A Lick of Frost
WE HAD ADJOURNED TO A DIFFERENT ROOM. THE ROOM WAS smaller than the conference room, but then so were some single-family homes. There was a huge mirror on one wall, the glass of which held small imperfections, bubbles near one corner. The mirror had an almost smoky quality in a few spots. Its frame was gilt edged, and worn with age. It had belonged to the original Mr. Biggs's great-grandmother. We were here, in Mr. Biggs's inner sanctum, to make a phone call of sorts, though no phones would be involved.
Galen, Rhys, and Abeloec had had their turn at the questioning in the conference room. They hadn't been able to do much but deny the charges. Abe had stood there with his perfectly striped hair: black, shades of gray, white, all perfectly even and artificial like some artful modern Goth, but it wasn't a good dye job, it was real. His pale skin and gray eyes matched the look. He looked odd in his charcoal-gray suit. No amount of tailoring could make it look like the clothes he would have chosen himself. He had been a party guy for centuries, and his clothes usually reflected that. Abe had no alibi because he'd been trying to crawl into a bottle with a drug chaser at the time of the accused attack. He'd been clean and sober only about two days. But the sidhe can't truly be addicted to anything, just as they can't truly drink or drug themselves into oblivion. It was an upside downside.
The fey couldn't get addicted, but they couldn't use liquor, or drugs, to hide from their problems either. You could get us drunk, but only up to a point.
Galen looked cool and boyishly elegant in his brown suit. They wouldn't let him wear his signature green because it brought out the green undertones in his white skin. What they hadn't seemed to understand was that brown made the green undertone darker still, and much more noticeable. His green curls were cut short, with only one thin braid to remind me that his hair had once fallen in a glorious sheet to his ankles. He had the best alibi of the three, because he'd been having sex with me when the alleged attack took place.
Once I would have described Rhys as boyishly handsome, but not today. Today he seemed every inch the grown-up, all 5'6" of him. He was the only one of the guards with me today who was less than six feet. Rhys was still handsome, but he'd lost some boyish quality, or gained something else. A man who was more than a thousand years old, and had once been the god Cromm Cruach, couldn't grow up, could he? If he'd been human, that's what I would have said, that the events of the last few days had helped him grow up at last. But it seemed arrogant to think that my little adventures could affect a being who had once been worshipped as a god.
His white hair curled over his shoulders, and down the broad plane of his back. He was the shortest of my sidhe guards, but I knew that the body under the suit was the most muscled. He took his workouts very seriously. He wore an eye patch to cover the main scars from an injury he'd received centuries ago. The one eye he had left was lovely, three circles of blue like lines of sky from different days of the year. His mouth was soft and rich, and one of the most pouting of the men, as if his lips begged to be kissed. I didn't know what had wrought this new seriousness in him, but it gave him a new depth, as if there was more to him than there had been only a few days ago.
He was the only one of the three who had been outside the faerie mound, our sithen, when the attack was supposed to have happened. He had actually been attacked by Seelie warriors, and accused to his face of the crime. They had come out into the winter snow hunting my men with steel and cold iron, two of the only things that can truly injure a sidhe warrior. Most of the time even duels between the courts are fought with weapons that can't bring true injury, true death, to us. It's like one of those action movies where the men beat the hell out of each other but keep coming back for more. Steel and cold iron were killing weapons. That alone had been a breach of the peace between the two courts.
The lawyers were arguing. "Lady Caitrin alleges that the attack took place on a day that my clients were actually in Los Angeles," Biggs said. "My clients can't have done something in Illinois when they were in California all day. On the day in question, one of the accused was working for the Grey Detective Agency and was in view of witnesses all day."
That would have been Rhys. He loved being detective for real. He loved undercover work, and had enough glamour to be even better at it than a human detective. Galen had enough glamour to do it, too, but he couldn't play the part. Undercover, or decoy, work was only partly looking right. You also had to "feel" right to the person you were trying to catch. I'd done my share of decoy work in years past. Now, no one would allow me near the dangerous stuff.
So how had Lady Caitrin's attack taken place before we got to faerie? Time had started running differently in faerie again. Time had started running very differently in the Unseelie sithen, around me. Doyle had said, "Time is running oddly in all of faerie for the first time in centuries, but it was running even more oddly around you, Meredith. Now that you have left, faerie time is running oddly, but no more oddly for one court than another."
It was both interesting and disturbing that time had run not exactly backward for me, but it had stretched out. It was January for us and the courts, but the date still wasn't the same. The post-Yule ball that my uncle Taranis had been so insistent on me attending was finally safely past. We'd all decided it was too dangerous for me to attend. The accusation against my guards confirmed that Taranis was up to something, but what? Taranis had a plan, and whatever it was, it would be dangerous to everyone but him.
"King Taranis has explained that time runs differently in faerie than it does in the real world," Shelby said.
I knew that Taranis hadn't said "the real world," because to him the Seelie Court was the real world.
"May I ask your clients a question?" Veducci asked. He'd stayed out of the squabbling. In fact, this was one of the first times he'd spoken since we had changed rooms. It made me nervous.
"You can ask it," Biggs said, "but I'll decide if they answer it."
Veducci gave a nod, and pushed away from the wall where he'd been leaning. He smiled at us all. Only a hardness to his eyes let me know that the smile was a lie. "Sergeant Rhys, were you in the lands of faerie on the date that Lady Caitrin accuses you of attacking her?"
"Of allegedly attacking her," Biggs said.
Veducci nodded at him. "Were you in the lands of faerie on the date that Lady Caitrin alleges this attack took place?"
It was nicely worded. Worded so that it was hard to dance around the truth without actually lying.
Rhys smiled at him, and I got a glimpse of that less serious side he'd shown me most of my life. "I was in the lands of Faerie when the alleged attack took place."
Veducci asked the same question of Galen. Galen looked more uncomfortable than Rhys had, but he answered, "Yes, I was."
Abeloec's answer was simply "Yes."
Farmer whispered to Biggs, and asked the next round of questions. "Sergeant Rhys, were you here in Los Angeles on the date of the alleged attack?"
The question proved that our lawyers still didn't quite understand the quandary of time in faerie.
"No, I was not."
Biggs frowned. "But you were, all day. We have many witnesses."
Rhys smiled at him. "But the day in Los Angeles was not the identical day as the day that Lady Caitrin accused us of this alleged attack."
"It is the same date," Biggs insisted.
"Yes," Rhys said patiently, "but just because it's the same date doesn't mean it's the same day."
Veducci was the only one smiling. Everyone else looked like they were thinking too hard, or were wondering if Rhys was crazy.
"Can you clarify that?" Veducci asked, still looking pleased.
"This isn't like a science-fiction story, where we have traveled back in time to redo the same day," Rhys said. "We aren't truly in two places at once. For us, Mr. Veducci, this day is truly a new day. Our doppelgangers are not in faerie reliving this day. That day in faerie is past. This day here in Los Angeles is a new day. It happens to have the same date, so outside of faerie it appears to be the same day, repeated."
"So you could have been in faerie on the day she was attacked?" Veducci asked.
Rhys smiled at him, almost tsking. "On the day she was allegedly attacked, yes."
"This will be a nightmare for a jury," Nelson said.
"Wait until we get done demanding a jury of their peers," Farmer said, smiling almost happily.
Nelson paled under her tasteful makeup. "A jury of their peers?" she repeated softly.
"Could a human juror truly understand being in two places on the same date?" Farmer asked.
The lawyers looked at each other. Only Veducci didn't share in the confusion. I think he'd already thought of all of this. Technically, his job description made him less powerful than Shelby or Cortez, but he could help them hurt us. Of everyone on the opposing side, Veducci was the one I wanted to win over the most.
"We're here today to try to avoid this going to a jury," Biggs said.
"If they attacked this woman then, at the very least," Shelby said, "they must be confined to faerie."
"You would have to prove their guilt before you could get a judge to meet out a punishment," Farmer said.
"Which leads us back to the fact that none of us really want this to go to court." Veducci's quiet voice fell into the room like a stone thrown into a flock of birds. The other lawyers' thoughts seemed to scatter like those birds, flying up in confusion.
"Don't be giving our case away before we've even begun," Cortez said, not sounding happy with his colleague.
"This isn't a case, Cortez, this is a disaster we're trying to avert," Veducci said.
"A disaster for whom, them?" Cortez said, pointing at us.
"For all of faerie, potentially," Veducci said. "Have you read your history about the last great human-faerie war in Europe?"
"Not recently," Cortez said.
Veducci looked around at the other lawyers. "Am I the only one here who read up on this?"
Grover raised his hand. "I did."
Veducci smiled at him as if he were his favorite person in the world. "Tell these intelligent people how the last great war started."
"It began as a dispute between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts."
"Exactly," Veducci said. "And then spilled over all the British Isles and part of the continent of Europe."
"Are you saying that if we don't mediate these charges the courts will go to war?" Nelson said.
"There are only two things that Thomas Jefferson and his cabinet made unforgivable offenses for the fey on American soil," Veducci said. "They are never again to allow themselves to be worshipped as deities, and they are never to have a war between the two courts. If either of those things happen they will be kicked out of this, the last country on earth that would have them."
"We know all this," Shelby said.
"But have you considered why Jefferson made those two rules, especially the one about war?"
"Because it would be damaging to our country," Shelby said.
Veducci shook his head. "There is still a crater on the European continent almost as wide as the widest part of the Grand Canyon. That hole is what is left of where the last battle of the war was fought. Think about if that happened in the center of this country, in the middle of our most productive farming country."
They looked at each other. They hadn't thought about it. To Shelby and Cortez it had been a high-profile case. A chance to make new law involving the fey. Everyone had taken the short view, except Veducci, and maybe Grover.
"What do you propose we do?" Shelby asked. "Just let them get away with it?"
"No, not if they are guilty, but I want everyone in this room to understand what might be at stake, that's all," Veducci said.
"You sound like you're on the side of the princess," Cortez said.
"The princess didn't give a United States ambassador a bespelled watch so he would favor her."
"How do we know the princess didn't do it, to trick us?" Shelby said. He sounded like he even believed it.
Veducci turned to me. "Princess Meredith, did you give Ambassador Stevens any object magical or mundane that would sway his opinion of you and your court in your favor?"
I smiled. "No, I did not."
"They really can't lie, if you ask the questions right," Veducci said.
"Then how did Lady Caitrin accuse these men by name and description? She seemed genuinely traumatized."
I took a deep breath and let it out, slowly. "I think so. It means that Lady Caitrin has everything to lose here. If she is caught in an actual lie, she could be cast out of faerie. Exile is considered worse than death to the Seelie nobility."
"Not just the nobility," Rhys said.
The other guards nodded. "He is right," Doyle said. "Even the lesser fey would do much to avoid exile."
"So how is the lady lying?" Veducci asked us.
Galen spoke, voice low, a little uncertain. "Could it be an illusion? Could someone have used glamour so strong that it fooled her?"
"You mean made her think she was being attacked when she wasn't?" Nelson asked.
"I'm not sure that would be possible on a member of the sidhe," Veducci said. He looked at us.
"What if it wasn't completely an illusion," Rhys said.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"You make a tree by planting a stick in the ground. You create a castle from the ruin of one," he said.
"It would be easier to do such a thing if you had something physical to build upon," Doyle said.
"What could you build on for an attack?" Galen asked.
Doyle looked at him. The look was eloquent, but Galen didn't understand it. I got it first. "You mean the stories of our people appearing as dead warriors coming into the widows' beds, that kind of thing."
"Yes," Doyle said, "illusion used as a disguise."
"Very few in faerie have such power of illusion now," Frost said.
"There might only be one in all of faerie who could pull it off," Galen said. His green eyes were suddenly very serious.
"You can't mean..." Frost started to say, then stopped. We all thought it. Abe said, "That son of a bitch."
Veducci spoke as if he'd read our minds. It made me wonder if without his protections from faerie magic I'd have read him as a psychic, or more. "The King of Light and Illusion, how good are his; powers of illusion?"
"Fuck," Shelby said. "You did not just say that. You did not just give them reasonable doubt."
Veducci smiled at us. "The princess and her men had reasonable doubt when they stepped into the room, but they would never have accused the king out loud in front of us. They'd have kept their secrets even from their lawyers."
I had an awful idea. I moved toward Veducci, only Doyle's hand on my arm stopping me from touching the man. He was right, they might see that as magical interference. "Mr. Veducci, are you planning on accusing my uncle of this plot on the mirror call today?"
"I thought I'd leave that to your lawyers."
My skin was suddenly cold. I felt the blood drain from my face. Veducci looked uncertain, and almost reached out to me. "Are you feeling all right, Princess?"
"I'm frightened for you, for all of you, and for us," I said. "You do not understand Taranis. He has been absolute ruler of the Seelie Court for more than a thousand years. That has led to an arrogance you can't even begin to imagine. He pretends to be the jolly, handsome king for you humans, but he shows quite a different face to those of us in the Unseelie Court. If you accuse him bluntly of this, I do not know what he will do."
"Would he hurt us?" Nelson asked.
"No, but he might use magic on you," I replied. "He is the King of Light and Illusion. I have stood in his presence, just over a minor call, and he has almost bespelled me. I almost fell to his power, and I am a princess of the Unseelie Court. You are human. If he truly wanted to bespell you, he could."
"That would be illegal," Shelby said.
"He is a king with the power of life and death in his hands," I said. "He doesn't think like a modern man, no matter how much he apes it for the press." I felt dizzy, and someone brought me a chair.
Doyle knelt beside me. "Are you unwell, Meredith?" he whispered.
Nelson asked, "Are you all right, Princess Meredith?"
"I'm tired, and scared," I said. "You have no idea what the last few days have been like, and I daren't tell you."
"Does it have anything to do with this case?" Cortez asked.
I looked up at him. "You mean the reason that I'm tired and scared?"
"Yes."
"No, it has nothing to do with these false accusations." I reached for Doyle's hand. "Make them understand that they must tread carefully with Taranis."
Doyle took my hand in his and said, "I will do my best, my princess."
I smiled up at him. "I know you will."
Frost came to the other side of me and touched my cheek. "You are pale. Even for one of us with moonlight skin, you are pale."
Abeloec came closer to me. "I had heard that the princess was human enough to catch colds. I thought it was a nasty rumor."
"You can't catch colds?" Nelson asked.
"They can't," I said, pressing my cheek against Frost's hand, and still holding on to Doyle. "But I can. I don't get them often, but I can get them." In my head I added, "the very first mortal faerie princess." It was one of the reasons for all the assassination attempts on the Unseelie Court. There were factions that believed that if I sat the throne I would contaminate all the immortals with the disease of mortality. I would bring death to them all. How do you argue against a rumor like that, when they can't even catch a cold? And I was about to talk to the most bright and shiny of them all, King Taranis, Lord of Light and Illusion. Goddess help me if he realized that I was coming down with some petty human illness. It would just confirm for him how weak I was, how human I was.
"It's almost time for the king to contact us," Veducci said, looking at his watch.
"If his time is running on schedule with ours," Cortez said.
Veducci nodded. "True, but may I suggest that we get some cold metal for the rest of you to carry?"
"Cold metal?" Nelson made it a question.
"I think some of the office supplies of this fine law firm might just help the rest of you have clear vision when we deal with King Taranis."
"Office supplies," Cortez said. "You mean like paper clips?"
"Maybe," Veducci said. He turned to me. "What do you think, Princess, would a paper clip be helpful?"
"It depends on what it's made out of, but a handful of them might help."
"We can test it for you," Rhys said.
"How?" Veducci said.
"If it bothers us to touch it, it'll help you."
"I thought it was only lesser fey that couldn't touch metal," Cortez said.
"Some of them can actually be burned by the touch of some metals, but even the sidhe don't truly enjoy most man-forged metal," Rhys said, still with that smile.
"Burned just by touching metal," Nelson said.
"We don't have time to discuss the wonders of the fey if we're going to get those office supplies," Veducci said.
Farmer hit the intercom and spoke to one of the many secretaries and personal assistants who had seemed to be in the offices outside. He requested metal paper clips and staples. I suggested, "Box cutters, pocket knives."
Shelby, Grover, and the other male assistant all had pocket knives. "You were pretty fascinated with the princess," Veducci said. "I'd add a handful of something else, just in case."
I watched Veducci hand out the office supplies. He'd taken charge, and no one had questioned it. He was supposed to be our enemy, but he was helping us. Had he told the truth? Was he here for justice, or was it a lie? Until I found out what Taranis wanted, I couldn't afford to trust anyone.
Veducci came to stand in front of where I sat. He nodded at Doyle and Frost, who were still pressed to me, one on each side. "May I offer the princess some extra metal to hold?"
"She is carrying metal, as are we all."
"The guns and swords, we see them." Then Veducci's eyes flicked to me. "Are you saying the princess is armed?"
I was actually. I had a knife strapped to my thigh in a holder I'd worn before. I had a gun at the small of my back in one of those new sideways holsters that were designed to be worn there. We didn't actually expect me to use the gun for shooting, but it was a way to carry a lot of metal - steel and lead - on me and not make it obvious to Taranis. He'd see me wearing metal as an insult. The guards could get away with it, because they were guards; they were supposed to be armed.
"The princess is carrying what she needs to protect herself," Doyle said.
Veducci did a little bow from the neck. "Then I'll put the office supplies back in the box."
Trumpets sounded, sweet and clear, as if they rained music down upon us from some great height. It was the sound of King Taranis calling on the mirror. He was being polite, and waiting for someone to touch the mirror on our side. The trumpets sounded again as we all stared at the blank mirror.
Doyle and Frost got me to my feet. Rhys came in at my side, as if they'd discussed it beforehand. Doyle moved forward, letting Rhys take his place at my side. Rhys gave me a one-armed hug, and whispered, "Sorry to move your favorite out of his spot."
I turned and looked at him, because jealousy was supposed to be a human emotion. Rhys let me see in his face that he knew that my heart had chosen even if my body hadn't. He let me know that he knew how I felt about Doyle, and that it hurt him. One look, full of so much.
Doyle touched the mirror, and Rhys whispered, "Smile for the king."
I let the smile I'd practiced for years slide over my face. The smile that was pleasant, but not too happy. It was a court smile, a smile to hide behind, and think thoughts that had nothing to do with smiles at all.