Page 72 of When Sorrows Come

Walther nodded, as Quentin pulled away from his mother, pausing to kiss her temple before he moved to stand by me. She looked after him, sorrow in her eyes, but didn’t say anything.

Poor woman was going to need a hug and an extra slice of wedding cake when this was all over, I swear. I offered her a sympathetic smile, then turned to Fiac. “Lead the way,” I said.

“As my lady says,” said Fiac, and opened the door into the hall.

We followed him out and away.

seventeen

The hall outside theHigh King’s study was long and gently curving, as pleasant and well-appointed as the rest of the knowe. I scowled as we followed Fiac along it.

“I’m starting to feel like we’re lost in a mall,” I muttered.

Quentin hid his smile behind his hand. “Now you understand why I was so disoriented when I moved to Shadowed Hills,” he said. “It was sotiny, I didn’t understand how people could stand being on top of each other all the time. No one had any space.”

“And yet you moved into my makeshift motel for some ridiculous reason,” I said mildly.

Fiac didn’t look back, but he did say, in a calm tone, “You do realize I can hear you both. I would take care with what I say. A lie, even from an ally, is likely to ignite my blood.”

“We aren’t lying to you.”

“I know. If you were, there would already be blood on the floor.”

I walked a little faster, pulling up even with him. “I’ve never actually met an Adhene before.”

He glanced at me. “Then how can you be sure you know what I am?”

“I’m not actually sure how to describe this honestly, so please try to forgive me if I get this in some way wrong, but my mother was Amandine the Liar, and she drilled me after my Changeling’s Choice, to be sure I could identify all the known children of Faerie by appearance and common attributes,” I said. “My parents have since divorced and I repudiated her, so I don’t know if she’s mymother anymore, but she was when I was younger, and she told me what to watch for in the Adhene.”

“Why did she do that, I wonder?” Fiac kept his eyes fixed straight ahead as we continued. “Only princes and princesses need that level of tuition to avoid giving accidental offense, and when last I checked, the Last among the First was not considered a princess of any line, not even her father’s.”

“I don’t know why she did that either. I always just sort of assumed it was normal for pureblood parents. That they made sure their kids wouldn’t embarrass them, or themselves, by getting things wrong in the wider world. By the time I was old enough to start meeting people who weren’t her or the folks at Shadowed Hills, embarrassing her was one of my major goals.”

“Ah. A rebellious child.”

I smiled a little. “I guess you could say that. I didn’t want her to be proud of me. ‘Ashamed to admit she was connected to me in any way’ was more of the idea.”

“Then we may never know her motivation.” Fiac turned down a wider hall. It was substantially more opulent, the ceiling growing high and cathedral-arched, lined with more of those vast panels of amethyst crystal, gleaming in the light they cast on one another. If they ever had an earthquake in this knowe, absolutely everyone was going to get impaled.

At the end of the hall was a single set of broad double doors, and a small, plain door set off to the left-hand side. Fiac ignored the larger doors, heading for the single. Quentin and I followed.

Fiac touched the door, murmuring something I couldn’t hear. It swung open, and he stepped through. Quentin and I followed him into a room that consisted entirely of towering bookshelves reaching toward the misty depths of an unseen ceiling. There were no walls. Rolling ladders moved along the shelves seemingly at random, with no one in sight to operate them. Pixies clung to the higher shelves, occasionally chiming, their wings waving lazily as they fanned themselves.

There didn’t seem to be anyone there. I looked both ways down the endless row of books before turning to look at Fiac. “Is this a capital-L Library?” I asked. “From the way you were saying it before, I assumed it was, and this looks like one, but if it’s just a small-l library, I don’t want to break any rules.”

“This is the Library of Stones,” said Fiac solemnly. “The firstHigh King Sollys granted them space and connection to the knowe’s magic in exchange for Library cards for himself and his Queen, and for the highest-ranking members of his household.”

“So you have one, and the chatelaine, who I still haven’t seen, has one, and who else?”

“In the normal course of things, the Crown Prince, once he returns home and agrees to take up his royal duties,” said Fiac, resolutely not looking at Quentin. I hoped the kid was proud of the fact that he’d managed to make an Adhene skirt the truth. “We’re all allowed guests, when using the entrance through the knowe. The entrance on the mortal side moves around the province, although I understand it mostly stays in Toronto. The Librarian is uncommonly fond of mortal coffee.”

Maybe that was an attribute shared by all Librarians. The Librarian we knew in San Francisco, Mags, was also fond of coffee. I smiled a little. “None of this makes sense to poor, provincial little me, you know. Where I come from, Libraries are considered independent of all noble ties, and don’t answer to Kings or Queens.”

“Oh, that’s true here as well.” Fiac touched one of the rolling ladders as it passed. It paused, vibrating, then reversed and rolled off in the other direction. “The High King has no authority within the Library. When he walks these walls, he is merely a man, and the Librarian treats him as such.”

I blinked. “Then why...?”

“When this knowe was opened, the political situation along the Eastern coast was much more dangerous than I think you can understand,” said Fiac. “Death was common, war was constant, and chaos reigned in both the human and fae worlds. The American Revolution rendered the streets hazardous, and shops which seemed safe and stable today could be ashes and memory tomorrow. He offered the Librarian a stable doorway into the Summerlands, with no need to fear insurrection or collapse leading the Library to become unmoored. They can be lost easily, if their connections are severed, and the Library of Stones contained a great deal of information that was deemed too valuable to risk. The first High King kept his word, and never attempted to use the Library for political ends, and so when his son took the throne, the Librarian willingly renegotiated the treaty to maintain the same terms. It is assumed she will do the same, if she retains power, when young Quentin comes into his ascension.”

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