by E. D. Walker
He hesitated, then released her and stepped back, nearly stumbling as one of the scattered pearls rolled under his foot. Beatrice wrapped her arms around her torso, hugging herself tight to keep from reaching for the false baby. Without the seeing stone’s power, he looked just like her son again. She bent and began picking pearls off the ground, clutching a handful of them in her clammy palm. Counting pearls meant she didn’t have to look at the changeling. “Put him back in the crib, Mary.”
“We ought to put him in the fire,” Mary said.
Beatrice winced, her body aching from the ride and Llewellyn’s manhandling, her heart aching for everything else. “No.”
“My lady—”
“No.” Furious, she tossed the pearls she clutched to the ground and watched them roll under the bed, the furniture. Her ladies would have to clean them up later. The baubles made hollow rolling sounds against the stone. Hollow. The whole world was hollow now.
Mary must have caught the edge of steel or maybe hysteria in Beatrice’s voice, because the midwife settled the changeling child gently enough back in the crib, then stepped away. The baby let out another token bit of fussing but quieted when Llewellyn crossed to the crib and tucked him in her son’s blankets.
Beatrice wet her lips, her throat dry. “How—how did this happen? How was my son taken?”
Mary coughed, then wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “The maid said your son was fussy after you left, so she took him out for some fresh air. She said…she said you showed up, acting anxious, and sent her back inside for another wrap. When she returned with the shawl, you handed the baby back and said you had some things to attend to elsewhere. You—the fairy pretending to be you—left, and the maid put the baby in the crib. Nothing seemed wrong to her.”
Something snapped inside her, and Beatrice let out a harsh bark of laughter. “All the salt rings and charms and precautions, and I lose my son because some flitter-wit of a maid wasn’t paying attention?” She bared her teeth, feeling as wild and feral as the fairies had accused her of being. “Which maid was it? I want her name.”
“No. If you intend to waste time on wrath, my lady, waste it on me.”
“I want my son back.” Beatrice’s voice cracked, and she sagged to the floor, her knees going out. She waited for tears to come, but there were none, just an empty despair that left her feeling like a rotted-out log.
Mary touched her shoulder. “If you want your son back, then we’ll have to put the changeling to the fire, burn the truth out of it.”
Beatrice shivered and recoiled from Mary’s touch. She couldn’t help but envision the fairies doing the same to her own son. How could she do it to someone else’s? Monster though he might be.
Llewellyn crossed forward, shooting a hard look at Mary. “I advise against harming the changeling, my lady. It doesn’t always work, especially on one so young, and—” He opened his mouth, closed it, his brows knit in a frown. “It…well…it seems needlessly cruel to me. Besides, he could be a potential hostage. We’ll find another way without hurting this changeling to get your son back, Lady Beatrice. I swear it.”
Beatrice pushed to her feet, the blood in her veins popping with anger, boiling like the oil they used for defense on the castle walls. She swung her arm back and cuffed Llewellyn hard across the face, her palm stinging with the force of it.
The magician touched his cheek, and his pale eyes went wide.
“How dare you?” Beatrice screamed. “How dare you stand there and pretend you give a damn what happens to my son? You, you who killed my brother. You care nothing for my family. You want my whole line stomped out, I know it.” Tears shimmered in her eyes, blurring her vision, and she scraped her hand across her eyes to clear them. “Whoreson! Bastard! I hate you and your king—” She raised her arm to hit him again, but he caught her wrist, stopping her momentum. His grip was firm but not painful.
She looked into his face, expecting to see her own rage reflected back to her. But the magician’s face was pinched only, sorrowful, and the gentle compassion in his gaze nearly undid her. “Your brother was killed in a duel, my lady, after trying to murder the king’s nephew. It was a fair fight, and your brother might still have been spared if he hadn’t tried to stab his opponent in the back.”
She winced, wanting to disbelieve this version of events. But her brother, Reynard—a hothead, a lecher—had been a man given to doing just as he liked without concern for the consequences. She could easily picture his anger carrying him away in the moment. It had enough times in the past.
Llewellyn released her and lowered his voice. “Beg pardon, my lady. I cannot be sorry your brother is dead. But I am sorry for your loss. I will do all that is within my power to get your son back. I promise you that.”
Beatrice stared. What sort of man is this Llewellyn? A man whose first impulse was not anger? There were few men in her life who had never hit her, lashed out at her. Her husband had not—yet. But they had barely been married a year. Her father had, her brother. Brave, courageous men. Warriors. And yet her father’s strength had not saved him from his enemy’s arrow. Her brother’s bravado had gotten him killed, and dishonored the whole family in the process. Her husband’s men-at-arms and all his bluster had not kept their son safe.
Llewellyn’s ways were not what she was used to, but perhaps they were just what she needed right now. She took a deep breath and slow, and met his gaze with a level look of her own. “I believe you, Magician. I believe you will help me.”
A smile flickered over his face, then disappeared before she could be sure she’d seen it at all. “Good. I will tell your husband what has transpired.”
“So he won’t think me mad if I tell him?”
Llewellyn tilted his head in a noncommittal gesture. “Will you come with me?”
“Yes.”
A soft knock sounded on the door, making them all jump despite its quietness. Llewellyn snorted wryly and opened the door. “Yes?”
It was the new page. The painfully shy one. “The baron bids you ’tend upon him, my lord.”
“I was just about to head to his chambers.”
“He’s in the courtyard. Mustering the men.”
Beatrice blinked. “The men?”
Chapter Six
Beatrice clattered down the stairs into the courtyard, Llewellyn nearly tripping on her heels. The changeling child cooed in her arms—she hadn’t trusted any of the castle women alone with him, least of all Mary. Before the four of them were even outside, she could hear the loud cries of men, the squeals of horses. Her heart hammered with fear. She knew the sounds of arms and war, fighting, warning of danger to come like birth pains.
She wrapped the blanket more tightly around the infant, trying to shield him from sight, even though he looked as human as her. As human as my own son. She shook the thought away. He—it was a valuable hostage. One she dared not trust to Mary or any of the suspicious gossips littering the castle. Though as she approached her husband, she wished she could have left the creature back in her rooms.
Stephen stood at the center of a whirl of motion, flinging his arms about to direct men-at-arms, and bellowing orders in his deep bass voice. She opened her mouth to call out to him, but Llewellyn beat her to it. “My lord, what is all this?”
Stephen twisted at the sound of Llewellyn’s voice, and Beatrice flinched back from her husband’s burning scowl even though it wasn’t directed at her. “I know they’ve taken my boy. One of the servants found your midwife crying and came to tell me. Make ready to ride. Now. Tonight.”
“Tonight?” Llewellyn gasped.
Yes. Beatrice rose on her toes, triumph blazing through her. Stephen would mount an attack. He would get her son back. The baby let out a small, pitchy whine, and she automatically bounced him in her arms, trying to keep him quiet.
“You’ve been worthless to me so far, Magician. Tonight you can fight by my side. Prove to me you’re not a cowardly weakling.”
“Fight? My lord
—Baron…you cannot hope to fight the Fair Folk. I would think tonight would have been enough to show you that.” He nodded toward the welts on Stephen’s neck.
A chill crawled up Beatrice’s spine, and she suffered her first shivering of doubt. Welts, bruises, even though the fairy queen had never touched him. Her husband’s men were strong, brave, well-trained, but how could they truly stand against magic like that? The baby tugged a curl of her hair free of her braid, fascinated by its color, and she gently disengaged his fingers, her mind spinning now with unease.
“If you attack the fairy mound they will fight you off.” Llewellyn had pitched his voice loud now, addressing all the men around him. “Your men will die, but that won’t be the worst of it.”
Stephen’s lip curled. “No?”
Llewellyn worked his jaw, his brows furrowed, his gestures jittery now, frantic. “No, my lord. For the fairies will blight this place. If you attack, they will strike back. In the souring of your milk, the crippling of your animals, the slow creeping death of all your crops and all the people you hold dear.”
“He’s right, you know,” Mary’s voice hissed in Beatrice’s ear.
Beatrice turned to her, slowly, and the midwife’s eyes were dark, her voice hoarse with emotion and quiet. “It happened once, when I was a child. Some fool farmer, an old soldier who’d been given land by the last king, he came and tried to burn the fairy mound, get rid of them. The Good Neighbors made it rain in the middle of a clear summer sky. That put the fire out and drowned the poor farmer.
“But then the rain didn’t stop. For months it didn’t stop. The summer blew away like fluff off a dandelion in the cool wind of their wrath. Our crops failed. The whole village’s did. I lost my mother and sister in the famine that winter.”
Beatrice swallowed and bit her lip. “Why tell me?”
“You want a madwoman to try and tell the baron anything?” Mary scoffed. “Now, especially?”
The baby fussed in Beatrice’s arms as if echoing the anxiety boiling inside her. “I want my child back, Mary.”
“You won’t do it through force, my lady. No human’s ever fought the Good Neighbors and won. Not like that.”
“I’m going back,” Stephen snarled. “Tonight. And if you’re not man enough—”
Beatrice whipped around. Things had escalated between Stephen and the magician while she’d been distracted. Stephen shoved Llewellyn, knocking the magician to the ground. Llewellyn just hopped to his feet again, his teeth bared now in anger. “At least prepare yourself, Lord Stephen. Your son is unharmed. They mean to adopt him as their own. It will do no harm to take a day or two to forge iron weapons and chain mail. To properly prepare your men for what they will face.”
Stephen narrowed his eyes, thinking. After a long, long moment he nodded. Then he turned and bellowed another order. “Send for every blacksmith in the village.”
As soon as her husband had stomped off again, Beatrice rushed to Llewellyn’s side as he patted the dust from his clothes. She still didn’t know whether to be relieved or frustrated. Llewellyn offered her a weary smile as she approached, but he frowned to find her holding the changeling baby.
She shifted on her feet, embarrassed. “I don’t trust the castle women alone with him. He’s a valuable hostage, you said.”
His mouth quirked. “That’s right, my lady.”
“Are you really going to ride to war against the fairies?”
Llewellyn brushed his wrist over his forehead, swabbing the sheen of sweat away. “If I can’t talk the baron out of this folly. What kind of man would I be, what kind of knight, if I stayed behind while all the others rode off to their doom? Besides, if the worst happens, I might be able to save some of them.” His face was grim, his jaw tight.
Mary hobbled over to them and spat to the side. “The Fair Folk will slaughter you all, and then swoop down like a winter storm to kill the rest of us.”
Llewellyn twitched his shoulder. “If Lord Stephen rides, then I am honor-bound to ride with him. I am a knight as well as a magician, and a knight does not desert on the eve of a battle.”
As a horse trotted close by, the baby squealed with laughter, and he flapped his arms, reaching for the animal’s mane. Beatrice winced as if an arrow had hit her. This whole ordeal would be so much easier if only the damn creature weren’t such a convincing baby.
Llewellyn tickled under the changeling’s chin, making it laugh. “In the meantime, I must make arrangements for this lad. He is our only hostage. We will need him as a bargaining chip for the fairies.”
Mary snorted and spat again at the ground. “It’s not.”
Beatrice frowned. “Not what?”
Mary’s mouth curled in a smug smile. “Our only fairy hostage.”
Chapter Seven
“Mary, it’s a horse.” A fine horse, to be sure, with a well-arched neck and powerful hindquarters. Sixteen hands high, he possessed a glossy black hide and startlingly blue eyes, but still…clearly a horse. Perhaps incidents like this were why they called the midwife Mad Mary in the village. Beatrice cast a questioning glance back at Llewellyn, but he merely shrugged.
“It’s a kelpie.” Mary clucked her tongue at the magician, looking smug, and took a bridle off its peg. “Here, my lady.”
The horse, meanwhile, watched their exchange closely, tension in every line of his sleek muscles.
As her fingers touched the bridle, a voice erupted suddenly inside Beatrice’s head. “GIVE IT TO ME.”
She staggered, nearly dropping the bridle, and stared wide-eyed at the horse, whose eyes seemed to burn into hers now. “That voice…”
The horse nickered and tossed his head, and the strange voice sounded inside her head again. “Give it to me, sweet lady, kind lady.”
Beatrice gasped as she recognized the fairy’s voice. The taunting one from last night.
Mary took the bridle from her and slid the leather straps through her palms. In his stable stall, the horse-fairy snorted with impatience, pushing against the stall door.
“He’s a kelpie, my lady,” Mary said. “A water horse. He tried to drown me tonight, but I cut his bridle off in time and trapped his power. Now he’s stuck as a horse, and he must do what I say.”
Beatrice tilted her head, a spark firing inside her. Hope. Or maybe just the potential for hope. “Or what I say?”
“If you hold his bridle, my lady, yes.”
Beatrice lifted the leather straps out of Mary’s hand again and rubbed the material between her thumb and forefinger. “Magician?”
Llewellyn startled guiltily and eased back from the kelpie, whom he’d been studying. Llewellyn held the changeling child, and Beatrice fought back a jolt of disappointment. She kept forgetting—letting herself forget—that the baby wasn’t really her son. Which made it worse every time to remember.
“My lady?” Llewellyn prompted her gently as he shifted the changeling’s wiggling weight in his arms.
Beatrice tilted her chin back and straightened her spine for courage. “Magician, you believe that an assault on the fairy mound would be useless? We’d waste lives and ultimately fail at rescuing my son anyway.”
“Yes, my lady.” Llewellyn opened his mouth, then closed it, scowling. “Would you consider the lives wasted if we did get your son back?”
Mary hissed in outrage.
Beatrice met his stare, unflinching, and felt a smile twist on her lips. “You know the ruthless bent in my blood. I would waste lives like water and laugh at the cost if it would get my son back.” Beatrice waved her hand through the air, ignoring Mary’s wide-eyed stare. “But that doesn’t matter. We must come up with a better plan that will actually work. And we must do it before my husband brings the wrath of our Good Neighbors down on this countryside.”
“I can help.” The fairy-horse sidled over to the door of his stall and whuffled in her direction. The inner voice sounded like a song, a soft crooning in her inner mind. “Pretty lady, sweet lady, kind lady. I can get you into t
he fairy mound. I can help you get your child back.”
The breath stopped in Beatrice’s lungs on a small, painful gasp.
Mary touched her shoulder. “My lady, he’s a fairy. A trickster. Don’t—”
Beatrice stepped away from the midwife and stood nose to nose with the horse. “And what do you want in exchange, kelpie?”
He pawed at the stall door with his front hoof, making the wood rattle on its hinges. A hint of panic had leached into the horse’s eyes as they rolled white at the corners. “My freedom. Only my freedom. I am a wild thing like you. Just like you. The river calls me home. Do not trap me like this, to work the plow and break my back. Do not, do not.”
Llewellyn shuffled forward. “My lady, this is not—”
“Magician, when is the next full moon?” Beatrice twirled the reins on the bridle, flicking the dust at her feet with their whip-like ends as she pondered.
“Tomorrow.”
Mary snorted. “The night before Stephen rides to attack.”
“Why?” Llewellyn asked.
The baby shifted in his arms and whined in the back of his throat, reaching his hands out to Beatrice. She stepped back and tore her gaze away from her false child. “I’ve a mind to attend the fairy revels myself tomorrow night.” She passed the bridle to Mary.
The midwife took the reins but stood there motionless. “My lady, what are we to do with this damned fairy-horse in the meantime?”
Beatrice glanced at the kelpie. He hung his large horse head and widened his limpid blue eyes as he tried to look sad. To look innocent. She could feel her back teeth grinding together. “Did the kelpie help in the plot to take my son?”
Mary nodded. “I’m sure of it. He lured me from the castle himself, didn’t he? And he bespelled one of the pages to take my charm off me.”
The horse tossed his head, huffing loudly in alarm.
And well he should. Rage crackled in Beatrice’s veins as she whirled away from the kelpie. “Then he can earn his keep until his services are needed. He seems to have a good, strong back. Assign him to one of the plowmen in the morning.”
