Once Broken Faith (October Daye #10)(86)
“A fairy ring,” said Chrysanthe.
I raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“A fairy ring,” she repeated. “You’ve heard the stories about humans who wandered into the woods and spent a night dancing, only to go home the next morning and find a hundred years had passed? That was the work of the fairy rings. They were commonly used in wartime, before the development of elf-shot. Instead of sleeping out your sentence, you’d simply go . . . forward. The spell would keep you frozen until you reached a time when the fight was over, and you could no longer serve your liege on the field.”
“How hard are they to make? Are they portable?”
She shrugged, looking to Theron. He shook his head. “I don’t know. Neither of us has the skill for crafting them. But they were a weapon once, and they could be again, if there was the need for them.”
I opened my mouth to ask if they knew anything more. The tolling of the dinner bell stopped me. It was a light, chiming sound that nonetheless scythed through walls, making sure that everyone within the confines of the knowe was aware that their presence was required.
“With that, I believe this audience is over, Sir Daye,” said Theron. He rose more easily than I would have thought possible for someone with the lower body of a stag, offering his arm to Chrysanthe, who took it with a smile. “We’ve enjoyed this chance to know you better.”
The two of them walked to the door and let themselves out, leaving me to stare after them in frustration. The bells continued to ring. I slumped backward in my chair, putting a hand over my face. This was getting me nowhere. This was getting me nowhere fast. We couldn’t let the nobility leave without losing the killer—but if we kept them here, we were keeping ourselves captive with the killer, and that could only end poorly. My wounds were healed, but there was a phantom ache in my shoulder that was happy to remind me of how badly things could go. I was hard to kill. That didn’t make it impossible, and it didn’t make the people I cared about any more equipped for survival.
Survival. I lowered my hand, staring up at the strings of garlic and pearl onions that obscured the ceiling. Whoever had attacked me couldn’t have been expecting me to survive. Sure, I was sturdy, but how sturdy was still under discussion, and many people who knew and loved me had no idea how difficult I really was to kill. I’d been attacked—or Tybalt had—by someone who was expecting to have another body on their hands. So who hadn’t been expecting to see me in the gallery? Who had been surprised by my appearance?
Blood contained all memory, and I’d been looking at the audience. I raised my thumb to my lips and started gnawing at my cuticles, trying to bite through the skin fast enough to draw blood. It wasn’t working. I healed too fast, and my natural reluctance to hurt myself was a problem. I stood, scanning the shelves. There were no knives in here. There was a trowel in with the potatoes, but it was blunt and filthy, and I had enough common sense that I didn’t want to drive it into myself.
The dinner bell was still ringing. There was my answer. Gathering my skirts in one hand, so as not to trip myself, I left the pantry and followed the sound down the hall. Most of the guests were already there, judging by how empty the place was; a few servants passed me, harried and laboring under the weight of their trays. They didn’t look upset or illused; they were doing their jobs, and they had the focused looks of people who liked what they did and who they did it for. That was nice. I liked to hope Arden was going to be one of the better ones, a treasure instead of a tyrant, since her place on the throne was at least partially my fault.
I’d been friends with the household staff at Shadowed Hills for years, and I knew that for some fae—the Hobs and the Brownies and the Bannicks—service really was their only joy. That didn’t mean they didn’t deserve to be treated well when they were at work. Or that everyone treated their servants with kindness. The Barrow Wight from Highmountain walked by, despondent as always, a heavy tray in her arms. I did a double-take: a very heavy tray. It looked like she was carrying an entire roast suckling pig.
The hall ended at a pair of redwood doors with stained glass inserts, propped open to let the moonlight slant through the colored panes and dance along the hallway walls. Outside was a pavilion of black mesh, letting the starlight shine through while preventing leaves or insects from falling to the deck below. Round tables covered by white cloths studded the area, like something out of a mortal awards banquet. It was a comparison that would have been lost on most of the people here, and laughed at by the rest. The servants I’d seen before swirled through the scene like dancers, pausing to deposit trays and pitchers in front of people as they passed them by. There was even music, courtesy of a string quartet in the far corner. The cello player was a Huldra, and held a second bow in her tail, using it to coax impossible double stops from her instrument.
Arden, Aethlin, Siwan, and Maida were seated at a table on a raised platform at the far end of the deck. Tybalt was at a table nearby, keeping company with the Luidaeg, Karen, Quentin, and Patrick Lorden. I started in toward them, weaving around tables and dodging passing servers. It was like a bizarre obstacle course, and it was a relief when I reached the wide open space in the middle of the dining area, although it took me a moment to realize why that space was open.
It was a dance floor. Of course it was. Because nothing said “let’s pause for a quick waltz” like a political convocation where people were getting elf-shot and murdered.