Marlis looked at him blankly. There was an open confusion in her face that hadn’t been there a moment before, like some thin, undefinable veil had been stripped away.
“Have another cookie, dear,” said Ceres, her voice holding the note of command that has been used by parents and teachers since the beginning of time.
Automatically, Marlis put her second cookie in her mouth. This time, her chewing was less exaggerated and more mechanical, like she didn’t know exactly what she was doing. Ceres glanced to Walther.
“What did you do to your sister?” she asked.
“Isn’t that a question that should have been asked before you fed her the second cookie?” I asked. “As, you know, a thought?”
“Walther has never poisoned Marlis before, so it seemed unnecessary,” said Ceres.
I really didn’t have an answer for that. I sat silently for a moment, trying to come up with one, before I finally shrugged and reached for another of the rose cookies.
“Do I know you?” Marlis was still staring at Walther, making no effort to hide her confusion. “Do I . . . you look like my cousin.”
“It’s me, Marley.” Walther put his last cookie down and stood. They were almost the same height. She was a tall woman, and he was of relatively average height, for a man. Expression sheepish, he spread his hands, and said, “I go by Walther now—that’s my name—but you used to call me ‘Waltrune.’ If that helps.”
“Truny?” Marlis squinted at him, like she was trying to confirm what he was saying to her. “But that’s silly. Truny was my sister.”
“And now I’m your brother,” said Walther. “Technically, I always was. I just needed some time to get that sorted out properly. I thought you were going to run. I ran, because I thought you were going to run.”
“I couldn’t leave the rest of our family behind; I told you I was going to run because I didn’t want you to wait for me,” said Marlis. “You were my baby sister. It was my job to look out for you. That meant getting you out of the Kingdom before the new regent took—Waltrune, really? Are you really Waltrune?”
“Not anymore, and always,” said Walther. He offered her his hands, smiling. “It’s good to see you, Marley. I’ve missed you.”
“I . . .” Marlis took his hands, and frowned. “What did you put in the cookies?”
“Standard anticompulsion charm. If you were being compelled by King Rhys—and of course you were being compelled by King Rhys—it would cancel out the potion. Who does he have making his tinctures, Marley? I thought the whole family was asleep, except for you.”
“Yes, except for me,” she said bitterly. “I do all his blending and brewing and binding. Just me, in Mother’s workroom, enspelling a Kingdom for the sake of a man who should never have sat this throne.” She gasped then, yanking one hand free and clapping it over her mouth. “Oh, sweet Oberon, those words just left my mouth. Truny, what have you done? What have you done to me? He’ll know! I’m his seneschal, his eyes are everywhere, and he’ll know! My disloyalty will be punished!”
“His eyes are not here,” said Ceres calmly. “His eyes have never been here. I am on these lands at his sufferance, or so he pretends, but he knows full well that he’ll never move me if I do not wish to be moved. My roots are deep in this land. I support his kingship solely to retain access to the castle where my charges sleep. They deserve more than to have me desert them before they wake and remember me.”
“But his eyes are everywhere else.” Marlis lowered her hand. “He’ll know. He’ll know.”
“Only if you slip up,” I said, finally interposing myself into the conversation. I pushed my chair back and stood, offering Marlis my hand. “Hi. I feel like we didn’t really meet before. I’m Toby, I’m a friend of your brother’s, and I’m here to keep the man who’s been drugging you from leading your Kingdom to war against mine.”
“Marlis,” she said, taking my hand and shaking. Then she laughed bitterly. “And he only drugged me once. Maeve knows who mixed the potion for him, but it was strong, and it worked well, and my resistance disappeared like sugar on the snow. I’ve been drugging myself to make him happy ever since.”
I couldn’t quite conceal my wince. It was an elegant solution to the captive alchemist: drug her into loyalty and then tell her that the thing you wanted most was for her to drug herself better. “All right. Do you remember what you did while you were drugged?”
She grimaced and turned her face away without answering me. Which was an answer in itself.
“Walther tells me you weren’t in line for the throne of Silences, but that you were more sort of . . . throne adjacent. That means you learned the manners and the dances and the rules right alongside your cousins, because you were always going to wind up being seneschal, or court alchemist, or whatever, right? Well, that means you know how to play a role. That’s all court politics are. A great big game of let’s pretend where winning means you don’t get your head chopped off this round.”
Marlis slowly turned back around to look at me. “Go on,” she said.
“Just play the role of a good, chemically modified seneschal,” I said. “No one in this room is going to get mad at you for pretending Rhys is still the boss of you. It’s the only sensible thing to do.”
“But the only reason for me to go back to him, to not flee the Court at once for fear of discovery, is to foment revolution,” said Marlis. “Are you asking me to join a conspiracy against my King?”
I grimaced. “Not in so many words, but sort of, I guess. I’m here to prevent a war, through whatever means necessary.”
“Trust October to feel that dethroning a monarch to prevent a small border skirmish falls under ‘whatever means necessary,’” said Tybalt, sounding amused. He was still seated, as was Ceres. I shot him a look. He smiled at me, and took one of the saffron cookies.
“Cats,” I muttered, looking back to Marlis. “You don’t have to help us. I’d ask only that you not work against us too enthusiastically. The woman who has the King’s ear was never rightful Queen in the Mists. She has no claim to the throne.”
“But she gave our throne to Rhys,” said Marlis hotly. “If she had no claim to her own, how could she have given ours to him?” The way she said “our” made it clear that she meant her family’s throne, and not just her Kingdom’s.
“At the time, she was Queen, and no one was questioning her, maybe because we’d just had half our Kingdom fall down and catch fire in a giant earthquake. That sort of thing makes people pretty tired,” I said. “After that, she had just been in charge for so long that nobody questioned her about whether or not she had a right to be there.”
I certainly hadn’t. Not until she’d forced my hand. Even then, all the questioning in the world wouldn’t have done me any good if not for the Luidaeg, who had stepped up to make sure I knew Arden wasn’t dead. A lot of factors had combined to see the nameless Queen relieved of her throne. As I watched Walther and his sister starting to reconnect, I wondered how many of those factors were combining right in front of me. Silences was a corrupt house. It needed cleaning.
“If you keep doing this, monarchs will cease allowing you to enter their demesne,” murmured Tybalt, voice low enough that I knew his words were intended for me alone.
I snorted. “This is the first time I’ve ever left the Mists. I don’t think it’s something we need to worry about becoming a habit.”
“Everything about which you have ever said, ‘oh, this will not become a habit, no, not for me’ has become a habit—even me,” said Tybalt. “My little king-breaker.”
I twisted to wrinkle my nose at him. Before I could say anything, Marlis said, “She’s already got that reputation.”
“What?” I looked back to her, blinking. “What do you mean?”
Marlis shrugged. “Rhys speaks freely in front of me. He knows I’m too deeply enspelled to turn against him, and I think it amuses him to stand before the last waking member of the royal family—however removed from the throne—and speak of things I’ll never have, or even remember wanting. When the Queen in the Mists sent notice that she was dispatching a diplomatic team, and that you’d be leading the group, he went white as whey and started whining about what you’d done in the Mists. He’s afraid of you. It’s why he orchestrated that spill at breakfast. He wants to get you out of here as fast as possible.”