Page 74 of When Sorrows Come

“Oh, right, the King of—fuck, what’s he King of these days? Man’s had so many crowns I lost track somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic. Doesn’t that mean he’ll have to give up his throne? I bet he’s relieved. Everything I know says he never wanted to be King of anything in the first place. But yeah, I knew that. Anyway.” Yenay let go of my arm and stepped away, waving her hands across her chest at the same time. Her bathrobe melted away, replaced by an equally pink-and-white dress that seemed to be made almost entirely from intricately interwoven strips of ribbon. Her braid adjusted itself at the same time, wisps and flyaways replaced by smooth perfection. The butterfly clip remained.

“I am Yenay Ng, chosen Librarian of the Library of Stones,” she said, with sudden solemn gravity. “What is your request?”

“I need to see the original proclamation declaring the Kingdom of Maples as the seat of the High Kingdom of the Westlands and dissolving the original crown,” I said. “I need to know exactly what was said in the process of making the first High King Sollys into, well, the first High King Sollys.”

Yenay blinked. “Why didn’t you just say so? The Kingdom’s founding documents are basically public domain, or they would be, if we had any concept of the public domain. Wait here.” She turned and dashed off into the stacks before I could reply.

“She didn’t really leave you roomtosay so,” said Quentin, stepping up next to me.

I glanced at him. “I get the feeling she gets talked over a lot. Tends to make people talk faster to make it hard to interrupt them.”

“Huh.”

“Shyi Shuai aren’t that common in the Westlands. Finding one not working as a Court Seer is a little weird.”

Quentin snorted.

I glared. “What?”

“Toronto has one of the largest Chinese populations outside of China,” he said. “And unlike the Mists, we didn’t try to burn their Chinatown down with all of them still locked inside. Our Shyi Shuai never left.”

“Huh.” A whole community of luck-bending fae. Maybe there was a reason the Kingdom of Maples—and by extension, the High Kingdom of the Westlands—had enjoyed more than two centuries of relative peace and prosperity.

Fiac loomed up beside me. “I understood you had a Shyi Shuai standing as a temporary Duchess in your home Kingdom.”

I jumped. “Man, we are gonnabellyou. Don’t sneak up on people!” I pressed a hand to my chest, trying to calm myself. “Li Qin, yeah. She took up temporary regency of Dreamer’s Glass when Duchess Riordan vanished.” I knew exactly where Treasa Riordan was, and I hoped she liked it in Annwn, because as far as I was concerned, she could rot there. I certainly wasn’t going to lead the expedition to get her back.

“So you know they still exist.”

Unlike the Roane, the Shyi Shuai had never been rumored extinct, just rare. “I do.”

“We are very fond of Yenay. If she chose to leave the Library, we would find her a place in the archives, or working with the scribes. Whatever she desired. But she seems to enjoy the relative obscurity of serving the Library’s whims, and she treasures her time with the books.” Fiac continued looking straight ahead. “Please do not confuse autonomy with a lack of loyalty.”

“I generally try not to.” Yenay came rushing back through the stacks, clutching a leather-bound ledger to her chest. She didn’t look distressed; on the contrary, she looked very nearly jubilant, as if she hadn’t expected her evening to be so interesting.

“I found what you were asking for,” she said brightly, thrusting the ledger at me before pausing, blinking, and pulling it back again. “But they weren’t big on consistent spelling in the eighteenth century, so you probably can’t read it. Would you like me to tell you what it says?”

“That might be for the best,” I agreed.

She beamed and turned the ledger around, opening it and reading aloud, “ ‘I, High King Clement Pemberton of Europa, do certify and attest that the High Kingdom of the Westlands has successfully petitioned for their independence as a noble demesne, to be ruled by their own power and to set their own laws and demands upon their citizenry. They shall no longer be subject to our law, nor heir to our kindnesses, but shall endure alone, and upon their own power. We guarantee to them as a condition of thisdecree that Europa will not make war upon them or seek to encroach upon their domain for a term of one hundred years as measured in the mortal world, unless there has been some disruption to the royal line as declared and agreed upon here.’ ” She looked up. “That’s fancy pureblood jerk talk for ‘we swear to leave you alone unless you depose the King we decided was a good idea. If you do that, we can do whatever we want.’ ”

“I picked up on that part,” I said dryly. “Is the whole thing like that?”

“Pretty much. You think the nobility is into being overly flowery today, you should go digging in the historical records.” She cleared her throat, then resumed, “As has been agreed upon by the Convocation of Crowns, the former regional Kingdom of Maples is henceforth to be dissolved and replaced with the High Seat of the Westlands, to be initially held by High King Oakley Sollys, with the throne to be passed along his descendant line according to the custom of our kind until such time as his line is sundered by either war or a failure to provide issue. In the event that High King Oakley is unable to perform his duties, and no male heir is available, the crown and throne will be passed to King Absalom Shallcross of Ash and Oak, who would have been named High King on this day had his land not been deemed unsuitable by the gathered Seers of the newly-formed Westlands, whose word was to be heeded...”

“Okay,” I said. “So if the High King died right now, it wouldn’t matter that Quentin isn’t here. He’s too young to inherit the crown, which means the line is broken, and the crown of the Westlands passes to Absalom Shallcross.”

“King Shallcross was the second candidate for the role,” said Fiac stiffly.

Something rustled in the stacks behind us, telling me my timing had been about as I’d hoped.

“Yes, but it’s bad wording.” I flashed Quentin a wry look. “It doesn’t cede the crown to his line; it cedes it to him in specific. Probably because Europa figured things would either go well or fall apart completely in pretty short order, and all the players they knew would still be on the board when the first High King Sollys got assassinated or caught syphilis or died from a staph infection or whatever they were into dying from in the Revolutionary days. So they bet on a horse they already knew and tried to prevent a crisis of succession in the process.”

“I fail to see the relevance,” said Fiac.

“Of course you do,” I said. “As long as you succeeded in assassinating the High King, you’d get to take over the Kingdom on the authority of the High King of Europa, and without an available heir, that would be the next best thing to Oberon himself stepping in and saying you were supposed to be in charge.”

Fiac blinked, staring at me for a moment like he couldn’t understand what I was saying. Then he sputtered, saying, “You don’t know what you’retalkingabout.”

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