Ashes of Honor

  Then Li Qin laughed. “I’m staying here,” she repeated. “I stand the best chance of bailing you out if Riordan catches you in her lands without an invitation, and it’s easier for me to bend your luck if I’m not standing in the middle of a battlefield while I’m trying to do it. I can’t keep anything truly bad away, but I may be able to at least skew the odds slightly in your favor.”

  “We’d appreciate that,” I said. I paused, a thought occurring to me. “You’re being awfully nice.”

  “I am,” she agreed. “I want something. I’m more likely to get it if you survive.”

  “What is it that you want?”

  She smiled. “That would be telling.” Before I could get mad, she added, “I’ll explain everything when this is done, and I swear, I expect nothing. I simply want you to be well-inclined toward us when the time comes for me to ask the things that need asking.”

  I blinked, glancing toward the others to see if their expressions would give me any idea. Elliot ducked his head and looked away, refusing to meet my eyes. Quentin and Raj looked as confused as I felt. That was reassuring. At least I wasn’t the only one who’d managed to miss the memo. “Fine,” I said, finally. “But you’d better be ready to tell me what’s going on when we’re no longer in mortal peril.”

  Elliot laughed. “So in about ten years, then?”

  “Something like that.” Now for the harder one. I turned to Raj. “You’re staying.”

  His eyes went wide and wounded. “What? You can’t mean that.”

  “I can, and I do. Your father tried to kill me earlier today. I don’t want to put you in the line of fire if he comes after me again.” I hesitated before adding, “What he did isn’t your fault, and I’m not rejecting you. I just want you to be safe.”

  “I’m a Prince of Cats!”

  “And as my only heir, I need you to remain here,” said Tybalt. Raj transferred his wounded look to his uncle. Tybalt smiled. “Glare all you like, kitten. You’ll still stay behind.”

  “You can’t tell me what to do forever,” said Raj.

  “Yes,” agreed Tybalt. “I’m counting on that.”

  There was a subtext I wasn’t getting in their conversation. Cait Sidhe successions are generally fatal. I couldn’t imagine Tybalt was looking forward to that. I decided it wasn’t important for the moment, and straightened, saying, “We need to go. Quentin, come on.”

  “Okay,” he said, and rose, coming to stand beside me. “What’s the plan?”

  “We go in, we find Etienne, we find Chelsea if we can, and we do our best to get out without starting a diplomatic incident too big to stop.” I turned to Tybalt. “You can handle us both?”

  “So nice of you to ask me, but yes. I can handle your transport, and that of your stripling, at the same time. More than that may become a strain if it has to be maintained for terribly long, but…” Tybalt shrugged. “That is a bridge to be crossed when we come to it, I suppose.”

  “Good.” I offered him my hand, gesturing for Quentin to do the same. “If Chelsea comes back here, try to stop her from leaving, and call me.”

  “Someone will contact you,” said April.

  “Good. Then let’s—” I stopped myself mid-sentence as a thought struck me. Dropping Tybalt’s hand, I said, briskly, “Come on,” and started at a fast walk toward the cafeteria door.

  “She still does that?” asked Elliot.

  Tybalt just laughed as he and Quentin followed me out into the hall. I kept walking, heading for the car as quickly as I reasonably could. When I got there, I dug the keys out of my pocket, barely pausing to check the backseat for intruders—long story—before unlocking the passenger side door and grabbing Walther’s cooler from the foot well.

  “Oh!” said Quentin, sudden comprehension in his tone. “She’s getting the power dampener Walther brewed for us.”

  “Thank you, Captain Exposition,” I said. The leather of my jacket was thick enough to keep the stuff from getting on me even if the glass broke. I paused before digging around in the glove compartment. I didn’t know what the Luidaeg kept there, but…“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said. “She has Baggies.” I wasn’t sure which was weirder, that the Luidaeg had them, or that I’d thought to check. Either way, they were getting put to use. I put a dose of dampener in one and a dose of counteragent in another, before tucking them into my jacket pockets. Then I paused, looking at my thermos, and sighed. “If Etienne ever doubts my devotion to doing the right thing, I will kill him,” I said.

  “What?” asked Quentin.

  “Nothing.” I uncapped the thermos, pouring half its contents down my throat and the other half out on the concrete. The smell of spilled coffee filled the air as I slammed the edge of the thermos against the top of the car, knocking it again and again until the interior seal came loose and I was able to yank the entire center piece free. I threw it into the car, grabbed another dose each of dampener and counteragent, and slid them carefully into the place where the center piece had been. As I’d expected, they fit perfectly.

  I sighed again. “At least my thermos didn’t die for nothing.” Putting the lid back on, I twisted it as tight as it would go and tossed the whole thing over to Tybalt.

  He caught it, frowning at the brightly colored plastic cylinder. “What, precisely, is this?”

  “Well, the orange stuff on top is an alchemical concoction designed to block the powers of anyone it gets spilled on for a year and a day. Walther specifically said not to get it on any shapeshifters, since he has no idea what that would do; let’s try to do what the alchemist says.”

  Tybalt blanched. “Yes,” he murmured. “Let’s. October, please don’t think I’m inclined to reject any gifts you choose to give me, but why, pray tell, have you chosen to give me this?”

  “If you see Chelsea, you need to dump it on her. I would have done it before, if I’d been carrying the stuff.” And if dampening her powers then and there wouldn’t have stranded us in Annwn, possibly forever. That was the sort of detail that couldn’t always be accounted for.

  That didn’t seem to make Tybalt feel better. He eyed the thermos the way I would eye a venomous snake and asked, “What happens if I spill it?”

  “There’s a jar of green stuff underneath the jar of orange stuff. It’s a counteragent. If you apply it within twenty minutes, you can cancel the effects of the power dampener. Or at least Walther thinks you can. This is all theory at this point.” I jabbed a finger toward the cooler. “Quentin. Gear up.”

  “How come he gets the thermos?” grumbled Quentin, as he moved to retrieve jars of variously colored goo from inside the cooler.

  “Because he’s the one whose side effects are completely unknown if he gets doused, whereas you get to wear baseball caps for a year, and I get to spend a lot more time sitting on the couch watching late-night television while enjoying a brief respite from being forced to leave the house. In this particular instance, we’re both better risks than Tybalt is.”

  “I’m not sure whether I should be flattered or appalled,” said Tybalt.

  “Neither am I,” said Quentin.

  I smiled. It wasn’t a happy smile, but it was a genuine one. “You know, if I have to march off to certain doom, I can’t think of many people I’d rather be marching with.”

  “You can think of any?” asked Quentin, sealing his own jars of glowing goo in Ziploc Baggies.

  “Anybody who owns a tank is at the top of the list. But you’re right underneath them.” I tossed the box of Baggies back into the car and closed the door, locking it before tucking the keys back into my pocket. There was a thick patch of shadows underneath the eucalyptus trees separating the campus from the street. I gestured toward them. “Shall we?”

  Tybalt nodded. “I suppose we shall.”

  The three of us walked into the shadow of the trees, our pockets heavy with the promise of magic’s end. And then Quentin took Tybalt’s hand while I took hold of his elbow, and he pulled us backward into the darkness, and the wor
ld fell away again. It was time to end this. One way or another, it was time for us to find Chelsea, and bring her home.

  TWENTY-ONE

  WE EMERGED IN A SMALL, familiar antechamber inside Riordan’s knowe. Quentin stumbled, shivering and trying not to cough. I managed to keep my feet, barely, and only because I knew we needed to do as little knocking about as possible. We were in enemy territory now, and if we were found, things weren’t going to go well for us.

  Tybalt was leaning against the wall opposite from Quentin, his own eyes closed. The effort of carrying two of us immediately after he’d been injured appeared to have exhausted him. I bent forward, bracing my hands on my knees, and forced myself to take deep, slow breaths.

  “It’s so much easier when we take the Tuatha Express,” I mumbled.

  “The cost of travel should be high,” said Tybalt. He straightened and paced toward the entrance to the antechamber. “It’s what keeps us from roving frivolously.”

  “Etienne seems to think it’s pretty hard, at least when he’s going more than a few miles,” I said. “He doesn’t usually teleport casually. But Chelsea isn’t playing by the usual rules.”

  “Yes. I know.” Tybalt shook his head. “The shadows are starting to push back against us. They only do that when their destination is unclear, or when they have nowhere to end. The tethers between the Shadow Roads and the Summerlands are beginning to fray—as are the tethers between the Shadow Roads and the mortal world. If this continues too long, we may find ourselves with nowhere to run.”

  I thought about that for a second, then put the thought aside. It was too big a problem for me to fix; it was something I couldn’t hit. All I could do was get Chelsea to stop ripping holes and let the people who could fix things get to work.

  Of course, that meant we couldn’t stay huddled in this tiny antechamber forever. “Riordan’s guards are mostly Folletti,” I said. “I can tell when they’re nearby, but only if I’m looking for them. Most of the time, they’re going to be effectively invisible.”

  “Charming,” said Tybalt.

  “Yeah. Can you scout the hall? Just make sure we’re alone before we leave here.”

  “It would be my pleasure,” said Tybalt. The smell of musk and pennyroyal swirled around him and he was gone, replaced by a large tabby tomcat. He walked over to me, rubbed himself against my ankles, and turned to slink out of the antechamber, vanishing behind the tapestry that covered the entrance.

  Quentin had his breathing back under control. He came to stand next to me, and we stayed where we were, waiting for whatever was going to come next. I kept one hand on my knife and the other on Quentin’s shoulder, ready to shove him behind me if something attacked us. I could take the damage. He couldn’t.

  The minutes ticked by. I was on the verge of becoming genuinely worried when the fabric of the tapestry stirred, and Tybalt slunk back into the room, ears pressed flat and tail carried low to the ground.

  I let out a relieved breath. “Took you long enough,” I said.

  The smell of pennyroyal and musk rose around him. He straightened on two legs, a troubled expression on his face. “Going unseen is an art as much as a skill,” he said. “I can smell the Folletti when I go in feline form. That doesn’t make it wise for me to risk discovery by exposing myself where they might see.”

  “What did you find?”

  “These chambers are scattered all along this hall, and the ones to either side. It seems our Duchess Riordan is quite fond of the spy’s art, providing she can control the placement of the spies. I doubt she would be pleased to know we were using her clever hidey-holes against her.”

  “If you don’t want people using your secret little rooms for nefarious purposes, you shouldn’t make them this easy to find,” I said. Then I paused. “Or maybe they’re not just here for spying on guests. Quentin, remember when you showed me how to navigate the servants’ passages at Shadowed Hills?”

  Quentin blinked as understanding dawned. “Give me a second,” he said, and moved to the back of the antechamber.

  Tybalt watched him go before turning his frown on me, clearly puzzled. “Would you care to explain?”

  “Most knowes—ones that don’t belong to the Court of Cats—are built to suit the nobles who own them. Even the good nobles want their servants to be invisible, although most don’t take it as literally as Riordan here. Service is supposed to be quiet, efficient, and only noticed when something goes wrong. So they hide little passages and back routes through the knowes, to make it possible for their servants to stay out of sight.”

  “Ah.” Tybalt frowned. “The Divided Courts are sometimes more alien to me than I like to admit.”

  “If it helps at all, I think they tend to feel the same way about the Court of Cats.”

  Tybalt shook his head, still frowning. “I am not sure it helps anything to know that we are all strangers to one another.”

  “Got it!” Quentin’s triumphant whisper stopped me before I could say anything I’d regret later. I turned to see him standing in front of a narrow open rectangle in what had seemed to be a solid wall only moments before. He was grinning, visibly pleased with himself—as well he should be. “She uses a pressure code to keep the doors closed. It’s pretty clever, but it’s also pretty common. I’ve seen it in a bunch of knowes.”

  “My little cat burglar,” I said dryly. “How proud your parents must be.”

  His grin, if anything, brightened. “I’d bet you a dollar that you’re right.”

  “As long as it’s not a Canadian dollar, you’re on.” I started toward the opening. “Let’s see what’s behind door number one.”

  “Is the answer ever ‘unending pain and a suffering beyond imagination’?” asked Tybalt. He still followed me. Either his sense of self-preservation was weakening, or he was confident that whatever might be lurking up ahead would eat the rest of us first.

  “Sometimes,” said Quentin. “Other times, it’s a pantry.”

  I smothered my laughter behind my hand as I stepped through the door Quentin had managed to open in the wall, gesturing for the others to wait. They did, Quentin calmly, and Tybalt with obvious annoyance. At least he was listening to me. That was going to be essential if we were going to get out of this with everyone still breathing.

  The floor on the other side of the wall was as plain as the antechamber behind me. I still stepped carefully, testing the wood with my toes before moving forward. If there were any booby-traps, they were the kind that needed more than a little weight to trigger them.

  The servant’s hall was dark, lacking the glowing spheres that dotted the hallway outside. I paused, then dug the Luidaeg’s Chelsea-chaser out of my pocket. Its glow brightened as I brought it into the open, chasing back the worst of the shadows. It was in its neutral state, glowing like a handful of captive starlight…but it hadn’t been this bright since it was first activated. I wasn’t sure what that meant. I had to hope it was a sign that Chelsea had been here at least once, and might be here again.

  Finally, I closed my eyes, let my mouth drop open, and breathed in. Nothing. The only magic I smelled was my own, cut grass and copper, underscored with the whisper of frozen wind across lonely moors. The Luidaeg’s charm was making its presence known. Beyond that, we were alone. “Come on,” I said, opening my eyes. “The coast is clear.”

  Tybalt and Quentin stepped through the wall, Quentin pausing to slide the panel back into place and tap his fingers against the “hinge” in a rapid, elaborate pattern of strokes and beats. When he pulled his hands away, the panel remained set firmly into the wall.

  “Nice trick,” I said.

  Quentin nodded as he turned to face me. “Like I said: clever but common. If you don’t know the right pattern, you can try for hours and never get through.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “So how did you…?”

  “There are only ten right patterns. I learned them when I was a kid.” It was said with simple matter-of-factness. I decided to let it drop. We
had bigger things to worry about than why Quentin knew how to break into any knowe that used a “clever but common” lock system for its service passages. Being fostered definitely seemed to come with some unusual skill sets.

  “Duchess Riordan’s receiving room was this way,” I said, turning. “We might as well start our search in familiar territory. If Chelsea’s not there, we can go looking for the dungeons.”

  “Which will doubtless be in the opposite direction,” said Tybalt.

  “Yeah, but there’s going to be a connection between them,” said Quentin. “That way, she can send servants to check on anybody she has locked up, and she won’t have to wait long to hear back. When you’ve got somebody in your dungeon, you’re not usually feeling very patient.”

  “You are just a wealth of unexpected information today,” I said. “We start with the receiving room. Tybalt…?”

  “I’ll scout ahead.” The smell of musk and pennyroyal had barely settled when he was racing on four legs into the darkness, ears flat against his head and tail held straight out behind him. I could see his coat for a few seconds, bands of brown moving through the shadows. Then he was gone, not even leaving footprints behind.

  “Stay close,” I said, gesturing for Quentin to move in next to me. “Get out your own charm. A little extra light could be a good thing in here—and it’s not going to make us any easier to spot. We’re already the only light in the place.”

  Quentin nodded, digging the sphere from his pocket as he moved into the position I’d indicated. Together, the two charms were enough to make every detail of the walls visible. Not that there was much to see. If there were other doors around us, they were well fitted enough to be invisible, leaving nothing but blank wall both ahead of and behind us. I drew my knife with my free hand. Quentin did the same, producing a short sword I’d never seen before from his belt. I raised an eyebrow. He shrugged, saying sheepishly, “I asked April if she had anything I could borrow when you didn’t come back for so long. I figured it was better if I was prepared to defend myself.”