A RED-ROSE CHAIN open thread!

I'm personally, selfishly, hoping that Walther keeps the cure for elfshot his own personal secret recipe and doesn't share it widely. If he keeps it secret, he sets himself up as the sole supplier of it and that can mean a lot of power for himself.

I rather suspect that it will ultimately be up to Arden, as he is one of her subjects. Taking this a step higher, the High King will probably also have something to say about it.

I think this is a /lousy/ idea for Walther -- trying to do something like that will make him a target of /everyone/ who has a loved one (or just someone they owe an obligation to, or would like to be owed a favor by) who has been elfshot. Some of these people aren't going to be nice and polite about asking him for the cure, and that's not going to end well for him. Then you have all the people who have /enemies/ who are currently elf-shot whom they want to /stay/ asleep for as long as possible -- and those folks don't need Walther alive... :(

So, yeah, if I were him, I'd post all the details ASAP to a wikipedia page and provide work with at least one, and preferably 2-3, alchemists to ensure that they can successfully brew the potion.

I agree that it would make him a target, but it would be up to Arden to provide protection for him. He would be such a valuable asset that she'd have to protect him. And Silences would be invested in keeping him alive and safe as well. If he doesn't broadcast that he has it and sets it up so that people who want the cure have to go through Arden or even King Sollys to get it and he's more or less anonymous in the chain of supply then he could be pretty safe. I'm much more concerned with it being widely available and everyone (EIRA) being woken at unpredictable (TERRIBLE) times.

The problem is that everyone in Silences (well, associated with the court, anyway) /already knows/ that he is responsible for the elf-shot cure -- thus, the whole "I don't want to be a hero" think at the end of the book. And the mere fact that a cure /exists/ will be immediately obvious to anyone who is aware of the political situation in Silences, and I would imagine that would be everyone (a pending war between courts is the kind of thing that everyone would know about, and the fact that it was averted by overthrowing the reigning monarch would be highly newsworthy itself).

From /Toby's/ POV, it would be ideal for Walther to disappear into protective custody for the remainder of his life to limit access to the cure -- but that's a really lousy outcome from Walther. Remember, he's going for tenure, and I don't think that's compatible with Fae protective custody. :)

I think that was a lot of the point of this book though - pretty much everyone was oblivious to what was going on in Silences. And since Silences is pretty loyal to Walther if he asked them to keep quiet I believe most of them would. Sure the existence of a cure will get out, but the Fae are pretty good at secrets, so I don't think it would be an impossible thing for them to keep it a secret.

And I disagree about your point of tenure being incompatible with Fae protective custody. Chelsea's mom (I forget her name atm) seems to be able to teach and stay safe within Sylvester's halls pretty easily.

I think locking Walther away would be bad on many levels, but allow me to play Devil's Advocate (cause it tickles me). Bridget's 'protective custody' is for the sake of Faerie, not her. She's under a geas that won't let her expose Faerie, so she is free to keep teaching. Walther would be hiding from those who would want to kidnap or murder him, and one way to make that easier for such nefarious types would be to, oh, be predictable and accessible, like someone going to teach classes regularly.

I think people are conflating "protection" with being locked away. I'm suggesting a security team a la Secret Service, not Walther being locked away in a knowe. A security detail as he lives his life pretty normally otherwise.

Someone living with a protective detail from the secret service (for non-US readers, this is the department that is best known for providing bodyguards for the US president) is /not/ by any stretch of the definition living a normal life. For example, see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/conde-nast-traveler/restaurants-with-secret-service_b_2552187.html.

And I wouldn't be confident that this level of security would be sufficient to deter threats from opponents with glamour, shape shifting, and teleportation abilities, although I'm not sure if being locked in a knowe would help with these concerns either.

In regards to Bridget, nobody is /specifically/ targeting her -- practically speaking, it is likely that very few people even know that she exists. To the degree that a threat exists at all, though, there isn't any effective way of nullifying the risk -- the threat is intrinsic to the knowledge she has of the Fae and I believe it was explicitly stated that the only way to remove the knowledge would be to kill her. In Walther's case, though, widely disseminating knowledge of the cure would minimize the number of people with an interest in killing, kidnapping, or threatening him.

I disagree about Toby's perspective. Aside from Eira, I don't think she'd care who it was used on. Simon? I think she probably wants him awakened very much because 1) he has answers she very much wants, and 2) in the end, geas and all, he had her back. As for Raysel, I don't see her objecting to her being awakened. I really think (hope, at least) that Raysel will awaken different than she was, and as I said in another post, she won't simply get the cure and be set free.

And as for the Winterrose, I seriously, and I mean seriously, doubt we have seen the last of her, but for the present she's about as inaccessible as she can get. Anybody with the connections or power to reach her isn't going to be stopped by any attempt to keep the cure a secret. Personally, if I was Toby, I'd have gotten my iron knife, along with a nice, thick leather glove, and had the Luidaeg take me back there immediately so I could end the bitch forever. Technically she couldn't even be accused of breaking Oberon's Law ... she was already dead, everybody knew that.

The best way to protect Walther is to disseminate the cure recipe. Once it's readily available to all, kidnapping or killing him becomes pointless, except as an act of petty vengeance. Not saying there wouldn't be those who might try that, but they'd be far fewer than those who might want the cure all to themselves, or see it lost.

Toby would certainly prefer that the nameless queen and King Rhys remain asleep, so that's two more in Toby's "Keep asleep" column.

Whether or not Toby would want Simon awakened is iffy -- yes, he has answers to questions that she would very much like answers to, but on the other hand he is very strongly geased to serve Eira's interests -- and awakening him would mean that he /knows/ a cure exists. The odds of him stealing the cure and searching for Eira would be very high (even if he didn't want to do so, the geas would force the issue).

If Toby's relationship with Luna was as it (appeared to be?) at the beginning of the series, then yeah, I agree that Toby would want Raysel awakened. But by the end of "A Winter Long" (chapter 21, to be exact), her relationship has deteriorated to the point that I'm not sure if Luna wouldn't /encourage/ Raysel to attack Toby -- and I have no confidence at all that she would act to /stop/ Raysel from attacking Toby. At this point, Luna seems to be as unstable as Raysel used to be, and (given the nature of the books) I suspect that this is will turn out to be caused by one of Toby's enemies (Eira being the obvious candidate).

It would be very out-of-character for Toby to make the above calculation, though, so yeah, I expect Raysel to be awake in the next book. But I don't think this is a /wise/ decision, and this would happen whether or not Toby tried to keep the cure secret or not.

And I agree that if I were Toby I would make every effort to murder Eira before she awakes -- but again, Toby doesn't make wise decisions very often. :)

Yeah, you cot me with Rhys and Queen Crazy. I'm sure Toby wouldn't mind one bit if they locked them in a room and then totally forgot where they put the key ... and the room. I think you're overestimating what a geas is capable of, however. As I recall from my years of D&D, the conditions have to be pretty specifically spelled out when the spell is cast, so unless Eira included "if I'm ever elfshot and dumped in a forgotten corner of Faerie, come find me," I don't think Simon will be looking for her.

Now, mind you, I'm not even suggesting that Toby is ever going to forgive him, trust him, or even like him, but I believe he showed in The Winter Long that, in his own twisted way, he did try to protect her. As for Raysel, like I've said, I really hope that Toby shifting her blood has fixed her, and I hope that can help bring back the Luna we grew to love. For me, meeting Ceres was so bittersweet, because I too was reminded of that Luna. I want her back.

As for the wisdom of Toby not going back to finish Evening, I'll borrow a line from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Toby's a hero, she's not like us. (Season 5 'The Gift.' Giles to Ben ... just before he kills him.)

Plus she's already broken Oberon's Law and had some trouble with it previously. She may not want to repeat that again.

Keep in mind, though, that Simon is a somewhat willing co-conspirator with Eira -- she has promised to save August from some unspecified problem if he helps her achieve some unspecified end. This is an "Anakin agrees to kill Mace Weidu because he believes that Palaptine is the only one who can save Padme" scenario, and is obviously very dangerous for Toby (or anyone else) who Eira identifies as a roadblock. Simon has also shown that, while he doesn't want Toby to be harmed, he has a /very/ odd definition of harm -- turning her to a fish, and trying to turn her into a tree are both considered "no harm" from his point of view.

The best way to fix the problem with Simon is for Toby (or someone else) to fix the problem with August, and the only way to do /that/ involves waking Simon up (as he, Amandine, August, and Eira are the only one with the details), so I suspect that you are correct that Toby will end up waking Simon -- but, again, not a wise decision. Of course, if characters in books made wise decisions consistently, books would be quite a bit more boring, wouldn't they? :)

Amusing side-note -- try a Google search for "October Daye's mother". Google really /does/ know everything...

"Somewhat willing co-conspirator," are you sure about that? Remember who Eira is, the Daoine Sidhe Firstborn. As Toby said, "I had seen firsthand just how hard it was for Evening's descendants to tell her no." How sure can anyone be, even Simon, that he had any choice in the matter at all?

His odd definition of harm isn't odd at all, for a fae. In the minds of many purebloods, most perhaps, you can do anything you want to someone, as long as you don't break Oberon's Law. Rhys and the False Queen certainly believed that and, of course, under her reign, Simon could have killed Toby with impunity, because she's just a changeling. No, you can't hold Simon's point of view here against him, because it isn't his, it's that of his society.

So, Simon may well have been under a compulsion even before the geas, and his charming approach to protecting Toby is really just a product of his heritage. Given that, where do we stand? Well, for my part, I can only stand by Toby, there on the Thorn Road. Again, in her words, "When the chips were down, he'd tried to change sides. In that moment, in that place, that was good enough for me."

Toby has to wake Simon, because there is no way she can let the mystery of what happened to August go. She's a lost child (figuratively speaking), and she's her sister. So yes, she'll wake him ... I just hope she never turns her back on him.

Changing gears, I think we may see Amandine playing a role in the search for August as well. She's been spending all this time wandering the Summerlands, rattling doors no one can see, as though she was looking for something. I think we know now that it's someone, not something, -shes been looking for.

Oh, and Cortana is also familiar with Toby. Seanan's site was 5th on the list she returned, but Cortana can be forgiven that, I believe. After all, Google knew Daye has an 'e.'

Regretfully, I don't think we can ever get old Luna back. I suspect that all those years with her parents, plus the years she lostwhen Simon kidnapped her and Raysel have really worked a number on Luna. Ceres left before Blimlnd Michael's land went completely wonky. Luna didn't. It's also pretty clear that there is A LOT of mental instability in their family. Mental instability is frequently hereditary in humans and it seems pretty clear that that is true in fae as well. I suuspect that what sanity Luna had came primarily from Hoshibara and Hoshibara is completely gone since Raysel poisoned Luna.