Seanan McGuire - Chimes at Midnight

“That is absolutely terrifying.”

“Tell me about it.” I turned to look at the room around us, my head throbbing in time with the motion. “This is a treasury. This is where you put rare and important things. If you had something that could treat iron poisoning, this is where you’d put it.” The gray spots at the edge of my vision were intruding again, threatening to block everything out. I ignored them in favor of pulling my phone out of my pocket.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m calling information.”

The phone was answered on the fourth ring. “Hello?”

“Li Qin, hi,” I said. “Remember when you called the Library to ask if I could come in? I need that number.”

“Toby? You sound terrible!”

I looked around the bloody, trashed treasury and fought the urge to laugh. That would have been taking black humor too far, even for me. “Things have been a little messy here.”

“Is there really a challenge to the Queen’s throne?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose, closing my eyes. “Okay, Li, I would love to explain everything right now, but I honestly can’t, because I’m about to keel over from iron poisoning, as is Tybalt, as is the Crown Prince in the Mists. Please, please , can you just give me the number for the Library?”

“No,” said Li.

“What?!” I opened my eyes to find Tybalt staring at me, apparently startled by my outburst.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t—the Library doesn’t have a number in that sense. But I can have Mags call you.”

“Please,” I said, swallowing the urge to yell. “Now.” I hung up before Li Qin could ask any more questions. In my current mood, I would have started screaming, and that wouldn’t have done either of us any good. Losing my temper would be just one more complication.

Speaking of complications . . . I looked around the treasury, feeling the pit drop out of my stomach, and finally voiced something that had been nagging at the edges of my awareness since we escaped the dungeon. “Where’s Dianda?”

“There are two possibilities,” said Tybalt. “Either she is unaware of the guard’s duplicity and calmly awaiting our return, or she has been overpowered. No matter which it is, we will do her little good in our current condition.”

“I know, but—” My phone rang. I answered without hesitation. “Hello?”

“Toby?” This time the voice was less familiar, and had a British accent. I let out a relieved breath, taking a split second of comfort before snapping back to business.

“Mags, Tybalt and I are in the royal treasury. We’ve both been exposed to a lot of iron—I’m not sure how we’re still standing, but I don’t think it’s going to last much longer. Is there anything in here that we could use to treat the symptoms? Anything you’ve heard of the Queen confiscating, or that was traditionally in Gilad’s custody?”

Mags paused. “You know, I don’t usually get questions this interesting.”

“I’m thrilled to have made your day more fun, but my day is the opposite of fun. Please. What should I be looking for?” If she said “nothing,” that was it; we were done. The fuzziness was spreading, and we needed medical care if we wanted to avoid collapsing in the Queen’s knowe and missing the fight completely.

“Um . . . there should be a gray earthenware flagon somewhere in there. The current Queen confiscated it from the reigning monarchs of the Kingdom of Silences when she overthrew their government. There will be a cruet with it.”

“Hang on.” I lowered the phone, turning to Tybalt. “Look for a gray earthenware flagon, and something called a ‘cruet.’ What the hell’s a cruet?”

“A smaller pitcher, of a very specific design,” said Tybalt, already moving away from me, toward the shelves. “Ask if they match.”

I raised the phone. “Do they match?”

“Yes.”

“They match!” I called. Into the phone, I said, “What do we do once we find them?”

“Fill the flagon from the cruet,” she said. “It should be a thick green liquid. Drink it.”

“That’s always the answer when we’re talking about thick green liquids, isn’t it? Okay. We’ll get right on that. If Quentin asks, tell him we’re fine.”

“Will I be lying?” Mags asked dubiously.

“Right now, I don’t know. Open roads.” I hung up before she could ask any more questions, turning to scan the room. It was a mess in here, a disorganized jumble of stolen treasures and unique artifacts that hadn’t been well organized before we had a major fight in the middle of everything. There was a heap of what looked like old vases in one corner. I picked my way toward them, leaving bloody footprints behind me.

“It’s not here,” said Tybalt.

“Keep looking.” I reached the vases and began moving them one by one, trying to reach the back of the pile. Something this important wouldn’t be right out in the open. “Mags says it was confiscated from Silences. That would mean she took it, what, about five years after King Gilad died? Dig deeper.”

He didn’t say anything, but I heard things clatter behind me as he kept looking. I moved vase after vase, and was on the verge of giving up and looking somewhere else when I pulled the last vase away and revealed the base of what looked like a bookcase. It was covered by a gray silk sheet that had seemed somehow beneath notice until I actually focused on it. “Poor man’s cloak of invisibility,” I muttered, and pulled the sheet aside. Then I stared. “Holy . . .”

The bookcase the sheet had been concealing was the sort of thing that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a royal bedroom. It was made of redwood, carved with a pattern of blackberry vines. “It matches Arden’s wardrobe,” I said, mostly to myself, and stepped closer to study the assortment of small, strange items piled on its shelves. There were gleaming jewels and jars of oddly-colored liquids . . . and on the third shelf from the bottom, there was a gray earthenware jug that I was willing to call a flagon, with a smaller, vase-like jug next to it. “Tybalt! Over here!”

I picked up the cruet with shaking hands, locking my fingers tight to keep from dropping it, and peered inside. It was empty. In Faerie, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Leaning forward, I tipped the cruet onto its side over the flagon. Thick green liquid the color of radioactive wheatgrass poured out. It smelled like a mixture of maple syrup and overcooked broccoli. I wrinkled my nose and kept pouring. Tybalt stepped up next to me.

“Is that it?”

“I sure hope so,” I replied, continuing to pour. “We’re supposed to drink it.”

Tybalt wrinkled his nose. “Delightful.”

“It’s better than dying.” The flagon was full almost to the top. I righted the cruet, setting it back on the shelf before picking up the flagon with both hands. “Here goes nothing,” I said, and raised it to my lips.

The liquid tasted worse than it smelled, adding library paste and overripe banana to the mix. I gagged but forced myself to keep drinking . . . and as I did, I felt my hands stop shaking. The throbbing, bruised feeling that filled my body faded, taking my headache with it. I kept drinking. The taste of the liquid changed, becoming sweeter. As the throbbing stopped, I swallowed a mouthful of what tasted like sugared raspberries and champagne.

I lowered the flagon, holding it out to Tybalt. “When it starts tasting good, you know it’s working. I think. It feels like it worked.”

“It worked,” he said, and touched my cheek, smiling. “Your color is better, and you’re breathing normally. It worked.”

“Good.” I held the flagon out more emphatically. “Now drink. I’m going to check on Nolan.”