Page 10 of Practical Boots

"I gotta go." Cat stood up, suddenly stiff with nerves. "Dad's calling me."

"He candothat?" Kallie swallowed hard to ask the question with an empty mouth and winced in discomfort at the bulge of half-chewed food straining down her esophagus. "Cat, are you okay? Is this okay? Are you cool?"

"I'm cool." Cat didn't believe it, but then, unlike her father, she could lie if it suited her. She didn't, usually. The fact that her entire life in the World up until seven years ago was fictional carried enough complications without adding to them by lying about other things. But she could, and in this case…

…well, call it a half-truth. 'Cool' stretched the matter, but she'd gotten herself into the situation with her eyes open, and that was close enough to count. "Water my plants if I'm gone too long, aight?"

"You don'thaveany plants, bitch."

Cat grinned, shrugged, andstepped.

* * *

She hadn't seen the manor she grew up in for seven of the World's years. Only the stars knew how long it had been in the Torn; the stars, and perhaps some reprobate fiend whose entire joy came from counting the passage of meaningless seasons beneath the Torn's thin sun. Catsteppedto the manor's complex, garden-ridden front walkways, not because she didn't dare her father's office, but because she wanted to see if anything had changed in her absence.

It hadn't. She saw that in a breath, in a glance.

Whathadchanged in those seven years was Cat herself.

The organic, living, breathing tangle of the manor looked alien to her. The way it grew, rather than having been built; the lines that curved and bulged and sank where nature dictated, rather than running smoothly as humankind would have them shaped; the colors that changed with the seasons and the shapes that altered with the growth and loss of leaves: they were all she had known for the bulk of her years, and she hadforgotten, all the way into the depths of her, how beautiful it was.

The closest humanity came to such structures was through decay and the creep of new growth. Ivy, softening the edges of straight, strong walls, or branches pulling arches toward the earth; that was the World's equivalent of her father's Torn manor, and they were not, in truth, alike at all. Cat walked slowly along the path, following its twists with half a mind and half a memory; theycouldchange without warning, but tended to settle back into shapes they knew, and her father would want her to find the manor's entryway sooner rather than later.

Stone-like shards of rounded glass shone beneath her feet, always shifting; here lay a spate of something not unlike emerald; there ran a river of ruby, building images that teased from the corner of the eye, and faded when looked at directly. A swath of yellow garnet could be a castle, if seen sideways; the blue of aquamarine could be its moat, and no one was to say whether whole lives were lived out in those half-seen worlds. The hedges and grassways bordering the paths were not lovely, and could curl into darkness and danger without notice, but at the same time they often showed the promise of beauty, like bare stark winter branches could carry a hint of spring.

It was never entirely possible to tell where the paths ended and the manor began; the hedges grew thicker, angrier, more impassable, and littered by windows that gleamed darkly from within as they rose in their artless coils to make walls that changed with the light. There were no flowers; the only rose her father had ever liked was Lilibeth.

Cat walked along the wall until it parted in doors made of living oak, and entered a building less raw in its interior than outside, but no more welcoming. The inside of her father's manor mimicked humanity's structures more than its exterior did; the floors were smooth, often enrobed with rugs, and the furniture did not threaten the way the hedges did. But neither were they entirely still, bereft of life, the way mortals built things to be; even the chairs and tables that could be moved had a kind of pulse to them, and the decorations that sat in alcoves and high on walls had the sense of things trapped rather than images captured.

No one welcomed her. No one ever had. There were no signs of Yylana Alara, no hint that a wife had come into the Woodland lord's halls and made herself at home there. Cat climbed a set of undulating steps, following them where they wished to lead her; she could stay on them all day, fighting to reach her destination, if she did not choose the track they wanted her on. As it was, it took only a minute or two to reach the inner chamber where her father was most often found.

It could have been a friendly place, had another master ruled it. With her father in charge, it felt like the heart of an ancient, hollow tree, full of darkness and shadows that parted here and there to allow windows that could not, in any human way, access the light of the outside world. It was lit by torches that dared not singe the heavy, curving sides of the room, nor carry soot to the higher reaches of the hollow. A desk of bending wood reached around one side of the room; her father rose from behind it, an aelfen faerie lord of obvious power.

This was the heart of his domain, his place of singular strength; here, very few could stand against him, and that, only at the risk of their own life. Cat had absolutely no interest in challenging him here, but she'd learned that the hard way, a long time ago. He wore robes of sable and green, made of fabrics woven by delicate, inhuman hands; they would keep neither heat nor cold nor wind nor water at bay, but they looked glorious, and the people of the Torn had other ways to fend off the weather. Around his temples lay a crown of thin black oak, holding his thick wash of red hair back from his sharp-featured face, and for a moment, his expression as he looked at Cat was almost pleased.

And in that moment, she could almost see why her mother had left the World to come here with him. He couldn't glamour Cat, but he didn't need to; here, in the Torn, in the heart of his power, he was beautiful. More beautiful than he had been in the Waste, and, if he was not more beautiful yet in the World, then the comparison of his strangely compelling features to that of most humans made him seem all the more desirable anyway.

Then his gaze rose on her hair and such irritation flooded his face as to enormously improve Cat's day. "You will have to comport yourself with greater dignity in my halls."

"I really don't plan on hanging around on my off time."

"A vassal has no 'off time'."

"You need me to make Artifacts for you," Cat said with a patience she didn't feel. "No one can make them constantly, and there's no reason at all for me to stay here when I'm not working. Or even when I am, largely. You can put in your order, I'll go make it, and deliver it back to you."

"I willwatchyou," he said with sudden spite. "Lest you betray me with your workings."

"With all due respect, I don't think you could tell if I did it right under your nose. What do you need me to make, anyway?"

"An item of deception." Her father's voice was cagey, somehow, and Cat squinted uncertainly, then grinned.

"You mean like those elaborate food pranks where you think you're having a burger but you take a bite of it and it's really cake?"

Her father's expression went rigid and Cat choked on a laugh, then gave up and let it out, ending with a cackle of delight. "You're gonna have to be alotmore specific. You know that. Artifacts have to have purpose. They have to be shaped to do something specific. 'An item of deception' won't cut it."

Cords stood out in his throat. "I require an item that will permit me to lie, Leandra."

A cool rush ran through Cat. She hadn't heard that name in years, and never from anyone she liked. Her mother had called her Cat; that was, more or less, what 'Leandra' meant. She'd chosen tobeCat, in the World; hearing her other name felt like a slap.

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