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regallibellbright · 4 months

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So, I've been thinking about Toby's knives.

Well, okay, I specifically think primarily about Toby's main knife, but there's something interesting to be said about all three of the knives she "regularly" wears (silver, iron, and the new one.) All three of them are gifts. All three of them are given to her by someone expecting Toby to be a hero.

"Ms. Daye?" "Yes, Dare?" It was like trying to leave kindergartners with a babysitter. If I was lucky, they'd run out of questions before the sun went down. Maybe. "Here." She pulled a knife out of her sleeve, offering it to me. I didn't recognize the style of the blade, but if it was street legal, I'm a Kelpie. "In case you don't scream fast enough." "Good idea," I said. She looked almost disappointed by my reaction - she was still young enough for the rules against saying thank you to seem pointless. I winked, sliding the knife into my belt with the edge facing outward to keep me from cutting myself. She brightened, reading the unspoken gratitude in my eyes. She was pretty smart when she let herself be.

(Rosemary and Rue, Chapter 21, pages 239-240)

The first and most important, of course, is Dare's knife. And yet, this is a pretty minor moment. There's no sign this particular knife is special to Dare - it's mentioned earlier she's got enough weapons on her at the moment to clank. Manuel will ask for it later, claiming it was a loan, but that's the most he can say - and May, who would know, corrects him that it was a gift.

By this point, Dare's already told Toby she wants to get away from Devin and take Manuel with her, and Dare asks because Toby's already her hero. She got out. Dare doesn't get to, in the end. And so the knife that Dare all but offhandedly gave her becomes a keepsake, and one of Toby's most valued possessions. As Toby says taking it in A Local Habitation, maybe Dare's knife would help her be someone else's hero. Eventually, it does. Dare's knife is Toby's promise to herself not to fail anyone again. It's the justification she uses when she needs to go back and confront Blind Michael. (Incidentally, May tells her they can get a new knife in response. For all that she remembers being Dare, she doesn't yet understand what the knife is to Toby.) It's so tied to Toby's identity that when she loses her way home, among all the allies she can't recognize or only knows as enemies -

[Quentin] walked toward me, pausing to bend and gingerly retrieve a silver knife from the floor. It looked sharp. It also looked well-used; there were flecks of blood dried on the hilt, and streaks of something much fresher on the blade. "I'll just, um, hold this for you, for now," he said. "I promise I'll give it back when you're ready." "You can't give it back when it's not mine," I snarled. At least I could talk.

(A Killing Frost, Chapter 19, page 266)

Toby thinks at this point that she's sworn to Sylvester and can return to him, not knowing she's banished. He's not part of her way home anymore. But the knife is. When Toby can't recognize the knife, it's because she's not herself anymore. (Incidentally, it says a lot about how thoroughly Sylvester fucked up, particularly in AKF, that Shadowed Hills isn't home anymore.) On top of that, because of its link to Dare, the knife is also Home - the shitty flophouse for changelings with nowhere else to go run by an exploitative crime lord, but also the place where Toby learned to fight and survive. Sylvester's tried to teach her, but she's not the kind of knight to use a sword.

Moving on:

Then Acacia's hand was on my shoulder, and a knife was landing in the dust beside me. "Kill him or let him go, Amandine's daughter, but don't torture him," she said. "Make your choice. You haven't got much time." I looked up. "Acacia -" She looked down at me, the short tendrils of her hair curling around her face. When I distracted Blind Michael, that must have broken his hold on her, allowing her to rip herself free. "No. You let others make your choices too often. Kill him or let him live, but do it now. No more games." "I don't know what to do." "You always know. You just don't listen to yourself." She shook her head, turning, and started to walk away. The Riders parted to let her pass, still silent, still staring at me. Choices. Oh, Oberon's blood, choices. I put the candle between my teeth, keeping my knife pressed tight against Blind Michael's throat. The flame licked at my cheek, filling the air with the hot smell of singed blood as I reached out and picked up Acacia's knife. I almost dropped it when the metal hit my hand. Iron - it was made of iron. It would have to be; did I really think I could kill one of the Firstborn with silver alone? That was never an option. Not really. ... "I'm sorry," I said. "I can't forgive you." I lifted my hand, bringing the two knives together, and slammed them together down into his throat. Iron slices through faerie flesh like it's nothing but dry leaves and air. That's what iron exists to do: it kills us. Silver can do almost as well, if you use it properly. Acacia's knife was iron, Dare's was silver, and I held them together as I thrust downward. ... It didn't really matter; he was dead, I had won, and I couldn't fight anymore. No more children would suffer because of him. In the end, I'd proved myself as a child of Oberon's line, no matter how much I tried to deny it; I was a hero...

(An Artificial Night, Chapter 31, pages 295-296)

A longer passage there because Acacia's knife is by far the one that gets the most dramatic focus when Toby receives it, for obvious reasons. But it's also more significant than the moment itself. Up to this point, the closest Toby comes to considering herself a hero in more than Dare's eyes is just before the Ride, where she thinks that all her kids are safe (except Katie, who she can't save,) and that she should run before the Ride begins, even if it kills her, because at least then she'd die a hero. There's even a moment early in the book where the Luidaeg calls her a child of Oberon (five pages after Toby reflects to herself that the children of Oberon are heroes,) and Toby thinks to herself that the Luidaeg's wrong, since she still thinks she's Daoine Sidhe.

But she claims it here, because she has no option not to. You can't kill one of the great monsters of Faerie and not accept that you are, ultimately, a hero. So long as she's herself, Toby won't deny that she's a hero again.

Toby carries Acacia's knife with her regularly for the period of time between the end of An Artificial Night and the events of Late Eclipses. This is all but exactly six months - she receives it on October 31, 2010, going back to confront Michael almost immediately after being freed from the Ride. She stops being able to carry it regularly once Amandine changes her blood, in early May 2011. (I’d have to reread Late Eclipses in full to get the exact point it ends, since she’s still carrying it even though she can feel it in the scabbard at the very end.) After that, she keeps it secured at home unless her blood’s changed far enough back towards mortal that it’s safe. But she always keeps the iron knife, and she always brings it with her when she IS more mortal than fae. In The Brightest Fell, she notes the hilt fits perfectly for her. She has to throw it off her when she changes back in Chimes at Midnight, but once the False Queen’s been ousted, Toby apparently makes sure to reclaim it from the treasury. It’s not a good idea to lose a gift from one of the Firstborn, after all. And you never know when you might need to kill another one, especially when one of them is your (terrible) mother. Which she considers, to some extent, at the start of The Brightest Fell, and openly threatens in its ending to get Tybalt and Jazz back.

In short, Toby thinks of the iron knife as being a part of her life for much longer than it actually was, consistently. Part of it’s definitely that it represents the balance of her blood the way she was used to for most of her life - after all, when she gets another blood choice vision in CAM, the choice is presented as iron and silver knives for human and fae. But it’s also the knife she used to kill one of the Firstborn. Dare’s knife is Toby’s promise to be a hero going forward. Acacia’s knife is Toby choosing the title, and all the danger that comes with it. She stabs them both into Michael at the same time. When she’s rebalancing her blood, in CAM, she does the same thing to herself.

"... You do make the first cut, though, and you use my knife to do it, since yours is probably covered with something unspeakable that would despoil my beautiful creation." "Or she can use mine," said a male voice, from behind me. I turned. There was Oberon, still in his mostly-unassuming buise, the antlers on his brow small enough not to attract more attention than he wanted. He was wearing red, which was a little odd, since he wasn't part of the official wedding party, but he was also Oberon, which meant absolutely no one, not even his daughters, was going to tell him "no". And he was holding a knife by the blade, offering it to me hilt-first. I blinked, first at the blade, then at him. "Sire?" I asked. This was one of those things that probably held some great meaning and import no one had ever bothered to explain to me, assuming it wouldn't be important enough to matter. ... "I would be honored," I said, and took the knife from Oberon's hand, turning to face the cake. ... Oberon was gone when I turned around, leaving me holding his knife. I tightened my grip on the handle. I wasn't putting this one down until I could return it to its owner.

(And With Reveling, the novella/epilogue to When Sorrows Come, pages 360-361)

Today would be the first day I carried two knives to Arden's Court. The first, the silver, was familiar. The second was relatively new, although it felt natural and easy in my hand, and was made of a material I still hadn't identified. In a very real way, it was the only gift I had received on my actual wedding day. ... The knife was different. I hadn't even realized it was a gift at first; I'd thought it was just something I could use to cut the cake. But when I'd tried to return it, the Luidaeg had interceded, explaining that once her father - you know, Oberon himself - handed someone a weapon, it was a grave insult to hand it back, and did I really want to insult my grandfather, the Lord of All Faerie, on my wedding day? Was I that eager to become something genuinely unpleasant and leave Tybalt functionally a widower? I was not. And so now I carried a gift from the father of us all on my left hip, sharp and deadly and ready to be used. But no pressure.

(Be The Serpent, Chapter Two, pages 9-10)

Oberon's knife is given with so little ceremony Toby doesn't realize it's truly a gift at first, at a time where - for once - Toby does not actually need a knife for standard stabbing purposes. Oberon's knife immediately has the kind of importance that Toby isn't entirely comfortable with it, in stark contrast to how quick she is to accept the iron knife and how thoroughly the silver knife has become an extension of her identity. She's gotten used to being a hero, and even a hero of the realm - she lets/asks Aethlin to re-recognize her hero status so she can help investigate, which may or may not mean she's now a hero of the entire Westlands as a realm, not just Maples. (Neither of them bothers to specify.) But when a god gives you a knife, it's understandable to be a little hesitant about it. It's given under the most gift-like circumstances of the three - Dare's was a preemptive gift for self-defense, and Acacia's came with a direct request: Kill Blind Michael, or not, but choose. Oberon's gift is more to have than to cut that cake, even if it's not laid out until later.

Dare's knife's metal isn't actually specified in Rosemary and Rue - it's specified when things are iron in that book, but Toby never actually bothers to mention what they use instead. It comes up for the first time in A Local Habitation, instead. What's important to know at the time is that it's a knife, and a pretty unexceptional one, because Dare thinks Toby might need it. Acacia's knife, of course, is immediately singled out as iron. Oberon's knife is just left as "a knife" in And With Reveling (most importantly, a CLEAN knife,) but when it first comes up in Be The Serpent its material is explicitly mentioned as unknown. We immediately know that will be important. Oberon's children are heroes. The man himself does not give weapons lightly.

The Luidaeg waited until the door was closed behind her before she spoke again. "I saw my father hand you a knife at the wedding," she said. "I know he didn't take it back. Do you have it with you?" "I do," I said, and touched the knife belted to my hip. "Show me." Pulling the knife from its sheath felt like a promise I didn't want to be making, as if by doing so, even when asked, I was committing to using it for its intended purpose. The Luidaeg held her hand out and I dropped the handle into her palm, letting her take the blade for me. She lifted it toward the light, squinting. "Hmm," she said. "I think it's antler, rather than bone, but it should still work." "Oh, go- Wait, what?" "Antler. You know what those are, don't you?" She offered the knife back. I took it. "They're the handles on the stag. Not that I'd suggest grabbing them if you don't have a damn good reason, since the best-case scenario when you do that is being stuck on the end of a pissed-off stag. Bone would be better, but I guess Daddy has a renewable source for antler. He drops them every spring, right around Moving Day, and we used to use them for all sorts of things. There's a piece in every hope chest." "You're telling me that I've been carrying around a piece of Oberon?" I demanded, staring at the knife in my hand. The Luidaeg nodded, apparently untroubled. "He isn't good at showing people he likes them, but he must like you, if he's giving you one of those. He tends to keep them close, given what they're used for." "What's that?" "Murder, mostly." She said it so lightly, like it was nothing out of the ordinary. "Silver and iron for a Firstborn, silver and bone - or antler - for our parents. Not that we know that for sure, of course. It was just what the magic seemed to indicate, and what the oracles Saw, back when there were enough of us to ask." I kept staring at the knife. I couldn't seem to take my eyes away. "So you're telling me this knife could - could -" "Could kill Titania, if you used it correctly and caught her off-guard, yes, I am," said the Luidaeg.

(Be The Serpent, Chapter Twelve, pages 161-162)

Oberon's knife is a piece of himself, and it is the ability to kill one of the Three, if Toby dares, if Toby deems it necessary. Granted, that last part was also the case with Acacia's knife - she's Firstborn too, after all. (And of course, ANY knife has the capacity to kill a changeling like Toby starts the series, or Dare.) But coming from the King of All Faerie, it feels even more tremendous, particularly because it's given when the only one of the Three active is Oberon himself. He's actually surprised when Toby discusses killing Titania or threatens him in Be The Serpent. He isn't actually expecting her to start thinking about killing gods with her god-killing knife. Oberon doesn't think about things he knows A LOT. Toby probably gets it from him.

But he's already given her his absolute trust. You don't give someone the one kind of knife that can kill your wives and yourself if you think they would use it irresponsibly.

Toby's wedding is in many ways, in- and out of universe, a recognition of her heroism. Oberon's knife is, as well. And with it comes the burden she's locked herself into: She's the one who brought Oberon home. She's the restorer of the Roane. She's the one who will go to the Heart of Faerie. She has broken the bindings on Titania, set on her by Oberon himself, and destroyed the illusions of Titania; unraveling something of Maeve's seems as inevitable as finding her and bringing her home as well. The antler knife isn't just marking her a hero, it's marking her as something all but mythic.

Even a hero would be nervous about that responsibility.

But for all the weight it carries, it still feels natural to use, just like the iron knife. The antler knife and the role it brings with it are just as much a part of Toby as the silver and iron. And by the time she receives it, she's more than earned it already.

#violence #moreso than the sheer fact of Knife Meta implies there's a death scene under the cut #october daye #october daye series #meta #wall of text below the cut #spoilers through the most recent books; quotes through Be The Serpent #toby daye #Dare october daye #Acacia october daye #Oberon october daye #not gonna tag the other appearances here but I feel like the knife-givers deserve it

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