[Merry Gentry 04] - A Stroke of Midnight

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “Or Barinthus,” I said.

  She nodded. “Yes, that was well done.” She looked at Kieran and his wife, who still had Hawthorne’s knife at her throat. “If I kill Barinthus, then one of my most powerful guards is dead. If he kills me, then you are rid of me, and can be the first to suggest that he needs to die for his actions.” She moved in her chair as if settling her skirts more comfortably. “Oh yes, Kieran, good plan. You made only one mistake.”

  He looked up at her. “And what was that?”

  “You underestimated the princess, and her men.”

  “I will not make the same mistake again,” he said, and gave me an unfriendly look.

  “Kieran, that sounded like a threat to the princess.” Andais looked at me. “Did that not sound like a threat to you, Meredith?”

  “Yes, Aunt Andais, it did.”

  “Frost, did Kieran just threaten the princess?”

  “Yes,” Frost said.

  “Darkness,” she said.

  “Yes, he threatened the princess, or threatened to plan better the next time he plots to kill you, Your Majesty.”

  “Yes, that is what I heard, as well.” She looked out at the nobles. “Blodewedd, did you hear him threaten me and mine?”

  Blodewedd took in a deep sighing breath, then gave a small nod.

  “I need to hear it aloud for all the court,” Andais said.

  “Kieran has been foolish this day. More foolish than I or my house can support or salvage.”

  Kieran looked at her, frightened for the first time. “My lady, you are my liege lord, you cannot mean . . .”

  “Do not involve me in your stupidity, Kieran. Madenn is your wife and has always been your shadow. But if you could have persuaded more of your own house to take your part, I do not believe you would have enlisted Innis’s help.”

  “An interesting point.” Andais gazed down at the unconscious form of Innis. “Dormath, I offer you a choice. One of your people must die. Innis or Siobhan, choose.”

  “My queen,” Doyle said, “I would ask that Innis be spared, and Siobhan . . .”

  “I know who you would kill, Darkness.” She looked at me. “I even know who you would have me slay, Meredith, but you are not their liege. I want Dormath to choose, so that the rest of his house will understand that he will not protect them.”

  “My queen, do not make me choose among my lords and ladies.”

  “Would you take their place, Dormath? Would you offer yourself to save Innis and Siobhan both? I am willing to entertain such a bargain, if you are willing to offer it.”

  Dormath’s face got even whiter, something I didn’t think possible. He blinked his large, dark eyes slowly. Were we about to see Dormath, the door of death, faint?

  “Come, Dormath, it is a simple question,” Andais said. “You are either willing to pay for the crimes of your house, or you are not. Nerys was willing to give her life for her house.”

  Dormath’s voice came thin and reedy, as if he was struggling to keep it even. “Her entire house had joined her in her treachery. My house is innocent of wrongdoing, save for these two.”

  “Then choose, Dormath. I cannot deny the princess her call for a death. She is within her rights.”

  “A death, yes,” Dormath said, “but not an execution. She is within her rights to challenge them to combat, and take their life if she can.”

  “That might be true, Lord Dormath,” I said, “if Siobhan had attacked me one-on-one, but she did not. She attacked with the aid of two others. She ambushed me. This was no one-on-one combat. This was an assassination attempt, pure and simple.”

  “Innis did not even attack you,” Dormath argued, “he attacked the green knight. Surely it should be he who demands the life debt.”

  “Do you think he will show more mercy than the princess?” Andais asked.

  “I think Galen has always been a fair man,” Dormath said.

  Galen pressed my hand tight in his and sighed. It was not a happy sound. “I tried to be fair, and just, and good, whatever that means. Siobhan told me once that I belong in the Seelie Court, where they try to pretend they are something they’re not. I asked her what they try to pretend to be. Human, she said, and made it sound like a curse.” I watched his face grow solemn, and very unlike my Galen. “Do you really expect me to help you save the lives of the people who tried to kill me?”

  The two sidhe looked at each other, and it was Dormath who looked away first. He spoke with his eyes lowered, so that he met no one’s gaze. “One tries to know their opposition and use their strengths and weaknesses against them.”

  “Why am I your opposition?” Galen asked.

  Dormath spoke to the queen as if he hadn’t heard Galen. “My queen, I would ask that you do not make me choose between my people. One has done, perhaps, the lesser crime, but I have more affection for the other.”

  “Answer Galen’s question,” Andais said.

  Dormath blinked those deep, shining eyes and looked at her. His thin face showed nothing. “And what question would that be, my queen?”

  “I tire of word games quickly, Dormath,” she said. “I suggest you bear that in mind. I will tell you once more. Answer Galen’s question.”

  Dormath shivered, and the long black cloak gave the illusion of feathers settling around his body. “I do not think your son would want this question answered in open court.”

  I looked at Andais then, my aunt, my queen. I did not know what Dormath was referring to, but she might. She had helped hide her son’s secrets for centuries. Her face was cold beauty, arrogant and perfect, every line of her like some statue carved to be the beauty that drives men not to love but to despair.

  “Answer as much or as little of the question as you will, Dormath. Know that if you answer as fully as you might you will forfeit all of Prince Cel’s allies. For they will feel you betrayed them. Know also that there are those among us now who will condemn you as the blackest of traitors for going along with his plan.”

  Dormath put out a long pale hand to steady himself against the table. “My queen . . .”

  “Dormath, if you do not answer the question I will consider it a direct challenge to me, personally.”

  “You would slay me to keep from revealing what he has done,” Dormath said.

  “Is that what I said? I don’t believe that is what I said.” She looked at me then. “Is that what I said, Meredith?”

  I wasn’t entirely certain how to answer that question. “I do not believe that you threatened Dormath with death if he revealed what Prince Cel, my cousin, has done. Nor do I believe that you have encouraged him to reveal all that he knows.”

  “Go on,” she said, and she seemed pleased with me, though I wasn’t sure why.

  “But you have stated clearly that if he does not answer Galen’s question, you will challenge him to single combat, and kill him.”

  She nodded and smiled, as if I’d said a smart thing. “Exactly.”

  I looked from her to Dormath, and I had a moment of pity for him. She had set him a riddle that might not have an answer, not one that would keep him alive anyway.

  He was still propping himself up on the tabletop. His face showed clearly that he did not see a way out of the maze of words she had thrown up around him. “I do not believe that there is a way to answer the green knight’s question without revealing much that I do not believe you want known.”

  “I do not believe that you know what I want, Dormath. But if you remain mute, I will kill you, and there will be no argument that it is unfair, for it will be one-on-one against me.”

  He swallowed, and his throat looked almost too thin to hold the bobbing of his Adam’s apple. “Why are you doing this, my queen?”

  “Doing what?” she asked.

  “Do you want the court to know? Is that what you want?”

  “I want a child who values his people and their welfare before his own.”

  The silence in the room was profound. It was as if all of us took a br
eath and held it. It was as if the very blood in our veins ceased to move for just that instant. Andais had admitted that Cel valued nothing but himself, something I had known for years. She had raised him to believe that faerie and the sidhe and the lesser fey owed him. He had been the apple of her eye, the song in her heart, the most precious thing in her world for longer than this country had existed, and now she wanted a child that valued others above themselves. What had Cel done to so disillusion his mother?

  Dormath spoke into that silence. “My queen, I do not know how to give you what you desire.”

  “I can give you what you want.” Maelgwn’s voice had lost its usual amused smoothness. He sounded serious and gentle at the same time, a tone I’d never heard from him.

  Andais looked at him, and with only her profile I could tell it wasn’t a friendly look.

  “Can you, wolf lord, can you truly?” Her voice held that edge of warning, like the pressure in the air before you even know the storm is coming.

  “Yes,” he said softly, but the word carried through the hall.

  She settled herself against the back of her throne, her hands very still on the carved arms. “Illuminate me, wolf.”

  “There are two children of your line who have come of age, my queen. One child has reawakened the queen’s own ring, and now offers almost anything to be allowed to enjoy the ring’s magic. A child who says bringing children to all the sidhe is more important to her than gaining the throne, or protecting her own life, or filling her own belly with life. These are all things that most of the nobles in this room, perhaps everyone in this room, would give anything to have. Is that not a child who puts her people’s welfare above her own?”

  I sat very still. I did not want to draw her attention to me. Maybe what Maelgwn said was true, but the queen didn’t always like or reward the truth. Sometimes a lie got you further. Andais’s most beloved lie was that Cel was fit to rule here. She herself had opened the door to the nobles finally speaking the truth. That Cel would have been almost no one’s choice, if they’d had any other choice that didn’t include a half-breed mortal. Only my father had ever had the courage to tell Andais that there was something wrong with Cel. Something that went beyond just being spoiled or privileged.

  Andais spoke as if she’d heard my last thought. “When my brother got his new bride pregnant so quickly, there were those who urged me to step down. I refused.” She turned and looked at me. “Do you want to know why I called you home, Meredith?”

  It was so unexpected that I gaped at her for a moment, then managed, “Yes.”

  “I’m infertile, Meredith. All those human doctors have done everything they can for me. That is why you must prove yourself fertile. Whoever rules after me must be able to bring life back to the courts. Maelgwn accused me of condemning all of you to be childless because my line is. I can only give you my word that I did not believe it until recently. If I could go back . . .” She sighed and slumped as much as her tight bodice would allow. “I wonder what we would be now, we Unseelie, if I had allowed Essus to take this throne these thirty years and more.” Her eyes held a pain that she’d never let me see before. That one look answered a question that I had wondered about. I knew that my father loved his sister, but until that moment I had not been sure that she loved him back. It was there in her eyes, in the lines of her face, even underneath the makeup. She looked tired.

  “Aunt Andais—” I started but she shushed me.

  “I have heard whispers in the dark, niece of mine, whispers that I did not believe. But if the ring truly lives for you, if it has begun to choose fertile couples for you, then perhaps the rumors are true. Is Maeve Reed, once Conchenn among the Seelie, with child?”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it. There had to be some among us who were spies for the Seelie Court. It would endanger Maeve to say yes, but Taranis had already tried to kill her. She was in another country now, as safe as we could make her. It was more dangerous not to answer, because we had told no one that Maeve Reed had been exiled from faerie because she had refused the king’s bed on the grounds that he was sterile. Which meant that, unlike Andais, Taranis had known a hundred years ago that he was infertile. He had kept his throne and condemned his people to diminish and die rather than step down. The Seelie were within their rights to demand his death as a true sacrifice to the land for that oversight.

  I’d thought too long, and Andais said, “Meredith, what is wrong?”

  Frost squeezed my shoulder, Galen was very still beside me. I looked at Doyle, and he gave a small nod. Truth was the lesser evil. I whispered it. “Yes, she is with child.”

  Andais was looking from me to Doyle, as if she longed to ask why I had hesitated so long, but she was a better politician than to ask. You did not ask a question in public to which you did not know the answer. “Answer so that everyone can hear you, niece.”

  I had to clear my throat to make my voice carry through the hall. “Yes, she is with child.”

  A sigh of murmurs ran through the assembled nobles.

  Andais smiled, as if she was satisfied with the reaction. “Did you work a spell for her, a fertility spell?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  The murmur grew, swelling like the sea as it sweeps toward the shore.

  “I heard her husband was dying even then, is that true?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “Treatments for cancer can leave a man sterile or unable to perform.”

  “Sometimes,” I said.

  “But you managed a spell that got a dying man to perform one last time for her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who played the part of the consort to your goddess? Who was god to your goddess for this spell?”

  “Galen.” I pressed his hand against my chest, as I said it.

  The ocean of murmurs burst upon us in a confused babble. Cries, almost shouts. Some did not believe it. I heard at least one male voice that I could not quite place say, “That explains it.” I would ask Doyle or Frost if they recognized the voice later.

  Andais looked at Kieran still standing bound at the foot of the steps. “I slew Galen’s father before I, or the noble lady who brought complaint of magical seduction, knew she was pregnant. You almost slew a warrior who had helped work magic to create life in the womb of a sidhe woman and a dying human.”

  Kieran looked confused, as if he was thinking very hard. “I would say I do not believe it, but you have spoken too much truth today, my queen, for me to doubt this. And you do not like Galen enough to lie to save him.”

  “We never lie, Kieran.”

  He bowed. “I meant . . .”

  “I know what you meant.” She leaned back against her chair, almost cozily, like a cat settling in. “What did Cel’s people tell you that made you agree to do this traitorous thing?”

  I expected Kieran to argue, or fight her, but he simply answered. “That the green man would bring life to her.” He nodded at me, since he could not point.

  Andais looked at Dormath. “And what did Siobhan tell you?”

  “That the green man would return life to the land of faerie.”

  Kieran’s face showed his panic. He tried to fall to his knees, I think to bow lower, but hands caught him, kept him on his feet. “That is not what I was told, my queen, I swear it. I would never destroy a chance for our court to be brought back to what we were, never.”

  “Dormath,” she said, “explain to Kieran the wording of the prophecy that Prince Cel paid the human psychic for.”

  Dormath bowed to her, then said, “The green man will bring life back to the land of faerie. The ruler is the land, and the land is the ruler. Their health, their fertility, their happiness, is the health, the fertility, and the joy of the land itself.”

  “Well put, Dormath, and very true. If you killed Meredith’s green knight, and he was destined to be the king who brought back children to the sidhe, then what would you have done to us, Kieran, Madenn?” She didn’t wait for them to answer. “By ki
lling him you would have destroyed all our hopes and dreams.”

  “But it is Mistral and Meredith who have begun to awaken the dead gardens, and the magic of the guard. He was with her when the ring chose Nicca and Biddy,” Kieran said. “It is Mistral who sits in the consort’s throne, not the green knight.”

  “True enough, and perhaps the ring has chosen the storm lord to be her king. I myself interpreted the term ‘green man’ to mean any of our green gods, but perhaps I have been too literal. Green man can be another name for god, or consort.” She shook her head. “I do not know for certain. I do not know if it is irritating or reassuring that prophets still speak in riddles even in this very modern America.” She turned to me. “Go help Nicca and Biddy make the child you saw. But abide by my rules; if I find you have given him first to Biddy, I will be cross. But take Galen and one other green man to your body this night, as well.”

  “What of the traitors, Aunt Andais?” I asked.

  “You go try and make babies; I will tend to them. I will give you a united court, Meredith. It will be my first and last gift to you.” She put a hand in front of her face and said, “Leave me, take the guards who are green men with you, but leave me the ones who are not.”

  Frost’s hand tensed on my shoulder, and I must have made some small sound of protest, because she looked up at me. She glanced at Frost and Doyle, and anger filled her eyes. “Take your Darkness and the Killing Frost. They are yours, but I will need some of the guards to help me punish the traitors.”

  “And Biddy and Nicca,” I said quietly.

  She waved her hand impatiently. “Yes, yes, now go.”

  Frost’s hand eased up on my shoulder. He gave a small nod. I got up, bowed to the queen, and we moved toward the doors, leaving her to punish the traitors. She probably wouldn’t kill them, but she’d make sure they regretted their actions. Of that, I had no doubt. I shouldn’t have looked back, but I did. I saw Crystall, Hafwyn, Dogmaela, and others try to control their faces. Mistral and Barinthus were among the unreadable.

  I stopped. Frost grabbed my shoulder, and Galen still had my hand. They tried to get me moving again, but I balked. I couldn’t save everyone, I knew that, but . . .