A Red-Rose Chain

She wasn’t the only one in Faerie who didn’t deserve a throne. King Rhys of Silences had been hand-picked for the position he now held. Under him, changelings were worse than second-class citizens. They never had a chance. But that didn’t mean that we could just walk into his house and start questioning whether or not he had the right to keep it.

“I don’t know that we’re ever going to depose another monarch,” I said carefully. “Right now, we’re here to prevent a war, and that’s what we’re going to focus on. But when this is over, and we’re not all spilling our literal guts out on the battlefield, I think it might be time to take a trip to Toronto and talk to High King Sollys about the validity of Rhys’ claim to Silences. He was given the throne by someone who didn’t have the right to her own crown. It’s possible that a member of the old royal family could just . . . step in.”

All eyes went to Walther. I took the opportunity to pull my jeans on and tuck my blouse in, creating a faintly old-fashioned, but acceptable level of decency.

Walther shook his head. “Don’t look at me,” he said. “Even if you deposed the man, I couldn’t inherit. I keep telling you, I’m several steps away from the line of inheritance. I’d be no more legitimate than he is, and besides, I’m on a tenure track. It’s important that I stay in Berkeley.”

I blinked. “That may be the best reason for not wanting to be King that I’ve ever heard. ‘I’m going to get tenure.’”

“It’s true.” Walther shrugged. “So what are we going to do now?”

“The same thing I always do,” I said, selecting a lace-up bodice from the wardrobe and sliding it on. “I’m going to go annoy the crap out of the nobility. Now somebody lace me into this thing.”





TEN




I WALKED DOWN THE DESERTED hall toward King Rhys’ receiving room with Tybalt on my arm and Walther following two paces behind. Quentin was off with May, exploring the knowe. As my squire, he could be reasonably expected to be running around and doing the tasks I didn’t want to bother with, and as a pureblood, he was going to be in less danger than a changeling manservant would have been. I’d still insisted he take some of Walther’s powder with him, just in case somebody tried to force him to have a friendly cup of tea or something. The thought of Quentin being dosed with a loyalty potion was enough to make my skin crawl.

“I wonder how big this Court really is,” I commented mildly, looking at one of the blank walls. I’d never been in a knowe this size with so little decoration. It was like Rhys had ordered the whole thing from Castles R Us, and then never bothered to swing by the local Bed, Battlements, and Beyond for the accessories he’d need to make it believable.

“In what regard, my dear?” Tybalt’s tone was artificially plummy and tolerant, like he was speaking to a child he suspected of being slightly slow. I wrinkled my nose, resisting the urge to burst out laughing. We were almost certainly being listened to, and speculating about the size of the Court, while rude, wasn’t seditious or otherwise inappropriate . . . except in that it could be considered speculation about the size of Rhys’ army.