Лорел Гамильтон - A Stroke Of Midnight

Crystall came to my order. The guards with him helped Lord Kieran walk in, but they had to drag Lord Innis. They dumped him at the queen’s feet.

Her face was empty, cold, and arrogant. It gave nothing away as she stood on the steps. Mistral was still kneeling behind her where she had left him. Barinthus was still standing where she’d left him. I think he feared drawing her attention back to him.

“Kieran Knife-Hand, your wife has been telling me evil things. Telling me that Barinthus means to take my throne and that I should kill him before he comes back into his full power. I admit the thought occurred to me when I realized he had been with Meredith. Barinthus is many things, but dishonorable is not one of them. He gave his word, I believe he will keep it. In fact, I allowed him into our court on that belief.” She moved down the steps until she stood just above him. “So why did I give such weight to your wife’s evil words?”

After a moment she said, “Mistral.”

“My queen.”

“Rise, and come to me.”

He did as she asked, but kept his hair over his face, as if he didn’t trust his expression. I couldn’t blame him.

“Bring Kieran’s wife before me.”

Kieran’s house was led by Blodewedd, who was created from the spring flowers of oak, broom, and meadowsweet by Gwydion and Math to be a bride for Lleu Llaw Gyffes. Why would the Unseelie Court take in a woman who had betrayed her husband and her marital vows, and only failed to be a murderer because her husband was able to kill her lover? Because marriage by force is not recognized among us. She was created, then given as a sort of gift, like you’d buy a dog or a horse. Even in a day and time when women didn’t always have the right to choose their partners, it was a little high-handed.

The one thing you always needed to remember with Blodewedd is if you’re fair with her, she’ll be fair with you, but don’t betray her. Don’t ever do anything she could take badly. She learned from her earlier mistakes. She does her own killing now.

Blodewedd stood as Mistral came for her table, and one of her people. Her hair was the startling yellow of the flowers that had formed her. Her skin was a soft, pale color that was somewhere between white and gold. She was almost doll-like in her beauty. The kind of woman men would create if they could, with high proud breasts a little bigger than was usual for the sidhe. Her eyes were huge and liquid dark, drowning and lustrous, owl eyes in that delicate face. Supposedly, she’d been cursed with them, cursed to be in the shape of an owl. If that were true, than she’d managed to cure herself of everything but the eyes.

“Madenn is mine to protect, Queen Andais. I would speak with her before you take her.”

“Is your house traitor to me as Nerys’s was, Blodewedd?”

“I would never betray a fellow sister of the dark.” Blodewedd would go for years without uttering a word in court, then she’d come out with lines like that. “Nor would I tolerate such betrayal among my household.”

“You may speak with her,” Andais said, “but it must be publicly done. There will be no more secrets this night.”

Blodewedd gave a small bow, then turned to the woman in question. Madenn was a small woman by sidhe standards, barely five-eight. But sitting there in her black dress with her dark hair and eyes, she seemed smaller, as if she had shrunk in upon herself. Her normally pale skin was pasty. Her hands were very still on the arms of her chair. She sat there immobile, her face frozen.

“Madenn,” Blodewedd said, in a voice that carried through the hall, “your husband has been named traitor. What say you to that?”

Madenn licked her pale lips. “I do not know what to say.” Her voice was breathy but more in control than her face and body.

“You must say something, for the Queen’s Ravens come for you. You must give me some reason to protect you. If you swear to me that you are innocent of wrongdoing I will fight for you even against the queen herself. But I must know now, Madenn. I must know how much I am to risk for you, and if you are worth that risk.”

I could not see Kieran’s face, but even with his hands bound behind his back, he stood easier and more naturally than his wife sat in her carved chair. I watched what little blood was left in Madenn’s face drain away.

“Fainting will not aid you,” Blodewedd said, and her voice held an edge of that purring darkness that Andais’s could hold. “Can you give me a reason for defying our queen about this? Give me a word of defense for you, Madenn, and I will use it.”

Madenn looked up at her liege lord, and tears glittered in her eyes, but no words came. As admissions of guilt went, it was good enough.

Blodewedd bowed her head, and turned back to Mistral. “I cannot save her from her own actions.”

“Take her, Mistral,” the queen said.

Madenn did not move or speak until Mistral grabbed her arm. Then she held on to the arms of the chair like a child. She may have been delicate by sidhe standards, but she was still strong enough that making her leave her chair without hurting her wasn’t really possible. She was saying one word, over and over again—“No, no, no, no”—in a high, thin voice.

“Hawthorne,” I said.

“Yes, Princess.”

“Help Mistral bring her out.”

Hawthorne bowed to me, then moved toward them in his crimson armor, putting his helmet back on so he had his hands free. He went to stand on the other side of the woman’s chair. Mistral shook his unbound hair back behind his shoulders, then nodded to Hawthorne, as if they’d discussed it. They both bent their knees, and raised the chair up with Madenn still plastered to it. They carried her and the heavy wooden chair, threading their way through Blodewedd’s people, and out to the main floor. They carried it all easily, gracefully. If Madenn hadn’t looked terrified, it would have appeared as if they were honoring her, carrying her like the May queen, to be worshipped by her subjects. The look on her face said that she was expecting to be the sacrifice, not the belle of the ball.

They put her chair down beside her husband. Her shoulders rounded, and I thought she was probably crying. “Meredith,” the queen said, “come join me.”

She didn’t have to ask me twice.

She had taken her throne, leaving what had once been Prince Cel’s throne empty for me. It had been my chair for only twenty-four hours. She motioned Eamon, her consort, from behind her throne to take his smaller throne that was a little lower on the dais. There was another throne lower down on my side, too. It wasn’t for my consort of years but for the flavor of the day. Consort of the moment, perhaps.

The last time I’d sat here, the consort’s chair had been occupied by Sholto, Lord of That Which Passes Between. It was only as I took my throne that I realized that Sholto and his sluagh weren’t at their table near the door. Nor were they at the queen’s back as guards. The sluagh were not here. He was king of his own court. The goblins were not here either, but they were often absent unless it was a planned event or a major holiday. This was neither, but Sholto never missed an occasion at court. He wanted too desperately to be accepted as sidhe to miss one.

Tyler, the Queen’s pet human, curled at her feet. She asked, “Where is your little goblin?”

She meant Kitto. “He is helping Rhys watch over the police while they are inside faerie.”

“Has there been some problem?” She was letting Kieran sweat, or seeing whether he would. Madenn was openly weeping, and if she hadn’t been part of a plot to kill Galen, I might have felt sorry for her.

I told her briefly of the effect the entrance to faerie had had on Walters and his people. She seemed most interested.