Anne Kelleher - Silver's Bane

Vinaver smiled then, but her face was sad. “Child, don’t you understand? You are the next Queen of Faerie. That is, if Faerie survives at all.”

There was the faintest smell of rot in the air. Like the warm tap of a random spring raindrop, the odor drifted, now here, now there, never so much that one was ever quite sure what one smelled. But it was enough to make one pause, turn one’s head, wrinkle one’s nose and sniff again. It had first been detected after Samhain, and it was becoming noticeable enough that a fashion for wearing perfumed lace face masks was spreading rapidly throughout the ladies of the Court.

And it was noticeable enough that Timias had been forced to listen, a prisoner in his chambers, to Her Majesty’s Master of the House, Lord Rimbaud, and her Chatelaine, Lady Evardine, while they lamented the situation for nearly a full turn of the glass, before a summons from Alemandine’s Consort, Hudibras, interrupted their torrent of complaint. Now Timias tightened his grip on his oak staff, and pressed his mouth into a thin line as he hurried through the palace of the Faerie Queen as quickly as his aged legs would allow. A small puff of stink through the lemon-scented air was enough to make him furrow his already wrinkled brow as he scurried through the arching marble corridors, hung with tapestries and mosaics so intricately and perfectly executed, some were known to move. He passed the image of a stag brought down by a huntsman’s bow, the great antlered head lifted in eternal agony, and something made Timias pause, transfixed, before it. The crimson blood flowing from the stag’s side shone with a curious rippling gleam, as if the blood that flowed from the wound was real.

Timias stepped closer, narrowing his eyes. As another trace of putrid odor filled his nostrils, he reached out and touched the gleaming rivulet. For a moment his finger registered the cold pressure of the stone as wetness and he started back, peering closely at his finger, half expecting to see a smear of blood. But his fingertip was clear, without a hint of moisture. Of course there wasn’t any blood, he told himself, there was no blood. How could there be blood? It was only a picture. There was no blood. It was but a trick of his overwrought senses, a consequence of his agonized mind. He had enough to occupy a dozen councilors. His discovery with Delphinea of the missing Caul led to the disclosure of the plot against the Queen, and allowed him to once again assert his position and authority as the oldest of all the Council. The stupid girl had not waited long enough to allow him to thank her properly before she’d run off. The first thing he’d done had been to order the arrests of every one of the Queen’s councilors in residence at the Court. This meant that, while the immediate threat was contained until he could determine who was to be trusted, he alone remained to steer Alemandine through the task of holding her realm together both under the strain engendered by her pregnancy and the inevitable attack by the Goblin King. But the calamity of the missing Caul, coupled with the revelation of Vinaver’s treachery, made what would have been a heavy burden especially weighty. A lesser sidhe, one without so many years and experience as his, would surely not be equal to the task. He touched the wall again, just to make sure. “No blood,” he whispered aloud. “No blood.” He realized he was still muttering as he stalked through the halls to Alemandine’s chambers.

There was certainly enough to mutter about. Vinaver, that foul abomination, had seized the opportunity afforded by his absence in the Shadowlands to hatch some horrific plot against her sister, Alemandine, the details of which he did not yet understand. It was her cronies on the Council he’d had arrested, all of them—all of them save Vinaver herself, who’d prudently retired to her Forest House. Well, he’d not let that stop him. The very hour he’d discovered Lady Delphinea gone missing, he’d sent a company of the Queen’s Guard out to drag both her and Vinaver back to the palace. He’d find out what had happened to the missing Caul and then turn his attention to the defense of Faerie. The calculated way in which Vinaver had so coldly plotted against her sister when the pregnant Queen was at her most vulnerable intrigued him and made him admire her in a way he refused to contemplate.

He’d already decided that it had been a mistake to allow Finuviel to take over Artimour’s command, and the sooner Artimour was restored to his proper place, and Finuviel recalled, the easier they could all rest. After all, it was only logical to assume that Finuviel was an integral part of Vinaver’s scheme to make herself Queen in her sister’s stead, and so the sooner Artimour resumed command, the better. After all, Artimour would be so pathetically grateful to have his place back, Timias knew he’d be able to trust him. And maybe not just trust him, thought Timias as he considered new and different roles for Artimour to play. He was always something of a misfit around the Court. He couldn’t have been happy about the revocation of his command. He’d owe tremendous loyalty to the person—or group of persons—who restored it.

It was time to recall Artimour, decided Timias, time to assure the dear boy of their continued support and offer apologies for the terrible mistake they’d made in replacing him with Finuviel, the spawn of that foul abomination, Vinaver. If necessary, Artimour could be dispatched to the mortal world with an offer of assistance. And wasn’t that what should’ve been done in the first place? Timias’s head ached. There was simply too much to think about all at once. He came to himself with a little shake and realized he’d been talking to himself the entire length of the corridor.

The two guards standing watch over Alemandine’s private rooms gave him a curious glance but said nothing, as together they opened the great doors that led into the reception room of Alemandine’s suite.

There, Timias found Hudibras, looking distracted, even as he berated two bedraggled ladies-in-waiting huddled in the window seat. They all looked up, their expressions an odd mixture of both relief and fear, as Timias entered. He pinned the ladies with a ferocious stare, and their wings, fragile and pink as rose petals, trembled above their heads. But why were they both wearing crowns of oak and holly leaves? Oak for summer, holly for winter—why both at once? He peered more closely at them, and realized to his relief the illusion was nothing but a trick of the light and that their small veils were held in place, as usual, by the customary ribboned wreaths that all Alemandine’s ladies wore. “What’s going on? Where’s the Queen?” He addressed Hudibras, but it was one of the ladies-in-waiting who answered.

“She will not unlock the door, most exalted lord,” she replied, olive-green eyes huge in her angular face so that she resembled a frightened doe. Honey-colored hair spilled over her shoulders and across her rose-colored gown, partially obscuring her fichu of ivory lace. It matched the lace of her face mask, Timias saw, as another foul whiff momentarily distracted him. This time the seed pearls in her wreath looked like writhing white worms. He started back and she gave him another questioning look, as he realized that that was exactly the effect the pearls were meant to have. It struck him that this was a bizarre conceit for an adornment for one’s hair, but then, he never paid attention to the fashions of the Court. Since Alemandine was crowned Queen, they changed with such dizzying frequency, he could not keep up.

He really had to get control of himself, he thought. He tightened his grip on his staff and the wood felt dry as a petrified bone in his palm. He must not succumb to the pressure. Surely that’s what Vinaver hoped for, and it occurred to him that indeed, the success of the very plot itself might hinge on his ability to single-handedly uphold the Queen through this hour of her greatest need. He would show Vinaver that while he wore an old man’s face, he yet possessed a young man’s vigor.