A noise behind me, like metal being torn. I stop and turn, suddenly dizzy, as if I am out of breath, even though I am breathing normally. Perhaps the meal is ending; perhaps we are about to return to the pointless pretense of diplomacy. I walk back to the dining room.
It is empty. Where has everyone gone? The curtains are drawn.
That tearing-metal sound repeats. I turn, and there is pain, pain like I have never felt. I am falling. I am falling, I am dying, and even death holds no mercy, for I am still alive when the first of my Merry Dancers hits the ground, and I feel it when she shatters—
Gasping, I ripped myself free of his memories before they could drag me down to the actual moment of his death. I hadn’t been weak enough to kill that easily in a while; riding someone else’s blood to the end was still dangerous. Some rules were never intended to be broken. Not by me. Maybe by my mother, but she’s Firstborn, and I’m not. I’ll never be as strong as she is.
Then the Luidaeg was there, placing a hand between my shoulder blades and holding me up, keeping me from falling over. “What did you see?”
“Nothing.” I closed my eyes. My own body felt strange, too small, too female, and too alone. There should have been Merry Dancers swirling around me, their lives connected to my own on a level too deep to explain with words. The feeling would pass. That didn’t mean I enjoyed it. This wasn’t the first time I’d felt out of synch with myself after riding the blood, but it had never been this strong. “He didn’t see the person who killed him, or detect their magic. He heard a weird sound, followed it back to the dining room, and someone he didn’t get a decent look at stabbed him.”
“So it didn’t work?” Quentin sounded disappointed. He also sounded scared. He’d been with me for long enough to understand that sometimes, when the first, safest method of getting information failed, we had to keep going. We had to find another way.
He was right to be concerned. There was always another way, and it was rarely a good idea. “It worked,” I said, opening my eyes and turning toward the sound of his voice. He and Karen had been busy; the table next to them was covered in shining shards of Merry Dancer. Seeing them that way hurt my heart. That, too, would fade; I wouldn’t be mourning for Christmas ornaments forever.
But someone should have been. I gripped the Luidaeg’s arm as I levered myself to my feet. The feeling of strangeness was already fading, replaced by the more usual absolute faith in my own body, which was familiar and comfortable and home.
“He couldn’t tell me anything because he didn’t see anything worth telling,” I continued, wiping the blood off my hand and onto my trousers. Black is forgiving in more ways than one. “At the same time, we’re going to have company soon, and maybe he can tell me something I can’t intuit from his blood.”
Quentin’s eyes went wide. Karen looked confused. And the Luidaeg sighed.
“You really want to talk to them again?” she asked. “I’m pretty sure they weren’t kidding when they threatened to eat you. They’re not big jokesters.”
“I saved May’s life. That has to earn me a little tolerance.”
“It’s already earned you a little tolerance. They didn’t eat you the last time they saw you.”
“No, they didn’t, because their leader had something he wanted me to do. I’ve done it. They’ll talk to me.”
The Luidaeg threw up her hands and turned her eyes toward the ceiling. “Dad’s bones, you people never learn. Fine. Do you want me to call them? Maybe they’ll be less hostile if I’m the one who calls.”
“Um, excuse me?” Karen’s voice shook. We all looked at her. She bit her lip, worrying it between her teeth before she asked, “Who are you talking about?”
Oh. “Quentin, maybe you should take Karen back out to the balcony,” I said quietly. “She doesn’t need to see this.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” said Karen.
“October still believes children can be sheltered,” said the Luidaeg. There was no blame in her tone: she was stating a fact, something plain and simple and immutable. “She forgets to ask herself whether they should. More, she forgets that everyone is a child to someone. Compared to me, you’re all infants.”
I sighed. “Okay. Point taken. We’re talking about the night-haunts, Karen. They’re going to come for King Antonio’s body, which means they’ll know what he knew, and maybe we can get some answers.”
“I hate it when you summon the night-haunts,” said Quentin.
“But I’m not summoning them,” I said. “I’m just going to be here when they show up. Totally different.”
Quentin did not look like he thought this was totally different. Quentin looked at me like this was the worst idea in a long string of bad ideas, stretching back to “hey, I think I might like to be born.” He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. The kid has some of the most expressive eyebrows I’ve ever seen. I glanced to the Luidaeg, looking for support.
What I found was vague amusement, and a shrug so expansive that her hand hit the side of my arm. “You’re the hero of the realm here, Toby. I’m just the sea witch. You’re supposed to leave me slumbering in my watery cavern until you need a handy deus ex machina.”
Karen was looking back and forth between us, increasingly agitated. It had only ever been a matter of time before the dam broke. “What’s wrong with you?” she demanded. “There’s a man . . . he’s dead, Aunt Birdie! He’s right there, and he’s dead, and you’re making jokes! How can you do that? It’s mean, and it’s petty, and it’s . . . it’s not fair.” She sounded petulant as only the young ever could.
I missed being that upset by the cruelty of the world. I just couldn’t seem to work up the anger anymore. “You’re right, pumpkin: it’s not fair,” I said, walking over to put an arm around her shoulder. I kept my still blood-sticky hand behind my back. She knew it was there, but that didn’t mean she should be forced to look at it. “Nothing about the world is ever fair. You know that. We joke because we’re not happy either. King Robinson was a jerk, but he didn’t deserve to die, and we can’t bring him back. So we try to make ourselves feel better when we can, because we know the world isn’t going to suddenly turn kind. That sort of thing would take more magic than there is in the whole world.”
“He was a pureblood,” said Karen. The quiet puzzlement in her voice broke my heart to hear. She was so young. The Luidaeg was right that I never asked myself whether children should be protected: I knew the answer. They should be protected for as long as they could be, for as long as our shoulders could bear the weight of the world, because innocence was so fragile, and so easily destroyed. Karen had lost most of hers when Blind Michael had taken her captive. As for what remained . . .
There was so much more of it than I’d ever suspected. And it was so very, very fragile.
“I know,” I said. “Purebloods aren’t supposed to die. When they do, all we can do is try to make sure that justice is done. We’re going to figure out who killed him. I promise.”
It was a foolish promise to make. I’d made worse, and I could hear, distantly, the beating of paper-thin wings against the wind. The night-haunts were coming.
Quentin heard it, too. “Do you want us to go wait somewhere else?” he asked.
Karen was an oneiromancer. She could see the night-haunts any time she wanted to, just by visiting my dreams, or May’s. It might be better for her to see them in the flesh, not colored by whatever nightmare they were flying through.