Лорел Гамильтон - A Stroke Of Midnight

“Why should I care if he is injured?” I asked.

“He is a free lord of the court you seek to rule,” she said.

“He is merely one lord among many, Kanna. I see no extra value in him, merely because he had enough power and political savvy to stay out of the guards.”

“Others see the free lords as more valuable than we of the guard.”

“That is because they have forgotten that once it was considered an honor to be asked to join the royal guard. Once it was not a punishment, but a reward.”

“You speak of things too old to bear remembering,” Kanna said. “You were not there. You cannot know.”

“I listen to our stories, Kanna. I remember our history. Many of our best and most accomplished warriors were not forced into the guard, but invited. It only became a burden and a punishment… later.”

“You would leave a free lord to bleed to death, then?”

“If it is a choice between a man who risked his life on my order to save one that I love, and a man who tried to take the life of the one I love, then yes, let him die if he can. Wasn’t it you, Lord Kieran, who said a sidhe who can die from blood loss is no sidhe at all?”

Crystall had to move his sword back a little to give him breath and space to talk. “Innis is of the purest blood, not some pixie half-breed.”

“Funny how all blood looks the same when it is spilled upon the ground,” I said. “Are any of my people hurt besides Adair?” I looked at Kieran when I spoke, watched his face. I was rewarded because he looked puzzled.

“You truly would let Innis die.”

“Give me a reason not to let him die,” I said.

“He is not important enough to me to bargain for,” Kieran said.

“Then he will lie there and bleed until I decide otherwise.”

“Innis’s clan is powerful, Princess. You do not want them as your enemies.”

I laughed at that. “He has already proven himself my enemy.”

“We did not attack you,” Kieran said.

Adair was still leaning against the wall, bleeding. “Look at his wound, see how bad it is, and I ask for the last time are any of the rest of you hurt?”

Aisling spoke still wrapped in his cloak, so that most of him was hidden. “I let this one get past me.” He emphasized his words by driving the edge of his sword a little tighter against Melangell’s throat. Enough that a thin edge of crimson began to flow.

“Was it you that nearly cleaved her helmet to her skull?” I asked.

“Yes, but only after she bloodied me.” He sounded disgusted with himself.

“Frost, choose someone to take Aisling’s place, so we can see to his wounds.”

“Hawthorne,” Frost said, and one word was enough. He put his helmet back on, and went to take Aisling’s place.

Dogmaela was standing there between the two groups, as if she didn’t quite know what to do. Melangell was her captain of the guard. Unless she was willing to make the same offer that Hafwyn had made, she would have to go back under Melangell’s rule. In the middle of such a power struggle was a tricky place to be. Dogmaela was like Galen, you could see her struggle with the problem on her face, in the posture of her body. She had fought with the others, but now she didn’t know where her loyalties lay. The fact that she was so divided made me put her in the untrustworthy category.

Hafwyn and the other wounded moved to one side, leaving me with Galen cradled in my lap. I slid my hands down the front of his shirt. “You need to start wearing armor.”

“Unless it was enchanted armor, it would not have helped,” Adair said. Hafwyn and Aisling were helping him remove his armor in pieces. The padding underneath was soaked crimson with blood. The wide, clean cut was plain in the padding, low on his side. “He was able to do this to me, even with the armor.”

“Your armor is still worthy of its maker,” Kieran said. “I could not pierce it. I had to find a seam.”

“No true sword could have found the opening you used,” Adair said. The padding peeled off in layers. The linen shirt next to his skin was a ruined red mass.

“That is why magic will always win against weaponry,” Kieran said.

“It was not magic that stopped Innis,” Crystall said.

“It was human magic,” Kieran said.

“Guns are not magic,” Crystall argued, “they are weapons.”

Kieran shook his head. “What is human science but another name for magic? Even now, the princess has brought human spell casters into our sithen. She allows human magic free range inside the only refuge we have left.”

“That’s a reason to attack me,” I said, “but not a reason to attack Galen. Why him?”

“Perhaps we are attacking all your guards, if we find them alone,” Kieran said.

“No,” Galen said with his head still in my lap, “when I came around the corner Melangell said, ‘We’ve been waiting for you, green man,’ then you hit me in the back. Where were you hiding? I must have passed right by you.”

“Innis can hide in plain sight,” Frost said, “and he can hide one or two with him, if none of them moves.” Frost was still very much on alert, guarding me. He hadn’t looked at a wound, or participated in the conversation. He was working and it showed.

“So Kieran, why Galen?” I asked.

“Lord Kieran,” he corrected me.

I shook my head, my hand sliding a little farther down Galen’s chest, so I could feel his heart beating against my palm. “Fine, Lord Kieran Knife-Hand, answer my question.”

He looked at me, his face arrogant and handsome in the way that most of the sidhe were. But his was a cold beauty, or maybe I was just projecting. “You have captured me, but you cannot make me answer your questions. Take me to Queen Andais so I may get on with my night.”

I stared at him, with Galen’s heartbeat under my hand. Was Kieran being that brave, or did he believe that the queen would do nothing to him? “You have attacked a royal guard. You will not be getting on with your night, Lord Kieran.”

“Siobhan nearly killed a royal heir, and yet she lives. Imprisoned, but she lives. The queen’s pet torturer fears the touch of Siobhan’s skin, so she has not even been tortured. She will sit in her cage until Prince Cel is released, then she will be his right hand again. If that is all the queen does to a would-be assassin of royalty, then what more can she do to us? Nerys’s house still lives, even though all of them turned traitor. They tried to kill both you and the queen herself, and they have lost nothing.” He sneered at me, all that beauty turning ugly.

“That is why you and Innis agreed to this,” I said. “You saw Nerys’s people go free, and you think you will go free, too.”

“The queen needs her allies, Princess.”

“How can you be her ally if you toadie for Cel?”

“I toadie to no one, but I admit to preferring him to you. There are many who feel the same.”

“Of that I have no doubt.” I looked at him, so sure of himself, and I needed him not to be. I needed whatever information he possessed, and I needed the court to fear me. To fear harming my people. If the queen would not put that fear into them, then I had to figure out a way to do it myself.

There was a sound like a great hollow gong being struck.

“What is that?” I asked.

It sounded again before the first echoes had died.

Frost reached for a knife at his belt. “I have a call.” It was Rhys.

“What are you doing, Merry? It was all I could do to keep Walters and the police from running to check out your screams. Is Galen all right? You were screaming his name.”

Galen spoke from my lap. “I’m touched that you care.”

Rhys chuckled. “He’s fine.”

“He was attacked, though,” I said.