Truthseeker

by C. E. Murphy

  Though, truthfully, she had already stepped so far beyond her customary boundaries as to be unrecognizable. I contain multitudes, she thought, and wondered if the poet who had written those words had ever found himself torn between worlds and choices.

  Dafydd’s incantation ended and the court gave a collective sigh, their attention turning to Lara again. She tightened her arms around her ribs, then imagined how fragile and afraid she must look, huddled like that. It was the stance of a woman who didn’t want to be noticed, but she’d come here to offer help. She straightened, taking a breath deep enough to strain her tight-woven bodice, and met the eyes of those closest to her.

  Light eyes: they all had light eyes, water blue to golden hazel and clear green, but none of them even close to the brown of her own. Lara stared from face to face for a few seconds, taken aback by uniformly translucent skin, pale hair, and eyes without a hint of darkness to them. For an instant their willowy forms and high-cheekboned faces looked not ethereal but inbred. Nowhere on earth could she imagine corralling a thousand passersby from any handful of streets in that city and finding such an unbroken similarity from one face to another.

  They were dying, she thought very clearly, then threw the idea off with a shudder. “Is there a way to test if the compulsion is working?”

  Dafydd made a nonplussed sound. “You’ll have to trust me. Or ask everyone individually if they’re obliged to answer, in which case we may as well have not bothered.”

  “Fair enough.” Lara backed up until her heels touched the first step of the throne dais, then stood on her toes. “I wish I could see you all. All right. I think I’m going to have to ask a lot of very similar questions to cover all the bases, so I’ll start with … did anyone here murder Merrick ap Annwn?”

  She braced for a tide of answers similar to the thanks offered moments before, but was instead greeted with a thousand chimes, like single notes struck from distant triangles. They lifted her, played at her skin and the fine hairs at her nape, making her tremble with their music and taking her weight from her feet. “No,” she whispered back into the purity of their response. “No one here murdered him.”

  A sigh of relief tempered with concern washed over the court. Lara felt a stab of sympathy. It would have been easier if one false note had played; if one person had come up untrue and therefore offered an end to their uncertainty. At the same time, the truth reverberating in their answers meant none of their friends was guilty of murder, and that was soothing, too. Lara bit her lower lip. “Is anyone here responsible, in any way, for Merrick ap Annwn’s death?”

  Sour notes echoed in the court’s response. Lara pressed her fingers against the sides of her nose and bared her teeth behind the steeple of her hands. “That was an awkward question. Let me try this: Does anyone here feel guilt over his death?”

  Pure tones rang out in disparate answers: hundreds upon hundreds answered no, truthfully, but a handful more said yes with as much truth. Glances were exchanged, frowns and sharp looks, and in a few places the courtiers shifted, making distrustful space around those who had answered in the affirmative.

  Lara nodded, lifting a hand as though she conducted music. “Will those of you who said yes please answer this next question, and the rest remain silent: Why do you feel guilty over Merrick ap Annwn’s death?” Repeating his full name felt necessary, like anything less might allow the men and women she interrogated to squeak by with a truthful answer that didn’t address what Lara wanted to ask. Her heartbeat was sick and fast in her chest, full of worry that she might let something slip by unnoticed. She was a tailor, not a lawyer.

  Answers flooded back, more than one word this time, many of them mumbled with shame. I didn’t like him, or I wished him ill; I wanted him out of our court—all true answers. Dafydd stood rigid with tension at Lara’s side, his gaze lingering on those who responded truly with an answer he didn’t like. He looked betrayed, Lara thought, as though those who hadn’t liked Merrick struck at him personally with their distaste.

  Lara nodded again, more to encourage herself than the court. “The same group, please answer this: Do you believe your feelings may have created a situation that led to Merrick ap Annwn’s death?”

  Some did, or were, on further questioning, afraid they might have. The spaces around them grew, their comrades distancing themselves from association with possible murder. Those who stood abandoned did so with grim pride, their eyes warning that such slights would not go unforgotten.

  Lara put her teeth together, searching for the right questions to ask: Were those fears rational? Fear wasn’t, by its nature, rational, but most people could separate out a fear of heights from the conviction that the bridge they crossed was going to fall into the water below. Finally satisfied that it was, indeed, fear driving guilt and dissonant answers, Lara brought her questions back to the whole: Does anyone know who is responsible for Merrick ap Annwn’s murder? Does anyone have suspicions? Motives? That got a bitter laugh, and one clear voice out of hundreds: “He was Unseelie.”

  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.”

  Fourteen

  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?”

  Unanswered, at least, in the way she wanted it to be. Weary regret in the lines of his body told her everything she already knew to be true: that Aerin’s accusation held merit, and that the son of the Seelie king had somehow lied to her.

  “I nocked the arrow.” Dafydd’s shoulders slumped, all his slender alien beauty wiped out with such a human stance of defeat. “I drew the bowstring and loosed the arrow that ended my brother’s life.”

  “And you didn’t think to tell me this?” Venom melted the cold in Lara’s chest and carried heat to her cheeks. Worse than blushes, bitter water stung her eyes. She knotted her fingers more tightly into the thin fabric of her skirts, willing herself to not draw attention to tears by dashing them away, and wondered sharply if the Seelie cried from frustration or anger. It was a human fallibility she’d be glad to give up. “What the hell did you want me here for, if you killed him?”

  “He claims himself innocent of the crime.” Emyr spoke again, disdain in every word. “Our poet and seer insisted he be given the chance to clear himself, and that can only be done through a truthseeker’s talents.”

  “I loosed the arrow.” Dafydd’s hands slowly turned to fists, his body taut and his face downcast. His gaze, though, remained on Lara, fiery with desperation. “But my actions weren’t my own, Lara. I remember still—I will never forget—the thickness that came over me. I can see what I did, can feel my arm bend and take the arrow from its quiver, can feel the weight of the bowstring against my fingers, and in nightmares I watch the arrow fly true while my mind screams against my actions. I was the weapon, but I am not the killer. I swear it.”

  Strain released him abruptly, as though offering his explanation had been a battle of wills that, once ended, left him drained. “I’m sorry,” he added in a whisper. “I should have explained it all, but I was afraid you wouldn’t come with me, and I have no other way to prove myself innocent.”

  Lara sat down gracelessly, scraping her hip painfully on the edge of the throne dais as she did. The wince that crossed her face was excuse enough to cup her hands around her forehead, shielding herself from the curious light eyes of so many strangers while she caught her breath.

  Shielding herself, too, from showing confusion and relief and dismay, though she knew hiding her expression was as much a giveaway as sharing it would be. The courtiers’ silence pressed on her, unforgiving in its interest, inhuman in its patient extension.

  She broke before they did, shivering under the weight of their anticipation. “He’s telling the truth. At least he believes it’s the truth. He was the weapon, not the murderer.” Aerin had named Dafydd the weapon as well, a distinction that had meant nothing to Lara a few moments earlier. She folded her fingers down, searching for Aerin’s willowy form among so many others. “Is that possible? Dafydd just laid a compulsion to answer on all of you. Can one be laid on someone to make them act against their will?”

  Hesitation clouded the Seelie woman’s clear eyes. “I would have said no. That there must be a part of the one enchanted that wishes to act as the enchanter wishes him to.”

  “But?” The single word echoed sharply in a hall too filled with bodies for reverberations to sound at all. Discomfort crawled over Lara’s skin, raising hairs, and the muscles in her neck creaked with the
effort of holding her head still. Magic was being employed, making her voice carry. She was almost certain of it, but looking around to question Dafydd or Emyr’s hand in it felt, somehow, like losing ground.

  “But I’ve known Dafydd and Merrick all their lives,” Aerin said. “I saw rivalry between them, as with any family, but I can’t believe there’s any part of Dafydd that wished Merrick harm. Either I don’t know him as well as I think, or there’s a magic that can force a man’s hand against his will.”

  “Unseelie magic” came out of the gathering, accusing words spoken in more than one voice. Others nodded, muttering agreement as a spasm of uncertain concurrence shaped Aerin’s mouth. Lara released her self-imposed stillness and twisted to glance first at Dafydd, then Emyr. Her neck ached from the angle, but getting to her feet seemed risky: tremors rattled her, Dafydd’s confession still leaving marks.

  “A few more questions, if you will, your majesty. Am I right in assuming you’re one of the most skilled magic users of your people?” A trill of body-weakening absurdity ran through her, making her glad she hadn’t risen. A week earlier she hadn’t believed in magic at all. Now she was interrogating a monarch on his talent for it. She felt as though a bandage had been torn off, the sting fading so long as she didn’t look too closely at the wound it had covered.

  Emyr stared down at her, impassive enough to be threatening. He finally nodded, a single short action that informed Lara as to her rudeness in asking. She sighed and climbed to her feet again, feeling more able to face Emyr’s acidic gaze that way. “Then for the purposes of this trial, I’m going to consider you an expert witness. As such, would you say it’s possible to enchant someone into doing something he didn’t want to?”

  “I have never tried,” Emyr said after a lengthy silence, “but I believe I could.” The faintest emphasis lay on the final “I,” making it clear that he doubted it was a skill owned by all.