Page 52 of The Innocent Sleep

Time was passing. It was obvious that I had been here, that someone had entered the tower by force. I needed to give them an easy explanation why. I returned to the kitchen and to my two-legged form, gathering cheese, butter, preserves, three loaves of bread, a bowl of eggs, and a whole hanging joint of cured meat into a potato sack before diving into the shadows.

I dropped the sack before I reached the manor. Much as I wanted to give it to Eion and his family, if I was staging a robbery, I couldn’t risk pinning the blame on them. They were free to move until the stroke of midnight on Halloween, but they were still unranked, and the girls were changelings. All it would take was a few days of detention and they’d never see the Golden Shore. No. I wouldn’t do that to them.

I emerged onto the balcony. The party was well over by that point. The garlands and ribbons that had been tied around the columns were slumping toward the ground, which was littered with debris from the buffet and fallen flower petals from the décor. Servants moved through the mess, collecting what could be saved and sweeping up what couldn’t be.

The air smelled of spilled wine, slightly stale buttercream frosting, and— I stopped dead, unable to keep myself from sniffing the air.

And blood.

October’s blood.

The smell was almost as familiar as her magic, coppery, bright, and achingly present. I hated that it made my heart glad to smell it, because it meant she had been here, and recently. Been here, and been bled, while she was trapped under Titania’s spell and hence defenseless. In all the time I’d observed the tower, I had never seen her pick up so much as a pair of garden shears, nor pluck a single rose. Whatever else this world allowed her to do, it didn’t let her bleed.

A solidly built Brownie changeling was mopping up the point on the balcony where the smell of blood was strongest, using far more water than I would have thought strictly necessary. I strolled over to her.

“What happened here?” I asked.

“The Lady August and her sister come to visit,” said the girl. “Lady went inside, sister stayed to help with cleaning up. Squire Quentin came over to talk to her, when she talked back, gave her a shove, and some chips of plate caught and cut her. Naughty girl, talking back to the gentry like that. Deserves the punishment she’ll likely get when her father finds out.”

“Indeed,” I said, stiffly.

I turned away from her, stopping when I spotted Grianne on the other side of the balcony. She was back in her uniform, meaning she had started a guard shift right after party’s end; she’d be exhausted and useless by nightfall. I walked quickly toward her.

“October,” I hissed, once I was close enough, keeping my voice too low to be easily overheard.

If anyone could understand the meaning in a single word, it was Grianne. She nodded.

“Inside,” she replied. Then, apparently realizing that wasn’t going to be enough, she added, “Shaken, but fine.”

“I’d gut him for touching her, but she’d be furious with me once this was over, for laying a hand on him.” I scowled. “I don’t like needing to forgive people for behaving badly based on the behavior of their other selves.”

Grianne nodded, looking halfway sympathetic, which was really all I could expect. October and I were in the same place for the first time in four months, the same knowe. It felt like my skin was suddenly too tight, like every one of my nerves was on the verge of bursting out of my body and rolling away as their own composite entities, leaving the rest of me behind. I felt like a stripling waiting for the girl he’d been courting to walk around a corner.

It was exhilarating and exhausting at the same time, and I was trying to push the feeling aside when Garm ran into the doorway to the inside, out of breath, tabard askew. “Rand!” he exclaimed. “Baron Torquill is approaching!”

August and October were both in the knowe, and I had just broken into Simon’s home. If he didn’t know they were planning to come to Shadowed Hills . . .

“Does he seem angry?” I asked, trying to quickly decide how I was to handle this new complication. Simon might suspect me, as a stranger in his brother’s halls, but surely he would have no place to anchor his suspicions. More, as my time here was nearly done and Moving Day had now officially begun, this might be my opportunity to speak to a member of October’s family as Mary’s prophecy had suggested.

There is little harm in learning, and sometimes there can be great benefit. I watched Garm intently, waiting for his answer.

“Furious,” Garm replied.

“Then the warning is appreciated,” I said, and stepped into shadow, following the Shadow Roads from the balcony to the gloom under the trees at forest’s edge. There I stopped, and listened.

Simon’s anger would make him less focused, less likely to wonder at why I was seeking his company after so many nights of managing to avoid his presence. It would seem less suspicious, also, if I wasn’t hiding from him now. And Mary had said I should speak to those October called family. What family closer than her father, even if he played the role against his will? So I held my place, and waited.

It wasn’t long before I heard Simon’s approach, leaves crackling underfoot as he stormed toward the manor. I stepped onto the path, turning to face him.

“Baron Torquill! I didn’t expect to have the pleasure of seeing you again so soon. How was the celebration you left us to attend?”

“Fine,” he said, waving the question away as if it were nothing. Which, to be fair, it was. “I need to see my brother.”

“I can escort you, if you’d like.”

“That would be . . .” He paused, rubbing his face. “That would be unnecessary, but pleasant. I returned home to find a window broken and my daughters missing. Under the circumstances, I would appreciate the company.”

I fell in beside him as we continued toward the manor, and he walked more sedately now that there was someone who could judge him for losing his composure. So the thought of a threat to the girls had been enough to upset him, and he’d said “my daughters,” not “August and the other one.” He really did seem to care for them equally in this world Titania had created.