Page 26 of Sleep No More

Li Qin flashed me an encouraging smile and stepped into the kitchen. I followed.

It was a smaller room than its equivalent at Shadowed Hills but substantially more modern, with gleaming glass and silver surfaces in place of stone. A Barrow Wight stood by a long silver table, kneading bread dough, while a Gwragen changeling stirred a pot of something rich and aromatic-smelling.

The Barrow Wight looked up at our entrance, grinning a gap-toothed grin at Li Qin. “Duchess!” she said, brightly. “Dinner’s not for several hours yet, if you were hungry. It’s saag paneer tonight, and I’m about done preparing the dough for naan, but if you wanted feeding, it’s sandwiches and last night’s scampi for the moment, I’m afraid.”

Her speaking so bluntly and familiarly to her liege stopped my tongue. I gaped, astonished by the audacity. Li Qin, however . . .

Li Qin laughed. “Oh, I would never dream of trying to get my supper early, and a few hours is more than fine. This mite, however”—she indicated April—“has just shown up on our doorstep, and requires a slice of last night’s fine carrot cake, if there’s any yet remaining.”

“October as well,” said April. She lifted her chin, stubbornly. “She rarely eats enough.”

“October?” asked the Barrow Wight—Avebury, I assumed—as she looked to me.

“Duke Torquill’s niece,” affirmed Li Qin.

“A pleasure to host you in our house,” said Avebury, leaving the dough as she bustled around the table, pausing only to grab a cloth and wipe the flour from her hands. “Of course there’s cake for the having, if there’s company to be having it. Would you like tea as well?”

“We would,” said Li Qin. “If it wouldn’t delay dinner too upsettingly, could you bring it to us in the library?”

“In a twinkling,” said Avebury, smiling as she moved to begin gathering plates.

Li Qin led us out of the kitchen again. I must have been looking at her oddly, because she raised an eyebrow and asked, “Is there a problem, Miss Torquill?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know,” I said. “The way she spoke to you . . .”

“Avebury is as pureblooded as I am, if that’s what’s concerning you,” said Li Qin. “Her sister, Minna, came here from . . .” Her face clouded for a moment. “I don’t remember where Minna came from, but she brought Avebury with her, and once Avebury was well settled in my household, Minna returned home. She’s never come to visit, either. Isn’t that odd?”

“Not if their original place of residence was outside the three Kingdoms I have named,” said April.

“Fair enough. I can’t think of anyone who’s traveled outside those three Kingdoms,” said Li Qin. “It’s like there’s a wall between us and the rest of Faerie.”

“Because there is,” said April.

“It’s . . . the way she spoke to you, yes, as if she had the authority to do so,” I said. “Uncle Sylvester tolerates what Mother says is a shameful amount of backtalk from his servants, but none of them would dream to tell him his dinner wasn’t ready if he deigned to appear in the kitchens asking for it. It was . . . unseemly.”

“Ah,” said Li Qin. “I always forget how much closer Shadowed Hills is to the Queen’s knowe. They have to follow courtly manners much more rigidly than we do here. I promise you, October, when you’re not watching, there’s plenty of backtalk and sass in your uncle’s halls.”

The thought was unsettling. I focused instead on the room Li Qin had led us to, which had a green carpet and walls painted in climbing roses, so it was almost as if we were sitting in a small outdoor garden. A circular table sat at the middle of the room, flanked by comfortable chairs. Li Qin settled in one. I took another. April, apparently loath to be parted from the mother who didn’t know her, perched on the arm of Li Qin’s chair.

Avebury appeared a moment later with plates, forks, and an uncut carrot cake, all of which she put down in front of us.

Li Qin smiled at her. “Your baking is always excellent.”

“Will there be anything else, ma’am?”

“Just the tea.”

Then Avebury was gone again, presumably to fetch the tea service, and Li Qin was cutting the cake, serving me first, as if I were somehow her equal, and it all made me want to scream, because none of this was right. I was less than she was. I knew I was less. Even August, much as she adored me, never made any bones of the fact that I was born to be her servant; I was not her peer but her plaything.

But did she think that, or did I? I sank deeper into my chair, frowning, trying to puzzle through the conflicting ideas in my head. Some of them mentally tasted of copper, as if they were concepts or ideas I had stolen from the version of myself who’d never existed outside of impossible blood memory, the one who would offend Titania and allow the sea witch to marry her to an animal. The Cait Sidhe—all the shapeshifters—had been little more than beasts, cursed by their mother, Maeve, to such a degree that they were unfit for any reasonable company, seized by wicked instincts to rend and rip and destroy.

The thought turned my stomach just as Avebury returned with the tea, which was hot and sweet and tasted of peppermint, a flavor that made me think of pennyroyal for some reason. Close on that thought was a wave of rejection and revulsion so strong that it almost made me drop my cup.

I didn’t like it there in Dreamer’s Glass. I didn’t like the things it was causing me to think, or the way it was making me feel. The sooner I could get back to Mother’s tower and the safety of my family, the better off I would be.

Li Qin was talking quietly to April. The tiny, flickering Dryad seemed to be giving her more details on the world that wasn’t. I, resolutely, didn’t listen. None of that was true anymore, and I couldn’t really believe it had ever been true to begin with, no matter what the blood said. I had no training, by design. Perhaps if I did, I would have received the lessons on blood lies and how to recognize them. I would know that what they told me wasn’t true.

Li Qin finally settled with her own plate of cake. I pulled mine toward me and took a bite. She said Avebury’s baking was excellent, but what I tasted was heavy clay, sweetened with some sort of cloying sugar. I swallowed, rather than spitting it out, and set the plate aside.