Theron and Chrysanthe exchanged a look. Finally, Chrysanthe spoke. “We could play at being offended, demand to know what gave you the right to suspect us, much less question us, but to be honest, we’ve been looking forward to the opportunity to speak with you,” she said. “Why in the world are you working for these people?”
Well. That wasn’t what I’d been expecting. I blinked, trying to conceal my bewilderment, before asking, “What do you mean?”
“You’re a changeling. You may have given up much of your human birthright for power, but you’ve been mortaclass="underline" you know what it is to be looked down upon for reasons you didn’t choose and can’t control,” she said. “Why would you stay in the Mists, where you’ll never be considered a full citizen of Faerie, when we’re just down the coast? You would be welcome on the Golden Shore.”
I gaped at her. Then, recovering my senses, I shook my head and said, “Because I was born in San Francisco. My liege is here. My friends and family are here. I wasn’t going to give any of that up for politics. I’m still not going to do it. The Mists are my home.”
“That may be so, but your choices might be broader down the coast,” said Theron. “You should consider it.”
I wanted to laugh. Here I was, trying to figure out who’d killed King Antonio and attacked me, and these people were attempting to recruit me? It was ridiculous, and that was what made it so understandable. Faerie had a lot of rules and manners, but it didn’t always understand how to prioritize them for people who actually paid attention to time. When eternity was a given, there was really no good reason to treat anything with urgency.
Theron and Chrysanthe ran a kingdom of changelings, but they were still purebloods. No matter how much that statement might have offended them, offense wasn’t enough to make it untrue. “I am sworn in service to Duke Sylvester Torquill of Shadowed Hills, whose Duchy has always been kind to changelings, and through him to Queen Arden Windermere in the Mists,” I said. “I’m pretty cool with both of those things. And I’m getting married soon, and the man I’m marrying isn’t exactly in the position to pack up and move. So while I appreciate the offer, I’m happy where I am. I just want to do my job and find out who murdered one of your peers. Do you think you could help me with that?”
“I don’t see how you can be happy in a place that’s made you give up so much of your heritage,” said Theron solicitously.
I stopped. The urge to yell at him was strong. The urge not to get in trouble for insulting yet another monarch was stronger. Swallowing my rage, I said, “I wasn’t forced to give up my humanity to prove I was as good as the purebloods. I did it to save myself, to save the people who cared about me, and to cure a goblin fruit addiction. Those might not be doors that are open to most changelings, but part of growing up in this world was learning that I can’t refuse to do something just because it might be hard or inconvenient or impossible. Now please. Let me do my job.”
“Are you in favor of this cure?” asked Chrysanthe.
The urge to start screaming was getting stronger. It was like talking to a couple of missionaries, who wanted to bring things back to Jesus no matter how much I wanted directions to the nearest gas station. “Yes,” I said, through gritted teeth. “I was there when it was developed. I would have died or turned myself completely fae without it. So I’m pretty sure this cure is a good thing, and that the purebloods aren’t going to get more careless just because it exists.”
“Would Duchess Lorden agree with you?”
That stopped me. Would Duke Michel have been so willing to shoot her, even knowing that his kingdom was landlocked and hence safe from Undersea reprisals, if he hadn’t known she could be woken up at a moment’s notice? The cure might already be changing how people thought about elf-shot. I just wasn’t sure that was a bad thing.
“Nothing we say here is going to impact the conclave,” I said slowly, feeling my way through the sentence. “I’m not running some secret poll where I find out how everyone really feels about the idea of the cure and then go and tell the High King how he should resolve the situation. You know that, right? I’m trying to solve a murder. Someone is dead. A king is dead. I need to find out who killed him.”
“King Antonio sent us citizens from time to time,” said Chrysanthe. “People who didn’t want to stay in Angels anymore. He’d buy them bus tickets, if you can believe it.”
“I can,” I said. It wasn’t even a surprise. Human cities did that all the time, bussing their homeless to San Francisco, where the milder weather was supposed to make up for the inhumanity of shipping people away from their communities.
“They were never mistreated, per se, or at least not by the Crown,” said Theron. “Most had stories about ill-treatment at the hands of other purebloods, lesser nobles who felt their household staff didn’t need to be protected. He’d send us the addicts, the ones already so far gone on goblin fruit that they could no longer manage whatever menial jobs they’d held before.”
“What did you do?”
“Do?” Chrysanthe’s laugh was small and bitter. “We gave them clean beds and brooms to hold, and fed them toast and jam until they were beyond even that. We buried them in safe places, surrounded by the graves of their own kind. Don’t look so stunned, Sir Daye. We might have found a cure for elf-shot, but a cure for goblin fruit? That’s a thing that will never be, unless we count the cure you’ve made for yourself—give up humanity, give up the addiction. Not a route that’s open to most people.”
The accusation in her voice was hard to miss. I fought the urge to squirm. She was right: my route out of addiction wasn’t open to anyone who didn’t share my bloodline or have access to something that could change theirs. Something like a hope chest, or my mother . . . or me. I had given that choice to the changelings of Silences, after we’d dethroned the puppet king who’d been tormenting them. That didn’t mean I could travel the world, offering it to everyone.
“So Golden Shore was well-inclined toward King Antonio?” I asked, trying to get the conversation back under my control.
“As well-inclined as we are toward any of our neighbors,” said Theron. “Angels buys our produce, sends us their broken, and refuses to change. The same can be said of any of the Kingdoms in this half of the continent. Maybe someday things will improve for the changelings. Maybe someday we can stop being so angry all the time. But that day is a long way from now.”
“Why?” The question burst out before I could stop it. “You’re purebloods. You could have whatever you wanted. Why are you so focused on the treatment of changelings?”
“I suppose this is where we’re intended to say ‘I had a changeling child’ or ‘I had a changeling sister,’ or something of the like,” said Chrysanthe. “That would be easy, wouldn’t it? It’s always easy to admit to someone’s right to live when you have a personal tie to them. We don’t have that. What we have is the memory that, before humans and fae met so often, before changelings were common, it was people like us—people who showed how close our King and Queens once were to the natural world—who bore the brunt of those prejudices. There was a time when ‘animals in the court’ was as bad as ‘changelings.’ So, yes, we’re interested in knowing things are going to get better for the changelings, even if we have to fight for it. Not because we have a personal stake. Because it’s the right thing to do.”
I took a breath. “That’s a good thing, honestly. We need all the help we can get.” Most changelings didn’t have stories like mine, where they got titles and responsibilities and respect. Most changelings had things much, much worse. And yet . . . “Now please, for right now, can we focus on the murder?”