don’t deserve it. This way, we can find out what happened, and why, and wake her up when we have the right people all gift-wrapped for her punching pleasure.”