Six #4
Two portals opened on the stage. Arden and Nolan stepped through, accompanied by their own unique magical scents.
They were both wearing purple and silver, hers in the form of a bell-sleeved gown that brushed the floor as she walked, belted with a silver chain whose links had been shaped to look like twists of blackberry briar, his in a matching suit with blackberry vines stitched around the hems. They bowed to the room, then turned and walked to their respective thrones, sitting.
Quentin leaned around Raysel and Chelsea, toward me. “Who taught Arden about showmanship?” he whispered. “This is a lot more pomp and circumstance than she usually goes for.”
“Too many newcomers,” I whispered back. “Gotta impress them if she wants them to take her seriously.”
I hoped the “impressing our new neighbors” phase wasn’t going to last all that long, but I could see the value of it while it did. Sadly.
Arden cleared her throat, and the silence that had begun to fray around the edges of the room snapped back into place, leaving everything in quiet.
“I now declare this court formally in session,” she said.
“Our first order of business tonight is the discussion of Rayseline Torquill’s term of offense, approved by this court almost exactly one year ago, prior to the establishment of the Lady of Flowers’s false reality.
Will the parties involved step forward?”
I moved toward the dais, Raysel moving with me, while Quentin, Chelsea, and Tybalt hung back. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Dianda and Dean doing the same. And behind them, out of the crowd, came Sylvester.
The sight of him made my breath catch and my heart beat harder in my chest. He looked defeated in a way I had never seen from him before, not even in the days immediately following Luna’s disappearance.
Not even in Titania’s Faerie, where he’d been alone and drinking himself slowly to death.
He walked like he had nothing left, eyes dull and chin down.
“The claim of offense was made by Duchess Dianda Lorden of the Undersea Duchy of Saltmist,” said Arden. “Duchess Lorden, in your eyes, has this term been completed?”
“It has not, Your Highness,” said Dianda.
I was close enough to her that she wouldn’t have needed to shout regardless, but everyone’s voice was still carrying loud and clear throughout the room, while the whispers and murmurs around us weren’t.
Cassandra’s control over the wind was even better than I’d assumed.
I’d have to congratulate her for that later.
“And why not?” asked Arden. “A year has passed. A full turn of seasons. What cause could you have to claim the offense has not been accounted for?”
Raysel tensed beside me, and I bumped her with my hip, trying to calm her.
We’d been warned about this part of the process; before she could issue a judgement, Arden needed to make sure that all the information was available to her court.
If Raysel hadn’t been a duke’s daughter, this would have been a lot simpler.
By involving the nobility, we’d made things incredibly difficult for ourselves.
I hate politics.
“The term of offense had barely begun when the Lady of the Flowers enchanted the land, and Rayseline Torquill was pulled from the home where she had been placed to serve and thrown into a skerry with no way to fulfill her obligations,” said Dianda.
“Time passed normally during that enchantment. Four months of service were lost. We will not be satisfied that the girl has paid properly for her actions until she has served a full year.”
“A reasonable argument, and well fitted to our understanding of time and enchantments,” allowed Arden. She turned to me. “Sir Daye, Rayseline has been serving in your household. Do you agree that the term of offense has not yet been completed?”
“I do, Your Highness,” I said, bowing my head so she wouldn’t see the way I smirked uttering her title.
It’s hard to take noble titles seriously sometimes, especially when they get all fancy.
“Rayseline has served well over the past eight months, but eight months are not a year. Had she run away at the start of her service, we would hold that time against her term. She wasn’t in my household to offer service as she should have been. She’s not finished yet.”
“I see,” said Arden, and turned her attention to Raysel, who seemed to wilt under her gaze. “Rayseline Acantha Torquill, do you also agree that your term of service has yet to be completed? Are you prepared to continue to serve?”
“Yes, Highness,” squeaked Raysel. She looked at the floor as she spoke, and I was pretty sure that without Cassandra’s enchantment, she would have been entirely inaudible.
“I want to—I mean, I need to finish out my term of service. I owe another four months. Even that’s not going to be enough, probably.
After everything I did, I can’t imagine being forgiven that quickly. ”
“The term was to serve for a year or until both you and Sir Daye could agree that your service was discharged,” said Arden. “With that in mind, I declare that—”
“Wait!”
Luna’s voice echoed from the back of the hall. I whipped around, eyes going wide. Sylvester shrank in on himself, looking like he wanted nothing more than to vanish into the floor. Raysel was doing much the same, and in that moment, they had never looked more alike.
The crowds parted as Luna stormed toward us, pink-and-red hair streaming out behind her, wearing a structured gown that looked like it had been made by stitching giant rose petals together.
It was less beautiful than it was stunning, the sort of thing you expect to see in an animated movie or on a Broadway stage, not in open court.
“You do not have the full story,” declared Luna, stopping as she pulled up level with Sylvester, who didn’t even look at her. “Without all the information, you can’t possibly pass your judgement, however fair and balanced it might be intended to be.”
“The court recognizes the Duchess Luna Torquill,” said Arden, sounding only a little miffed—something that could easily be excused as displeasure over the interruption of normal proceedings. It was important that she not seem biased here, not with Raysel’s future on the line.
Luna bowed her head in acknowledgement, then looked up, making direct eye contact with Arden. “While we were enchanted, my daughter was thrown into the skerry once controlled by Blind Michael.”
A gasp ran through the room, coming most loudly from the newcomers. For them, Blind Michael was still a children’s story, not a threat that had been defeated by their local hero. Some might not even know that he was gone.
That might seem ridiculous, but the majority of Faerie doesn’t have portable phones, much less the internet.
Easy access to those things was absolutely a result of April O’Leary in Tamed Lightning being a living bridge between fae magic and human technology.
She could “upgrade” mortal machinery so that it worked reliably in the Summerlands.
Before her, we hadn’t had those things either, and without them, information had been much slower to spread.
People would hear rumors, but not confirmations, and no one could say for sure whether they were hearing truths or just another story.
Technically we still couldn’t be sure of that, but when six people are calling you with the same version of something they insist just happened, it’s a little harder to argue with it.
Luna didn’t seem to notice the shock she’d engendered, although I knew she was paying attention to the crowd: part of speaking at court is convincing the reigning monarch, but part of it is getting enough of the room on your side as possible.
“The monster is, of course, long gone,” she continued.
“But his wife remains. Acacia, the Mother of the Trees, keeps the skerry and its inhabitants in safety. She is the Firstborn daughter of Oberon and Titania, a shining beacon of fae propriety and position.”
That might have been Luna’s first mistake.
All the newcomers were here because of the disruption Titania had caused in our society, driving them from their homes and uprooting them from their loves.
Even the ones who’d come here of their own free will, looking for something better, were unlikely to be very well inclined toward the Lady of the Flowers.
Reminding them that Acacia was her daughter was very close to calling Blind Michael a monster.
There was a reason Cassandra had emphasized her mortal surname, and not the fact that she was Titania’s child in her own right.
Luna wasn’t choosing her words very well.
We could use that, if we were careful about it.
“Under the enchantment, Acacia believed her husband to have returned, and her power in her own lands to be limited. Rayseline was unable to convince her that she needed to be released—but she was able to offer aid, in the form of reclaiming the gardens belonging to Acacia’s absent children.
She may not have spent those four months in service to Sir Daye, but she spent them in service to one among the First. Shouldn’t that count for something? ”
Arden looked momentarily nonplussed. Then, recovering her composure, she said, “Of course it does. It counts for the favor of a Firstborn. But the terms of Rayseline’s service were not ‘one year in service to whomever comes along.’ They were ‘one year in service to the household of Sir October Daye,’ and even then, the passage of time was never the deciding factor.
Until both parties agree that she has served sufficiently to clear her debts, her service is not completed. ”
Rage flickered across Luna’s face, bright and blazing. She was smart enough not to voice it, however, only turn toward me and Raysel and ask, in a syrupy voice, “Well, Rayseline? Are you ready to come home?”