The Winter Long

“I do,” he said.

“Did the same person bind you?”

Simon looked at me for a moment, mouth moving as he tried to force words out past a tongue that no longer seemed to want to cooperate with him. Finally, he made a choking sound, and said, “I have to leave.” Then he turned, still stiff, left leg barely bending, and made his way quickly into the stacks.

I stayed where I was, looking after him.

“Was there a point to that?” asked Mags. She sounded annoyed.

“We pretty much knew from the Luidaeg that they were bound by the same person, but I wanted it confirmed. And I wanted to see whether Simon would tell me the truth.”

“But he didn’t tell you anything,” Mags protested.

“Sure he did,” I said. “If he’d been lying to me, a ‘no’ would have cost him nothing.” I turned back to Tybalt and Quentin. “Put on your studying shoes, boys. We’ve got work to do.”





NINE


IT WAS DIFFICULT TO focus on research with the ghost of Simon Torquill hanging over us, an unwanted presence we could neither dispel nor deny. Worrying about the Luidaeg made it even harder, until focus seemed like a beautiful dream. I sat on the Library’s antique couch with the bulky census open on my knees, running my finger down columns of names and trying to associate them with faces dredged from the dusty recesses of my mind. Quentin was settled next to me, going through a box of dusty sheets of loose-leaf paper that Mags had fetched from wherever it was that historical records went to die. He had refused to split the burden, insisting that his knowledge of the political divides within the Mists would be more useful than Tybalt’s actual observation of the Court. I had refused to get involved, and in the end, Tybalt had ceded the point.

I sort of wished he hadn’t, since in the absence of anything else that needed to be reviewed, Tybalt was pacing around the edges of the room-sized square where we were working. It was getting on my nerves, quite honestly, but my attempts to convince him he should maybe go elsewhere had met with disdain.

“Do you honestly believe that, after you have encountered Count Torquill not once but twice in a single day, I’ll allow you to ask me to leave your side?” he had asked, eyes blazing. “I’m not sure how relationships are commonly conducted in this modern age, but I am absolutely certain that a proper suitor does not leave his lady to be turned into a fish because she would feel more ‘comfortable’ were he elsewhere.”

That had settled the matter. Tybalt only got that formal with me when he was really unhappy. I was a little uncomfortable with his pacing, but as he would clearly have been extremely uncomfortable leaving me—even in the Library, where I was supposed to be safe—I didn’t press the issue.

Mags came and went, mostly to make sure we hadn’t started eating the books while she was taking care of her filing. I was still a little pissed about her not having warned us that Simon was there, so I didn’t have much to say to her. Maybe it was unfair of me, but hey. I’m part of Faerie, and Faerie isn’t fair.

“I’ve never heard of half these people,” said Quentin glumly, picking up another stack of loose pages. The motion dislodged a patch of pixie-sweat, and for a moment, we were both distracted by sneezing.