Page 18 of The Innocent Sleep

“Running the shadows all the way to Silences will take me the better part of a day,” she said. “I couldn’t go until you returned, because I couldn’t leave Raj alone.”

“And I am sorry to have done exactly that,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking. I couldn’t spare the time to think. When the world changed, October was ripped away from me, along with the rest of the occupants of our house, and while I will do my best to be here for you and for the Court, she must remain my first priority. If that means I set my crown aside and we begin the challenge for succession right here and now, that can be arranged.”

I didn’t want to force Raj into a challenge before he was ready. If he lost, he’d be exiled, and if he won, Ginevra would have to leave, while I would abandon the Court immediately to seek my missing wife. Both of them looked alarmed at the idea, and Raj actively recoiled.

“If you need to fight me to satisfy your ideas of right and wrong, we can,” I said. “You’ll lose no face if defeated by the current King, as you cannot challenge me while you stand regent. But if you force me to choose between the Court and my family, I’ll choose my family, every time.”

“What about me?” asked Raj, voice gone small.

“You will always be my beloved nephew, but our time of being able to live freely in closeness is coming to an end,” I said. “Once you’re King, I will be banned from this Court. We both know that. The only way I can avoid leaving San Francisco entirely will be to renounce my place here, and find a new place for me to be. That means you’ll only see me when your duties allow you the time to step away—and as this past near-week has demonstrated, the duties of a King are often overwhelming.”

“It’s not fair,” he said.

“Now I know you’ve spent too much time with October,” I said. “Her strange obsession with fairness has passed to you like fleas within a litter of kittens, and you may never be free of it. Regardless, if you’ve not yet been to Shadowed Hills, that seems a place I should go, and stop off to see Shade on my way. The rules regarding visiting monarchs during a regency are ill defined, for they rarely require use. Ginevra, would you be amenable to a visit from one of our local Queens, if she’s able to get here?”

“I’m afraid she may be having the same problems we are, but if she can help with our food and hygiene situation, I’m down for anything,” said Ginevra, sounding exhausted. “When this is over, I’m going to eat twelve cheeseburgers and sleep for a week.”

“I look forward to seeing that,” I said, and ruffled Raj’s hair before I stood. “You have done excellently well, both of you, and I regret that I must now leave you to continue as you have been. It’s a cruel repayment for a great service.”

“You’re coming back, right?” asked Ginevra.

“I am,” I said. “I’ll go first to Berkeley, and then onward to Shadowed Hills, to seek my lady in the halls of her liege. Whether I find her there or not, I’ll return, and either way, Shade may well get here ahead of me.”

“Please be safe,” said Raj.

“I’m a King of Cats, Raj. I’m always safe. It’s everything around me that’s in danger,” I said, and stepped backward into shadow. The road rose up to meet me, dark and cold and welcoming as it had always been. No traces of the depths remained, for which I was grateful, even as I oriented myself and broke into a run, heading for the distant beacon of the Berkeley Court.

Berkeley is an unaffiliated area within the Kingdom of the Mists. No one truly claims dominion there, aside from Shade, and even she would have left the place to its own devices, had she not been necessary to keep the Shadow Roads properly anchored to her side of the water. The university at the city’s heart is often assumed to be the reason, a place of lore and learning that attracts young people of all stripes and species from around the country and even the world. Who wants to deal with the fealties and conflicting obligations of students from a hundred fiefdoms, each of them convinced that their liege knows the proper way of doing things?

It’s an easy answer, but it may not be a true one, as many cities have large universities, but few are allowed to go entirely unaligned. The choice was made by the Divided Courts before I came to California; it has never been any of my concern.

I ran until I felt the point of decision open ahead of me. I could turn one way and exit into the mortal city, or turn the other and pass into the Court of Golden Cats, where Shade kept her company. It was rude to trespass upon another monarch’s territory uninvited. Rude, but not an unforgivable insult, as I was a King and she a Queen; we’re allowed a certain amount of visitation, something which I assume lingers from the days when we thought there might be some connection between the status of parents and the appearance of royal kittens. A King who mated with a Queen could surely expect to sire royalty!

Except that it didn’t work that way, and never had. The chances were good that none of my children would be royal, and having them with Shade would only have resulted in us killing one another before the babes were weaned.

Normally, I would have gone to the mortal city, found a cat to carry a message for me, and asked Shade for her permission to visit. Under the circumstances, I had to hope that she’d forgive my presumption. I turned toward the Court, still running, until I reached the moment when I needed to step out of the shadows.

I emerged into warm air, and had a moment to see the Court of Golden Cats spread out before me, similar to my own in that every surface I could see was covered in furry bodies, all packed together in a way that bordered on unnatural for healthy felines—before a ball of claws and fury slammed into me, knocking me backward and to the ground.

SIX

MY ASSAILANT HISSED AND spat, clawing at me with the wild fervor of a beast pushed beyond the bounds of endurance. I changed forms, dropping away from the bipedal attacker as I fell to the ground and went bounding away into the Court, which resembled the storage space behind a school auditorium, hard plastic chairs stacked up in unsteady towers against corkboard walls. The stranger followed me, cats scattering as we ploughed through them, neither of us slowing down.

I reached a tall redwood post anchored to one wall and raced up it, using my claws for traction. The stranger grabbed for my tail, barely missing as I whisked it out of the way and made for the rafters. Once there, I stopped and looked back, hissing.

The stranger was clearly Cait Sidhe, wearing one of the forms we strove to hide from the rest of Faerie. For the most part, we present ourselves as either fully feline or fully fae, lingering as little as possible within the in-between stages, but even as we can extend our claws regardless of form, we can shift ourselves in other small ways.

This person was currently halfway between feline and humanoid, furred and tailed, with a muzzle in place of a flatter fae face. I couldn’t tell their age or their gender, only that it wasn’t Shade, who was a colorpoint cat when transformed. This person was a tabby, brown and orange and anger, tail lashing as they circled and snarled up at me. I adjusted my place on the rafter, making sure my balance was good, then transformed back into my two-legged shape, frowning down at the prowling stranger.

“I am Tybalt, King of Dreaming Cats,” I said, sternly. “I have come to see your Queen, who knows me well, and did not think to be met with violence.”

The stranger hissed. One of the other cats stirred to motion, rising and sauntering over to rub against the stranger’s ankles before transforming into a two-legged form and looking up at me. She was a lithely built teenage girl whose golden hair still bore the ghosts of tabby stripes in this shape, betraying her feline heritage.

“We’ve seen no one pass here in years,” she said. “How could our Queen know you well when you’ve never been here before?”

I hadn’t interacted much with any of the ordinary Cait Sidhe of my own Court since this began, only with the other royal cats. An illusion cast by Titania would be powerful enough to ensnare them, and rewrite their memories to suit whatever Titania needed them to be. What had she chosen to make the Cait Sidhe she had locked away believe about why they were thus confined?

“Pray believe me that I have been here before, and answer why an arrival was met by an attack.”