She looked at me strangely. “It might,” she admitted.
“They met in secret and another guy, Aimery, turned up with soldiers, but then the King arrived…”
“Whoa, stop right there,” said Claire. “Where did you come by this information?”
“I told you, I dreamt it.”
She ran her fingers through her hair. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said, “but dreams aren’t usually considered reliable as a historical source.”
“The King had Aimery killed.” I told her. “He had him thrown overboard on the river.”
“You saw this?” Claire was incredulous.
“No, but I heard the King give the order. He didn’t exactly say that, but his meaning was clear. You must be able to look that up somewhere.”
“I’m not sure,” she said with measured patience, “that kings kept records of illicit killings. That sort of thing tended to breed unrest.”
“Then check one of the other things. Check the names. They met in a hall with six passages leading to it under a domed roof. It must be somewhere.”
“I’m flattered that you think my abilities in research are so well-developed,” said Claire, “but there could be a hundred places like that, and many of them will have been destroyed by fire, flood, or just fallen down.”
“I’ve given you the names,” I told her. “You must be able to do something.”
She looked at the list. “I’ll go to the National Archive,” she said. “It may be that there are references in the journals. I can check, but it will take days.”
“I could help,” said Alex brightly.
Claire looked pained and shook her head. “Even if you were allowed access, which you are not,” she clarified when Alex looked hopeful, “You would need to be able to interpret Norman French, Middle English and be familiar with a number of conventions. No, it is a job I must do alone.”
“What if they’re waiting for you?” said Katherine. “It’s one of the places you might go, isn’t it?”
Claire looked from Niall to Katherine, and back to me.
“I can’t read Norman French,” I said. “But I am willing to stand guard while you do.”
“Then that’s what we will do,” she said.
After four hours I was beginning to regret that offer. Claire sat in the private reading room, requesting one volume after another to be brought up from the vaults while I watched through the glass. She pored through volumes of journals written in tiny script while making notes on a lined notepad. That was as interesting as it got.
I wasn’t allowed in the room when the documents were on display. According to the stern lady archivist, that was what restricted archive meant.
Most of the people who came to the National Archive were interested in family history, lost in the dream that they were secretly related to the nobility, or simply interested in their ancestor’s lives, means and whereabouts. There were a few legal types working their way through ledgers and maps, but other than that it was deathly dull.
Instead, I could sit outside, I could walk up and down, I could even request documents myself, as long as they were not from the restricted archive. I began to wonder whether I should take an interest in my own family history. After all, at least one of my ancestors wasn’t human, though I wasn’t expecting them to have records of who it was.
There was a rhythm to it: people came, people went, documents arrived, documents were taken away. I found myself lulled by it, until my series of disturbed nights began to wear on me. I felt my eyes droop and shook myself awake to find someone sat across the table. It was Raffmir.
“Late night?” he said. I grabbed for my sword, but he just pursed his lips and leaned back in his chair. “Too late, cousin. Far too late. If I wanted you dead, your blood would be all over that glass by now.”
I retracted my hand, realising that he was right, and I couldn’t harm him anyway. We had both sworn under Feyre law not to harm the other under the rules of trial by ordeal. He had expected me to die that day. It was a great source of satisfaction to me that I was still here.
He looked through the glass at Claire working her way through another journal. “What’s she doing?” he asked.
“None of your business,” I told him.
“I see your temper hasn’t improved in my absence,” he said.
“Pity you came back,” I said.
“Nor your manners,” he added.
That was also true. With most people I didn’t like I could manage to be polite or at worst ignore them. Raffmir brought out the worst in me.
“What do you want?” I asked him.
“Perhaps I was simply worried for your health,” he said. “That looks nasty…” he slid his fingertips up the line of his jaw in the place the gates at the Royal Courts of Justice had left their impression on me.
“You took a vow,” I pointed out, “not to harm me or allow me to come to harm.”
“It wasn’t me that harmed you.”
“Your driver, then,” I said.
“And yet here you are in the peak of health,” he said. “A little marred, a little tainted — normal really…”
“What would you have done if it had killed me?” I asked him.
“…still as rude as ever,” he finished.
“I’m serious,” I said. “It’s execution, isn’t it, if you’d killed me? I’m quite sure that Blackbird wouldn’t have let that go.”
“The witch is still with you then?”
“Don’t call her that,” I warned.
“Shall I not call a goose, a goose? There is power in names, Dogstar, I think you know. And how is your lovely daughter? Such treacherous curls, it makes you want to cut them all off.” He made snipping signs with his fingers.
“You swore not to harm her too,” I reminded him.
“Unfortunately, she does not seem to have the same attitude to me,” he said. “I do my best to preserve her sorry little hide, and how does she repay me?”
“I’ll ask you again, Raffmir, what do you want?”
He leaned across the table, clasping his hands together and meeting my gaze with earnest intensity. “I’m meeting the terms of my vow.”
“You’re not harming me? You could have done that back wherever you came from,” I pointed out.
“You’d think it would be easier than it is,” he said. “You are my burden, and I suppose I must bear you, at least until the end.”
“The end of what?” I asked him.
He smiled, long and slow. “Prophesy, it’s such a fickle thing, don’t you think?”
“I wish you’d just come out and say whatever it is that you came to say,” I told him, “and then leave.”
“You haven’t thanked me for my last gift yet, and once again I find you are ungrateful.”
“For what? I have to be grateful because of something you haven’t done for me?”
He stood, straightening the lapels of his coat as he moved around the table and looked down his nose at me. “Not long now, Dogstar. The world turns.”
“As it always does?”
“Soon,” he said, turning. I watched his retreating back as he walked away between the tables. I shook my head, and glanced in at Claire. It looked like she’d had enough too. She was slumped across the books asleep. At least I thought she was until I noticed the dribble of red off the edge of the table.
“Shit!” I grabbed my sword and burst into the room, wary of someone hiding behind the table, under the line of the windows, but there was no one. I lifted Claire by her shoulders and she flopped back in her seat, exposing the long slit across her throat. Blood was soaked into her clothes. Her dead eyes stared up at me.
How? She was OK a moment ago. I’d watched her while Raffmir asked me what she was doing. No one had entered or left since then. Except me. I suddenly realised what this looked like. People were staring at my sudden activity. I stood out in the quiet archive like a food-fight in a convent. I pulled my glamour around me, but they had already seen. When asked later they would make the connection, exactly as Raffmir had wanted.
I pushed the journals away from the growing pool of blood, streaking red across the surface.