The King of Faerie (Stariel Book 4) Read online

  This, at least, was a familiar demon. I can’t be mad, he told his inner pessimist firmly. Someone would have told me by now. His father, for one; Lord Henry had never held back on his opinions of his eldest son. A grim reassurance, but reassurance nonetheless.

  But Hetta and Wyn were worried about you after Aroset’s attack, the pessimist argued back. They didn’t want you to return to university to see out the rest of term—what if it’s because they knew something might be wrong with you? What if Aroset permanently injured your brain?

  I’m not so easily broken. He hurled the words back forcefully, because he so badly wanted them to be true. His family loved him, but they saw him as fragile, made him see himself as fragile when he was around them. Returning had been a refusal to be that fragile man they thought him to be.

  Also, you didn’t want to be in the same house as Rakken for an extended period, the relentless inner voice added.

  Marius carefully drew his thoughts back from that dangerous topic. Instead, he checked once again that he was alone. This wasn’t a highly frequented section of river even at more civilised hours, and he was shielded from view of the old towpath by a handy willow in any case.

  Dawn was breaking gently above the thin whorls of mist, the sun a pale disc amidst the spires of Knoxbridge’s buildings in the distance, gentle gold infusing the landscape. Extremely pretty, but it was difficult to appreciate it within the prickle of his own self-consciousness. No one can see you, he reassured himself. And it wasn’t as if he were doing anything wrong, was it? If someone did come, they probably wouldn’t even give him a second glance. Right. These reassurances didn’t stop the itch on the back of his neck, as if an invisible audience were watching and judging his every move.

  Are you sure it’s not guilt rather than self-consciousness? his inner voice added helpfully. In which case, you can stop worrying; no one from Stariel is here to see what you’re up to. You can betray them all in comfortable secrecy.

  I’m not betraying them!

  Hetta would understand, wouldn’t she? He was just being sensible about things. Someone had to be. Gingerly, he pulled the case from his pocket and extracted the modified quizzing glass. He was no artisan, so although he’d eventually managed to glue the rowanwood in place, the result was a bit rubbish. Still, good enough to test a theory, he hoped.

  He held the quizzing glass up to his spectacles and surveyed the river. This would be a lot easier if he didn’t have to look through two sets of lenses, but it was necessary unless he found a handy fae within the three feet of the world he could see properly without his spectacles.

  Marius didn’t have the Sight, not really, though Wyn had theorised that he might be able to learn it, as an offshoot of his resistance to compulsion. But sometimes he did catch the odd ripple in the world, not seeing things exactly, but getting a prickling sense that there was something more present than met the eye. He’d gotten the sense of something unseen down here the other day, and moreover this spot seemed like the kind of location that might appeal to lowfae, with the banks left to grow naturally rather than cut into straight canals. All his reading suggested fae had always been more strongly associated with natural spaces. The books suggesting this were admittedly folk tales and children’s stories, but Wyn had been uncomfortable in the city when they’d been there recently.

  Although that might’ve just been due to the warrant out for his arrest at the time.

  Thin tendrils of mist curled lazily over the dark waters, and Marius’s heart stuttered as he spotted—no, it was only a pair of swans, feeding amidst the reeds on the opposite banks. He lowered the glass, disappointed.

  Step two, then. He pulled out a vial from his breast pocket. It was an awkward juggle to smear some of the mixture it contained on the quizzing glass, and he wrinkled his nose at the oily mark he managed to leave on his gloves in the process. He’d have to think of a more efficient dispensing method, if this worked. At least the green, herbaceous smell was pleasant enough. The yarrow was the strongest, but there were other plants in the mixture as well, combined with small iron filings. He’d decided to start with a rough approximation of the same mixture that had had such an effect on Wyn when thrown by the bank manager’s wife last year. If it worked, he’d take out ingredients until he could figure out which individual one was the key, or whether it was the combination.

  Perhaps a glassblower could make quizzing glasses with a hollow section that one could then add the liquid into? He mulled over the problem, considering and discarding ideas as he continued to survey the river through the quizzing glass. How were quizzing glasses made? He was so preoccupied with wondering that he’d almost passed over the swans again when he realised the flock had multiplied—and that none of them were swans.

  He inhaled sharply. The fae swans didn’t have feathers, or rather, their feathers didn’t seem to be made of the same stuff as birds’ were (What were bird feathers made of anyway?) but in any case, these creatures had bodies and wings adorned with pale, lace-like waterweed. Silver flashed as they moved, as if there were blades hidden amidst their weed-feathers, and their beaks were sharply silver too, cutting daggers of dawnlight with their deadly beauty. There were five—no, six of the creatures.

  Keeping his eyes on them, he lowered the quizzing glass. The shapes blurred, caught halfway between swans and whatever sort of lowfae they actually were, as what he knew fought with the glamour they were casting. It made his head hurt, so he held up the modified quizzing glass again. The blurriness resolved into the creatures’ true waterweed strangeness. Marius followed the fae swans’ lazy path as they swam along the riverbank, both fascinated and appalled that he’d successfully found lowfae in Knoxbridge.

  It all felt faintly surreal, blurring the boundaries of proper placement. Stariel was for wild magic and strange happenings; Knoxbridge was supposed to be a place of order, knowledge, and things fitting neatly in their assigned places. Even if the fit he’d thought waited for him here wasn’t quite as neat as he’d remembered it being. He’d thought he was coming home, but instead it was as if he’d gone to don a beloved coat only to find it had somehow shrunk in the wash.

  The fact that Knoxbridge was heartily pretending fae didn’t exist wasn’t helping. Some days he felt like he was going quietly mad, trying to reconcile a series of things that couldn’t be reconciled: Marius-before and Marius-now; fae and mortal; botany and magic. And now fae swans, he thought, watching the lowfae’s serene movements. Were there fewer of them than there had been before?

  Something hit him hard in the leg.

  He flinched back with a cry of pain, his other foot landing on slippery grass. I’m not actually going to fall into the river, am I? Not even I’m that unlucky, surely? he had time to think as he over-balanced and slid down the slope and, indeed, fell into the river.

  “Fuck!” The cold shock of it had him scrambling to his feet. The water came nearly to his waist, his trousers heavy and billowing as he pulled himself up onto the bank, creating a mess of muddy grass about himself in the process. Delightful. At least he hadn’t dropped his spectacles, though a patina of muddy river water now fogged over the world. He half-reached for his handkerchief to wipe them clean before realising not only that his gloves were filthy but that said handkerchief would now be soaked.

  “Gods bloody damn it!”

  An urgent voice at the back of his head reminded him that something had caused him to fall into the river in the first place and perhaps he should be paying more attention to that than clean handkerchiefs right now?

  He looked around wildly. One of the fae swans lurked further up on the riverbank, and Marius met its black, fathomless eyes with a bite of fear. He could make out every crisp detail of the creature’s strangeness, even without the quizzing glass. Perhaps the cold and shock had made his brain realise it ought to be paying better attention. The lowfae had seemed harmless from a distance; it didn’t seem so now.

  Mind you, maybe it’s just the angle. Even a real swan
would be fairly alarming from this vantage point. But its beak looked awfully sharp, and were those claws rather than the webbed feet of a waterbird?

  “Er, was there a reason you bit me?” he asked it, for lack of any other option. The fae swan puffed out its strange feathers, and Marius was just thrilled to see that he’d been correct in his earlier observations: there were indeed what looked like sharp blades hidden in the curves of its wings. Excellent. Cygnus horribilis.

  “I suppose you weren’t expecting anyone to be able to see you. Sorry.” He wasn’t sure what made him carry on with the one-sided conversation, but it was better than trying not to stare at the bladed wings. “No, I’ve no intention of hunting you or your flock. None whatsoever.” He shot a quick glance towards the rest of the creatures. Oh no. Several of the fae swans were considerably smaller than the others. “Or your babies.” He held up his hands to show they were empty. “I was just watching, because, er…” I’m trying to figure out how to negate fae magic didn’t feel like the right thing to say, somehow.

  The creature made a low ominous sound and began to blur subtly at the edges. Marius got the sense it was doubling down on its glamour. He pinched the bridge of his nose and went to fish about for the quizzing glass with the other hand. He came up empty and realised with a sinking feeling that he’d lost it in the river.

  He started to get up. “I’ll just go then, shall I?”

  The fae swan—and he really must find a better name for them—spread its wings, blades flashing, when—

  “Good morning! I say, shoo, you silly bird, shoo!”

  The fae swan made an indignant honking noise at the woman who was carefully making her way down the riverbank towards them. Then it resettled its wings with a hiss, and Marius swore he could hear it thinking scornfully, you’re not worth the trouble, before it gave him one last glare and flounced back to the river.

  Marius looked up at his would-be rescuer, conscious of his general state of disarray and of the fact that she’d just seen him menaced by—to all appearances—a perfectly ordinary swan. A familiar tide of hot embarrassment began to rise. Perhaps he could brush her off and put this whole incident behind him as quickly and anonymously as possible. Her next words put paid to this hope.

  “You must be Mr Marius Valstar. I’ve been looking for you.” She beamed.

  He pulled himself to his feet, feeling his ears heat. “Yes?” he said cautiously. “I don’t believe we’ve met, ma’am.”

  She was a youngish woman, a similar age to himself—ha, youngish!—dressed in smart but modest clothing, hair pulled back into a neat bun beneath her hat. There was something orderly about her that made him think of lists and notebooks.

  She held out a hand. Marius blinked at it. Women didn’t usually offer handshakes. But then, they didn’t usually approach muddy strangers on riverbanks at dawn either. Should he ignore her breach of etiquette and take her hand? Deciding it was far more awkward to ignore it, he reached out gingerly and then hastily pulled back before their hands could touch.

  “Forgive me,” he said, holding up his muddied gloves.

  “Oh,” she said, withdrawing. “Fair enough. Ms Orpington-Davies.” She gave a little wave in lieu of a handshake. The smooth Ms startled him. He knew the modern address had found fashion amongst a particular sort of woman, but he didn’t often hear it.

  Ms Orpington-Davies also wore spectacles, horn-rimmed ones that were thicker than his own. The eyes behind them were dark and intelligent, and he felt uneasily exposed beneath them. This isn’t a chance encounter; she wants something. Information. And there were really only so many topics people would seek him out for information on. He somehow doubted Ms Orpington-Davies had an interest in botany. A dull throb began at the base of his skull.

  “You’re a reporter,” he said flatly.

  “Well, yes,” she said. She gave him a charming smile. “But please don’t hold it against me! I promise I don’t bite.” She batted her eyelashes in a manner he knew was supposed to be disarming.

  He shook his head and started walking back up the bank to the towpath. She followed.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “To interview you, of course! Although I understand perfectly that you probably wish to change right now. What a peculiarly aggressive swan that was!” Her voice was warm with understanding, and she held out a card. He took it out of sheer reflex. “Perhaps we could set up a time—”

  She hadn’t seen through the lowfae’s glamour then. “Interview me about what, specifically?”

  “I was hoping you might be able to tell me more about fairies. Obviously, our readers are highly interested in the topic at the moment.”

  He stopped and narrowed his eyes at her. “And why are you asking me?” He knew why, of course, but he wanted to see if she’d say it: everyone knows your sister is involved with a fairy.

  To his surprise, she dropped some of her artless manner and pinned him with those intelligent eyes.

  “There are eyewitness accounts of an altercation between you and a fairy woman with red wings at Celerebank Station in Meridon in March.”

  ‘Altercation’ was a mild word for Aroset’s attempt to kill Wyn with lightning in a crowded part of the capital city. For a moment all Marius could see were golden eyes, gleaming with triumph, fear a live thing in his belly. He pushed the memory away. The throbbing at the base of his skull intensified, sending rootlets up to his crown and around to his temples. Fantastic.

  “The public deserves to know if there will be further attacks.”

  “There won’t be,” he said heavily. “She won’t be coming back any time soon.” No one had seen Aroset since the Spires had been locked in stasis, which was compelling evidence that she was trapped there. Marius couldn’t imagine Aroset not causing chaos if she was freely wandering the human world.

  “What makes you say that?” A trace of excitement crept into Ms Orpington-Davies’ tone, and she had half-reached for her breast pocket, an automatic habit, to retrieve her pen and notebook.

  Marius frowned down at her. “I haven’t said I’ll give you an interview.” Besides, something about this whole situation didn’t quite fit. “What paper did you say you were from?”

  “I am the Society Reporter for Lady Peregrine’s Society News.” She said it with calm dignity, he had to give her that.

  Still, he turned on one heel and began to stride along the towpath. It was abominably rude, but he didn’t trust himself not to say something even ruder otherwise. It’d been Lady Peregrine’s that had started the original ugly rumours about Hetta.

  Ms Orpington-Davies followed him, though she had to pick up her skirts and trot to keep up with his long stride. “Please, Mr Valstar! I understand you’re probably angry about that article, but that wasn’t me—and wouldn’t you rather correct the record?”

  He couldn’t walk the entire way back to town with a pleading woman chasing after him, could he? Maybe she would give up?

  She showed absolutely no sign of giving up as they moved in their strange parade—him with his head down, his wet trousers flapping as he walked, trying to ignore her as she trotted tirelessly a pace behind him, peppering him with questions and justifications.

  He tried not to care, even though the awkwardness of it all made him want to crumple into a ball—or alternatively, break into a sprint and run away from the entire situation. But no, literally running away from a reporter wasn’t a good idea—he could already see the headline: Lord Valstar’s Brother Dodges Questions, How Suspicious!

  “What about these wing worshippers, then? Do you endorse them?”

  He lost his rhythm. “Wing what?” he asked, slowing down despite himself.

  Ms Orpington-Davies was slightly breathless when she caught up. “Wing worshippers. That’s what they’re calling themselves.”

  He curled his muddied fingers. “I don’t know what you’re referring to.” But he guessed nothing good, from that name.

  Ms Orpington-Davies pursed h
er lips. “I suppose you wouldn’t have; they’re new but quite fervent supporters of fairies.” She rolled the word ‘fairies’ around thoughtfully. “Zealots, by all accounts. They seem to be based in Greymark, but there hasn’t been much published in the papers yet.”

  “Why not?”

  She laughed. “You’re very free with your questions for someone who refuses to answer any!”

  He narrowed his eyes. “You were told to bury the story,” he guessed. It wasn’t much of a guess, given how angry Queen Matilda had been at one of her advisors—the Earl of Wolver—who owned a good chunk of Meridon’s press, including Lady Peregrine’s. And in fairness, all the papers the earl owned had refrained from printing any more mud about Hetta since. Not that it had stopped others from filling the gap. Marius carefully didn’t think about why the earl had taken up a personal vendetta against Stariel in the first place, though even skirting the knowledge made his insides writhe with shame.

  She heaved a deep sigh. “Yes. Well, not me personally. But yes. But that won’t hold forever—not with the upcoming Conclave.” She paused hopefully, waiting for him to comment.

  He sized her up as they came to the gate between the towpath and the commons. Small brown cattle looked up from their grazing as he put his hand on the latch. Could he simply close the gate in her face? No, that would be too rag-mannered. He stood indecisively and frowned down at her.

  “Look, I sympathise with your ambitions of breaking into political journalism, but I still have nothing to say to the press. Your editor doesn’t know you’re here, does he?” Because this wasn’t society reporting, what they’d been speaking of. Ms Orpington-Davies saw this as her chance to prove she could do more than write about what hat everyone was wearing this season or who was engaged to who. His developing headache throbbed, like a bruise being prodded.