A Red-Rose Chain

We walked down the carefully-maintained paths through the flat part of the park, across streams and over tiny ponds that still made my skin crawl if I looked at them too closely—I don’t like water much, and I don’t like pools of standing water at all—and began to climb the hiking trail that wound its slow way up the side of the hill. Tybalt let go of my arm as the path narrowed, taking up a position directly behind me. He’d learned the hard way that if he let me out of his sight when we were checking in with the nobility, I’d probably find a way to dump myself in a mud puddle, cover myself in blood, or otherwise render myself completely unpresentable. To be fair, I never did it on purpose. It was just a talent of mine.

The path leveled off, and we stepped into the small clearing that preceded the entry to Arden’s knowe. The doors in the big redwood that served as the knowe’s tie to the mortal world stood open, like they were welcoming us home. Many knowes require complicated rituals or motions to get in. Not this one. This was the royal seat of the Mists, and its doors were never closed to the people of the Kingdom. The pixies clustered in the trees here so thickly that they illuminated the area like so many pastel Christmas lights. Guards in Arden’s livery stood to either side of the doors. I waved. One of them—a diminutive Glastig with hair the color of walnut shells—waved back.

“Evening, October. Quentin. Your Highness.” She bobbed her head to Tybalt, which was as close as any member of the Divided Courts would come to bowing to a Cait Sidhe. The fact that she called him by his title at all said a great deal about relations between Arden’s Court and the Court of Cats. “The Queen’s expecting you, and said that we were to send you right on in when you arrived.”

“Evening, Lowri,” I said, with a quick smile. It was safe for Arden’s guards to stand outside like this: given the strength of the illusions hiding the knowe, they were probably rendered invisible to searching eyes just through proximity. “Where did Madden go with the Mauthe Doog?”

“You mean the big black dogs that pop in and out of view like bad special effects?” asked Lowri, her faint Welsh accent making the question sound even more surreal than it probably should have. The other guard—a Coblynau I didn’t know by name—put a hand over his mouth, concealing a smile.

“Those are the ones,” I confirmed.

“He took them home to meet his siblings,” said Lowri. “Said some of them need proper medical care that’s based on dogs, not on people. He looked awfully sad about it, too, and said that if you asked, we were to tell you he didn’t blame you, since you didn’t know any better.”

I winced. There was something especially unsettling about being chastised, even secondhand, by someone who was essentially a dog. The Cu Sidhe liked to cultivate a simpler way of life, eschewing the complexities of fae politics and human manners. That doesn’t mean they’re rude or stupid: Madden couldn’t have been Arden’s seneschal if he wasn’t a smart guy. It just means they don’t hold grudges or go on vendettas, or host dinner parties that require knowing when to use multiple forks.

“We shall make it up to him later,” said Tybalt.

“Yes, we will,” I said. “Is Arden inside?”

Lowri wrinkled her nose at the informality, which was funny, considering that when we’d met, Lowri had been working in the private guard of the false Queen, who had called Arden things that were far worse than her actual name. “As she said to send you in, I believe that is a fair guess, yes.”

“Cool. See you in a bit.” I waved to the other guard and walked inside, with Quentin and Tybalt following.