Page 70 of When Sorrows Come

Aethlin didn’t react.

“I’m pretty sure the smell won’t ever come out. You’re going to have to shave your head.” Walther’s tone never varied, and his hand didn’t shake. “The choice is yours. Swallow this or wear it.”

“Can he hear you?” asked Maida.

“If he can’t, we’re past the point where I can help him, and the kid’s not howling yet,” said Walther matter-of-factly. “He can hear me.”

Aethlin made the sound again, stronger this time, and I saw his throat move as he swallowed whatever of the mixture had managed to trickle into his mouth. “Good man,” said Walther, and tipped the beaker a little further forward. He still wasn’t pouring very fast—the liquid would be entering the High King’s mouth at barely above a drip—but now that he knew Aethlin wasn’t going to choke, he could focus on getting it into him as quickly as possible.

“Human hospitals use IVs,” said Quentin.

“So do I, when the issue is dehydration, or when I’m working with a changeling kid who needs human-developed medication delivered over a long period of time. When it’s hormone replacement or a painkiller, I usually use a syringe.” Walther kept hisattention on the High King as he spoke, eyes scanning Aethlin’s face in quick, sharp motions that looked far more urgent than anything else he was doing. “When you’re dealing with an alchemical tincture, direct injection is almost never the answer.”

“Why not?”

Walther glanced at Quentin, a wry, frustrated smile twisting at his mouth. “Because most of the things in this beaker are technically poisonous whether ingested or injected, but the magic that goes into the brewing process renders them inert when administered in the correct way. There may be an alchemist somewhere who’s been working on applying more mortal means of draught completion, but I am not he, and I still use traditional methods. Which say swallow.”

“So you’re giving my—my king,” Quentin caught himself clumsily, barely managing not to glance at Fiac, who surely had to know his identity by now. He’d been in the room when Aethlin demanded to see his son, after all, and Maida was clinging to Quentin like a lifeline. “Poison to get rid of poison? How does that make sense?”

“Most medicine is poison,” said Walther. “It’s just poison that kills you more slowly than whatever’s been making you sick.”

High King Aethlin groaned again. An actual groan this time, strong enough to be worth the name. Maida sat up straighter, pulling Quentin along with her as she clutched at her husband’s hand.

“Aethlin?” she asked—pled, really, voice dripping with the desperate need for him to reply. “Sweetheart, can you hear me? Are you awake?”

He groaned again, louder this time, and raised his free hand to bat weakly at the beaker Walther was still holding to his lips.

Walther, though, was resolute. This was a man who gave pro bono medical care to any changeling kid who stumbled across him—something that happened with increasing frequency as word spread—who brewed elf-shot cures for the nobility of the West Coast, and who, maybe most importantly, was often charged with putting me and my allies back together. A little feeble struggling from a High King was nothing to him.

“Nope,” he said, almost cheerfully. “Sorry, Your Majesty, but I’m going to need you to finish drinking the whole thing before I can let you stop. It’s like reciting a proclamation. If someone interrupts you in the middle, technically whatever you were trying to decree isn’t finished.”

Something about that sounded important. He was right, though. Interrupting ranking nobles with a coup when they were in the middle of declaring something—usually land rights, titles, or the naming of a formal heir—was a time-honored way of disrupting the political structure.

“Hey, Fiac, you know a lot about the founding of this Kingdom, don’t you?”

“The Librarian would know more, or Hiram,” Fiac looked around the room as if the absent historian might still be lurking there. “But I know a great deal,” he continued. “I know if the High King dies while the lines of succession have been somehow muddled, we shall have to break the seal on the Princess’ fosterage, and even that might not be enough to save the kingdom.”

“Cool, cool,” I said. “Do you know the wording of the founding decree?”

Fiac blinked at me. “Not precisely,” he said. “I know where they’re stored, if you feel they matter for some reason.”

“They might,” I said. “Walther?”

“Almost there.” He tipped the beaker a bit further and smiled encouragingly at Aethlin. “You’ll be finished soon, Your Majesty, and then you can yell at me for making you drink something so nasty.”

“Will helive?” demanded Maida.

“Oh, sorry, didn’t I say? If he was going to die, this would have killed him already.” Walther stepped back, taking the now-empty beaker with him. “He’s going to be fine. Exhausted for a while, because his body’s not built to heal itself the way October’s is, and twice in one day is probably pushing things, but the poison has been counteracted, and the damage is being repaired even as we speak.”

High King Aethlin gasped, opening his eyes and sitting up in the chair—or trying to, anyway. He seemed to get caught partway into the motion and sagged back into his slump. The color in his face was improving at an unnatural rate, the waxen pallor removing itself like a film running in reverse.

“Is it that weird to watch me put myself back together?” I asked Walther, in a low voice.

“Weirder, since you’re usually doing it without help, and with half your blood on the outside of your body,” he said. “We’ve had time to get used to it.”

“I haven’t,” said Cassandra, staring raptly at the High King.

Aethlin coughed and tried again to sit up, succeeding this time, although the effort appeared to exhaust him. He clutched at Maida’s hand, seeming to realize she was there for the first time as he slumped against that side of the armchair. “Maida...”

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