Page 30 of A Divided Duty

“I’m guessing you’re here for Raj?” I asked.

She nodded. “He needed to have a representative, since he couldn’t come, and since tonight’s business involved members of his court.”

“It’s not his court yet.”

“No, but it’s going to be. And he really doesn’t want his uncle getting banished or something before they can fight.”

The sad truth of the Court of Cats is that they manage succession through physical strength. Tybalt would always be a King of Cats—the title is about magical power, not political position—but he had effectively stepped down, ceding his crown to Raj and rendering himself throneless in the process. Only Raj was too young to fight him and have a prayer of winning, which meant that Ginevra had been called in to stand as Regent, keeping him moving forward and learning his position without facing challenges from roving Cait Sidhe who wanted to rule.

It was a precarious arrangement, but not a unique one, and as long as it was working for them, I wasn’t going to get in the way. I nodded. “I don’t want that either, and I don’t want them fighting before they’re both ready. How much longer do you think the court will tolerate your regency?”

“Tybalt robbed a bunch of Costcos for them during the communal bad dream, and he’s just had a baby. I think they’ll give us another year without complaint, two if we don’t mind them grumbling about it. There’s no rush.”

“There’s always a rush.”

She laughed, short and sharp. “That’s for sure. What are you doing out here?”

“Waiting for the pixies to tell me where to find the Queen.”

As if on cue, a pale purple pixie came streaking toward us, ringing wildly. I held out my hand and she landed lightly, dropping directly into a cross-legged position as she looked at me.

I smiled. “Hello, Lilac. Did you find the queen?”

She rang once, a sharp sound that I’d come to learn meant yes, but didn’t move from my hand. I sighed.

“You want to know where Simon is, don’t you?”

She was tiny, but not so tiny that I couldn’t see her vigorous nod.

“He’s in the Undersea with his new daughters. They’re still too young to be left alone, and he really didn’t want to come to court tonight.” There were plenty of reasons he didn’t have any pixies with him in Saltmist. Pixies don’t do well in the Undersea, for one thing. Their wings get weighted down with water, and they can’t swim. They’re easy targets for any fish or other predators that might happen to come swimming along. But he had been their friend for a long time, and Patrick had been their friend before him, and they missed him when he didn’t come to visit.

I paused, feeling suddenly guilty. “I’m going to be visiting him soon, to see the babies,” I said. “We have a way of getting there that doesn’t mean moving through the water. If you’d like to come with us, I can ask whether that would be all right.”

She began chiming wildly, and the light coming from her skin and wings got stronger, making her almost too bright to look at directly.

“So now will you take me to the queen?” I asked.

Lilac nodded again, bouncing to her feet before kicking off into the air. She flew a circle around my head, then began leading me down the balcony to the first winding stair, flying slowly enough that I could keep up, while still fast enough that she didn’t fall out of the air.

I looked at Ginevra, who made a shooing motion with her hands. “Go on,” she said. “I know you need to follow the bug. I’ll see you later, okay?”

“Come see the baby,” I said. “We miss you.” And with that, I took off after Lilac.

Following a pixie when you can’t run without possibly falling down a steep flight of stairs is a fascinating balancing exercise. I knew I’d be okay if I fell, thanks to the part where I heal like I’m being billed by the second for my injuries, but it would still hurt, and Tybalt would be livid if he let me out of his sight and I immediately tumbled off a supposedly safe walkway. Broken bones are nobody’s friend. Worse yet, Ginevra was still close enough that he’d definitely find out about it.

We went down the first stair, then along a long floating boardwalk, and down a second set of stairs to a stone foundation I’d seen on other visits. I followed it, this time to a broad stone stairway that descended slowly into the tangled depths of the loggia, a long open-air corridor enclosed by trellises heavy with thornless blackberry vines.

I’d seen halls like this all my life, but I’d never known they had a special name, not until Tybalt had offered it up as an identifier. Sometimes it’s nice to marry a man whose depths of nerdiness have yet to be fully plumbed.

Most knowes would have put a space like this to use cultivating grapes, but here in the Mists, blackberries were the fruit of choice for almost all purposes. Sometimes I wondered if that wasn’t partially about providing cover for the Windermeres. I might be unusually skilled when it came to tracking the scent of someone’s magic, but I wasn’t unique, and the more everything else smelled like blackberries and redwoods, the harder it would be for someone else to track them down by sniffing out their portals. It was a paranoid way of looking at things. After the way their parents had died, I couldn’t blame either one of them.

Bands of light and shadow danced across me as I walked down the long hall, Lilac adding a flashing purple undertone to the scene. I smiled as I watched her, a smile that only widened as I reached the end of the hall and stepped into one of the elevated courtyards Arden sometimes used for summer entertaining. She and Nolan were both there, her seated on the edge of a dry marble fountain with her hands tucked between her knees, him standing nearby and watching her with visible concern.

Lilac chimed as we entered the courtyard, and Arden looked up, eyes very wide. She visibly relaxed as she realized it was only me, beckoning me toward her.

I walked forward, Lilac circling me several times before landing in my hair.

“What the hell was that?” demanded Arden, before I could say anything.