[Merry Gentry 04] - A Stroke of Midnight

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  I cuddled in against Frost’s body, my arms clinging around his waist, my cheek pressed so hard against him that I heard his heartbeat. He wrapped his arms around me, though it meant he would have to move me to draw almost any of his weapons. As a bodyguard he should have moved me to the side, left himself some room to maneuver, but as my lover, my friend, and Galen’s friend, I knew that he wasn’t clinging to me just for my comfort. It was impossible not to like Galen. It was his gift to make people like him. The tension in Frost’s body as he held me told me more clearly than any words that I wasn’t the only one who would miss Galen. It said something about our Galen that he had melted the Killing Frost.

  Hafwyn pressed her hands over the wound in his thigh. She was at least starting with the more life-threatening wound. Her skin had looked white, but it was gold the way that Galen’s was green, so pale that something had to make you see that other color. Her magic turned her skin a pale solid gold, as she glowed. Strands of her hair struggled to escape the knot that she had it in, her hair moving in the wind of her own magic.

  “She’s a healer,” Hawthorne said. “Why is she being wasted behind a sword?”

  We had expected Hafwyn to have some small healing ability, but what was glowing and dancing along our skin was not small. All the healers with this much magic were not allowed to be warriors, not in the front lines anyway. Their talents were too valuable, and too rare among us now, to risk them.

  Watching her shining hands rise from his body, I began to hope. Her voice echoed with magic as she asked, “Can someone turn him over so that I do not waste the healing on smaller things? It has been so long since I have been allowed to use my powers to their full benefit, I am a little out of practice.”

  Hawthorne and Adair rolled Galen over for her, Hawthorne cradling his head and shoulders so Galen’s face did not touch the blood. I would remember that little extra care he took with Galen, and it would earn Hawthorne something.

  Hafwyn laid her hands on Galen’s back, and my skin prickled with the effort she put into him. She could have closed his wounds, but simply from the sensations her healing chased across my skin, I thought she was doing more.

  “NO!” shouted one of the other female guards, still kneeling, still bound. “You are saving him.” Aisling placed his sword tip at her throat. She had to stop talking or risk piercing her own skin against Aisling’s sword point.

  “Siobhan will see you dead for this,” said Melangell.

  Siobhan had been Cel’s captain of the guard. She and a handful of others had also attacked me overtly. I had killed two of the attackers, more by accident than on purpose, and she had surrendered. I had assumed she was dead. She’d tried to kill a royal heir. She should have been dead. When we weren’t in front of so many hostile ears, I would ask someone.

  Hafwyn leaned back from Galen, a smile on her face. “Siobhan is still locked in a cell in the Hallway of Mortality. She won’t be killing anyone for a while yet.”

  Galen shuddered in Hawthorne’s arms. The first breath he took was loud and gasping, and he thrust himself up off the floor, eyes wild. He collapsed almost immediately, and only Hawthorne’s arms kept him from falling flat to the floor.

  “You are safe,” Hawthorne said. “You are safe.”

  Frost let me go to him. I don’t know if he trusted Hafwyn now, or if he knew he couldn’t have stopped me without a fight. I did have enough sense left to go on the far side of Galen’s body, closer to the wall than to Hafwyn.

  Hawthorne spilled Galen’s upper body into my lap. I cradled him against me, looking into those green eyes, that face, that smile. Tears streamed down my face, though I was laughing. I had so many emotions that I felt drunk.

  “I have not been allowed to heal anyone in decades. It felt so good.”

  I looked up at the woman who was still kneeling in all that blood. She was crying, too, and I didn’t know why.

  “Why would anyone forbid you to use your powers?” I asked.

  “It is a secret, and I would not go back to Ezekiel’s tender care for anything or anyone, but I can say this: I tried to heal someone that Prince Cel did not want healed. I went against his express orders. He told me I would be a bringer of death until he told me I could heal again.”

  “That is a waste of power,” Hawthorne said.

  She glanced at him, but her attention was all for me. “But today, for you, I have gone against that order.”

  “He will see you raped and skinned for it,” said one of her fellow guards.

  Neither Hafwyn nor I even bothered looking at the other woman. “Why would you risk that for me?” I asked. “You just tried to kill Galen, why heal him?”

  “Because I am a healer, it is what I am, and I do not want to be this anymore.” She touched her sword. “Does saving him buy me anything from you?”

  I nodded. “I would not promise until I hear what you want, not even for Galen, but yes, it buys you something.”

  She gave a small smile. “Good.” She took a deep breath and let it out as if she were steeling herself for some great effort. “Queen Andais announced to the court today that you needed more guards. She said that any who wished to could offer their services to you, but that only the ones who bedded you could stay with you.”

  “I knew about the first part, but not the second,” I said.

  “She said all guards.”

  “What are you asking me, Hafwyn?”

  She leaned in toward me, hands at her sides. I fought the urge to lean away from her. I saw Hawthorne look to Frost, as if asking what to do. I couldn’t see what Frost told him, because Hafwyn’s face was all I could see. She kissed me gently, eyes open. There was no passion to the kiss, no promise of anything, just a touch of lips.

  “Take me,” she whispered, “take me to your bed, take me here, take me anywhere, but please, Goddess, please, don’t leave me here for Cel. I owe him no vow, so I break no vow by asking this of you. I served Prince Essus as his healer for centuries. When he went into exile when you were six, if I had known she would give me to Cel, I would have gone into exile with you. But I thought that exile from faerie was the worst of fates. I ask you, as his daughter, do not leave me here. Now that the queen has opened the way for me to ask, I ask, I beg.” Her eyes glittered with tears and when she could not keep them from falling, she bent her head down so I would not see.

  It was Galen who reached for her first, but I was only moments behind. She collapsed into us both. Her shoulders shook with the emotion of her sobs, but she was absolutely silent. How many years had it taken for her to learn to cry silently? To hide away this much pain.

  I stroked her yellow hair, and said the only thing I could say, “Yes.”

  CHAPTER 21

  ADAIR STUMBLED AS HE ROSE FROM BESIDE US, CATCHING HIMself against the wall. Blood was seeping out from underneath his breastplate. “You are hurt,” I said.

  “Innis’s warriors are as skilled as ever,” he said, in a voice that was a little tight with pain.

  I felt a little spurt of surprise. Innis had always been among the most neutral of nobles. He hadn’t seemed to care one way or the other who ruled, as long as he and his clan were left alone. They specialized in necromancy of one kind or another. Once upon a time, some of them could raise true armies of the dead. Innis’s skill had always been to raise phantom armies that could bleed you, kill you. You could cut them, but they could not die. I understood now why he was the one on the ground. They had had to hurt him badly enough to stop him doing magic.

  Hafwyn raised her head from Galen’s chest. Tears still traced the pale gold of her skin. “I have some healing left to me tonight. I could not bring another back from so close to the veil, but I can look at your wound.” She looked at me. “I can be of use to you, Princess Meredith, I swear that I can.”

  “I believe you, Hafwyn. Attend to Adair’s wounds, unless someone else is hurt worse.” I looked at Crystall, who was still standing with a weapon pointed at Kieran. After Adair’s show of
bravado, I thought I’d better simply ask. “Is anyone else wounded?”

  Kanna, the only one of the prisoners without a sword at her throat, spoke up, “Lord Innis, Conjuror of Phantoms, is badly injured.” Her voice was very neutral as she said it. Her long brown hair was coming loose from its ponytail, beginning to show the heavy fall of it around her pale face. Her eyes were wide, as if she might be in shock, but her voice gave none of that away.

  “Why should I care if he is injured?” I asked.

  “He is a free lord of the court you seek to rule,” she said.

  “He is merely one lord among many, Kanna. I see no extra value in him, merely because he had enough power and political savvy to stay out of the guards.”

  “Others see the free lords as more valuable than we of the guard.”

  “That is because they have forgotten that once it was considered an honor to be asked to join the royal guard. Once it was not a punishment, but a reward.”

  “You speak of things too old to bear remembering,” Kanna said. “You were not there. You cannot know.”

  “I listen to our stories, Kanna. I remember our history. Many of our best and most accomplished warriors were not forced into the guard, but invited. It only became a burden and a punishment . . . later.”

  “You would leave a free lord to bleed to death, then?”

  “If it is a choice between a man who risked his life on my order to save one that I love, and a man who tried to take the life of the one I love, then yes, let him die if he can. Wasn’t it you, Lord Kieran, who said a sidhe who can die from blood loss is no sidhe at all?”

  Crystall had to move his sword back a little to give him breath and space to talk. “Innis is of the purest blood, not some pixie half-breed.”

  “Funny how all blood looks the same when it is spilled upon the ground,” I said. “Are any of my people hurt besides Adair?” I looked at Kieran when I spoke, watched his face. I was rewarded because he looked puzzled.

  “You truly would let Innis die.”

  “Give me a reason not to let him die,” I said.

  “He is not important enough to me to bargain for,” Kieran said.

  “Then he will lie there and bleed until I decide otherwise.”

  “Innis’s clan is powerful, Princess. You do not want them as your enemies.”

  I laughed at that. “He has already proven himself my enemy.”

  “We did not attack you,” Kieran said.

  Adair was still leaning against the wall, bleeding. “Look at his wound, see how bad it is, and I ask for the last time are any of the rest of you hurt?”

  Aisling spoke still wrapped in his cloak, so that most of him was hidden. “I let this one get past me.” He emphasized his words by driving the edge of his sword a little tighter against Melangell’s throat. Enough that a thin edge of crimson began to flow.

  “Was it you that nearly cleaved her helmet to her skull?” I asked.

  “Yes, but only after she bloodied me.” He sounded disgusted with himself.

  “Frost, choose someone to take Aisling’s place, so we can see to his wounds.”

  “Hawthorne,” Frost said, and one word was enough. He put his helmet back on, and went to take Aisling’s place.

  Dogmaela was standing there between the two groups, as if she didn’t quite know what to do. Melangell was her captain of the guard. Unless she was willing to make the same offer that Hafwyn had made, she would have to go back under Melangell’s rule. In the middle of such a power struggle was a tricky place to be. Dogmaela was like Galen, you could see her struggle with the problem on her face, in the posture of her body. She had fought with the others, but now she didn’t know where her loyalties lay. The fact that she was so divided made me put her in the untrustworthy category.

  Hafwyn and the other wounded moved to one side, leaving me with Galen cradled in my lap. I slid my hands down the front of his shirt. “You need to start wearing armor.”

  “Unless it was enchanted armor, it would not have helped,” Adair said. Hafwyn and Aisling were helping him remove his armor in pieces. The padding underneath was soaked crimson with blood. The wide, clean cut was plain in the padding, low on his side. “He was able to do this to me, even with the armor.”

  “Your armor is still worthy of its maker,” Kieran said. “I could not pierce it. I had to find a seam.”

  “No true sword could have found the opening you used,” Adair said. The padding peeled off in layers. The linen shirt next to his skin was a ruined red mass.

  “That is why magic will always win against weaponry,” Kieran said.

  “It was not magic that stopped Innis,” Crystall said.

  “It was human magic,” Kieran said.

  “Guns are not magic,” Crystall argued, “they are weapons.”

  Kieran shook his head. “What is human science but another name for magic? Even now, the princess has brought human spell casters into our sithen. She allows human magic free range inside the only refuge we have left.”

  “That’s a reason to attack me,” I said, “but not a reason to attack Galen. Why him?”

  “Perhaps we are attacking all your guards, if we find them alone,” Kieran said.

  “No,” Galen said with his head still in my lap, “when I came around the corner Melangell said, ‘We’ve been waiting for you, green man,’ then you hit me in the back. Where were you hiding? I must have passed right by you.”

  “Innis can hide in plain sight,” Frost said, “and he can hide one or two with him, if none of them moves.” Frost was still very much on alert, guarding me. He hadn’t looked at a wound, or participated in the conversation. He was working and it showed.

  “So Kieran, why Galen?” I asked.

  “Lord Kieran,” he corrected me.

  I shook my head, my hand sliding a little farther down Galen’s chest, so I could feel his heart beating against my palm. “Fine, Lord Kieran Knife-Hand, answer my question.”

  He looked at me, his face arrogant and handsome in the way that most of the sidhe were. But his was a cold beauty, or maybe I was just projecting. “You have captured me, but you cannot make me answer your questions. Take me to Queen Andais so I may get on with my night.”

  I stared at him, with Galen’s heartbeat under my hand. Was Kieran being that brave, or did he believe that the queen would do nothing to him? “You have attacked a royal guard. You will not be getting on with your night, Lord Kieran.”

  “Siobhan nearly killed a royal heir, and yet she lives. Imprisoned, but she lives. The queen’s pet torturer fears the touch of Siobhan’s skin, so she has not even been tortured. She will sit in her cage until Prince Cel is released, then she will be his right hand again. If that is all the queen does to a would-be assassin of royalty, then what more can she do to us? Nerys’s house still lives, even though all of them turned traitor. They tried to kill both you and the queen herself, and they have lost nothing.” He sneered at me, all that beauty turning ugly.

  “That is why you and Innis agreed to this,” I said. “You saw Nerys’s people go free, and you think you will go free, too.”

  “The queen needs her allies, Princess.”

  “How can you be her ally if you toadie for Cel?”

  “I toadie to no one, but I admit to preferring him to you. There are many who feel the same.”

  “Of that I have no doubt.” I looked at him, so sure of himself, and I needed him not to be. I needed whatever information he possessed, and I needed the court to fear me. To fear harming my people. If the queen would not put that fear into them, then I had to figure out a way to do it myself.

  There was a sound like a great hollow gong being struck.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  It sounded again before the first echoes had died.

  Frost reached for a knife at his belt. “I have a call.” It was Rhys.

  “What are you doing, Merry? It was all I could do to keep Walters and the police from running to check out your screams.
Is Galen all right? You were screaming his name.”

  Galen spoke from my lap. “I’m touched that you care.”

  Rhys chuckled. “He’s fine.”

  “He was attacked, though,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Nobles and guess whose guards?”

  “Let me think . . . Cel?”

  “Who else?”

  “But why does he keep picking on Galen?”

  “I’m about to try to find out. How is the evidence collection going?”

  “Okay. I put a guard on each of the humans, as per your order. We figured out how the reporter strayed outside the magical boundaries we set up.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “He had small iron nails in the soles of his shoes.”

  “Cold iron,” I said. “He’d done his research.”

  Rhys’s reflection wavered as he nodded. “And he came here planning to try to see something we didn’t want him to see.”

  “I guess it is part of the job description for a reporter.”

  “I guess so.” He sighed, and it was heavy.

  “What’s wrong, Rhys?”

  “Major Walters insists on seeing you in person. He says that the reflection could be an illusion.”

  “I’m a little busy here.” I glanced at our prisoners.

  “I figured that, but if you don’t put in an appearance soon, he’s going to want to come looking for you. Just a heads-up.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “I’ll try to keep him pacified.” The sword was suddenly empty, only my own distorted reflection showing.

  I handed Frost’s blade back to him and looked at the prisoners. If I had been certain how the queen would take it, I would do something drastic to at least one of the nobles. But Kieran was right, the queen did need her allies. I didn’t think Kieran qualified, but Andais might, and I didn’t want her angry with me if I could avoid it. Still, Kieran’s reasoning meant that Andais was losing her hold on the court nobles. That was bad, because I didn’t have enough political clout on my own to compete for the throne, even though I was still of the ruling bloodline. If Andais failed as queen, they would see me as a threat, no matter who took the throne after her.