The Solstice Cup (16 page)

Finian pulled her backward so quickly that she nearly lost her balance. He shoved her through the nearest doorway. He was halfway through after her when a woman's voice called out to him.

“Is that you, Piper? You're out of bed early.”

Mackenzie froze.

“Aye, 'tis me, my lady,” Finian said, backing out into the hallway again. “I couldn't sleep. I've been composing something special for tonight's ceremony.”

Mackenzie heard suspicion in the faery's voice. “Do you always compose so far from your chamber?”

“Indeed, my lady,” Finian said smoothly. “My best pieces always come to me as my feet are wandering. And may I ask why you are awake so early this morning?”

“It's not early—it's late,” the faery said with a girlish laugh. “I haven't been to bed yet. Perhaps you could escort me there and play a simple tune to put me to sleep.”

From the shadows, Mackenzie saw Finian give a gallant bow. “Nothing would please me more.”

“He's coming back,” Mackenzie told herself as she waited, crouched down in an empty room with Breanne's mantle pressed to her chest. “He has to come back.” Her ears strained for the sound of approaching footsteps, but the corridor outside remained silent.

“Come on, where are you, Finian?”

She gave him ten minutes, until the count of six hundred. She gave him five minutes more, and then five after that. By the time it added up to half an hour, she was too anxious to sit any longer.

“I can find the way,” Mackenzie told herself as she reentered the hallway. “I go straight, and then I turn left—”

Any confidence she had evaporated at the end of the corridor. There was a junction, but both arms of the T ended abruptly at blank walls. Mackenzie retraced her steps. There was an entrance to another passage just down from the room where she'd waited for Finian. She followed it several yards until it led around a corner—and she found herself dead-ended again.

Mackenzie hit the wall with her fist. “There
has
to be a way out,” she said desperately.

She spun around at a rustling noise behind her. When a gray-hooded girl turned the corner with a large jug in her arms, she let out her breath. It was Deirdre, Nuala's redheaded attendant.

Mackenzie didn't wait for her heart to settle. “Please,” she begged. “You have to help me! I need to get back, but all the hallways just end, like this one—” She turned to indicate the wall behind her, but it was no longer there. “What?” The corridor continued in a straight line as far as she could see.

“Right, the ways don't trust me. It opened for you.” Mackenzie turned back to the servant, who had stopped a few paces away. “Please—I have to get to my room before Nuala gets there!”

The attendant's face remained impassive.

“Do you understand anything I'm saying?” Mackenzie asked, shaking her head in frustration. She started again, pronouncing each syllable carefully this time. “Are you going anywhere near my chamber? Because I could just follow if you are—”

She moved aside as she spoke, out of the attendant's path. The hooded girl came toward her and then walked past.

“I guess that's the best answer I'm going to get,” said Mackenzie. “All right then, I'm right behind you.”

They made it all the way to the corridor outside the chamber Mackenzie shared with her sister. Mackenzie's chest felt lighter the instant they turned the corner and she recognized the hallway. They were almost at the door—twenty paces away, then ten, then five—when Mackenzie heard an unmistakable jingling sound coming from an adjoining passage.

Half a dozen panicked thoughts raced through Mackenzie's mind as she swiveled to face the girl who'd been escorting her. In the split second that their eyes connected, Mackenzie thought she saw some emotion flicker across the attendant's face. She couldn't wait to find out for sure. She flew to her room, fumbling with the buttons of her outer garment as she ran.

Mackenzie was still pulling the gown over her head when she heard the sound of pottery shattering a short distance down the hall. Nuala's voice followed immediately, angry hisses and clicks that could only be curses. The distraction bought Mackenzie just enough time. She shoved the mantle under the mattress of the canopy bed and dove under the covers beside her sister. She had just chewed one of her fingernails to make it ragged when Nuala appeared at the door, still berating the girl in the hall.

Mackenzie left her hands above the quilted coverlet. She closed her eyes and prayed that her pounding heart and trembling limbs would pass for symptoms of the solstice fire she was supposed to have drunk two nights before.

She could hardly breathe as jingling footsteps approached the bed. There was a faint earthy smell, like a garden after a storm. Mackenzie felt a slight disturbance in the air above her face. It took all of her will not to flinch when the faery's fingers landed on her cheek.

“Are you dreaming of pretty things?” Nuala whispered as she stroked Mackenzie's skin. “I'm so glad you finally gave in.”

Mackenzie forced herself to breathe evenly.

“And you,” Nuala said, reaching past Mackenzie to Breanne. “I see your eyes fluttering, like moths still trapped in their cocoons. Don't worry—you won't be stuck in this bed much longer. I'll return this evening to help you both get up.”

Mackenzie felt the silk of Nuala's wide sleeve trail over her hands. There was no time to think, no time to summon courage. She moaned softly and shifted position, as if she were stirring in her sleep. Her fingers scratched blindly at the fabric above them, and she felt a thread catch on her nail. “Please, oh please,” she begged silently as her thumb joined her finger to tug at the tiny fiber. Her hand went limp a second later. She'd done as much as she dared.

An awful silence had fallen over the bed. Mackenzie made herself exhale as she waited to find out if she'd been discovered.

Inhale, exhale, slowly, deliberately.

She could hear her heart racing, could feel the sweat beading on her forehead. Just when she was sure her heart was going to explode, she heard the faery's voice.

“For a moment I thought you were awake,” Nuala said softly. Her finger traced a path down Mackenzie's arm. “But of course you're not. You won't wake until I bring the herbs to rouse you this evening, will you?”

The faery's weight left the bed. “Until then, sleep tight, my sweet child.”

Nuala had been gone for at least half an hour before Mackenzie felt safe enough to move. She raised her right hand toward the light of the nearest candle as she sat up carefully. What she saw between her finger and thumb made her so relieved that she shook her sister's shoulder.

“I got it! Oh, thank goodness—I got it! Let's hope it's enough.”

It was a silver thread, barely a few inches long. Mackenzie held on to it carefully, hardly daring to breathe as she slid out of bed. With her free hand, she felt under the mattress for Breanne's mantle. Inside the folded mantle was a pouch with the needle Maigret had given her. She threaded the needle with the silver thread and stitched it into the coarse fabric of the mantle. There was enough thread to make a few tiny stitches, but not enough to knot it at the end.

Mackenzie surveyed her handiwork doubtfully. “It
has
to stay in.” She shook her head and pulled the short thread out again. This time she knotted the thread around a single fiber and then used the blunt end of the needle to work the free ends of the thread into the weave on either side of the knot.

“That's better.”

She pulled up the light shift she was wearing and wrapped the mantle around her waist so that it lay flat against her skin. She secured it with a slender piece of twine and pulled the shift back down again. The mantle was all but invisible beneath the loose undergarment.

After that, there was nothing Mackenzie could do but wait. She climbed into bed beside her sister and closed her eyes, with no expectation of sleep. Every muscle in her body was tense. Her mind stumbled down one anxious path after another.

In the end, exhaustion prevailed. Clinging to the top cover as if it were a life raft, Mackenzie drifted into a deep sleep not even dreams could reach.

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

M
ackenzie woke retching. A sharp smell under her nose had pulled her back to consciousness.

“There, there,” said a familiar voice. “You'll be fine in a moment.”

Mackenzie blinked, trying to orient herself. The room was full of pale green light, as if somehow a bit of solstice fire had been brought inside. Nuala sat on the edge of the bed in a scarlet cloak. The hood of her cloak was raised so that only the lower half of her face was visible. Mackenzie saw a bundle of herbs disappear under the faery's cloak as Nuala withdrew her hand and stood up.

Mackenzie blinked again. Her mouth tasted metallic and she felt sluggish, as if she'd been drugged. Her head pounded dully. It took her a few seconds to realize that it was not her pulse she could hear, but a drum beating somewhere deep in the faery compound.

She let one of Nuala's attendants help her out of bed. Behind her, she was vaguely aware of a second attendant assisting Breanne to her feet. Mackenzie raised her arms, and the first attendant slid a seamless white gown over her shift. The front of the dress's hem clung briefly to Mackenzie's undergarment at the level of her hips. It was only as the attendant was tugging it down, smoothing the bottom of the dress with her hands, that Mackenzie remembered the mantle hidden at her waist.

Her heart instantly accelerated. She was fully awake, all sluggishness gone. It was all she could do not to flee the room at the thought of how close she might have come to being discovered. As if the distant drummer could sense her agitation, the drumbeat got stronger and faster. Another drum joined the first, and then another one, until the room echoed with every muffled beat.

Nuala nodded her head, and the attendant who had clothed Mackenzie draped a white cloak over Mackenzie's shoulders. An identical cloak was wrapped around Breanne. Nuala nodded again, and her attendants each took a white-robed girl by the hand and led them to the door.

Mackenzie desperately wanted to look back at her sister as they traveled down the first hallway. Instead she forced herself to stare forward, to walk slowly and deliberately as if she were still in a trance. As the drums got more insistent, Mackenzie's fingers curled more tightly around the attendant's hand. Everything inside her felt clenched. She could barely breathe.

They reached the surface too quickly. Mackenzie couldn't help hesitating at the giant doorway. She had to take an extra half step to fall in stride with her escort again, but no one seemed to notice.

There were no tables in the courtyard this time. Instead, tiered stone seats rose to form an amphitheater. At the center was a huge faery bonfire, its green and white flames stretching like columns all the way to the sky.