The Shadow Queen

by Anne Bishop

Page 54

 

  When the two men headed for their assigned tasks, Daemon led Jaenelle into the informal receiving room.

  “Problem?” Jaenelle asked.

  “The bitch who tried to play with me has been murdered,” Daemon replied.

  “That didn’t take long,” she muttered.

  “Apparently it’s how she died that’s causing alarm. The host’s wife has also been injured, but I don’t have a clear idea of how or how badly. I have to go there. ” He could keep his pride or he could ask for what he needed. “Come with me. ”

  Her smile was gentle and teasing. “You want me to come as your escort and protect you from all the nasty witchlings?”

  “Yes, I do. ”

  Her smile faded.

  Did she understand what it cost him to ask?

  Of course she did. She was Witch. In some ways, she knew him better than he knew himself.

  She placed a hand against his cheek, a touch full of comfort. “I’ll make a bargain with you, Prince. I’ll stand as your sword and shield when you need it if you’ll do the same for me. ”

  He pressed a kiss into her palm. “I’ll take that bargain. Gladly. ”

  She stepped back. “Find out as much as you can, then ask Beale to slip that Warlord the sedative I prepared. I don’t think either of us wants to ride in a Coach with a hysterical man, and I could feel him losing control even before I came downstairs. I’ll pack some clothes and ask Jazen to pack a bag for you. ”

  She was about to open the door when Daemon said, “Jaenelle, they think it was me. ” She didn’t turn to look at him. She froze in place, listening. “Rhea sent her man here to ask for help because everyone in that aristo Warlord’s house is more than scared. The Warlord who brought the message is afraid to say as much as he knows, but I got the impression that there’s something about the way Vulchera died that . . . They think they’re asking for help from the same man who killed her. ”

  “It wasn’t you,” Jaenelle said, finally turning to look at him. “May the Darkness have mercy on her, because it wasn’t you. ”

  She looked pale, and that confirmed his own suspicion. And the worry that went hand in hand with that suspicion.

  “I’ll get packed,” she said.

  He went back to his study and reviewed the information with the Warlord again but didn’t learn more than he had gleaned the first time. Leaving the man in Beale’s care, he returned to his suite and took a quick shower before getting dressed.

  The sun—that lazy bastard—was just beginning to think about dawdling its way to the eastern horizon when he tucked the lightly sedated Warlord into the back of the Coach with Holt and took a seat in the driver’s compartment.

  Jaenelle hovered in the doorway between the two compartments, frowning at the large urn of coffee Beale had put in the Coach, along with a variety of foods to provide them with a cold but substantial breakfast.

  Daemon lifted the Coach off the landing web, then caught the Black Wind and headed for the house of the aristo Warlord and his wife.

  “An urn of coffee?” Jaenelle said. “Riding on the Black, it won’t take that long to reach Rhea’s Province and that Warlord’s house. Why would Beale give us that much coffee?”

  He knew better. He really did. But he tucked his tongue firmly in one cheek and said as casually as possible, “I guess he wanted to make sure I would get a cup with my breakfast. ”

  He felt her sapphire eyes fix on a spot between his shoulder blades, and he really wanted to twitch.

  Finally she growled, “Drive the damn Coach. ”

  He waited until he was sure she was occupied with fixing a plate of food before he allowed himself to grin.

  And he did, eventually, get a cup of coffee with his breakfast.

  Standing in the hallway beside Jaenelle, Daemon looked at the bedroom and the body—and swallowed hard.

  It wasn’t the blood. There had been times when he had drowned rooms in blood, so the sight of a sodden carpet and smears on the walls and furniture didn’t bother him.

  And it wasn’t the body, which, from the shoulders down, looked relaxed, as if she’d fallen asleep on the floor.

  It was the rage—the cold, dark, glittering rage—that made him shiver. It filled the room and yet felt elusive, wispy. As if it could be brushed aside. And there was something more in that rage, some quality to it that he knew he should recognize.

  “Mother Night,” Jaenelle said softly.

  “And may the Darkness be merciful,” Daemon added.

  “She came upstairs early, said she was tired,” Lord Collyn, the aristo who owned the house, said. There was a bitterness in his voice, in his eyes. “She often got tired at house parties and went to bed earlier than the other guests. ”

  “This wasn’t her room?” Jaenelle asked.

  “No,” Collyn replied. “My wife and I were the last to retire, and when we were about to go upstairs, our butler mentioned that one of our guests left in a hurry and was very upset. Having heard about what had happened at Lady Rhea’s country house”—he shot a nervous look at Daemon—“my wife went up to confirm that my ‘friend’ was in the guest room that had been assigned to her. She wasn’t, of course, so my wife came to this room . . . and found her. I don’t know what she could have been thinking. It was clear Vulchera was dead, but Rosalene touched the body. That’s how she hurt her hands. ”

  “What’s wrong with her hands?” Daemon asked.

  “The Healer isn’t sure. ” Another nervous glance at Daemon.

  “Or doesn’t want to say. But she’s tried everything and hasn’t been able to heal the wounds. ”

  “I’ll look at them in a few minutes,” Jaenelle said. “Examining the body won’t take long. ”

  *How do you know that?* Daemon asked on a private psychic thread.

  She didn’t answer him. Instead, she removed her flowing, calf-length black jacket and vanished it. “You’ll want to air walk when you’re in this room. ”

  “I’ve walked on blood-soaked ground before. ”

  “That may be, Prince, but you don’t want the scent of blood on you. Not this blood. ”

  He watched her walk into the room, standing on air a finger’s length above the floor. He made sure he was standing the same distance above the floor before he walked into the room.

  Jaenelle circled the body slowly. Once. Twice. Thrice.

  He circled the body too, and was almost certain they weren’t picking up the same information. At least, not all the same information.

  If he’d come across a body like this when he’d lived in Terreille, he would have recognized there was nothing gentle about this death, despite there being no sense of violence in the room. That would have made him sufficiently wary to back away. Because it took more than control and power to do what had been done in this room.

  Jaenelle crouched on one side of the body and stared at it. He crouched on the other side, trying to make sense of the pieces of information he could glean.

  He put a Black shield around his hand, then reached for the shirt, intending to pull back the collar enough to see if there was a tailor’s label.

  Jaenelle grabbed his wrist. *Don’t touch the shirt. I’m fairly certain the spell wasn’t triggered until she put the shirt on, but now that the silk has been saturated with blood, I think it will hook into any flesh. *

  *My hand is shielded. *

  She looked at him, just looked at him. A chill went down his spine.

  Releasing his wrist, she held one hand above the witch’s chest. The Twilight’s Dawn Jewel in her pendant changed to Red edged with Gray. The Jewel in her ring was the equivalent of Ebon-gray with veins of Black.

  He couldn’t tell what spell she used. The power that flowed out of her felt like nothing more than a puff of warm air.

  But when that power flowed through the fabric, silvery strands shone in the blood-darkened silk.
Silvery strands that had nothing to do with clothing and everything to do with a different kind of weaving.

  *Tangled web,* Jaenelle said.

  The silvery strands faded.

  *Can we remove it?* Daemon asked.

  *No. *

  *Can we destroy it?*

  She looked grim. *Yes. It . . . offers the answer to destroying it. But the Darkness only knows what that will unleash. *

  *Jaenelle . . . *

  *We need to talk about this. About all of this. But not here. Not now. Right now, I want you to walk out of this room and close the door. *

  *Why?*

  *Wood and stone remember. *

  He couldn’t be understanding her. *You’re going to use the Hourglass’s Craft to recall what happened here and watch the execution?*

  *Yes. *

  *Then I’ll stay with you. *

  *No. I want you out of this room, Daemon. Now. *

  And the Queen commands, he thought as he walked out of the room—and wondered if his heart could bruise his chest, the way it was pounding.

  What was it she suspected that she didn’t want him to see?

  It felt like he’d been standing in that hallway for days, but when Jaenelle walked out of the room, he was fairly certain she’d been inside less time than it had taken for Vulchera to bleed out.

  “You’ll have to burn the body,” Jaenelle told Lord Collyn. “If you don’t, that shirt will continue to be a danger to your household. ”

  “Can’t we wait until the spell fades and then deal with the remains?” Collyn asked.

  “The body will rot before those spells fade,” she replied sharply. “Use Craft. Don’t touch anything you don’t have to. Build a bonfire,Warlord, because this has to burn. Use witchfire as well as natural fire. Both will be needed to break the spells. I’ll leave a cleansing web Lady Yaslana and I developed to remove emotional residue from a room. That should make it possible for your people to be in the room long enough to take care of the physical cleaning. ”

  Of course, it would be a long time—if ever—before any guest would willingly stay in that room, cleansed or not, Daemon thought.