Page 12 of Sleep No More

“Depending on his family, once it’s revealed, Mother might.”

I couldn’t really argue with that, much as I might want to; August was right. Titania’s edicts said the pursuit of political power was as much the duty of the Firstborn as the creation of descendant lines and the birthing of changelings. If that bastard Quentin turned out to come from a powerful family, Oberon forbid, Mother might think he’d make a good match for August, and I could wind up in a household with a man who loathed me when he had power enough to assault me in the open rather than hiding his malice away behind closed doors.

It was a terrifying thought, and thankfully, I didn’t have long to dwell on it before we were rounding a bend in the hall and approaching the tall oak doors of Uncle Sylvester’s receiving room.

“He’s lucid today,” said August, touching my arm with her free hand. “I think he’s in one of his good patches. I’ll bet you a sink of dishes next time Mother’s away that he can tell us apart.”

“Is that a fair bet, if you’ve already seen him today?”

She dimpled at me. “Maybe I just want an excuse to do the dishes.”

I laughed, and was still laughing when she pressed her palm against the door and it swung smoothly open. It looked as if it should have creaked, like the hinges should have squealed and protested, but looks can be deceiving. Melly would never have tolerated such signs of disrepair in her own home, never.

I stopped laughing.

August gave my arm a reassuring squeeze and stepped into the receiving room, pulling me with her.

The receiving room had been constructed during a time when Uncle Sylvester thought he would eventually court and marry, building a household filled with laughter and with love. My grandparents had apparently been the loving kind, genuinely devoted to each other, compassionate and caring where their children were concerned, and that was the model both their living sons had looked to live up to. But while Father had been fortunate enough to find a wife who cared less for power and station than she did for warm soup and a loving spouse, Uncle Sylvester’s attempts at courting had been thwarted again and again, until he had stopped trying and fallen into a deep depression.

He had been in that deep depression for several hundred years now, and seemed to like it there. He sought no lovers, looked for no one to share his demesne, and as long as his Court operated smoothly, the Queen of the Mists left him alone. Depressed Dukes in backwater Duchies weren’t likely to raise armies against her or attempt revolutions, after all, and she had her hands full with the rest of the nobility.

In addition to being large enough to contain an entire Court that never came, the receiving room was dark, the windows shrouded by layer upon layer of gossamer-thin cobweb silk. Each of those curtain panels was worth enough to have bought a commoner like me anything we could possibly have wanted, but they were a compromise here; before installing the curtains, Uncle Sylvester had apparently tried to dim the light through the windows with actual spider webs, sending the household staff into absolute fits. I almost wished I could have seen that. Except not, because an angry Hob is a terrifying thing.

The floor was black-and-white checkerboard marble, pristine, even as the light through the curtains turned the white squares a grimy gray. The door slammed shut behind us as August and I started across that floor. Neither of us jumped. We were both well accustomed to Shadowed Hills and its theatrics. Instead, we walked toward the far end of the room, where a dais in deepest shadow held a single central chair.

In that chair sat our Uncle Sylvester, chin resting on his hand, apparently content to be all but invisible to me. I frowned, but said nothing.

August was not so decorous.

“You know October’s eyes are less suited to the shadows than our own,” she said, voice gone peevish, and snapped her fingers. A ball of witch-light rose from her hand, glowing bright as an oil lamp as it drifted to a point just above our heads, illuminating the area. “There now. That’s better.”

“Is it?” he asked, dryly.

Uncle Sylvester was a tall, fair-skinned man with fox-fur red hair and golden eyes, and would have been identical to our Father in every regard had he looked as if he’d enjoyed a solid meal or a hot bath any time in the last five years. As it was, he was a ragged scarecrow of a man, skin less fair than sallow, hair less bright than greasy and garish, until it seemed he flirted with the edge of unattractiveness . . . or at least as close to same as the Daoine Sidhe can come. His clothing was tattered but clean. Melly would have tolerated nothing less, and while she wasn’t officially chatelaine, Etienne had no head for the job. He was often absent when not on duty, and allowed her to manage most of the duties that would have accompanied the position.

“It is, Uncle,” I said, with a small curtsey. “I appreciate being allowed to see to whom I am speaking. August said you wanted to speak with us both?”

“My nieces. My dearly beloved, closest family.” He sat up, then leaned back in his seat, slumping. “Am I not allowed to desire your presence?”

“You’re allowed, but you usually don’t,” I said. “Or you only want to talk to August, since she’s, you know . . .” I fumbled for words before I finished, “The important one.”

“Yes, but we’re near to Moving Day, which changes the pieces on the board.” His eyes were sharp as he looked between us. “Have you ever been to Dreamer’s Glass?”

“The Duchy to the south?” I asked, perplexed. “I haven’t. There’s been no need. August?”

“Only once, a long time ago,” she said. “I was much younger at the time. Mother took me to oversee the dismantling of a failed fiefdom. Chained Thunder, or something of the like? We stayed in Dreamer’s Glass, for the safety of a politically secure demesne around us while we slept. Has something happened?”

“The Duchess of Dreamer’s Glass has requested the presence of a member of the Ducal line, on what she considers to be a matter of grave importance,” said Sylvester.

“Li Qin Zhou is in charge of Dreamer’s Glass,” said August.

“I’m glad to see the hours spent in drilling you on the local nobility have not been wasted,” said a dry voice from behind her.

We turned in unison, both of us beaming and already delighted. “Father!”

“Hello, my flowers,” said our father, Simon Torquill, who had slipped into the room while we were distracted talking to his brother—older brother by almost an hour, as Uncle Sylvester sometimes took delight in reminding us. “Imagine my surprise when I returned early to the tower and found it standing empty, warded and alone. The kitchen window broken, my flowers fled.”

“I’m sorry, Father,” I began automatically, prepared to draw the blame for our mutual transgression. I didn’t remember a broken window, but that didn’t mean there hadn’t been one. I could be so careless sometimes. “Only we were hungry and—”