Midnight's Daughter

Page 37

I nodded. The Fey who attacked us hadn’t been after me at all—they’d mistaken me for Claire, the other half-breed who lived at that address. It looked like Kyle had gotten something right, after all. Claire was carrying a nonhuman child, but the father was Fey, not vampire. I felt a rush of relief so extreme that I laughed aloud. This garnered me a few worried glances, but I didn’t care. That was one huge weight off my mind. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the only one.
“I was under the impression that the Fey took human babies and left changelings in their place,” Radu was saying. “Why would a Fey leave a child behind?”
Caedmon made a graceful, indeterminate hand gesture. “Presumably because the lady did not tell him she was going to have one. Perhaps she feared that he would take the child if he knew.”
“Then how did the king find out?” I asked. “Claire’s mother died when she was a baby. And if her real father didn’t know . . .”
“That is one of many questions I, too, would like to ask, were there any who might answer them,” Caedmon said. “Perhaps her mother told her husband the truth before she died. Perhaps he arranged for a test. There are several that could have shown the truth, both magical and mundane. We can only speculate.”
Louis-Cesare’s blue eyes narrowed as if he didn’t like Caedmon’s answer. “The Senate believes that the succession struggle has been taken into our world recently. Both Prince Alarr and another contender, a Svarestri noble named Æsubrand, have been seen in New York within the last month.”
I stared at him. “Where did you hear that?”
“From Kit Marlowe.” I scowled. The beetle hadn’t bothered to mention that little tidbit.
Louis-Cesare had the look of someone who was thinking hard. I preferred it to the compassion on Caedmon’s face. I didn’t want Claire to need compassion. “If the king is dead,” Louis-Cesare said slowly, “the throne is in contention. Disposing of Claire, if she is carrying the king’s child, would also remove a rival.”
“She must be found and the succession issue resolved,” Caedmon agreed. “In the last civil war, more than ten thousand of us perished.” His gaze went distant, as if he was seeing another time. “Arrows shredded the sky. Blood fell like rain. Smoke from the funeral pyres filled the air until all that was visible was a dirty haze that stung the eyes and stopped the throat.” His voice thrummed in the air like a note from a plucked string, and suddenly, I could actually see the scene his words described.
Wind whipped my robes against my sweat-soaked body. Below me, a battlefield flowed away to the bloodred horizon. All around, columns of smoke clutched the sky like leprous fingers. Everywhere lay bodies in still-smoking armor, suffocating me with the smell of blood and fire and burnt flesh. My hands were raw from holding the spear I had used against my enemies, but I barely noticed. Ashes were in my eyes, ashes that had once been the body of a comrade, an ages-old life ended by a chance shot from a green recruit. They clung to my face, stealing the pride of victory, mixing with my tears, threatening to choke me—
“Caedmon!”
It felt like someone slammed a door in my face. I was back at the table, my heart thudding, my ears ringing, my vision swimming in pieces. I was light-headed and disconnected, as if my mind was trying to occupy two places at once and it wasn’t built for it. My mouth was sour with anguish over the death of someone I’d never met; my veins thrummed with adrenaline from a fight I’d never experienced.
Radu was on his feet, confusion on his face, and Louis-Cesare was looking daggers at the guest of honor. Caedmon ignored him, but his eyes were concerned as he gazed at me. “My apologies, child. I would not have had you see that.”
“What happened?” To my surprise, my voice was steady.
Caedmon appeared slightly embarrassed. “The Frumfórn, what you call the Fey, exist in both planes of being at once: the physical and the . . . I suppose you would call it the spiritual. I sit here, I eat, I talk, yet my awareness is not taken up entirely with such things. It exists—I exist—elsewhere, as well. And for a moment, so did you.”
“Why?”
He lifted his glass slightly. “I have had, perhaps, a bit too much of our host’s excellent wine.”
Louis-Cesare snatched up his own glass, sniffing it cautiously. He turned to Radu. “What are you serving?”
Caedmon smiled at his host. “I must congratulate you—smooth, velvety and with a subtle tang that lingers on the palate like perfume.”
Radu looked from him to Louis-Cesare, managing to appear proud, confused and contrite, all at the same time. “I thought it appropriate, considering our guest—”
“What is it?” Louis-Cesare demanded again.
Radu was beginning to look cross. Something told me his dinner party wasn’t working out quite as planned. “I had Geoffrey dilute it. Most of that is my personal label—”
Caedmon chuckled. “And the rest is some of the best Fey wine I have tasted in many a year.”
“So that is what did it!” Louis-Cesare’s expression could have cut diamond.
Caedmon’s eyes went dark, like underwater jade. “Do you wish to accuse me of something, vampire?”
“That . . . substance . . . tortured us with memories! Made us relive things from the past. Horrible things.”
Caedmon’s expression was eloquent. Without saying a word, he managed to give the impression that it was an incredible trial to be forced to share a table with one so ill-mannered. Then he sighed and looked at me. “Did you also experience these memories?”
I nodded. “We thought . . . we encountered a spell at the caves. We thought the mages had left it.”
“You were likely correct, although our wine would heighten the effects. Have you had any before tonight, say, within the last three days?”
“No. I—”
Louis-Cesare interrupted. “You drank some on the jet, from my glass. I had filled a flask in the cellar of your home.”
“Wait a minute. You’re telling me Claire’s cellar is full of Fey wine?”
“Yes. I was surprised to see it, for only the Fey can make it. I always wondered why it is so heavily regulated in our world.” He stared daggers at Caedmon. “It seems now I know.”
Caedmon looked affronted. “In a few days, three at the outside, the effects will dissipate. The strongest will be gone in a few hours.”
I sat up, feeling more myself. I sniffed my glass, but there was no sign that we’d been drinking anything dangerous. It had merely tasted like a decent red, fruity and earthy. “What does it do?”
“Nothing harmful,” Caedmon assured me. “Under the right conditions, it helps align two people’s thoughts or, in lesser quantities, their emotions.” Dark green eyes regarded me appraisingly. “Even with a great deal of wine, few would have been able to pull forth a memory so vivid. I could almost smell the smoke.”
I nodded, thinking of the molten armor, like a black puddle around one of the bodies, and of the scalding wind. By the time it blew across all the fires, it was like a breeze straight off of hell. It brought back memories of my own, of the trenches in France after a mortar attack, and I broke out in a sudden sweat. My heart leapt in my chest, adrenaline flooding me as my perception began to skew. My throat closed once more, full of pain, choked with ashes—
Caedmon stroked his hand up my arm, brushing power along my body like liquid, dissipating the sensation. “Yes,” he murmured, “unusually sensitive.” He smiled reassuringly. “Do not let it concern you. What you saw happened long ago, a memory of our last great war. Even then, it took centuries to replace the numbers lost. Now, I fear, it would be impossible. Yet a struggle over the succession could provoke just such a cataclysm. Your friend must be found.”
“You read my mind,” I said fervently, shivering slightly from the power in that brief touch.
“The Fey don’t read minds,” Louis-Cesare said harshly, his eyes on Caedmon’s hand.
Caedmon smiled, and it was not a particularly nice expression. His grip tightened. “Perhaps not. But we read other things. For example, vampire, I know you have a knife up your left sleeve, even though I cannot see it. The metal sings to me; it is a talent.” He glanced at me, and his smile was deliberately provocative. “One of many.”
Louis-Cesare’s anger suddenly filled the small room like water, and in a heartbeat his eyes went from silver-tinged to as solid as two antique coins. I sat frozen, awash in a sea of power. I was beginning to understand why Mircea had wanted him along, only Daddy had failed to mention anything about the hair-trigger temper. I guess he assumed the red hair would clue me in.
Caedmon sat very still, not offering challenge but not shrinking from it, either. I wasn’t sure what to do, with a suddenly homicidal vamp on one side and a less-than-pleased Fey on the other. Rock and a hard place didn’t begin to describe it. I glanced at Radu, but he was sitting like a deer caught in headlights, with those beautiful turquoise eyes almost completely round.
In the end, it was Olga who defused matters by letting out a belch that I swear was a full minute long. By the end of it, we were all staring at her in sheer amazement. It’s considered rude by troll standards to fail to show appreciation for a fine meal with an appropriate bodily function. It appeared Olga had liked the grub.
She patted her enormous middle and got out of her chair with all the grace of a pregnant hippo. “Good food,” she told Radu, who managed to nod his thanks. “I sleep now,” she announced, with an almost queenly dignity. Geoffrey scurried to lead the way back up the stairs, and Olga followed him out, her behind brushing the sides of the narrow stone stairwell as she went.
I decided she had a point. If Caedmon knew anything more, I’d squeeze it out of him tomorrow when I could think better. I pulled Stinky out of the cheese plate, where he’d decided to take a nap. “I think I’ll call it a night, too,” I said, hefting him onto one hip. I didn’t bother to say good night. Radu was too stunned to notice, and it wasn’t a Fey tradition. Besides, I had a feeling it wouldn’t be.