Midnight Never Come (15 page)

But elegance and beauty were not the only things that mattered; Dame Halgresta and her two brothers proved that. Raw ugliness and power had their places, too.

Lune caught the bread and examined it; she had been shorted on her ration more than once. The lump was large enough to make up the requisite seven bites, though, and so she tucked it away in her purse. “So what you got?” Gresh asked, scratching through the patchy, wiry hairs of his beard. “Make it quick — just the important stuff — got better things to do with my time than sit under some drippy tree listening to gossip.” He glared up at the willow’s swaying branches as if personally offended by them.

She had spent much of the day planning out what she would say to Vidar, how she would answer the questions she anticipated him asking. Faced with only Gresh, she felt rather deflated. “The Earl of Tyrone is likely to come before the privy council again soon,” she said. “If her Majesty wishes to take some action, that would be an opportune time; he is an ambitious man, and a contentious one. He can be bought or provoked, as needed.”

Gresh picked something out of his beard, examined it, then threw it away with a disappointed sigh. “What about what’s-his-face? The one you supposed to be watching. Not the Irish fellow.”

“Walsingham may be my assignment,” Lune said evenly, “but he is not the only way to advance our Queen’s interests at court. I began with the most significant news.”

“Planning to bore me with insignificant news?”

“
Less
significant is not the same as
insignificant.
”

“Dunna waste time arguing; just get on with it.”

Tedious experience had taught her that Gresh could neither be charmed nor intimidated into better behavior. It simply wasn’t in his nature. Lune swallowed her irritation and went on. “Walsingham continues to defend Sir John Perrot against the accusation of treason. His health has been poor, though. If he has to take another leave of absence, Robert Beale will likely stand in for him with the privy council, as he has done before, but while Beale will follow his master’s wishes, he will be less effective of an advocate for Perrot.”

Gresh scrunched his brows together in either pain or intense thought, then brightened. “Walserthingy, Wasserwhatsit . . . oh, right! Something I was supposed to ask you.” He feigned a pensive look. “Or should I make you wait for it?”

Lune didn’t bother to respond to that; it would only amuse him more.

“Right, so, Water-whoever. Got some mortal fellow dangling that serves him, right?”

“Michael Deven.”

“Sure, him. How loyal’s he?”

“To me?”

“To his master.”

She hadn’t expected that question. To buy herself time, Lune said, “He has been in Walsingham’s service since approximately a year and a half ago —”

Gresh snorted, a phlegmy sound. “Ain’t asking for a history. Would your mortal pup betray him?”

Her nerves hummed like harpstrings brought suddenly into tune. Lune said carefully, “It depends on what you mean by betrayal. Would he act directly against Walsingham’s interests?” She didn’t even have to ponder it. “No. Deven, like his master, is dedicated to the well-being of England and Elizabeth. At most, his opinion on how to serve that well-being might differ from Walsingham’s. I suppose if it differed enough, and he thought the situation critical enough, he might take action on his own. But a direct betrayal? Never. The most he has done so far is indiscreetly share some information he should have kept secret.”

“That so?” Gresh greeted this with an eager leer. “Like what?”

Lune kept her shrug deliberately careless. “Matters I have already shared with her Majesty. If you are not privy to them, that is no concern of mine.”

“Aw, c’mon.” The goblin pouted — a truly hideous sight. “No new scraps you could toss the way of this poor, bored soul?”

Why was he pressing? “No. I have nothing new to report.”

It could have been the wind that stirred the branches of the willow. By the time she realized it wasn’t, the knife was already at her throat.

“Really,” Vidar breathed in her ear, his voice soft with malice. “Would you care to rethink that statement, Lady Lune?”

Gresh cackled and did a little dance.

She closed her eyes before they could betray her. More than they already had. With sight gone, her other senses were sharpened; she heard every quiet tap as the willow’s bare branches met and parted, the chill whistling of the damp spring breeze. Frost left a hard crust on the ground and a hard scent in the air.

The edge against her throat rasped imperceptibly across her flesh as she inhaled, its touch light enough to leave the skin unbroken, firm enough to remind her of the blade’s presence.

“Have you heard something to the contrary, Lord Ifarren?” she asked, moving her jaw as little as possible.

His left arm was wrapped around her waist, nails digging in hard enough to be felt through the boning of her bodice. Vidar was taller than her, but with his skeletal build, he weighed about the same. What would Gresh do, if she tried to fight Vidar?

There was no point in trying. Even if she got the knife away from him, what would she do? Kill him? Invidiana had been known to turn a blind eye to the occasional murder, but Lune doubted this one would go unremarked. If she could even best the faerie lord.

He laughed silently; she felt it where his body pressed against her back. “How very evasive an answer, Lady Lune.” Vidar pronounced her title like a threat. “I have heard something very interesting indeed. I have heard that you spoke with that mortal toy of yours.”

“I speak with him often.” The words came out perfectly unruffled, as if they stood in ordinary discourse.

“Not so often as you might. You should have told me he was at Richmond without you.”

“My apologies, my lord. It was an oversight.”

Another silent laugh. “Oh, I am sure. But this recent conversation — that is the one that interests me. A little whisper has said he told you something of import.” His grip tightened around her waist, and the knife pressed closer. “Something you have not shared.”

She knew the conversation he meant. There was no way the draca could have heard it; they stood in the palace kennel at the time, well away from the river. What manner of fae could have overheard them without being seen?

A black dog, perhaps — some skriker or brash. Hidden in among the hounds. But how much had it heard?

Not everything, or Vidar would not be here now, forcing the information out of her. But she had to be very careful of what she said.

She opened her eyes. Gresh had vanished, his duty done; if he was eavesdropping, that would be Vidar’s problem.

“Sir Francis Walsingham,” she said, “has begun to suspect.”

Vidar went still against her back. Then his arm uncurled; the elfin lord kept the knife against her throat as he circled around to stand in front of her. His black eyes glittered in the near-total darkness.

“What did you say?” he whispered.

She wet her lips before she could suppress the nervous movement. “The Principal Secretary has begun to suspect that someone unknown to him has a hand in English politics.”

“What has he seen?”

The question lashed out like a whip. But it was easier for Lune to retain her composure, even with the knife still against her skin, now that her body was not pressed to Vidar’s in violently intimate embrace. “Seen? Nothing. He suspects only.” She had to give him more than that. “The recent events concerning Ireland have caught his attention. He is beginning to look back at past matters, such as the Queen of Scots.”

Vidar’s shoulders rose fractionally with tension. Lune knew that one would worry him.

“And what,” Vidar said, his voice now hard with control, “will he do with his suspicions?”

Lune shook her head, then froze as she felt the knife scrape her throat once more. “I do not know. Deven does not know. Walsingham spoke of it only briefly, and that in a confused fashion. He has not been well; Deven thinks this a feverish delusion brought on by overwork.”

She stood motionless, briefly forgotten as Vidar considered her words. The black dog — if that was the watcher in question — could not have heard them over the racket the other hounds were making. He had only seen them talking, and surmised from her reaction that whatever Deven spoke of was important. Vidar’s sharp reaction to her first declaration had made that plain.

Which meant that she could afford to bend the truth — within limits.

Vidar’s gaze sharpened and turned back to her. “So,” he said. “You learned of this — a clear and immediate threat to the Queen’s grace and the security of our people — and you chose to keep the information to yourself.” His lips peeled back from his teeth in mockery of a smile. “Explain why.”

Lune sniffed derisively. “Why? I should think it obvious, even to you. This is the kind of situation that makes people stop thinking, sends them into a blind panic wherein they strike out at the perceived threat, thinking only to destroy it. Which might be a terrible waste of opportunity.”

“Opportunity.” Vidar relaxed his arm; the knife moved away, though it still glimmered in his hand, unsheathed and ready. “Opportunity for Lady Lune, perhaps — at the expense of the Onyx Court, and all the fae who shelter under its power.”

She wondered if this rhetoric came from their habit of copying mortals. The greater good of the Onyx Court, and the faerie race as a whole, was occasionally deployed as a justification for certain actions, or an exhortation to loyalty. It might have carried more force had it not been only an occasional device — or if anyone had believed it to be more than empty words. “Not in the slightest,” she said, keeping her voice even and unperturbed. “I am no fool; what gain could there possibly be for me, betraying her Majesty in such a manner? But I am better positioned than any to see which direction Walsingham moves, what action he takes. And I tell you that quick action would be inadvisable here. Far better to watch him, and to move subtly, when fortune should offer us a chance.” She allowed herself an ironic smile. “Even should he uncover the times and places in which we have intervened, I hardly expect he will imagine fae to be the culprits.”

And that was true enough. But Vidar’s malicious smile had returned. “I wonder what her Majesty would think of your logic?”

Beneath the facade of her composure, Lune’s heart skipped several beats.

“I might not tell her.” Vidar examined the point of his dagger, scraping some imagined fleck of dirt off it with one talonlike fingernail. “It would be a risk to me, of course — if she found out . . . but I might be willing to offer you that mercy, Lady Lune.”

She had to ask; he was waiting for it. “At what price?”

His eyes glittered at her over the blade in his hands. “Your silence. At some point in the future, I will bid you keep some knowledge to yourself. Something commensurate with what I do for you now. And you will be bound, by your word, to keep that matter from the Queen.”

She could translate that well enough. He was binding her to be his accomplice in some future bid to take the Onyx Throne.

Yet what was her alternative? Say to him,
So tell the Queen, and be damned,
and then warn Invidiana of Vidar’s ambition? She knew of it already, and he had not said anything specific enough to condemn him. At which point Lune would be dependent on nothing more than the mercy of a merciless Queen.

Lune kept from grinding her teeth by force of will, and said in a voice that sounded only a little strained, “Very well.”

Vidar lowered the knife. “Your word upon it.”

He was leaving nothing to chance. Lune swallowed down bile and said, “In ancient Mab’s name, I swear to repay this favor with favor, of commensurate kind and value, when you should upon a future occasion ask for it, and to let no word of it reach the Queen.”

That, or remove him as a threat before he ever had occasion to ask.
Sun and Moon,
Lune thought despairingly,
how did I reach such a state, that I should be swearing myself to Vidar?

The dagger vanished as if it had never been. “Excellent,” Vidar said, and smiled that toothy smile. “I look forward to hearing your future reports, Lady Lune.”

O
ATLANDS
P
ALACE
, S
URREY
:
March 14, 1590

Standing at attention beside the door that led from the presence chamber to the privy chamber, Deven fixed his eyes on the far wall and let his ears do the work. It was a tedious duty, and a footsore one — shifting one’s weight was frowned upon — but it did afford him a good opportunity to eavesdrop. He had come to suspect that Elizabeth’s penchant for conversing in a variety of languages was as much an obfuscatory tactic as a demonstration of her learning; her courtiers were a polyglot assortment, following the lead of their Queen, but few could speak every language she did. He himself was often defeated by her rapid-fire speech, but he had enough Italian now to sift out the gist of a sentence, and his French was in fine practice. So he stared off into the distance, poleax held precisely upright, and listened.

He listened particularly for talk of Ireland.

A hidden player, Walsingham had said. Deven had already calculated that any such player must either have the right of entrée to the presence chamber — likely the privy chamber as well — or else must have followers with such a right. The former made more sense, as one could not effectively influence the machinery of court at a distance for long, but he couldn’t assume it too firmly.

Unfortunately, though a great many people were barred from entry, a great many were not. Peers of the realm, knights, gentlemen — even some wealthy merchants — ambassadors, too. Could it be one of them? Neither the Spanish nor the French would have reason to urge Mary’s execution on Elizabeth, and they had little enough reason to care what happened in Ireland, though part of the accusations against both Perrot and the Earl of Tyrone were that they had conspired with the Spanish.

But ambassadors came and went. If Walsingham was correct, this player had been active for decades. They made poor suspects, unless the true players were their more distant sovereigns — but those were already on the board, so to speak.