Лорел Гамильтон - A Lick Of Frost

"You can ask it," Biggs said, "but I'll decide if they answer it."

Veducci gave a nod, and pushed away from the wall where he'd been leaning. He smiled at us all. Only a hardness to his eyes let me know that the smile was a lie. "Sergeant Rhys, were you in the lands of faerie on the date that Lady Caitrin accuses you of attacking her?"

"Of allegedly attacking her," Biggs said.

Veducci nodded at him. "Were you in the lands of faerie on the date that Lady Caitrin alleges this attack took place?"

It was nicely worded. Worded so that it was hard to dance around the truth without actually lying.

Rhys smiled at him, and I got a glimpse of that less serious side he'd shown me most of my life. "I was in the lands of Faerie when the alleged attack took place."

Veducci asked the same question of Galen. Galen looked more uncomfortable than Rhys had, but he answered, "Yes, I was."

Abeloec's answer was simply "Yes."

Farmer whispered to Biggs, and asked the next round of questions. "Sergeant Rhys, were you here in Los Angeles on the date of the alleged attack?"

The question proved that our lawyers still didn't quite understand the quandary of time in faerie.

"No, I was not."

Biggs frowned. "But you were, all day. We have many witnesses."

Rhys smiled at him. "But the day in Los Angeles was not the identical day as the day that Lady Caitrin accused us of this alleged attack."

"It is the same date," Biggs insisted.

"Yes," Rhys said patiently, "but just because it's the same date doesn't mean it's the same day."

Veducci was the only one smiling. Everyone else looked like they were thinking too hard, or were wondering if Rhys was crazy.

"Can you clarify that?" Veducci asked, still looking pleased.

"This isn't like a science-fiction story, where we have traveled back in time to redo the same day," Rhys said. "We aren't truly in two places at once. For us, Mr. Veducci, this day is truly a new day. Our doppelgängers are not in faerie reliving this day. That day in faerie is past. This day here in Los Angeles is a new day. It happens to have the same date, so outside of faerie it appears to be the same day, repeated."

"So you could have been in faerie on the day she was attacked?" Veducci asked.

Rhys smiled at him, almost tsking. "On the day she was allegedly attacked, yes."

"This will be a nightmare for a jury," Nelson said.

"Wait until we get done demanding a jury of their peers," Farmer said, smiling almost happily.

Nelson paled under her tasteful makeup. "A jury of their peers?" she repeated softly.

"Could a human juror truly understand being in two places on the same date?" Farmer asked.

The lawyers looked at each other. Only Veducci didn't share in the confusion. I think he'd already thought of all of this. Technically, his job description made him less powerful than Shelby or Cortez, but he could help them hurt us. Of everyone on the opposing side, Veducci was the one I wanted to win over the most.

"We're here today to try to avoid this going to a jury," Biggs said.

"If they attacked this woman then, at the very least," Shelby said, "they must be confined to faerie."

"You would have to prove their guilt before you could get a judge to meet out a punishment," Farmer said.

"Which leads us back to the fact that none of us really want this to go to court." Veducci's quiet voice fell into the room like a stone thrown into a flock of birds. The other lawyers' thoughts seemed to scatter like those birds, flying up in confusion.

"Don't be giving our case away before we've even begun," Cortez said, not sounding happy with his colleague.

"This isn't a case, Cortez, this is a disaster we're trying to avert," Veducci said.

"A disaster for whom, them?" Cortez said, pointing at us.

"For all of faerie, potentially," Veducci said. "Have you read your history about the last great human-faerie war in Europe?"

"Not recently," Cortez said.

Veducci looked around at the other lawyers. "Am I the only one here who read up on this?"

Grover raised his hand. "I did."

Veducci smiled at him as if he were his favorite person in the world. "Tell these intelligent people how the last great war started."

"It began as a dispute between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts."

"Exactly," Veducci said. "And then spilled over all the British Isles and part of the continent of Europe."

"Are you saying that if we don't mediate these charges the courts will go to war?" Nelson said.

"There are only two things that Thomas Jefferson and his cabinet made unforgivable offenses for the fey on American soil," Veducci said. "They are never again to allow themselves to be worshipped as deities, and they are never to have a war between the two courts. If either of those things happen they will be kicked out of this, the last country on earth that would have them."

"We know all this," Shelby said.

"But have you considered why Jefferson made those two rules, especially the one about war?"

"Because it would be damaging to our country," Shelby said.

Veducci shook his head. "There is still a crater on the European continent almost as wide as the widest part of the Grand Canyon. That hole is what is left of where the last battle of the war was fought. Think about if that happened in the center of this country, in the middle of our most productive farming country."

They looked at each other. They hadn't thought about it. To Shelby and Cortez it had been a high-profile case. A chance to make new law involving the fey. Everyone had taken the short view, except Veducci, and maybe Grover.

"What do you propose we do?" Shelby asked. "Just let them get away with it?"

"No, not if they are guilty, but I want everyone in this room to understand what might be at stake, that's all," Veducci said.

"You sound like you're on the side of the princess," Cortez said.

"The princess didn't give a United States ambassador a bespelled watch so he would favor her."

"How do we know the princess didn't do it, to trick us?" Shelby said. He sounded like he even believed it.

Veducci turned to me. "Princess Meredith, did you give Ambassador Stevens any object magical or mundane that would sway his opinion of you and your court in your favor?"

I smiled. "No, I did not."

"They really can't lie, if you ask the questions right," Veducci said.

"Then how did Lady Caitrin accuse these men by name and description? She seemed genuinely traumatized."

"That is a problem," Veducci admitted. "The lady in question would have to be lying, an outright lie, because I asked the questions right, and she was unshakable." He looked at us, at me. "Do you understand what that means, Princess?"

I took a deep breath and let it out, slowly. "I think so. It means that Lady Caitrin has everything to lose here. If she is caught in an actual lie, she could be cast out of faerie. Exile is considered worse than death to the Seelie nobility."

"Not just the nobility," Rhys said.

The other guards nodded. "He is right," Doyle said. "Even the lesser fey would do much to avoid exile."

"So how is the lady lying?" Veducci asked us.

Galen spoke, voice low, a little uncertain. "Could it be an illusion? Could someone have used glamour so strong that it fooled her?"

"You mean made her think she was being attacked when she wasn't?" Nelson asked.

"I'm not sure that would be possible on a member of the sidhe," Veducci said. He looked at us.

"What if it wasn't completely an illusion," Rhys said.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"You make a tree by planting a stick in the ground. You create a castle from the ruin of one," he said.

"It would be easier to do such a thing if you had something physical to build upon," Doyle said.