The Queen's Price, page 33
“You’ll thank me for it,” Anya had said.
Squeals. Stomps. And the small thunder of a stampede that Ryder stopped by throwing a shield across the open stable doors. Blocked by the shield, the handful of foals she’d played with yesterday stared at her, then squealed their demands for attention.
“Saeti and Shelby have to go to puppy school now,” Ryder said, raising his voice enough to be heard. “Saeti can play with you when they get back.”
Before she could give an opinion about that, Kieran boosted her into the pony cart and picked up Shelby. The moment he was seated, he told the Warlord pulling the cart to go.
“They won’t settle down for Ryder while you’re in sight,” he said, holding Shelby in his lap.
“I’m not sure . . .”
“Did you play with the foals yesterday?”
“Yes.”
“Did you think they would forget?”
“I . . .” She hadn’t considered that an hour of play might get her into trouble.
“As a human adult, or close enough when compared to their age, you have to help Ryder maintain the rules. Otherwise, we’ll have an unruly bunch of youngsters who will be bigger and stronger than a lot of humans can handle by the time they’re old enough to receive their Birthright Jewels.”
“I don’t have to play with them if it will cause trouble.” More trouble.
Kieran just looked at her.
Saetien sighed. There had been foals born at the Hall. Hadn’t there? Maybe she hadn’t paid much attention since she couldn’t ride them? Or maybe she’d just admired them and petted them but somehow hadn’t become a playmate?
“Is there anything I should know about puppy school?” she asked.
“It’s an experience,” Kieran replied.
After an hour of puppy school, Saetien decided that Kieran could have been a little more forthcoming about the “experience” of having that many kindred Scelties in one place. There were human teachers, and adult Scelties who were also teachers. And then there were the other helping hands who were supposed to corral and occupy the fuzz balls who were waiting their turn at a lesson or had finished a lesson.
If she stayed on her feet, the puppies, who had not yet absorbed the necessity of basic manners, scratched at her legs, clamoring to be petted or held or brushed or some combination of those things. If she sat on the floor to accommodate a pile of puppies in her lap, the ones standing behind her grabbed her braid and began an invigorating game of tug. When she’d finally rescued her hair, she stuffed it under her sweater—which, of course, was the hiding game, and the puppies who had learned to air walk clung to her shoulders while they grabbed the part of the braid they could see in order to pull the prize out of its hiding place.
Shelby was delighted with the lessons, delighted with the games, delighted to be around other puppies.
The teachers were delighted to have another human to help with the teaching games—although the female teachers suggested that she put her hair up tomorrow so that it wouldn’t be mistaken for a toy.
Was she really coming back tomorrow?
The pony cart, minus Kieran, waited for her when she walked out of the school.
“Home,” she told the Warlord. “Please.”
Since there were no reins on a vehicle pulled by one of the kindred, she let the Warlord take care of getting them home and closed her eyes. Just for a minute. Surely only a minute. Except the next thing she knew, Kildare was giving her a little shake.
Saetien opened her eyes.
Squeal. Stomp. Small thunder up to the paddock fence.
A handful of foals stared at her.
Kildare helped her down and smiled. “You’ll build up stamina. But if you’re seeing Butler this evening, you might want to have a little sleep after the midday meal.”
“That’s a good idea.”
Remembering that Ryder had promised the foals that she would play with them on her return, Saetien removed her sweater and vanished it as she walked to the paddock, where she would be the only two-legged contestant in the races.
* * *
* * *
“You said Surreal helped my father escape the guards who were hunting for him,” Saetien said. “What happened to him after that?”
“You’ll have to ask him,” Butler replied.
“Why? I’m asking you.”
They were standing on either side of the gate in the picket fence. She wondered why he didn’t invite her inside. She wondered if, unlike the outside, which looked well maintained—if you didn’t look too closely at the flower beds—the inside of the cottage was a decaying mess. After all, he’d been living there for a long time.
Then again, her family had been living at SaDiablo Hall for a very long time, and no one could say any room in that huge place was untidy, let alone a mess.
No one would dare—at least not in Helene’s hearing.
“I don’t know your father’s story,” Butler said. “I don’t know what happened to him between the last night that he saw Jaenelle and when he arrived in Kaeleer thirteen years later. Besides, we’re not here to talk about your father.”
How much of her father’s past—and Uncle Lucivar’s—would she know if she’d listened to the stories they’d shared during family gatherings?
“Why did Wilhelmina come to Kaeleer?” Maybe it wasn’t the right question to ask next, since, like Daemon Sadi, Wilhelmina didn’t arrive in Kaeleer until thirteen years after the night her sister was taken away for the last time.
“Whenever she was afraid, whenever she felt threatened, she would hold on to that Sapphire Jewel and hear Jaenelle’s voice telling her to come to Kaeleer, telling her she would be safe in Kaeleer. There weren’t many in Terreille who knew how to open the Gates between the Realms, so she might not have known how to reach the Shadow Realm. She could have gone to Ebon Askavi and asked for sanctuary. The ones who look after the Keep in Terreille would have opened the Gate there and escorted her to the Keep in Kaeleer. For whatever reason, she didn’t attempt to reach the Shadow Realm until the last service fair.”
“Did she feel threatened living with her family?”
“Yes.” Butler stared at something in the distance. A physical distance, or the distance of time and memory? “One of Jaenelle’s friends in Briarwood urged her to create a trap for the uncles—the men who used that place for sex and other gratifications they couldn’t afford to indulge in elsewhere—a trap that would be sprung if Jaenelle’s blood was spilled.”
A room and a bed. And blood. So much blood.
“And that’s what Jaenelle did. She wove a tangled web that took in Briarwood, was Briarwood. She included her friends—both the ghosts and the demon-dead—and she created the pretty poison. To each was given what he gave. That became the price of Briarwood.
“The last time Jaenelle was taken to that place, she was raped by a man named Greer, who was Dorothea SaDiablo’s favorite assassin—until Surreal found him in Briarwood and slit his throat.”
The first time she had walked through Briarwood, she’d seen the moment when Surreal killed that man.
“I bet Rose was the one who talked Jaenelle into making that trap,” she muttered. Rose had been her sharp-tongued, unsympathetic guide when she’d seen Briarwood.
“Yes,” Butler snapped, “she was.”
She didn’t know how, but she’d just stepped onto dangerous ground.
After a moment, Butler said, “There was some justice to Surreal being Greer’s executioner, since Greer had killed her mother when Surreal was twelve. Slit Titian’s throat.” Butler’s eyes held a strange glitter. “Titian made the transition to demon-dead and became the Queen of the Harpies. She had no use for men except as prey, but she did respect Daemon because he was Tersa’s son and he had helped her and Surreal, and she allied herself with Saetan to protect Jaenelle. If you were a man, even someone who served in the Dark Court, you needed to be very careful if you crossed paths with Titian.”
Was her cousin Titian named in honor of Surreal’s mother, just as she’d been named for . . .
“What does all that have to do with Wilhelmina feeling threatened?”
“That night the trap was sprung, and Briarwood caught every man who used that place. It took a while for the uncles to understand that the relentless pain and nightmares of being tortured and raped, of feeling hands or legs being cut off, of feeling the terror and slow death caused by suffocation after someone walled them into an alcove specially made for such a punishment . . . It took a while for them to realize that they were feeling everything the children had felt—because there were a few boys there too. They wouldn’t admit the truth, so all of those men from the important aristo houses sought out Healers. But the Healers couldn’t find anything wrong with the men, had no explanation for the pain that was slowly consuming those men.” Butler’s smile had a nasty edge. “There is no cure for Briarwood. Some of those men tried to seek relief from the pain by choosing the physical death, but they couldn’t succeed until they had paid the debt they owed. Then their bodies could die. But they hadn’t known that the High Lord of Hell would be very interested in them once they made the transition to demon-dead. Saetan found out a great deal about Briarwood. More than Jaenelle would ever want him to know. But she had nightmares about that place all her life, and she sometimes talked in her sleep, so Saetan wasn’t the only one who learned the truth about Briarwood.”
Marjane. Myrol and Rebecca. Dannie. Rose. When she’d walked through the memory of Briarwood, had she seen any of the girls who had been walled in? Or had Witch spared her that much?
“Some of the uncles believed that having sex with a virgin would cure them,” Butler continued after a minute. “Being one of the afflicted, Robert Benedict—or Uncle Bobby, as Jaenelle had called him—targeted Wilhelmina to be his cure. Philip Alexander intervened when he was home, but he was often absent while escorting Leland or Alexandra, which left Wilhelmina vulnerable. When she gathered the courage to tell Alexandra that Robert was trying to force himself on her, the Queen of Chaillot refused to believe her. She was making things up, trying to cause trouble by telling tales. Like her sister had done before she disappeared.
“Wilhelmina ran away, went into hiding with the help of a stable lad named Andrew who, at some point, lost an eye while trying to protect her. There was some speculation that Philip had found her, but he denied it, finally trying to do the right thing for one of his girls. No one had any news about Wilhelmina until she showed up in Kaeleer. And the person who made that discovery and broke that news to Alexandra was Dorothea SaDiablo.”
“Why would Dorothea care about Wilhelmina?” Saetien asked.
“She didn’t. But shortly before that last service fair, Daemon Sadi showed the most powerful and uncorrupted witches in Chaillot the truth about Briarwood, and Alexandra was about to be unseated as the Territory Queen because many of those powerful witches had lost young relatives in that place. When Alexandra learned that Wilhelmina was in Kaeleer and being controlled by a Warlord Prince who also controlled an eccentric girl who was strangely powerful, she had to go to the Shadow Realm to find her granddaughters, didn’t she? She thought, being a Queen, she was Dorothea’s ally, but in truth, she was the High Priestess of Hayll’s pawn—and she played her part well.”
Butler took a step back. “That’s enough for tonight.”
Nowhere near enough, but her head was swimming with the images from this recounting of Wilhelmina’s life. And while she didn’t think telling her this story was easy for Butler, she had a feeling that they were coming to parts that would be . . . difficult.
“See you tomorrow night,” she said.
“Yes.”
It felt rude just to leave. “What do you do at night?”
He gave her an odd look. “I’m sorting out my affairs. My time here is almost done.”
As she walked down the lane to where Kieran waited with the pony cart, she imagined a giant hourglass slowly turning and the sand whispering Almost done as it fell.
Why almost done? And where would Butler go?
THIRTY-EIGHT
Amdarh
Idiot, Daemon thought as he shut off the water and got out of the shower. You should have known better than to spar with Lucivar when he was agitated and looking to pound someone into the ground.
He did know better, but sparring had given them something to do during that hour when Jillian wasn’t doing what was normally done during a Virgin Night—which was taking place in the afternoon so that Jillian could be “rested” for the party that evening.
Rested. Ha!
A tapping on his bedroom door. Recognizing Helton’s psychic scent, Daemon wrapped a towel around his waist and walked into the bedroom. “Come in.”
Helton glanced at him, then focused on the floor. “Some of the guests have arrived.”
“Which guests?”
“Lady Nurian and Lord Rothvar. Lady Titian and Lady Zoela. Prince Daemonar and Prince Raine.”
“Raine? Why? He doesn’t know Jillian.”
Another quick glance at him. “Prince Raine knows Lady Brenda.”
“Ooohhh? Any indication of how well Raine knows Brenda?” Raine wasn’t a fool, and he knew the family’s rules about sex—and the consequences of getting into anyone’s bed without the High Lord’s permission.
“Well enough that, from what Beale conveyed as information—not gossip—Raine and Brenda intend to talk to you about their interest in being intimate. Beale thought you might want to be forewarned, with it being the celebration of Lady Jillian’s Virgin Night.”
Mother Night! That would mean another discussion with Brenda about sex.
“Thank you, Helton. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
“Very good, Prince.”
Helton was too good a butler to bolt out of a room—most of the time—but his retreat was a bit hasty. Daemon could blame his own state of undress for the haste, but he suspected Helton had spent enough time around Brenda yesterday to decide that the best way to deal with any request from the Green-Jeweled witch from Scelt was a speedy response followed by a quick retreat.
* * *
* * *
Daemon and Lucivar met Surreal in the room she’d made into her office. A practical place to meet, since the sitting room seemed to be overrun with excited youngsters and with adults waiting to corner him into a discussion about sex.
“Permission before action is a stupid rule for adults,” he grumbled as Lucivar knocked on the door and walked in.
“Father held that line because it protected everyone who worked at any of the estates, and especially anyone who worked at the Hall, since that’s where troublesome guests usually ended up,” Lucivar replied.
“Guests aren’t the only troublesome individuals who end up at the Hall.” He knew when it was pointless to draw a line. After all, the Scelt contingent was already firmly entrenched at the Hall.
Lucivar stared at Surreal. “Well? How did it go?”
Surreal looked at the two of them. “When I explained his new role in this . . . activity . . . the Warlord, having heard that both of you were in the city, almost wept in relief. However, I gathered from the little Jillian said on the way back to the town house that she had enjoyed a frank conversation with the Warlord about what men like their lovers to do in order to stimulate and excite.”
They stared at her.
Surreal stared back. “We have establishments that teach young men—especially aristo men and those training to be consorts—how to be good lovers. They’re taught what generally pleases and what doesn’t, along with variations. Why shouldn’t knowledge also flow the other way?”
Lucivar looked at Daemon. Daemon looked at Lucivar.
Knowing what pleased a man, and thinking of a daughter doing that to please a man? No.
“Is the vintner here yet?” Lucivar asked, sounding much too reasonable.
“He is,” Daemon replied, sounding just as reasonable.
Surreal called in her crossbow and aimed it at Lucivar. “You are going to pretend that you don’t know that one of your children will be having sex and doing all kinds of other things with her lover, just like your children pretend they don’t know you have sex with Marian and do whatever it is that’s making you go pale right now when you think of them doing it too.”
That was the moment when Marian walked into the room. She looked at Lucivar and froze. Then she looked at Surreal holding the crossbow.
“What happened?” Marian asked.
“Nothing,” Surreal replied cheerfully. “We’re establishing boundaries about what Lucivar isn’t going to notice when Jillian and Stefan have sex.”
Marian choked on a laugh. “Mother Night.”
Then Surreal aimed the crossbow at Daemon. “And you, being marginally more rational right now, are going to give Jillian and Stefan official permission to be lovers and have sex. You’re also going to give Brenda and Raine permission to be lovers and have sex.”
“They haven’t . . . ,” Daemon began.
“Just find them together and tell them they have your permission. Then run.” Surreal raised her eyebrows. “Do you really want to have another discussion with Brenda about sex?”
Not in several lifetimes. “Very well.”
Daemon and Lucivar headed for the door, a strategic retreat.
“While you’re at it, you might talk to Zoey and Titian about expanding their permissions for romantic—”
Lucivar didn’t mean to rip the door off the hinges, but it made his position on Zoey and Titian quite clear.
“Maybe not today,” Surreal said.
Daemon looked back at Surreal, who seemed amused, and Marian, who seemed confused.
