Chapter 18 In Which I Am Royally Screwed #3
“Four prisoners, three of them residents of another Court, and the fourth a human whose blood is forfeit on my soil,” the Queen mused. She stared at Kamare. “Do you think the Princeling will not come looking?”
“I took them according to the laws of prisoner exchange, and they will acknowledge this themselves, if asked.” Kamare looked a bit flustered.
I shot Sahir a look that said It is insane that you live in a world where prisoners can be traded for favors from the Queen. And he returned it with a look that said I’ve been to New York; don’t get too self-righteous.
“As the humans often say, there is the letter of the law, and the spirit of the law.”
What a weird thing for the human-killing ruler to say. The Princeling had never quoted humans to me.
The Queen took three side steps around the fire, and my heart stuttered. I’d never seen anyone move with such grace. She moved at a human speed, so my eyes could track her, and every muscle bent and stretched until at the third step, I found myself crying.
The Queen looked at me, still several feet away. She seemed unsurprised by my tears. “There is also something in the way that humans watch magic,” she said musingly, and gestured at my face. Even the sweep of her arm mesmerized me.
Kamare turned to me, too, and her forked tongue flicked out between her lips—tasting the air for my tears?
“They can kill us,” she said, “without intending to. They bring destruction in their wake. You know that.”
The Queen shrugged. “The humans have always salted the earth,” she said, her tone indifferent.
I didn’t expect the rage with which Kamare responded—she screamed and flung herself at the Queen, her fingertips extended into claws. I gasped and started forward, but before I’d taken half a step, the Queen’s guard were in front of her, spears leveled.
As I stared at the sharp, pointed tips, the spears didn’t seem so funny to me.
“You will fall,” Kamare said, but she backed up, until she was next to me in our row.
“We all fall.” The Queen still seemed disinterested. “You may leave, Kamare. I am your Queen, and my strength is my people, and I will not allow harm to befall you.”
Kamare slunk backward until she was out of the room. I watched her go with a strong feeling of relief.
The Queen’s eyes flicked to me. “Did you intend to assist the soldier, or protect me?”
I stared at her long black eyelashes, the regal sweep of her nose. “Defend you, I think,” I said.
One of the guards snickered—a tall one with wings. I wanted to differentiate them, but they all looked a lot like androgynous Elvis in various colors, and I was having trouble.
Sahir stepped forward to stand beside me. The Queen flicked her hand at him. A spark jumped from her fingertips to his chest, and he exploded into vines.
“Do not hide your form from the Queen,” she said. In third person.
“Apologies, Queen,” Sahir said, his familiar voice coming from the center of the vines. He was much stiller than he’d been last time the vines came out, everything drooping like chagrined shrubbery.
“Speak your plea,” she said to Sahir, imperious and still so disinterested. “That I can end the mortal’s life and cease to ponder this.”
“You are a Queen, and a faerie, and fair,” Sahir said. “If you deem her harmless, give us leave to bring her back to the Princeling.”
“No human is harmless to us,” she replied. If she felt that to be true, there was no hope for me.
“Then if you deem her worthy of respect,” Sahir tried. “If you hear our accounting for her and believe she has earned the name Friend of the Fae.”
She tsked gently, almost sad. “You know that if I let one human walk freely past my borders, more will follow.”
I had the strange distant thought that I was about to dissociate through my own death.
“Then give her leave to attempt a portal crossing,” Gaheris said.
Sahir groaned under his breath. The Queen looked at Gaheris.
“This is hardly a mercy,” she said.
“It is a chance,” Gaheris replied. “If you deem her worthy of it.”
The amount of adrenaline thrumming through my veins could have exploded a pony. I felt every nerve ending, heard the thump of each heartbeat in my chest.
Obviously we’d planned to hurl me through a portal at some point. I just hadn’t expected that point to be imminent.
The Queen and I looked at each other.
“Well,” she sighed. “If nothing else, it will break the monotony.”
Again a flicker of movement on the face of one of her faerie guards. Again, a decision on my own part to avoid noticing.
“I shall hear from each of you in turn,” the Queen said. She stepped nimbly around her guards and glided over to Gaheris. I tracked every step she took, my head swiveling on my neck.
Gaheris inclined his head, the fires of his hair brushing her forearm as he kissed her outstretched hand. I watched the flames lick toward her elbow. I felt an inexplicable urge to separate them, to protect her.
Sahir whacked me in the thigh with a vine. I glared at him, but the pull to the Queen had been severed. I looked back toward her where she stood facing Gaheris.
“Tell me why you are here, Gaheris.”
He lifted from his bow, straightened, and looked at her. I stared at his profile, his long arms and legs and face, and his thin mouth. I felt overwhelmed by a sense of something—gratitude or friendship or pride.
“Sahir has been my companion for many years, long and short,” he said. “We have exchanged many bargains. I will always assist him, if I am able.”
She nodded, as if she understood. The golden diadem shone in the firelight. “You have come at Sahir’s behest, and with fair recompense for your risk.” She started to turn away from him, toward Lene.
“In part,” he said, sounding anxious; his eyes fell to the floor. The Queen froze, and readjusted to face him head on.
“When Sahir wanted to go to the human lands, I was afraid,” Gaheris continued. “You know the ease with which we can die there. He went for his own reasons, which I shall not share, by your leave.” He stopped and glanced at her, fear and a desire for approbation warring in his eyes.
The Queen nodded again, encouraging him to go on.
I stared at her, feeling a burgeoning desire to one day be that powerful.
I was well-adjusted, and knew that the feeling was just in response to a lack of control in my own life.
Like any well-adjusted person, I pushed the feeling down and vowed never to examine it.
“About a year after Sahir started the job in the human world, he began to speak of a woman who had joined the company.”
I jerked my head to look at Sahir so fast that my neck hurt. He’d spoken of me to his friends? We were office mates; we hadn’t spent any significant time together.
Sahir was still a tangled mass of vines, so I couldn’t exactly see his face.
“The other humans were cruel to him, as I understand it. They laughed when he spoke, or pretended not to understand him. They would not be alone with him if they could avoid it. These were forms of cruelty I did not know to fear, until Sahir explained them to me. But she never treated him any differently.”
I flushed. Sahir had talked about me at length, apparently.
He’d mentioned me often enough that Gaheris knew who I was before I ever came to Faerie.
And—Sahir had been miserable at work, and in all these months I’d never asked him about it.
I’d been too wrapped up in my own misery to think about his. My stomach dropped.
Sahir’s arm vines had started twitching in agitation.
“I had to think about cruelty and kindness, Queen,” Gaheris said. “And I found myself relieved that my companion had one kind face during the hours he toiled in the mortal realm,” Gaheris continued, oblivious to my inner turmoil. “And so I was indebted to Miriam before I ever met her.”
If a mass of vines could look embarrassed, Sahir did. I raised an eyebrow at him, but he didn’t speak.
“This does not explain why you felt the need to trespass upon my lands,” the Queen said, her jaw set. “Nor why you spoke with Roman, the Builder, of the portals between our realms.”
“We trespassed to speak with Roman,” Gaheris replied.
“Our need was great, and his work had taken him into your Court. When we learned that he might know something of the magics trapping Miriam here, we knew we must go to him for assistance, even if we would miss her when she left,” Gaheris finished.
He had finally raised his head to look at the Queen again.
The Queen looked into his eyes for another minute, her expression implacable. Then she nodded, like she had come to a decision. “Our people do not prize kindness, Gaheris.” It was a rebuke.
His face dropped, but to my shock, he stood tall, the fire on his head small but vital. “My Queen, I believe we do not prize kindness because we do not understand cruelty.”
The Queen frowned but didn’t comment. Instead, she took a step to her side, stopping in front of Lene. She moved with the same grace, but I didn’t feel the same awe as before.
“And you?” The Queen’s red robe had spread out around her feet in a perfect circle. That was cool magic.
Lene rolled her shoulders. “I love her cat, Doctor Kitten. He is soft and warm, and we sometimes watch birds together.”
I glared at her. Eleven weeks we’d been hanging out. That was it?
She looked at me across Sahir’s undulating arm-vines. “And I like her,” she added hastily, seeing my expression.
Small comfort that faeries couldn’t lie.
The Queen seemed to be suppressing a smile. “The mortal offered you no gifts for your companionship?”
Lene shrugged. “None that I could easily name.”
“And you joined her anyway,” the Queen said.
Lene nodded.
“Did her knight treat with you?”
Lene shrugged a second time. “No more so than usual,” she said. “I came here without expectation of recompense.”
The Queen did not reply.
Instead, she took another step, toward Sahir. “And you? Why did you tie your life to a mortal woman, the moment she set foot in our realm?”