Then he took my hand and pulled me with him through the circle, which closed behind us, and we were somewhere else, just the two of us. I had never been alone with him before.
“I had hoped it would be you,” he said, releasing my hands so he could grab my shoulders. “August would never have agreed to help me. October. I know what your bloodline can do. I know how your magic bends. And I need your help. My daughter—”
But that was ridiculous. Sir Etienne was unmarried, and had never agreed to do his duty in the mortal world. I stared at him, utterly perplexed, until he let go of my shoulders and stepped away, his own shoulders drooping.
“I should have known,” he said. “She’s kept too tight a hand for too long, and—I should have known.”
“Should have known what?” I asked, but he was already gone, opening another portal in the air, this one to a sunlit street lined with unfamiliar trees and houses that looked like the ones I’d sometimes seen in a mortal magazine, or in a painted picture. It closed behind him, and I was by myself in a strange place, in this room that smelled like incense and unfamiliar magic, the walls so lush with tapestry that they swallowed the sound of my feet on the hardwood floor.
I turned a slow circle, looking around. Dreamer’s Glass. I was in Dreamer’s Glass. Miles from Shadowed Hills, from the tower. I had never been this far from home, or my family, in my entire life. If I messed up there, I might never be this far again.
Duchess Zhou had requested me, which meant I had the hospitality of her house until well past Moving Day. That was a good thing; it would stop people from deciding they were allowed to harm me just because I was a changeling. But I didn’t know the rules there, and I would need to be even more careful than I usually was if I wanted to avoid crossing any lines.
Taking care began with staying calm. I forced myself to breathe slow and steady, until I was breathing at a regular pace and my head felt less like it was going to fall off. I had barely managed to get my equilibrium back when someone behind me began to applaud.
I turned. A petite woman in a long red gown was there, standing in front of an open door, applauding vigorously. Her hair was short and black, perfectly straight, cut across the bottom like she had done it with a sword of some sort, and her skin was a tawny shade of brown that perfectly offset her completely black eyes. She had no irises or sclera, just what looked like an all-consuming pupil filling them from one side to the other. It was unnerving, and gave her the air of watching through dark glasses or some other form of personal concealment.
She smiled at me.
“I was expecting the older daughter, I’ll admit, but I meant it when I told your uncle that any of you would do perfectly well. I did somewhat hope it would be you. Everyone’s very curious about the hidden Torquill girl, and anything I can learn will be coin and currency the next time I go to the Library.”
I frowned. “I don’t understand why a Librarian would be curious about me. I’m no one important.”
“Ah, because your mother is Firstborn, and your parents have been very careful never to reveal or record more than the barest necessities. Your name, your date of birth, and the holding to which you’re bound are the extent of what the Library has on record about you.”
I knew changelings belonged to their fae parents in every sense of the phrase, but I still bristled at the word “bound.” The stranger, whom I assumed was Duchess Zhou, nodded at that, seeming oddly pleased. Then she bowed.
“My manners have faded in isolation,” she said. “I am Li Qin Zhou, Duchess of Dreamer’s Glass, and you are welcome in my domain. I extend to you the hospitality of my home; none will raise hand nor word against you in my presence or with my approval so long as you walk my halls, and should you give me cause to regret this, you will have three days to vacate my demesne before you will be held responsible for your presence.”
“I’m not going to be here past Moving Day, ma’am,” I said, then froze, feeling as if I had already made a massive misstep. “I mean, Your Grace. Your Grace, ma’am. I’m supposed to help with whatever you needed a Torquill for, and then go home before my mother gets back from her assignment in Silences and worries about me.”
“They haven’t taught you much in the way of subtlety, have they?” she asked, sounding amused, and beckoned for me to follow her through the doorway, deeper into the knowe. “Not that I suppose you’d have much need of it, confined to a tower and all.”
“I’m not confined,” I said, bristling again. “I could leave any time I wanted to.”
“It’s just that you’d have nowhere to go, I suppose.”
The hall on the other side of the door was more of the same, all of it very grand and towering. I was beginning to regret the human disguise Father had woven for me, but because it wasn’t my magic, I couldn’t dismiss it even if I tried. The itching in my ears was distracting enough that I missed half of what Li Qin was saying, and snapped back into the conversation just in time to catch:
“—odd configuration, so I asked the luck, and the luck seemed to think a member of your family would be the answer. I’ve got no idea why. The last time I saw your mother and sister, they couldn’t get out of here quickly enough. It would have been insulting, if it hadn’t been so damned funny. You really do live like it’s still medieval times out there in Shadowed Hills, don’t you?”
I blinked. “I’m not sure what you mean by that, so I’m afraid to answer one way or another. I don’t want to insult my home by accident, and I don’t want to refute something that’s actually a good thing.”
Li Qin laughed. “Oh, you’re charming! The unspoilt ones always are, of course.”
“Do you have any changelings here that I could speak with? I wouldn’t want to step on any toes . . .”
“Some members of the household staff have done their duty, and reduced the workload for their fellows, but they’re mostly in the kitchens or the scriptorium.”
“You have a scriptorium?”
“Naturally. This is the seat of modern human innovation. Silicon Valley is where the mortals go to dream tomorrow’s dreams. Faerie can’t be left ignorant of what’s going on outside our doors, however much we might want to pretend we can just ignore the humans and they’ll eventually go away. So my people watch them, work with them, learn their secrets, and write them out for other noble households to comprehend. We’re quite wealthy, really, since we’ve been able to get in on the ground floor of various human enterprises. Which is why you’re here today.”
I frowned. “Come again?”
“Sometimes my people stumble across . . . call them ‘business opportunities,’ and they have a certain amount of freedom when it comes to acting on them,” said Li Qin, stopping in front of a plain wood door and producing a key from inside a pocket. She slid it into the keyhole, flashing me a sunny smile as she did. “They bring all sorts of weird junk home. One of my better finders is a Coblynau named Siôn who has an incredible gift for finding human collectibles. He bought roughly eight thousand baseball cards a year ago, and I’d be annoyed about that, except that he more than quadrupled our money and taught half the Duchy a new game that many of my subjects really quite enjoy. So I find it best to let them do as they like.”