C.E. Murphy - Truthseeker

The words twisted in Lara’s ears, the sense of them clear, but the language itself wholly unfamiliar to her. She shook her head once, a sharp motion, and frowned at the woman kneeling in front of her. “What did you say?”

“I said behave.” This time Aerin’s speech was clear again. “I apologize for Myfanwy’s impudence.”

“But I heard—” Lara drew a slow breath. “You’re not speaking English, are you. Of course not. Why would you be? What are you speaking? Why do I understand you?”

“It will be part of the spell Dafydd’s cast to bring you here,” Aerin said after a moment. “If you didn’t understand me, it’s because I used our high tongue to scold her.”

“I understood what you meant.” Lara pressed her lips together as too many thoughts fought for precedence. Aerin’s question was a good one: she had come so willingly she might well have been influenced, unknowingly, by magic.

Might have been. There was one clear risk to that gambit, one that she put into words slowly. “I understood what you meant,” she repeated. “Not the words, but the idea of it. The truth behind it. If I can sense the true idea behind words I don’t even know, you tell me: Would you dare cast a glamour to trick me into coming to your world?”

Aerin folded her hands in her lap, studying Lara. “Perhaps not. Not if I thought there was any chance you might realize it, and I would assume a truthseeker would. You should still be cautious of us, Lara. All of us. Even Dafydd.”

Chimes poured from her words, ringing true and clear. Lara, fist still knotted in the fine fabric, nodded, and Aerin lifted a hand to gently loosen Lara’s grip on the skirt. “Then I think you’re ready to greet the court.”

She had not expected Dafydd to be at his father’s side.

In the moment after she assimilated the sight of the slim golden prince beside his father’s iron throne—no, it wouldn’t be iron, a small part of her recognized: fairies weren’t supposed to be able to bear the touch of iron, and so for all of its cold metallic weight, the king’s throne could not be iron. His father’s silver throne, and that was an idea even more overwhelming than Dafydd’s cool remote presence at the king’s side. The throne, tall and spired and shining, engulfed Emyr. Lara felt embarrassingly mortal for being so impressed at a chunk of precious metal.

A very large chunk of precious metal, to be sure: more than most humans might expect to see in a lifetime, much less displayed ostentatiously at the head of a courtroom. Lara shook herself, not caring that every eye would see her do it: she had no reason for pretense. She was a stranger and meant to be awed.

It would have been all right, though, if it hadn’t worked quite so well. And Dafydd, as if catching a hint of her thoughts, quirked a corner of his mouth, which went much further in restoring her equilibrium than she had imagined possible.

He would, of course, be at his father’s side. He was a prince of this realm, and for all she gathered he wasn’t precisely the favored son, there was nowhere else he could be without presenting the appearance of a schism within the royal house. Lara knew enough of politics to understand personal feelings fell a distant second to the illusion of a united front. And they did: the rest of the Seelie court rippled away from them, fading into obscurity when viewed alongside the king and prince. There were hundreds of people pressed into the throne room, all of them slim and ethereal and inhuman, but it was the royals who arrested Lara’s attention.

She, though, held everyone else’s. She’d known she would: that was the purpose of being presented to the court. Knowing it, though, and feeling the weight of so many gazes were different things. If it weren’t for a fear of doing her elegant gown an injustice, Lara thought she might turn and flee. She was a tailor, almost invisible to even the people she worked for, and she had spent most of her life trying not to call attention to herself or the discomfiting gift she possessed.

A gift that every person in the room knew she had, and which they all hoped might give them the answers they sought. Lara, quite certain royalty was supposed to break the silence, cleared her throat and squeaked, “Look, if I’m supposed to ask everybody in this room if they murdered Merrick ap Annwn, we’d probably better just get started.”

A ripple of subdued laughter turned Lara’s hands into slow fists beneath the long pointed sleeves of her borrowed dress. She looked the part of one of Dafydd’s people, or very nearly: she’d seen that in Myfanwy’s mirror.

The gown was probably the finest thing she had ever worn, despite having been made for someone else. Its tall, open-throated collar brushed her jaw and plunged to a narrow V that spilled down the bodice, making the most of her height. The bodice was wound gold and russet velvet, woven alternately until it made a textured cinch that shaped her figure to remarkable slenderness. It loosened at a dropped waist to float into the long, light lines of the skirt, layers upon layers of thin silken gauze. The colors were perfect for her, bringing vitality to her pale skin, and in the gown, she might well have been one of the Seelie, if unusually petite.

And then she opened her mouth, and marked herself as absolutely and unquestionably alien to the Seelie realm. The king stiffened, becoming a blade of ice. Dafydd touched a hand to his father’s shoulder, murmuring, “She means no offense. Her country has no king and no protocol in speaking with royalty. She’s afraid, and trying to hide it.”

The king relaxed fractionally, evidently satisfied by the idea that Lara feared him. She wondered if Dafydd had been as impossibly arrogant as his father when he’d left the Barrow-lands to roam the mortal world, and wondered, too, how deep and shocking the change in him must be, if that were so. He must have lived half a dozen human lives in the century he’d spent in Lara’s world, but only a matter of days had passed here, in his own. He may well have returned a stranger to the life and people he’d known. The idea sent a pang through her, as though an unexpected wound had opened and left her with no way to heal it.

“If I may, my lord,” Dafydd offered, as much to Lara as his father. The king sniffed and lifted a finger in agreement. Refusing to be sullied by speaking with a mortal, truthseeker or not, Lara thought. She caught Dafydd’s gaze, struggling against the urge to roll her eyes. The Seelie prince’s mouth quirked, but he replaced the beginnings of a smile with solemnity as he lifted his voice to address the court.

“I have brought to you the truthseeker we sought. Born of the mortal world and carrying mortal magic, Lara Jansen has chosen to come here, a place so foreign to her home that it’s a thing of legend and children’s tales. She knew me from the moment we met: knew me to be other than what I claimed to be, and in so knowing proved her magic. We are all in her debt, myself most of all.” His voice softened as he brought his attention to Lara.

“Myself most of all, for the scant days that have passed in the Barrow-lands have been a full century in her world. Her willingness to join me and search for the truth of Merrick ap Annwn’s murder has ended an exile that has left my heart bereft. I would ask you to do her an honor, and offer her the thanks of all our people.”

A thunderous chant answered him, and Lara flinched straight. She patted the noise down with her palms toward the floor, embarrassment burning her cheeks, and mumbled, “Thank you.”

“I think you might be able to ask us as one, Truthseeker,” Dafydd said as the calls faded away. “Only if you sense discordance in the answers would you have to trouble yourself to ask us individually if we are guilty of this foul deed.”