Full of Briars

SEANAN MCGUIRE

A Quentin Sollys Story

DAW BOOKS, INC.

www.dawbooks.com

Also by Seanan McGuire

October Daye
Novels
:

ROSEMARY AND RUE

A LOCAL HABITATION

AN ARTIFICIAL NIGHT

LATE ECLIPSES

ONE SALT SEA

ASHES OF HONOR

CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT

THE WINTER LONG

A RED-ROSE CHAIN

ONCE BROKEN FAITH

InCryptid
Novels:

DISCOUNT ARMAGEDDON

MIDNIGHT BLUE-LIGHT SPECIAL

HALF-OFF RAGNAROK

POCKET APOCALYPSE

CHAOS CHOREOGRAPHY

MAGIC FOR NOTHING*

SPARROW HILL ROAD

*Coming in 2017 from DAW Books

September 2nd, 2012

No, some of it is for my child's father.

O, how Full of briars is this working-day world!

—William Shakespeare,
As You Like It

“Okay, it's official: I am
definitely
going to throw up,” announced Toby. She was pacing back and forth like she thought she could somehow find a way to escape from Arden's study if she just tried hard enough.

“Please don't,” said Tybalt laconically.

She glared at him and kept pacing, the skirt of her black spider-silk gown flaring every time she turned. The light drew gold-and-silver highlights from the fabric. It wasn't anything like what she normally wore; it was too elegant, and not bloodstained enough by half. Maybe it was small and petty of me, but I was grateful for that. Toby is awesome and everything, but most of the time she dresses like she's not sure what clothes
are
, and I wanted her to make a good impression on my parents.

Oh, sweet Oberon, she was not going to make a good first impression on my parents.

“I'll throw up if I want to,” she muttered.

“Please don't throw up,” I said, doing my best not to whine. “I don't think Mom likes it when people say hello by puking on her.”

Tybalt was lounging on the couch, looking like he did this kind of thing all the time. The urge to kick him in the shins just to take the smirk off his face was distressingly strong. I'm mostly okay with the fact that Toby's dating a smug jerk who thinks the rest of us exist for his amusement—mostly. No matter how much I trust him, he's always going to be a cat and she's always going to be able to do better.

Or maybe that's just my inner snob talking again. He's been quieter since I went and got squired to the only person who's ever been willing to put me in mortal danger for fun, but he's still
there
. I was born Crown Prince of the Westlands, destined to follow my father onto the throne when he and Mom decide to take their well-deserved retirement. My every wish had been someone's command and my every whim had been immediately catered to, right up until the day I'd been placed in blind fosterage and sent away.

I had had the best of everything, just for existing. That was part of why my parents had chosen to send me and my sister away. It was ostensibly for our protection—it's hard to assassinate an heir you can't find—but really, it was to make sure we didn't grow up to be total jerks.

Fosterage of one sort or another is pretty standard among noble houses. It keeps us all indebted to each other. But Crown Princes and Princesses are usually sent only to other High Courts, and I'd been sent to the middle of nowhere, put into the care of a half-mad Duke who didn't even seem to care about the status I would eventually convey upon his Court. I was being punished, clearly. I just couldn't figure out
why
. Worse yet, I'd been separated from Penthea—my sister—and from the nursemaids and courtiers who had been our companions virtually from birth. My parents had never had the bulk of raising me, and then they'd been the ones to decide I needed to go away. It didn't make
sense
.

I'd been angry at my parents for a long time. Then I'd been determined to be the best blind foster the world had ever known, following every rule, obeying every protocol, the very model of royal fae youth. Maybe that way, they would send for me. I could go home.

And then I'd met October, and everything had gone sort of topsy-turvy and weird. She had a way of doing that.

The doorknob turned. Toby stopped pacing. I straightened, trying to make sure everyone could tell how much I'd grown, both in stature and in bearing. Even Tybalt sat up a little, his attention going to the door. If he had been in cat form, his ears would have pricked up.

The door swung open. May stepped inside, still wearing her rainbow taffeta gown and black velvet choker. She blinked at the three of us while we looked at her like she was the last thing we'd expected. Then she burst out laughing and waved her hands in the air like a horror movie ghost.

“Boo!” she crowed, and laughed some more, stepping fully into the room. She let the door swing shut behind her. “Man, you guys should see your faces. I wish I had a camera right now.”

“No cameras,” I said hurriedly. “My parents aren't human celebrities. And they can't be photographed with me.” Anyone with time to kill would be able to compare my face to theirs and see too many similarities to explain by us all being Daoine Sidhe.

May rolled her eyes. “Uh, duh, I
know
, Quentin, okay? Not my first rodeo. Not even my first time meeting the High Monarchs. I almost was a High Queen once, only my brother needed the first bite more than I did, so he wound up with her face and memories for six hundred years.”

“Right,” I said, trying to cover my awkwardness. May had been created as Toby's Fetch, combining Toby's memories with the memories of a changeling girl named Dare . . . and with the memories of the night-haunt that May had originally been. She looked half-human, with rounder ears and softer features than even October had, but she was pure fae, and she was older than any of us knew for sure. “Uh, just. Okay. Do you know what's holding them up?”

“The usual. Arden's showing off the knowe while her staffers try to impress the High Monarchs and it's all blah politics and etiquette out there, which is why I had to escape.” May walked over and flopped down on the couch next to Tybalt. He turned to look at her, raising an eyebrow. She beamed at him. “Hello, kitty. Anyway, everyone knows they're going to finish by giving some kind of official thanks to Toby for finding the missing princess. Probably not with actual ‘thank you's involved. That would just be weird.”

“Yes,” said Toby firmly. “That would be very weird, and we do not want that. The
last
thing I need right now is for the High King and Queen of the Westlands to feel like they're indebted to me for something.”

“That's a pity,” said my father, from the other side of the room. “Here we were planning to buy you a nice dinette set.”

“Dad!” I turned and started toward him while everyone else was still staring at the trio who'd appeared through one of Arden's portals on the far side of the study. Mom and Dad were standing in front of the new Queen in the Mists, both still wearing their Court garb, down to the heavy, overly ornate circlets that they always used to complain about when they stopped to check on my sister and me after taking audiences. Arden looked uncomfortable. My parents looked exhausted. That was familiar, too. They always looked tired after they'd been doing their jobs.

They'd been working since they'd left Toronto. The trip would have required multiple portals opened by their Tuatha de Dannan escorts, which meant passing through multiple regional Courts. Even if they weren't stopping to hold audience in each of them, it still meant at least six pauses to show their appreciation for the nobles who'd agreed to host the processional. And that was the short route, which meant it was also the more dangerous one. They'd probably made nine or more jumps on the way here. They'd been working for
hours
. The last thing they were going to want was an overly enthusiastic teenage boy jumping all over them.

I stopped before the point of impact, pulling myself back and trying to salvage a sense of respectability from the situation. It didn't help that I was still getting used to my height after my latest growth spurt. My limbs felt like they were twice as long as they needed to be. Quentin Sollys: the Once and Future King of Spiders.

“Mother, Father,” I said, folding my hands behind my back and offering a shallow but respectful bow. “I'm so pleased to see that you've made it here safely.” I turned, offering a slightly deeper bow to the newly confirmed Queen. “Queen Windermere in the Mists. Congratulations on the moment of your ascension.”

Mom and Dad blinked at me, nonplussed. Arden looked baffled. Toby, who had stopped pacing when my parents appeared, burst out laughing.

I turned to glare at her, momentarily forgetting myself in my annoyance. Unfortunately, moving meant getting a look at May and Tybalt. May had her hands pressed over her mouth, keeping her laughter contained, although she couldn't keep her nostrils from flaring. Tybalt wasn't laughing, but wore a look of such deep, profound amusement that it was clear he would have been, if it hadn't been an undignified way to say hello to a group of monarchs.

Toby stopped laughing. “Oh, Oberon's ass, I just laughed in front of the High King. Oh, crap, I just swore in front of the High King. Oh—”

“Loath as I am to disrupt this comedic treasure, I do not want my beloved to give herself an aneurysm over proper behavior,” said Tybalt. He flowed to his feet like liquid, offering my parents and Arden the shallowest of bows. “Milady Windermere, allow me to be among the first to formally congratulate you on your assumption of the throne. May it grow comfortable beneath you, and may you never have cause to regret your choice of seating.”

“I think you're supposed to call me ‘Highness' now,” said Arden.

Tybalt smirked. “No. Everyone else is meant to call you ‘Highness' now. I'm to call you whatever strikes my fancy, and you're to feel fortunate that I speak to you at all. Not every monarch of the Divided Courts is so blessed.”

“Case in point,” said Dad. “Our local King of Cats hasn't come to see us in over a decade. There could have been a coup for all we know.”

“That is not necessarily something to be proud of,” said Tybalt.

Dad shrugged. “Maybe not. Still, we don't make trouble for him, and he doesn't make trouble for us, and it all works out. Sir Daye, if you're done looking horrified, would you like to introduce us to the rest of the room?”

“Oh! Uh. I.” Toby looked even more flustered. She pointed to Tybalt. “King Tybalt of the Court of Dreaming Cats.”

Tybalt nodded regally.

“That's, uh, May over there. May Daye. She's sort of my sister.” Toby glanced to May. “I mean, technically, we're related.”

May lowered her hands and beamed at my parents. “You ever watch
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
? It's like when the monk dudes made Dawn out of Buffy to hide the fact that she's the Key, only no one was hiding anything when I was made. I'm just her Fetch. Nowhere near as complicated.”

Mom looked nonplussed. “Her . . . Fetch?”

“This happened before you let Quentin become my squire,” said Toby, and shot me a sharp look. “I thought you'd know.”

I did my best to look innocent. “I told them the broad strokes.”

“But he's been your squire for more than a year, Sir Daye,” said Mom, focusing on Toby. “How can you have had a Fetch for so long without dying? It seems odd.”

“It is,” said Toby. “May's still my Fetch—she looks like me, or like I used to look, she has my memories, all the usual stuff—but she's not my death omen anymore. It's complicated.”

For the first time, the corner of Mom's mouth twitched. “Funny. That's how Quentin describes things when he bothers to write home.”

“I can't blame him for that,” said Toby. “I mean, I can't imagine trying to explain some of the things that go on around here, much less explain them to my parents. Uh. Everyone in here knows about that, you know. That he's . . .” She waved a hand vaguely in my direction. “You know.”

“He wasn't supposed to tell you,” said Dad, shooting a mock glare at me. Then he yielded, and smiled. “But we're glad he did. I will admit, I wasn't looking forward to not being allowed to contact my eldest child until he reached his majority.”

“
Dad
,” I hissed.

“You should've been there for his last birthday,” said May. “We had six cakes. It was awesome.”

I said nothing, just hunched my shoulders and glowered as my face flamed red.

Being sent into blind fosterage meant unless I was called home for some reason—and there were no good reasons to be called home, only reasons that began and ended with funeral processions and the beating of the night-haunts' wings—I was expected to remain incognito and keep denying my identity until I turned thirty and went back to Toronto to fulfill my duties as Crown Prince. I'd done it for a long time, even when it hurt more than I could have believed possible. I knew how much Toby hated people lying to her.

But then there had been Arden, and her denial of her throne, of her birthright, of the idea that she could ever be a queen. I should have stayed silent. I'd known it then, and I knew it now. I just
couldn't
. She'd needed a voice that she would listen to, and somehow, that voice had been mine. Silence would have condemned the people of the Mists to lose their rightful queen and continue to labor under a usurper. And I couldn't allow that to happen.

Sometimes I felt like my time with Toby was turning me into an excellent knight and a terrible king, and the worst part was that I liked myself better this way.