Page 78 of A Divided Duty

But it had been enough, hadn’t it? The carvings had always been accurate before. There was no reason to assume that they were lying now. Although that did raise the question of how anyone could get away with anything, if a magic wall was just going to tattle on them. So it couldn’t work every time. Arden would have been able to find me faster when Dame Altair took me prisoner if it worked every time.

“Why is Elvia a dame?” asked Chelsea, mercifully shattering my train of thought. “I thought that was a sort of misogynistic term for women used in old detective novels, not something to call one of your guards.”

“Knights are ‘sir’ when they earn their titles through service,” I said. “It’s ‘lord’ or ‘lady’ when they get titles just because they exist. Some female knights choose to be called ‘dame’ because they think it’s sexist that we all have to use the same title.”

“Why aren’t you a dame?”

“Because I worked damn hard to be called ‘sir’ instead of ‘lady,’ and I’m not going to trade that for another title that’s all about what society expects of me,” I said. “‘Sir’ suits me perfectly well. I don’t see any good reason to change.”

“I’ll be a sir someday,” she said, firmly.

“Only if you decide you want to pursue a knighthood,” I cautioned. “It’s a lot of work. You have to train pretty damn hard, and you have to find someone who’s already been knighted to sponsor you as a squire.”

“Oh, but I thought I already had,” she said guilelessly.

I shot her a hard look. “No. That was just me trying to get us inside. That was a ruse, and ruses aren’t binding.”

“Quentin says you’re the best knight there is.”

“Quentin is biased.”

The knowe was quiet around us as we walked, its occupants having gone to bed for the day. Still, I knew at least one person who would be up, both because she needed to be seeing to the daytime operations of the household, and because her class schedule kept her functionally diurnal.

Cassandra Brown was the eldest daughter of my friends Mitch and Stacy, and had always assumed she was a relatively weak changeling, at least until we found out that Stacy was secretly Titania and all the blocks her presence had placed on Cassie’s magic began falling away, leaving her stronger by the day. Arden hiring a changeling as her Chatelaine had somehow become a lot more acceptable when the truth of Cassie’s parentage became common knowledge among the ranking nobility, and no one really gave her any crap about it anymore. The people who didn’t know were low enough in the local social structure that they functionally didn’t matter when it came to the inner workings of the Queen’s court.

Anyway, Cassie was a lot less human than we had always believed she was, but was still better at staying awake all day than most purebloods, her consciousness supported by habit and what we now knew was Firstborn stubbornness. And as Chatelaine, she was in charge of the household, meaning she knew where everyone’s rooms were. If anyone would be able to tell me where to find Eion, it was her.

Since she was my honorary niece and I represented a fairly hefty chunk of her family support structure, the wards on her rooms had been keyed to always let me in. I led Chelsea through the knowe, rapidly passing from the public spaces like the entrance hall into the more-private areas that were only ever intended to be seen by the queen’s household. Chelsea stuck close to me and goggled as we walked, head moving like it was on a swivel.

“Never been backstage at the big venue before, huh?” I asked.

“Everything is so new,” she said. “But it’s old. Isn’t this knowe older than Shadowed Hills?”

“Well, you’ve got that much of your local history down,” I said. “Yeah, King Gilad’s family built this place while the Mists was still being settled. Then they lived here for at least two generations. Arden and Nolan were both born here.”

“So why…?”

“Because after King Gilad was killed, Arden and Nolan ran, and the knowe sealed itself.”

“They can do that?”

“The knowes are alive, Chelsea. They can do whatever they want to do, within reason. That’s why Shadowed Hills rearranges itself sometimes. It doesn’t like the way it’s configured, or it wants something to happen, it just opens a door or moves a hallway.”

“Okay, so … old knowe seals itself off, opens up again, now it’s a new knowe?” She paused, looking perplexed. “Please don’t make me try to say that again. My tongue hurts from doing it the once.”

“Old knowe seals itself off, reopens when its rightful holder comes home, and starts trying really hard to make her happy,” I said. “There are parts that are still just the way they used to be, at least according to people who would know, but most of the knowe is updated and a lot more modern, to keep Arden from feeling like she’s living in a tomb.” The halls we were walking through now looked like they could have been stolen from a luxury hotel. The walls were white, the floors covered in a softly plush carpet, and decorative light fixtures bristling with drop crystals and globes of light hung from the ceiling.

It was almost funny. When I was Chelsea’s age, I used to look at knowes like this and wonder where the magic was. Now, I looked at them and all I could see was magic. This place, where Arden spent most of her time, was willing to transform itself to make sure that she was as comfortable as possible. It might not like looking like the sort of place where checkout was at noon daily, but it would, for her.

That was the truest proof of love a building could offer. Redecoration may not seem like a big deal for a person, but for a knowe? It was everything. Muir Woods loved Arden Windermere, and always would.

We walked along the tastefully white-and-gray halls, the only real pops of color the blackberries in the carpet and the carnival glass in the windows, which the knowe had remained unwilling to change, until we reached a door like all the others. I knocked. A moment later, Cassandra’s familiar, beloved voice called, “Leave it outside, okay? I’ll be out in a second!”

“She thinks we’re lunch,” I said to Chelsea, who giggled anxiously. She might not have grown up in our society, but she’d picked up enough to be concerned about bothering the queen’s chatelaine.

I knocked again. “Cass, it’s me. Well, me, and Chelsea Ames. Let us in.”

Something crashed on the other side of the door. I lifted an eyebrow and stepped back, waiting.