Almost as if he could read my thoughts, Quentin said quietly, “You can order me to go back if you want, but I’m not going to listen.” I shot him a surprised look. He shook his head. “I know you. This is about where you start realizing you left your big guns behind, and start thinking I’d be better off if I was somewhere safer. That usually means you’re forgetting that I’m your squire.”
“I never forget that,” I protested.
“No, you never forget that you’re my knight, and that it’s your responsibility to protect me and stuff,” said Quentin. “But me being your squire means it’s also my responsibility to protect you. I’ll never be a knight if I let you run off and get yourself killed without at least trying to keep you in one piece.”
“I’m hard to kill,” I said.
“So am I,” said Quentin, in a voice that made it clear he didn’t want to argue about this anymore.
I still considered it. Getting the Crown Prince of the Westlands elf-shot because I didn’t want to talk to the King of Silences alone struck me as a bad plan. At the same time, Quentin’s parents had known the risks when they had agreed to let him try for his knighthood—something that wasn’t required for him to become King one day. And they did have a backup heir if I got this one put to sleep for a century.
“I hate my life sometimes,” I muttered, and kept walking.
The doors to the receiving room were closed, flanked by two guards in the livery of Silences. They moved to block me as I started for the door. I marched straight up to the closer of them, making no effort whatsoever to conceal my fury.
“You will not fuck with me right now, do you understand?” I snapped. “I am here as a diplomatic emissary, and you are going to start respecting that title if I have to punch every single one of you assholes in the throat. Now I am going to talk to your King, and he is going to give me some answers, or I’m going back to Arden and kick-starting this war all by myself. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”
The guards stared at me. Quentin smirked.
“She’s using human profanity,” he said. “She learned that from her close personal friend, the Luidaeg. Just in case you were wondering if you needed to be concerned right now. I would be, if she was talking to me like that.”
The guards exchanged a look. Then they stepped back, allowing me open access to the doors. I paused, looking at them. “You should get out of here, you know. Things are about to get ugly.” Before they could react, I shoved the doors open and marched inside, Quentin once again at my heels.
There were people in the receiving room, men and women dressed for Court and milling around the edges. Going by the time, they were probably getting ready for dinner. Meals seemed to be the focus of all the action around here, maybe because there was nothing else anyone could do that didn’t run the risk of the King stepping in with an elf-shot arrow and an admonition about bad behavior. Some of those same people gasped when they saw me, pointing at my outlandish human world attire and covering their mouths like they had never seen anything more shocking in their lives. Quentin, who was dressed similarly, walked beside me with his head held up, every inch the prince he had been born to be. If their stares concerned him, he didn’t show it.
I couldn’t have cared less about the petty concerns of a bunch of fops, courtiers, and political leeches. All my attention was on the man at the head of the room, King Rhys, sitting on his throne and smirking—yes, smirking—as he watched me approach. The seat reserved for the false Queen was currently empty, which explained how we were able to make it all the way to the foot of the dais without someone turning my jeans into a ball gown.
Rhys composed his expression as we drew closer, but it was a hollow gesture: he knew we had seen his true face, and he didn’t care. We were of no more concern to him than the rose goblins in his gardens, and he wanted us to know it.
Oh, I knew it. And I was going to make him pay for it. I held up the broken arrow, showing him the feathers.
“Does the hospitality of your halls always extend to pursuing visitors into the streets of Portland—into the mortal world—and leaving them in alleyways with elf-shot inches from their hearts? Because where I come from, that is neither showing respect to your guests nor to the rules which keep us safely hidden.” My voice was cold as ice, and I was actually proud of myself for that: until I’d started speaking, I’d been afraid that I would scream. Raising my voice to the King of Silences might be the last thing I’d do for a hundred years.
“I assume you refer to your ‘lady’s maid,’ the Fetch,” said King Rhys. His voice was calm, even reasonable, like he was negotiating side dishes for the meal to come. “You did not inform me when you arrived in my lands that you traveled with an oddity never before seen in Faerie. A Fetch with no living tether? It seemed impossible to me. But my lady insisted that this woman who accompanied you was no changeling, no distaff sister; that she was, instead, something entirely different and hence potentially dangerous.”
“May is my sister, named and accepted by the Firstborn of my line,” I said. It was stretching the truth a bit, but not so much as to break it. “The fact that she started out as my Fetch is irrelevant. In what world is an elf-shot arrow to the body a part of proper hospitality? You break the laws that we all live by, and you do it without remorse.”
“I broke no laws,” said Rhys. He waved his hand carelessly, as if he was brushing away my petty, uninformed concerned. “Portland is my city, the crown jewel of my Kingdom, even as San Francisco is under my lady’s right and proper rule. I am allowed—no, I am required—to protect it as I do my own lands, my own halls. When my guard saw a strange woman carrying a mysterious bag in a dark alley, they acted according to their orders, and they subdued her before she could do any damages. Imagine my surprise when they came back to me and reported that they had silenced your maidservant.”
“Oh, I’m imagining it,” I said darkly. “This is an act of aggression during a time when we are supposedly under your protection. As to the bag she carried, I’d like it back, please.”
“Is it really an act of aggression?” He leaned forward. “She walked my streets under a mask that hid her true face, after failing to divulge her nature upon her arrival. She carried such contraband as could fuel an army of alchemists. Is this an act of aggression on my part, or an act of treason on hers? Be glad I am an honorable man, Sir Daye, or I could have the lot of you arrested—and this time, there would be no argument to free you from my chains.” He didn’t mention my laundry.
“Everyone fae wears a mask when they go out into the mortal world,” I said, through gritted teeth. “If you don’t, you run the risk of attracting human aggression. She’s not plotting treason against the crown. Not yours. Not anyone’s.”
“We’ll ask her, when she wakes up,” said Rhys. “If you would like to have her kept here, to prevent the need to set up a room for her slumbers, we would be glad to discuss this with you. We have well-established bedding and care for our sleepers.”
I stiffened, mouth opening as I prepared to rip into him for his treatment of those “sleepers.” Then I stopped.
We only knew about his harvesting alchemical supplies from the sleeping members of the royal family because Marlis had told us. Marlis would never have said anything if Walther hadn’t broken the spell of obedience that had been placed on her. If I said anything to indicate that I knew what he was doing to them, I would be outing Marlis as free of his control, and more, I would be revealing an actual act of treason. If he was willing to interpret carrying my laundry as hostile alchemy, how would he take Walther using alchemy to free his sister from enspellment?