by C. E. Murphy
“Where did that—” Lara straightened again, eyes rounding. “I didn’t see us coming up on—” Despite her poor riding seat, she bent to look over Dafydd’s arm at the fading path they’d taken. “I should’ve been able to see that a long time ago. Why couldn’t I? What is it?”
“The citadel of the Seelie,” Dafydd murmured. “Welcome to my court.”
Twelve
“Your court.” Aerin made a sound remarkably like the horse’s regular snorts. “Watch your tongue, Dafydd. You don’t want your father to hear you say that.”
“Our court, then,” Dafydd said affably. “I meant nothing by it. It’s my home, after all.”
“As it is all of ours.” Emyr’s cool voice broke over their conversation, warning that he’d overheard Dafydd’s claim. “You are not appropriately dressed for court, Dafydd.”
Dafydd managed to sweep a bow around Lara, whose eyes were all for the citadel. It glowed in the moonlight, pouring so much brilliance from its white walls she couldn’t understand how she hadn’t seen it as they approached. A fanciful answer, magic, leaped to mind, then remained there, its honesty ringing true. Certainly its lavender-hued light was unlike any earth light Lara had ever seen, and even from the ground she could see the delicacy of tall towers winding their way toward the sky. The path beneath their feet had turned to flagstones, though the horses’ hooves made no sound on them, like they still walked on grass.
“I will remedy that, Father, never fear. And as for you, Lara, I think Aerin can help you.” Dafydd swung down from the horse with more grace than Lara could imagine having, then helped her down and made her graceful, too.
She was unexpectedly stiff as she hit the ground, as though they’d been on horseback far longer than it had seemed. Startled, Lara cast a glance toward the moon, trying to gauge its travel through the sky. It had crossed more distance than she’d realized, pushing the hour very late. Still gazing at the moon, she rubbed her back and asked, “How long was that ride?”
Dafydd hesitated, not so much reluctance, she thought, as struggling for words. “It’s the horses,” he finally said. “They choose the easiest path, and only some of it is … noticeable. We’ve ridden for perhaps two and a half hours.”
Lara turned to him, gaping, and his smile turned apologetic. “The Barrow-lands are not much like your world, Lara. I’m sorry, but I swear the lost time won’t count against us when we bring you home. Are you all right?”
“I’m …” Lara wobbled her head, knowing she looked silly but unable to express herself more coherently. “Yeah, I guess so. I just thought we’d been riding about twenty minutes. Is everything here like that?”
“Rather a lot of it, I’m afraid.” Dafydd gave her another crooked smile, then gestured to Aerin. “She has a sister not much taller than you. Would you like to borrow an outfit to meet the court in?”
Lara held her breath a moment, searching for her equilibrium, then let out an explosive sigh. Clothes that weren’t wet and grass-stained would help her regain her balance, if nothing else. “Please. That would be great. Thank you.”
Aerin dismounted with the same dismaying grace Dafydd had shown. She was taller than he was, and brisk as she said, “We have only a little time before the court is gathered. Will you come with me?”
“Of course.” Lara shot Dafydd an uncertain glance; then, at his nod, hurried after Aerin.
The Seelie woman made no allowance for Lara’s shorter legs, striding through phosphorus halls whose permeating glow had no apparent reliance on torches or other obvious light sources. Lara caught glimpses of open spaces within the citadel, stretches where forest seemed to break through china-white walls and become part of the building, but she had no time to linger and wonder: it was clear Aerin would leave her far behind if she didn’t focus on keeping up.
It was clear, too, that she would be hopelessly lost without the taller woman’s guidance. By the time Aerin gestured her through doors to what proved to be her private rooms, Lara’s stomach was tight with nerves bordering on panic. She had crossed into a world that wasn’t her own, a world where time and space bent to a horse’s will, and she had just left the only person she knew here. Kelly may have teased her about not taking risks, but this one now seemed like idiocy. No one in her right mind would have taken the chance Lara had just taken.
An untuned violin’s sour notes screeched through her mind, objecting to her last thought—Lara did, at least, believe herself to be in her right mind. “Most of the time,” she breathed aloud, and cast a glance upward, taking in the room Aerin had led her to.
It soared, distant ceiling edged with delicate cornices that made earthly gingerbreads look gross and squat in comparison. Globes of light, emitting the same soft glow the halls did, swung around each other near the ceiling, shifting the room’s shadows. Tapestries hung down the walls, picked with silver and gold and blue, as though someone had threaded moonlight and sunshine and water to weave them. Subtle patterns teased Lara’s eye and faded again when she looked directly at them, the tapestries becoming nothing more than shimmering imageless cloth.
This room was clearly a sitting room, a public area. There were recognizable chairs and couches, though, staring at them, Lara became convinced their wooden frames were grown, not carved or fastened. The padding was of pale soft cloth, cool colors everywhere.
Which made the emerald-clad girl in the middle of the room all the more remarkable. She was vivid, the first Seelie besides Dafydd whom Lara’d seen wearing anything but moonlight shades. Her hands were gathered in her skirts and her green eyes were wide with excitement, making her look rather like Cynthia Taylor when her attention was caught by a new project at the bespoke shop. Lara offered a swift, surprised smile to the girl, whose own smile lit up with youthful delight. “I’m Myfanwy, Aerin’s sister. She said you wanted to borrow one of my dresses?”
Lara gave Aerin a startled look, and the other woman shrugged. “We aren’t, with close friends and relations, relegated to mere vocal speech. Impulses, ideas, emotions can be shared, if not words. I sent ahead to let Myfanwy know we were on our way.”
“I think I have the perfect dress,” Myfanwy said breathlessly, and within minutes Lara found herself in the unusual position of playing dressmaker’s dummy. She had spent so many hours as the tailor that she was surprised to discover she was self-conscious, and kept stiffening as the sisters adjusted a gown meant for a taller woman. It wasn’t, she told herself with some despair, that she was short. The Seelie were just unnaturally tall. Aerin, kneeling to stitch a hem, was still more than half Lara’s height.
“How long have you known him?” Aerin glanced up at Lara with studied nonchalance. Pretending to try to put Lara at ease but in reality testing the waters; it was very much the same indifference Lara had affected when Dafydd had offered Aerin his hand. Faintly amused at their awkward camaraderie, Lara smiled.
“In hours? About eleven, over the course of five days.”
“Oh,” Aerin said with an odd note. “Our stories tell us we find your kind easy to glamour and pull into our world at a cost to your own lives. If that’s what Dafydd’s done, I’m sorry.”
“He didn’t.”
Aerin’s eyebrows shot up. They were nearly white, like her hair: the blue tones had faded once moonlight was left behind, and her yellow eyes had proved spring green. “Would you know?”
The question hung between them, marking out the silence between heartbeats. Lara felt heat crawl into her cheeks, an admission of uncertainty broken by a light tug on her hair and a shy, fascinated trill of laughter as her ears were uncovered.
Aerin reached around Lara and smacked her sister on the thigh without losing hold of the work she did. “Behave. The Truthseeker is a guest here.”
The words twisted in Lara’s ears, the sense of them clear, but the language itself wholly unfamiliar to her. She shook her head once, a sharp motion, and frowned at the woman kneeling in front of her. “What did you say?”
“I sa
id behave.” This time Aerin’s speech was clear again. “I apologize for Myfanwy’s impudence.”
“But I heard—” Lara drew a slow breath. “You’re not speaking English, are you. Of course not. Why would you be? What are you speaking? Why do I understand you?”
“It will be part of the spell Dafydd’s cast to bring you here,” Aerin said after a moment. “If you didn’t understand me, it’s because I used our high tongue to scold her.”
“I understood what you meant.” Lara pressed her lips together as too many thoughts fought for precedence. Aerin’s question was a good one: she had come so willingly she might well have been influenced, unknowingly, by magic.
Might have been. There was one clear risk to that gambit, one that she put into words slowly. “I understood what you meant,” she repeated. “Not the words, but the idea of it. The truth behind it. If I can sense the true idea behind words I don’t even know, you tell me: Would you dare cast a glamour to trick me into coming to your world?”
Aerin folded her hands in her lap, studying Lara. “Perhaps not. Not if I thought there was any chance you might realize it, and I would assume a truthseeker would. You should still be cautious of us, Lara. All of us. Even Dafydd.”
Chimes poured from her words, ringing true and clear. Lara, fist still knotted in the fine fabric, nodded, and Aerin lifted a hand to gently loosen Lara’s grip on the skirt. “Then I think you’re ready to greet the court.”
She had not expected Dafydd to be at his father’s side.
In the moment after she assimilated the sight of the slim golden prince beside his father’s iron throne—no, it wouldn’t be iron, a small part of her recognized: fairies weren’t supposed to be able to bear the touch of iron, and so for all of its cold metallic weight, the king’s throne could not be iron. His father’s silver throne, and that was an idea even more overwhelming than Dafydd’s cool remote presence at the king’s side. The throne, tall and spired and shining, engulfed Emyr. Lara felt embarrassingly mortal for being so impressed at a chunk of precious metal.
A very large chunk of precious metal, to be sure: more than most humans might expect to see in a lifetime, much less displayed ostentatiously at the head of a courtroom. Lara shook herself, not caring that every eye would see her do it: she had no reason for pretense. She was a stranger and meant to be awed.
It would have been all right, though, if it hadn’t worked quite so well. And Dafydd, as if catching a hint of her thoughts, quirked a corner of his mouth, which went much further in restoring her equilibrium than she had imagined possible.
He would, of course, be at his father’s side. He was a prince of this realm, and for all she gathered he wasn’t precisely the favored son, there was nowhere else he could be without presenting the appearance of a schism within the royal house. Lara knew enough of politics to understand personal feelings fell a distant second to the illusion of a united front. And they did: the rest of the Seelie court rippled away from them, fading into obscurity when viewed alongside the king and prince. There were hundreds of people pressed into the throne room, all of them slim and ethereal and inhuman, but it was the royals who arrested Lara’s attention.
She, though, held everyone else’s. She’d known she would: that was the purpose of being presented to the court. Knowing it, though, and feeling the weight of so many gazes were different things. If it weren’t for a fear of doing her elegant gown an injustice, Lara thought she might turn and flee. She was a tailor, almost invisible to even the people she worked for, and she had spent most of her life trying not to call attention to herself or the discomfiting gift she possessed.
A gift that every person in the room knew she had, and which they all hoped might give them the answers they sought. Lara, quite certain royalty was supposed to break the silence, cleared her throat and squeaked, “Look, if I’m supposed to ask everybody in this room if they murdered Merrick ap Annwn, we’d probably better just get started.”
A ripple of subdued laughter turned Lara’s hands into slow fists beneath the long pointed sleeves of her borrowed dress. She looked the part of one of Dafydd’s people, or very nearly: she’d seen that in Myfanwy’s mirror.
The gown was probably the finest thing she had ever worn, despite having been made for someone else. Its tall, open-throated collar brushed her jaw and plunged to a narrow V that spilled down the bodice, making the most of her height. The bodice was wound gold and russet velvet, woven alternately until it made a textured cinch that shaped her figure to remarkable slenderness. It loosened at a dropped waist to float into the long, light lines of the skirt, layers upon layers of thin silken gauze. The colors were perfect for her, bringing vitality to her pale skin, and in the gown, she might well have been one of the Seelie, if unusually petite.
And then she opened her mouth, and marked herself as absolutely and unquestionably alien to the Seelie realm. The king stiffened, becoming a blade of ice. Dafydd touched a hand to his father’s shoulder, murmuring, “She means no offense. Her country has no king and no protocol in speaking with royalty. She’s afraid, and trying to hide it.”
The king relaxed fractionally, evidently satisfied by the idea that Lara feared him. She wondered if Dafydd had been as impossibly arrogant as his father when he’d left the Barrow-lands to roam the mortal world, and wondered, too, how deep and shocking the change in him must be, if that were so. He must have lived half a dozen human lives in the century he’d spent in Lara’s world, but only a matter of days had passed here, in his own. He may well have returned a stranger to the life and people he’d known. The idea sent a pang through her, as though an unexpected wound had opened and left her with no way to heal it.
“If I may, my lord,” Dafydd offered, as much to Lara as his father. The king sniffed and lifted a finger in agreement. Refusing to be sullied by speaking with a mortal, truthseeker or not, Lara thought. She caught Dafydd’s gaze, struggling against the urge to roll her eyes. The Seelie prince’s mouth quirked, but he replaced the beginnings of a smile with solemnity as he lifted his voice to address the court.
“I have brought to you the truthseeker we sought. Born of the mortal world and carrying mortal magic, Lara Jansen has chosen to come here, a place so foreign to her home that it’s a thing of legend and children’s tales. She knew me from the moment we met: knew me to be other than what I claimed to be, and in so knowing proved her magic. We are all in her debt, myself most of all.” His voice softened as he brought his attention to Lara.
“Myself most of all, for the scant days that have passed in the Barrow-lands have been a full century in her world. Her willingness to join me and search for the truth of Merrick ap Annwn’s murder has ended an exile that has left my heart bereft. I would ask you to do her an honor, and offer her the thanks of all our people.”
A thunderous chant answered him, and Lara flinched straight. She patted the noise down with her palms toward the floor, embarrassment burning her cheeks, and mumbled, “Thank you.”
“I think you might be able to ask us as one, Truthseeker,” Dafydd said as the calls faded away. “Only if you sense discordance in the answers would you have to trouble yourself to ask us individually if we are guilty of this foul deed.”
Lara’s eyebrows shot up, her distress wiped away by Dafydd’s sheer pomposity. He pursed his lips, clearly judging what he’d said by her terms, and amusement creased his features as it had moments earlier when the king had been equally haughty. The impulse to tease him rose, then faded again: she was there to fulfill a duty she’d agreed to. “Dafydd, there ha—”
Another gasp rushed around the hall and Lara’s gaze went to the gathered courtiers, her eyebrows wrinkled in confusion before exasperated comprehension swept her. She’d breached protocol by using his name so casually. Well, the Seelie court would have to adapt: she wasn’t, despite an outward similarity, one of them. “There must be a thousand people in this room, Dafydd. There’s no way I can tell if a handful of them don’t answer, and if they don’t, there’
s no truth or lie to sense.”
“A compulsion can be laid,” he offered. “One that will oblige speech, though it cannot force the truth.”
Lara’s eyebrows shot upward. “I take it you don’t have a Fifth Amendment. You can—” She turned away from the throne—turned her back on the king, eliciting yet another shocked intake of breath around the room—and put her fists on her hips. Only Dafydd, she thought, would see how her nails bit into her palms: how she used the bold stance to hide her own worry. “And you’d let him?” she demanded of the court at large. “You’d let him compel you to speak?”
“He is our prince,” Aerin said into a silence no one else seemed willing to break. “We have nothing to hide from him. Of course we’ll allow it.”
Lara, loudly enough to hear in the quiet of the courtroom, muttered, “You really aren’t human,” and turned back to Dafydd. “All right. If that’s acceptable within your justice system, it’s all right with me. But if it’s not someone here, what are we going to do about the rest of the Barrow-lands?”
Another smile spilled over Dafydd’s face. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Thirteen
Elves obviously didn’t say “we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it”: a rumble of comprehending bemusement rolled through the court before their prince began murmured words of enchantment. As when Aerin scolded Myfanwy, the sense of his words became clear to Lara. Then recognition leapt in her: it was the same tongue Dafydd had spoken in the fight with the nightwings, and she hadn’t understood it at all, then. A few hours in the Barrow-lands had changed her, had deepened her talent already. Lara folded her arms around herself, warding off a cold that came from within. A murder investigation might take days. By the end of that time, she wasn’t sure she’d recognize herself as the same woman who’d walked through a portal torn in the air.
