Chapter 44
Forty-Four
“Do you not feel it, my liege? Samhain is pressing on.”
Lileas and I reclined in the courtyard on couches of red velvet beneath a canopy of drooping vines. Whatever fruit we wished grew from it; we need only reach up, and the sweet bounty tumbled into our hands.
Here in Faery, it might yet have been spring. The leaves were new and green, the blossoms newly sprung, yet the fruit happened to also be ripe. Faery makes Her own rules about such things.
Yet the seasonlessness of Faery does not change how bound we are to the circle of the mortal year. As Samhain approached, I felt my senses quickening, hair pricking up along my arms, the air as filled with energy as during a lightning storm.
I reached up to the vine, plucking deep-purple grapes that seemed to be dusted in gold. “Of course I feel it.” I bit into the fruit, and it tasted sweet as ambrosia, but it left me aching to be filled.
Neither Faery fruit nor a lover could sufficiently sate me now.
The Veil parted but four times a year. I felt as though I were sundering as well. Looked at my fingers and saw cadaverous claws. Glanced at my chatelaine, and her face was a skull, adorned only with a few strands of dry yellow hair.
I blinked, and she was again a lovely maiden, diaphanous gown threatening to slide off her shoulders.
She took a bite of a peach and closed her eyes at joy in the taste.
Patting her lips with a silken kerchief, she opened her eyes again.
“Have you given some thought as to who will pay the Teind this year?”
The Teind, which we pay every seven years, had not been paid since Una’s time.
Yet I had that well under my control. “I had thought Lord Elidor, seeing as I need him put to death in any case.”
Lileas’s eyes grew wide. “Lord Elidor? Your prisoner? But Your Majesty—”
“Chatelaine.”
It was Amadan who cut her off, suddenly standing there in a golden-green tunic shading at the prodigious sleeves to orange and rust. His hair, too, was tipped in shades of autumn; every bit of him flamboyant as the jewel-toned season, though his expression was as sober as a priest.
“Dark Fool,” Lileas said, inclining her head. “Was there something we could help you with?”
Amadan turned his attention to me. “Your Majesty, I am afraid the mortal bairn has fallen into the fishpond again.”
I leapt to my feet. Did Jamie even know how to swim? “The fishpond? But I do not have a fishpond!”
Amadan waved his hand. “Well, you did not until just now. Thought I would update the garden a bit.”
“Update the garden? And you did not think to tell me, or keep an eye on Jamie?”
Amadan threw his hands open and shrugged.
“Oh, for the sake of Mother Mab!” I gathered fistfuls of skirt in my hand, glaring at the Fool. Will you never stop tormenting the boy? “I will find him and return shortly.”
Lileas nodded but looked rather uncomfortable as Amadan took his seat beside her. I did not blame her. I didn’t much want the Dark Fool’s company myself.
I rushed to the garden to find that, indeed, there was a new fishpond, with a treacherous fideal hiding in the weeds beside it.
Jamie and his goat boy were playing in the water, splashing about happily; it did not appear to be very deep.
Yet the fideal reached out its long reef-like arms towards the mortal boy, and only a sharp cry from me made the arm recoil back into the brush.
Jamie and his friend looked up, confused.
“Enough playing in the water for today,” I said. “Jamie, please go indoors and wash up. I want you clean and in bed early tonight.”
The last thing I intended was for him to be awake to witness the Teind. I had to be a brutal queen now, someone I didn’t want Jamie to meet.
I returned to the courtyard to find Lileas and Amadan sitting equally uncomfortably, although Amadan had a rather smug look on his face. He rose quickly and chucked Lileas under her chin. She looked away in disgust.
“Big night tonight,” said Amadan. “I shall round up the others to make the rade.”
Our procession through Carterhaugh, he meant, with great pomp and ritual, to carry out the Teind.
My first, though I had been told what to expect.
My seneschal would ride beside me, the Teind on a white horse, escorted by riders on horses red and black.
The trooping fae would follow, from sylph to goblin, trow to brollachan, and everything in between.
I only had to preside over the procession and, of course, carry out the sacrifice myself.
Thank Mab it would only be Lord Elidor, not someone I cared about or even really knew. And speaking of Elidor—
“Weren’t we discussing the Teind just now?” I asked Lileas. “I thought there was something you wanted to tell me.”
Lileas looked down at her hands. “There are things you do not yet understand, Majesty. Things I am not at liberty to divulge. Well, not any longer, at least.”
What was that supposed to mean? “But Lileas, I value your counsel—”
She cut me off with a look. Her face seemed to shimmer in the air, briefly appearing like her kinsman’s, and then like no one’s at all. She stood. “Let me get the wee bairn ready for bed. He should not stay up this night to see.”
She echoed my earlier thoughts, yet I was not ready to drop the subject. “If Amadan has done or said something that disturbed you, I need to know.”
Her eyes were hollow and her expression blank. “I can report no bad behavior that the Dark Fool has done. Excuse me, Your Majesty.”
“I am Fia,” I said, for so I always wished to be for her, but she did not turn around.
Let me help you, I thought at her, but had no idea what she needed or how.
In Faery, the days and hours move according to my will, but when the Veil thins it is different.
I felt the sun set in the mortal realm almost as if it literally hit the horizon.
Every hour after that thudded on, like a footless trow climbing up a hill.
Then, at last, ’twas nearly the witching hour, and I sent my guards to fetch Lord Elidor, to bathe and purify him and set him upon a horse so white.
’Twould be a good sacrifice if such there may ever be.
Lyel I summoned to my side. “Ready the horses, then on to Carterhaugh,” I told him. “The others will meet us at the well.”
He did not meet my eyes. “The Teind is Elidor for certain, then?”
Why did he and his kinswoman both seem reluctant to have this traitor die? “I must make an example of him. The Aos Sith are only as good as their loyalty to their queen, you understand that, do you not?”
He nodded.
I put a hand against the side of his face; his skin was rougher than his kinswoman’s, but the bones were the same.
“Una shall have her justice, finally,” I told him.
“I am glad of that.” But his eyes were still troubled, and I nearly wished to shake him, that whatever he concealed would come out.
As we rode out, we attracted an entourage of knights and guards, Aos Sith and sylphs, all garbed as for battle, glistening even without the light of the sun.
Their cloaks unfurled, thick velvet on the breeze; jewels hung from their ears, and garlands were set atop their silvery helms. ’Twas a momentous and ceremonial occasion: my first faery rade.
The land hungered, my people hungered. Their eyes burned and their lips were wet; I felt their racing pulses as if they were my own.
Blood is easily come by. But Faery starves for want of souls.
One way or another, tonight we would feast.
We paused at the edge of the forest and were joined by three horsemen.
Amadan rode the black horse, Lyel dismounted his own steed to mount the red, and Elidor sat upon the white.
He was glamoured to appear in his former beauty: his long silvery hair full and unbound, his face shining like gold, his garments elegant and snowy white.
You almost did not notice the vines wrapped round his wrists and tying him to his horse.
Too dangerous to live, but almost too pretty to die.
I wondered what would have happened if I had danced with him at the coronation; if that would have been enough to change his mind about me, or if he simply would have tried to kill me then.
In the end it did not matter. Someone needed to die today, so that Faery might live.
And my mother’s killer was the perfect choice.
Yet my seneschal would not meet my eyes. My heart felt weak and my conscience stumbled at the thought of killing Elidor. Was it simply that I must be the one to hold the blade?
You nearly killed him once. This time it will take.
I closed my eyes, conjuring up the most dangerous parts of myself, all that was fatal inside me, hard and cold and cruel, but did not let it take over. Instead, it coalesced, and I stretched out a single arm from which a dagger sprouted, deadly sharp and cold as ice.
“To the well!” I cried out, and held my dagger high overhead.
The company roared out their assent and on we rode.
Among the woods of Carterhaugh, the Unseelie roamed.
The shapeless brollachan clung like shadows to the night-dark trees.
Blue-faced hags muttered in the darkness, their every step turning the ground to frost. An unearthly washerwoman wrung out soaking wet clothing; I did not look too closely to find out whose garments they were.
I ruled them as much as I did the prettier fae in the company. They would feed tonight as well.
How infinite we all were, in our magic, our hunger, and our desires. I knew then I would do whatever it took to make my people thrive.
And at last, we were at the well.
The company stood back, all but the three horsemen. Amadan helped me to dismount, while Lyel did the same for the bound Elidor. I stood against the well, and the roses, my roses surrounded me, crawling up my skirts and over my arms like fine embroidery.
I raised my chin and looked straight forward. “Bring the prisoner to me.”