Seanan McGuire - Chimes at Midnight

Tybalt looked at me out of the corner of his eye, clearly interested in my answer. I took a deep breath and held it for a few seconds before letting it out and nodding. “I don’t know. But I’m going to try.”

“Who would you put on the throne?” asked Tybalt mildly.

“See, there’s the stumper. She has no kids, and even if she did, they wouldn’t have a legitimate claim, since she doesn’t have a legitimate claim. She was able to take the throne because there was no known heir. The Windermere line died with King Gilad. I guess that means she’d be as valid a Queen as anyone, if she could get the High King to confirm her as the start of a new royal line, but she’s been on the throne so long . . .”

“If she knew she wasn’t King Gilad’s heir, and she took the throne anyway, that’s treason,” said Quentin. “We could tell the High King now.”

“If we can prove she wasn’t Gilad’s heir, sure,” I said, feeling even more daunted by the scope of this potentially treasonous notion. In the mortal world, contesting someone’s claim to a throne after a century had passed might have seemed excessive. In Faerie, it was likely to be filed under “guess it’s Tuesday.” “But we need something more concrete than the word of the changeling she’s just banished if we want the High King to take this seriously. If we make a false accusation, we won’t live to make a true one.”

“So we find proof,” said Quentin.

“I do enjoy a challenge,” said Tybalt.

We were quiet for the rest of the drive home. Cagney and Lacey—my half-Siamese cats—were sitting in the kitchen window when we pulled into the driveway. They looked at us disapprovingly as we got out of the car. “You’d think dating a King of Cats would get them to cut me a little slack,” I said.

Quentin snorted. “Are you kidding? The cats probably think you’re a social climber.”

“Something like that,” said Tybalt.

“I hate you both,” I said, walking to the back door. I unlocked it, pushing it open and calling, “It’s us. Where is everybody?”

“We’re in the dining room!” May called back.

We found them sitting at the dining room table. May was cutting pictures out of a magazine. Jazz was armed with a hot glue gun, a plaster unicorn head, and a box of artificial gems in various colors and sizes. I stopped in the doorway. “Do I want to know?”

“It helps us stay calm,” said Jazz, hot gluing a bright purple teardrop to the unicorn’s cheek.

“How did it go?” asked May.

“The Luidaeg told me to talk to people who’d known King Gilad before he died,” I said. “So we went to Goldengreen to talk to the Lordens.”

“And?” prompted May.

“Dianda and Patrick were happy to talk to us about King Gilad,” I said. “The trouble is, that just made things worse.”

May frowned. “How could they make things worse than ‘we have a goblin fruit problem and I’ve been banished from the Kingdom’? Is the Undersea being attacked by giant squid?”

“I think the giant squid thing is pretty much normal for them, but no. According to Dianda, the Queen of the Mists isn’t King Gilad Windermere’s daughter. Which means she’s not legitimately our Queen; she’s been holding a throne that wasn’t hers for all these years, and no one did anything about it.”

“Which goes a long way toward explaining her policies regarding the Undersea,” noted Tybalt. “Most of the nobility on land was behind her, or was mysteriously absent. I doubt our sea-going cousins would have been so accommodating.”

Jazz yelped. I turned. She was sucking the side of her thumb. “Sorry,” she said, voice muffled by her hand. “I got distracted listening to you and hot glued myself to my unicorn.”

“Right. See, this is why I don’t think anyone in this house should be allowed to use power tools.” I shook my head. “Anyway, now we need to figure out how to prove that Dianda is right about the Queen. And we have to do it all in three days, since otherwise I’m going to be committing treason by correspondence course.”

“We all are,” said May. I blinked at her. She laughed, a little wearily. “Do you honestly think Jazz and I will be staying if you go? Oh, and Quentin? He may be fostered to Shadowed Hills, but he’s your squire. He goes where you do, unless you decide to leave him behind.”

“Which you’re not going to do,” said Quentin quickly.

“I have a Court to tend to,” said Tybalt. My heart sank a little, even though I had already known that would be his answer. Then, to my surprise, he continued, “It will take me some time to hand my duties off to Raj. When that is done, I will find you.”

I turned to stare at him. “What . . . ?”

“I am a cat, October. I have a sense of duty, because I am also a man, but no cat can be held down by duty forever. Eventually, we must go where we wish to be, not where we are told.” Tybalt smiled slightly at the expression on my face. “A simple banishment is not enough to see you quit of me, little fish.”

“Is it just me, or is getting hot in here?” asked May, causing Jazz to break into a peal of laughter. I wrinkled my nose at her, but I was secretly relieved. I would have either thrown myself at him or blushed myself to death in a few more seconds, and neither of those was a great option.

“You are all evil.” I slicked the wisps of hair that had escaped their net of ribbons back from my face with both hands, releasing the illusion that had been making me look human in the same gesture. “Okay. We have three problems. If the Queen of the Mists isn’t supposed to be in charge, who is? How do we find them? And how do we depose a sitting monarch who has her very own private army?”

“Remember when our biggest problem was ‘who turned the laundry pink’?” asked May. Then she sighed. “Yeah. Me neither.”

“Your guess is as good as mine on all of these topics,” said Tybalt. “Even in my misspent youth, I never attempted to depose a monarch of the Divided Courts. Only my father, and I doubt our means of succession would hold in the Courts of Oberon.”

“Probably not, but . . .” I paused. “Maybe we don’t need to guess about any of this.”

“What?” said May.

“What?” echoed Jazz and Quentin.

“Li Qin has a Library card.” I dug my phone out of my jacket pocket. “Maybe she can get me a temporary pass or something.”

Tybalt blinked. “That is a surprisingly thoughtful, nonviolent solution.”

I stuck my tongue out at him as I scrolled through my contact list, finally locating the entry for Li Qin Zhou, current acting regent of Dreamer’s Glass. She was the widow of Countess January O’Leary of Tamed Lightning, and the adoptive mother of Countess April O’Leary, also of Tamed Lightning. She was also the only person I knew who might be able to get me into the local Library.

The phone rang twice before Li Qin picked up, with a cheerful, “October! I wasn’t expecting to hear from you today. Has Treasa turned up?”

“Not as such, no.” Duchess Treasa Riordan was technically the regent of Dreamer’s Glass. It was a real pity she’d gone and gotten herself stranded in Annwn, leaving Li Qin to mind her fiefdom. And by “real pity,” I mean “too bad she didn’t do it sooner.” “I need to ask for a favor.”

“Anything. I owe you.”

“Yeah, you do, but you might want to hear what I need before you agree to it. Can you get me a Library pass?”

There was a pause before Li Qin asked, “May I know why you need one?”

“Stuff. Important stuff. I’m not going to burn the place down or anything, I just need to look a few things up, and the Library seems like the best starting point.”

There was a longer pause. Then Li Qin said, “I know when you’re not telling me everything.”