Death's Mistress

“Yes, but Heidar’s gone half the time, patrolling the border, and Caedmon’s holed up in high-level meetings deciding God knows what while I’m supposed to hang around and, I don’t know, knit or something!”

“You don’t knit.”

“I’ve been so bored, I’ve been thinking of learning.”

“Sounds like you need a vacation.”

She chewed noodles and didn’t say anything.

I tugged off my boots and chucked them by the door, enjoying the feel of the smooth old boards under my feet. They’d absorbed a lot of heat through the day, and were giving it off in steady warmth that contrasted nicely with the cooler air. A few moths fluttered around the old ship’s lantern overhead, which was swinging slightly in the breeze.

“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” I finally asked, when Claire had finished most of her whiskey and still hadn’t said anything.

She’d been staring out at the night, but now she shifted those emerald eyes to me. “How do you know anything is? Maybe I decided to take that vacation.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“You keep odd hours sometimes—”

“With no shoes, no luggage and no escort?”

She frowned and gave it up. “I don’t want you involved in this. I only came this way because I didn’t have a choice. The official portals are all guarded since the war.”

“The ones we know about,” I agreed.

“I mean on the fey side,” she said, as if it were obvious that her own people would be trying to prevent her from leaving.

“Okay, back up. You came through the portal in the basement—”

“Because nobody knows about it. Uncle used it to bring in his bootlegging supplies, so he kept it quiet.”

“And you needed to slip away u

“I told you, I don’t want—”

“I’m already involved,” I pointed out. “You’re here. You’re obviously in some kind of trouble. I’m going to help whether you like it or not, so you may as well tell me.”

“I don’t want your help!”

“I don’t care.”

Claire glared at me. She had one of those faces that could really only be appreciated when she was animated. Ivory pale, with an aquiline nose humanized by a wash of freckles and a strong chin, it was pretty enough in repose. But with emerald eyes flashing, color high and that glorious mop of hair blowing around her face, she was beautiful.

She was also one of the few people I knew with more of a hair-trigger temper than me. It was always possible to get the truth out of her, if you made her mad enough. “I’m here to save the life of my son. All right?” she snapped.

CHAPTER 4

I focused on the little boy. He was the usual pink-cheeked, chubby-limbed baby as far as I could tell. He was currently poking at a couple of chess pieces, trying to get them to fight each other.

He had taken them out of the game and put them in the circle made by the round wicker bottom of the table. He was watching them avidly through the open side of his makeshift combat ring, waiting for some mayhem, but they weren’t obliging. One had hunched down to clean his sword, and the other was having a smoke. Tiny rings wreathed its head for a moment, before the wind pulled them away.

“They’re friends,” I told him. He’d accidentally picked up two trolls instead of one of each.

Puzzled blue eyes looked up at me.

“They’re allies,” Claire said harshly, and a flash of comprehension crossed his features.

A chubby hand rooted around in the game and plucked out an ogre, its small tusks gleaming behind a metal faceplate. He put it into the ring and immediately both trolls fell on it. He frowned and pulled one of them off, making it an even contest.

“He doesn’t know the word ‘friend’?” I asked, a little appalled.

“In Faerie, you have allies and enemies,” Claire said, getting up to get a refill. “Friends are a lot more rare.”

Stinky had joined the little prince, and they had their heads together, one shining blond, one fuzzy brown with pieces of egg roll in it. I picked them out as Claire came back with what looked like a double. “He looks healthy enough to me,” I commented. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing! And it’s going to stay that way.”

“Why wouldn’t it?”

“Because he had the bad luck to be born a boy,” she said bitterly.

“Come again?”

“The fey don’t allow women to rule—at least, our branch doesn’t—so a girl wouldn’t have been a threat.”

“A threat to who?”

“Take your pick! Everyone at court has had hundreds of years to make plans based on the idea of the king being childless. Then, a century ago, he had Heidar, but no one cared because he can’t inherit.”

I nodded. Heidar’s mother had been human, and he’d inherited his heavier bone structure and more substantial musculature from her. It was the same blood that ensured he could never take the throne. The law said that the king had to be more than half fey, and Heidar was a flat fifty percent.

“But then I came along,” Claire said, after taking a healthy swallow of her drink. “And I’m slightly more than half fey. So when Heidar and I a

“But murder—”

“The ‘accidents’ started almost as soon as he was born,” she said, quietly livid.

“What kind of accidents?”

“In the first month alone, he almost drowned in the bathwater, was set upon by a pack of hunting dogs and had the ceiling of his nursery collapse. And things only got worse from there.”

“And Heidar didn’t do anything?”

“The maid was fired, the dogs were put down and the ceiling was reinforced—none of which helped the fact that my son was surrounded by a bunch of killers.”

I sipped my own drink for a minute, trying to think up a tactful way of putting this. It wasn’t easy. Tact was Mircea’s forte, not mine. “Is it at all possible that at least some of these things really were accidents?” I finally asked.

“I’m not crazy, and I’m not hallucinating!” she snapped, her spine stiffening with a jerk.

So much for my attempt at diplomacy. “I never said you were. You want to protect your child, and a mother’s instincts are usually pretty good. But you were born here. Heidar was brought up there. If he doesn’t think there’s a problem—”

“Oh, he knows damned well there’s a problem! Everybody does, after tonight.”

“What happened tonight?”

“They tried again. And this time, they almost succeeded.”

I sat up. “What happened?”

She took a breath, visibly steadying herself. “I was on my way to di

“Whose blood?”

“Lukka’s,” she whispered. “I found her lying across the threshold of the nursery. They’d cut her throat and the puddle… It had run down the tiles, into all the crevices. Almost the whole floor was wet with it.”

“Lukka was his nurse?”

Claire nodded, her lips pale. “She was so young. I wasn’t sure, when they first brought her to me, but she was really good with him. The fey love babies and she couldn’t—” She swallowed. “She loved him,” she said simply. “And he wasn’t even there, and they killed her anyway.”

“Who did?”

“I don’t know!” She gestured tiredly. “It could have been anyone. There’s no shortage of people who think they’d be better off if Aiden had never been born.”

“But it must have been someone Lukka could have identified, or there would have been no need to kill her.”