Tybalt motioned for me to be quiet before raising his hand and rapping lightly on the doorframe. “I believe we had a lunch appointment, if you would care to put your papers and quills aside, you old rapscallion.”
“Rand!” The man was smiling as he turned, the expression carving deep furrows into the skin around his lips and eyes. If not for the faint glitter of a human disguise hanging in the air around him, I would have assumed that he was somewhere in his mid to late sixties, young enough to still be healthy and spry, but old enough to be slowing down. With that glitter, he could have been any age, from sixteen to six hundred. Immortality makes everything difficult. “So you weren’t kidding when you said you’d bring your new girlfriend to meet me.”
“Indeed, and here she is,” said Tybalt, lifting our joined hands ever so slightly, like he was showing me off and asserting ownership at the same time. I swallowed the urge to pull away. No one owns me, and I don’t like it when people pretend they do. At the same time, what little I understood about the Court of Cats told me he was trying to protect us both. He knew my feelings on the subject, and that I’d be yelling at him later. He’d done it anyway.
Belatedly, I was starting to realize that marrying a King of Cats was going to mean learning a lot more about how the Cait Sidhe worked. I was never going to be part of their world, but I was definitely moving into the subdivision next door. “Hi,” I said, smiling at the man as sincerely as I could manage. “I’m October.”
“And you can call me ‘Joe.’ Give me just a second.” The man—Joe—stood, leaning out of his office, and called, “Susie! You’ve got the store for the next hour or two. My lunch date’s here.”
“Yeah, whatever,” called a female voice from the front of the shop. Presumably, the bored clerk we’d seen before was just as bored now that she was in charge.
Joe stepped back into his office, beaming. “There, that’s sorted. Come with me.”
The office was small, and had no visible exits. “Won’t she notice that we didn’t go out through the front . . . ?” I asked hesitantly.
“The new issue of Atomic Robo just came in. Susie’s a great employee, and I love her dearly, but I’d be lucky if she noticed an armed robbery right now. We’re fine. Now come on.” His smile faded a few degrees, and a warning glint came into his eye.
Tybalt stepped into the office. I followed. Joe reached past me to close the door before turning off the light and casting the entire room into shadow.
“Hold your breath,” he said, and we were plunged into cold.
The transition lasted only a few seconds. Then we were standing in ankle-deep grass, surrounded by trees that had twisted and tangled together until they became an impassable wall. Tybalt released my hand and snapped his fingers, allowing his human disguise to waft away into nothing. I took his lead, clapping my hands as Quentin had instructed. I hadn’t cast the illusion, so I couldn’t feel it give way, but my ears stopped itching, and I assumed that meant the release had worked.
A voice chuckled from the shadows near the base of the trees. “What an odd young lady you’ve found, Rand. She’s lovely, but so unique. Whose bloodline is she? Whose name claims her?”
“Come out, Jolgeir,” said Tybalt. There was an edge of impatience in his tone, so thin that I only heard it because I knew to listen. “We are here at your sufferance, and for that, I am grateful, but we are not here to be your playthings. You have plenty such, and finer than we.”
“I don’t know that I’d trust you to assess the value of my toys,” said Joe—Jolgeir—from his hiding place. But he strolled out into the open all the same, giving me my first look at Tybalt’s local equivalent without his human mask on.
Fae tend to stop aging in their mid-twenties, thanks to whatever quirk of impossible biology makes purebloods immortal. Jolgeir was no different. He was recognizably the frame on which the older human man had been constructed: his facial features were a little finer, and his ears, now sharply pointed and subtly feline, would have looked wrong on the pleasant human proprietor of the little comic book store. His hair was still silver, although now it was the mottled silver of a gray cat, shot through with veins of purest white. His eyes were a shade of blue never seen in a purely human face, and his pupils were vertical slits, like Tybalt’s.
He was still wearing brown slacks and a button-down shirt, which explained why Tybalt hadn’t suggested I change my clothes. Kings get to set their own standards, and the standards of the people around them. Of the three of us, Tybalt was the one who looked slightly overdressed. That wasn’t so unusual. He usually dressed better than I did.
Jolgeir looked me thoughtfully up and down, less like he was looking for something wrong, and more like he was trying to take a fair and accurate measure. Finally, he said, “Forgive me for my earlier rudeness, but I truly must ask, what bloodline bore you? You look most like the Daoine Sidhe, but you are not Daoine Sidhe, and no other race so fine in face and form would suit you half so well.”
“I think that was a compliment,” I said. Jolgeir smiled, revealing one pointed incisor. I relaxed a little. A King of Cats who was relaxed enough to be smiling at me was a King of Cats who wasn’t planning to disembowel me any time soon. “Do you know Amandine?”
“Amandine, the blood-worker? The one who claims to be Daoine Sidhe, and is such a liar that I can’t bear her company? That Amandine?”
“That’s the one,” I said. “She’s my mother. She’s also a Firstborn daughter of Oberon. Surprise, and all that.”
Jolgeir frowned. “It seems odd that she could be Firstborn, and I not have heard.”
“Like you said, she lied about it for a long, long time. She even lied to me, until I figured out what she was doing. These days, it’s not quite common knowledge, but she doesn’t get to make it a secret anymore, either. If she didn’t want people to know she wasn’t Daoine Sidhe, she shouldn’t have left me in the position of needing to figure out my magic on my own. Makes it sort of hard to keep things on the down-low.”
“I see.” Jolgeir’s attention shifted to Tybalt. “I suppose I can see the appeal of a novelty. It’s always nice to have something that no one else has.”
Tybalt’s eyes narrowed, but his tone was pleasant as he said, “I would watch myself, were I you, old man. Some people might say that senselessly baiting me was a sign that you wished to be rid of your Kingdom entire.”
“Only if you could take me, kit, and I doubt you can. You couldn’t do it last time.” Jolgeir moved closer, until he and Tybalt were almost nose to nose. They stared at each other for a long moment, long enough that I was starting to consider shoving my way between them. I might regret it for a moment, but I could recover from whatever damage they did to me. The same couldn’t necessarily be said of the damage they would do to each other.
Then something changed in the air between the two men, and they burst out laughing. Tybalt put his hand on Jolgeir’s shoulder; Jolgeir bent forward until his forehead was resting against Tybalt’s, his entire body shaking with merriment. I stared at them, baffled.
“Oh, Rand, your sense of humor remains your best quality! Never let it go, and don’t let marriage change you. The temptation will be there, but I assure you, you and your lady will both enjoy matrimony more and for longer if you remain exactly as you are.”
“You old cat,” said Tybalt, and pounded Jolgeir on the back. “To speak to me of marriage so! How is your Libby? Still wild and full of mad ideas?”
“Older than she was, but lovelier every day than she was the day before.” Jolgeir pulled away from Tybalt, gathering his dignity—such as it was—back around himself before turning to me. “My lady wife, who will not be joining us this day, is of the mortal persuasion. Thirty years she’s been a bride, and three children she’s borne me, and never have I questioned my good fortune. See to it that you and your husband-to-be feel the same.”
“Do my best,�
� I said. “So is there a rule that says Kings of Cats have to talk like they’re in a BBC production, or am I just lucky with the ones that I run into?”
Tybalt snorted. Jolgeir looked amused. “Being here makes it easy to fall into the old ways of speech. Remember, the modern world is a moving target. For centuries, men of learning and sophistication spoke the way we do.”
“In certain parts of the world, anyway,” said Tybalt.
Jolgeir rolled his eyes. “Must you always make corrections?”
“It is my one true joy; begrudge me not such a simple thing,” said Tybalt.
“I will begrudge you whatsoever I like on my own lands,” said Jolgeir, and offered me his arm. “Walk with me, if you would, milady October? I will show you what lies beyond the briars, and you may tell me what it is that brought you hence. Rand has given me some of the story, but I always like to hear it from the source when possible.”
“If you turn down the romance novel dialog a little bit, I’d be happy to,” I said, and placed my hand on his arm as he roared laughter. Behind him, Tybalt nodded approvingly. I was doing the right thing, then: good. I hated to think what would happen if I acted wrong.
“As I was saying, the modern world is a moving target,” said Jolgeir, recovering his composure and starting toward the thorn wall, tugging me along with him. “Once, modernity was measured in horses and carriages, then in steam trains, and now in cars. I have a station wagon. I bought it in 1984. It still runs like it was made yesterday, and the man I was in my youth would have seen it as impossible magic, too powerful for mortal hands to steer, much less build. Everything changes. I can talk like the men you see on the streets—I do, in my shop, although most of my younger patrons will tell you that I’m old-fashioned. They think I’m quaint.”
“If only they knew,” I said, smiling.
Jolgeir matched my smile with one of his own. “Precisely so.”
We were still walking, and should have reached the thorns by now. I looked up, and was unsurprised to see that we were now in a tunnel of brambles. When I looked back, I could see the clearing behind us, still ringed on its far side by the original thorn wall. Tybalt walked behind us, seemingly relaxed, and looking pleased with how this whole encounter was going.
“So,” I said, turning my attention back to Jolgeir. “You own a comic book store. That’s an interesting choice.”
“Why?” he asked. “Because I should have opened a rare book store, crumbling and cobwebbed, to frighten off anyone younger than the age I pretend to, which is so much younger than my own? Comic books appeal to children, and children understand the era they are born to. When the time comes for my current mortal face to die—and it will come, much as I might wish this time could last forever—I will understand the man I must manufacture as my next self all the better because of the children, and their comics. And besides, the X-Men offer many powerful life lessons to which even the eldest among us should attend.”
“Uh, okay,” I said. “I’ll take your word for that.”
Jolgeir was still laughing when we stepped out of the tunnel. There was the twist and stretch that I associated with transit inside knowes, and we were suddenly standing in an old, somewhat repurposed Chuck E. Cheese’s. The stage was still there, although the animatronic animals had been cleared away. There was no throne. Instead, where it should have been, there was a burgundy leather armchair, complete with footrest. Dusty old picnic tables cluttered the room, some in their original positions, waiting for birthday parties that would never begin, while others had been pushed off to the side and piled into towers of furniture.
And then there were the cats. They lounged on the piled-up tables; they prowled the floor. A few had stretched out on the steps leading up to the stage, although none had set foot on the stage itself. They understood the limits of their freedom, and if they were anything like the Cait Sidhe Tybalt was responsible for, they appreciated those limits. Total freedom was terrifying. Boundaries made it controllable, and hence enjoyable again.
“If you will excuse me,” said Jolgeir. He took his hand away from my arm and calmly walked up onto the stage, where he draped himself across the chair. His posture changed subtly, becoming regal without becoming formal. Before, we had been in the presence of Tybalt’s old friend—and, I got the feeling, sometime rival. Now we were in the presence of a King of Cats, and we would do well to remember that.
“Your Majesty,” said Tybalt, bowing.
I didn’t bow. Instead, I dropped into the deepest curtsy I was capable of holding, bending my knee until it nearly brushed the floor and lowering my head so that I was bent virtually double. I stayed in that position, breathing as deeply and slowly as I could manage in order to distract myself from the slow burn starting in the muscles of my thighs.
Jolgeir whistled. It was a long, low sound. “You found a girl from the Divided Courts who would curtsy to a King of Cats. Again, Rand, I must salute you for the novelty of it all, even as I continue to question the sense of it. You may both rise. You have shown sufficient respect to amuse me, and that’s really what this is about.”
“That’s what I always say. If you can’t impress them or dazzle them, at least leave them laughing.” I straightened up, feeling my thighs all but sigh in relief. “Your Majesty.”
“Sir Daye,” replied Jolgeir, with a small smirk. “You came to Silences hoping to meet one King, and here you’ve been so fortunate that you’ve met two! Are you overcome?”
“No, Sire. Just relieved. I came to Silences hoping to meet one King, and until this moment, I wasn’t sure I was going to meet any.”
Insulting Rhys to his Cait Sidhe contemporary’s face was a calculated risk. Jolgeir ran a comic book store and had a mortal wife. Those things put him almost exactly opposed to Rhys, with his anti-changeling policies and his disturbingly ornate Court functions. If I was right about relations between the two men, I was making myself an ally. And if I was wrong . . . well, I’ve functioned in situations where everyone hated me before. It wasn’t fun, but I didn’t die, so I’m calling it a victory for my side.
Jolgeir looked at me thoughtfully for a long moment. Then he grinned, so wide that I could see both his incisors, along with a great white sweep of supporting teeth. “Oh, Rand, I like her. Are you implying that the great King Rhys is less of a King than I am?”
“Implying, no. Stating outright, yes. He’s on the throne because a woman who had no right to make decisions about this Kingdom put him there. I’m here, in your territory, because my Queen sent me to prevent a war. Do I look like the kind of person who can just stroll in and prevent a war? Cause one by accident, maybe, but prevent? Not my strong suit. The fact that I worry him should be enough to prove that he’s no true King.” I shrugged. “Now here I am. It’s an honor to be in your Court, by the way. I know the Court of Cats is private, and I’m grateful to be allowed to pass here.”
“My wife and daughters pass here frequently,” said Jolgeir. He turned his attention to Tybalt. “What of you? Do you find this King of the Divided Courts to be worthy of the name?”
“He is a mewling child playing at the monarchy, making demands he has no right to make and fussing like a kitten when denied,” said Tybalt. “In all these regards, he is as so many of their Kings have been, across the centuries. It’s difficult to look on him and see anything beyond the destiny they have graven for themselves. But my lady speaks true when she says his throne was granted to him by one who had no right to do the granting. It is possible a sea change is coming, one which will reorder the heavens and the earth, or at least the political structure of Portland.”
“Mm,” said Jolgeir. His eyes flicked back to me. “Forgive me if my question is rude, but you have human blood, do you not? I can see it in your lips, in the angle of your cheekbones and the way you hold your hands. It’s dilute, but it’s there.”
“My father was human,” I said. “I’ve nev
er hidden it.”
Jolgeir sat up straighter, making no effort to hide his bemusement. “You lie, lady, you lie; you aren’t a human’s child. You have far too little mortal in you to be a human’s child.”
“Nope. I don’t lie. My father was as human as any man who’s ever lived.” He died for it, too, alone, thinking himself a widower who had buried his only child. I will never stop regretting that. “I told you my mother was Firstborn. Her children are Dóchas Sidhe. We’re blood-workers. For lack of a better explanation, we’re hope chests that walk. I changed my own blood. It was necessary to save my life.”
He sat up straighter still. “And that is the extent of your powers? To slide yourself back and forth along a scale from human to fae and back again, as you like?”
Just like that, I realized what I was being asked. I glanced to Tybalt, who wouldn’t meet my eyes. He’d known this would happen when he brought me here, and he hadn’t warned me, maybe because he was afraid I wouldn’t agree to come, and maybe just because he, like everyone else in my life, was in the habit of keeping secrets that didn’t need to be kept.
We’d have to talk about that later. For the moment, there was a King of Cats who needed an answer. “No, Sire, that’s not the extent of my powers,” I said politely, focusing my attention back on Jolgeir. “If you’re asking what I think you’re asking, yes. I can adjust the balance of someone else’s blood, if given their consent. I can pull the mortality out of a changeling—or I can make them fully mortal, and let them be human without needing to be killed.”
“I have three daughters,” he said. His voice dipped at the end, turning more serious than anything he had said since we walked into his store. “The eldest of them is twenty-eight. She’s so beautiful. She looks so much like her mother.”
A Red-Rose Chain Page 24