Fey 02 - Changeling (18 page)

The severe flooding had damaged most of them.
 
During this last, long winter, Burden had felt that it was the Fey's fate to live in grayness.
  
The only difference outside Shadowlands was that the grayness contained rain.
 
He had finally asked Hanouk to control the rain and the flooding, and she had given him a withering look.
 
He had not had the power to ask, and she always pretended that he never had.

As he walked, he could see over the walls into the city of Jahn.
 
The walls had gone up shortly after the Fey arrived into the Settlement, another joint project by Fey and Islanders.
 
But unlike the barge on which Jewel and Nicholas held their marriage, this wall was a secret construction.
 
Burden never knew who started it, and he wasn't certain he wanted to know, but one morning he awoke with one side of the gate built.
 
The builders continued during the nights that followed, and he found a few Fey who confessed to adding to the gate.
 
But they never admitted to starting it.
 
He believed that the Islanders started the gate, hoping the Fey would continue it.
 
And they had.

He wiped his face with the back of his hand, trying not to get too much mud on his features.
 
Hanouk's cabin was straight ahead, its boards the only ones unaffected by the weather which was, Burden had always thought, a supreme irony.
 
Hanouk would help herself, but not her fellow Fey.

The cabin was larger than the others, since Hanouk outranked most of the Fey in the Settlement.
 
She had four rooms where the luckiest of the rest had two.
 
The wood was still its natural light brown, the building still looking sharp and new.
 
The only signs around the cabin that showed the heavy rains were the standing water on the walk outside.
 

The door was open.
 
He took a deep breath before mounting the wide stones Hanouk used as steps.
 
It had been a long time since he had seen Jewel alone.
 
He had spoken to her briefly after her marriage, and she had seemed distant, completely unlike the Jewel he had known.
 
The Jewel he had grown up with had been a fierce adventurer, a worthy heir to the Black King's throne.
 
The woman he had seen had been an Islander wife, content to speak about her husband in soft, admiring tones.

He had seen her again when she had brought her strange child to his healers.
 
He had refused to look at the boy, hearing rumors that the child was not natural.
 
His response had hurt Jewel then, but nothing like she had hurt him.

After that, Burden had spoken to Jewel through the Fey channels she had set up with the human palace, and then he had spoken to her only rarely.
 
That she would come to see him was a shock.

He took the steps slowly, his untreated boots sliding on the stone.
 
He knocked as he stepped across the threshold, and someone moved inside the house.
 
Hanouk had not come back.
 
In a moment he would see Jewel.

He wanted the meeting under his control.
 
He stepped inside and blinked at the darkness.
 
Hanouk had left a fire, but it was burning out, and there was no more wood stacked beside the fireplace.
 
A small table stood in front of an oversized chair — clearly Hanouk's favorite place — and decorations of cloth hung from the walls.
 
Burden didn't take the time to examine them, however.
 
Instead he glanced around until he saw Jewel.
 

She was standing near one of the other chairs, this one filled with stuffing, clearly Domestic made.
 
Her hand rested on its back, and her body was hidden by its frame.
 
Even so, the marks pregnancy had left on her were very visible.
 
Her face was fuller, her hair darker.
 
But unlike most pregnant Fey, she did not seem radiant.
 
Her features were drawn and her skin was ashen.

Then the possibility that had missed him initially came to mind.
 
Perhaps she needed his help.
 
Perhaps the bargain was as bad as he had feared.
 
Perhaps she needed a way to escape the palace.

"Are you all right?" he asked, making certain his voice held the tenderness he felt.

Her smile was small.
 
"The last month is always hard," she said.

For a moment, he didn't know what she was referring to.
 
Then he realized she was talking about her pregnancy.

"And there has been a lot of strain."
 
She brushed a strand of hair off her face, a gesture so familiar that it made his heart ache.
 
"I need to talk to you, Burden, as an old friend."

"Certainly," he said and pulled the door closed.
 
The light from the fire provided the only illumination.
 
For some reason, Hanouk had preferred a Shadowlands tradition — a home with no windows.
 
He took one of the other chairs and pulled it closer to the fire.
 
"Would you like to sit, Jewel?"

She nodded.
 
She braced herself with one hand on the chair, and emerged from behind its back.
 
He had to work at keeping his expression neutral.
 
Her belly was swollen, and rode low against her hips.
 
She wore a long dress made of a shiny brown cloth he had never seen before.
 
Although she hadn't worn dresses much in the
 
past, this one made sense.
 
Fey women often wore long dresses during pregnancy.
 
She was as thin as ever — the weight gain in her face had probably been his imagination.
 
He had expected to see the pregnancy, but what he had not expected was the slow deliberateness with which she moved.
 
Jewel had always been rapid heat, lightning quick, and full of grace.
 
She had never moved with the care she moved with now.

She grabbed the arms of her chair to pull it closer to the fire, and he shook his head.
 
"This one, Jewel," he said.

Her smile was small, tight, and grateful.
 
She brushed past him as she walked, and he recognized her familiar scent of cinnamon and sunshine.
 
A quick flare of desire ran through him.
 
He had forgotten how much he missed her.

She gripped the arms of the chair he was holding and eased herself into it.
 
Then she sighed.
 
Her long black braid brushed his hands.
 
He stared at it for a moment before letting go.

He walked over to the fire and peered into it.
 
The flames were tiny, hesitant, just as he was feeling.

"Aren't you going to sit?" she asked.

He shook his head.
 
"I don't want to get this mud on Hanouk's furniture."

"I think," Jewel said in a tone that told him she was really smiling for the first time since he saw her, "that Hanouk of all people is prepared for these things."

Special Domestic-made furniture.
 
Of course, her furniture would be able to handle the effects of weather.
 
He took the chair Jewel had left, pulled it closer to the fire and sank into it.
 
A tingling along the back of his legs told him she had been right.

"You look tired, Jewel."
 
He leaned back and rested his elbows on the arms of the chair.
 
"Are you all right?"

"A lot of strain," she said again.
 
"And the baby."

She put a hand protectively over her stomach.
 
For the first time since he had come in, he got a real sense of her.
 
She wanted this child, but she was afraid for it.
 
He wondered what had gone wrong with the other one.
 
Mixed Fey were always more powerful than Fey.

"I need your help," she said, her voice soft.
 
She paused.

"Is it Nicholas?" Burden asked into the silence.
 
"What's he done?"

"No.
 
Nicholas has done exactly what he said he would." She sighed, and brushed her hair away from her face.
 
The gesture was a nervous one.
 
Burden had never realized that before.
 
"I don't suppose you heard the news.
 
About Alexander."

"The King?"
 
Burden hadn't been outside the Settlement in days.
  
Not that it would have mattered.
 
He tried not to pay any attention to news any more.
 
Too distracting.
 
He needed instead to concentrate on the Settlement and his own undeveloped — and unknown — magical powers.

"He's been murdered, Burden."
 
Jewel leaned back and closed her eyes.
 
"Far from here.
 
In the Kenniland Marshes."

"The Islanders finally got tired of him, huh?"
 
Burden smiled.
 
He felt no regret about this one, except, perhaps that he should have listened to Jewel in the first place.
 
"So you're in power now.
 
Good.
 
What do you need me for?"

"It's not that simple."
 
Only her mouth moved.
 
It looked as if she were talking in her sleep.
 
"The Rocaan believes that a Fey murdered Alexander.
 
I think he may be right."

"In the Marshes?
 
Really, Jewel.
 
We have enough trouble getting around Jahn."
 
A tension built in Burden's shoulders.
 
The relaxed, listening posture he had adopted had suddenly become uncomfortable.
 
He sat up and took his elbows off the chair arms.

"The Marshes are apparently flat and wide with few trees.
 
Alexander was murdered with a single arrow through his heart.
 
Even though his guards searched the area, they found no one.
 
The Rocaan says only Fey can disappear that easily.
 
I think he might be right."

"Jewel, that man hates us.
 
To agree with him —." Burden sucked in his breath.
 
"You really do believe him, don't you?"

"It would, as you say, bring me closer to power.
 
But they're trying to blame me for this."
 
She opened her eyes.
 
She had deep shadows beneath them.
 
"Not Nicholas, but the Rocaan and the others.
 
They think I did it."

"So why come to me?"

She rubbed her hand along the top of her belly.
 
Her eyes opened wider and then her gaze pinned him.
 
In it, he saw the fierce Jewel of old.
 
"Forgive me, Burden, but I need to know.
 
Did you or one of your people assassinate Alexander?"

He felt a slight chill, even though he sat close to the heat of the dying fire.
 
Assassinate the King?
 
It had been the farthest thing from his mind.
 
Mending the houses, staving off the rain, making sure his people had enough to eat.
 
Those things preoccupied him.
 
It should be obvious to her, but it wasn't.
 
She actually thought he might assassinate the Islander King, as if that would make a different to the Fey plight.

"Jewel," he said, struggling to keep his voice calm.
 
"If I were going to do something like that, I would slit him with my sword, in the palace, just so that I could get credit for the murder."

Her lips tightened.
 
"I'm serious, Burden."

"I am too."

She stared at him a moment, her eyes moving back and forth as if she were trying to read hidden messages on his face.
 
Then she sighed.
 
"Are you sure none of your people did this?"

She was determined.
 
She wanted to pin this death on a Fey.
 
"Look around you, Jewel," he said.
 
"No one in the Settlement has time to travel to the Marshes, plan and commit a murder, and return.
 
We barely get enough to eat."