Chimes at Midnight: An October Daye Novel (14 page)

“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.

B
RINGING THE UNDERSEA INTO THE PICTURE meant another round of introductions, none of which managed to top Arden meeting Dean for awkwardness, although all of them came with some measure of sizing up. Arden looked uncomfortable, the Undersea guards looked murderous—nothing new there—and Dianda looked murderously hopeful, like this was the opportunity she’d been waiting for since King Gilad died. I guess it’s not every day you get invited to overthrow the ruler of the neighboring Kingdom and get away with it.

“At least I hope we get away with it,” I muttered, picking at the ribbons snarled in my hair. I had retreated to stand near the wall while Dianda introduced her people to Arden. This was Dean’s County, not mine. Let him handle the tricky political bits. I just didn’t want to get dripped on by the admittedly damp representatives of the myriad Undersea races.

Where I went, Quentin inevitably followed. It’s been that way for years, so it wasn’t a surprise when he trailed after me. I elbowed him as best I could with my hands full of hair.

“Don’t you want to hang out and learn about the politics and stuff?” I asked. “Hell, it’s an opportunity to get to know a Princess. Isn’t that supposed to appeal to your inner romantic or something?”

Quentin snorted. “If you’re going to ask two questions in a row, could you not end them with ‘stuff’ and ‘something’? It makes you sound . . .” He stopped, apparently realizing there was no good way to end that statement. Finally, he mumbled, “Princesses aren’t that exciting. I’ve met princesses before.”

“Uh-huh.” I balled up a ribbon, flicking it at him before starting on the next one. “Where did you meet a Princess?”

“Not here.” He folded his arms, looking back to the gathering.

That meant that he’d probably met a Princess somewhere in Canada, and that telling me would give away too much about where he came from. Pressing the subject would have been rude, and so I didn’t try, asking instead, “What did you find at the Library after we left?”

“Lots of stuff about the history of the Kingdom of the Mists. The Kingdom was founded by Denley and Nola Windermere; they had two children, a daughter, who died before she could be named—a curse was suspected, but never proven—and Gilad, who was basically raised in a bubble.”

“They probably felt like that was the only way he’d live to take the throne.” I shook my head. “Does
anyone
royal ever die a natural death?”

“Statistically speaking, no,” said Tybalt, stepping out of the shadows beside me. I didn’t flinch. Years of putting up with his sense of humor even before we started dating have left me surprisingly desensitized to people sneaking up on me that way. It’s probably going to get me killed one of these days.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I was not in the Mists before Gilad’s reign, but it was common knowledge that his parents had been murdered. I would not be surprised if it was done to make room for someone else’s political agenda. Gilad was a young King. He had not been given sufficient time to prepare before he took his place.” He moved to stand behind me, pushing my hands away as he began delicately unwinding the ribbons from my hair. “The trouble with killing old Kings in hopes that young ones will be more easily controlled is that young Kings are frequently headstrong and angry over their change in status. They refuse to listen to reason, and they are not always as weak as they are expected to be.”

“Did anything indicate that King Gilad was involved with the conspiracy that killed his parents?” I asked, dropping my hands to give Tybalt room to work.

Quentin shook his head. “Kind of the opposite. Apparently, the High King had to coerce him into taking the throne, because he didn’t want to rule in the Kingdom where his parents had died. And then, once he was in charge, he was a
good
King. Not everybody liked him, but everybody agreed he was as fair as it was possible for him to be.”

“Faerie isn’t fair,” I said, automatically. My eyes strayed back to the water, where one of the Cephali was bowing to Arden. She looked discomforted by the whole situation. I guess having an octopus person bow to her wasn’t a normal thing back at the bookstore. “Did the books say anything about him having children?”

“They said he was really private. He didn’t like anyone knowing what he was doing, or where he was going when he didn’t have to be formally before the Court. Some people said he was arrogant, but most of them thought he was sad. He was all alone. He never had any lovers the Court knew about.” Quentin followed my gaze to Arden. “But there was nothing to say that he
didn’t
have children.”

“She does look like her father,” said Tybalt. “Even if I had not known, I would have suspected, once I saw her eyes.” He pulled another ribbon from my hair. “The question becomes, is she prepared for what lies ahead?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “She looks pretty unhappy to me.”

“Where did you find her, anyway?” asked Quentin.

“There’s a bookstore on Valencia,” I said.

“I know. Dog Eared Books.”

“No, there’s another one. It’s called Borderlands. They have a café.” I paused before adding, in my most portentous tone of voice, “It sells coffee, and I had no idea it was there.”

Quentin turned back to me, eyes going very wide. “Wow. Whatever spell she’s been hiding under, it’s a doozy.”

“I know, right? She’s been hiding in plain sight this whole time. Hiding and hoarding all the coffee.” I shook my head. Tybalt’s fingers promptly snagged in my hair, and I winced, going still again. “She’s been living in the basement with her brother. He’s upstairs now. The Queen had him elf-shot sometime in the 1930s, and any chance Arden was going to lead an uprising on her own died when he went to sleep. I guess we could wait another decade or two for him to wake up, but somehow, I doubt the Queen is going to put up with me lurking around the borders of her Kingdom until then.” Not to mention all the changeling children who’d become addicted to goblin fruit before that could happen—and once they were addicted, they were as good as lost.

No. It had to be Arden. The Queen was part of the problem, not part of the solution. I couldn’t do anything if I was banished from the Kingdom of the Mists. Quentin would have to find a new Knight, and Tybalt . . .

That wasn’t even worth thinking about. I sighed, and continued, “Arden didn’t want to come, we didn’t really give her a choice, and now we have to talk her into a revolution. If anyone can do it, it’ll be Dianda.” The Undersea Duchess looked positively gleeful about the entire situation. I couldn’t hear them from where I was standing, but handing her the opportunity to overthrow the Queen of the Mists was probably just shy of her personal Christmas.

“The Lordens are a good choice,” Tybalt agreed. “They knew her father well.”

“Yeah. For now, we need to go put in an appearance where the Queen’s men can see me.” Both Tybalt and Quentin looked at me blankly. I swallowed the urge to roll my eyes, and said, “If I disappear completely, she’s going to assume we’re up to something. Since we
are
up to something, it’s important we keep her from thinking that.”

“Ah,” said Tybalt. “Misdirection.”

“That, and having me around isn’t going to help Arden make up her mind. Getting out of the way and letting her talk to people who remember her father just might.” I held out my hand. “Can I have the ribbons, please?”

“Certainly.” Tybalt handed them to me. “If I may say so, the style does not exactly suit you. Perhaps if you were a trifle more staid . . .”

Quentin snorted.

“I’m not going to put them back in my hair, and you,” I pointed to Quentin with my free hand, “no commentary from the peanut gallery, you got me? I’m going to go get Raj, and then we’re getting out of here.” I turned and walked toward the group gathered near the water, where Raj had joined the others in studying our lost Princess.

Patrick saw me coming and smiled. “You know, October, I’m starting to think you’d be a dangerous enemy to have. You have a disturbing tendency to find what people don’t want you looking for.”

“I can’t take all the credit this time; I’d never have done it if the Luidaeg hadn’t pointed me in the right direction,” I said, and turned to Arden. “Are you going to be okay here for a little while? I need to go be seen in public so the current Queen doesn’t start an inquisition looking for me.”

Arden blanched. “Is that a risk?”

“Only if I don’t go. There’s no way she followed us here, and you’ll be safe with the Lordens. They’re some of the best people I know.” Assuming “best” meant “most potentially deadly if thwarted.” “Your brother is safe here, and we’re going to be looping back to the Library of Stars. I’ll see if there’s anything about waking up elf-shot victims early.”

“I’m not sure . . .” said Arden, still looking uncomfortable.

I tried to smile. “Look, you’ve known us, what, an hour longer than you’ve known everyone else here? And you’re a Tuatha de Dannan. Worst comes to worst, you can teleport yourself straight home. Please. Stay, and listen to what everyone has to say.”

There was a long pause, where I was afraid Arden might insist on coming with us rather than staying in this strange new place, surrounded by strange new people. Finally, she nodded, and said, “If I’m not here when you get back, don’t look for me.”

“I won’t,” I said. I turned to Raj. “Ready to go?”

“I was thinking I’d stay here.” He snuck a glance back at Tybalt and stepped closer to me before saying, softly, “I want there to be more than one person who can move fast without going into the water.” He shuddered at the very idea.

It made sense, tactically. Arden couldn’t teleport more than one or two people. That didn’t mean I had to like it. “If there’s a problem, where will you go?”

“Shadowed Hills,” he said. “I can carry someone there if I have to, I think. Or I can do short jumps and lead the way for the Princess.”

“All right,” I said, finally. “But be careful.”

He grinned, showing over-long incisors. “That wouldn’t be any fun at all.”

“Yeah.” I turned to Dean, who had moved to stand next to his mother, and bowed. “My Lord, I must take my leave. I’ll be back as soon as it’s safe. Do you have my phone number?”

“I do,” he said. With a faint smile, he added, “If we can pull this off, we’re even.”

“A rebellion for a rescue? Works for me.” I held up the handful of ribbons. “Do you mind if I borrow some of your pixies?”

He blinked. “They’re not mine to loan, but if they want to go with you, sure.”

“I appreciate it.” I glanced toward the Lordens. “Nice seeing you, Patrick, Dianda.”

“Always a pleasure,” said Patrick. Dianda just smirked, which somehow seemed like the perfect answer from her.

I walked back to Tybalt and Quentin. “Let’s go upstairs. I have some pixies to bribe.”

“It is a terrible thing that this statement seems completely reasonable to me,” said Tybalt.

We walked back up the spiral staircase to the hall upstairs. Marcia was there, viciously sweeping the pristine-looking floor. I stopped, blinking. I hadn’t realized she wasn’t downstairs with the rest of us. In the crowd, it had been hard to see who was and wasn’t there.

“Marcia?”

She jumped, expression seeming oddly mired between guilt and terror as she whipped around to face us. Then she relaxed, somehow forcing herself to smile. “Toby. You scared me. Are you leaving so soon?”

“For a little while. Dean has everything taken care of with Arden, and I need to keep moving, or the Queen’s going to get suspicious. Speaking of which . . .” I held up my handful of ribbons. “Do you know where the pixies are? I have a business proposition.”

Marcia blinked, blue eyes going puzzled within their protective mask of fae ointment. “What kind of proposition?”

“Simple: I want them to take these ribbons and scatter them around the city. That way, when the Queen sets her men on me, she’ll be able to find traces of my presence
everywhere
, not just where I’ve actually been.” I shrugged. “If she’s going to insist on transforming my clothing without my consent, she can deal with the consequences.”

“That’s . . . actually pretty clever,” said Marcia.

“I try,” I said, and watched as she raised her broom and rapped it against the rafters. Tiny, multicolored heads popped into view as the pixies that had been lurking overhead checked to see what was going on. I offered them a little wave. “Hi. You guys want to do me a favor?”

The pixies left the rafters in a swarm, surrounding us. Some landed on my shoulders and head. More hovered in front of my face, waiting to hear what the “favor” would constitute.

“I need to mess with the Queen,” I said. “Can you take these ribbons and scatter them around the city, so she can’t tell where I am?”

One of the pixies rang in a questioning tone.

“I’m prepared to pay you three bags of cheeseburgers from the fast food joint of your choosing.” They’d choose McDonald’s, if the swarms of pixies around the dumpsters were anything to go by, but that was no big deal. There are several in the city, and they’d all seen stranger things than a woman buying half her bodyweight in food.

The pixie rang again.

“Three bags a week for the next month,” I amended.

A third ring.