Chimes at Midnight: An October Daye Novel (7 page)

Marcia returned with a fresh tray of sandwiches while we waited. She had a large mug in one hand. “I thought you could use this,” she said, handing it to me.

“You are a
genius
,” I said, before taking a long drink of coffee. “Oh, that’s good.”

“The Luidaeg didn’t have any coffee,” said Quentin.

“Well, then, I’m amazed Toby hasn’t started stabbing people yet.” Marcia looked at me frankly. “It looks like you’ve been eating, and I can’t see any circles under your eyes. Have you started actually sleeping?”

“Tybalt makes her,” said Quentin.

“That’s wonderful,” said Marcia, and handed Tybalt a sandwich.

I raised an eyebrow. “You three realize I’m right here, don’t you?”

“Yes, but as you can’t be trusted to take care of yourself, we’re doing it for you.” Marcia thrust her tray in my direction. “Sandwich?”

I sighed. “Sure.” I may be stubborn, but I know when I’ve been beaten. I took a sandwich. Quentin took two. “How are things around here?”

“Good. The Count’s getting his land-legs, and he’s a thoughtful boy who’ll be a thoughtful man someday. Sooner rather than later, if he has his way, but he’s only eighteen. We’re not pushing him yet.” Marcia cocked her head. “How about you? Are you doing well?”

“I am, yeah, except for the whole banishment thing.” The admission would have seemed impossible a year ago, when I’d lost my boyfriend and my daughter on the same brutal night. But time heals all wounds, and mine were healing.

“Banished.
You
, by
her
, over goblin fruit. I never thought I’d see the day.” Marcia scowled. “It’s filthy stuff. The Count doesn’t allow it in the knowe, and we’ve managed to keep everyone away from it, but that can’t last forever. Not with the way it’s spreading.”

“I don’t like goblin fruit either.” Marcia was a quarter-blood, more human than fae. Goblin fruit would probably kill her even faster than it killed most changelings. I took another drink of my coffee, and said, “I just can’t focus on that until I’ve dealt with the banishment. I’m not sure what King Gilad has to do with my being kicked out of the Kingdom, but when the Luidaeg tells me to do something, I try to do it. If it can get me un-banished, it’s worth the time.”

“And if not, at least there are sandwiches,” said Quentin.

“Way to look on the bright side there,” I said.

He grinned. “I know.”

Marcia, on the other hand, looked genuinely concerned. “Toby, are you sure that challenging the Queen’s declaration is, you know, a
good
idea?”

“No,” I admitted. “But it’s the only one I’ve got. She’s not going to stop the goblin fruit, and she’s not going to let me stay in her Kingdom. Right now, you could be handing out goblin fruit sandwiches in her Court and you wouldn’t actually be doing anything wrong.”

“Yes,” said Marcia bitterly. “I know.”

Oberon’s Law is supposedly the one unbreakable rule in Faerie: thou shalt not kill. Or at least, thou shalt not kill purebloods. Killing humans is okay. So is killing changelings. As a changeling who’s known and loved a lot of humans in my time, I’m not a big fan of the way the Law is enforced. I’m even less a fan of the way the Law is sometimes used: as a weapon. I killed a man named Blind Michael. It was self-defense, which is allowed under the Law. I was still considered guilty of his murder by the Queen, who would gladly have put me to death if I hadn’t been pardoned by the High King. At the same time, the bastards who were peddling goblin fruit to changelings could kill hundreds of people and not even get a slap on the wrist.

The Luidaeg was right: Faerie isn’t fair.

“Toby will find a way to fix it,” said Quentin. “She always does.”

“I wish I had as much faith in me as you do,” I said.

“Believing in you is not your job,” said Tybalt mildly. “It’s ours.”

“He’s right,” said Marcia. “So let us work, and eat another sandwich.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Between the burritos, the sandwiches, and the caffeine, I was starting to feel better—or at least less hungry, which was sort of the same thing. Now all I needed was something to hit, and I’d be doing great.

We chatted about the state of the County, our lives, and Marcia’s sandwiches until Dean came back, bare feet slapping against the stone. He looked entirely pleased with himself.

“Mom and Dad are on their way up, and they’d be glad to find you here upon arrival, so don’t leave,” he said.

“First part, formal message, second part, Dean’s addition,” I said to Quentin.

He nodded. “Definitely.”

Dean’s smile didn’t waver. “Hey, this is the most interesting thing that’s happened all week. Let me enjoy it.”

“My apologies, sire, if we endangered your enjoyment.” My mocking bow was accentuated by the coffee mug I was still holding in one hand.

Dean laughed. “You should come to visit more often. I think the knowe has missed you. I know the pixies have.”

“I’ve been busy,” I said. That, and Goldengreen, pleasant as it was these days, was altogether too haunted by the memories of my dead friends. As someone else’s home, I could appreciate it and even enjoy being there, for a little while. Anything longer than that, and I was likely to break down crying.

“Still, you’re always welcome here.” Dean took one of the last remaining sandwiches from the tray. “My parents will meet us in the cove-side receiving room. Come with me?”

“There’s a cove-side receiving room?” I asked, putting my mug down on Marcia’s tray and moving to follow Dean into the hall.

“The door was locked when I got here. I guess you didn’t get around to opening it.”

“I guess not.” Or it hadn’t been there when I was in charge of Goldengreen. I’ve long suspected that knowes were not only alive, they were capable of thought, even if the thoughts of a building were incomprehensible to the rest of us. Goldengreen had definitely expressed its preferences to me more than once when it was supposedly mine. Having a new Count who came from the Undersea could have inspired the knowe to form a more direct connection between the land and the water. As long as that was all it did, I was still comfortable walking down the spiraling stone stairway toward the distant sound of water lapping against sand.

There was a large room at the bottom of the stairs, maybe half the size of the central courtyard, with a high ceiling inlaid in quartz and mother-of-pearl. I wondered whether Dean had noticed how similar it was in design to the ceiling in his mother’s arrival chamber, or whether he’d dismissed it as being some sort of architectural standard for rooms like this.

The floor was treated redwood, which required more upkeep than marble but would be less slippery when wet. That was a good thing, since only two thirds of the room actually
had
a floor. The wood ended at a narrow strip of clean white sand, and then the water began, extending out into the ocean. Everything smelled of clean saltwater and the Summerlands sea, much like the Luidaeg’s apartment.

Tybalt sniffed the air, and smiled. Quentin looked curiously around. “This is a neat room,” he said.

“Yes, it is,” I replied, directing my comment toward the distant ceiling. Everyone deserves a few compliments. Even a building.

The surface of the water rippled, and the sleek black-haired head of Duchess Dianda Lorden of Saltmist broke through. Her husband was a few strokes behind her. Patrick lacked his wife’s natural advantages where swimming was concerned. Honestly, I was impressed he could make the trip at all, even with the aid of the water-breathing potion her Court alchemists brewed for him. Dean grinned and waved when he saw his parents, looking less like a Count and more like an ordinary teenage boy living on his own for the first time.

Patrick stood, waving back, and began wading through the waist-deep water toward us. Dianda remained low, swimming until the water got too shallow, and then pulling herself the rest of the way to the sand. Instead of legs, she had a jewel-toned tail, scaled in shades of purple and blue, which she stretched out as she reclined. Her flukes barely broke the surface.

“Your Grace,” I said, bowing to her. “Patrick.” He was technically the Ducal consort and not the Duke, which made formality a little less important with him.

Not that Dianda looked that formal. Without legs, she didn’t need pants, and her top was made of blue cotton, embroidered around the neck and cuffs with stylized green kelp. “Hello, October,” she said, sunny smile entirely at odds with her sour disposition the first time we met. Then again, at the time, her children were being held hostage, so I couldn’t blame her. “Forgive me if I don’t get up. It’s harvest season for us in the Undersea, and I’ve been in the fields every night for tides. I’m too tired to deal with having legs right now.”

“It’s cool,” I said. “Just don’t expect me to come into the water and say hello.”

“You need to get over your hydrophobia.”

“Hey. I’m standing next to the ocean, talking to a mermaid, not freaking out. I think I’m on my way to recovery.” Just to prove my point, I sat down cross-legged on the edge of the wooden dock, putting us on the same eye level. Quentin did the same. Dean, meanwhile, splashed out into the water and sat down next to his mother, not seeming to care that his jeans were getting drenched. Tybalt stayed a few feet back, well away from the shoreline.

“Dean said you wanted to talk about King Gilad.” Patrick sat down on the dock as well, although he chose the other side of his wife. We made a funny little line, like a beach party gone weirdly wrong. “I’m a little confused about why you’d need to. Gilad was a great man, and a good friend, but he’s been dead for a long time.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s why I wanted to talk to the two of you. And, well. There’s another thing.” I took a deep breath. “I’ve been banished from the Mists.”

Dianda frowned. “What?”

“The Queen banished me for trying to get her to stop distributing goblin fruit. I went to the Luidaeg, and she told me to ask about King Gilad. I don’t know what talking about the Queen’s father is supposed to accomplish, but . . .”

“It would help if he had been her father,” countered Dianda, frown fading into her more customary scowl.

I stared at her. “Wait—what?”

“Di . . .” said Patrick warningly.

“No. Don’t use your ‘honey, play nice’ voice on me. If she’s looking into Gilad because of that spindrift
bitch
who claimed his throne, I’m going to tell her the truth.” Dianda turned back to me. “She’s
not
Gilad’s daughter. I don’t know what kind of whaleshit political insanity went on up here when she stepped forward—I was busy rebuilding my own Duchy at the time—but there’s no way she’s a Windermere.”

“The earthquake did massive damage in Saltmist,” said Patrick. “Our air-breathers were trapped for months while we made repairs, and our water-breathers were busy cleaning up the gardens, rebuilding the farms, and a hundred other things. I didn’t even know Gilad was dead until after his memorial.”

“What do you mean, there’s no way she’s a Windermere?” I asked. “Is it because she’s a mixed-blood? Gilad was never married—”

“My own children are mixed-bloods,” said Dianda. “I have no issues with her heritage. Just with the fact that her heritage contains no Tuatha de Dannan. And Gilad Windermere was a pureblooded Tuatha de Dannan.”

I didn’t say anything. I just gaped at her, feeling like an idiot.

As a Dóchas Sidhe, I have a gift for determining the makeup of someone’s blood. All blood-workers can do it, to one degree or another, but I’m what you might call an untrained savant when it comes to identifying the elements of a person’s fae heritage. The Queen of the Mists had Sea Wight, Siren, and Banshee blood . . . and not a drop of Tuatha de Dannan. I should have realized that she wasn’t related to King Gilad years ago.

“Could the Tuatha have been removed from her?” asked Tybalt, before I could recover the capacity to speak. “There is at least one hope chest in the Kingdom. There is also Amandine to be considered.”

Hope chests could change the balance of an individual’s blood. So could my mother—and so could I. “Mom might have been able to, I guess,” I said slowly, “but why would anyone want to keep three different bloodlines and give up a fourth? It doesn’t make sense.” The more mixed a person’s fae heritage is, the more likely it is that they’ll become either physically or mentally unstable. Some types of fae don’t play nicely, and when you’re talking about people who can exist on the bottom of the ocean or in the heart of a volcano, the fighting can be very literal. Almost every mixed-blood I’ve ever known eventually snapped, driven to madness by the conflict living inside their own veins.

One day, I was going to offer to shift the Lorden boys all the way to either Daoine Sidhe or Merrow. One day. But Daoine Sidhe and Merrow were both descendants of Titania, which made the boys more likely to be stable than a mixture of Titania and Maeve. And once a decision like that is made, it can’t be taken back. I wanted to give them time to figure out who they were and where they wanted to be before I made them any promises.

“Amandine never laid hands on that girl,” said Dianda. “When we came to her Court to offer our regrets and our aid, she was already holding herself apart, and your mother was nowhere to be seen. She made it clear that the Undersea was not welcome in the Courts of the land. We left after that. We had our own tides to tend.”