“Unless it was enchanted armor, it would not have helped,” Adair said. Hafwyn and Aisling were helping him remove his armor in pieces. The padding underneath was soaked crimson with blood. The wide, clean cut was plain in the padding, low on his side. “He was able to do this to me, even with the armor.”
“Your armor is still worthy of its maker,” Kieran said. “I could not pierce it. I had to find a seam.”
“No true sword could have found the opening you used,” Adair said. The padding peeled off in layers. The linen shirt next to his skin was a ruined red mass.
“That is why magic will always win against weaponry,” Kieran said.
“It was not magic that stopped Innis,” Crystall said.
“It was human magic,” Kieran said.
“Guns are not magic,” Crystall argued, “they are weapons.”
Kieran shook his head. “What is human science but another name for magic? Even now, the princess has brought human spell casters into our sithen. She allows human magic free range inside the only refuge we have left.”
“That’s a reason to attack me,” I said, “but not a reason to attack Galen. Why him?”
“Perhaps we are attacking all your guards, if we find them alone,” Kieran said.
“No,” Galen said with his head still in my lap, “when I came around the corner Melangell said, ‘We’ve been waiting for you, green man,’ then you hit me in the back. Where were you hiding? I must have passed right by you.”
“Innis can hide in plain sight,” Frost said, “and he can hide one or two with him, if none of them moves.” Frost was still very much on alert, guarding me. He hadn’t looked at a wound, or participated in the conversation. He was working and it showed.
“So Kieran, why Galen?” I asked.
“Lord Kieran,” he corrected me.
I shook my head, my hand sliding a little farther down Galen’s chest, so I could feel his heart beating against my palm. “Fine, Lord Kieran Knife-Hand, answer my question.”
He looked at me, his face arrogant and handsome in the way that most of the sidhe were. But his was a cold beauty, or maybe I was just projecting. “You have captured me, but you cannot make me answer your questions. Take me to Queen Andais so I may get on with my night.”
I stared at him, with Galen’s heartbeat under my hand. Was Kieran being that brave, or did he believe that the queen would do nothing to him? “You have attacked a royal guard. You will not be getting on with your night, Lord Kieran.”
“Siobhan nearly killed a royal heir, and yet she lives. Imprisoned, but she lives. The queen’s pet torturer fears the touch of Siobhan’s skin, so she has not even been tortured. She will sit in her cage until Prince Cel is released, then she will be his right hand again. If that is all the queen does to a would-be assassin of royalty, then what more can she do to us? Nerys’s house still lives, even though all of them turned traitor. They tried to kill both you and the queen herself, and they have lost nothing.” He sneered at me, all that beauty turning ugly.
“That is why you and Innis agreed to this,” I said. “You saw Nerys’s people go free, and you think you will go free, too.”
“The queen needs her allies, Princess.”
“How can you be her ally if you toadie for Cel?”
“I toadie to no one, but I admit to preferring him to you. There are many who feel the same.”
“Of that I have no doubt.” I looked at him, so sure of himself, and I needed him not to be. I needed whatever information he possessed, and I needed the court to fear me. To fear harming my people. If the queen would not put that fear into them, then I had to figure out a way to do it myself.
There was a sound like a great hollow gong being struck.
“What is that?” I asked.
It sounded again before the first echoes had died.
Frost reached for a knife at his belt. “I have a call.” It was Rhys.
“What are you doing, Merry? It was all I could do to keep Walters and the police from running to check out your screams. Is Galen all right? You were screaming his name.”
Galen spoke from my lap. “I’m touched that you care.”
Rhys chuckled. “He’s fine.”
“He was attacked, though,” I said.
“Who?”
“Nobles and guess whose guards?”
“Let me think… Cel?”
“Who else?”
“But why does he keep picking on Galen?”
“I’m about to try to find out. How is the evidence collection going?”
“Okay. I put a guard on each of the humans, as per your order. We figured out how the reporter strayed outside the magical boundaries we set up.”
“How?” I asked.
“He had small iron nails in the soles of his shoes.”
“Cold iron,” I said. “He’d done his research.”
Rhys’s reflection wavered as he nodded. “And he came here planning to try to see something we didn’t want him to see.”
“I guess it is part of the job description for a reporter.”
“I guess so.” He sighed, and it was heavy.
“What’s wrong, Rhys?”
“Major Walters insists on seeing you in person. He says that the reflection could be an illusion.”
“I’m a little busy here.” I glanced at our prisoners.
“I figured that, but if you don’t put in an appearance soon, he’s going to want to come looking for you. Just a heads-up.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“I’ll try to keep him pacified.” The sword was suddenly empty, only my own distorted reflection showing.
I handed Frost’s blade back to him and looked at the prisoners. If I had been certain how the queen would take it, I would do something drastic to at least one of the nobles. But Kieran was right, the queen did need her allies. I didn’t think Kieran qualified, but Andais might, and I didn’t want her angry with me if I could avoid it. Still, Kieran’s reasoning meant that Andais was losing her hold on the court nobles. That was bad, because I didn’t have enough political clout on my own to compete for the throne, even though I was still of the ruling bloodline. If Andais failed as queen, they would see me as a threat, no matter who took the throne after her.
Hafwyn’s voice came with a thread of anger to it. “Let me see the wound, Aisling.”
“I dare not let you see more of my body.”
“I am a healer. We are immune to most of the contact enchantments. If it were otherwise we could not heal the sidhe.”
Aisling was holding his white cloak close around the bloody front of his tunic.
“Take off your tunic so I may see your wound.”
He shook his head, spilling his hood back, and revealing a veil like some of the Arabic countries make their women wear. It was a thin, gauzy, golden cloth, so you saw his head and face through the haze of it. Only his odd eyes were free of the cloth, showing pale skin, and a lace of pale eyelashes.
“I’d forgotten that you covered your face,” I said, and hadn’t really meant to say it out loud.
“Much is forgotten,” he said, hands still holding his cloak around his bloody side.
“I said I forgot that you covered your face, not why.”
“Yes, yes,” Hafwyn said, “the most beautiful man in the world. So beautiful that if a woman, or even some men, look upon your face they will be instantly besotted with you and unable to deny you anything.” She grabbed his cloak and tried to wrench it from his hands, and finished the rest through gritted teeth. “But I am not asking you to take off your veil, just your tunic.”
“I fear what effect it would have upon a mortal.”
Hafwyn stopped struggling with him, and leaned back on her heels, I think too surprised to know what to do. I realized then that he meant me. How could I ever truly rule here if they still thought of me as a human?
Kieran spoke my thoughts out loud. “Even the guard itself thinks of you as only mortal, and not sidhe.”
I would have argued with him, if I could have. “Are you saying, Aisling, that your bare chest is enough to bespell me?”
“I have seen it happen before to humans.”