C.E. Murphy - Truthseeker

Silence, abrupt and strained, followed the accusation. The courtiers, so willing to edge away from those who confessed to dislike, went still, as if afraid they would otherwise all look to whomever spoke, and in doing so condemn him.

But there was no condemnation to be made. Even the repugnance with which the words had been spoken wasn’t enough to mask an inherent truth. Merrick’s Unseelie heritage may have seemed, in melodramatic terms, to be reason enough to destroy him, but there was dissonance in the words: it was not, in truth, reason enough. It had not driven any of the gathered court to kill.

It made her aware she knew too little and that Dafydd had diced his language carefully when he’d asked her to help him. That, in turn, reminded her of Aerin’s warning to be cautious, and Lara trembled with both exhaustion and nerves as she finally turned back to the throne. “I honestly don’t think anyone here is responsible in any way for your brother’s murder, Dafydd. I don’t know what that means, where we go from here, but if anyone here is guilty I can’t think of a question to ask that’ll resonate with me.”

“A truthseeker worthy of the name would have looked among us and known instantly,” the king said coolly.

There was no profit in angering powerful men. Lara’s chin dropped to her chest, weariness overcoming wisdom. “Dafydd said my talent hasn’t matured. If you’re not in any hurry, I could come back in a few years and we could try again then. I’m trying my best, though, and there is something I did notice, even if I’m not as good as I could be.”

Impatient fingertips rattled a drumbeat against the throne’s arm. “And what is that?”

Lara lifted her head, meeting the elfin king’s eyes. “Neither you nor Dafydd answered any of my questions.”

Emyr came to his feet in a silver shot, offended power blazing off him so strongly that Lara’s next breath showed on suddenly chilly air. As one, the gathered courtiers moved back, showing the respect and awe due a monarch whose temper had been ignited by insult.

Panic leapt in Lara’s stomach, driving the impulse to do as the courtiers had done: to escape the king’s reach and his wrath. She wasn’t certain it was bravery that held her in place; it could as easily have been a fundamental inability to move. But she forced her chin up, forced her gaze to be cool, and told herself that in the face of her calm the Seelie king’s response was overblown and gauche. That he made himself foolish, when all he’d had to do was respond evenly in order to retain his own dignity.

“I’m sorry,” she said mildly, and meant it, though more as an expression of surprise than apology. “Is the king above the law in the Barrow-lands?”

“The king is not expected to participate in common courtroom displays,” he said through his teeth. Ice crystals grew around his feet, marring the silver craftsmanship of his throne and creeping toward Lara like a physical threat. For a long moment her attention was drawn to their inching progress, and a shiver rose up from her core. Regardless of how much courage she drew on, she could never hope to match an anger that was literally elemental.

The leading edge of ice turned to water as it moved beyond the immediate area of the king’s effect, and a prosaic curiosity knocked fear out of her: she wondered how the silver remained unblackened, if the Seelie monarch was prone to fits of temper. There would have to be servants to mop up the melt water so it wouldn’t oxidize in hard-to-reach crevices, since Lara couldn’t imagine Dafydd’s father stooping to do such menial work himself.

Equilibrium restored by ordinary matters of pragmatism, Lara lifted her gaze back to the king and arched an eyebrow in deliberate, if moderate, challenge. “In private will be fine, then. I do most of my work behind a closed door anyway.”

“I have nothing to hide.” Dafydd’s voice surprised her, but nowhere nearly as much as it shocked his father, who flinched so hard a spray of frost cascaded from his shoulders and fell white against the throne. “I should have thought to include myself in the compulsion, or at the least, made answers to your questions. The prerogative of royalty,” Dafydd explained. “I’m afraid even a century among humans didn’t eliminate my assumption of carte blanche once I returned home.”

The king’s jaw locked, fury paling his eyes. Dafydd met the expression with an artless expression of no concern, but subtle tension changed the set of his shoulders and the way his clothes fell. He was forcing his father’s hand, Lara realized and, looking between them, had an instant’s clarity. The king wasn’t above the law: he was the law, as he would have been through much of human history. It was therefore almost impossible to suggest the law might be in any way corrupt without also implicating the crown.

She’d come to the Barrow-lands to help, not to sow the seeds of civil war. “It’s all right, Dafydd. I probably wouldn’t have thought to include myself, either. And I imagine no one would expect the queen of England to be subjected to mass questioning, either. I do think it’s necessary to put you through it, though, your majesty, if for no other reason than to allow you to face the Unseelie king with the absolute truth at your side.”

The phrase “your majesty” came more smoothly than she’d feared it might. It was deliberate mollification, as deliberate as her earlier attempt to infuriate him, but the wealthy and powerful were frequently easy to assuage by paying them the due they thought owed them. And, to be fair, the man was a king. Insufferably arrogant, perhaps, but a king.

And, just like a highly sensitive shop client, he relaxed a little, some of the cold inching back from where it had grown around him. “Hafgan would never believe me to be in any way responsible for his son’s death. To be so would be to risk my own child Ioan’s life. Even so, the assurance would not go amiss.” He took one step down from his dais, approaching Lara, though it was his court he addressed.

“I am Emyr, king of the Barrow-lands, and I tell you this now: I have had no hand in the death—the murder —of Merrick ap Annwn, child of Hafgan of the Unseelie. I neither nocked the arrow nor drew it nor released it.” His gaze went to Lara, and quietly but sharply, he added, “And those words are both literal and figurative in their truths. I am not part of the plot that designed his death. I did not shape it, nor do I have any knowledge of who did. I only wish I did, if for no other reason than to assure my oldest son’s safety.” The ice that had left it came back into his voice. “Now, Truthseeker, are you satisfied?”

Lara tilted her head, eyebrows furrowed as she considered the king. Then she took a handful of skirts and dropped a brief curtsy that felt unnatural, but which she meant with as much genuine respect as she could muster. “I am. You were very thorough, and I don’t think I have any follow-up questions.” She released her skirts and turned to Dafydd much less formally. “Which only leaves you, I guess.”

“Why bother?” Aerin stepped forward from within the courtiers. “There’s no one among us who doesn’t know Dafydd ap Caerwyn was the murder weapon himself.”

Ice erupted in Lara’s stomach and froze her breath as surely as though Emyr had cast a spell to chill the air. Bravado had pushed her through facing his anger; bravado and the certainty that if she let herself admit to the awe she felt, she would crumble in a whimpering heap at the throne’s edge and never get up again.

Even that narrow strand of willpower deserted her, resonating pure tones in Aerin’s charge stripping what strength she had to draw on. She swung toward Dafydd, the ice in her belly spreading to her arms and legs and leaving her a clumsy marionette. Only the way the skirts crumpled in her hand promised her gown was still gossamer: its weight was such that it might have turned to stone. There was nothing to her voice, only a protest of disbelief she knew would go unanswered: “Dafydd?”