11
When Morgana gently set the wood mouse onto the blanket of leaves beneath the holm oak, the sparrow flew up from her shoulder into the branches overhead. Braithe murmured to Idhri, “We can go to her now.”
“But the fox?”
“He will be gone in a moment.”
It was true. Morgana bent to look into the fox’s bright dark eyes and said something.
He seemed to laugh up at her before he flicked his ruddy tail, whirled, and scampered into the woods.
Braithe felt Idhri’s bewilderment, and she understood.
It had been the same for her when she first knew Morgana, before she became one of the Nine.
He would get used to it if they had to stay long in fae country.
But they couldn’t do that. The king needed them. The Blackbird was counting on them.
When Braithe felt a hand on her arm, she thought it was Idhri, and she turned to encourage him to walk with her.
It wasn’t Idhri who had touched her. He had fallen back a step to allow one of the laborers, a woman with wispy gray hair tied back in a scarf, to approach. Her wrinkled hand bore the spots of too much sun, and her fingers on Braithe’s arm were work-roughened and dry.
Braithe, startled, pulled her arm away, then regretted the abrupt movement. “I’m sorry, grandmother,” she said. “You startled me. Can I help you?”
“You’re with them, yah?” The woman pointed a gnarled finger first at Idhri, then at Morgana. Idhri stepped farther back, as if he was afraid the woman would seize him.
Morgana glanced up and started toward them. Braithe said to the woman, “I am with them, grandmother. Why do you ask?”
“You’re not fae.”
“No.”
The woman leaned closer, and Braithe saw how reddened her eyes were, how lined her cheeks.
“Don’t trust ’em,” she said in a hoarse voice.
Her eyes flicked to Idhri and then to Morgana.
“Don’t trust ’em, pretty girl like you. They promise things, but then—” She pointed behind her at the fields, where so many like herself labored in the sun.
“Then this is what they give you, yah?” She gave Morgana a nervous glance and began to back away.
Braithe said, “These are my friends, grandmother. They wouldn’t—”
“Oh, they would.” She gave Idhri and Morgana a narrow-eyed glance, full of resentment. “Take my word, yah? Don’t believe a thing they say.”
Just as Morgana reached Idhri’s side, the woman spun away and marched back to her work. The overseer shaded his eyes to see what was happening, and the old woman scurried along the row she had been weeding, bending low to hide herself from him.
Morgana said, “What did that woman want?”
Idhri said, “She thinks we will hurt Braithe.”
“Why would she think that?” Morgana’s relaxed expression began to tighten as she looked out among the tilled rows, searching for the woman in the scarf.
“It’s all right,” Braithe said. “She thinks you’re like the fae in the White City, you and Idhri. She took a terrible chance, coming to warn me.”
“Did she ask for anything?”
Braithe shook her head. “She wanted me to be careful.”
Morgana frowned. “I see. That is never bad advice, I suppose.”
“Priestess—”
“What?”
Braithe could still sense the sorrow in the old woman, the terrible resignation. The surrender, and the fatigue. “Never mind. I just wanted to say—she meant well.”
“You could feel that.”
“Yes,” Braithe said, remembering the grief that emanated from the woman. “She didn’t want me to end up the way she has.”
“That’s very sad,” Idhri said.
“It is.”
“Well,” Morgana said, “I can assure you that is not going to happen. Come now, we should start back. You both must be hungry. I thank you for this, though. I feel much more myself.”
As they set out to walk back the way they had come, Braithe averted her eyes from the people pursuing their backbreaking work under the hot sun. She couldn’t bear to watch them labor, knowing they had no choice in the matter.
They found Councillor Emerlyn waiting for them at the house, and her usually impassive features gave away her relief at seeing them. All she said was “Your breakfast is waiting,” but Morgana understood she had been alarmed to find them absent.
Idhri and Braithe eagerly set upon the boiled eggs and bread and fruit awaiting them. Morgana felt little appetite, but she joined them at the table. Emerlyn sat, too, her hands folded in her lap.
“You have breakfasted, Councillor?” Morgana said, before beginning her own meal.
“Yes. I eat very little.”
“I find it hard myself sometimes,” Morgana said, but she reached for an egg to slice onto the piece of bread she had taken. “Especially when there are things on my mind.”
“Where did you go?” Emerlyn asked.
Morgana set her bread on a napkin. “We went outside the city. Through the fields and on into the woods.”
Emerlyn blinked in surprise. “Why would you do that, Priestess? The fields are so dirty.”
Braithe looked up in surprise. “Dirty?”
“The fields are beautiful,” Morgana said. “As are the woods, and the creatures who dwell there.”
“Creatures!”
“Indeed.”
“Do you mean—animals?”
“And birds. Sometimes insects.”
“But they can be dangerous!”
“They are hardly more dangerous than your citizens, Councillor,” Morgana said. She suppressed a surge of impatience. “The creatures of the woods and fields connect me with the wisdom of the world. Do you not find that to be so?”
Emerlyn gave a small but visible shudder. “I do not. I find them distasteful.”
Morgana’s impatience gave way to a different feeling, one she had not expected. She felt Braithe’s eyes on her, and she knew her handmaid sensed her emotion. It was sympathy, verging on pity. She had not expected to feel that way.
She leaned forward. “Councillor, I think that is a great shame. I needed answers today, and I found them in the company of a fox and a sparrow and a wood mouse.”
Emerlyn’s lips parted, but she closed them again without speaking, only giving a tiny, mystified shake of her head.
“I hear the Lady’s voice in wild creatures’ thoughts,” Morgana said softly. “As the Blackbird teaches, the Lady’s spirit continues, though she grew weary of her body.”
Emerlyn was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke at last, it was with the gravity of memory and the pain of sorrow. “Your Lady, as you call her, was once the queen of the fae. She has been gone a long time.”
“Yes. The last thing she did in the world, the Blackbird tells us, was to bring her infant daughter to be fostered at Camulod. Me.”
“She banned the fae from Lloegyr.”
“She had good reason.”
Emerlyn said, “I do not disagree. My delegates do.”
“Surely not all of them, Councillor.”
The older woman’s lips curved in a weary smile. “Do call me Emerlyn, Morgana. You and I have much in common. We are both overborne with responsibility. I have no equal here to share my worries, and I doubt you have anyone in your Temple.”
“Only the Blackbird, when he is present. Even then…” Morgana spread her hands. “I take your point, Emerlyn. Being unique can be lonely.” She glanced at Braithe, who was picking berries out of the bowl and pretending not to listen to their conversation. “But I am not so alone as I might have been.”
“Your handmaid.”
“I call her that, but she is much more. Companion, confidant—friend.”
“You are fortunate. I have no one.”
“Not the queen you represent?”
Emerlyn gave Morgana a sour look. “The queen,” she said, in a tone that dripped disdain. “I will trust you with this knowledge, Morgana, as we have come to understand one another. The fact of the matter—of my life, and that of the White City—is that there is no queen.”
Morgana gave a little grunt of surprise. “What? Are you saying it is all pretense?”
“Not precisely. We did have a queen, but no longer. We maintain the fiction of a queen because it helps to keep the delegates of the council in check.”
Morgana sagged back in her chair. “By the Lady’s hand. I had no idea.” She glanced down the table and saw that Braithe had given up her pretense of not paying attention. “Braithe, did you?”
Braithe gave a small nod.
“You sensed it.”
Another nod.
“Are you reading minds, then?”
“No, Priestess, but—my impressions are distinct, and getting clearer by the day. I have not yet been wrong.”
“Your particular gift has grown powerful,” Morgana said.
“It’s the magic,” Braithe said. “It’s everywhere, soaked into everything. Besides making my bones ache, my gift—or whatever this is—has grown intense.” She wriggled her shoulders, as if the intensity was not completely comfortable.
“It is the opposite for me,” Morgana said. Speaking the words aloud made her anxiety surge anew, and she touched her sigil to steady herself.
“I know,” Braithe said quietly. “I’m sorry, Priestess.”
It was Emerlyn’s turn to lean forward, to give Braithe a searching look. “Your gift told you there was no queen?”
“It did. Forgive me, Councillor, but I picked it up from you.”
Morgana said, “Tell us, brat. What do you sense about this illusion of a queen?”
Braithe looked from Morgana to Emerlyn, frowning.
“It is more than a sense, Priestess. I cannot say why.” When Emerlyn made a gesture of permission, fingers lifting from the table, Braithe gave an apologetic shrug before continuing.
“There was a queen. Not your Lady mother, Priestess, but another who came after, or was supposed to. She is gone. Died or fled, I don’t know. ”
Emerlyn said, “Disappeared.”
“Yes. Disappeared without warning.”
Morgana said, “That is a very strange thing.”
Emerlyn dropped her hands into her lap in a gesture of defeat and resignation. “I suppose it is. It was some time ago. I have gotten used to it.”
“Why would she disappear?”
“I suspect,” Emerlyn said heavily, “that she grew tired of the council. It is, in fact, wearying, often beyond bearing.”
“Does no one ever ask what became of her?”
“I expect some of the delegates suspect she’s gone, but they say nothing. It’s a convenience. A manner of speaking, claiming we act in the queen’s name.”
Not a convenience so much as a deception, Morgana thought. It all reminded her of the changeling, deception upon deception, lie upon lie. She marveled that someone like Emerlyn could tolerate being a part of it.
“And now,” Emerlyn said, deftly turning the subject, “I have confided in you. Will you do the same for me?”
“What do you want to know?”
“You said you found an answer with the woodland creatures today. Will you tell me what it was?”
Morgana hesitated before she said, “I will, Emerlyn. But you will not like it.”
“I assume it pertains to identifying the ones cursing the boy king’s reign.”
“It does. We need to know who they are in order to stop them. I cannot make that happen, but there is someone who can, and that is the wisdom I received.”
“And who is this person?”
Morgana turned to her handmaid. “It will be Braithe.”