Child of Darkness-L-D-2 (10 page)

“Your Queene has no understanding of the world down here. I do. I have never lived in the Upworld. I have never seen the sun and sky but through grates that separated me from it. I have never lived in the Astral, and I have not had to adapt myself to Human domination. But I do know those who have, and their pain is far too great to mock by engaging in your selfish Queene’s silly games. Go back and tell your Queene that we will not fear monsters of the Human imagination, and that it will take more than an injured Faery to incite us to run from our homes!”

Bauchan stood slowly, spread his hands helplessly before him. “If Your Majesty does not wish to believe the danger you face, that is your own choice. But I could not leave here without offering to your subjects that which you have turned down on their behalf.”

He would offer to take Faeries to the Upworld, to join his Queene in her campaign against the Humans. They would go. She had no illusions to the contrary. Life in the Lightworld was unpleasant for even the richest Fae, and if offered the chance to live as they once had, in the time just after the Veil had torn, before they were forced Underground, they would embrace it.

Perhaps she should have been more prepared for this day. She had known, ever since Mabb had shared the words of the prophecy, that her race would return to the world above. Ayla knew, also, that she would not lead them there herself. But she had not known how quickly this time would come.

That was not the only shock. That a Faery colony existed on the Upworld surface and had survived since the rest of their race had been banished to the Underground, seemed fantastical. That they had not known of it seemed impossible. Queene Danae, if Bauchan was to be believed, had sustained this colony and resisted Human oppression for centuries. Their ignorance was shameful, and that shame fueled her angry pride. The rage that had been building in Ayla reached its breaking point. Her limbs trembled and her vision blurred red. “Guards!”

The doors to the council’s meeting room opened, and soldiers appeared. “Take our guests back to their accommodations. See that they do not speak to anyone on the way, and, once they are returned to their lodgings, that they do not leave.”

“This is an outrage!” Bauchan shouted, pounding his fist on the table. It was the last he managed before the guards dragged him from the room. His entourage followed willingly, likely out of a desire to avoid being so roughly handled.

When they had gone, Flidais spoke up from her seat at the table. “Your Majesty, a word?”

“Yes.” Ayla righted her stool and sat. Her anger had left with Bauchan, and now she was more tired than she had been before.

“It is possible that the Waterhorses were not a simple ruse to frighten us. No other creature could have caused those wounds to a Faery. We are not damaged by the ravages of time, and mortal weapons might kill us, but I have never seen a surviving Fae with scars. We heal completely, or we die. And I know of no Fae who would consent to be altered through magic to become such a disturbing vision.” She spoke so sensibly, it was as though the inner workings of her mind could be heard clicking away throughout the otherwise silent room. After a long moment of consideration, Cedric spoke. “You are right, Flidais. A Faery could have healed from wounds worse than those if caused by sword or spear. But even if those injuries were caused by a Waterhorse, that is not proof that the Elves have made any pact with them. If the Elves on the surface do not have a quarrel with Faeries, why would they have used the Waterhorses against them?”

“Perhaps we should ask the creature itself,” Ayla wondered aloud. “If it can still speak. Only it can tell us how it became so mutilated.”

“If he does not simply repeat what Bauchan has coached him to say,” Malachi added quickly. Cedric stood, his hand going to the knife at his belt unconsciously. “We should go into the Darkworld and abduct some Elves. Interrogate them, torture them, see if there is any truth to these rumors.”

“But how will we know which Elves are responsible?” Flidais asked, tapping the ends of her antennae absently with a forefinger. “Surely, not every Elf in the Darkworld is privy to this plot, any more than a Faery beggar outside the Palace gates is privy to what we say here.”

“Abduction could cause retaliation,” Ayla mused. “Retaliation could also indicate whether or not there is a real threat from these Waterhorses.”

“Precisely,” Cedric agreed.

Flidais sighed, the way she often sighed when she knew she was about to make an unpopular point. “This is true. But if they have raised the Waterhorses, they are in as much danger as we are from them. If this attack happened on the surface, where the Elves have no quarrel with Fae, then they are unable to control them. Or, the Ambassador is not being honest in his tale. Should we not follow the course of action that would not lead to war, and see first if Bauchan is telling the truth?”

“Perhaps we should wait, just long enough to pull members of Court and the Guilds into militia service,” Cedric agreed. “In that time, we can investigate Bauchan, and we can defend our borders in case of attack. And we should let the Trolls and Dragons know that we’ve been threatened.”

“The Dragons, yes,” Ayla agreed, “but not the Trolls. They are likely to start a war for the sake of violence. Besides, they supported Garret while he was in exile. They may turn against me as easily, again. We need not involve them until all other options are exhausted.”

“I will go to the Dragons and seek an audience,” Flidais volunteered. “Give Cedric the time he needs to fortify our borders, Your Majesty. But do not let this Bauchan go. If he has brought lies from the Upworld Queene, then our quarrel is not with the Elves, but with our fellow Fae. He could be made an example of.”

It was not a possibility that Ayla took lightly. It haunted her even after her council had departed. Malachi followed her, without speaking, to her chambers. He knew her mood well enough to know that there was nothing he could say, and so he remained silent. What did this Upworld Queene wish, besides to rule over the Lightworld, as well? Perhaps Ayla had lied when she’d told Bauchan she did not turn down Danae’s offer of aid out of pride. The gall, to send an Ambassador to her Court in the hopes of luring away her subjects—after all she had done to earn her throne!

What did you do, besides kill your mate? And nearly get killed yourself, doing it? the familiar voice of doubt chided her. But she had earned her throne. Now, twenty years after she had killed Garret, she could finally say that. She could not have remained Queene, even for this short time, if the Court had not had faith in her and her abilities. She would have been assassinated, if they thought her weak or incapable of ruling. This false Queene, who wished to lure her subjects away from her, would have to do far more than simply scare her with monster tales.

But if they were not tales, and if the Faeries of the Lightworld were truly in danger, what then? The Dragons were their allies, true, but would they be moved to actually defend the Fae? The Trolls would no doubt relish the chance to go to war with anybody, but they often made more problems than they solved.

No answers would come to her. They would come, as they always did, in their own time, and Ayla’s impatience burned her. Even though a plan was in place, and even though that plan was the most sensible course of action they could take, it had not unfolded in her view yet; she could not see what lay on the other side of it. That was the true torture of her position. She could make all the decisions and declarations that she might like, but she could not control the outcome. In a few weeks, would she be the slave of an Upworld Queene? A trophy of her victory over the Faeries of the Underground? Or would her own Court lay in ruin, a monument to her pride and unwillingness to bend? Or would some unguessed third outcome be her people’s fate?

She would not be able to sleep this night, probably not the next, either. But she went through the motions of climbing into bed and closing her eyes, and, though she knew he was aware that she did not sleep, Malachi stayed at her side all through the night.

Though he was tired, and though it was the last thing he wished to do, Cedric had made a promise to the Royal Heir, and it had to be kept.

He knocked on the door to her chambers, and the governess—the child was too old for a governess, really—opened the door and eyed him with suspicion.

“I am here at the request of the Royal Heir,” he stated without conviction, half hoping he would be turned away. Instead, the dour-faced servant opened the door wider and motioned him into Cerridwen’s antechamber.

He’d never been in these rooms, even when Mabb had been Queene and his visits to the royal quarters had been frequent. The antechamber was smaller than the one afforded to the Queene and her Consort, and it was overrun by all the trappings of a young female Faery. Baubles and hair ornaments lay discarded on the tables and stools. A drum, limned in a fine jacket of dust, sat abandoned and unpracticed against the curved wall. The ugly gray of the concrete that enclosed the room had been stained in an attempt to make it white, a color far more appealing to a child.

Cedric stood in the middle of this unfamiliar chaos, helpless, while the governess went beyond the little wooden partition that separated the antechamber from where the Royal Heir slept. There was a shushing of raised whispers, the content of which he could not make out, and movement. The governess returned and said, though it was as though each word pulled a tooth from her mouth, “You may go into the royal bedchamber.”

He nodded to her. She did not follow. Did she think that her charge’s betrothed had come to mate this very evening, without the benefit of ceremony in Sanctuary? The thought was as humorous as it was sickening. He would sooner bed the old Dya than the spoiled princess of the Lightworld.

Inside her bedchamber, the Royal Heir stood beside her bed. Her dress was rumpled, as was the coverlet, which had not been turned down. Her face was drawn and gray. If she had slept, she had not intended to, and whatever sleep had visited her had been fitful at best. Cedric almost pitied her. What must it be like, he wondered, to be the heir to something held captive by an immortal? Cerridwen’s entire existence was that of a child waiting and watching, preparing to take over a throne that might never become vacant. To be caught that way, always a child, always waiting, would have to be a particular sort of torture. She nodded to him, and he bowed his head, though there was no one in sight to demand such protocol. “What has the council decided?”

The reason for his visit, which he had not realized he’d forgotten, came back to him with a peculiar tinge of suspicion. What did she care what went on behind the closed doors of the council? It did not affect her. But perhaps that was why she wished to know it—to finally be involved in something, to finally have something affect her. “The Ambassador has been imprisoned. He came with the goal of luring your mother’s Court to the surface, to induce their fealty to another Queene.”

Cerridwen’s grim demeanor changed. Her shoulders sagged and her breath came out as a sound of relief. She pressed one hand to the rumpled fabric of the bodice of her dress and struggled to speak over the rapid exhalations she’d held in while waiting for him to speak.

“Then the Elves…it is not true that they will use force against us?”

It had not occurred to Cedric that the Royal Heir might have been frightened by what she had seen in the throne room. Hadn’t she been present when the horrible, malformed Faery had been revealed? And certainly, in her haste to convene the council and empty the throne room of Courtiers, Ayla had not bothered to reassure her child of her safety. He wondered for a moment if he should calm her fears now, and tell her it was not for her to worry over. But then he would be as bad as everyone else who patronized the Royal Heir and expected her to think only on childish things. “We do not know. Your mother wishes for us to form a strong militia from members of Court and the Guilds, and then we will begin capturing and interrogating Darkworld Elves to see if there is any truth to the rumors Ambassador Bauchan planned to use against the Faery Court.”

Her relief fled, all at once. He knew he should not have told her that a danger still remained.

“Interrogate them?” Her voice wobbled on the word. “You mean torture them?”

“It is a necessary evil, unfortunately,” he told her apologetically. “But you need not fear retribution from the entire Darkworld. They are unfocused, and unorganized. Any strike that is made against us will be from the Elves alone, and they are dealt with easily enough.”

“I am sure they are,” she said angrily, though he could not fathom what he could have said to anger her. “Thank you, Cedric. I appreciate that you kept your promise to me.”

“I would be a very poor Fae indeed, if I did not keep my promises.” He tried to smile, hoping to see some of the tension in her expression ease, but it did not.

“Truly?” She seemed more angry now than she had been. “It seems to me that treachery and lies are the hallmarks of our race.”

The bitterness in her tone shocked him, until he thought of the reason for it. “I am aware that you do not agree with your mother’s decree that we should be mated.” The words were so difficult to say. He wanted to tell her that he also disagreed, that he planned to run from the Lightworld and never return, that she had no reason to fear that her mother’s wishes would be carried out. But he could not risk her revealing all of that to Ayla, out of anger or spite. So, he settled for, “But you must believe that things will work to our mutual happiness.”

“You could not possibly know that,” she insisted, a sadness so deep that it shocked him coming over her face. “You may leave now.”

“Your Highness,” he tried again, but she stopped him.

“You may leave now.”

He had no other choice, though for some reason, he was now reluctant to obey.

There was not much time. She thought of writing a letter, sat down with the pen in her hand. Whom could she address it to? Her mother could not read. And she did not wish for her mother’s Darkling to be the first to find this confession.