Laurell K Hamilton - Meredith Gentry 07 - Swallowing Darkness

by Swallowing Darkness(lit)

  "And Una helped me sew the coat. She has become quite skilled, and I envy her all those limbs to sew with." She gestured at the nightflyer who had braided Doyle's hair.

  The nightflyer who had been standing so quietly against the wall, gave a bow. "You are too kind, mistress."

  "I give credit where credit is due, Una."

  Una actually blushed a little across the paleness of her underbelly. "I'm impressed that you made boots for Mistral in such quick order," I said.

  Mirabella looked at me, a little startled. "The sizes are almost the same. How did you know that they were new just by looking?"

  "I've had to take the guards in Los Angeles shoe shopping. I've gotten pretty good at judging sizes."

  She smiled, almost shyly. "You have a good eye."

  I started to say thank you, but wasn't sure how long Mirabella had been inside faerie. "Thank you" can be an insult to some of the older denizens.

  Instead I said, "I do my best, and the coat you made for me is perfect."

  She smiled, truly pleased.

  "You didn't make the boots," Sholto said.

  She shook her head. "I made a bargain."

  "The leprechaun," he said, and he said it as if there was only one of them, which wasn't true. There weren't many in the New World, but we had a few.

  She nodded.

  "Are you really going to date him?" Sholto asked.

  She actually blushed. "He enjoys his work as I enjoy mine."

  "You like him," I said.

  She gave me that nervous eye flick again. "I think I do."

  "You know that there are no rules among the sluagh for who you sleep with," Sholto said, "but the leprechaun has been pressing you for a hundred years, Mirabella. I thought you found him unpleasant."

  "I did, but... " she spread her hand and tentacle wide. "I just don't seem to find him unpleasant anymore. We talk of clothes, and he has a television in his home. He brings me fashion magazines and we discuss them."

  "He's found the way to your heart," Doyle said.

  She gave a little giggle and a smile. That alone let me know that the leprechaun had gotten some of his bargain already. "I suppose he has."

  "Then you have my blessing. You know that," Sholto said. He was smiling.

  Then her face went serious and grim. "Tully has courted me for a hundred years. He has been gentle, and he's never gotten above himself with me, unlike some I could name."

  "Taranis," I said. I said the name without feeling anything. Parts of me were still a little numb, and that was probably a good thing.

  She glared at me, then her face softened. "If I am not too presumptuous, Queen Meredith, I heard what he did to you, and I am most heartily sorry. He should have been stopped years ago."

  "I take it he tried his version of courting with you."

  "Courting." She almost spat the word. "No, in the midst of a fitting he tried to take me by force. I had been invited into faerie with promises of safety and honor. He had to drop all the illusions on his person for fittings, so his magic that made all the women see him as beautiful did not work on me. I knew that he was getting a little soft around the middle. I knew all the flaws in his illusions. I had truth on my side, and he could not seduce me with magic."

  "You were probably also holding pins and needles made of cold steel," Doyle said.

  She looked at him, then nodded. "You are correct. The very tools of my trade kept me from falling into his trap. In his rage, he cut off my right arm." She held up the tentacled limb. It moved gracefully in the air, like some underwater creature found on land. "Then he had me driven out of his sithen, because a one-armed seamstress was useless to him."

  "How long had you been in faerie by then?" Doyle asked.

  "Fifty years, I think."

  "To drive you outside the sithen means that all those years would have come upon you all at once," Mistral said.

  She nodded. "Once I had touched ground, yes. But not all in his court agreed with what he had done to me. Some of the court women carried me to the Unseelie Court. They petitioned the queen for me, and she said almost the same thing Taranis had said: 'What use is a one-armed seamstress to me?'" Tears glistened in her eyes, unshed.

  Sholto went to her in the beautiful black and silver tunic, and pants, and shiny boots that she had made, or had had made for him. He raised her from her knees, with one hand on her hand and one on the end of her tentacle.

  "I remember that night," he said.

  She looked up at him. "So do I, My King. I remember what you said. 'She is welcome among the sluagh. We will tend her.' You never asked what I was good for, or if you had a use for me. The court ladies made you promise that you would not abuse me, for they were sore afraid of the sluagh."

  Sholto smiled. "I want the Seelie afraid of us; it is our shield."

  She nodded. "You took me in with only one good arm, not knowing that Henry could find a way to make me useful again. I have never asked, My King. What would you have done with me if I had had no skill to give you?"

  "We would have found you some task that you could do with the one hand you had, Mirabella. We are the sluagh. There are those among us with only one limb, and those with hundreds. We are an adaptable lot."

  She nodded, and turned away so he couldn't see that the tears had finally decided to fall down her face. "You are the kindest of rulers, King Sholto."

  "Don't tell anyone outside this court that," he said with a laugh.

  "It will be our secret, My King."

  I said, "Did you say that Dr. Henry gave you your new limb?"

  "He did," she said.

  "How?"

  "One of the nightflyers was kind enough to let him take a limb from her. You know they can grow back their tentacles?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "Well, Henry had been working on the... concept that he might be able to put a limb from a nightflyer, who could replace it, onto one of the sluagh, who could not. He had not done it successfully, but he offered to try on me, if I was willing." She gave a small gesture with both her limbs. "I was willing."

  "Humans have to get donors who are genetically compatible for any kind of organ donation. They're only just beginning to try with hands and things, but most of the time the bodies reject the new limb. How did Henry get past the rejection problem?"

  "I do not understand everything you just said, My Queen, but Henry would be better able to answer your questions. If you want to know how I sew his jackets to flatter his body, I can tell you, but how he made the wonder of this new limb, I do not completely understand even now. I have had it for many, many years, and I marvel at it still."

  She began to gather up her basket and sewing. Una helped her. When they were done, they turned back to survey us. "You all look suitable, as I'd hoped, if I do say so myself."

  "Shall we find a reason to mention who did our clothes?" Doyle asked.

  She gave him that flick of eyes again. "He knows I am here, Lord Doyle. Taranis might not have valued me, but there were those at his court who mourned my swift fingers and my needlework. There are still a few women of the court who come to me with commissions from time to time. Those who carried me on a cloak from sithen to sithen, trying to save me that dark night, have come to pay me for my work. King Sholto graciously allows it."

  I looked at Sholto, and he looked a little embarrassed. "One king cannot keep a designer of your skills busy. The sluagh are not a court where clothes matter so terribly much."

  She laughed. "The fact that most of your court goes nude is a disappointment to me." She looked at me, and the others. "Though I think that may be changing." She dropped a curtsey, Una bowed, and out they went.

  "Taranis needs killing," Mistral said.

  "Agreed," Doyle said.

  "We will not start a war over what happened to me, or what he did to Mirabella."

  "It's a history of such things, Meredith," Doyle said.

  "Ah," Mistral said. "He was once a ladies' man, but when that failed him he wa
s never above force."

  "Was he always so cruel – taking her arm, I mean?"

  "No, not always," Doyle said.

  I kept hearing stories that Taranis had once been a hard-drinking, hard-loving, manly man, but I'd never seen it. There wasn't enough reality left to my uncle for that now. Once he would have trusted his powers of seduction to get me into his bed. In fact, before he used magic to rape me, I would have said that he would never have believed that I would refuse him. His self-confidence was legendary. What had I done to make him think that his illusions could not win me?

  "Why did Taranis use a spell to rape me, rather than trust his own attractiveness? I mean, his ego is huge. Why would he not believe that I would say yes eventually?"

  "Maybe he didn't feel that there was time," Sholto said.

  "He meant to keep me, Sholto. He should have felt that there was time enough."

  "What are you asking, Meredith?" Doyle asked.

  "I just find it curious that he used a spell so much different than his usual ones on me. He's nearly rolled over me with his attractive illusions all the way to Los Angeles in a mirror call. But this time he raped me almost as any man might. It doesn't seem like him."

  "You've told us that you saw through his illusion when he first found you in faerie," Doyle said.

  "Yes, he looked like Amatheon but I touched him and he didn't feel like him. Amatheon is clean-shaven, and I felt beard."

  "But you shouldn't have felt it," Mistral said. "Taranis is the King of Light and Illusion. It means that his glamour stands up to almost anything. He should have been able to bed you without you ever knowing that he was not who he pretended to be."

  "I had not thought," Doyle said.

  "Thought what?" I asked.

  "That his illusion was not as good as it should have been."

  We all thought about that. "His magic is fading," Sholto said at last. "And he knows it," I said.

  "That would make the old ego-hound completely desperate," Mistral said.

  "And completely dangerous," Sholto said.

  We could only agree with him, unfortunately. We did the last-minute preparations for the mirror call with my mother and the other Seelie outside our gates.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Besaba was tall, slender, and very sidhe in her body build. But her hair was only a thick, wavy brown, bound on her head in a complicated hairdo that left her thin face too bare for my taste. She had her mother's hair, and brown eyes, very human eyes. It had only been in the last few months that I'd realized one of the reasons she had always hated me. I might be short, and too curvy, but I couldn't have passed for human with my hair, eyes, and skin. She could have.

  She was wearing a dress of deep orange, decorated with gold embroidery. It was a dress to please Taranis, who was very fond of fire colors.

  She was in a tent that they had set up on the ground outside. She looked to be alone, but I knew better. Taranis's allies would never have trusted her to make the call without watchers to "guide" her.

  I was sitting in Sholto's official calling room, which meant it was richly appointed, and had a throne for a chair. It wasn't "the" throne of the sluagh court. That was made of bone and ancient wood. This one was a gold and purple throne, probably found in some human court long, long ago. But it served its purpose. It looked impressive, though not as impressive as the men around me, or the writhing mass of nightflyers who clung to the wall behind us like a living tapestry from some nightmare you'd rather forget.

  Sholto sat on the throne, as befitted the king. I sat on his lap, which lacked a certain dignity, but we thought it might get the point across that I was having a good time. Of course, when someone doesn't want to understand, nothing you can do will make them see the truth. My mother had always been excellent at seeing only what she wished to see.

  Doyle was on one side of the throne, Mistral on the other. If we hadn't had the nightflyers behind us, we'd have looked very sidhe. But we wanted whoever was with my mother, just out of sight of the mirror, to understand that they would not be fighting only the four of us, if they pressed. They needed to understand that above all else.

  I had settled myself comfortably on Sholto's lap. His arm curved around my waist, putting his hand on my thigh in a very familiar way. He hadn't actually earned such a familiar gesture. Of the three men with me, he had been with me the least, but we were putting on a show, and one point of that show was to prove that I was their lover. When trying to prove something like that, a little hand on the thigh can say volumes.

  "I do not need rescuing, Mother, as you well know."

  "How can you say that? You are Seelie sidhe, and they have taken you from us."

  "They have taken nothing that the Seelie valued. If you speak of the chalice, then all who can hear my voice know that chalice goes where the Goddess wills it, and she has willed it to me."

  "It is a sign of great favor among the Seelie, Meredith. You must come home and bring the chalice, and you will be queen."

  "Taranis's queen, you mean?" I asked.

  She smiled happily. "Of course."

  "He raped me, Mother." Doyle moved a little closer to me, though he was quite close to begin with. I reached out to him without thinking so that he held my hand, even while I sat in Sholto's lap.

  "How can you say such things? You bear his twins."

  "They are not his children. I am with the fathers of my twins."

  Mistral moved nearer the chair. He did not reach out for me, because I was out of hands, one in Doyle's hand, and one on Sholto's arm. He simply moved closer, to help me emphasize my point, I think.

  "Lies. Unseelie lies."

  "I am not queen of the Unseelie yet, Mother. I am queen of the sluagh."

  She settled the stiff, rich sleeves of her gown, and harrumphed at me. "Again, falsehoods," she said.

  I had a moment when I wished I could conjure the crowns of faerie to me, but such magic came and went when it would. Though, frankly, seeing Sholto and me in the crowns might just make her more convinced that we were Seelie. It was all flowers and herbs, after all.

  "Call it what you will, but I am content in the company I keep. Can you say as much?"

  "I love my court and my king," she said, and I knew she meant it.

  "Even after some of that court conspired to kill your mother, my grandmother, just days ago?"

  Her face clouded for a moment, then she stood straight again and faced me. "It was not Cair who slew my mother. I am told that it was one of your guards who struck the blow."

  "To save my life, yes."

  She looked shocked then, and I think it was real. "Our mother would never have harmed you. She loved you."

  "She did, and I her, but Cair's magic turned her against me, and my people. It was an evil spell, Mother, and the fact that she used her own grandmother to carry it was worse."

  "You lie."

  "I led the wild hunt to get my revenge. If it had not been the absolute truth, the hunt would either have not answered my call, or when it arrived the hounds of the hunt would have torn me limb from limb. They did not. They helped me hunt Cair down. They helped me kill her, and save the fathers of my children, who were still being attacked."

  She shook her head, but looked a little less sure of herself. A bit, but I knew her. Her certainty would return. It always did. She would get a glimpse of how wrong she was, or how evil her allies were, then she'd shake off that flitting insight and embrace her ignorance like a well-worn cloak.

  I leaned forward in Sholto's lap, my hand finding his hand so that I held both his and Doyle's hands. I leaned toward the mirror on the wall and spoke quickly, trying to get through this small chink in my mother's willful ignorance.

  "Mother, the wild hunt does not do the bidding of liars or traitors. Taranis did rape me, but he was too late. I am to have twins, and the Goddess has shown me who the fathers are."

  "You have two babies, but three men. Who is to be left out?" She was retreating from the harshest
truths to concentrate on smaller things. Not a question about the rape, or the traitors whom the wild hunt had helped us destroy, but the math of fathers and babies.

  "The history of the sidhe is full of goddesses who had children by more than just one man, Mother. Clothra is the one most oft named, but there have been others. Apparently, I will need many kings, not just one."

  "You have been bespelled, Meredith. All know that the King of the sluagh is a great one for glamour." She was back to her certainties. Sometimes I wondered why I tried with her. Oh, she was my mother. I suppose we never quite give up on parents. Maybe they feel the same way about us.

  "Faerie itself has made us a couple, Mother." I unbuttoned my tight-fitting cuff, and rolled it back as much as the coat would allow, which was not much. Sholto's sleeve was looser, so that more of his rose and thorn tattoo showed, but enough showed to prove that the tattoos were a pair.

  She shook her head. "You can get a tattoo at any human shop."

  I laughed then. I couldn't help it.

  She looked startled. "There is nothing funny here, Meredith."

  "No, Mother, there is not." But my face was alight with humor. "But it is either laugh or start screaming at you, and I don't think that would be helpful."

  I pushed my sleeve back down and closed the bone button once more. Sholto followed my lead. I stood and walked out of sight of the mirror, just long enough to fetch something from the table near the far wall.

  Mistral said, "Do you think that wise?"

  I looked at the table that held all the ancient weapons that had come to us. Was it a good idea? I wasn't entirely certain, but I was tired. I was tired of people trying to kill us. I was tired of people assuming that if they could strip me of my men I would be a pawn to be used as they saw fit. I'd had enough.

  I hesitated with my hand over the sword Aben-dul. I prayed. "Goddess, do I show them what I am? Do I make them afraid of me?" I waited for some sign, and thought at first that she would not answer me, then a faint perfume of roses came. I felt the tattoo on my arm flare to life, and the moth on my stomach flutter. The weight of the rose and mistletoe crown wove itself to life on my head.