Once Broken Faith (40 page)

“Yeah. Do you, uh . . . shit. There's no way to say this that isn't super rude, so I'm going to go with it. Do you know what that means?”

I smiled a little, wryly. “I may be a pureblood, but I've spent the last hundred years in the mortal world. I know about physics. I watched the moon landing on TV along with everyone else on my block. I even know how to program a VCR.”

Cassandra looked at me blankly. I rolled my eyes.

“I promise you, references used to stay topical for longer. I know how a cell phone works, okay? Does that prove I'm down with the modern world?”

“What did you do for a hundred years among the mortals?”

I shrugged. The stairs ended in a narrower, less extravagant hallway. The walls were still carved redwood, but the ceiling was straight, not domed, and there were no flowers. “A lot of things. I was a seamstress for years, before it got hard to make a living that way. I worked as a nanny for wealthy mortal families for a while, until they started wanting references and proof of identity. A few odd jobs, and then, in the 1950s, I discovered I liked selling books. So I've been a bookseller for the last sixty years. I'm good at figuring out what a person might like to read, and convincing them to give it a chance.”

“Huh,” said Cassandra. “You know, when Aunt Birdie said she'd found the lost princess, I was expecting something more, I guess . . .”

“Disney on Ice?” I smiled faintly. “I can do my best, but I'll never be the kind of girl who willingly stands in front of the glitter cannon.”

“Boom,” said Cassandra, deadpan.

I laughed. It was a relief. Nolan was asleep, but Master Davies—Walther—was going to find a way to wake him up, and everything was going to be okay. It had to be. I'd already lost more than I could stand to lose. One more thing would be too much.

We arrived to find the kitchen occupied by two Hobs, one standing on a stepstool at the sink with her arms buried in soapy water, the other sitting on a box and peeling potatoes. They froze at the sight of me and Cassandra standing in the doorway. I forced a smile.

“Hi,” I said. “Pretend we're not here.”

The two Hobs continued to stare. Finally, the seated Hob lowered her knife and said, “I'm not sure we can do that, Highness.”

“Why not?”

The question came from Cassandra, and it was enough to make all three of us turn to look at her. She shrugged.

“This is the kitchen,” she said. “This is your space, right? I mean, a queen's a queen even when she's peeling potatoes, but you have to have a certain amount of authority here, or what would stop princes and princesses and the like from just rampaging through the place sticking their fingers in scalding water and ruining soufflés? If Queen Windermere wants to sit and have a sandwich or something, that's proof that you're doing your jobs
awesomely
.”

“Really?” asked the potato peeler, looking dubious.

“Really,” said Cassandra. “She feels safe here, being incognito and feeding her guests. By which I mean me. I'm starving.”

The two Hobs exchanged a look. The dishwasher focused on me.

“You would truly not be offended, Highness?” she asked.

“As long as you don't mind me making myself a sandwich while you keep working, I'd be overjoyed,” I said. They were starting to look uncomfortable again, so I added, “Remember, I grew up here. I know where everything is. I like making my own sandwiches.”

“If you say so, Highness,” said the dishwasher.

Neither of them looked happy, but they weren't arguing, and they went back to their respective tasks as I led Cassandra to the kitchen table, only pausing occasionally to shoot uncomfortable glances in our direction, like they were expecting me to start yelling about dereliction of duty.

“Wow,” said Cassandra, voice pitched low. “Is it always like that?”

“Oh, this was mild,” I said. “They're kitchen staff. They don't expect to have to deal with me on a daily basis, and so they don't really have a script to follow.
Watch me try to talk to the guards if you want a laugh. They're so busy bowing that they don't hear half of what I say.”

“Putting the fun back in feudalism.”

“Something like that.” I looked at the rest of the kitchen. The shelves were well-stocked; preservation spells meant pastries and pies could be baked days before they were needed. Roast meat could be frozen at the perfect level of doneness and kept that way indefinitely. “What did you want to eat?”

“I don't know,” said Cassandra. “I really would be happy with a sandwich.”

“Got it,” I said. “Be right back.”

My childhood raids on the kitchen had been hasty things, Nolan giggling at my side while Marianne watched tolerantly from the door, ready to sound the alarm if it looked like we were going to be caught. Mostly they'd been focused on cookies and cakes, the sort of easily-snatched sweets that defined a child's world. That had still necessitated a certain understanding of where things were kept. Since the knowe had been sealed for a century, it wasn't like the place had been remodeled.

I found a dish of sliced beef and carried it back to the table, dropping it in front of her. “Hang on,” I said, while she was still blinking in bewilderment at the massive amount of meat. My second pass garnered bread, cheese, mustard, and something purple and spicy-smelling that I suspected of being beetroot ketchup. Fae cooking can get odd sometimes.

I spread the rest of my pilfered wares in front of her with a deadpan, “Ta-da.”

“I'm not going to eat all this,” said Cassandra.

“I wouldn't expect you to.” I settled across from her. The thought of eating made me feel sick. The slowly-growing ache in my temples told me I didn't actually have a choice. Food is one of the only things that helps combat magic-burn. Food, and rest, and if Walther
needed me, I was going to be there for him. Rest wasn't going to be an option for me until my brother was awake.

Slowly, I began assembling a sandwich, starting with a healthy smear of the beetroot ketchup. Fortune favors the bold.

“I am coming here for lunch from now on,” said Cassandra, shaking off her shock and starting to put her own sandwich together. She was a healthy eater, judging by the amount of meat she piled on her bread. “If this is how your pantry is always stocked, I may move
in
.”

“We'd be happy to have you, as long as you didn't mind being put to work,” I said. Cheese went onto the beetroot; meat went onto the cheese. It was an automatic process, but it made me feel better. Human or fae, queen or commoner, a sandwich went together in the same order. “I'm so understaffed that I keep wishing there were a temp agency that served noble households.”

“I don't know that there's anything I could do here.”

“You might be surprised. Most of these jobs, no one actually
knows
how they're done. They just sort of happen. Half the households around here have conflated their Seneschal and their Chamberlain, which is great if you can get away with it, but when you're talking about a knowe as big as this one . . . it's not gonna work forever.”

Cassandra raised an eyebrow. “Because the difference is . . . ?”

“Seneschal runs the non-household side of the knowe. My schedule, organizing balls, keeping our records accurate, updating the local Library whenever we have a chance so the record never falls out of true, all that fun bullshit. The Chamberlain runs the household. Kitchen, cleaning staff, laundry. The positions are frequently combined at the County level and below. Ducal houses can go either way. Royal houses? You need both. There's too much for one person to do.”

“So if I ever need a job, you'll have a place for me.”

“Exactly.” I took a bite of my sandwich. The beetroot wasn't bad. Strange, but not bad. Swallowing, I asked, “How did you and Walther meet?”

Cassandra raised her eyebrow again. “Small talk now?”

“I'm trying to distract myself. Humor me. It's this or I pace back and forth in front of my brother's room until I wear a hole in the carpet, and I don't think that would be good for anyone.”

“Right,” she said. “Well, we met on campus. I'm not in any of his classes, but we tend to be in the same buildings. We're both disguised as humans, of course, so it's possible I would have missed him entirely if not for his grad student, Jack.”

“What did the grad student do?”

“He's a friend of one of the girls from my study group. Apparently, Aunt Birdie came by while Jack was on campus, and Jack thought she was dating Walther—as if. I mean, he's sweet and funny and cute and everything, but he's not her type.”

“Too academic?”

“Insufficiently Tybalt.” Cassandra smirked. “She's had a thing for kitty since she came back from the pond. Maybe not instantly, but I'd say within six months of her return. She'd come over on Friday night to have a drink with my folks and spend half the time complaining about what Tybalt had been doing during the week. I'm pretty sure Mom and Dad had a bet going about when she'd finally give in and start dating him.”

“But you recognized her from Jack's description,” I guessed.

“Exactly. I mean, how many grumpy, stressed-out brunettes named ‘October' can there be in the world? I'm hoping the answer is ‘one.' Any more than that would be too many. Jack said she was visiting his advisor, so I went to welcome said advisor to the ‘October Daye
Occasionally Ruins My Life' club, he asked if I wanted to grab a beer, and we've been hanging out ever since.”

It was difficult not to look at her, look at him, and see the age difference as a problem. It would have been, in the human world—assuming it had even been
possible
. The word for humans as old as Walther is “dead.” But Faerie has different rules, and she hadn't actually said her interest in him was romantic. She'd just chosen clothes that would draw attention to her figure and a human illusion that would call attention to her eyes. Both of those could have been coincidence. I didn't think so. And it was none of my damn business. I was Queen, not babysitter to the kingdom.

“He seems nice,” I said neutrally. “He's a good alchemist. I don't think I've ever known someone who could accomplish what he's been able to do already.”

“You mean despite things not working exactly as you want them to.”

I glanced at the kitchen Hobs. They were still hard at work, but I knew they were listening. That was one thing Marianne had worked hard to drum into my skull, reinforced by years of working retail in the mortal world: the staff was always listening. Especially if it looked like they weren't. I would forget that at my own peril.

“Yes,” I said, keeping my tone forcibly light as I turned back to Cassandra. “Even despite that, he's done amazing things. A cure for elf-shot is just . . . I never thought I'd see it in my lifetime. And him living in the Mists means it reflects well on me that he accomplished it, even if he was in Silences at the time.”

“Are we, like, friends with Silences now?”

“I probably shouldn't send October to visit any time soon, but I think we are.” I took another bite of sandwich, and swallowed before saying, “We put the rightful ruling family back on the throne. We corrected a profound wrong. The whole coast is healthier now, and Queen Siwan is grateful for our help, even as she hopes
that we don't need to do any more diplomacy in her presence for a long, long time.”

Cassandra leaned closer, lowering her voice conspiratorially as she asked, “Did you do that on purpose? Send Aunt Birdie because you knew she'd mess things up in the best way possible, I mean?”

“Honestly, I was just mad that she'd touched me without permission.” I smiled wryly. “I guess I'm getting used to this queen thing after all.”

“What?” Cassandra blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, I know this is all ‘poor little rich girl' of me, but . . . I gave up expecting to be Queen in the Mists a long time ago. I'd adjusted to the idea that I wasn't going to have the opportunity, and then I'd adjusted to the idea that I wasn't going to have the responsibility. I figured I'd spend the next few centuries selling books, or whatever comes after books, and not worrying about anything outside my immediate sphere. When October showed up at the bookstore where I was working, I hated her a little. She forced me to take a job I'd given up on wanting.”

“That must have been hard,” said Cassandra.

“You know what's funny? The hardest thing is remembering not to thank people.”

She cocked her head to the side. “Come again?”

“I worked in retail. ‘Thank you, have a nice day' is such an automatic thing for me that I might as well have a pull-string in my back. I thanked the staff something like a dozen times my first week here. They were all volunteers, half of them were from the old Queen's Court, none of them had any idea what kind of ruler I was going to be, and I was
thanking
them. Some left as soon as I said the words. I don't think they're ever coming back.”

“I . . . wow.” Cassandra began to laugh helplessly. “Please don't take this the wrong way, but holy
shit
, Toby actually did it. She went and got us a changeling queen.”

I blinked. “Come again?”

“You don't sound totally pissed. That's a good sign.
Look.” She took a deep breath, getting her laughter under control. “You're a pureblood, absolutely. I mean, if you weren't, there's no way you'd be Queen now. It's a pretty simple logic problem. But you have the same problems interacting with fae society that I do. It's not natural to you. You're not really a changeling. That doesn't mean you're one of
them
.”

This time, my blink was slower, and accompanied by another bite of my sandwich. Chewing gave me time to think. “Huh,” I said finally. “I . . . that makes a lot of sense. Maybe if I think about it that way, I won't feel so damn out of place all the time.”