The Winter Long

FIVE

WE STEPPED BACK through the main gate. Tybalt and Quentin were standing on the other side of the hallway, next to the wall, and talking in low, intense voices. Tybalt glanced up, seeming to realize that they weren’t alone anymore. Quentin did the same a heartbeat later. Both of them went quiet, stepping apart. Quentin looked at me anxiously. After that first moment, Tybalt didn’t look at me at all. I sighed and filed that away as something I could ask about later. I had a huge file of things to ask about later, and I almost never remembered to ask any of them.

“I should get a secretary,” I muttered.

“What’s that?” asked Sylvester.

“Nothing.” I turned to the boys. “Do you want the short form or the long form? Never mind, scratch that, you’re getting the short form right now, and you’ll get the long form later, probably over alcohol, ice cream, or both. Simon Torquill was married to my mother. Is still married to my mother under fae law. That means he’s family, and that means he can enter her tower without her giving direct and immediate consent. She’s probably not in any danger, since she’s Firstborn, but she’s also confused, so he might be able to get around her defenses. I want her warned at the absolute least, and preferably moved here. Any questions?”

They both gaped at me. Quentin recovered first. “So are you going to call him ‘Daddy’ now? Can I watch? From behind a safe Plexiglas barrier, like they use on MythBusters?”

“No more TV for you,” I snapped. “And I will call Simon Torquill ‘Daddy’ right after I do something else that’s never going to happen, ever. I have a father.” He was long dead and forgotten to almost everyone in the mortal world, but he wasn’t forgotten to me.

“What do we do?” asked Tybalt.

I could have kissed him for that. Would have kissed him for that, if it wouldn’t have required time I wasn’t willing to spend right now. “Sylvester tells his people Simon may be on his way, and that they shouldn’t trust his face—Simon has the same one. They need to make him cast a spell. They need to trust his magic. We head for Mom’s tower. If she’s there, we warn her. If she’s not there, I try to negotiate with the wards and convince them to keep Simon out.” Modifying a spell that had been cast by one of the Firstborn would be easy, right?

Probably not. Even though the spell was my mother’s, it would be like sticking my hands into live current. I still had to try. Amandine was so bad at taking care of herself these days, and Simon was . . . well, Simon. There was no telling what he’d do if he got his hands on her.

For just a moment, I tried to picture the man he must have been in order to get my mother to marry him. I couldn’t find any path between that man and the one I knew.

“What if Simon’s there?” asked Quentin.

Sylvester smiled that thin, alarming smile again, and said, “If he’s there, my brother and I can finally have the reunion I’ve been dreaming of for so long.”

I shuddered. There was no way to interpret his words that didn’t end in blood and screaming.

“We can manage without you,” said Tybalt.

“Ah, yes,” said Sylvester, raising an eyebrow. “Because a half-trained squire, a knight with an abnormal sensitivity to transformation spells, and a King of Cats, that’s the appropriate way to handle my brother, whose magic has been honed to a killing edge by many, many years of villainy. Whatever was I thinking?”

“Okay, can we fight with Simon, instead of with each other?” I asked. “Pretty please?”

“That is my intention, assuming we can find him,” said Sylvester calmly. He continued, “Amy will listen to me, if she’s there, and may respond to me when she doesn’t respond to you. I’m sorry, October. I know she’s your mother, but there are centuries of history between us, and those may be enough to pull her back into the present day, if only for a moment.”

Tybalt spoke before I could. “I do not like you,” he said, looking straight at Sylvester. His voice held the perfect, bald honesty that has been the birthright of the feline kingdom since time began. He stepped up to stand next to me, putting a hand possessively on the back of my arm. His gaze remained fixed on Sylvester the whole time, making it clear who the show of ownership was directed at. “I think you are too comfortable here, in your marble halls, and have forgotten what it means to fight for what is yours. But if you insist on coming, at least you’ll be one more person between Simon and October. Are you sure your men can hold your wards against a member of your own family without you here to bolster them?”

I turned to gape at Tybalt. Sylvester was already nodding. “They are well-trained, and they know their jobs. October was one of them for a reason, after all.”

“Fine. We will wait for you outside in the garden, where October may shout imprecations at her leisure.” One corner of Tybalt’s mouth tilted upward in a smile. “I believe she’ll be calling both of us some rather inventive names.”

“You’ve got that right,” I muttered.

“Very good.” Sylvester nodded to me, and then to Quentin, before turning and heading off down the hall at a rapid clip.

“Come along,” said Tybalt, turning to head in the other direction. He kept his hand on my arm, using it to steer me. “We have much ground to cover.”

I was startled enough that I allowed him to pull me for several steps before I stopped, becoming a dead weight against his hand. He turned his head to look at me, expression mild.

“Are you going to begin the shouting while we’re still inside? I ask only because I advised your liege that we’d be in the garden, and I know how you hate disappointing him.”

“Sylvester has been lying to me for my entire life,” I said. “To say I’m not happy with him would be an understatement, but I don’t need you at each other’s throats—”

“October.” Tybalt didn’t take his hand off my arm. “There is no love lost between Sylvester Torquill and myself; there may never be any love there to lose. But I have no objection to his presence, if he will protect us from his brother. Forgive me if I would do whatever needs doing to keep you safe. If you cannot forgive, please understand that I’m never going to change my ways in this regard. Perhaps not in any regard touching on your safety.”

I blinked at him, glancing reflexively to Quentin.

He shook his head. “I’m not getting involved with this one. He’s your boyfriend. Also, I think he’s pretty much right, but I’m not sure I’m allowed to say so, what with the whole squire and loyalty thing in the way.”

“Why did I let you people outnumber me?” I demanded. I turned, starting to walk in the direction Tybalt had been trying to push me. I kept my chin high, trying to show that I was choosing to walk this way.

“Because somewhere in that lovely skull of yours is a glimmer of self-preservation, fighting against all odds to remain intact and keep the rest of you breathing,” said Tybalt, hurrying to keep up. He still didn’t take his hand off my arm. Matching his steps to mine, he continued, “This does raise an interesting question of protocol, however. I had regarded Sylvester as the closest thing you have to a father figure. However, if Simon has a legal claim to the role, I may have to approach him as your eldest male relative.”

I opened my mouth to swear at him, and paused, walking in silence for several steps before I asked, “Is this your way of distracting me from the fact that we’re going to wait on the lawn when my mother may be in danger?”

“Yes,” said Tybalt calmly. “Is it working?”

“If you mean ‘is it making me want to kill you with a brick,’ then yes. It’s working.” I sighed. I might be furious, but it was good to know there were some things I could always count on where Tybalt was concerned. It was even better to know that Sylvester was going to be with us, serving the dual purposes of providing backup and keeping himself in my sight. Upset as I was with him, I didn’t want to think about him here, at Shadowed Hills, where I wouldn’t be able to do anything to help him.

“I know you’re worried, but Amandine is Firstborn,” said Quentin. “I’m pretty sure she can take care of herself.”

“Amandine’s not so good at paying attention to her surroundings right now, and she married Simon,” I said. “Maybe she can take care of herself, but is she going to realize she needs to? Because I’m afraid she’s just going to open the door and invite him back into her life.”

“I doubt even your mother would be so foolish,” said Tybalt, and opened the door to the back garden. For a moment, we all just stared.

“. . . whoa,” I said.

Luna had clearly been preparing the grounds for winter, even if she was spending the bulk of her time at Rayseline’s bedside. Most of the roses were covered by canvas sheeting, and the hedges had somehow been teased to even greater heights than in the summer, twisting into strange, elegant shapes. The roses that weren’t covered didn’t need to be; they were flowers of pure snow white and brittle, translucent ice blue, impossible in the mortal world, and impossibly beautiful even in the Summerlands.

Quentin was less reserved than I was. “Snow!” he shouted, our troubles forgotten as he dove straight into the nearest snowdrift. The spray he kicked up hit me in the face. I yelped.

“Hey! Be careful! That stuff is cold.” I looked mournfully at the white expanse of the lawn. “It didn’t even occur to me that it might be snowing in the Summerlands.”

“It may not have been five minutes ago,” said Tybalt. He gave me a concerned look. “Should I go inside, and see if I can locate a Hob to give me directions to the winter wear?”

“No,” I said, turning to face him as I finished my scan of the gardens. “I need to talk to you.”

Tybalt frowned, watching me silently. I fought the urge to bite my lip. He looked so serious, and so worried, like he knew that whatever I was going to say, it wasn’t going to be something he wanted to hear.

Tough. “Did you know?” The words were strangely fragile when exposed to the light like that.

Tybalt blinked. “Did I know?” he echoed.

“Did you know Simon and my mother were married? Have you been keeping this from me? Have you been doing the same thing everyone else has been doing, and protecting me?” I spat the words at him like a mouthful of snakes, all twisting and venomous. “I need to know the truth, and I need to know it now.”

“No,” he said, and I didn’t hear any lies in that word, only rock-solid conviction. “I swear to you, October, I did not know. My association with the Torquill line goes back centuries, but it was broken after the Great Fire of London, when they ran and left me behind in a city full of ghosts. I never even knew that Simon had married, and to be quite honest, I did not care. He is beneath my notice, save for where he endangers you.”

I searched his face, looking for any hint of dishonesty. I didn’t find it. I relaxed, the tension going out of my body. Tybalt put an arm around me, and I leaned close, grateful for his warmth.

“I won’t claim never to have lied to you, but I have not lied to you since we decided to try taking this relationship seriously,” he said quietly. “I love you. Lying to you would be a mistreatment of what that love means.”

I laughed, a cold, jagged sound. “None of the other people who say they love me seem to feel that way.”

“Then they are not very good at loving,” he said. “We will go to your mother. We will see that she is fine. If Simon troubles her, perhaps that will pull her out of the fog. We know she can rise, when she feels the need.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m just worried.”

“That is because you are a good daughter.” Unspoken was the fact that he didn’t think Amandine was a very good mother. I loved him even more for that—both for thinking it, and for not saying it out loud.

She did the best she could with me. It’s just that what she wanted for my life and what I wanted were always different things. I would have broken myself trying to be the daughter she wanted me to be. In the end, I did the only thing I could have done—the only thing that stood any chance of saving us both. I ran away.

I leaned closer to Tybalt, resting my head against his shoulder as I watched Quentin, who was apparently half Snow Fairy, kicking his way through the glittering yard. “We really need to take him skiing,” I said.

Tybalt snorted. He pulled me closer and pressed his cheek against mine, only to draw back and look at me disapprovingly. “You are cold,” he said. “Can I convince you to reconsider your position on properly outfitting yourself for this expedition?”

“Mom’s tower isn’t far, and it’ll be closer if I have genuine need to get there,” I said. “I’ll be cold, but I’ll live.” The Summerlands are the last layer of Faerie to remain accessible. They’re both larger than the mortal world and smaller, following some strange set of physical laws that no one has ever been able to adequately explain. My friend Stacy’s oldest daughter, Cassandra, is majoring in Physics at UC Berkeley, in part because she’d like to be able to figure out how the Summerlands can bend space the way they do.

Living in the mortal world makes it easy to forget that Faerie doesn’t follow the same laws. Maybe that sounds a little pat—I mean, my boyfriend is a cat in his spare time, and my sister was originally the physical embodiment of my impending death—but those things are normal to me. Unlike snow in California, and land that can expand and contract like a rubber band according to the needs of the people who use it.

The one thing that never changes is the size of a claimed demesne. Shadowed Hills had set boundaries and borders. No matter what happened, it remained the same size. Technically, the same could be said about my mother’s tower, but it was a pretty small chunk of real estate: the tower and grounds occupied a patch of land scarcely larger than the footprint of my own Victorian house. I guess that’s one of the side effects of building upward, rather than outward.

The door opened behind us. I pulled away from Tybalt, turning to see Sylvester standing there with an assortment of coats slung over his arm. He had added a military-style greatcoat to his own attire, tan camel hair or something close, with patches on the elbows. “It occurred to me that you had not made allowance for the weather in your plans,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind if I reduce our chances of dying of exposure during the walk.”

There was no point in arguing now. “No, coats are great,” I said, shivering exaggeratedly before I held out my arms. “Gimme. Please. Before I lose feeling in my fingers.”

“You chill too easily,” said Tybalt, with an “I told you so” look.

“You love me anyway.” The coat Sylvester had brought for me was patchwork wool in a dozen shades of red, trimmed with rabbit fur and large enough to fit over my leather jacket. Slipping it on was like enfolding myself in a giant fabric hug. I stuffed my hands into the pockets, enjoying the feeling of being completely surrounded.

“True enough.” Tybalt’s coat was of a similar style, if in a more masculine cut, and made of shades of brown and gray. He sniffed once, and then said, “These will do.”

“You’re darn right.” I took the last coat from Sylvester—this one done in shades of purple—and held it up, shouting, “Quentin! Come put this on before you catch your death of cold! I need you to live long enough to be cannon fodder when Simon decides to attack.”

“You’re really inspiring, you know that?” asked Quentin, as he trudged through the snow to take the coat from my hands.

“I learned from the best,” I said. “Come on. Let’s move.”

The boundary of Sylvester’s land was always marked by a forest. We walked toward the trees, our feet crunching in the snow, and into a veritable winter wonderland. Everything was limned in glittering white. Most of the trees were leafless and dormant. Meanwhile, the scattered trees that always appeared brown and dead during the summer had come alive, putting forth frost-laced leaves and even delicate winter flowers. I glanced to Sylvester, who knew more about fae flora than I did.

He took the hint. “Luna planted some of these, of course; she took cuttings from others, for the winter gardens. They’re all naturally occurring. They can lie dormant for years while they wait for a good snowfall.”

“Huh,” I said.

Quentin was ranging ahead again, too delighted by the snow to be sensible about staying with the pack. Tybalt walked to my left; Sylvester to my right. They didn’t look at each other, and I was too tired from lack of sleep and too worried about my mother to play mediator. They were both big boys. They’d figure it out for themselves, or they wouldn’t.

The wood ended at a meadow. That was normal. What wasn’t normal was the dividing line that ran through the middle of the open ground, cutting it into two distinct landscapes. On our side, the Shadowed Hills side, everything was white and frozen. On the other side, as the land grew closer to Mother’s tower, everything was growing resplendently green, completely ignoring the season. In Faerie, the king is the land, and that goes for anyone who holds dominion over even the smallest scrap of territory. The space between Shadowed Hills and Amandine’s tower was unclaimed, responding in a general fashion to the kings and queens around it.

“Is there a reason Shadowed Hills is having a white Christmas?” I asked, glancing to Sylvester.

He sighed, and looked away. “Luna is . . . not well,” he said, before beginning his march down the gently sloping hillside, toward that slash of improbable green.

I winced. “Right.” I looked to Tybalt. “Mom probably doesn’t even know what season it is.” Actually, thinking about it, it was never anything but summer at her tower. That was part of why the snow had been such a surprise. I’d only lived in the Summerlands for a decade or so—no time at all, as Faerie measured such things—and most of that time had been spent as Amandine’s shadow, living with her in her eternal summertime. It was easy to forget that some people were fond of cycles, if not of actual change.

“Amandine will be fine,” said Tybalt, taking my arm in his. “If Simon wishes to challenge a Firstborn daughter of Oberon on her own ground that will be his funeral, not yours.”

“Come on.” I started after Sylvester, trying not to dwell on the word “funeral.” Mom was Firstborn. That didn’t make her immune to Oberon’s Law. If she killed Simon, she could be in serious trouble, and while I didn’t think she was a killer, it was always hard to tell what Mom would do. I’d never learned to read her the way I had most of the other people who made up my admittedly small circle of family and close friends. But in the years since I’d returned from the pond . . .

Fae madness isn’t the same as human mental illness. Sometimes I wish the fae had maintained a language of their own, rather than stealing and sharing with mortals. Maybe then we’d have a better word for what the purebloods go through when the centuries of mistakes and magical backlash get to be too much. They go away for a time, receding into themselves and pulling a veil of fog over the world. It’s the only way to give their brains the space to carve out a new worldview, something that can account for the changes that inevitably happen around them. Amandine had been skirting the edges of that fog when I had run away from her, tired of watching her flirt with an oblivion that would probably leave me dead of extreme old age before it let her go. Then Simon had transformed me, and by the time I made it back to my own body, Amandine was gone, burying herself in the fog with all the enthusiasm of a girl preparing for her first formal ball.

She might know Simon wasn’t living with her anymore. But depending on how long they’d been together, she might not.

I walked a little faster.

Everything changed when we stepped across the invisible line dividing the lands influenced by Shadowed Hills from the lands influenced by my mother. The temperature shot up at least ten degrees, everything suddenly smelling of fresh green leaves and sweet potential. I pulled my arm away from Tybalt long enough to shrug out of my coat. He and Quentin did the same. Sylvester kept his coat on, but his was tailored, not borrowed from the general stock; it was probably enchanted to keep him at just the right temperature, regardless of the weather. We walked on until the bowl of the meadow began slanting upward again, and we stepped out of springtime into summer.

By any rules of normal geography, we should have been able to see Amandine’s tower long before we reached that transition point. The Summerlands aren’t big on rules. We stepped into the summer, and the land leveled out before us, and we were suddenly standing less than fifteen yards from the low stone wall that surrounded the elegant white needle of the tower. The stone glowed faintly against the twilit sky. Flowering trees and bushes crowded her garden, all blooming in a dozen shades of white and ivory.

“Think she’s home?” asked Quentin.

“I don’t have the slightest idea,” I said, and started walking faster. The others fell back, allowing me to take the lead. The enchantments on the tower knew who I was; they’d always let me in, no matter what else might be going on. That could be important, depending on the situation ahead of us.

The gate swung open when I touched it. I left my fingertips against the wood, murmuring, “These three are with me. Let them in.” Then I walked on, into my mother’s garden.

Tybalt, Quentin, and Sylvester followed without difficulty. The enchantments were listening.

I hadn’t lived in the tower for a long time, but the layout of the garden had always been simple, and I knew the way. I followed the path as it curved gently past the marble birdbath to the door, which was standing open. That was enough to make me stop, one hand going to my knife as I sniffed the air, trying to find traces of magic beneath the riotous perfumes of a dozen different types of flower, some of which never existed in the mortal world. I thought I smelled smoke. I couldn’t be sure.

“Tybalt?”

“Yes.” The smell of pennyroyal and musk cut through the layers of perfume as he transformed, and as a cat, he raced past me, up the shallow steps at the threshold, into the building beyond.

I tensed, waiting where I was. Simon was a powerful magician, but Tybalt was harder to transform than I was—most people are harder to transform than I am—and there’s very little that can catch a Cait Sidhe when he’s not trying to be caught. The tower was five floors, no more than four rooms to a floor. Some of the floors were a single large room, like mine, like Amandine’s. He could search them and return in an instant. He could—

He reappeared on the steps, stretching back into human form, a blank expression on his face. For just an instant, I was certain that he had found her body in one of the tower’s upper rooms, throat slit by the silver and iron required to kill one of the Firstborn, colorless eyes open and staring into the rafters.

Then he shook his head. “She is not here; from the scent markings in her room and parlor, she has not been here in days, maybe even weeks. There are no signs of a struggle. I’m sorry, October. Your mother is still missing.”

It was almost a relief. I realized that even as I sighed, shook my head, and said, “We had to check. Did you smell anyone else?”

“Yes.” His face hardened again. “Traces of candle smoke and rotten oranges. Simon has been here, and recently.”

I turned to Sylvester to see how he was taking this news. He was staring at the tower, lips gone pale and bloodless as he pressed them into a thin, hard line. One hand was grasping the pommel of his sword. His knuckles were white, and I had to fight not to take a step away from him.

“I can’t follow this trail. Our magic is not so attuned as it once was, and he is too far for me to follow. He could see our walls from your mother’s land, and the wards would never tell me how close he had come,” said Sylvester, voice pitched low. “He could have been here for days, watching us, waiting for the chance to strike. Oh, he is going to pay for what he’s done to me and mine, October. On the root and the branch, I promise you that.”

I glanced to Tybalt, who looked as alarmed as I felt. He stepped away from the tower, and the door swung shut behind him, leaving the four of us standing in my mother’s garden, where the white petals from the blossoming trees were falling like so much unfrozen snow.