The Act of Hares

by

Seanan McGuire

They that have the voice of lions and the act of hares,

Are they not monsters?

—William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida

London, England, 1709

October

Colleen curled upon my knee, a contented purr echoing through her bones as I ran my hand along her back. Its vibrations tickled my skin in the most pleasant of ways. I closed my eyes, letting my head tilt back until I was fully relaxed into my throne. This, right here, was happiness. I might need nothing more for all the long days of my life.

Cats and men both enjoy being petted, when they trust the hand that strokes them. It was at Colleen’s insistence that I had begun sitting Court for my Kingdom of two—as if either she or Cailin could bring anything before me which I had not already heard over the dinner table—and it had been her idea to spend the span of my fortnightly sessions in her feline form, where she could neither offer counsel nor be seen to influence my hand.

She has always been more aware of the etiquette of what we are, my sister, my star to steer by. I blame our childhoods. I spent mine playing the fool and the fop to keep our father from seeing me as a viable challenger for his throne, with my sisters’ lives standing hostage to my good behavior. Colleen, though…she knew Father never viewed the girls as viable challengers, for it is perishingly rare for a Court which serves under a Queen to be taken by a King, or the reverse. She learned her lessons with an eye toward eventual escape, either once I or one of my brothers had deposed Father, or alone in the middle of the day, when all Faerie was sleeping.

It was amusing, in a way. She had prepared to be a Queen, and now here she was, subject of the boy who had never dreamt himself a King, whose first and truest act of kingship had been to drive all of his own kind from the boundaries of his Kingdom. I might be no ruler, as yet, but I was an excellent enforcer of my own decrees, and I had decreed solitude.

Perhaps I would have had it forever, had not my sister fallen in love with a prince of the Divided Courts and fled back into my protection, carrying her newborn daughter in her arms. My niece, Cailin. No Princess of Cats, but the princess of my heart, and the second subject of my Kingdom. For her, I would do anything. Even enact this farce of sitting to hear the petitions of subjects who did not exist, to prepare her for the day when she and her mother would need to leave Londinium and seek out the company of more of our own kind.

I had sealed my own fate when I killed my adoptive father and took his crown for my own. Never mind that I did it to preserve the lives of everyone I had ever cared for: a King has a duty to the Shadow Roads, and it must be upheld. I could no more walk away from the responsibilities I had willingly assumed than I could tire of being a cat and become a silver hind instead.

Cailin, though…nine years old, and already too fond of mortals by half, because the mortal children were all she had ever had as playmates. She was still young enough that the difference in their lifespans had yet to occur to her. She would watch them age, see them wither and die, and then she would learn the folly of consorting with humans. She needed the company of fae children her own age, of other Cait Sidhe who might be able to coax her from her stubborn reliance on her two-legged form and introduce her to the delights of dashing through the world on four swift paws, whiskers tilted toward the wind.

These Courts, these endless hours sitting with Colleen on my knee, waiting for petitioners who would never come, they were all preparation for the day my bonnie girls would leave me. I only hoped that when they did, they would leave enough of my heart behind to allow me to survive.

“We…we come before the King of Fogbound Cats with open hands and bared throats, ready to be punished for our hubris.”

The voice was male, unfamiliar, quavering slightly with terror and overlaid with hope. I sat bolt upright, eyes opening. Colleen dug her claws into my leg to keep herself from being dislodged. I barely noticed the pain. All my focus was on the open space in front of me.

There were four of them standing there. A man grown, his face marked around the edges with the odd rosettes of a Scottish tabby, his hair a shade of orange that has never graced a human’s head; a woman—a girl, barely past her teens, if that—with a hair few shades darker and the same spots ringing her face; a babe in her arms, swaddled so tightly that I could see nothing of markings or otherwise. And a child, dressed in rags and tags, hair so black that it could have swallowed the sun whole, clinging to the girl’s leg like she might disappear at any moment.

The child was Cailin’s age, or within a year of it. I would have staked my throne on that.

“What,” I demanded, sitting up even straighter, wrapping imperiousness around myself like a shroud, “is the meaning of this?”

“W-we heard, Highness, that the Court of Fogbound Cats held audience again after these forty years,” said the man, voice quavering. “We come to seek service in your Court. We would be yours, if you would have us.”

I narrowed my eyes and cast a glance at Colleen, still purring upon my knee. “You meant for this to happen, you little minx,” I murmured, voice pitched for her ears alone. “We will speak of this later, you and I.”

She said nothing, but purred on.

The petitioners were still standing patiently when I lifted my eyes once more to them. Well, three of them were. The child had found something on the floor that was far more enthralling than staring at an unknown King; she was leaning away from the girl as casually as she could, all but trembling with the urge to pounce.

Kings do not smile when in formal audience. It simply is not done. I smothered the impulse before it could fully form, and asked, “What makes you think this Court would suit you? The whole of it is arrayed before you now. This is not a place of luxury and comfort.”

“My father served in your father’s Court, until he was driven from his home for the crime of refusing to yield my mother to the King,” said the man. His voice shook as he spoke. “They live still, far from here. They would not return to Londinium for all the fish in Atlantis. But they spoke well of the youngest Prince of this Court; said that he was not cruel, nor needlessly harsh to those he might have thought beneath him.”

Mention of my father was enough to peel my lips back from my teeth, baring them in a snarl. “You do not yet recommend yourselves to me.”

“Highness, I bring my children, and my grandchild, to the Court where they should have been born, been cared for as all children of the Cait Sidhe deserve, regardless of their parentage.” He was speaking faster now, words stumbling one over the other. “I knew that the Prince my parents spoke of must have grown into a King who would understand that children are precious. Did not Malvic and Erda accept Jibvel, and raise him as their own, for all that they shared no blood between them?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Invoking all three among the night-haunts is an interesting approach, Mister…?”

“Bartram,” said the man, with something like relief. Dismayed, I realized that he saw this as me taking an interest. “This is my eldest daughter, Agnet, and my youngest, Chalcedony. The babe in arms in my grandson, Bram.”

“Pardon me the presumption,” I said, tone making it clear that I needed no pardon: I was King here. Anything I asked was more than reasonable. “Where is your mate?”

Bartram’s face fell. “Gone to the winds,” he said. “She was slain two winters past, when she raced against a cart and lost.” The girl at his side flinched, clutching her baby more tightly, and refused to look at me.

Well, then.

“Ah. That would be a pity, if it were true.” I raised one hand to the level of my eyes, studying it as I extended my claws. Bartram took a step backward, pushing his children with him. A smart man after all.

Not smart enough to refrain from lying to me.

“H-Highness, I don’t—”

“Your mate was not killed in a cart accident. If she had been, your daughter would not look like she were so terrified of being caught lying to a King.” I stood, Colleen leaping lightly from my knee, and allowed more of my human seeming to melt away. Claws extended and stripes exposed, I snarled. “The Court of Fogbound Cats has been sealed for forty years, and you would come to me with a lie on your lips? Do you take me for a fool? Run, little man, and be glad that I know more of mercy than my father.”

“But—”

“Run.”

“No.”

The voice was sweet, female, and unfamiliar. I glanced toward it in surprise. Agnet had stepped away from her father, the babe still bundled tight against her breast, her younger sister clinging to her skirts. She was glaring at me, her pupils narrowed to hairline slits of challenge and disapproval.

“What did you say?” I asked. There was a rustle of skirts from behind me as Colleen slid into a two-legged form and stepped to my side.

“I said no,” said Agnet. “We won’t run. If you don’t want us here, you’ll have to kill the lot of us here and now.” Her father’s accent was almost local—the result of his upbringing, no doubt—while hers was Scottish, bright and broad in the same breath, like the language was being made anew in her mouth. “We’re done with running.”

“Your father lied to me, child.”

“My father lied to protect me. If there’s to be punishment, it falls to my head, not his.” She raised her chin. “Can you kill a mother with a baby in her arms? Are you such a great man, such a powerful king, as that?”

“If you ask the humans, the most powerful kings have always been child-killers.” I took a step forward, sniffing at the air, and stopped to stare at her. “The child—”

“Changelings have always been welcome in the Court of Cats,” she snapped. There was a clear challenge in her voice. I had no doubt that she would have been happy to fight me to the death for the sake of her son.

I respected that. “No one has been welcome in this Court for a very long time.”

“Then isn’t it lucky that we bring you everything you need to be renewed?” She continued to glare at me. “A changeling boy to look down upon and a Princess to stand for your heir. We are a complete Court in and of ourselves, save that we have neither Queen nor King to stand for our interests.”

“A Princess?” I snorted. “You are no Princess.”

“She’s not,” said Chalcedony. It was the first time the child had spoken. Her accent was even thicker than her sister’s, like heather rolling across the moors that comprised her heart. I could hear the power in it, still young, but growing with every passing day. “I am.”

“So you are,” said Colleen, moving so that we were standing side-by-side. I risked a glance at her. She was gazing at Chalcedony with wide, approving eyes, and I knew two things in that instant, both of them complete and irrefutable: that my sister had found her heir, and that she would, before too much time had passed, be challenging me for my throne.

I should have been angry. The part of me that was, despite everything, my father’s son wanted to be angry. I was a King. Nothing could ever take that away from me. Whether I was deposed or defeated or stepped aside, I would still be a King, unable to go back to the careless frivolity of princedom. The Shadow Roads knew my name. They would follow me to the ends of the earth if they had to, and never let me go. But the greater part of me rejoiced at the thought that soon, perhaps, this burden might pass from my shoulders. Let Colleen bear it for a time. Let her train her own successor, and let the Court of Fogbound Cats bloom again. I had no interest in being its gardener. I had been its protector, for a time.

Let that be enough.

“So you are,” I said, in echo to my sister. I stepped down from the dais and walked toward the little group of four, pausing at the last moment to crouch and put myself on a level with Chalcedony. She was glaring at me with an unmatched fierceness, a kitten preparing to fight a lion for the sake of her family.

The urge to ruffle her ears and tell her that she was very fierce, yes, very fierce indeed was strong. I would have done it, had it been Cailin looking at me with such challenge in her eyes. With this child, I would have been delivering a grave insult—and might have found myself lacking a hand.

“Surely you can understand why a King cannot let a lie stand,” I said, in as reasonable a tone as I could manage. “If you were to become my subjects, then a lie would be cause for punishment, with the gravity of it to be decided by me and me alone. Your father lied to me.”

“He had to,” she spat.

“Why did he have to?” I kept my eyes on the young Princess, constantly aware of Colleen’s presence. She would be focusing on the family, protecting me from attack. It is truly a pity that the Cait Sidhe must always rule alone. If we could have shared our father’s throne, all of Londinium would no doubt have fallen before us.

“So you’d let us stay.” She narrowed her eyes, studying me. “But you didn’t. You said to go. Why did you do that?”

“Because he lied,” I said. “The snake swallows its own tail, little one, and we remain where we began. Why did he lie to me? What is the truth he would not tell?”

For the first time, the kitten Princess looked uncertain. She glanced back to her older sister, and to the bundle in her arms.

The story was coming clear, much as I wished it wouldn’t. I swallowed bile and anger, straightening as I turned to face the eldest among their number once again. He flinched as he met my eyes, clearly believing that the rage he saw reflected there was intended for him.

“My sister is clearly enamored of your youngest daughter,” I said. “She has a girl about the same age, and has been eagerly seeking a companion for her. Taking this into consideration, I find myself inclined to give you the opportunity to sing a different song, should you so desire. Where, sir, is your mate?”

“Dead, Highness,” he said. “I did not lie when I told you that.”

“You lied regarding the manner of her death.”

“I did,” he admitted quietly. Then, with no effort to conceal his bitterness, he said, “Oberon gave us a Law when he knew that he was leaving, but he left it so full of holes that he might as well have done nothing at all. It doesn’t protect the changelings. It doesn’t protect the pixies, or those who have no voices of their own—the Barghests, the Unicorns. It doesn’t protect us from royalty, who claim the right to perform executions.”

I said nothing. Agnet was looking at the baby in her arms, tears forming in her eyes. Chalcedony was still clinging to her sister’s skirt, eyeing me warily, with the air of a kitten who had been kicked one time too many. No Princess of Cats should ever wear that expression.

“It doesn’t protect us from our own,” finished Bartram, looking down at his own unshod feet.

I waited. He said nothing more. Finally, I turned to Agnet. “I am willing to listen,” I said. “But someone must speak. If no one will speak, the lie remains my only truth, and I will need to act upon it. Will you tell me the truth?”

“My son is a changeling,” she said. “His father worked at the mill in the town nearest to the Court where we served. He had kind hands. When the miller commanded that unwanted kittens be drowned, he would carry them to the water and release them where no one could see, in the hopes that they would find their fortune, or at least a chance for survival. He was kind. No one asked him to be kind, and he was kind.”

I said nothing. She was speaking, at last. Interruption would only serve to slow her down.

“He spared the lives of my dearest friend’s kittens. She had borne them in an ill-considered place, and when they were found, she dared not change forms, out of fear of revealing her true nature to the humans. She was too weak from the birthing to take them to the shadows. Five kittens—five Cait Sidhe babes!—and all could have been lost, if not for the kindness of a man who had no cause to be.” Agnet looked down at her boy, and smiled wistfully. “So I went to him, to show him the Cait Sidhe were grateful for what he had done. To show him kindness would be rewarded. Three times I shared his bed, and when I left him, I carried his last gift to me in my belly, needing only time to be revealed. But our Queen…” Her voice trailed off.

No matter: I could see the shape of the story now. “Your Queen knew your sister was a Princess born. Power of that kind shows from the moment a kit’s eyes are open. She objected to the thought that the next to hold her throne might be burdened with changeling kin. She demanded you do to the boy as the miller had done to so many kittens. She demanded you drown him, and leave his body as a warning of the dangers of the river.”

Agnet raised her head, eyes wide and bright with unshed tears. “How did you…?”

“Because it’s what my father would have done. It’s what he would have counseled me to do, had he raised me to be King, and not a guarantee against his own throne.” There are those among the Divided Courts who count the Cait Sidhe as beasts, because when we resolve a problem, we tend to do so with tooth and claw and bright finality. The Divided Courts is fonder of silly theatrics, turning men into trees or women into white-coated hinds, setting their own weapons against them. They toy with their food in a way that we would never dream, and yet they call us the barbaric ones.

“I don’t care if my nephew is a changeling,” said Chalcedony, glaring at me once more. “He’s mine and he always smells like milk and I love him.”

“Did I say I cared?” I asked mildly. “I have no special fondness for changelings, but neither do I view them as so disposable that I would kill a child for the crime of their parentage. His existence does not change your future, nor besmirch your family in any way. But the Queen you served under felt differently, did she not?” I swung my gaze back toward Bartram.

He nodded, swallowing hard. “My mate…my wife. We married in the manner of the Divided Courts before our first child was born.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“She had had an older brother who bore a Prince’s power. He was sold into fosterage by her parents when she was still a kit. If we were married, I could never sell our children. Not without her full and free consent, which she would never give.”

The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and my teeth ached to lengthen. The world is sometimes smaller than we wish it to be, and which of my brothers had been sold by this family’s ancestors was beside the point: I owed their memories nothing. Colleen had found our mother before returning to Londinium, or at least the bones of her, and all the family I had lived in these halls.

“Who killed her?” I asked.

“Our Queen,” he replied.

“And the Law?”

His laugh was bitter. “Would protect us only if I were willing to go to some other regent and claim insult against her.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Do you claim insult?”

“No.” He shook his head, making no effort to conceal his weariness. “I would not start a war for the sake of my beloved. I wish only to keep the children she gave to me safe, and to see my grandson grow. Please, Highness. I am a proud man, but I will kneel if you command it. Let us stay here. Let my children grow up in safety, and not in fear.”

There was no question of what my answer would be, had been no question since Colleen recognized Chalcedony for what she was. Still, I was silent for a count of ten before I asked, “Why did she kill your wife, who the Law could protect, and not your grandson, who the Law would not protect?”

“My wife stayed to fight for us, to give us time to escape,” said Bartram. “She died for her family.”

As Jill had done once, for me. I swallowed hard, and said, “Do not challenge me and you can stay.”

“We will not challenge you,” said Bartram solemnly.

“Thank you for that,” I replied, and the compact was sealed.

Colleen stepped forward, suddenly smiling. “We have a great many unoccupied rooms,” she said. “Let me help you find one that will suit you.” She herded them before her like so many chickens in a farmyard, and in a matter of moments, I was alone in my throne room once again.

My throne room. My throne. Sweet Oberon, I had subjects; I had a Court. At long last, I would need to be a King in more than name alone. I stood frozen, staring at the wall, and wondered what in the world I was meant to do next.

#

“Uncle?”

I did not know how long I had been standing in silence before the most beloved voice in all the world came to break the spell and set me free. I turned, already smiling, toward it.

“Hello, darling,” I said. “How has your day been?”

“Boring,” said Cailin, wrinkling her nose. “Where’s Mother?”

“She’ll be back soon,” I assured her, and bowed. “Would milady care for something to eat?”

Cailin giggled.

Children—all children—are a wonder and a miracle and should be prized above all else. Of this there has never been any question, but I hoped that the world would forgive me for considering my sister’s child, my niece, to be the most wondrous and precious of them all. She was my miracle, and without her the burden of the crown would weigh far heavier.

Like her mother, Cailin was a calico child, white and black and orange, although her eyes were the strange purple of frost forming on the skin of a ripe plum. She inherited them from her father, the late Prince Santon of the Daoine Sidhe. That was not all she had of his, impossible as it should have been for her to retain any gifts of his blood: when she had been but a babe in arms, Colleen and I had bargained with Cyne, Santon’s sister, to spare her life by stripping her father’s bloodline from her veins. She was as purely Cait Sidhe as Colleen or I, despite her eyes…and despite her refusal to transform. The power was there, thrumming in her magic, and yet she had never once assumed a feline shape. She was content to walk the world on two legs, allowing the orange and black streaks in her white hair to betray her bloodline to anyone who asked, and never to know what it was to race the moon along the rooftops, whiskers flat and tail brushed out like a shooting star given flesh.

It was strange to me, who had been more kit than boy during my own long-distant childhood, that she should choose to eschew half of her birthright so completely. There had been times when I had felt shame at the idea that perhaps she couldn’t transform—that her refusal was born of necessity, and not desire. That shame had yielded, every time, to a greater, wilder shame, this one directed at myself, who dared to feel that anything about my niece was less than perfect. Whether she learned to shift her form or not, she was Cailin, and I would not change a thing about her if I could.

“I’m not hungry,” said Cailin finally. “And I’m not a lady.”

“The Divided Courts would call you ‘princess’ for your place in these halls.” I closed the distance between us with quick steps, sweeping her off the floor and up onto my shoulder. Another cascade of giggles followed the motion, and I smiled as I said, “They use the word differently, it’s true, tie it to blood and not to power, but who’s to say you shouldn’t be a lady, if you wish to be? I would fight all the knights in Albion for your honor, if you would have me for a champion.”

“Silly Uncle,” she said, and kissed the top of my head.

I would have died for that girl. The world needed only to ask me.

“I’m glad you’re here,” I said, walking toward my throne. It was a theatrical thing, all bare wood and paste jewels, stolen from a theater that had fallen into disrepair and been close enough to forgotten to slip through the cracks into the space where I could claim it. All forgotten things and places belong to the Cait Sidhe. We find our greatest treasures there. It was no grand creation of gold and shining stones, as my father’s had been, but that was why I was willing to sit on it at all. His throne could never have given me peace, or comfort.

I swung Cailin down from my shoulder and onto the throne, settling her as regally as any Queen before dropping to one knee before her, head bowed, every inch the petitioner.

Cailin giggled again. “Speak, sir,” she said, with a sweet imperiousness in her tone.

“Four of our kind appeared before me today,” I said, raising my head and watching her, gauging her reaction to my words. “A man, his two daughters, and the son of the elder girl. They came fleeing a Court that had no place for them, and asked me if there might be a place for them here, in the Court of Fogbound Cats.”

Cailin’s eyes widened. “How old is the little boy?”

“A babe in arms, my dearest, no fit playmate for a girl of your stature.” She began to droop. Before she could do so fully, I added, “But the younger girl is your age. Her name is Chalcedony, and she is a Princess.”

Cailin was old enough to understand what that meant, and how it was different from the title some members of the Divided Courts had tried to hang on her over the years. Her eyes widened again, this time with bright, certain eagerness. “Mother needs a Princess,” she said. “She hasn’t got an heir. Are you going to let them stay?”

“I am.”

“For true?”

“For true,” I said gravely. Anyone else who questioned my word would have met the points of my claws. From her, in her excitement, it was a delight, and the chance to be allowed to tell her twice. “Your mother is seeing them settled in the Court. It’s been so long since any lived here save the three of us that it may take some coaxing to pull their rooms out of the walls, but I am confident she can achieve it. She knows this place as well as I do.”

Better even, in some ways. I had been the fool, distracting our father with my useless excesses, while she had struggled to hide herself and our sisters from his eyes. We had both had our failures in those days. Of the six that had comprised our patchwork litter, she and I alone survived. It was not enough. It was all we had.

“Can I meet them?”

“I don’t know. Can you? Are you capable of making introductions and beholding someone new?”

Cailin scowled at me. “Uncle.”

“What?”

“May I meet them?”

“You may.” I stood, offering her my hand. She slid off the throne, taking it, and together we walked out of the throne room and into the hall that would lead us to the greater Court.

The Divided Courts carve their hollow hills and hallowed halls out of the space between the Summerlands and the mortal world, that thick, liminal membrane that keeps the realms from spilling into one another. They build their towering spires and imposing castles on Faerie’s soil, and they punch holes through the membrane to connect them to humanity’s domain. They think themselves clever for accomplishing this fragile construction, as if they have done anything more than imitate what the Cait Sidhe have been doing since Oberon bade us to run and hide and watch.

Where there are cats, there are Cait Sidhe, and where there are Cait Sidhe, there must be a Court of Cats, but we do not live there. We have our own Kingdom, etched on that same membrane, just…slightly above, slightly below. Out of sight and never out of mind. The Shadow Roads—which belong to us entirely, anchored by the presence of our Kings and Queens—lead us to the forgotten places, the human buildings left to fall to disappear, the dark corners of knowes where a wall was allowed to slice off a dining hall or bedchamber. We can take those places, if we like them, adding them to the vast patchwork that we call our own. Then, since they are not lost any longer, but found by their new owners, they disappear from where they had once been, becoming ours forever.

My father had been fond of ridiculous things. He claimed Viking feast halls and longbarrow chambers, forgotten palace storage rooms and high-ceilinged churches. For years, I had been content to live in the space he’d made for me. I was a King alone, after all: I needed nothing more.

Colleen had disagreed. She thought it unhealthy for me to dwell solely in Father’s echoes, and more, felt that Cailin deserved better. In her company, I had resumed scouting for lost things, adding them to the shape of the Kingdom as it appeared in Londinium. Mortals could be very careless with their constructions, and so we had added many simple, comfortable rooms and places to our domain.

It was down one of those halls that I walked with my niece, until we reached what had once been a village square, before the village itself had been inexplicably abandoned. The shape of it was still out there in the mortal world, but the things that had distinguished it—the things that could be lost, the fountain and the odd little trellis with its burden of ivy, the scent of sugar mixed into the hard-packed dust, left behind by some forgotten traveling show—those were all gone, removed to us, where they would never be lost again.

There was no sky, of course. The sky is never lost. But there was a painted canvas, all stars and moons and darting comets, and Cailin smiled as she looked up, comfortable under her makeshift theatrical heavens. We had made this world for her, as best as we could, and we would keep it for her, from now until the end of time.

The square gave way to half a dozen more hallways, and to one narrow, wooded path that had been forgotten along with the clearing at its end. We moved down the path, and there in the clearing was Colleen, standing in front of the little woodcutter’s cottage, Bartram before her, his head bowed so that his eyes were on the ground.

“Mama!” Cailin cried, pulling herself away from me and running for my sister as though it had been years since their last encounter, and not the stretch of only a few hours.

I hung back, watching them. Bartram knew me as King, and Colleen as my sister and potential enforcer. Of the two, he was more likely to speak openly and honestly with her, who might have his throat for offending her, but who lacked the authority to expel him from these lands without just cause.

It is a difficult thing, to rule. Watching Bartram, seeing his discomfort, I realized that it might be even more difficult to be ruled over.

Cailin reached her mother and embraced her, a swirl of skirts and tangled calico hair. She turned her beaming face up toward Bartram, and I was pleased to see that he, the father of two daughters, was as enchanted by her as any sensible man would be. She asked him a question, the query visible in her bright expression and eager eyes. He nodded, once, before looking to Colleen. Colleen nodded in turn, and he walked away from them, heading for the nearest door.

Once he was gone, I strolled over to join them. Voice mild, I asked, “Is he to fetch Chalcedony for Cailin?”

“It will do them both good to have someone their own age to play with,” said Colleen. “Kittens fare poorly on their own.”

“True enough,” I agreed. I looked to Cailin. “You must play gently with her, at least at first, until you know each other better. She has just lost her mother and the Court of her early childhood, and she will need a certain measure of consideration from you.”

“She is our Princess in fact, but you have been our princess in role for many years,” agreed Colleen. “Comport yourself as your father would have had you do.”

For that was the secret truth of Cailin’s not-quite title: her father was a prince, and that made her a princess in the eyes of the Divided Courts. The hope chest might have stolen his blood from her veins, but it could not change his role in the making of her. The title that was his should have been hers by right, at least until his sister Cyne took the throne and made a duchess of her.

Cailin, who had been raised on tales of her father—a simple man grown to near-heroic status in the murmurs of the woman who had loved him—stood a little straighter and nodded solemnly. She would try. For our sake, for Santon, she would try.

Then Bartram returned, leading his youngest child by the hand, and all thoughts of trying fled Cailin’s mind, replaced by clear delight. She ran to meet them, hands waving, already chattering like a jackdaw in the brush.

“Hello! You’re going to live here now! My name is Cailin, that’s my mother and my uncle,” a vague wave toward the two of us, “but they’re both old and there’s never been anyone here to play with, I’m not allowed to go out and play with the human children anymore, not for years, do you like to play? Do you know how to play ball?”

Chalcedony, who was looking suddenly overwhelmed, nodded shyly. Cailin grabbed her hand and ran away, hauling the other Cait Sidhe child off toward whatever wild adventures she could think of. Bartram, Colleen, and I watched them go, briefly united as the uninvited adults, too old for their games, however much we might remember enjoying them.

Bartram spoke first. “Meaning no offense, Highness, but is your girl likely to lead mine outside the Court? She’s not had much experience with a city the size of London…”

“Cailin does not leave the Court.” My words were a stone wall blocking the rest of his concerns.

Bartram blinked at me slowly, clearly trying to decide how he had given offense. Finally, his shoulders sagged, and he said, “Forgive me, Highness. I have much yet to learn.”

I opened my mouth to answer—and then I paused, catching sight of the quiet resignation in Colleen’s eyes.

Prior to this moment, I had never truly needed to be a king. I had been a Prince under my father; I had been a tyrant after I deposed him, for to be anything less would not have driven his subjects away. I had protected my borders like a beast until Colleen had come to me, Cailin in her arms, and demanded sanctuary. I was a King in power and in blood, but I had never been a king, in ruling.

What I said now, what I did to this man and his family, would determine whether I could be anything other than my father’s son. I did not want to belong to him. Not now; not with him forty years in the grave.

“We all have much to learn about one another,” I said, and cuffed him playfully in the ear, in the feline way. His relief was immediate, and visible. “We have had some trouble with the local Divided Courts. They think themselves better than us—”

“As they always do,” interjected Colleen.

“—and they have made themselves a nuisance regarding Cailin. She is a special girl. She has yet to change forms, and some among them have tried to claim this makes her their concern rather than our own.” It was the easiest way to explain Cyne, whose regrets over her own actions continued to spur her to act against me and mine.

“Do they…” Bartram looked nervously between us. “Do they have any basis for this claim, or is it merely that they see a lovely girl who stays on two legs, and thus believe themselves to have found an opportunity?”

“I assure you, she is my daughter, born of my body, and you have not led your children into the jaws of a war,” said Colleen.

Bartram relaxed. “I only want to see them settled. I want them to be happy. Anything more would be a blessing too dear to wish for.”

“You shall have every blessing you have earned, and more,” I said. I took a step back.

Colleen’s eyes tracked the motion, her brows lifting. “Brother?”

“It is the duty of a King to feed those members of his Court who cannot hunt for themselves,” I said. I nodded to Bartram. “I do not insult your prowess, sir, but you are new-arrived, and have children to concern yourself with. I believe that, on this occasion, feeding you all would be not only appropriate, but chivalrous, and Oberon knows, chivalry is a difficult enough thing to accomplish that it should be pursued when possible.”

“Well, then, why are you still here?” asked Colleen, approval and pleasure in her tone. “Go, and bring us back something pleasant for the table.”

“As my lady wishes,” I said, bowing and pulling the shadows tight about me in the same gesture, so that I tumbled out of the Court and emerged in the mortal world, standing at the back of an alley that I had often frequented.

The rats that sometimes gathered there fled, squeaking out their terror. I let them go. Rat is good enough for every day, and more than a few of their fellows had filled my belly, but this was a special occasion. It called for something more extravagant, and something sugary for the children, who had doubtless gone a long while without treats.

It was afternoon, late enough that the bulk of the household shopping had been done, but early enough that many of the stalls were still open. I gathered a handful of pebbles from the floor of the alley, slipping them into my pocket as I pulled a human disguise down over myself and stepped out into the avenue. The pebbles rattling in my pocket lost the stony feel of rocks, gaining the heavy clank of coins. Fairy gold is a simple enough trick to play, and humans are ever greedy enough to believe it. Their lives are bought and paid for so cheaply.

Even simple tricks can be cruel. When I must shop the human markets, I try to spread the artificial wealth around, not giving too many coins to any one stall. It does me no good to buy an excess of bread from a bakery I am fond of, not if it means the baker is reduced to beggary and must sell his shop. As with any of form of hunting, the clever can fill their bellies as they will, but the careless will take too much, and there will be no further meals.

I was standing at a fruit stand, considering the merits of their apples, when two unfamiliar men approached me, coming to a stop on either side. The air around them glittered with the haze of a well-cast illusion. I sniffed discreetly. The stink of burnt herbs—a recent trend within the Divided Courts, supposedly meant to lend “mystery” to masked balls and the like, but really intended to vex the noses of the more animal among them—clung to their skins like rainwater.

“To what do I owe the honor of your company?” I inquired mildly, putting down the apple I had been holding and reaching for another, which seemed more tempting.

One of the men grabbed my wrist, stopping my hand in mid-reach.

Slowly, barely believing that he would dare such a thing, I turned to look at him. The mask I wore would keep him from seeing the danger he was in, but I had all faith that he would understand, even without my narrowed pupils and bared fangs. There are some dangers that are universal.

“What,” I asked coldly, “is the meaning of this?”

“You are wanted,” he said, in a voice like two granite slabs sliding over one another.

“I am aware of my desirability,” I said, giving my wrist a hard twist and popping it free of his grip. “The lads and lasses of London are more than eager to remind me how much I am wanted. None of them, however, would think to lay hands upon me uninvited, as you have done. Tell me, sir, how much do you value your fingers?”

The man blinked at me slowly, like he was reviewing the script composed for our encounter, and finding my cues to be entirely wrong. It was a pity, really. He could have been a pleasant fellow, had he not been following beats composed by someone with little concern for his well-being.

“I like my fingers,” he said finally. “But you are wanted.”

“And who, pray tell, wants me so badly that they would disrupt my shopping in such a public way?” People were starting to stare, some more openly than others. I did nothing to dissuade them. We looked like three human men having a mild altercation in the marketplace. There was no reason to fear for the safety of Faerie…

…unless, of course, one of these gawping fools should claim that a member of the royal family wanted me, which would attract a great deal more attention, and not all of the pleasant sort. Really, they hadn’t thought this through.

The second lout was quicker on the uptake than the first. He grabbed my shoulder in one heavy hand and said, in an almost mild tone, “It doesn’t matter who, although you know well who we mean. All that matters is that you’re outnumbered, unless you wish to cause a scene.”

Under normal circumstances, with a full Court to come to my defense, I might have caused a scene. But alas, this was London, and things had not been normal here in a very long time. I sighed. Dinner, it seemed, was going to be delayed.

“In that case,” I said, “by all means, lead the way.”

The two of them pushed me away from the stall, into the depths of the crowd. Humans moved to fill the space that we had left, and we were, for all intents and purposes, gone.

#

The knowes of the Divided Courts are nowhere near as convenient as the Court of Cats, which can be accessed via any shadow, giving us the most elaborate network of paths and passages in the world of Faerie. Each knowe among the Divided Courts has a set number of entrances and exits, and their people must, in the main, use them as intended if they wish access.

I could have used the Shadow Roads to deposit myself directly in Heydon and Lettice’s throne room, had they but sent word that they wished to see me. But alas, that would have been too much like treating me as their equal, something which they sought to avoid at every turn. In their eyes, my throne was a jest, illegitimate at best, a mockery at worst—as if Oberon himself had not been there to bless the first King of Fogbound Cats. As if he had not done the same for the first King and Queen of Londinium.

The Divided Courts will always find a way to set themselves ahead of us, if given half the chance to do so. If only the world was not so wedded to making those chances plentiful.

The king’s men—for they could be nothing but Heydon’s louts—marched me out of the market and to a waiting carriage, which carried us through the emptying streets until I heard the cry of sailors in the distance and knew that we approached the docks. The carriage slowed, finally stopping and disgorging us onto the pavement of the Isle of Dogs. No true island, and it had a shortage of dogs I had always found quite pleasant, although…

“I was unaware that there was a doorway here,” I said. “Has there been a recent adjustment of priorities?”

The men said nothing, only grasped my upper arms and commenced to marching me toward a warehouse.

“If you’ve brought me here to murder me, I would beg that you remember what a terrible idea that is, and put at least a pinch of value on your own lives. You will not succeed. You will, however, leave your loved ones in mourning for a not inconsiderable amount of time.”

“We don’t break the Law,” rumbled the first lout.

“Nor do I,” I said. “It’s amazing how much mourning can be necessary for someone who is not, in all actuality, dead.”

He gave me a withering look before releasing my arm and striding toward the warehouse door, muttering something in a whisper too faint for even me to make out. I was impressed by this unforeseen talent at being quiet. The edges of the door flared red, and the door disappeared, replaced by a lightless void that both was and was not like my beloved shadows.

“You are wanted,” he said again.

“Charming,” I replied, and pulled away from his fellow, striding with my head held high toward the hole in the world.

Running would have been beneath me, and fleeing at all would merely have postponed the inevitable. I refused to have them tracking me down like one of their criminals, when I could remind them of the insult they had dealt simply by walking in under my own power. I stepped through the doorway. The world reoriented itself around me, and I was standing in the royal knowe of the Kingdom of Londinium, once beloved of Oberon himself, now abandoned by his grace and glory.

As are we all.

The floor and walls were Irish marble, festooned with tapestries that would have been tasteless, had they not been so clearly expensive. Their value carried them over into ostentatiousness, which struck me as being no better, but which was apparently a forgivable transgression in these halls, for it continued in all directions. It made me want to shift to feline form and show my displeasure by sharpening my claws on them. Now that would have been an insult to their Majesties, long may they reign in filth and treachery.

Their men marched me along the hall to the throne room doors, which opened to reveal an all but empty chamber. This was to be a private meeting, then: interesting. Heydon and Lettice normally thrived on the presence of their courtiers, using them as mirror and magnifier for their own ideas. Today, though, it was only the pair of them, King and Queen of Londinium sitting proudly and alone.

Their dais was less cluttered than it had been before Cailin’s birth. Santon’s throne had been removed at the end of seven years, when the time of his mourning had finished. Cyne’s throne had been removed shortly after that, when her marriage had removed her from the court of her parents to the court of her husband. She was still the Crown Princess and their only heir; should something happen to them before she could have a child of her own, she would return and take her father’s throne as Queen, while her new husband would rule at her sufferance.

The Divided Courts are eternally fond of making complex what should be simple. One day all their careful plans will collapse upon them, and they will regret the choices they have made. One day.

This would not be that day. Chin up, shoulders back, I marched to the dead center of the space before their dais, and stopped. I did not bow to them, for I was no subject of theirs, to lower myself so. Instead, I stood tall, looking at them calmly, and waited.

“Sir Cat,” said Heydon finally. “I believe—”

“No,” I said.

He bit off his next word, frowning as he looked at me. “I beg your pardon?”

“That might be a wiser course of action,” I said. “I am the King of Fogbound Cats, made your equal by the hand of Oberon himself. What right have you to send your men to fetch me from the marketplace like a common thief? What right have you to call me to your court by any means? You should invite, beg, bribe me to enter with sweetmeats and cream. Instead, you violate all rule of common courtesy and uncommon diplomacy, and you do it with that look upon your faces, as though you do me some great favor by speaking to me at all. My title is as great as yours, Heydon, and if you will address me by such insulting terms, I will find my own terms to pin upon you.” I glared, finally allowing my anger free license to show through.

Heydon leaned back in his throne, apparently surprised, although he had no cause to be. “I am…you have my apologies. How would you prefer to be addressed?”

This was my time to be magnanimous, much as it galled me. “We are alone, or as good as,” I said, with a small, dismissive wave toward the men behind me. “We may use our given names, as is only proper. You’re looking well, Lettice. Your gowns are always so in fashion, I can only envy them.”

“I must set an example for the court,” said Lettice primly. Her gown today was a monstrosity of ivy stitched as if it were fabric, with runner vines twining down her arms like webbing. She looked like the living forest come seeking victims, and while she was beautiful, she was cold.

It is perhaps good that a man should prefer the fashions that dominate in the spaces he occupies, but I have always found the elaborate gowns of the Divided Courts to be somewhat unsettling. How is one to have them off, when they are made from neither fabric nor honest fur? I have seen women in their ballrooms garbed entirely in feathers, men garbed entirely in knotted ribbon, and while I have found beauty in their faces and forms, the thought of undressing them was enough to steal the ardor right out of me.

“As I must for mine,” I said. “You avoid my name, milady. Is there something in that offends you?”

“Only that you said to use our given names, and the name I know you were given is not the name you wear today,” she said. “I would avoid giving a second offense, when you have already felt so shamed in our company, but I know not what to call you.”

“I see,” I said. “Perhaps I have found another difference between our peoples. Among the Cait Sidhe, when we do not know a thing, we ask. Questions can be clumsy, yet they rarely give offense when asked honestly, and we find it better to betray a moment’s clumsiness than to foster such confusion. Misunderstandings are a plague. They spread whether we will it or no.”

“Well, then, what am I to call you?” She tilted her head slightly upward, all bravado and irritation, while her husband sat silent by her side and allowed her to court my temper without his aid. I felt a spike of anger, directed at his smug, unspeaking face. Family should be supported, not left to wander into dangerous tangles of etiquette without assistance.

“My name is Tybalt, milady,” I said, tone cold. “That is the name I took when I claimed my throne.”

“Shakespeare’s word,” said Heydon, making no effort to conceal his disgust. “A mortal name.”

“All names are mortal names,” I replied. “They have the yen for naming, and we the yen for theft. So they create them, and we steal them, and we call ourselves the clever ones.”

“His Prince of Cats, was it not?” asked Lettice. “From that romance of his.”

“Yes, although unlike my fictional counterpart, I am Prince of Cats no longer. The name reminds me that I was, once, when I was permitted such indulgent days.” I looked between them. “Now that we have sorted through the first tier of offenses, we can proceed to the second. Why am I here? I am not your dog, to come to heel at the snapping of your fingers. Had I entered this room to find it filled with your people, I would have been gone before you could speak a word.”

“There has been little traffic between your court and our own in quite some time,” said Heydon. “You have our sincere apologies, but we knew not how else to bid you come.”

That was a lie, and more, it was a lie stretched across an open grave. Santon’s grave. He had been slain by his sister, Cyne, who had tried to pin the blame for his murder—and her violation of Oberon’s Law—to Colleen’s shadow, where it would surely have killed her as well. Heydon and Lettice knew what their daughter had done, what she had tried to do to my sister, and to my niece. They were the reason that Cailin had none of her father’s blood running through her veins.

They knew full well how to call me to them without offering insult. They had done so in the past, and had no trouble with it. But here and now, they wished to seem the wronged parties—although for what reason, I could not possibly know.

“The sending of heralds and messengers is still practiced, I believe,” I said, with more patience than even Titania herself could have asked of me. “A request, rather than a demand, would have made all the world’s difference.”

“We shall request in future,” said Heydon.

“See that you do,” I replied. “Now, as we have dispensed with the pleasantries, tainted as they were, I ask you: why am I here? You have seemed content to let our courts stand apart, until this moment. I would have been content to allow that to continue.”

“We were informed that three Cait Sidhe had entered your court from outside our borders.”

“You were informed incorrectly,” I said, voice stiff.

Heydon frowned, exchanging a glance with Lettice. When he spoke, it was with the greatest of care. “I apologize if it seems that I am questioning your word, but they passed my guards on their way—”

“There are four,” I said. “A man, his two daughters, and his grandson. They have requested the comfort of my court. I have granted it, as is my right within my own demesne. You have no claim on the Cait Sidhe.”

“We would not attempt it,” said Lettice. “But I believe you have counted incorrectly. There are three. The babe is…not as you would describe it.”

“The boy has human blood in his veins,” I said. “He is not to blame for that. None of us can choose our parentage, as my darling niece would be among the first to say. His mother dotes on him. He will be raised with all the succor and sufferance he deserves, as any child should be.”

“You would claim a changeling.” Heydon made no effort to conceal his disgust.

How delightful his throat would feel beneath my claws. “I have claimed a changeling,” I said stiffly. “The boy is mine now, as are the other members of his family. They will stay where I have put them.”

“Changelings are little better than beasts,” said Lettice.

“Then I should be grateful that your court has long considered me and mine to be undeniably bestial,” I snapped.

“You have no queen of your own, so I will not blame you for being unable to speak civilly to mine,” said Heydon coldly. Judging by Lettice’s face, she was more than willing to blame me, even if her husband was not. “Are you opening your borders, then, Tybalt?” The stress he put upon my name was enough to be an insult in and of itself.

It paid for the insult I had offered Lettice: I decided to let it pass in favor of offering him a lazy smile and a lazier shrug, and asking, “Do you think I should? I have been so long without the company of my own kind, it truly did not occur to me that I could have a full court again. What a revelation this has been.”

“I warn you—”

“No.” Again, my disapproval was a wall for him to slam himself against. He stopped speaking. I kept smiling. “You have no warnings to offer me, nor the grounds to give them. The Court of Fogbound Cats is mine. You have no authority there, nor over my people. Should they trespass against you, you may bring your complaint to me, and I will deal with it, even as I would bring a complaint about one of your own people to you. My court is open to all who belong within its walls.”

“Tread lightly, cat,” snapped Lettice. “You would not want to make more enemies.”

“And yet I see myself making no friends here.” I bowed to her, finally, creating a shadow with my own body. Then I dove into it, and I was gone.

#

The Shadow Roads between the royal knowe and the Kingdom of Cats were difficult to travel, rendered obstinate by disuse. That would have to change. Now that I was maintaining a Court again, I would need to send someone to every open court that their Highnesses chose to host, reminding them constantly that the Cait Sidhe were not toys to be cast aside, or pets to be shut out in the yard. Colleen would do for that task. She would be a reminder of their son’s life outside their walls, and that would upset and unbalance them, without leaving them any recourse to object.

Colleen would need to understand her enemies, if she were to one day follow me to the throne. She would do well in the role. Even if she disliked it, she would do well.

I dropped out of the shadows and into one of my own little-used halls. I was still in man’s array—mostly—but my anger showed in the claws that sprouted from my fingers and the tail that lashed against my ankles, warning any who might see me that now was not a good time to try my patience.

Flexing my fingers in an effort to retract my claws, I stalked down the hall toward what I hoped would be my chambers, or at least something in their general neighborhood. It is difficult for a King of Cats to get lost: the Shadow Roads are always there, willing to carry me to a more familiar destination. I always know precisely where I am. The question is what surrounds me, and whether it is friendly terrain, or no.

At the moment, nothing in London felt like friendly terrain. The King and Queen of Londinium were against me. The Court of Cats was small, and I had no one to help me defend it—no one save for Colleen, and while she loved me beyond words, she would save her daughter before coming to my aid. That was all well and good, and as things should have been, but it left me feeling suddenly vulnerable. Heydon and Lettice’s men had been able to waylay me in the market. That should never have been possible.

I stopped abruptly. They had waylaid me in the market. I had never finished collecting food for my suddenly expanded sphere of responsibility.

“Dammit,” I muttered, and grabbed for the shadows, and was gone again, running through the darkness toward the only destination I could think of. When I stepped out into the light, I was standing in the larder of one of the richest men in London. A few burlap sacks were crammed under one of the shelves. I grabbed two of them, and proceeded to fill them to bursting with potatoes, carrots, onions, jams, jellies, and cured meats and cheeses, cramming my pilfered goods in one atop the other, until it was obvious to any with eyes that I had taken far more than my small current court required. I hesitated, looking at the bags. Then I put them down and stepped sideways into shadow, appearing again outside his kitchen window.

London is a city best characterized as “vast,” and has been for so long as I have known it. If the owner of this house thought a member of his staff behind the theft, he would punish them. If he thought it had been a random gang of ruffians looking for a soft target, he would merely build a higher wall. Men would be employed to lay the stones; the neighborhood would benefit.

I found a rock. I smashed the window, and stepped into shadow again, returning to my stolen goods. Then, and only then, did I hoist them off the floor and sling them over my shoulders, grunting under their weight. I took one last look at the larder, to be sure that I had not missed some unspeakable delicacy, and pulled the shadows around me like a veil.

Running the Shadow Roads while burdened with a great quantity of food is difficult and somewhat awkward, and I do not recommend it.

I emerged into the clearing, where Cailin and Chalcedony were playing a complicated game with sticks and marbles, under the watchful eye of Agnet, the baby at her breast. Colleen sat on Bartram’s porch. She looked up at my appearance, a smile already gracing her lips.

“I was beginning to fear that you had forgotten us,” she said.

“You feared the greatest of impossibilities, my sister,” I replied, and placed both sacks gently at her feet. “Decide upon dinner, if you would, and see the remains to our pantry. You may have to look for it. I haven’t seen it in years. I will return shortly.”

“What?” Her smile faded. “Where are you going?”

“I go to do what should have been done a very long time ago.” I leaned in, kissing her gently on the forehead. “I go to bury our sister.”

She said nothing, but I saw shock and understanding in her eyes as I stepped back, into a fresh shadow, and disappeared.

#

There had been no Cait Sidhe in London save for me and mine in decades. The threat of my teeth and claws had been sufficient to keep them at a distance, choosing their own skins over the dubious comforts of a small Court with an untested King. But the cats…ah. There is no monarch in this or any other world who could threaten or cajole cats into staying out of anyplace they wish to be.

I stepped out of the shadows and into the alley behind a butcher’s shop that I had been known to frequent on both two and four legs. The cats in the alley looked at me disinterestedly. I was a man, which meant I was unlikely to challenge them for the offal and scraps they purloined from the bins, and I was Cait Sidhe, which meant I was even less likely to pelt them with rocks or threaten them.

Instead, I bowed.

There was a rustling, as lounging cats got to their feet and prowling cats changed their direction to bring themselves toward me. I kept my head bowed until the sound ceased, and when I looked up, I was surrounded on all sides by mortal felines. Some might be merlins, with a few drops of fae blood far, far back on their family trees, but the majority of them had no more connection to my Kingdom than a sparrow had to a swan.

“My name is Tybalt,” I said. “King of Cats. I have a task for you, and for all your fellows in all of Albion. You are swift and you are cunning and you are bold. You are the survivors of a world that is forever set against your comforts, and you will be the best messengers I could choose.”

The cats watched me with large, luminous eyes, and said nothing. That was just as well. The language of mortal cats is harsh and halting, incapable of much nuance. All cats are connected to Faerie, and are thus my subjects to command, but they often resent being reminded of this fact—something for which I truly cannot blame them. It was the reason I tried so hard to keep my distance, save for moments like this, where there was no other way.

“Go,” I said to them. “Go throughout London; go to your homes and your ships and your prowling grounds, and to any cat you meet, say this: that the Court of Fogbound Cats has opened its doors. Tell them to come home. Tell them to seek the Cait Sidhe, wherever they have hidden, wherever they are hiding, and bid them to come home as well. Tell them…” I hesitated, my voice faltering.

To be a King of Cats is to have a certain measure of power: to anchor the Shadow Roads and keep them open for all our kind. The relationship of Kings and Queens to the shadows is the reason the Cait Sidhe still possess access to our old roads, when so many in Faerie have lost the rituals or tokens that anchored the roads they called their own. There is no need for us to keep courts or care for our people. Our existence is enough…or it would have been, had we not been so determined to be free of the Divided Courts. Had we not gone to Oberon and petitioned him for our own Courts, our own Kingdoms. He granted our requests, but made requests of his own. That we should be kings and queens in fact, as well as name. That we should care for our people. That we should protect them.

My father, may his bones be lost forever in the shadows, had been no true King of Cats. He had lied. He had bullied. He had murdered. My youngest sister, Jill, had died at his hand as punishment for my disobedience, and she had been the best of us, better than I, better even than Colleen, who was pragmatic and swiftly harsh when the need arose. He had been the one to raise me, to teach me what it was to rule, if only by his example.

He had been dead some forty years and more, and still he haunted me, for I had been living in fear of becoming him.

No more. Jill deserved better than to be the rock around my neck. I deserved better, as did my people. As did my Court.

“Tell them their King does not command it, for only a fool would command a cat, but that if they would come to me, I would have them. I would have you as well. You are welcome.”

Some of the cats turned tail and raced off at once, eager to spread this precious bit of gossip. Others sat, considering what they had heard. Still others lay down and began grooming themselves.

And one orange tom swaggered up to me and leaned against my leg, his message clear. I had offered my protection to all: he, old and nearing the end of his time as a scrapper on the streets, was claiming it. I bent, scooping him into my arms, where he fit like a promise. He flexed his claws just enough for me to be sure that they were there, and I smiled.

“It has been too long,” I said. “It is time for London to remember why a cat may look at a king.”

Then I stepped into the shadows, my new companion in my arms, and left the mortal world behind.

#

Colleen had set a feast by the time I returned. The others were eating, some with more manners than the rest, but she was waiting for me at the clearing’s mouth. She looked approvingly at the cat in my arms. He looked back before leaping down and trotting off to investigate the table.

“So,” she said. “Is it time?”

“Yes,” I said. “These halls have been empty too long. Our sister would not thank me for living so in solitude.”

Colleen nodded, expression grave. “Jill would be proud of you.”

“Not yet.” I leaned in and kissed her forehead. “But she will be.”

“She will,” Colleen agreed, and rested herself against my side as we turned to watch the table, and the rebirth of a Court that had been too long neglected. The Divided Courts needed to remember why we had petitioned Oberon for our liberty. They needed to remember why it had been granted.

A cat may look at a king. There is no other way to keep them honest. I smiled to myself, letting my chin settle atop Colleen’s head, breathing in the scent of her, and looked at the table of souls who would make an honest king of me.

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