“Coming,” said Walther. He grabbed his valise as he moved to stand next to Tybalt. “All you have to do is get me to the clearing.”
“Let’s get out of here so Tybalt can ward the door.” I leaned up, kissed Tybalt on the cheek, and started for the exit. Quentin followed. I only looked back once, my eyes meeting Tybalt’s for a brief, painful moment. He didn’t like letting me go alone: that much was obvious to anyone who knew either of us. The fact that he was allowing me to walk away without him for backup twice in one day said more about the direness of our situation than anything else.
May had been elf-shot. Walther was being watched for signs of treason. We couldn’t run back to the Mists, or war would follow—and now that I’d seen the way Rhys treated his changeling subjects and responded to any possible threat to his power, I knew the war would be brutal beyond imagining. Even if we rallied every possible ally to our side, called in the Undersea and the Court of Cats and Kingdoms both near and far, people would die. Elf-shot would rain down from the heavens, and there would be no escaping the carnage.
Quentin offered me his arm as we left our temporary quarters, dressed for court, with our vials of countercharm tucked into our clothes. He was shaking a little, his nerves getting the best of him. I slid my right hand into position, using my left to gather my skirt enough to make walking easier. Doing this revealed my tennis shoes. Quentin glanced at them, blinked, and then snorted.
“Really?” he asked. “You can’t even wear heels when your life is on the line?”
“I can barely walk in heels,” I said reasonably. “I certainly can’t run in heels. Given a choice between shoes no one can see, but that don’t leave me at risk of a broken ankle, or tiny torture devices strapped to my feet, I’ll go with sneakers every time.”
“Your mom didn’t do you any favors when she skimped on the early etiquette training,” he said.
“No, no, she did not,” I agreed. “But on the plus side, if I were a more polite person, I wouldn’t be able to associate with most of my friends.”
Quentin snorted, but didn’t say anything. We were well past the safe zone now; we had to assume Rhys was listening to everything we said, and watching everything we did, waiting for one of us to show weakness. It was an uneasy, awkward way to exist, and I had to wonder how his people could bear to live this way. I would have expected a lot more of them to follow the trail blazed by Walther and Lowri. Then again, maybe it had already been too late by the time most of them realized how bad it was getting. There were loyalty potions in the water, and no one was going anywhere without consent of the King.
It was a good way to run a Kingdom without conflict or risk of political upheaval. How could anyone challenge your leadership when they were no longer capable of thinking for themselves?
“Ever notice how the tenser Tybalt is, the more he sounds like he just escaped from a Jane Austen novel?” asked Quentin.
“How many Jane Austen novels have you read?” I asked.
Quentin shrugged. “A few. Enough. All of them.”
“Got it. Yes, I’ve noticed. I think it’s endearing. Although it can get a little difficult to understand him sometimes. If you wind him up far enough, he stops making any sense at all.” I slanted a tight smile toward Quentin. “Wait for the wedding. I plan to get him so freaked out that he sounds like a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Emma.”
Quentin snorted again.
People began appearing in the halls around us as we drew closer to the dining hall. I kept my face turned forward but stole glances at them out of the corners of my eyes, trying to get an idea of what we were walking into. My ball gown would have been too much for a dinner at Shadowed Hills or in Arden’s Court, but here, I fit right in. Some of the women were wearing dresses infinitely more complicated than mine. Their outfits were made of feathers, stitched-together moth’s wings, snakeskins, and other, stranger things. I saw three separate women in gowns made of rose petals held together with tiny loops of silver wire, like floral chain mail. Several of the men were wearing vests of the same manufacture, making me suspect that this was a local fashion brought on by idleness and access to too many rose goblins. It was also, in an odd way, an insult to Ceres: no matter how hard she worked to grow her gardens, they would be decimated over and over again by courtiers looking for a new outfit.
“Wow,” muttered Quentin, as a man walked by wearing a tailcoat that appeared to have been made entirely from evergreen boughs. “How does he get that to lay flat?”
“Don’t know, don’t want to know, not going to ask,” I said, still watching the crowd.
There was a homogeny to them that was even more unnerving than their attire. There were no changelings, and more, there were no visible mixed-bloods; no Centaurs with feathers in their hair, or Glastigs with white hair inherited from their Coblynau grandparents. Everyone in sight was pureblooded, and most of them were either Tuatha de Dannan or Tylwyth Teg. There were a few Daoine Sidhe scattered through the crowd, and seeing them made me realize what else was wrong: none of them had animal features. There were no Satyrs, Hinds, Fauns, or Huldra in the crowd. There weren’t even any Cornish Pixies or Harpies. Everyone fit the same basic mold of tall, bipedal, and pretty.
It was weird, it was disturbing, and it made me wonder whether Lowri hadn’t been allowed to leave. Maybe all the part-animal fae in Silences had been “allowed” to leave, possibly with encouragement from their King. “We need to see those bodies,” I said, very softly.
Quentin shot me a startled look, followed by a small nod. Even if he didn’t know what I was talking about, he was willing to go along with it. I appreciated that. He was a good squire, and he deserved better than me.
There was a soft rushing sound beside me, like air being displaced, accompanied by the faint scent of musk and pennyroyal. I let go of Quentin’s arm and reached calmly out to my other side. As expected, Tybalt’s arm was right there, ready for my hand.
“All is well?” I asked.
“I don’t believe that statement can apply to our current situation, but my errands have been run, and I have nothing more to do apart from accompanying you to our repast,” said Tybalt.
At the word “repast,” Quentin snorted for a third time. It was starting to become a habit.
Tybalt blinked, looking around me to Quentin, who was once again staring innocently forward. I offered him a sunny smile. Tybalt shook his head, and turned his attention to the hall.
It was a good thing, too: as we got closer to the dining room, the crowd grew even denser, until it seemed like everyone in Silences was there with us. Despite that, there weren’t that many people present—a quick count gave me somewhere between fifty and sixty warm bodies. That was a lot for a dinner party, but for a Kingdom that was pulling out all the stops to impress a visiting diplomatic detachment? It was about the same size crowd that Arden could have scraped up on short notice, and while she had an established Kingdom, she was severely understaffed where her actual Court was concerned. Once again, I found myself wondering just how small Rhys’ circles really were.
Then again, if he was winnowing people as severely as he seemed to be, it probably shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise. If anything, the surprise was that he still had this many people he was willing to allow inside his knowe.
“Be alert,” hissed Tybalt, next to my ear.
“Way ahead of you,” I murmured, and stepped into the dining hall.
The layout was very similar to the one from lunch, with long tables set up at the center of the hall in a neat square. No benches this time; instead, there were individual chairs, making it easier for the women to sit in their elaborate gowns, some of which could have taken an entire bench all by themselves. Once again, King Rhys and the former Queen of the Mists were seated behind a short table on the dais. There were no servers. Tables laden with platters of cold food, braziers of hot food, and pitchers of drinks had been arranged around the outside of the hall. No one was going near the food. Everyone who had arrived before us was milling around the tables, apparently waiting for someone else to sit first.