Ashes of Honor: An October Daye Novel

Silence fell in the car. Finally, Li Qin said, “None of this is proof.”


“See, the nice thing about not being a member of the nobility anymore is that I don’t need proof. I just need to be right. The knowe smelled like Chelsea’s magic; I smelled Riordan’s magic in the Court of Cats; Riordan knew which of her parents was mortal. And there’s more.” I took a breath before launching into a description of the phone call I’d overheard while I was hiding in Riordan’s hall.

When I was done, silence fell again. It lasted longer this time, until Quentin said, “I don’t like her very much.”

“Yeah, well.” I took my left hand off the wheel long enough to rake my hair out of my eyes. “Join the club, okay?”

“No one likes Treasa very much,” said Li Qin. “It’s part of her charm.”

“She has charm?” I asked.

“No,” said Li Qin, and laughed.

I shook my head and hit the gas harder. I wanted to get back to Tamed Lightning. I wanted to be sure Tybalt had been able to get out of Dreamer’s Glass without getting caught. And I wanted a cup of coffee really badly. My priorities may be strange sometimes, but they were good enough to make me drive almost thirty miles over the speed limit all the way to Fremont.

The smell of hydrangeas and black tea rose from Li Qin’s side of the car. I glanced over to see her playing cat’s-cradle with a piece of string, lips moving silently. Whatever she was doing didn’t involve casting a don’t-look-here or a hide-and-seek; I couldn’t feel any illusions on the car. But no one pulled us over, either.

The portcullis was up when we reached ALH. I drove through. Li Qin stopped her cat’s-cradle as the portcullis began to descend, letting her hands drop to her lap with a relieved sigh. I slanted a glance her way. “What was that?”

“I bent our luck. Kept the police from noticing you were speeding, kept any of Riordan’s spies who might have tried to follow from getting close enough to hear what we were saying.” Li Qin smiled a little. “It seemed like the best course of action.”

“Better than a speeding ticket.” I pulled into a space toward the front of the lot, and blinked at the empty sidewalk. “Huh. I expected April to come meet us.”

“She’s probably distracted by the company you sent her.” Li Qin unfastened her seat belt. “Let’s go rescue him.”

“Good idea,” I said, and followed her, with Quentin at my heels.

We walked through the reception area into the knowe and were starting to make our way through the cubicle maze when I heard voices up ahead. “Déjà vu,” I muttered. Voices in the cubicle maze greeted me when I first came to ALH. Li Qin looked pleased and started walking faster, making me and Quentin pick up the pace if we wanted to keep up with her. For someone short, she sure could move.

April turned as we came around the corner into the cube maze’s central meeting point, a quizzical expression on her face. Tybalt, who was sitting on the edge of the desk she’d been facing, didn’t rise. He just looked toward us and smiled.

I let out a breath I hadn’t been quite aware of holding, some of the tension slipping out of my shoulders. “Is there coffee?” I asked.

“Hello to you as well, October. You’re looking lovely, or at least not incarcerated, which is a definite pleasure, given where I left you.” Tybalt waved a hand toward April. “Countess O’Leary was explaining the functionality of her server systems to me. Fascinating stuff.”

It says something about how much practice Tybalt has had in the art of sounding interested when he isn’t that I didn’t realize he was kidding until he winked at me. “No arrests,” I said. “Riordan is involved in Chelsea’s disappearance, even though I don’t have any way to prove it to someone who could make her give Chelsea back. Now. Coffee, and then we have to hit the road.”