Silver and lead, p.12
Silver and Lead, page 12
“Fae steal everything,” I said.
He nodded. “It is our way,” he agreed. “We stole the name and social meaning, but not the root of it. A godparent has nothing of god in them, only the promise to parent should the birth parents be unavailable for some reason. As the purebloods of the Divided Courts denied death more and more completely, godparentage became less common, and fosterage rose in its stead.”
“So godparents are good things for people who live lives like we do,” I said, not quite a question, not quite a full statement.
“I should think so, if you could find them,” said Tybalt. “Why? Did someone offer?”
“Yeah,” I said, hesitantly.
“Who among us is old enough to remember the traditions, and have made you such a costly proposition?” Tybalt’s eyes widened, pupils contracting to slits. “By Malvic, you don’t mean to say…”
“Yes, I do,” I said. “The Luidaeg asked if I would be willing to let her stand as godmother to our child. She says we’re both in dangerous lines of work, and she knows better than to count on us surviving all the way to their majority.”
“Perhaps blunter than I would have been, but not so inaccurate as to become offensive,” said Simon. “They have more use for godparents in the Undersea, where the wars continue with more regularity and brutality. It’s a fine way to unite households, more reliable than betrothals, since no one gets to change their mind about who their godparents are, and even the cruelest try to avoid killing their own godchildren. It’s a banner of safety.”
“Oh?” said Tybalt. “Will you be asking someone to stand godparent to your expected child?”
“We already have,” said Simon. “Captain Pete will stand for the babe, and has already been more involved in Dianda’s pregnancy than is perhaps the norm. What a gift, to have the blessing of your own Firstborn.”
“Not all Firstborn,” I said sourly.
“Well, no. Neither one of us would want our Firsts anywhere near an innocent child. Or an evil child, or an evil adult. Or us.”
“What a fun club we belong to,” I said, and turned back to Tybalt, who looked like he was deliberating the advantages of passing out over throwing up. “The Luidaeg offered, and I told her I’d have to talk to you first, since it was such a big decision. Do we let her?”
“To refuse would be to court offense from the sea witch,” he said. “In addition to being unwise in the extreme. Any child protected by the Luidaeg’s decree would walk the world veiled in security. Of course we’ll let her stand as godmother, if she so desires.”
“I’ll call and tell her,” I said. “I’m sure she’ll be thrilled.” I paused. “Okay, maybe not thrilled so much as ‘smug because she knew I was going to say yes,’ even though she swears she can’t See anything to do with me.”
“Why not?” asked Simon.
“Too much Oberon in the atmosphere,” I said. “The big asshole distorts the ability of Seers to know what’s coming.”
“At least that means she’s not foreseen our deaths,” said Tybalt.
I wisely didn’t comment, remembering the sheer number of times she’d predicted my own demise, and the fact that when it came, it was meant to be at her hands. She didn’t seem to want to kill me. But she kept saying she was going to, and the Luidaeg never lied.
I sipped my lemonade again, looking around the kitchen. “The boys should be back soon,” I said. “May and Jazz, too.”
“How did May and Jazz get to Muir Woods?” asked Simon, politely.
“Not sure,” I said. “They may have hitched a ride with Quentin and Dean, or maybe they called Etienne and got him to portal them there.” Sylvester hadn’t been in attendance, but that didn’t mean my Fetch was above asking his Captain of the Guard to play taxi.
“You were away far longer than it takes to ask if you’ll allow the sea witch to stand godmother to our child,” said Tybalt, pupils returning to their normal shape and size as he narrowed his eyes at me. “What have you not yet told me, little fish?”
No point in putting it off any longer if he was already asking questions. “Arden wants me back at work,” I said.
Tybalt stiffened, pupils widening until they had all but consumed the banded green of his eyes. I held up a hand to ward off the explosion I knew was coming.
“Apparently some people took advantage of Titania’s enchantment to loot the royal vaults,” I said. “A lot of really dangerous stuff is missing. She wants me to get started on finding it.”
“It’s close to the birth of our child,” said Tybalt. “Your life isn’t the only one you’d be endangering.”
I glanced to Simon, who shook his head. “I agree with the cat,” he said. “I’m not so overprotective as he is, but I wouldn’t recommend a treasure hunt in your current condition, and I find it difficult to believe that Arden would.”
“Well, she did,” I said. “I think she feels like this is important enough to risk irritating the both of you, and making me walk around for extended periods of time.”
“Irritating us? The risk to your safety is the only thing she should be concerning herself with. What could possibly be missing that carries such importance?” Tybalt’s voice was harsh, but still tightly controlled. He knew better than to yell at me.
I turned to look at him levelly. “The hope chest, among other things,” I said. “We have to find it before someone starts using it.”
“Forgive me, my dear, but what harm could be done with a hope chest?” asked Simon delicately. “It allows nothing more than your own magic does.”
“Yeah, but my magic has a mind behind it,” I said. “A hope chest is a tool, and like any tool, it can be used in a lot of different ways. But hope chests don’t care about consent. They don’t care if you’re screaming no, no, no, and trying to fight back. They’re not intelligent; they just do what the person holding them orders them to do. And it hurts. Being the subject of a hope chest hurts like your blood is made of fire and acid at the same time. It hurts, and it can take from you, whether or not you want to allow it.” The first time I’d touched a hope chest, I’d truly believed that they were a bedtime story intended for naughty changeling children. And that hadn’t mattered, because the chest had shifted my blood further away from human even without my wanting it to.
In a way, it had just been putting things back the way they were supposed to have been from the beginning. Amandine hadn’t wanted me to be fae at all, and had spent a portion of my childhood trying to sap my fae heritage away, leaving me entirely human. That first hope chest had been returning some of what my mother stole.
Didn’t change the fact that I hadn’t agreed to anything. “If someone who hates changelings has a hope chest, they can shove them out of Faerie forever. I can’t give back a bloodline that’s been removed. Or they could turn their targets fully fae. It’s isolating to lose your humanity. Gillian still hasn’t recovered, and she has the largest support network anyone could have asked for. A changeling who becomes a pureblood without warning loses everything. Their friends, their mortal family, their jobs, whatever life they’ve built for themselves, it’s all gone.”
Tybalt was looking at me with sympathetic, sorrowful eyes, like he knew I was thinking about the life I’d been building with Cliff and Gillian, back before everything went wrong and I fell into Faerie forever. I liked the life I had now, I truly did, but it still stung to know that I hadn’t been given a choice.
“And then there are the people like January, or like Rayseline used to be,” said Simon, with dawning horror. “Some of them are torn apart by the clashes between their own bloodlines, but others have found a form of balance. If someone were to disrupt that, they could find themselves plunged into chaos, blood battling blood, magic turning unstable.”
It made me uncomfortable to hear him describe it that way, at least in part because that was exactly what I’d done to the pretender. I’d stolen one of her lines of descent without her permission, leaving her body to fight itself in the search for a new normal. Had she struggled? Was she still struggling? Could her being a villain be enough to excuse me for not being overly concerned? She certainly wouldn’t have worried about me.
“That’s not all that’s missing,” I said. “The fount that lets you treat iron poisoning without an alchemist to tailor the counteragent is gone, too, and a scabbard that transforms any metal into iron. Apparently whoever has it has already started using it. They attacked Dame Altair’s men. At least one of them died.”
“Dame Altair, you say?” asked Tybalt.
“Yeah. Which makes the fact that she was grabbed to masquerade as the false Queen interesting. There may be more here than meets the eye. I’ll ask Danny to drive me over to her place tomorrow so I can talk to her.”
“Absolutely not,” said Tybalt, without hesitation.
I turned slowly to stare at him, not otherwise moving, while Simon straightened, pushing away from the bit of counter he’d been leaning against. “As we’ve established that my presence is not going to cause Rayseline distress, I think I’m going to go and wash my hands without fear of encountering and terrifying her,” he said. “I believe I’ll rest in the living room after that. Come find me, should you need me.” And then he was gone, sensibly fleeing the coming explosion.
Tybalt didn’t blink as he said, “You are not going off into danger simply because a few trinkets have disappeared.”
“They’re not trinkets, Tybalt, and you seem to forget that I may not have a choice. It’s better if I go voluntarily, before Sylvester orders me to do my duty.” I caught my breath, then asked the question that really mattered: “Or are you planning to keep me prisoner here against my will?”
“You always have a choice,” said Tybalt. “Even if Sylvester did elect to make such a foolish decision, would you really endanger our child on his command?”
“I am a hero of the realm, and a grown woman, and you don’t get to tell me that I’m not allowed to do my job when my Queen or my liege call upon me,” I said, voice going cold. “I have been doing my absolute best to indulge your need to know where I am at all times, and I’m not going looking for danger, but you knew who I was when you married me. Pregnancy doesn’t turn me into a different person.”
“No, it doesn’t,” he said, and his own voice was tight. “It does, however, mean that when you risk yourself, you are not the only one taking these risks. You say a hope chest doesn’t ask for consent from the people it changes. Right now, I don’t see how Arden and Sylvester are any different. They’re not asking consent of our child, and neither are you, because you can’t. I’m only trying to keep you both safe.”
“I know you are,” I said. “But caring doesn’t mean you get to protect me so much that you suffocate me. I’m not planning to do anything reckless or that could hurt the baby, but it’s important that I do my job, and this”—I couldn’t stop myself from hitting the last word hard enough to make it obvious, because of course it wasn’t just this, it was everything since we’d come home from Titania’s enchantment—“makes me feel like you don’t trust my judgment.”
“It has never been my intention to make you feel that way,” he said, with obvious care, “and it isn’t that I don’t trust your judgment.” He paused, and I could tell that he was weighing out his words. “But you must see that you rarely plan the things that put you into danger. They seek you out, hero that you are, and then you feel obligated to see them through. Can we be honest about that much?”
“All right, so it’s honesty time. I am honestly going out of my mind being locked up like this. I need to work. The timing’s crap, but I can’t take much more sitting and staring at the same four walls. So I repeat: you knew who I was when you married me, and the Luidaeg is right when she says our lives aren’t safe ones. I know we’ll have to make some adjustments, and we’ve already discussed so many of them, but do you really think I’m never going to do my job again?”
“Of course not. Just not until you have the baby—”
“There will always be a baby!” I half-shouted. “From this point forward, there will always be a baby, or a child I might abandon again, the way I did Gillian. She lost me because I did my job. I lost her. And if you think I won’t rearrange the stars to stop that from happening again, I don’t understand how you ever thought you knew me.”
Tybalt’s pupils narrowed. “So you admit that terrible things can happen if you leave our home?”
“I do. I also admit that Blind Michael came to your Court before I was even involved, and Titania was masquerading as my best friend from childhood. Nothing I did or didn’t do invoked them. My job is not the only thing that puts me in danger. That puts us in danger. Our baby is going to be in danger. That’s what being a part of Faerie means. But they’re going to have the biggest bad-ass in the realm for a father, and a hero for a mother, and they’re going to be okay. No matter what else happens, they’re going to be okay. Now please. You have to stop acting like Amandine. She wanted to lock me away from anything that might hurt me.”
He went still, pupils narrowing even further, until they were barely slits. “Do not compare me to that woman,” he said.
“So don’t give me reason to,” I countered.
He opened his mouth, then closed it and turned his face away. After a moment of silence, I reached over and put my hand on his shoulder.
“I’m just so frightened all the time,” he said, voice gone dull and dead. “It was Anne at first, and the thought of you lying dead amidst the bedclothes, as she did, not even a baby’s cry to break the silence. But that thought faded quickly. When I dared to fall in love again, I loved an unbreakable woman for a reason. Whatever happens, you will survive. But October … when Titania took you from me, took our child from me, I feared I wouldn’t survive. I know you can endure whatever Faerie throws at you. I no longer trust myself to do the same. I haven’t for a very long time.”
“Oh, sweetheart…” I tightened my fingers on his shoulder, not letting go. The kind thing to do would have been to say I could endure the remainder of my pregnancy in semi-confinement, to agree that Arden could wait to be ready for me to come back out into the world. Unfortunately, that type of kindness isn’t always an option. And even if it had been, I was realizing that it was no longer the best option for us, if it ever had been to begin with.
“I know how hard this is.” He turned to look at me again and I dropped my hand, steeling myself against the entreaty in his eyes. “But I still need you to trust me when I say I can protect our child, and accept that you can’t come with me to Dame Altair’s because I won’t be able to get the answers I need if she’s too hostile—which is the same reason I can’t take a squad of royal guards with me. Arden offered, but I refused—”
He snorted before saying dryly, “Of course you did.”
“Just like you knew I would. Because you have to let me be myself, or you’re trying to change me just as much as Amandine did, and I can’t bear that. Not from her, not from you, not from anyone.”
He was silent for an uncomfortably long moment. “I don’t like it,” he said at last, and I could hear the anger and terror and resignation in his voice. “I can’t like it. But you’re right that I didn’t marry you to be your jailer. I don’t agree with this decision. It is still your right to make it, and I will try to accept it with such grace as I can.”
“And I will always, always come home to you. I’ve made it through Firstborn and monsters, curses and the Summer Queen. I know it’s hard to trust me when I say things like this, but just try. Try to believe I’m telling you the truth.”
He sighed. “I’m trying, little fish. For all of us, I’m trying.”
I knew how much he was. The trauma of his past losses aside, sometimes it can be easy for me to forget how much he’s the product of a different time and culture. Even if that weren’t the case, sitting back and letting their loved ones rush into danger unprotected is not in the nature of the Cait Sidhe.
“That’s all I can really ask you for. That, and please just let me do my job.”
“I have said I will do my best.”
“I love you, anxious nerd.” I leaned over and kissed his temple. “So like I was saying, I’ll get Danny to drive me to Dame Altair’s place tomorrow, so I can talk to her.”
“I can’t go with you, but I can’t endure the idea of you going alone,” he said.
I blinked. I hadn’t expected him to capitulate on letting me go without him quite so quickly. “Do you know why you can’t come?” I asked.
“Dame Altair is a staunch traditionalist who considers shapeshifters barely more than animals,” he said.
“I wouldn’t have said ‘staunch,’ and I wouldn’t normally allow her the courtesy of thinking she’s right, but she’s already spun up and primed to attack. I can’t take you with me,” I said. “I can take Quentin, though; she’ll respect him, even without a known title. And Danny will be there if anything happens. And whatever we find, I promise I won’t go off on my own without letting you know, and I’ll take backup. I won’t leave you a widower.”
Tybalt nodded. “I suppose Quentin won’t allow you the flavor of foolishness you sometimes seem to prize,” he said, reaching over to take my face in his hands. “Only promise me in turn that if I restrain myself like this, if I can resist the urge to follow and protect you, that you’ll do your best to keep yourself from harm in my absence.”
“What, sir, are you asking me to be careful?” I asked, with exaggerated courtesy.
Tybalt snorted again. “I would never be so foolish. I’m asking you to remember that I am but a man, and not put too much strain on my poor heart by running into danger without concern for your own wellbeing.”
“My wellbeing is pretty difficult to damage,” I said. “But I promise I’ll remember that I’m not rushing in alone, and be as careful as I can, for the baby’s sake.”
