Valiant

"You've gone crazy," Ruth said. "We just broke into some posh building."

"It's protected by glamour," Val said. "It has to be." For the first time, Val considered the two doors she'd assumed went to other apartments. One was set opposite the door to Mabry's, the other at the end of the hall. Given the size of the rooms and the staircase in Mabry's apartment and the size of the building from the outside, it didn't seem possible that the doors led to anywhere at all. Val shook her head to clear it. It didn't matter. What mattered was that she found some evidence to implicate Mabry, something that would prove she poisoned the other fey, prove it not just to Ravus, but to Greyan and anyone else who thought Ravus was behind the deaths.

"At least it's warm in here," Ruth said, walking into the apartment and turning around on the gleaming marble floor. Her voice echoed in the nearly empty rooms. "If we have to be cat burglars, I'm going to see what's to steal in the fridge."

"We're trying to find evidence she's a poisoner. Just a thought before you start putting random things in your mouth." Ruth shrugged and walked past Val.

A display cabinet rested in one corner of the sitting room. Val peered through the glass. There was a bit of bark inside, braided with crimson hair; a figurine of a ballerina, her arms on her hips and her shoes red as roses; the broken neck of a bottle; and a faded and browned flower. Val thought she remembered different bizarre treasures from her earlier visit.

It made Val conscious of how impossible her task was. How would she know evidence, even if she saw it? Ravus might recognize these objects—know their uses and perhaps even part of their history, but she could make nothing of them.

It was hard to imagine Mabry as sentimental, but she must have been once, before Tamson's death made her hateful.

"Hey," Ruth said from the next room. "Look at this."

Val followed her voice. She was in the music room, beside the lap harp, sitting on an ottoman covered in an odd, pinkish leather. The body of the instrument looked to be gilded wood, carved with acanthus swirls, and each of the strings was a different shade. Most of them were brown or gold or black, but a few were red and one was leaf green.

Ruth knelt down beside it.

"Don't—," Val said, but Ruth's fingers brushed a brown string. Immediately a wailing flooded the room.

"Once I was a lady in waiting to the Queen Nicnevin," a voice full of tears intoned, accent rich and strange. "I was her favorite, her confidante, and I took my pleasure in harrying the others. Nicnevin had a particular toy, a Knight from the Seelie Court that she was overfond of. His tears of hate gave her more pleasure than another's cries of love. I was called before the Queen—she demanded to know if I was intriguing with him. I was not. Then she held up a pair of his gloves and demanded that I look at the embroidery along the cuffs. It was a careful pattern sewn with my own hair. There was more proof—sightings of us together, a note in his hand swearing devotion, none of it true. I fell down, begging Nicnevin, wild with fear. As they led me to my death, I saw one of the other ladies, Mabryn, smiling, her eyes bright as needles, her fingers reaching out to pluck a single strand of hair from my head. Now I must tell my tale forevermore."

"Nicnevin?" Ruth asked. "Who is that supposed to be?"

"I think she's the old Unseelie Queen," Val said. She dragged her fingers across several cords at once. A cacophony of voices rose up, each one telling its bitter tale, each one mentioning Mabry. "They're all hair. The hair of Mabry's victims."

"This is some spooky-ass shit," Ruth said.

"Shhh," Val said. One of the voices sounded familiar, but she couldn't quite place where she'd heard it before. She plucked a golden string.

"Once I was a courtier in the service of the Queen Silarial," a male voice said. "I lived for sport, for riddles, and dueling and dance. Then I fell in love and all those things ceased to matter. My only joy was in Mabry. I desired a thing only if it delighted her. I basked in her gladness. Then, one lazy afternoon, as we gathered flowers to weave into garlands, I saw that she'd wandered off. I followed and overheard her speaking with a creature from the Unseelie Court. They seemed well acquainted and her voice was soft as she told him the information she had gathered for the Unseelie Queen. I should have been angry, but I was too afraid for her. If Silarial had found out, the consequences would have been terrible. I told Mabry that I would tell no one, but that she must leave directly. She told me she would and wept bitterly over deceiving me. Two days later I was to duel in a tournament with a friend. When I do

Val sat down hard, staring at the harp. Mabry was a spy for the Unseelie Court. She had killed Tamson herself. Ravus had only been her instrument.

"Who was that?" Ruth asked. "Did you know him?"

Val shook her head. "Ravus did, though. He was the one swinging the sword in that story."

Ruth bit her lower lip. "This is so complicated. How are we going to figure out anything?"

"We already figured out something," Val said.

She stood up and walked into the next room.

It was the kitchen. There was no stove, however; no refrigerator, only a sink in a long expanse of polished slate. Val opened up one of the cabinets, but it was filled only with empty jars.

Val thought about Ravus's glamoured form, his golden eyes the flaw in his disguise. There was something disquieting about these perfect rooms, dustless and without even a stray hair or bit of grime, echoing only with footsteps and the splash of water. But if there was a glamour, she had no idea what was beneath it.

Ruth walked into the room and Val noticed the white powder drizzling from her backpack.

"What's that?" Val asked.

"What?" Ruth looked behind her, on the floor, and shouldered off the bag. She laughed. "Looks like I ripped the canvas and popped a hole in our baby."

"Shit. This is worse than a bread-crumb trail. Mabry's going to know we were in here."

Ruth squatted down and started sweeping the powder together with her hands. Instead of forming a pile, it gusted up in white clouds.

As Val looked at the flour, she got an idea. "Wait. Hey, I think I might have to commit infanticide."

Ruth shrugged and pulled out the sack. "I guess we can always have another one."

Val ripped open the paper packaging and started sprinkling flour on the floor. "There has to be something here, something we can't see."

Ruth grabbed a handful of white powder and threw it at the door. Val tossed another fistful. Soon the air was thick with it. Their hair was covered and when they breathed, flour coated their tongues.

It settled all over the apartment, showing the fish pond as a broken pipe spilling water into buckets and pooling on the floor, revealing the sagging sheetrock of the ceiling, the chipped tiles along the walls and tracks of mouse droppings on the floor.

"Look." Ruth walked over to one of the walls, powder making her ghostly. Flour was stuck to most of the wall, but there was a large bare patch.

Val tossed more powder at the gap, but instead of hitting the wall, it seemed to go through the space.

"We got it." Val gri

Ruth gri

"Speak for yourself," Val said, and ducked through the gap.

There, in a shadowed room hung with velvet drapes, was Luis. He lay on a carpet patterned with pomegranates and was wrapped in a woolen blanket, but despite that, he was shivering. There was blood on his scalp and several of his braids had been cut off.