Ashes of Honor od-6

by Seanan McGuire

  “I realize I’m the last person in the world who should be saying this, but have you heard of this amazing new invention called ‘the telephone’?” I asked.

  “As I have used them to contact you in the past, yes, I am familiar with the concept. This was too important to explain over a telephone line.” He paused. “It concerns my nephew.”

  “Raj?” Quentin let go of the handle, twisting to stare into the back. Much as I wanted to do the same, I kept my eyes on the road. Tybalt only needed to be stared down by one of us at a time. “Is he okay?”

  “That is yet to be seen.” Tybalt reached forward, placing a hand on my upper arm. “Can you pull over?”

  The end of the bridge was in sight up ahead. “In a few minutes,” I agreed. “Tybalt—”

  “I wouldn’t be here if this weren’t important enough to be worth the risk,” he said.

  “I know,” I said, and I meant it. Now that my first mingled spike of surprise and anger was fading, it was being replaced by a deeper, slower emotion: fear. Tybalt was born before cars existed. He doesn’t like them under the best of circumstances. If he was willing to use the Shadow Roads to get into a car…

  This couldn’t be good.

  I pulled off the freeway in Emeryville and parked next to a polluted stretch of brackish swamp. A heron raised its head, looking at us without interest before it went back to poking among the cattails with its long orange beak, looking for something to eat. Shoving my phone into a pocket, I got out of the car, slamming the door to make my lingering displeasure clear as I turned to wait for Tybalt to emerge. Quentin did much the same.

  Tybalt got out slowly, leaning on the car door as he got his feet under him. The last of my anger fled in an instant.

  “Tybalt?” I whispered.

  He managed a smile. “Now you see my urgency, little fish. Or at least, you see the shape of it.”

  His clothes were torn and ash-blackened, and a bruise discolored the left side of his face. He couldn’t have been beaten that badly without being seriously injured, but—I breathed in deep, testing the air for traces of blood—he wasn’t hurt. I would have known in an instant if he’d appeared in the car while he was bleeding, but it was still a relief to taste the air and find nothing. I started to step forward and stopped myself.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “A fair question.” He looked down at himself, then back up at me. “A fair answer is owed. And as to the question you’re so thoughtfully not asking, yes. I was hurt, and hurt dearly. A King of Cats can, and will, recover from a great deal more than one who is not a King of Cats, and I simply did not feel it would be appropriate for me to lie down and die with things in their current state. If you would come with me?”

  “I can’t leave Quentin,” I said. I had to fight not to run around the car and fling my arms around Tybalt. That bruise…“Can you take us both?”

  Tybalt hesitated, clearly trying to decide what his answer was going to be. “I can get myself to campus,” said Quentin. “If the Court of Cats needs you, you should go.”

  “I’m your knight. I shouldn’t leave you on random street corners.”

  “I’m your squire. That means sometimes I’m the one who gets to stable the horse.” Quentin smiled, the concern not leaving his eyes. “Or, you know, the Civic. I’m not a great driver, but I’ll stick to side streets, and I know where the faculty parking lot is. Walther can get me a pass.”

  Or he could make the car vanish altogether. Either way, he had things covered. “The keys are in the ignition. Do you have cash for the cafeteria?” I asked. “You need to get some breakfast in you.”

  “I have my emergency twenty,” said Quentin.

  “I hereby decree this an official emergency,” I said, teasing a slightly bigger smile from him. “I’ll call you as soon as I get back to a place where I can use my phone.” I was already walking toward Tybalt, my feet seeming to operate without direct instruction from my brain. “Leave me a message if anything comes up. I’ll check them as soon as I get back.”

  “Got it,” said Quentin. He turned his attention to Tybalt. “Don’t break my knight.”

  “I haven’t done so yet,” said Tybalt, with odd solemnity. He cast a pained smile in my direction. “This is the point at which I ask you to take a deep breath.”

  “I think I know the drill by now,” I said, and offered him my hands. He took them, and pulled me backward, into shadow.

  The first time I used the Shadow Roads, I was terrified, cold, and confused. Since then, I’ve been dragged along them for miles, hauled onto them without my consent—and without enough warning to catch my breath—and even stranded alone in the dark, once, when it was throw me into the shadows or let me get shot with a potentially poisoned arrow. You’d think a place of absolute blackness where I got hypothermia would never manage to seem comforting. You’d be wrong.

  Every time I was on the Shadow Roads, Tybalt had me, or Tybalt was coming to get me out of the dark. No matter how cold it was, no matter how dark it was, I always knew someone was going to come and bring me home. There’s power in that.

  We fell through the dark for what felt like less than a minute—not even enough time for my lungs to really start aching—before we stepped back into the light. I took a breath, instinctively seeking oxygen after the airless passage along the Shadow Roads, and promptly started to cough as I got a lungful of smoke. Tybalt put a hand on my shoulder to steady me, producing a damp cloth from somewhere inside the tatters of his jacket with the same motion.

  “Here,” he said. “Cover your nose and mouth.”

  I took the cloth with a quick nod of gratitude, not even bothering to wonder how he’d been able to carry something wet through the Shadow Roads without it freezing solid. The ways of the Cait Sidhe are strange. Tybalt produced another cloth from his pocket and mirrored my motion. His eyes were watering. I chose to believe that this was due to the smoke, and not due to the damage around us. If I thought he was crying, I’d probably start doing the same thing.

  Putting the cloth over my face helped with the smoke, and my coughing stopped almost immediately. What it didn’t help with was the smell of blood. It had been masked before, since it’s hard to pay attention to subtleties when you’re trying not to choke to death, but now…I am my mother’s daughter, whether I want to be or not, and blood is not a subtlety for me. Blood is a reality. As soon as the smoke was removed, the blood made itself known.

  “Oak and ash,” I whispered.

  All the blood was Cait Sidhe. It spoke to me in whispers and almost-words, identifying the wounded and the slain in a language that was no less valid because it didn’t exist. Some of the Cait Sidhe who bled in this room were familiar to me. Others weren’t. And at least one…

  At least one had magic that tasted like pennyroyal and musk, and eyes the color of malachite, and a wonderful, annoying tendency to show up where he was least wanted but most needed. My heart dropped, suddenly aching like a coal in my chest. I turned to face Tybalt, lowering the cloth as I stared at him. “Tybalt?”

  “Keep your nose covered.” He grasped my wrist with his free hand, pulling my hand back up. Most of his face was covered, but I could still see his eyes, bloodshot from the smoke, worried, and so very, very tired. “I told you I’d been hurt.”

  “You didn’t tell me you died.”

  “I got better.”

  I glared at him. It was the only thing I could think of to do.

  This wasn’t the first time Tybalt had died—or come close enough that there was practically no difference—and miraculously recovered. Taking the “cats have nine lives” folktale literally was a perk of being a King of Cats. But I didn’t know how many lives he got, or how many he’d used up before he met me. I didn’t know when he was going to run out.

  Tybalt sighed, letting go of my wrist and putting his hand against the small of my back instead. “You can shout at me for dying later. For now, we have larger things to worry about. Come.” With th
at, he pushed, guiding me into the worst of the smoke.

  The first time I visited the Court of Cats, it was a confusing maze of mismatched hallways, rooms that should never have been connected, and completely unrelated architectures. None of that had changed. Still, it was somehow comfortable now; I was in a place where I knew no one would hurt me, not without going through Tybalt first.

  Although at the moment, given how recently he had returned from the dead, I wasn’t sure I’d let Tybalt stand between me and danger. The reverse seemed to be a lot more likely.

  As we walked, I saw scorch marks and signs of burning on the walls and ceilings, but no actual fire. The Cait Sidhe had managed to stop the Court from burning down entirely. It made me feel a little better to realize Tybalt had stayed with his people long enough to put out the fire before coming to fetch me.

  We didn’t see anyone as we walked. The lingering smoke had driven them to someplace safer, even if fire was no longer a danger.

  Tybalt stopped in front of a closed oak door, taking his hand away from my hip in order to knock three times. There was a long pause before someone on the other side of the door echoed his knock. He knocked again, twice this time, and the door was pulled open by a tiger-striped changeling with hair dyed in streaks of charcoal gray and cherry red. No; not entirely dyed. The red was artificial, but the gray was all ash.

  I lowered the cloth from my face and offered the woman on the other side of the door a wan smile. “Hi, Julie,” I said. “Mind if we come in?”

  Julie looked at me tiredly. There was a time when she would have launched herself for my throat, smoke or no smoke, and tried to kill me before Tybalt could stop her. These days, she restrains herself to a low-level disdain. Hatred takes too much energy. “Yes, but I’m not the one in charge here,” she said, and held the door open wider, so that we could come inside. “Hurry up. We don’t want too much smoke to get in.”

  “After you,” said Tybalt.

  I stepped through the door.

  Every room in the Court of Cats used to belong to some other place. Knowe or mortal dwelling, it doesn’t make any difference; all that matters is that the place existed and was lost. The cats get the lost places. The Court of Cats is a patchwork maze of those lost places. The room Julie allowed us to enter was probably a barn once, in one of those small towns in the middle of America that wound up abandoned during the Great Depression. The walls had that sort of old-fashioned look, not historical, but aged. There was even a hayloft, and bales of hay were stacked against the walls.

  Then there were the Cait Sidhe. The barn wasn’t crowded—it was big enough that it could have been used to host a wedding, and it would have taken more than that to make it seem really full—but it was definitely occupied. Most were in their human forms, only oddly colored skin and the occasional tail giving away their feline natures. A few were in full-on cat form, lounging on hay bales or draped across the rafters.

  And one of them was striding toward us, mouth twisted into a thin, furious line. He was tall and dark-skinned, with eyes the color of green glass bottles and short gray-and-white hair striped like a tabby’s coat. Raj’s father, Samson.

  Tybalt lowered his cloth, stepping forward so that he was between me and the oncoming Cait Sidhe. “Samson,” he said. “Has there been any—”

  Samson’s fist slammed into his chin while he was still speaking, cutting off his sentence. Tybalt’s jaw snapped shut, eyes widening in surprise. Then they narrowed, his expression turning dangerous. I had to fight the urge to step out of the splatter zone.

  Samson raised his fist to hit Tybalt again. Tybalt raised his hand, intercepting the blow before it could land.

  “Samson,” he said again. This time, the other man’s name sounded less like an acknowledgment, and more like a threat. “You forget your place.”

  “I forget my place?” Samson spat. He pulled once, trying to free his hand from Tybalt’s grasp. He failed, and so he stopped trying, choosing to stand and glare instead. “I am the one who remained here, while you went rushing off to fetch your changeling whore.”

  “See, he shouldn’t have said that,” commented Julie. I risked looking away from the tableau in front of me long enough to glance back at her. She shook her head. “I may not like you, but I know better than to say something like that. Uncle Tybalt is going to beat him down hard for that.”

  Tybalt’s eyes remained narrowed, and his expression hardened into something cold and predatory. “Yes, Samson, you forget your place. I went for October because she has a vested interest in the welfare of this Court, and because she may be able to track the girl who did this. I act in the best interests of the Court of Cats.”

  “We do not need help from the Divided Courts,” snarled Samson. He pulled away again. This time, Tybalt let him go. Samson staggered several feet backward before catching his balance. Staying where he was, he glared at the three of us. “The Court of Cats has stood alone since Oberon granted us our sovereignty. Would you endanger it for her?”

  To my surprise, Tybalt smiled, although his expression didn’t warm. “I am the King here, Samson. Unless you wish to challenge me—oh, but I forgot, you can’t, can you? You cannot stand as King here, or in any other Court. Now, will you allow me to save your son, or will you continue to posture at the edges of a challenge you are far too weak to force? The decision is yours.”

  Samson hesitated. It didn’t take a genius to know that Tybalt was lying about the decision being his. The only question was which way the falsehood would go. If Samson chose to press his objections to me, would Tybalt send me away, or would he leave Raj stranded in whatever undisclosed situation was causing the problem? I knew there was no way Tybalt would abandon Raj. Even if he wanted to, I wasn’t going to let him. But I wasn’t sure Samson knew that.

  Apparently, he didn’t. “Perhaps I forget my place, but so do you, Sire,” he spat. “A cat may look at a King. A cat may even be a King. That does not mean a cat may not also be a fool.” He glared at me. Then he stalked away, vanishing into the shadows at the edge of the barn.

  Tybalt sighed. “My father, Maeve rest his bones, had the right of it,” he muttered. “Take them as your own, and let the parents hang.”

  “Does someone want to tell me what in the name of oak and ash is going on here?” I asked. “I didn’t leave my squire in Oakland to come here and mess with a Cait Sidhe civil war.” I paused. “Also, I have no idea what you just said.”

  “I said I made a mistake when I took Raj as a nephew, and not as a son.” Tybalt turned to face me. “Chelsea was here.”

  I raked my hair back with one hand. “I thought that was what was going on. Couldn’t you have led with that, maybe? Since you know I’m looking for her?” Or maybe you could have led with the fact that, somehow, she managed to get you killed…

  “I’m sorry,” he said, with apparent sincerity. “I didn’t think.”

  Julie made a theatrical gagging noise before flouncing away, getting out of arm’s reach before either of us could decide to smack her.

  “I liked it better when she was trying to kill me all the time,” I muttered, and took another look around the barn. Some of the Cait Sidhe in the hayloft were bleeding, but only a little; there was nothing as bad as the injuries I’d tasted in the room where we arrived. “So what happened?”

  “Chelsea opened a door.” Tybalt’s expression turned grim. “I doubt she meant to do so; I doubt she even knows what she’s doing. I knew it was her only because I can’t imagine two terrified, half-human girls are presently ripping holes in the fabric of Faerie. If they were as common as all that, this wouldn’t be the first time I’d seen one.”

  “Opened a door to where?” I asked.

  “One of the Fire Kingdoms.”

  I blinked at him. He nodded, and said nothing more.

  Faerie is divided into four realms. The Land Kingdoms, where most of the fae I know live. The Undersea, home of Merrow and Selkies and stranger things, accessible only to those who
can breathe water or are willing to learn how. The Oversky, anchored in the clouds and even more alien than the Undersea; most people can learn how to swim, and scuba gear is reasonably easy to acquire. Flying suits are a little bit harder.

  And then there are the Fire Kingdoms, domain of salamanders and Kesali, Teine Sith and Djinn. No one goes there unless they can survive in a river of lava, and even some of the fae races that can live in the Fire Kingdoms choose not to, since no one’s been able to figure out how to get cable in the middle of a volcano.

  “Oh,” I said, slowly. “Crap.”

  “As always, my dear, you have quite the way with words.” He shook his head. “She came through one door and threw herself into another. I doubt she even realized we were here, or knew that she had entered a place that already had people in it. The fire that followed her was an unintended side effect of her flight, not an attack upon my people.”

  I turned to look again at the Cait Sidhe gathered around the edges of the barn. “Is everyone going to see it that way?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, with weary calm. “Perhaps, if it weren’t for the rest of what happened when she appeared here.”

  My heart was still hanging too low in my chest. Now it felt like my stomach dropped all the way down to my feet. Tybalt had managed to separate me from Quentin by telling me that it was about Raj, and while he might treat me like a cat toy from time to time, he had never, so far as I knew, intentionally lied to me. I shifted slowly to face him and asked the question I was most afraid of:

  “Tybalt, where’s Raj?”

  He shook his head, and answered, “I don’t know.”

  Oh, oak and ash. We were in trouble.

  TEN

  THE SILENCE OF THE CAIT SIDHE around us suddenly felt a lot more dangerous. I had allies here, people here who owed me their lives, but this wasn’t my place, and I was the second intruder in the course of a day. I took a half step toward Tybalt. “Why did you bring me here?”