BUT BY DEGREES #8
“No one ever comes this far back in the alley this time of day, unless they’re already drunk, and you know what they used to say about drunkards.”
“What’s that?” I asked, trying to stay polite despite their tone.
“That they’re all off dancing with the fairies.” Cal shrugged. “No one’s going to listen to them, so why should I worry about what they might or might not see?”
“Because secrecy keeps us all safe, and I know the Court of Cats enforces it as consistently as the Divided Courts?” Hiding Faerie’s existence from the mortal world is one of the only places our two courts can agree: we need the humans to believe that we’re nothing more than myth and legend, intended to be forgotten.
It’s what keeps us safe from their greater numbers and excessive amounts of weaponry.
Turning a man into a frog is all well and good, but when there are a hundred men with guns, they can pull the triggers faster than we can transform them all.
Cal scoffed. “Cats don’t follow rules.”
“Don’t they?” purred a languid voice from behind them, as the shadows shifted and pulsed like living things, and an arm emerged from the darkness, claw-tipped fingers catching the collar of Cal’s shirt and pulling tight.
Cal made a startled, strangled sound, staggering backward.
Their shoulders hit the shadow and they were pulled through, disappearing into the dark.
A moment later, a taller boy about my age stepped out of the space behind the dumpster.
It was impossible for him to have fit there, compacting into a gap too narrow for his body to pass through, but he came from there all the same.
Cait Sidhe aren’t big on respecting the laws of physical space.
Unlike his subject, he was wearing a human disguise, ears rounded and pupils the same, hair a simple auburn rather than agouti ticked in bands of black.
He frowned at the sight of me. “My subjects told me you were out here, but I thought they must be mistaken,” he said. “It’s the middle of the day. If you’re awake, you should be following Toby into certain doom.”
“Jealous much?”
“A cat is never jealous … but yeah, a little.” One corner of his mouth twisted upward as he shrugged. “You know how it is.”
“I do.”
There had been a time when Raj was effectively Toby’s second squire, even if he could never hold the title openly or in truth.
He’d followed us on adventures, been present through dire dangers and fabulous quests, and attended more of my lessons than I cared to really think about.
Unfortunately for everyone involved, he had always been a Prince of Cats, and his uncle Tybalt was both King of Cats and desperately, achingly in love with Toby.
Even when Tybalt had still been acting like he wasn’t, everyone who watched them together could see it, and as soon as he’d allowed himself to get really serious about being with her, his duty to the Court of Cats had been compromised.
A king can’t serve a people and a person at the same time—not with equal devotion—and for Tybalt, Toby would always come first. So as soon as they’d been married, he’d stepped aside, leaving his heir to take his place on the throne.
Raj wasn’t King yet, solely because he wasn’t ready to face his uncle in open combat.
As soon as he could do that, they’d fight, and Raj would be able to become the King of Cats in earnest.
We’d both always known that we’d wear crowns one day.
I guess I’d just expected it to happen to us both at once.
Instead, I’d been watching my best friend slip away from me, no longer free to play at being a squire, or to spend the day lounging on my couch, watching television and making scathing remarks about mortal fashions.
What little time he had to himself was as often given to Helen as not, these days, and I expected that relationship to fray and crack soon, broken under the weight of his duties.
His people had lost one king to love in the Divided Courts.
They weren’t going to allow the loss of a second.
“Anyway, Toby ran off without me,” I said, uncomfortably. “Duchess Torquill snatched Raysel and ran.”
“Is it kidnapping when it’s your own parent?” he asked. “I know it’s not babysitting when it’s your own child. It seems like the obverse should also be true.”
“Raysel had just been ordered to serve out her remaining term of offense by Queen Windermere, so yes, it’s kidnapping, at least in the eyes of the Divided Courts,” I said.
“And Toby took it personally, since she’s supposed to be taking care of Raysel, not letting Raysel’s mother torture her.
So she’s off trying to find Raysel, and I … am not.”
He visibly braced himself. “And why do you think that is?”
“Because when it happened, she had Tybalt standing right there, and she’d rather not take me into Blind Michael’s lands if she can help it.”
Raj paled, normally warm brown skin turning the color of badly curdled milk. “Blind Michael’s lands?”
“You know he was Luna’s father? Well, Toby thinks that’s where she took Raysel.”
“Your knight treasures you well, to spare you such horrors.”
“I’d rather not be treasured by being left behind.”
“I feel the same, and yet now I’m to be left behind forever.” He glanced over his shoulder, like he was checking that he hadn’t been followed, then looked back to me. “If my uncle is with your knight, you have no cause to be here. I can’t produce him for you.”
“I was here to talk to you, you jerk.”
Raj sniffed. “Me? The prince you forgot?”
“I never forgot about you, Raj. None of us ever will. You’re my best friend. You’re my brother. I just can’t come between you and your duty.”
“No. I suppose if anyone would consider themselves unable to do such a thing, it would be you,” said Raj, tone intentionally bland. “You’ve duties of your own looming.”
“I do.” I sighed, beginning to turn away. “This was a bad idea. The Luidaeg was wrong.”
“Wait. What do you mean, the Luidaeg was wrong? She’s the sea witch. If she’s making forays into inaccuracy, I think I have a right to know about it.”
“Just that she told me I needed to talk to somebody, and she suggested you. At least I think she suggested you. I can’t really think of anyone else described by ‘the one who’s not your boyfriend because you both have more political training than you do hormones.’”
Raj scoffed. “As if that’s the only reason we never dated.
You’re too pale. I’d be afraid of you illuminating the whole room while I was trying to sleep, like sharing sheets with the sun.
And you’re too proud by half of being Canadian.
Your parents weren’t enough of an accident of birth for you, you have to get smug about a nationality at the same time? ”
I swallowed my laughter. “At least Canada has socialized health care for our citizens.”
“A cat needs no socialized health care.”
“Yeah, because a cat can go to the vet, where care costs maybe a tenth as much, and no one asks whether you deserve whatever it is you’re dealing with.”
“A moot point regardless, since neither of us is dealing with the human medical system any time soon.”
“Still, I’m pretty sure she was talking about you.”
“It seems likely,” said Raj, tone mild but not unfriendly. “What do you need to talk about, Quentin?”
“Everything. Nothing. What happened during that little mix-up last year. I know we didn’t interact, what with you being sealed in the Court of Cats and all, but I don’t like who I was when she rewrote me, and I don’t like the things I did, and I need to figure out how to live with my memories of that time.
You’ve been my best friend for years. I thought you might have some advice. ”
“That, and the Luidaeg told you to.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not sure how I feel about you needing to be ordered by the sea witch before you’ll come and have a conversation with me.”
I could have tried to argue with him, could have pointed out how his duties were consuming more and more of his time, until every conversation felt like an imposition.
I decided not to. He was swatting at me verbally, but that was his way; he was a cat, as he never tired of reminding me, and cats like to play with their food and their friends in a similar manner.
“But now that you mention it, I’ve noticed that you’ve been off since the enchantment broke down,” he said, and leaned up against the wall, looking at me with undisguised concern for the first time.
“Too quiet, too obliging. When we’ve been together, which has been far from frequent enough, you’ve always seemed more than half-absent.
Do you want to talk somewhere more private than this? ”
I looked around the alley, still empty, but open to the world. “If that’s an option, yeah. I’d like that better.”
“Then here.” He stepped toward me, holding out his hand. “Trust me, and hold your breath.”
I lifted my eyebrows, but slid my hand into his, choosing trust over questions.
He pulled me sharply toward him, so that we wound up in a position that looked a lot like the starting steps of a tango.
Then, without warning, he fell backward, and I was pulled along, too unprepared to brace myself against his sudden shift in balance.
His back hit the wall, and kept going, as we both tumbled into shadow.
I’d been on the Shadow Roads before, a stretch of empty darkness stretching from wherever the Cait Sidhe who called upon them stood to wherever that same Cait Sidhe needed to go.
It was an infinity of nothingness, a void filled only with freezing cold, devoid of all air.
For me, anyway. The Cait Sidhe could breathe there, although I couldn’t imagine it was all that comfortable, and where my eyes found only endless dark, they found enough light to navigate by.
Raj’s hand tightened on mine, and then his other hand was cupping my waist, and he was running, leaving me with no choice but to run alongside him or be left behind. I had no real interest in being left behind, and so I ran.