Meredith Gentry 6 - A Lick of Frost

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  "You couldn't leave Doyle hurt, maybe dying," Usna said softly.

  "Maybe, yes, but also if I am ever to rule, truly rule a court of faerie, I must be able to lead in battle. We aren't humans to keep our leaders in the back. The sidhe lead from the front."

  "You are mortal, Merry," Doyle said. "That changes some rules."

  "If I am too mortal to rule, then so be it, but I must rule, Doyle."

  "Speaking of ruling," Abe said, "tell them what Hugh said about our princess being made queen of the Seelie court."

  "That can't be true," Usna said. He was staring at Abe and me.

  "I swear it is true," Abe said.

  "Has Hugh lost his senses?" Aisling asked. "No offense, Princess, but the Seelie will not allow an Unseelie noble who is part brownie, and part human to sit on the golden throne. Not unless the court has changed a great deal in the two hundred years of my exile."

  "What say you, Usna?" Doyle asked, "Are you as shocked as Aisling?"

  "Tell me first if Hugh gave reasons for his change of heart."

  "He spoke of swans with golden chains, and there is a green faerie dog in the Seelie Court once more," Frost said.

  "My mother tells me the Cu Sith had stopped the king from beating a servant," Usna said.

  "And you didn't share this with anyone?" Abe asked.

  Usna shrugged. "It didn't seem that important."

  "Apparently, some of the nobles have taken the dog's disfavor as a sign against Taranis," Doyle said.

  "Also, he went buggers, mad as a March fucking hare," Abe said.

  "Well, there is that," Doyle said.

  Aisling looked at me. "They offered you the throne of the Seelie Court, truly?"

  "Hugh said something about a vote among the nobles, and that if it went against Taranis, which he seemed confident it would, he would get them to vote me in as heir apparent."

  "What did you say?" Aisling asked.

  "I said we'd have to talk to our queen before I could answer their generous offer."

  "Will she be pleased, or pissed?" Usna asked.

  I think it was a rhetorical question, but I said, "I don't know."

  Doyle said, "I do not know."

  Frost said, "I wish I knew."

  We had a chance of being caught between a ruler of faerie who was crazy and a ruler of faerie who was simply cruel. I had found years ago that the difference between madness and cruelty doesn't matter much to a victim.

  CHAPTER 11

  DOYLE AND FROST PICKED USNA'S MIND FOR OTHER BITS OF unimportant news from his mother about the Seelie Court. There was a lot of it. Apparently Taranis had been acting erratically for some time. Aisling asked as we pulled into the gates of Maeve Reed's estate, "Why did you request me for this talk? Taranis forbade anyone to speak to me of the Seelie Court on pain of torture, so I have no intelligence to report."

  "The Seelie sithen recognized you as king when we arrived in America," Doyle said. "You were exiled because of that."

  "I am aware of what cost me my place at court," Aisling said.

  "So the princess is in effect being offered your rightful throne," Doyle said.

  Aisling's eyes went wide. Even through the veil his astonishment showed. Obviously he had not put two and two together and come up with that.

  The door to the limo opened, and Fred held the door. We all stayed sitting while we waited for Aisling to digest this. "Close the door for a moment, Fred," I said.

  The door closed.

  "Just because the sithen recognized me more than two hundred years ago does not mean that I would still be its choice for king," Aisling said. "And it is not me to whom the nobles are making this offer."

  "I wanted you to hear it first, Aisling," Doyle said. "I did not want you to think that we had forgotten what faerie itself offered you once."

  Aisling looked at Doyle for a long moment. "That was a very decent thing for you to do, Doyle."

  "You sound surprised," I said.

  He looked at me. "Doyle has been the queen's Darkness for a very long time, Princess. I am beginning to realize that some of his finer emotions may have been buried under the queen's orders."

  "That is the most polite way I've ever heard anyone say that we thought you were a heartless bastard, Doyle," Abe said.

  Aisling's eyes crinkled at the edges. I think he was smiling. "I would not have put it quite that way."

  Doyle smiled. "I think many of us will find that under the princess' care we are more ourselves than we have been in a very long time."

  They all looked at me, and the weight of that look made me want to squirm. I fought it off and sat there trying to be the princess they thought I was. But there were moments, like now, when I felt that I could not possibly be everything they needed. No one could meet so many needs.

  I got a whiff of a spring breeze and flowers. A voice that was not a voice, but more something that thrummed through my body, hummed along my skin and whispered, "We will be enough."

  I knew it was the old idea that with God, or Goddess, on your side you could not lose. But there were moments when I was no longer certain that winning meant the same thing to me that it did to the Goddess.

  CHAPTER 12

  WE WERE MET BY A BOIL OF BODIES AT THE DOOR TO THE BIG house. Dogs, faerie hounds, met us with barks, bays, yips, and noises that sounded like they were trying to talk. Since they were supernatural in origin I wouldn't have put it past them.

  There were so many dogs trying to greet so many different masters at the door that we couldn't move forward. As dogs will, they were acting as if we had been gone days instead of only hours. My hounds were like greyhounds, but not quite. There were differences in the head, the ears, the line of body from shoulders to tail, but they had that muscled grace. In color they were white, a pure, shining white like my own skin, but with marks of red, again like my own hair. Minnie, short for Miniver, was white save for half her face and one large spot of red on her back. The face was very striking: red on one side, white on the other, as if someone had drawn a line neatly down her face. Mungo, my boy, was a little taller, a little heavier, and even whiter, with only one red ear to give him color.

  Some of the larger hounds looked like Irish wolfhounds had, before they'd gotten mixed with anything less beefy. There were only a few of them among the greyhounds, but the few towered over everything else like mountains rising above a plain. Some had rough coats, some smooth, but all were a variation of red and white. Then you had the terriers that spilled around our ankles. They, too, were mostly white and red, except for a few who were black and brown. The old black and tan, brought back to existence by wild magic, was the breed that most of the modern terriers are descended from.

  Rhys had the most terriers, but then he was a god of death, or had been. Our people see the land of the dead as an underground place, most of the time, so the fact that he had earth dogs was logical. He didn't seem to mind that he had none of the graceful hounds, or the huge war dogs. He knelt in the mass of barking, growling dogs, all so much smaller, and glowed with the joy that all of us showed. We had always been a people who honored our animals. They had been much missed.

  There was one other exception to the color of the dogs—Doyle's hounds. They were not as tall as the wolfhounds, but meatier, black muscle over bone. They were the original shape the dogs had come to us in, black dogs, what the Christians called hellhounds. But they had nothing to do with the devil. They were the black dogs, the black of void and nothing from which comes life. Before there is light, there must be darkness.

  Doyle tried to walk unaided but stumbled. Frost gave his strong arms to his friend. Strangely, there was no dog to greet Frost. He and only a few others had touched the black dogs but they had not changed into some other hound for them.

  None of us knew why, but I knew it bothered Frost. He feared, I think, that it was a sure sign that he was not enough to be truly sidhe. Once he had been the hoarfrost, Jack Frost, and now he was my Killing Frost, but there was alwa
ys that insecurity that he was not born sidhe, but made.

  Hovering above the sea of dogs were small winged fey; the demi-fey. To be wingless among them was a mark of great shame. All that had followed me into exile had been wingless until I brought new magic back to faerie. Penny and Royal, twins with dark hair and bright wings waved at me.

  I waved back. To be greeted like this by a cloud of demi-fey and our dogs was an honor I never thought I would have.

  I offered to help Frost with Doyle, but Doyle refused. He wouldn't even look at me. His supposed "weakness" had cut him deeply. One of the big black dogs pushed at me and gave a soft growl. Mungo and Minnie both moved up, hackles beginning to raise. That was not a fight I wanted to see, so I backed off, calling them to my hands.

  My hounds were capable of protecting me if they had to, but against the black dogs they looked fragile. I stroked their heads. Mungo leaned against my leg, and the weight was comforting. I wanted nothing more than a nap with my dogs on the floor by the bed, or at the door. Not all my men liked a furry audience, and sometimes neither did I. Regardless, we had one more task to do before we could rest.

  We called my aunt, Andais, Queen of Air and Darkness, as soon as we got inside. I would have put Doyle and Abe to bed immediately, but Doyle had pointed out that if someone else told the queen before we did that I had been offered her rival's throne she might view it as treason. She might view it as me jumping ship. Andais didn't take rejection, any type of rejection, well.

  She was already fairly pissed that so many of her most devoted guards had dumped her for me. I didn't see it as dumping her for me. I saw it as them choosing a chance for sex after centuries of forced celibacy. For that, most men would have gone to any woman. It helped that I wasn't a sexual sadist and Auntie Andais was, but that, too, was a fact best not shared.

  Doyle had insisted on being present for the call. He wanted her to see what Taranis had done. I think he thought the visual aid would cut through her usual fits of temper. She was more stable than Taranis, but there were moments when my aunt didn't seem entirely sane. Would she like this unexpected news or hate it? I honestly didn't know.

  Doyle sat on the edge of my bed. I sat beside him. Rhys sat on my other side. He'd jokingly said, "You promised me sex, but I know you, you'll get distracted unless I stay by your side." It was a joke with some bite in it for Rhys and me. But Doyle said yes to his staying with us too quickly. It let me know that my Darkness was hurt worse than he'd let on.

  Frost stood at the corner of the bed. It's easier to go for a weapon when you are standing.

  Galen stood beside him. He'd insisted on being included in the call, and nothing anyone had said could dissuade him. In the end it had been easier to just give in. Galen's arguments that we needed at least one more able-bodied guard on the call had some merit. But I think he, like me, wasn't sure what Andais would do with the news from the Seelie Court. He was afraid for me, and I was afraid for us all.

  Abe lay on the far side of the bed. He hadn't wanted to be included, but hadn't argued with Doyle's order. I think Abe was afraid of Andais. Of course, so was I.

  Rhys moved to the mirror. His hand was close to the glass, but not quite touching it. "Everybody ready?" he asked.

  I nodded. Doyle said "Yes."

  "No," Abe said, "but my vote doesn't count, apparently."

  Frost just said, "Do it."

  Galen just watched the mirror with eyes that were a little too bright. It wasn't magic, it was nerves.

  Rhys touched the mirror, using such a small piece of magic that I didn't even feel it. The mirror was cloudy for a moment, then the black bedroom of the queen appeared. But she was not there. Her huge black-draped bedspread was empty except for a pale male figure.

  He lay on his stomach across the black fur and sheets. His skin wasn't just white, or even moonlight skin like mine, but so pale it had a translucent quality to it. It was what skin would have looked like if it could be formed of crystal. Except that this crystal was cut with long crimson slashes on arms and legs. She'd left his back and buttocks untouched, which probably meant the cuts were for persuasion and not torture. Andais liked to go for the center of the body when she was causing pain for the sake of pain.

  The blood shimmered in the lights, again with a jewel quality that I'd never seen in blood before. The man's hair spread to one side of his body, catching the light in small prism rainbows. He was so still that for a moment I thought there was some awful wound we could not see. Then I saw his chest rise and fall. He lived. He was hurt, but he lived.

  I whispered his name, "Crystall."

  He turned, slowly, obviously in pain. He laid his cheek against the fur underneath him, and stared at us with eyes that looked empty, as if there was no hope left. It hurt my heart to see that look in his eyes.

  Crystall hadn't been a lover of mine, but he had fought with us in faerie. He had helped defend Galen when he might otherwise have died. The queen had decreed that all the guards who wished could follow me into exile and then too many of them had opted to come, so she had had to take back her generous offer. The men who had left were safe with me. The men who had not been in the first few groups that Sholto, Lord of that Which Passes Between, had brought to Los Angeles had been trapped in faerie with her. Trapped with a woman who didn't take rejection well, when they'd openly chosen another woman. I was seeing what the other woman, my aunt, thought about that.

  I reached out toward the mirror, as if I could touch him, but it wasn't one of my powers. I could not do what Taranis had done so easily earlier today.

  "Princess," Crystall whispered, and his voice was hoarse, roughened. I knew why his voice sounded like that. Screaming will do that. I knew because I had been at the queen's mercy more than once. The queen's mercy had become a saying among the Unseelie sidhe, as in, "I'd rather be at the queen's mercy than do that."

  Andais had seen exile from faerie as worse than any torture she could devise. She did not understand why so many of her fey had chosen it. Just as she hadn't understood why my father, Essus, took me and our household into exile in the human world after Andais tried to drown me at six years of age. If I was mortal enough to die by drowning, then I wasn't sidhe enough to be allowed to live. Sort of the way you'd drown a puppy that your purebred bitch dropped after you realized it wasn't the mating of your dreams, but some mongrel that had gotten inside the fence.

  Andais had been shocked when my father left faerie to raise me among the humans, and she had been equally shocked when, many years later, nearly her entire guard would have followed me into the Western lands. For her, to leave faerie was worse than death, and she couldn't understand why it wasn't a fate worse than death to everyone else. What she failed to understand was that the queen's mercy had become a fate even worse than exile.

  I stared into Crystall's luminous, hopeless eyes, and my throat tightened around the tears that I knew I could not afford to shed. Andais had left us a present to look at, but she'd be watching, and she would see tears as weakness. Crystall was her visual aid. Her example to us, to me. I wasn't certain what the message was supposed to be, but in her mind there was one. But, Goddess help me, other than her jealousy and hatred of rejection I couldn't see any message here.

  "Oh, Crystall," I said. "I am sorry."

  His voice had reminded me of the sound of chimes in a gentle wind. Now it was a painful croak. "You did not do this, Princess."

  His eyes flickered toward what I knew was the outer door, though I could not see that part of the room. His face closed down, and for a moment where there had been hopelessness there was rage. A rage that he stuffed down, and hid behind eyes that showed as neutral a face as he could find.

  I prayed that Andais hadn't seen that moment of rage. She'd try to beat it out of him if she had.

  The queen swept into the room dressed in a loose, flowing black robe. It left open a triangle of white flesh, the flat perfection of her stomach and a trace of her belly button. There was a thin cord tied acro
ss the high, tight planes of her breasts that kept the front of the outfit from spilling open completely. There were long, wide sleeves that left most of her forearms bare. She must have been called away on important business to have put on that much clothing with Crystall still in her bed. He wasn't hurt enough for her to be finished with him.

  She'd tied her long black hair back in a loose tail of hair. The ribbon she'd chosen was red. I'd never seen her wear red before, not even a spot of it. The only red the queen liked on her person was other people's blood.

  I couldn't have explained it, but that red ribbon made my stomach clench tight, and my pulse speed. Andais slid onto the bed in front of Crystall, but close enough that she could stroke the untouched flesh of his back. She stroked him idly as you would a dog. He flinched at her first touch, then settled down and tried not to be there.

  She looked at us with her tricolored eyes: charcoal, to the color of storm clouds, to a pale winter gray that was nearly white. Her eyes went so perfectly with the black hair and the pale skin. She was so made for Goth fashion, like Abe, except she was scarier than any Goth on the planet. Andais was serial-killer scary, and she was my father's sister, my queen, and there was nothing I could do about either.

  "Aunt Andais," I said, "we have arrived from the hospital to tell you much news." We had already agreed that we needed to be clear from the beginning that we were telling her the news at the first opportunity.

  "My queen," Doyle said, doing an awkward sitting bow as far as the bandages would allow.

  "I have heard many rumors this day," she said, in a voice that some thought was a throaty, seductive sound, but that had always filled me with dread.

  "Goddess knows what the rumor's are," Rhys said as he moved back to stand by the bed, near me. "The truth is weird enough." He said it with a smile and his usual teasing lightness.

  She gave him a flat look that was anything but friendly. There would be no lightening her mood if that look was any indication. She turned those angry eyes back to Doyle. .