Лорел Гамильтон - A Stroke Of Midnight

He kept protesting his innocence in that same thick voice that sounded like he had a very bad head cold, but I knew it was his own blood he was choking on.

“Silence!” Doyle said, not a yell, but his voice carried all the same.

Onilwyn was silent for a moment, until Harry Hob said, “I saw…”

Onilwyn cut him off. “He lies.”

Harry made himself heard then, bellowing loud enough to shake the cups on their shelves. “I lie! I lie! It takes a sidhe to be a liar inside fairie.”

Doyle stepped between them, motioning them both to silence. “Hob, did you see Onilwyn kill Beatrice?” He turned at a sound from Onilwyn. “If you interrupt again, I will have you dragged from this room.”

Onilwyn made a sound, then spat blood on the kitchen floor.

Maggie May stalked toward him with a small iron pot in her hand.

“No, Maggie,” Doyle said, “we’ll have no more of your bogarting.”

“Bogarting? Why, Darkness, if you think that was bogarting, you must never have seen a true bogart.” There was something threatening in her golden eyes.

“Don’t force me to have to ban you from your own kitchen, Maggie May.”

“Yo’ wouldna’ dare!”

He just looked at her, and the look was enough. She backed off, muttering under her breath, but she put the pot down and went to the far corner. Her dogs boiled about her feet like a furry tide.

Doyle looked back to Harry Hob. “Now, once more, did you see Onilwyn kill Beatrice or the reporter?”

“If not to finish the job, then why did he come ahead of you all into the kitchen? Why not ask him that?”

Doyle’s voice was low and almost evil sounding, with an edge of a growl. “I ask you one last time, Harry. If you do not answer me straight and simply, I will let Frost shake you until some answer falls out.”

“Ah, now, Darkness, no need to threaten old Harry.”

“Old Harry, is it?” Doyle smiled. “You can’t claim age here, not among us. I remember you as a babe, Harry. I remember when you had a human family and farm to tend.”

Harry scowled at him, a look as unfriendly as he’d given Onilwyn. “No need to bring up hard memories, Darkness.” He sounded sullen.

“Then answer me straight, and no one here need know how you lost your place.”

“You wouldna’ tell,” Harry said.

“Give me truth, Harry Hob, or I will give you truth you don’t wish shared.”

Harry scowled at the floor. He looked somehow diminished and more delicate than he should have, held between the two tall guards. Maybe he was playing for sympathy, but if so, he was playing to the wrong audience.

Doyle knelt in front of him, staying on the balls of his feet. “One last time Harry; did you see Onilwyn kill Beatrice and/or the human reporter?”

The “and/or” had been a nice touch, because without it Harry would have room to wiggle: if he’d seen only one murder, but not both.

He answered, still staring at the floor, “No.”

“No, what?” Doyle asked.

Harry looked up at that, his dark eyes glittering with anger. “No, I didna’ see the tree lord slay my Beatrice or the human.”

“Then why did you hide from him?”

“I did not know he was hid there,” Maggie May said. “Mayhaps, Darkness, it was na’ the tree lord he first hid from.”

“Very good,” Doyle said, acknowledging it with a nod of his head. He stood and asked Maggie’s question: “Why did you hide yourself, Harry?”

“I saw him,” and he used a nod, since his arms were still held, to point at Onilwyn, who was also still being held.

We waited for him to say more, but he seemed to think he’d said enough. Doyle prompted him, “And why should the mere sight of Onilwyn make you hide?”

“Thought he was her sidhe lover, didno’ I.”

I couldn’t help it. I laughed. Harry gave me a dirty look.

“I’m sorry, Hob, but Onilwyn doesn’t think even I am pure-blooded enough. I can’t imagine him having a completely non-sidhe lover.”

“Thank you, Princess,” Onilwyn said in that still thick voice.

I gave him the look he deserved and said, “It wasn’t a compliment.”

“Just the same,” he said, “I am grateful for the truth.”

“Who but her sidhe lover would come here alone?” Harry asked.

“Good question,” I said and looked at Doyle.

He gave a small nod and said, “Why did you abandon us, Onilwyn?”

“I had no interest in watching the princess perform with someone else. The queen cured me of voyeurism a very long time ago.”

None argued with that, but Doyle asked, “So you came ahead to begin questioning the witnesses on your own, without either of your captains’ or even your officers’ permission?”

“You all seemed… busy.” And even with the broken nose the sarcasm came through loud and clear.

“You didn’t hit him hard enough, Merry,” Galen said, and my gentle knight had a decidedly ungentle look on his face.

“Did you come ahead to seek answers, or to hide them?” Doyle asked.

“I was not the lover of anyone. And I would most certainly not risk the queen’s mercy for anything less than a sidhe.” The disdain in his voice was thick enough to walk on.

“Did any of the rest of you know that Beatrice had a sidhe lover?” Doyle asked.

Maggie May said, “No, I’ve told all mah’ people that you leave the big ones alone. Only grief comes of it.”

“So, if Beatrice had taken a sidhe,” I said, “she’d have hidden it from you?”

“Ah, most like.”

I looked to the dainty blue figure that was almost hidden behind Galen’s neck. “Mug?”

Galen had to say, “The princess is asking you a question, Mug.”

She’d been too busy playing in the curls at the back of his neck to pay attention to anything else. She wasn’t stupid, but I’d seen her like this before, as if the touch of a sidhe was intoxicating to her.

She peered around his neck, her wings flicking nervously. “What?” she asked.

“Did Beatrice have a lover that you know of?”

She pointed to Harry. “Him.”

“Did she have a sidhe lover?” I asked.

Mug’s eyes went wide. “A sidhe for a lover? Beatrice…” She shook her head. “If I had known, I would have asked her to let me touch him.”

“Beatrice would never have told Mug,” Peasblossom said.

I looked for her and found her perched on the pots that hung from hooks on the near wall. “Did she tell you?”

“She did.”

“Who was her sidhe lover?” Harry asked, voice eager.

None us said anything, because it was one of the things we all wanted to know.

“She wouldn’t tell me, said he made her promise not to tell anyone or he would break off the relationship.”

“Why would that end the relationship?” Doyle asked. “Unless…”

Frost said it. “Unless he was a royal guard.”

“Who would risk death by torture for less than sidhe flesh?” Amatheon said.

I gave him an unfriendly look.

“I do not deserve that look, Princess; it is only truth.”

I started to argue but hesitated. I had had lesser fey lovers in Los Angeles, and it had been wonderful, but… but I had craved other flesh. Once you have had the full attention of another sidhe, all else was truly lesser. I wanted to argue with Amatheon, but I could not, not and be truthful.

“I will not argue with you, Amatheon,” I said.

“Because you cannot,” he replied. He kept his grip on Onilwyn, but his attention seemed all for me.

I acknowledged the truth of it with a nod.

“But if not a guard,” Galen asked, “then why would he care if others knew of his relationship with Beatrice?”

I looked at him, searching his face for any hint that he knew how naïve that question was, but there was nothing in his face that said he understood anything.