Chimes at Midnight

TEN

THE REDWOOD-SCENTED PORTAL closed behind us as Arden and I stepped into the darkened hall of Goldengreen. Arden staggered, looking winded. I offered a hand to steady her.

“Easy,” I said. “It’s been a while since you’ve had to take passengers.” Not to mention the strain of teleporting into someone else’s knowe, where the wards wouldn’t recognize her. We’d probably just broken half a dozen rules of etiquette, as well as a few prohibitions against trespassing, but I wasn’t as concerned about that. Dean would understand once he saw who I was bringing with me. We wouldn’t have been able to get inside at all if I hadn’t been the keeper of Goldengreen at one point—and most teleporters couldn’t have made the journey without knowing their destination. She was strong.

I hoped that was going to be a good thing.

Arden shrugged off my hand, looking around us. “Where’s my brother?”

“He and Tybalt should be right behind us,” I said. It had been hard to convince Arden to take me while Tybalt carried Nolan, but the division was necessary. No matter how strong she was, she couldn’t open a portal big enough to get four people safely across the city. The trouble was, since Nolan was asleep, he wouldn’t know not to breathe on the Shadow Roads. That meant taking the long way around, through the Court of Cats, to give him time to thaw.

A swarm of pixies raced down the hall, scattering off in all directions to avoid hitting us. Rather than flying on, they clung to the walls and tapestries, scolding in shrill, bell-like voices. A female whose wings and body were glowing a bright daisy yellow stopped to hover in front of my nose, shaking her finger and scolding me in a high, chiming voice.

“Hey, I couldn’t ask permission before we came,” I protested. “Don’t worry. Count Lorden will approve once I have a chance to explain.”

“I’m glad to hear you’re planning to explain,” said a voice.

“Hi, Marcia.” I sighed with relief, turning my back on the pixie as I faced her. “I’m sorry to burst in like this, but we couldn’t go outside; the Queen’s guards know what my human disguise looks like. Tybalt should be arriving with another guest any minute now. Again, sorry for the lack of advance warning. Things have been a little crazy.” I paused, blinking. “Marcia?”

The quarter-blooded changeling was staring at Arden, blue eyes gone so wide and normally rosy cheeks gone so pale that for a moment, I was afraid she was going to pass out. Then she shook her head, smile returning, and stepped forward to offer her hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t catch your name.”

Arden took a breath, and said, “I am Princess Arden Windermere, rightful heir to this Kingdom, and I am about to be sick.” She sounded apologetic about that last part. I suppose princesses aren’t supposed to puke. “Do you have a bathroom I can use?”

Not the most regal greeting ever, but Marcia took it in stride, offering Arden her arm. “Right this way, Your Highness, and while you’re settling your stomach, I’ll tell the Count you’ve arrived.” She cast a half-panicked look over Arden’s shoulder at me. “He’ll be surprised to hear that he’s hosting such a royal guest.”

I shrugged, mouthing “Sorry.”

“I’m not particularly royal anymore.” Arden took Marcia’s arm. Apparently, now that Marcia knew her real name, she fell into the category of “trust, because there’s no other option.” It was pragmatic of her, although it may have had something to do with her apparently urgent need to vomit. As she was led down the hall, I heard her ask, “Do you have any crackers?”

Half the pixies followed them. The other half stayed with me, still ringing in strident annoyance. I sighed and dug my phone out of my pocket. Scrolling quickly through my contact list, I found the name I needed and pressed the button to complicate the situation even further.

After the second ring, Etienne’s calm, overly cultured voice said, “Hello?”

I sighed with relief. “Hi, Etienne,” I said. “Can you put His Grace on for me? I sort of have a situation.”

There was a pause while Etienne considered my request. We go way back, Etienne and me, and my part of our relationship has traditionally consisted of giving him headaches and creating messes he has to clean up. That changed a few months ago, when I saved the life of the teenage daughter he hadn’t even known he had. Etienne had always possessed a certain grudging respect for me. Saving Chelsea may have finally made us friends.

“Is this one of those situations where the less I know, the happier I’ll be?” he asked.

“Absolutely. I absolve you of all involvement, at least for right now. Just please, please, get me the Duke.”

“Hang on,” said Etienne. There was a thump as he set the receiver down. It wasn’t loud, but it was loud enough I might have missed the soft sound of Tybalt’s footsteps, had they not been accompanied by the pennyroyal and musk scent of his magic—and the maddened shrieks of the pixies, who were clearly unhappy about the ongoing invasion of their territory.

I turned. Tybalt was behind me, holding Nolan in a fireman’s carry. He was winded, and as I watched, he lowered the unconscious Prince to the floor, half-propping him against the wall. “Remind me, next time I agree to something like this, that I am an idiot and should not be trusted to make these decisions,” he said, wheezing.

I grimaced. Before I could reply, the phone was picked up, and Sylvester said, “October? What’s wrong?”

Moment of truth time. I took a deep breath, and answered his question with a question. “If I had reason to believe one of our local nobles was holding their demesne illegitimately, would you want to know?” That should be vague enough that he wouldn’t jump straight to “you mean the Queen.” I hoped.

Silence until, finally, he asked, “October, where are you?”

“I’m at Goldengreen.” I paused before adding the next piece of the night’s news. I didn’t want to upset him, but he needed to know. “Oh, and the Queen of the Mists has sort of exiled me from her Kingdom.”

His sharp intake of breath was audible even through the phone. Then he said, “Please come to Shadowed Hills at your earliest convenience. And to answer your earlier question . . . I would absolutely like to know.” The phone went dead.

I lowered it, closing the lid as I turned to Tybalt. “Sylvester’s on board and wants us to drop by later. Now we just need Quentin.”

Tybalt raised an eyebrow. “How’s that?”

“He’s my squire, he should be here to watch me rail against the monarchy.”

Tybalt sighed. “Give me your phone.”

“What?” I blinked. Of all the things he could have requested, that one was near the bottom of the list.

“I will call Raj, who has recently taken to carrying one of those damnable machines. Raj will go get Quentin. They’re similar in size, and it’s time my nephew started transporting others through the Shadow Roads. He needs the practice.”

“. . . right.” I handed my phone to Tybalt, trying not to think about the fact that I was signing up my squire as a test case for a Prince-in-training. “I’m going to go see if I can find Dean and get help carrying Nolan to a better napping spot.” Hopefully, Dean would be okay with the fact that his knowe was becoming party central for the anti-Queen action. The fact that his parents were together in part because of Arden’s parents might help. If I was lucky.

“I’ll be right there,” Tybalt assured me, and began to dial.

I turned and walked toward the courtyard. That was my best hope of finding Dean fast. If I was going to run this fire drill, I wanted to run it right. Maybe it was cliché to hide the Crown Princess of the Mists in the only County in San Francisco whose regent had ties to the Undersea, but this was my first planned rebellion against the throne, and I was flying by the seat of my pants. Those pants said “go where she’s likely to find allies.”

Even if this didn’t work out, I had little doubt the Undersea would be happy to take Arden and Nolan in, hiding them where the Queen could never reach them. I snorted with suppressed amusement. Me, October “I was a fish for fourteen years” Daye, advocating that someone go hide with the mermaids. I guess some traumas get better with time. That, or they wind up buried under newer, bigger problems.

Dean was running across the courtyard when I stepped inside. His eyes widened when he saw me, and he stumbled to a stop. “What’s going on?” he demanded.

“Do you want the long version or the short version?”

“The pixies and bogeys are going out of their minds! I don’t really understand them—”

“Who does?”

“—but Marcia ran off when they started freaking out, and she hasn’t come back, and now you’re here! What’s happening?”

I took a deep breath. “Marcia is in the bathroom with one of your unexpected guests, who needed to throw up after teleporting us both across the city. Tybalt is in the hall with another, who isn’t throwing up, largely because he’s been elf-shot.”

“Tybalt’s been elf-shot?” asked Dean blankly.

“No, the other guest has been elf-shot. Tybalt’s fine. He’s calling Raj to pick up Quentin and bring him here. Sylvester is also on the way.”

Dean frowned. “Anyone else?”

“No, that’s it for now. Only you should probably call your parents back, because they’re going to want to be here for this particular debriefing.”

Dean’s frown deepened, growing more suspicious. “Why is that?”

In for a penny . . . “Because the guest in the bathroom with Marcia is Crown Princess Arden Windermere in the Mists, and the elf-shot man in the hall is her younger brother, Nolan. They’re here because we need—I need—Arden to take her throne back, and she has good reason to be afraid for her life if the Queen hears about her. I figured we might find allies in Goldengreen. Or, if not, we might at least find a fast ship to very, very far away.”

“I hate sailing, and I’m supposed to close the bookstore tomorrow. Jude’s going to be pissed if I don’t show up,” said Arden. I turned. She was standing in the doorway. Marcia was a few feet behind her, still looking pale. Arden, meanwhile, smiled wanly and walked forward to offer Dean her hand. “I’m told you’re the Count who currently holds this demesne. We appreciate your hospitality.” She cast a glance my way. “I’m definitely going to need to hear the story of what happened to Countess Winterrose. I thought that old spider would be squatting here until the stars burned out.”

“She died,” I said.

“Short story,” said Arden. She turned back to Dean. “I’m sorry to barge in on you like this. October said this might be a safe place to go, and we never went out into the open. No one could have seen us.”

Dean blinked, first at Arden, and then at the hand she was offering him. Finally, he took a step backward and bowed. His form wasn’t what I’d have expected from a courtier raised on land, but his posture was good, and his spine curled in the perfect mixture of deference and civility. Courtly manners aren’t identical throughout Faerie. They’re still recognizable, whatever form they take.

“If you are who October indicates you to be, I am your servant,” he said, straightening. “If you are not, you are still welcome here. Any friend of hers is a friend of Goldengreen.”

Arden blinked mismatched eyes in visible surprise before withdrawing her hand. “I guess I’m a little out of touch.”

“A hundred years among the mortals will do that, I understand,” said Tybalt, walking in behind us. He was carrying Nolan slung over his shoulder like a sack of slumbering potatoes. “Where might I deposit this gentleman? I am loath to drop a potential Prince a second time, but he is remarkably heavy for one who has not eaten in decades.”

“Marcia.” Dean looked to his seneschal. “Please prepare a guest chamber for the Princess’ brother. Meanwhile—” Whatever Dean was intending to say was lost as two teenage boys burst through the doorway, both of them moving at a speed that was probably unsafe when there were other people involved. Quentin managed to skid to a stop, his shoes making an unpleasant scraping noise on the cobblestones. Raj seemed like he was on a collision course with Arden until Tybalt reached out with his free hand and grabbed his nephew by the scruff of his neck, bringing him to an abrupt halt.

I didn’t bother hiding my smile. “Hi, boys,” I said. “Welcome to our party.”

“Did you really find the Princess?” Raj demanded, twisting in Tybalt’s hand as he tried to get a better look at Arden. “Let me down, I want to see!”

“He was never this willful before you came along,” said Tybalt mildly.

“Liar,” I replied. Raj was a Prince of Cats. “He’s always been this bad. Raj, calm down. There’s enough stupid political intrigue for everybody.”

Raj stopped squirming. Tybalt let him go, and he brushed himself off, going from hyperactive kitten to feline royalty in an instant. He turned to Arden. “Hello,” he said. He didn’t bow. Cait Sidhe bow to members of the Divided Courts only when they want to, and a wayward Princess he’d only just met didn’t rate. Instead, he looked at her, taking her measure with his eyes.

Arden might not have remembered all her courtly manners, but she clearly knew how to be looked at by a cat. She crossed her arms, raising an eyebrow, and eyed Raj right back, giving as good as she got. Like Quentin, Raj was growing like a weed, although she wouldn’t appreciate that the way that I did. When I first met him, he was a half-starved refugee in Blind Michael’s lands. Now he was a tall, thin teenage boy who somehow managed to avoid “gangly” in favor of looking like he was going to be snapped up to model jeans at any moment. His hair was russet red tipped with brown, like an Abyssinian cat’s, and his eyes were the green of leaded carnival glass. He looked nothing like Tybalt—they weren’t blood relatives—but after spending so much time around the Cait Sidhe, there was no way for me to look at him and not see the subtle marks of power that labeled him as a Prince.

“Hello,” said Arden finally. She extended her hand again. Unlike Dean, Raj took it. “Arden Windermere.”

“Raj.” He shook once, then reclaimed his hand and looked to Quentin, apparently waiting to see what was going to happen next. I followed his gaze. I was as curious as he was.

Much to my surprise, Quentin neither bowed nor offered his hand. Instead, he cocked his head, studying Arden. His gaze was franker than Raj’s had been, like he was looking for something specific. Finally, he asked, “Was King Windermere your father?”

“It was a long time ago, so I never got a paternity test, but as far as I’m aware, yes,” she said. She looked almost amused. “My brother looks just like him. We both have his eyes. Our mother always swore we were his fault. So I’m assuming he was my father.”

“Okay,” said Quentin. He bowed—not as formally as Dean had, but with a goodly measure of propriety. “It is a pleasure to meet you, milady.”

“This is my squire, Quentin,” I said. “Let me know if he bothers you. I’ll slap him upside the head until he stops.” I paused before adding, “Raj is also sort of my squire, but mostly, he’s Tybalt’s heir. I also have slapping rights where he’s concerned.”

Raj wrinkled his nose. Tybalt looked amused.

Dean, meanwhile, rubbed the back of his neck, and said, “This all seems a little, well. Lighthearted. If we’re actually doing what I think we’re doing.”

Marcia stepped back into the room. I hadn’t even seen her leave. “I’ve prepared a room for the Prince,” she said. “My Lord, your parents are on their way. They should be here shortly, if you wanted to receive them in the cove.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Dean. He rubbed the back of his neck one more time before asking, “Tybalt, can you . . . ?”

“I will join you by the water,” said Tybalt, and turned, following Marcia out of the room. I watched him go. Nolan’s head banging against the middle of his back only detracted a little bit from my customary admiration of his ass.

I turned back to the others. Dean met my eyes and grimaced.

“You really don’t have a plan, do you?” he asked.

“Not as such,” I admitted. “But I have a Princess, and that’s better than I was doing a few hours ago. Let’s go see your folks.”

The walk to the cove-side receiving room was less disorienting this time, since it was no longer totally unfamiliar. Raj and Quentin, on the other hand, gaped. They’d both essentially lived in Goldengreen while it was mine, and they’d done more exploring than I had, since, well, they were teenage boys and I wasn’t. For them, the existence of an unfamiliar hallway was both a delight and an insult to their skills.

Arden walked more slowly than Dean and the boys. I fell back to pace her, walking alongside her in silence for a little while before I asked, “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” she said. Then she laughed unsteadily. “No. No, I am not okay.”

“You want to talk about it?”

She waved a hand, indicating the walls. “When I got up this morning, I wasn’t planning my return to Faerie to be quite this . . . now. Or ever. You’re all very nice, and I’m sorry if this seems rude, but you haven’t shown me anything that makes me think we can take the throne. You’ve got what, a King of Cats, a couple of kids, and some changelings? No offense.”

“None taken,” I lied. Ahead of us, Dean stiffened. He’d clearly heard Arden lumping him in with the “kids.” “Look. We’re sorry to drag you into this. But aren’t you tired of hiding?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “That doesn’t mean I’m tired of living. The one seemed like the best way to accomplish the other.”

I sympathized with her, I really did. There was a time when I did my best to get the hell out of Faerie—and my best was never anything close to Arden’s, which removed her from our world for the better part of a century. Maybe longer, depending on how involved she’d been before Nolan got elf-shot. Faerie is huge and complicated and frankly scary if you’ve been living in the mortal world, where the laws of physics don’t change from hour to hour and the inanimate doesn’t take sides.

But that didn’t mean I’d let Arden walk away from her duty. Maybe that was ironic—me, October Daye, the woman who once said destiny could go screw itself if it insisted on trying to make me play its reindeer games—but I didn’t care. Arden was the Princess in the Mists. Unless she took the throne, nothing was going to change, and I was going to be banished. Neither of those things was okay with me, and that meant she was going to do her job.

I didn’t scold her. Instead, I said, “We have more allies than you think. I sort of collect them. You might be surprised by how much of the Kingdom will side with us once they know who you are.”

“You’re going to need an army,” said Arden, a note of well-worn bitterness in her tone.

Her voice carried. As we stepped off the stairway into the receiving room, Dianda Lorden, Duchess of Saltmist, stood from where she’d been sitting at the edge of the water. The scales covering her tail fell away, replaced by legs wrapped in blue canvas trousers. She was dressed like a pirate preparing to board a merchant ship. No romance here; just solid, serviceable clothing. Patrick stood next to her, his own clothes quietly echoing hers . . . and behind them stood what looked like a regiment of sea-folk. Merrow and Selkies, Cephali and Naiads, and beyond them in the water, the vast forms of the Cetacea.

“Will this army do?” asked Dianda.

Arden’s widened eyes provided all of the answer we needed.