Chapter 10 In Which I Am Forbidden from Eating Toast #2
Lene and I went to the usual table. I wasn’t entirely surprised to see the Gray Knight sitting there, eating something that looked suspiciously like a normal human-world banana.
She had popped in and out of the rotation a few times over the past few weeks, usually to criticize my interpretations of human behavior during class.
“So you believe you were poisoned,” she said, by way of greeting.
It took me a moment to understand what she was talking about.
“Good morning,” I said, still clinging to my manners. “It’s lovely to see you. Yes, it’s rude to eavesdrop on people’s predawn phone calls with their parents.” I stared at her severely, to see if she would apologize.
An apologetic frown didn’t mar her delicate features. She stared back, imposing even lounging splayed-leg on a wooden stool. “It is not eavesdropping when you shout it down a hallway.”
Touché. Perhaps not my subtlest moment.
“No, I don’t think I was poisoned.” I sighed. “I’ve been sick a lot, but I’m sure it’s just stress.”
She thrust her hand toward me, thumb pressed to her pinky, and her three middle fingers curled. A bolt of gray magic hit my tray and settled in a fine mesh over the buttered toast.
“You were poisoned,” she said, standing. The noises around us cut out; a buzzing filled my ears as I stared down at the bread on the plate.
Magic dusted the whorls and crevices in the crumb in a fine gray powder.
“Wait, what?” I pushed the tray away from me, but the Gray Knight had already stridden away, to the serving line.
“Kamare,” she said, in a booming voice so loud the entire room turned to stare. “You dishonor our Princeling with your treatment of his guest.”
“The Princeling dishonors us with his choice of guest,” the snake-scale lady countered, so smoothly she must have been preparing for this confrontation for weeks.
I stared at the toast, waiting for the poison to jump off the butter and down my throat.
“Do you serve the Princeling and his Court?” The Gray Knight stopped in front of Kamare, the table between them.
As it had once before, a weapons belt appeared at her waist, slung low over one hip. Instead of a gun, she had her hand on the hilt of a long thin saber. Its pommel glinted like diamonds in the flickering lights of the room.
“Does the Princeling serve his people?” Kamare countered. “Will a factory serve us, who do not need mortal money and do not value gold? What can they give us, if we open the winding ways to our kingdom and let the humans in?”
“The Princeling has brought choices, Kamare. The opportunity to stand beneath the sun and the moon. That was his promise and it will be his gift. But not for you, I think,” the Gray Knight said, drawing her sword.
I stood up, stumbling over the stool, and started toward her. “No, wait—” I said, sprinting past a table full of startled faeries.
She brought the sword up in a sharp slicing motion, and down—I hurled myself at her, catching her arm.
She stopped. Not because I was strong enough to hold her. That much was immediately obvious. She stopped because she wanted to.
I panted, my left hand clutching her right wrist, my body pressed to hers. I leaned up to look into her face; she stared over my head, at Kamare.
“The human spares your life, though you would not have spared hers,” she declaimed, in the tones of a particularly dedicated town crier at a Renaissance faire.
Son of a bitch, I thought. She’d baited me into it. She wanted the other faeries to see me stand between her and one of them.
I glanced past her at the other people in the room. A few had their mouths open in shock. As I watched, one faerie with blue skin and gray eyes reached over and pushed on his companion’s jaw.
“The human is weak,” Kamare snarled. “And when my Queen takes your Court, she will wear a necklace of the human’s teeth.”
In the rush of the past few weeks, I’d nearly forgotten the Queen and the threat of potential invasion. This was not the way I’d wanted to be reminded of her.
I let go of the Gray Knight and whirled to look at the woman who’d tried to kill me. Her face was twisted with hate.
“Perhaps the human is stronger than you,” the Gray Knight countered. “As our guest requests it, I will not kill you.”
I sagged in relief. Murdering people who didn’t like me seemed like a bad PR move.
“By the authority of the Princeling, Kamare, you are banned from the Court,” the Gray Knight finished.
I waited for somebody to say something. No one did.
Seconds passed as we all stood there, Kamare behind the table, the Gray Knight and me in front of it. The two of them stared at each other.
“Fine,” Kamare said, like they’d been having some kind of conversation. “But when my Queen brings her army upon your Princeling’s Court, you will remember this day.” She took off her apron, threw it onto the bowls of porridge on the table, and stormed out of the room.
The Gray Knight put her arm around my shoulders. “That was brave of you, to come between my sword and its target,” she said loudly at the air above my head. I stood stiff beneath her, trying to ignore our audience.
“Could we be less dramatic next time?” I whispered.
She smiled a smile that said Absolutely not and steered me back to the breakfast table.
Lene, who’d apparently lost interest sometime during the confrontation, had finished her breakfast. “Sahir will be angry he missed this,” she said, and sounded positively delighted at the thought.
I was also wondering why Sahir hadn’t come running. Surely finding poison in my food and stepping in front of an actual weapon was more dangerous than almost being kissed by a lying human?
“Do you think the bond only activates when I think I’m in danger?” I asked, trying to understand. I looked at the toast again. Oh man. I wanted toast so badly.
Maybe someone would make me a new piece of toast.
“A knight’s bond is shaped by his liege,” the Gray Knight said, watching me stare at my plate.
“It is based on the liege’s emotions. We cannot sense your environment, and we cannot tell threats real from imagined, nor fear from shock.
” She flicked her fingers and the toast disappeared from my tray.
“Perhaps he will learn to manage his response.”
“Poor Sahir,” I muttered. “Can it be undone?”
She shook her head. “He did an unusual thing, Lady of the True Dreams, but a brave one. Now, I believe you have a meeting to attend.”
I ate a few bites of the fruit bowl from Lene’s plate—which lacked any spiky bits—and then stood up. “Coming with me?” I asked.
Lene frowned. “I scheduled a nap with a few friends on the river side of the Court,” she said. “I can visit your chambers later, though.”
I felt disappointed, almost afraid at the thought of working alone in my room.
“Your room is on the way to my office,” the Gray Knight said. “I can walk you there.”
We left the dining hall in silence, with a small crowd of other Fae. “I think you saved my life,” I said, when we’d turned away from the group. “Or at least my morning. Thank you.”
She inclined her head in acknowledgment. “I regret that there was a threat to you in our Court.” The tip of her pointed ear poked up through her silver hair. It looked soft, so light it shouldn’t have lain flat. But maybe faeries didn’t get frizzy hair.
“There will always be threats,” I said softly, not thinking about the Court.
She looked at me, a little furrow in her brow. “You are a bit odd, I believe. Though I have not met many humans,” she said. “And neither has the Princeling.”
“But don’t the Courts trap us, for sport?
” I wondered if that was why Milo’s eyes sometimes looked like cracked shards of sky, if he’d been tortured once—he was definitely not being tortured now.
We stopped in front of my door, two upright pillars in the long hallway.
She stood closer than she needed to, her toes nearly touching mine.
“Our Court does not.” She glanced down and touched my ring, almost absent-mindedly. Her fingertips skimmed along my knuckle. “Except for the Queen’s Court, most have not, for a long time.”
Thoughtlessly, I flipped my hand so our palms touched. “So humans aren’t amusing anymore?” We looked together at the press of palm to palm, watched the dry brush of her fingers across my wrist as she pulled away.
I followed her hand as it slid up my arm, mesmerized by the warm walnut brown of her fingers against my waffle-knit Henley. Then she smiled and squeezed my shoulder. “You are still amusing. But our tastes have evolved.”
I touched the bottom of my name, carved into the wood. “You knew you trapped me,” I said. “You gave me the food.”
She met my gaze, her silver eyes hard. “I knew.”
I realized I didn’t actually have another thought. I had expected her to apologize. But of course she wouldn’t; it had been a direct order from her lord.
We looked at each other for another minute, and then she nodded and walked away.
My next human class was scheduled for that night. I picked Lene up on my way down the hall to the cafeteria. The route had become so familiar it was automatic.
When I pushed the doors open, I stopped in shock. The room was completely full. Crammed to the point where people stood along the walls.
My usual seat at the head of the center table was occupied by the Princeling. Behind him stood the Gray Knight, who jerked her head toward the front of the room—the serving area where she’d stood with Kamare that morning.
The Gray Knight was a budding dramaturg.
Lene split off from me to stand next to Gaheris. Sahir stood up when I walked past him, and stalked three steps behind me on my left flank.
At some point, I’d need to tell him I was left-handed so he could bodyguard on my right side instead.
Sahir and I turned at the front of the room.
“Hi, everyone,” I said. “How are you all doing?”
After a moment of confused glances, a new student spoke up.
“Do you mean, what are we doing?” she asked. “We are attending your class.”