In that chair sat our Uncle Sylvester, chin resting on his hand, apparently content to be all but invisible to me. I frowned, but said nothing.
August was not so decorous.
“You know October’s eyes are less suited to the shadows than our own,” she said, voice gone peevish, and snapped her fingers. A ball of witch-light rose from her hand, glowing bright as an oil lamp as it drifted to a point just above our heads, illuminating the area. “There now. That’s better.”
“Is it?” he asked, dryly.
Uncle Sylvester was a tall, fair-skinned man with fox-fur red hair and golden eyes, and would have been identical to our Father in every regard had he looked as if he’d enjoyed a solid meal or a hot bath any time in the last five years. As it was, he was a ragged scarecrow of a man, skin less fair than sallow, hair less bright than greasy and garish, until it seemed he flirted with the edge of unattractiveness . . . or at least as close to same as the Daoine Sidhe can come. His clothing was tattered but clean. Melly would have tolerated nothing less, and while she wasn’t officially chatelaine, Etienne had no head for the job. He was often absent when not on duty, and allowed her to manage most of the duties that would have accompanied the position.
“It is, Uncle,” I said, with a small curtsey. “I appreciate being allowed to see to whom I am speaking. August said you wanted to speak with us both?”
“My nieces. My dearly beloved, closest family.” He sat up, then leaned back in his seat, slumping. “Am I not allowed to desire your presence?”
“You’re allowed, but you usually don’t,” I said. “Or you only want to talk to August, since she’s, you know . . .” I fumbled for words before I finished, “The important one.”
“Yes, but we’re near to Moving Day, which changes the pieces on the board.” His eyes were sharp as he looked between us. “Have you ever been to Dreamer’s Glass?”
“The Duchy to the south?” I asked, perplexed. “I haven’t. There’s been no need. August?”
“Only once, a long time ago,” she said. “I was much younger at the time. Mother took me to oversee the dismantling of a failed fiefdom. Chained Thunder, or something of the like? We stayed in Dreamer’s Glass, for the safety of a politically secure demesne around us while we slept. Has something happened?”
“The Duchess of Dreamer’s Glass has requested the presence of a member of the Ducal line, on what she considers to be a matter of grave importance,” said Sylvester.
“Li Qin Zhou is in charge of Dreamer’s Glass,” said August.
“I’m glad to see the hours spent in drilling you on the local nobility have not been wasted,” said a dry voice from behind her.
We turned in unison, both of us beaming and already delighted. “Father!”
“Hello, my flowers,” said our father, Simon Torquill, who had slipped into the room while we were distracted talking to his brother—older brother by almost an hour, as Uncle Sylvester sometimes took delight in reminding us. “Imagine my surprise when I returned early to the tower and found it standing empty, warded and alone. The kitchen window broken, my flowers fled.”
“I’m sorry, Father,” I began automatically, prepared to draw the blame for our mutual transgression. I didn’t remember a broken window, but that didn’t mean there hadn’t been one. I could be so careless sometimes. “Only we were hungry and—”
“And I insisted,” said August. “We missed the party. I wanted to scavenge for cake. We thought we had hours before anyone would be home, and there was nothing to eat but bread and cheese.”
“Nothing sufficient for a pair of growing girls,” Father agreed. “Very well, then. If you must make mischief, best it were made in this direction. Your uncle will not see you come to harm, even if he will see fit to speak to you of distant shores without the presence of your parents.”
“Both girls have passed their majority, and have the right to make decisions for themselves,” said Uncle Sylvester. Father gave him a blank look. “It’s true! If they want to travel to Dreamer’s Glass, they can choose to do so.”
“And why should they choose such?”
“As I was saying when you decided to interrupt us, Duchess Zhou has requested the presence of a member of my immediate bloodline. Meaning one of the two of us, or one of the girls.”
I wasn’t sure how that could possibly work. Faerie considered me my father’s child in every way that mattered, but he hadn’t sired me; there was nothing of his bloodline in my veins. August, meanwhile . . . he was her father in truth as well as custom, but all four of us knew Mother had pulled even the echo of the Daoine Sidhe out of her firstborn child before August had even exited her womb. He had no current part in the body of either one of us. Unless Uncle Sylvester married or lay with a human, the Torquill bloodline was at an end.
From the complicated look on his face, Father knew that, even as he knew that saying it would be a terrible betrayal of Faerie custom and could endanger us all. Smoothing his expression, he looked coolly at Uncle Sylvester and said, “Then you should go.”
“I can’t. The Duchy needs me. I may be a figurehead, but I’m their figurehead, and my absence this close to Moving Day would raise more questions than my staff would like to answer.”
“Then I—”
“Is the Rose of Winter in such a generous mood that she would let her favorite dogsbody leave with so little notice right before a night of parties she intends to grace with her glorious presence? Some of which may feature her liege, the Queen of the Mists, while others may involve her mother?”
Father looked away.
“I thought not. And your wife is not of our bloodline. That leaves your girls. Either would do, although the timing of the request means our options are more open than they would be during most of the year.”
I frowned, curious. “What do you mean, Uncle?”
“Only that Moving Day is in two days.” He smiled, showing teeth that could use a good scrubbing. “A growing girl must chafe at being sealed in a tower for no crime of her own. I know your father and I chafed when we were boys and our parents were overprotective.”
“Don’t,” cautioned Father.
Uncle Sylvester ignored him. “But right now, with the changelings of the Kingdom free to move about as they will, immune to being claimed by the nobles whose lands they pass through, you could go to Dreamer’s Glass. Sir Etienne could take you that far, quite easily so, and you could meet with Duchess Zhou before returning here to tell me what she needed so dearly that she would summon a member of my own family to accomplish it.”
“Duchess Zhou is Shyi Shuai,” said August. “They manipulate luck.”
“Unfashionable, yes, but not Seers,” said Uncle Sylvester. “It’s very likely that she tried to bend the luck around some project of hers and found it would succeed if she had a Torquill present, but fail without one.”
“Descendants of Maeve,” said August. “How did they miss the purges?” She glanced to Father. “I would have expected the Summer Queen to have declared their tinkering with fate to be a step too close to prophecy, and had them removed.”