Page 60 of The Innocent Sleep

“Raj . . .”

“Nothing,” he said again, and shifted to feline form, the sudden change in size causing him to drop from my hand to the floor. He ran then, hiding behind August’s skirts.

I sighed. “Raj, this is not the time. Sir Etienne took October out of the knowe to perform a task for Duchess Zhou, and he has since misplaced her. I was just about to take Simon and begin looking for her.”

“And me,” added August stubbornly.

“. . . and August,” I amended. “I understand that you were worried, but the Court is now unprotected, and I don’t have time to stand here playing games with you.”

Raj shifted back to his two-legged form, peeping out from behind August. He was still unaccountably jumpy. “But that’s what I thought might have set you off,” he said. “I know exactly where October is.”

He was my adopted nephew, my all-but-son, and my heir. So I didn’t grab and shake him until he explained himself, only went very still, watching him through narrowed eyes.

“Where, pray tell, would that be?”

Raj took a deep breath and stood up straighter, gathering his courage. Then, in a low voice, he said, “She’s been arrested by the Queen’s guard. For murder.”

“Another frame job?”

“Oh, no,” he said, sounding almost offended by the suggestion. “She did it.”

I blinked. “She what?”

“I’m sorry, what did you just say?” asked Simon.

“I was ducking in and out of the Court to look for you, and all the pixies were in an uproar, so I asked a mortal cat who told me that one of the fair folk had been taken away for killing another of their number,” said Raj. “It was kinda confusing, so I went looking for more information, and I found the Queen’s guard in an alley, cleaning up a night-haunt mannikin that had been left in place of a pureblood. They were talking about the changeling girl they’d found covered in his blood. Said it was going to cause problems, because the Rose of Winter’s servant was her father. I think Toby really killed somebody this time, and now the Queen has her, and when Shadowed Hills was sealed, I thought you’d lost your temper when you heard.”

He paused then, wincing at my expression. “Or maybe you’re about to.”

“Do you see what you’ve done?” I demanded, turning to Simon. “October has been arrested. The Queen’s dungeons are ripe with iron. The first time she was held there, I was only able to get her back by taking a Selkie without his skin to open the doors. Unless you have a magic trick for evading iron poisoning, we’re going to have to fight the entirety of the Queen’s guard to have her back, and all because you were a coward who sent her on an ‘adventure’ to see if you could abandon her safely.”

Simon swallowed hard, skin waxen and eyes glossy. “I do, as you say, have a magic trick for evading iron poisoning,” he said.

“I can tell by the look on your face that I won’t like it,” I said, tightly.

“Well, no,” he said. “Because it doesn’t begin with us going to the Queen’s Court to retrieve my daughter.”

“Where does it begin?”

SEVENTEEN

WE STEPPED OUT OF the Shadows and onto the promenade outside the royal knowe of Golden Shore. The sky was the color of a bruise, purple and yellow around the edges, deepening as night approached. We had spent almost a whole day locked in the cell at Shadowed Hills.

Raj was no longer with us, having returned to the Court of Cats after passing his message along. I set a half-frozen Simon to his feet, managing not to sneer as he wiped the ice from his eyes. Beside me, Ginevra was doing the same with August. A few seconds later, Grianne stepped out of nowhere, one arm slung around Garm, keeping him upright.

All our passengers were wheezing, ill-suited to the conditions of the Shadow Roads, and I spared a moment to wonder when we had become a taxi service. Simon coughed, clearing the ice from his throat, then strode toward the doors, limping a little from the chill in his joints. August leaned against Ginevra, who looked unsettled by this show of trust from someone she’d just met.

I followed Simon, unwilling to let him out of my sight. “We’ve come to Golden Shore at your request, moving away from October,” I said, voice tight. “You had best explain yourself, and quickly.”

He knocked before he turned to face me. “I know you can suppress your stripes,” he said. “Don’t bother.”

I took a step back, blinking at him. “What?”

“This goes easier with some proof.”

I frowned, and was still frowning when the door opened and possibly the last person I would ever have expected to see here looked out at us.

She was tall, with a reasonably average build, wearing a patchwork jacket that appeared to have been made from stitched-together pieces of tapestries and pennants, fabric pieced with no concern for pattern or color or whether or not it clashed with itself. Beneath the jacket she had a plain black shirt of mortal make, and a pair of black denim trousers. Her hair was a black so deep and glossy, it crossed over into appearing almost purple, and her eyes were mismatched, pyrite and mercury, sharp and wary. Her ears were sharply pointed, her skin a warm shade of light olive-brown, and she shouldn’t have been here.