Child of Darkness-L-D-2 (8 page)

The best place to start looking, Malachi supposed, was with the guards he had been sent to call off the search the night before. He made his way to the barracks, a distant part of the Palace that was too close to the dungeons for his tastes. He found, as he had expected, that the guards who’d been sent off to search for the missing heir had been granted a day of rest. They were making use of it, too, as evidenced by the Faeries lounging on their crudely constructed bunks.

“Do not rise,” he said, holding up a hand when they first noticed his presence. As Consort to the Queene, he was due a certain amount of respect from the Court, but display of that respect seemed cheap to him, and made him uneasy. He would rather they respect him not because of their Queene’s preference, but because of the times he had fought at their side in the past twenty years. It was a vain hope, he’d concluded, but that did not stop him from wanting it.

“Last night, Master Cedric found you in the Darkworld and ordered you to call off the search, yes?” He watched as they nodded uniformly in response. “And did he return to the Palace with you?”

“No, Sire,” one of the soldiers spoke up. “He stayed behind, to look for any of us that got separated.”

That did sound like something Cedric would do. “Had any of you become separated?”

“No, sire.”

That, also, sounded like Cedric. “And did you tell him this?”

“Yes, sire.”

“Thank you.” Malachi nodded to the guards and turned to go, when a voice stopped him.

“Sire, I may know where he is.”

There was a noise of clearing throats and the rustle of movement. Out of these, Malachi distinctly heard someone whisper fiercely, “You keep your mouth shut!”

Malachi turned. A young Faery—or perhaps he just appeared young, as Malachi could never tell the difference—stood apart from the others. The rest all watched him with daggers for eyes.

“You know where Cedric is?” Malachi asked, flicking his gaze over the guards who sat in sullen silence behind him.

“Do not tell him,” one of the guards advised the young-looking one. “He is not one of us. What Cedric does is between himself and the Queene.”

“What do you know?” Malachi asked the young guard again, ignoring the others. “I need to find Cedric. I seek him on the Queene’s orders.”

The Faery squared his shoulders. “On our patrols near the border, we have observed Master Cedric in close contact with a Human. A Gypsy. He has been spotted meeting with her on the Strip. I believe…we all believe…that he goes to the Darkworld to be with her.”

That, of all things, did not sound like Cedric. But Cedric had always been private. And he’d been so angry at Ayla’s announcement the night before….

No, Cedric had enough reason to be angry at that, without a Human mistress. Cedric, the most noble and incorruptible of all the Fae in the Lightworld, toppled from his virtuous pedestal by a mortal? And a Darkling?

“That seems…very unlikely,” he told the guard, though he still let the thought tumble around in his mind. “But I thank you for your trust.”

He left then. Let them think what they would of him. He’d become so used to the disdain the Fae showed toward all mortal creatures that it only surprised him when one of them treated him with respect. Not Ayla or Cedric, of course, but they alone knew what he had been in his former life. If the rest of the Court knew, well, they might not respect him, but they would fear him.

He shook off the self-pity that would usually follow such thoughts. Right now, his only concern was finding Cedric. The guard’s story—and the zeal of the other guards to suppress it—troubled him. This was not the first time Cedric had left the Lightworld with no explanation. He always turned up later, but never offered where he’d been. Ayla had not pressed…perhaps she knew any answer would be a lie?

It would not be like Ayla to voice concerns about Cedric, who was, at times, closer to her than Malachi himself. She rarely questioned him and had never, to Malachi’s knowledge, voiced any displeasure with him, even in private. The Queene bowed to Cedric as much as Cedric bowed to his Queene.

But now, the faithful servant had gone missing. The guard’s story did not make so little sense, in this reasoning.

The years had flown—over half of Malachi’s own mortal life—but it had not been so long that he could not remember the ways through the Darkworld, to the Gypsy encampment. He made his way through the Strip, to the entrance of the Darkworld, to the place where the Gypsy markings began. Symbols meant to ward off evil—to ward off the Death Angels whose ranks he’d belonged to—all the things that crawled and slithered in the Darkworld that were so hazardous to mortal life. The symbols were useless. Malachi did not like them, did not need the reminder that there were things capable of destroying him here in the Darkworld. He had not been across the Darkworld border since before Ayla had officially become Queene, when he’d returned at Cedric’s pleading. Now, he hoped Cedric would return at his pleading.

After hours of walking, he found that the camp was the same as he remembered—dirty, crowded, smelling of fire and too many unwashed bodies. It was also guarded still, though on his last visit those guards had not seen him slip in, their eyes blind to the messengers their God sent to bring them home.

They were not blind to him now. And they were not blind to what he was. A group of children chased each other near the mouth of the tunnel, and a Human woman ran to them, crossing herself, looping her great fat arms around them and clutching them to her as she backed away, never taking her eyes from Malachi.

A warning call in a language Malachi could not understand rang out from one guard to another, and they came toward him warily, as if recognizing him as mortal, but unable to reconcile that with what their stories and legends told them about the Death Angels’

purposes.

“I am looking for one who is not of your kind,” he called out in the mortal language before they could get too close, before they could seize him, do him harm. They still might; their fear glittered in their dark eyes like the glimmer off of spilled blood.

“You are one who is not of our kind,” a thin man called to him. “And you are not welcome here.”

“I will leave, and gladly, once I find who I came for.” He considered for a moment that Cedric might not have told them his identity, that he was masquerading as Human. Among these people, as keen and superstitious as they were, it seemed unlikely that they would not know what Cedric truly was. “He is a Faery.”

A murmur went through the Gypsies who stood before him. Something that sounded suspiciously like “Tom.”

Had another Faery come to live among Humans? To have tracked the wrong Lightworlder into the Darkworld would be the perfect end to an absolutely fruitless day. The thin man nodded, once. “We cannot take you to him. We can bring him here, to you.”

“That will be enough for me.” Malachi bowed his head briefly, to show them deference. “I will go into the tunnel, and wait there, so I will not further upset your people.”

“And after that, you will not come this way again.” It was not a question, but Malachi answered with a nod, all the same.

He waited, as he had promised, in the tunnel. What would have possessed Cedric to come here, to cast his lot with these strange creatures? All mortal beings were strange, and Malachi did not excuse himself from that description, but Gypsies were among the most bizarre. And for a Fae to knowingly pursue one, when mortal lives were so terribly short and fragile…

It was something Malachi found himself thinking of far more often lately. The fragility of mortal life, the interminable length of immortality. He was not unaware of how his mortal body had aged. What had been full and strong in youth was now lean and tough. Lines marred his face. Those lines had not been there before, nor had the strands of silver that had grown into his hair. He had more years to live, true enough. But he could not imagine what it would be like to watch Ayla age, wither and die, as she would watch him fade away. Their circumstance, he had thought, was exceptional. Why would another immortal seek out such an unhappy situation?

Footsteps in the tunnel brought Malachi’s mind sharply back to where he was. His mortal life would be much shorter if he let his attention wander in the Darkworld. The figure that approached was unmistakably Fae, from the way it moved as though somehow not a part of the space it inhabited. And it was Cedric. He was distinctive among the other Faeries that Malachi had seen, in that he was not as wiry, as short and slender, as the others. At first glance, someone who did not know better might mistake him for mortal. But Malachi would never tell him so.

“What are you doing here?”

It was not the greeting Malachi had expected. He’d thought that, upon being found out, Cedric would beg forgiveness. He seemed, instead, to demand apology. It took Malachi a moment to adjust his response. “You are needed, back at the Palace.”

“I am always needed at the Palace,” Cedric said, but did not move, or offer any other explanation.

“I understand you are angry.” And Malachi did understand. What he did not understand was why the Faery did not rush from this place, as he would have done before. “But this has nothing to do with the betrothal.”

“It does not matter what it is. I will not return.” Cedric stepped into the light. He wore Human clothes, and they looked strange on him. His mothlike wings were unbound, powdered blue dust falling from them where they touched the fabric.

The Humans permitted him to walk among them this way? It almost made Malachi laugh, but that would have been disastrous now. “Your Queene needs you.”

Cedric’s hands balled to fists at his sides. “My Queene must learn that she cannot abuse her servants so. That she cannot reorder their lives at her whim.”

“She can reorder your life,” Malachi stated calmly. “She is your Queene. How often have you given her that power over you, Cedric? And it surprises you that she uses it?”

He did not answer.

“You have the right to be angry with her,” Malachi continued. “But you cannot endanger your entire race, the entire Lightworld, simply because you are angry. I know you too well, friend.

“A settlement of Faeries from the Upworld has sent an Ambassador. An uninvited, unannounced guest seeking an audience. Ayla does not understand the ways of Faeries as well as you do. She has been Queene a short time, and the ways of your Courts are hundreds of years old. Every step she has taken so far has been guided by your patient hand. She will badly mangle this on her own, and you know it.”

Cedric appeared to consider this, though Malachi knew he’d already settled this in his mind.

“I had planned to return, you know. I would not have left with things unfinished.”

It was a lie, but Malachi would pretend to believe it if it ensured Cedric’s return. “It makes me glad to hear it.”

“I will not stay, though.” Whether Cedric said this so that Malachi understood, or so he, himself, understood, Malachi could not tell. “I will return here, and I trust you will not come to find me for her, or tell her where I have gone.”

Malachi did not like to keep things secret from Ayla. But if she knew where Cedric had gone, she would seek him out for eternity. “I will not lie to her. If she guesses where you have gone, I will not lead her false. But I will not help her divine your location, either.”

The heavy breath Cedric let out was a sign of his concession. “I will return, to lend my help in this. But I urge you to promote Flidais above me in the Queene’s esteem. She is far wiser than I.”

“Clearly,” Malachi said with a nod toward the Human encampment. “She is not rushing off to live with mortals.”

The Ambassador from the Upworld was received at the evening audience. Cerridwen did her duty by her mother, standing at her side in the stifling, crowded throne room. She held her head high, so that she would not have to see her mother’s eyes, which flicked furtively to her now and again. Judging her, no doubt, looking for ways in which her daughter was failing yet again.

She also ignored the open stares of the Courtiers who’d witnessed the aftermath of her earlier humiliation. They, too, judged her, as if they had the authority. If she could burn them with her hatred, she would, but cold indifference was the only weapon she had against them. Their harsh stares and gleeful whispers were diverted, thankfully, when the herald announced the entrance of the Upworld Ambassador and his entourage. The throne-room doors scraped open and a hush fell. From the corner of her eye, Cerridwen noted her mother’s posture. Stiff. Formal. Intimidated.

The Faeries that approached the dais seemed far different than the Fae Underground. They were smaller, cleaner. Their clothes were made, it seemed, from natural materials found in the world above, rather than crafted from fabric the Humans above cast into the garbage. Their wings were unbound, their hair fell in tangled ropes, as if they had never cared to brush it out.

The one who led the group was quite handsome, Cerridwen decided, taking in his matted black hair and glowing skin. But he was not as handsome as Fenrick.

“Your Majesty,” he intoned with a deep bow, which seemed to somehow hold a hint of mockery. “We are honored to be received in your Court, having been sent by Her Most Glorious Majesty, Queene Danae—”

Queene Ayla snorted to interrupt him. “Queene? Thank the Gods, I thought only we lowly Lightworlders had succumbed to such mortal nonsense.”

She was, Cerridwen realized, jealous at the thought of another Queene. That thrilled an evil place in her, deep down, to know that her mother could be shaken. The Ambassador bowed again. “It is true, what you say, Your Majesty. We have found that, for our survival, leadership was necessary.”

“What is your name, Ambassador? Or shall I call you by your title?” The Queene leaned forward on the throne and made a show of examining him.

“You may call me Bauchan, for I am of their number.” The Ambassador, this Bauchan, was far wiser, in Cerridwen’s estimation, than her mother. This should have pleased her, but it frightened her, as well. Though she loathed her life in the Lightworld, in the Palace, she had never given thought to what might happen if it should one day come to an end. Is that what this visit portended? Would these Upworlders come here and take the Faery Court away?