Page 28 of When Sorrows Come

He blinked. “The stories I’ve heard about you include several bargains with the sea witch.”

I struggled not to glance at the table where Quentin sat, living proof of another bargain. “Yes, and that’s why I’m one of the people most qualified to tell you not to do it. She can’t refuse you if you ask her, and it... it isn’t kind to impose on your guests in such a way. You can, of course, if you really want to—it’s not like I can stop you—but it’s not kind.” I shrugged helplessly. “That’s all.”

“How did you know Nessa had been replaced?” asked the High King, apparently abandoning the idea of asking the Luidaeg for her protection. I was grateful for that. She told me once that she could only do things for free when she could somehow spin them around to being selfish, and I didn’t see a way that protecting a monarch she didn’t answer to could be selfish.

“My loyalty is pledged to Duke Sylvester Torquill of Shadowed Hills,” I said gingerly. The fact that I was here without my liege, and that he had, so far as I knew, not been involved at any stage of getting me permission to come here, could reflect badly on myhonor, as well as his, if I wasn’t careful. “I was trained in my knightly duties by his seneschal, Sir Etienne. And even in a backwater Duchy run by a politically unambitious man, the seneschal knew enough not to bring strangers before his liege without verifying their names and natures. The Doppelganger pretending to be Nessa offered us the hospitality of the house immediately, without asking our names.”

“She mistook the Luidaeg, who looks human when she so wishes it, for my lady,” added Tybalt. “October’s changeling nature is well-known, and effort has never been made to conceal it. She is proud of where she comes from.”

“But there’s still a difference between ‘human’ and ‘part-human,’ ” I said, with a nod. “She should have verified my name, and if she couldn’t do that for some reason, she should have avoided assumptions that might cause offense.”

“Wouldn’t want to offend the king-breaker, after all,” drawled Raj.

I turned. He was sitting at on the edge of one of the nearby tables, which had been summarily upended and abandoned when the fight broke out. Apparently, much as this place was set up to invoke the idea of a Viking longhouse, they weren’t big on Valhalla-esque nightly brawls.

Pity. He had snatched a pretzel roll from one of the breadbaskets and was gnawing on it idly. My stomach grumbled. It had been a long time since lunch, and what with everything that had happened, we were unlikely to get dinner.

To my surprise, High King Aethlin laughed. “Ah, the little Prince of Cats,” he said. “I was unsure you would be able to attend, or that you would be willing to, without your shadow by your side.” He raised an eyebrow, clearly waiting for someone to answer the question he was leaving unasked.

Raj toasted him with his pretzel roll. “My regent gave me time off for good behavior. The Court of Cats of San Francisco is well-kept in my absence, and in the absence of my uncle, which is a fine thing, since he will be unable to resume his throne when you’re done with him. Are we getting dinner or not?”

Raj being rude to the High King is sort of a recurring theme when we put the two of them in the same room, and yet we keep doing it, thus maintaining the relationship that’s existed betweenCait Sidhe and the Divided Courts for centuries. The relationship that might well be universal, if not for me and Tybalt fucking it up.

Of course, I didn’t trust Aethlin not to push the issue of Quentin’s location if I let them keep talking, and so I broke in hurriedly.

“Before dinner, we should find Nessa,” I said. “Do you have any good trackers among your court?”

“We have a family of Cu Sidhe who work with the groundskeeping crew,” said Aethlin. “I can call for them.”

“I am not a bloodhound,” said Tybalt, clearly anticipating my next question. “But I can track by scent well enough, when the need arises.”

“And I can track by blood. We’ll need to start with seeing her quarters,” I said. “Can someone lead us there?”

“Yes,” said Aethlin. “I’ll escort you myself.”

“Raj, tell the others where we’re going, and then catch up with us,” I said. “You’re going to need to be one of the trackers.”

What I didn’t mention was that if Nessa had been taken bloodlessly, my own tracking abilities would be effectively useless. I didn’t know the scent of her magic, although I might be able to pick it up from her rooms, so it wasn’t like I could trace it through the knowe, and if she’d been knocked unconscious, she wouldn’t have been casting anyway.

But she was Gwragedd Annwn. She needed an illusion to move safely through the world. If the Doppelganger had knocked her out, that illusion would have dissipated, lacking the attention necessary to maintain it. If it had killed her, it would still have needed to dispose of her body. Either way, it needed some of her blood to mimic her beauty the way it had initially, and whatever its plans, it wouldn’t have been able to look at her for long.

“I am?” asked Raj, eyebrow raised. But he shivered, the scent of pepper and burnt paper rising around him, and his pretzel roll fell to the floor, rolling to a stop next to Aethlin’s foot, as he was replaced with a russet Abyssinian cat. Raj meowed loudly, stretched, and leapt down from the chair, racing back to the others in half the time it would have taken him on two legs. I smiled. It’s rare for one of the Cait Sidhe to take orders from a member of the Divided Courts, but the only reason Raj isn’t officially my squire is because of our respective Courts. If I’d been Cait Sidhe, or he’d beenanything else, I would have accepted him at the same time I accepted Quentin. So he didn’t mind as much when I did it.

Let anyone else try, though, and things could get messy.

Aethlin started toward the exit. Tybalt and I followed. When a King in his own knowe walks, those who don’t wear the crown are bound to accompany. He made a small gesture with his hand as we went, and four guards peeled off from those remaining on the wall, falling into step around us like the corners of a compass.

Outside in the hall, there were small knots of former diners gathered together and talking in the low, anxious voices of people whose pleasant state dinner had just been interrupted by an unexpected knife fight and a rain of arrows. Some of them stopped talking to point at us and stare as we passed with their king, and I smiled weakly in response, unable to figure out the etiquette of this admittedly unusual situation.

“You’ve come at an interesting time, Sir Daye, and I find myself grateful that you left the item you have in keeping for me at home.” He cast a sharp sideways glance in my direction. My stomach tightened. So he was concerned for Quentin’s safety, and he was afraid someone in his own Court knew that Quentin was fostered with me. Interesting.

It made sense, though. Quentin had told me that Eira, in her guise as Evening Winterrose, respectable Daoine Sidhe Countess, had traveled to Toronto to discuss fosterage for Quentin and his younger sister, Penthea, or, as he sometimes said mockingly, “the heir and the spare.” She had somehow managed to convince Aethlin and Maida that the safest place to send their son and Crown Prince was a backwater Duchy whose Duke was rumored to have gone mad, and Quentin had been thrown to Shadowed Hills like a steak to the hyenas, there to sink or swim on what preparation he brought with him from his time in his parents’ shadow.

He’d gotten surprisingly lucky when he was sent to deliver a message to me and somehow became my private page when I was dealing with my liege. From there, it had been a small series of misadventures and disastrous almost-quests that led, inevitably in hindsight but unbelievably at the time, to him becoming my squire. Eira’s plans for him had fallen apart when one of her allies turned against her and forced her to fake her own death.

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer lady, really. Couldn’t have gotten me a better kid.

If the High King wasgratefulthat I hadn’t brought Quentin with me, something was really wrong. “How long ago do you think Nessa was replaced, Your Highness?”

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