“Better,” I said. “Queen Windermere would be delighted to receive you.”
Ginevra reached up to feel the tip of her left ear, smiling when she found it smooth and furless and immobile. “Oh, that’s good,” she agreed. “Your uncle taught you well.”
“My uncle has been preparing me to be King since I was old enough to understand what the position would entail,” I said.
“I can’t say the same about my dad.” Ginevra’s mouth twisted in a wry curl. “He always said he felt like I would have been a Princess if I weren’t a changeling, but I was a changeling, so it didn’t matter because the Shadow Roads would never anchor themselves through me. And then, Toby, you know,” she waved a hand, encompassing the whole of her fae self, “and suddenly I had a lifetime of lessons to catch up on in like, five minutes. I wouldn’t change it, not for the world, but wow am I going to mess things up.”
“Yes, well, you’re messing them up while technically standing regent over me, so this will be fun for both of us,” I said stiffly.
Ginevra laughed.
It was hard to stay unhappy with her; she had a joyful heart, and it showed. Still, I kept my face schooled to neutrality as I said, “The ship has gone. Uncle Tybalt and October are bound for the Undersea, and won’t return until they’ve fulfilled their duty to the Luidaeg.”
Uncle Tybalt, and October, and Quentin, and even Dean were bound for the Undersea, Dean, who loved my best friend in a way that could never have been open to me, and would now share an adventure with him that I would never truly understand. It wasn’t the betrayal it seemed, but oh, it burned.
So many things burn, these days. I’ve always known I’d be King, have even reveled in waiting for it. But I never wanted to be King so soon.
“All right,” said Ginevra. “I’ll double the patrols, tell everyone to watch for signs that someone’s sniffing around our borders, trying to take a measure of what’s happening here.”
“There’s no need to fear a challenge,” I said. “As a regent, you have seven years of peace before anyone would consider that right or proper.”
“I don’t quite understand that,” said Ginevra. “Everyone likes to tell me the Court of Cats is violent and complicated, but as soon as I said I’d hold the throne for you, the Court of Dreaming Cats gets seven years of no one bothering them? How does that work?”
“It’s rare for a regent to be called for any reason other than an orphaning,” I said. It was a struggle to keep the frustration from my tone. We’d had this conversation several times, and it seemed likely we’d have it several more before Ginevra accepted it as the way things were done. “Cait Sidhe can be brutal, yes, and our methods of succession are more direct than they are in the Divided Courts—in part because our heirs are so rarely a matter of blood. Your father is lucky to have you. You’ll be able to take his throne without killing him, when the time comes.”
Ginevra blanched. “You say that so casually.”
“Because to me, this is casual,” I said. “This is how the world works. We’re animals, but we’re not beasts. If Uncle Tybalt had died and you’d been called to stand regent, I’d be half-trained and grieving. There’s no honor in taking a throne from a child. So I’m to be allowed my grief, while you protect me and give me time to recover from my loss. In a customary regency, I’d be expected to fight you to show I was ready to claim what had always been mine.”
Unlike a normal succession fight, I wouldn’t be expected to do more than cursory damage. As long as she was defeated, I could claim my place, and she’d be allowed to return home in honor, having done her duty to a child of her own kind.
Our politics are as complicated and tedious as the politics of the Divided Courts. It’s just that they follow other rules, and have no interest in compromising themselves for the expectations of anyone else.
“You should know I hit like a freight train,” said Ginevra. “Dad says I don’t understand my own strength, so it’s sort of like trying to wrestle a bus. Yeah, you may have technique and training on your side, but it’s still a bus.”
“That’s why I’m supposed to teach you how to control your power.” Being my regent’s teacher was weird. It would leave us both better prepared for our futures. She’d be a better Princess when she went back to Silences, and I . . .
I’d be a better Prince. That was the only thing I needed to be. Better Princes make better Kings. That’s just logic.
“If milady does not need me, I would like to be excused,” I said, with a quick, shallow bow. “I have business to attend to.”
“Does the business involve wandering around the city unsupervised? Because I’m not comfortable with the way you keep doing that.”
I raised an eyebrow—a gesture I learned from watching my uncle, and refined over the course of many long hours with my mirror—and looked at her silently, waiting for her to explain.
“You’re still a teenager, and San Francisco isn’t the safest city in the world,” said Ginevra. “I’m not sure what the safest city is, but I know this isn’t it.”
“I realize your kittenhood was spent as a changeling, that your experiences will have been accordingly different from my own, but I am a Prince of Cats born and raised, and I’ve always been aware of my own power,” I said. Once again, I regretted my lack of a tail. It would have been nice to have something to lash. “I’m not in the habit of taking anyone with me when I go to visit my friends.”
I left unmentioned the fact that once, I would have been. Before Blind Michael—before the terror and the trauma, before the fear that I would be lost forever to the dark, before October, and Quentin, and Helen, had come crashing into my life and forced me to reshape it—I would no more have left the Court of Cats without a full escort than I would have supplicated myself before the Divided Courts and offered my services as a ratcatcher. I was spoiled and small in those days, content to live in a narrow world until the time came for me to take my rightful place upon the throne. It took a kidnapping to show me that a gilded cage was a gilded cage. It took imprisonment to tell me how much I wanted to be free.
Perhaps I would have been a better King if I had never changed. I would certainly have been a more willing one. It’s difficult to see one’s freedoms as limited when one fails to understand what they are, or what they have the potential to eventually become.
Ginevra looked unsure. I decided it was time to offer her the greatest incentive I had left.
“If you allow this,” I said portentously, “I will give you the password for the Wi-Fi.”
Ginevra blinked, her pupils expanding to swallow her irises whole. If her ears had still been feline in form, I had no doubt they would have been pressed flat against her skull. “What did you just say?”
“I have the password for the Wi-Fi. I’ll give it to you.”
“We’re in the Court of Cats,” she said. “There’s no Internet here!”
That would have been true once, before Quentin befriended April O’Leary, the cyber-Dryad sometime-Countess of Tamed Lightning. April has a certain understanding with electrical systems. She understands that she wants them to do what she tells them, and they understand that it’s best not to argue with her.
Since April entered the questionable orbit of my life, many things have gotten better. Mostly our phones, but also the availability and stability of wireless Internet in places like the Court of Cats.
“It’s not the best Internet,” I said. “I don’t recommend trying to stream something while also downloading something. And it’s terrible for gaming. I do all my gaming at Quentin’s place. But yes, there’s Internet, and I control it, and I have the password.”
“I’m your regent,” she said. “I could order you to tell me.”
I nodded. “You could. Shall we find out together how well that works?”
Ginevra glared, and I smiled at her. It’s always nice, the mo
ment when I know I’ve won. It’s always something to savor.
TWO
The air outside was all the sweeter for having been so skillfully bargained for. I walked with eyes half-closed, enjoying the scents and sounds of the midnight air.
Helen’s family lived near the Castro, in a residential neighborhood that had been new when her fae father decided he was ready to settle down. His neighbors would probably be way more pissed about how little he’d paid for his home than they were by the fact that he wasn’t human. If anything, they might take his fae nature as another statement on the gentrification of the city. Can’t live here unless you’re rich or supernatural.
They’re not as wrong as they would have been, once. The Court of Cats has swelled incredibly over the last several years as stairways and rooms and paths once inherently connected to the city’s shape have been lost, cast away by the humans dedicated to remaking the place in a shiny new image. It’s nice to know such things can be preserved, and yet it stings to know they must be lost in the first place.
A twig snapped behind me. I kept walking, but stopped sniffing the air for the sheer joy of it, and began sniffing for some sign of who was following me. Ginevra wasn’t completely wrong about the city’s dangers, annoying as that was to admit; muggings do happen, and a slim, relatively slightly-built teenage boy walking alone down darkened streets could be said to be inviting trouble.
Any human thief who tangled with me would find themselves facing more trouble than they bargained for. But I might get hurt in the process of teaching them a dearly-needed lesson, and then I’d have to explain myself to Ginevra, who would probably take this as an excuse to confine me to the Court of Cats any time my uncle so much as thought about leaving the Mists for an afternoon. No, thank you. My freedom has an expiration date, and I’m still a cat: I intend to enjoy every scrap of it that I can.
The air smelled of night-blooming flowers, of eucalyptus, of full garbage cans awaiting the morning’s collection . . . and ever so faintly, of pine. I sighed and stopped walking.
“You can come out, Cal. I know you’re there.”
There was a pause long enough that I began to worry that I’d been wrong, and worse, that I’d just invited a mugger to come over and make my acquaintance. Then Cal said, in a wounded tone, “How did you know it was me?”
“You switched forms too close to me,” I said. “You were probably following in feline form until I switched over, and then you did the same. Rookie move. If you’d stayed a cat, I wouldn’t have heard you, and I certainly wouldn’t have been able to smell your magic.”
“You could smell my magic?” Now they sounded awed. “I can’t smell magic.”
“Of course not. You’re not a Prince.” A keen sense of smell is part and parcel of being Cait Sidhe. Being able to detect signs of spellcraft, however, is more the bailiwick of the nobility.
I sometimes wonder if that wasn’t part of what originally attracted Uncle Tybalt to October. What might have seemed like a party trick to most must have looked like a common changeling treading far too close to mysteries that were meant to belong only to those with the strength to deserve them.
I winced a little at the thought. For a moment there, I’d sounded almost like my father.
Cal scoffed. “Good thing, too, or they’d need to come up with a whole new title for me. I’m not a stupid Prince. I’m not a stupid Princess, either. I’m me.”
“Accurate and yet unnecessary, as you lack the standing to require refusing either title.” I turned. “Why are you following me?”
“Regent’s orders.” Cal looked at me unrepentantly. “She outranks you, so don’t think you can tell me to leave. I won’t.”
“Root and branch preserve me,” I muttered. “Has Uncle Tybalt ever asked you to follow me when I was going to visit Helen? I’m fully capable of doing this without a babysitter.”
“Regent’s orders,” Cal repeated.
“Meaning you’re more afraid of her than you are of me,” I concluded grimly. “You do understand that I’ll be your King for much, much longer than she’s your Regent, yes?”
Cal rolled one shoulder, unconcerned. “Nothing says I can’t go back to Silences with her if I decide I don’t want a King my own age. So maybe this is me making sure I keep my options open.”
“Is it?”
“No.” Cal smiled, showing white, slightly crooked teeth. “I just like getting on your nerves.”
“Did she order you specifically?”
“No. She asked for volunteers.”
“And you were the only one to put your name forward?”
Cal shrugged. “It seemed like a fun way to spend an evening, and it’s not like you ever want to spend time with me when you don’t have to. So here I am, and here you are, and every minute you spend arguing with me is a minute you’re not spending with your girlfriend.”
I hissed at them. It wasn’t a very princely thing to do. In my defense, I wanted to. Doing something simply because I want to do it is an extremely princely thing to do.
Cal looked blandly back at me, unruffled.
“Fine.” I threw up my hands. “You are not to enter Helen’s home. You are not to attempt to cajole her father into giving you something to eat. You may lurk on a neighbor’s porch if you like, so you can see the door, but that’s as close as you come. In exchange, I promise not to try to sneak away. Are we in agreement?”
“I don’t see why I need to bargain with you,” said Cal. “Your regent sent me.”
“I’m sure that excuse will keep you very good company when you’re on my bad side and no one with any sense is willing to be seen with you,” I said. “Ginevra is temporary. I’m forever. Are you truly prepared to risk my eternal enmity simply for the sake of one evening’s entertainment? Consider your answer carefully.”
Cal looked at me sullenly before looking at their feet. “Fine,” they said. “I’ll stay on the porch.”
“Excellent. Now return to feline form, please. You’ll attract less attention that way.” I turned my back on them and resumed walking. They would follow instructions. Cal enjoyed playing the rebel, but they wouldn’t risk my genuine annoyance.
Sure enough, there was a rustling behind me as Cal stepped into the bushes beside the nearest house, followed by another rustle as they leaped out of the brush on four legs. I kept walking, not giving them the satisfaction of looking back. They would only take it as proof that they were getting to me, and keep going.
Cal and I have known each other since we were kittens. We’ve never been friends; as Prince, I was never encouraged to socialize with the common children of the Court. It was only after my father’s death that I began to ask myself how much of that had been his idea. Uncle Tybalt was always happy to leave my rearing to my parents, and Father’s will was always stronger than Mother’s. He was the one to stress how important I was, how powerful and special, and how much I needed to hold myself apart from the people I’d eventually rule.
I felt a pang of guilt at that. But the past is past—it can’t be changed—and while I might regret my paucity of friends among the Court, I’m too aware that Quentin’s time in the Mists is short and growing shorter; the only question now is whether he has to leave before I’m forced to become King. Call me a coward or call me cruel, but I have no wish to widen my social circle further, not when I’m about to lose my best friend in all the worlds. I’m a cat. We don’t share well.
Seen from the street, Helen’s house was as dark as the others around it. I started up the porch steps, smiling as I felt the magic grow thick and taut around me, like a bowstring drawn back and ready to be released. If I’d been human, I would have been repelled long before I reached the top step, shoved gently back by the field which concealed the lights from sundown to sunup every night. Helen’s father has tried to explain the parameters of his wards before, and the reason he lowers them during
the day—something about postal workers and Girl Scout cookies. To be honest, I’ve never been able to bring myself to pay attention long enough to understand his apparent cleverness. The house is secure; Helen is safe. That’s all I care about.
One more step carried me to the shabby welcome mat just outside the front door, and the spell released me with a soft, nearly audible sigh, allowing me to see the house as it truly was: brightly-lit and fully awake. The windows were open. Pixies swarmed around the hummingbird feeders, sipping sugary red juice and squabbling with each other in high-pitched voices.
I rang the bell. Footsteps thumped down the stairs inside. Then the door opened and Helen tumbled into my arms, her lips seeking mine, safe from prying human eyes within the shell of her father’s illusion.
Oh, Helen. My Helen. She wasn’t going to pose any competition to Helen of Troy any time soon, and I didn’t want her to; the sort of beauty that can launch a thousand ships is the purview of the Daoine Sidhe, may they choke on it, and it doesn’t belong in my arms. I have friends among the Daoine Sidhe—Quentin is virtually my brother—and I still don’t think I could love one of them. Their power is too much about how perfect they are, and not enough about the things they do.
A human mother and a Hob father had left her on the short side, not quite five and a quarter feet tall. Her hair was brown, curly, and inclined to mischief; I’d found myself with a mouthful of it more than once, when I was trying to play the skilled lover and plant kisses on her throat, jaw, or shoulder. Despite the scent of it, her shampoo didn’t taste like mint or melon. It tasted like soap. I didn’t like it.
I liked everything else about her. She was curvier than she’d been when we first met; puberty had been kind. There was nothing about her I didn’t like, and I’d never been shy about telling her so when she got self-conscious. She’d called me a pig a few times because of that. I would always sniff and reply that I was a cat, and she would always laugh, no matter how many times she heard it. That was how I first realized that she really loved me. She’d never have put up with me if she didn’t.
The Unkindest Tide Page 38