A Kiss of Shadows (33 page)

“Do you have a tone of voice somewhere between utter emptiness and joyous condescension?” I asked.

That tiny smile quirked his lips. “I will try to find a . . . middle ground between the two.”

I slid my arms carefully around his arm, the cloak bunched between our bodies. “Thank you,” I said.

“You are welcome.” The voice was still empty, but there was the faintest hint of warmth in it.

Doyle had said he'd try to find a middle ground, and he was already working on it. How terribly prompt of him.

Chapter 26

 

THE STONE ROAD ENDED ABRUPTLY IN THE GRASS. THE ROAD, LIKE THE
paths, stops short of any mound. We stood at the end of the road and there was nothing but grass beyond. Grass trampled down by many feet, but trampled down evenly so that no one way was more traveled than any other. One of our old nicknames is “the hidden ones.” We may be a tourist attraction now, but old habits die hard.

Sometimes fey-watchers will camp outside the area, using binoculars, and see nothing for days, nights. If anyone was watching in the chill dark, they were about to see “something.”

I didn't try to find the doorway. Doyle would get us inside without any effort from me. The door rotated on some schedule of its own, or perhaps the queen's schedule. Whatever caused it to move, sometimes the door faced the road and sometimes it did not. As a teenager, if I wanted to sneak out at night and come home late, I could only hope that the door hadn't moved while I was out. The small magic needed to search for the opening would alert the guards within, and the jig, as they say, would be up. I'd thought more than once as a teenager that that damned door moved on purpose.

Doyle led me out onto the grass. My heels sank in the soft earth, and I was forced to walk almost tiptoe to keep the heels free of dirt. The gun in its ankle holster made it a very awkward way to walk. I was glad I hadn't chosen higher heels.

As Doyle led me away from the avenue and the ghostly lights, the darkness seemed thicker than it had before. The lights had been dim, but any light gives the darkness weight and substance. I clung a little harder to Doyle's arm as we left the light behind us and walked into the star-filled dark.

Doyle must have noticed because he offered, “Do you wish a light?”

“I can conjure my own will-o'-the-wisp, thank you very much. My eyes will adjust in a minute.”

He shrugged, and I could feel the movement as his arm raised in my grasp. “As you like.” His voice had fallen into its usual neutral tone. Either he was having trouble finding a middle ground for his voice, or it was simply habit. I was betting the latter.

By the time Doyle stopped halfway around the mound, my eyes had adjusted to the dim, cold light of stars, and the rising moon.

Doyle stared at the earth. His magic gave a small warm breath along my body as he concentrated on the mound. I stared up at the grass-covered earth. Without some effort of concentration this grassy spot looked just like every other grassy spot.

The wind blew through the grass like fingers ruffling a box of lace. The night was full of the dry rustling of autumn grass, but faintly, oh so faintly, you could hear music on the wind. Not enough to recognize the tune or even be a hundred percent sure that you'd heard anything but the wind, but that phantom music was a hint you were standing near the entrance. Sort of like a spectral doorbell or a magical game of “hot and cold.” No music meant you were cold.

Doyle drew his arm out of my hold and passed his hand over the grass of the mound. I was never sure whether the grass melted away or the door appeared over the grass and the grass was still there underneath the door in some metaphysical space. However it worked, a rounded doorway appeared in the side of the mound. The doorway was exactly the right size to admit us both. Light filled the opening. If needed, the door-way could be big enough to have a tank driven through, as if the doorway sensed how big it needed to be.

The light appeared brighter than I knew it was because my eyes were accustomed to the dark now. The light was white but not harsh, a soft white light that breathed from the doorway like a luminous fog.

“After you, my princess,” Doyle said, bowing as he said it.

I wanted to come back to court, but looking at that glowing hill I was reminded that a hole in the ground is a hole in the ground whether it be a sithen or a grave. I don't know why I suddenly thought of that particuliar analogy. Maybe it was the assassination attempt. Maybe it was just nerves. I went through the door.

I stood in a huge stone hallway large enough for that tank to have driven through comfortably or for a small giant to pass without bumping his head. The hallway was always large no matter how small the doorway happened to be. Doyle joined me and the doorway vanished behind him. Just another grey stone wall. Just as the outside of the mound hid its entrance, so the inside did as well. If the queen wished it, the door wouldn't appear from this side at all. It was very easy to go from guest to prisoner here. The thought was less than comforting.

The white light that filled the hallway was sourceless, coming from everywhere and nowhere. The grey stone looked like granite, which means it wasn't native to St. Louis. If you want stone here it's red or reddish tan, not grey. Even our stone is imported from some alien shore.

I'm told once upon a time there were entire worlds under the ground. Meadows and orchards and a sun and moon of our very own. I've seen the dying orchards and flower gardens with a few straggling blossoms, but no underground moon or sun. The rooms are bigger and more square than they should be, and the blueprint of the interior seems to change at random, sometimes with you walking through it, like walking through a fun house made of stone instead of mirrors. But there are no meadows, or none that I've seen. I'm more than willing to believe that the others are keeping secrets from me. That wouldn't surprise me in the least, but to my knowledge there are no worlds under the ground, just stone and rooms.

Doyle offered me his arm, very formally. I took his arm lightly, out of habit mostly.

There was a sharp bend to the corridor. I heard footsteps coming toward us. Doyle pulled gently on my arm. I stopped and looked at him. “What is it?” I asked.

Doyle led me back down the corridor. I walked backward with him, and he stopped abruptly. He grabbed a handful of my dress and raised the skirt enough to bare my ankles, and the gun. “It wasn't your heels setting you off balance on the stones, Princess.” He sounded angry with me.

“I'm allowed weapons.”

“No guns inside the mound,” he said.

“Since when?”

“Since you killed Bleddyn with one.”

We looked at each other for a frozen second, then I tried to move away, but his hand closed over my wrist.

With footsteps coming ever closer, Doyle jerked me off balance so that I fell against him. He pinned me to his body with an arm across my back. He opened his mouth to speak, and the footsteps turned the corner.

We were left standing in full sight, Doyle pinning me to his body, the other hand on my wrist. It looked like an interrupted fight or the beginning of one.

The two men that stepped around the corner fanned out so that they covered as much of the corridor as possible with space to spare for fighting.

I looked up into Doyle's face and tried to put the request into one glance. I begged him with my eyes not to tell about the gun and not to take it.

He put his mouth against my cheek, and whispered, “You will not need it.”

I just looked up at him. “Will you give me your oath on that?”

The anger tightened the muscles in his jaw, thrummed down his arms. “I will not give my oath on the queen's whim.”

“Then let me keep the gun,” I whispered.

He moved to stand between me and the other guards. He still had the grip on my arm. All the others could see was the sweep of Doyle's cape.

“What's wrong, Doyle?” one of the men asked.

“Nothing,” he said. But he forced my other hand behind my back until he could grip both my wrists in one of his hands. His hands were not that large, and to get a firm grip meant my wrists were ground together, bruising. I'd have struggled more if I'd thought I could get away, but even if I escaped Doyle, he'd seen the gun. There was nothing I could do about it, so I didn't struggle. But I was not happy.

Doyle used his other arm to pick me up and lower me to the ground in a sitting position. Except for my wrists it was all done gently enough. He knelt, his cloaked back still hiding us from the other men. As his hand hovered over my leg, moving toward the gun, I thought about kicking him, being difficult, but there was no point. He could have crushed my wrists with no effort. I might get the gun back tonight. If he crushed my arms, my options were over. He slid the gun out of the ankle holster. I sat on the floor and let him do it. I stayed passive in his grip, let him move my body as he wanted. Only my eyes weren't passive—I couldn't keep the anger out of them. No, I
wanted
him to see the anger.

He let me go and slid the gun behind his own back, though the leather pants were tight enough that it couldn't have been comfortable. I hoped it dug into his back until he bled.

He took one of my hands, helping me stand. Then he turned with a flourish of his cape to present me to the other guards, one hand holding mine as if we were about to make a grand entrance down a long marble staircase. It was an odd gesture for the grey hallway and what had just happened. I realized that Doyle was uneasy about the gun or his choice of taking it, or maybe wondering if I had other weapons. He was ill at ease and he was covering.

“A small disagreement, nothing more,” he said.

“A disagreement about what?” The voice belonged to Frost, Doyle's second in command. Other than the fact that they were both tall, physically they were almost opposites. The hair that fell in a glimmering curtain to Frost's ankles was silver, a shimmering metallic silver like Christmas tree tinsel. The skin was as white as my own. The eyes were a soft grey like a winter sky before a storm. His face was angular and arrogantly handsome. His shoulders were a touch broader than Doyle's, but other than that they were both very alike and very unalike.

He wore a silver jerkin that hit him just above the knees to meet the silver cloth of his pants, tucked into silver boots. The jeweled belt at his waist was silver studded with pearls and diamonds. It matched the heavy necklace that graced his chest. He gleamed as if he'd been carved all of one great silver piece, more statue than man. But the sword at his side with its silver-and-bone hilt was real enough, and if you could see one weapon, there'd be more because he was Frost. The queen called him her Killing Frost. If he'd ever had another name I did not know it. He wasn't wearing any magical or bespelled weapons—for Frost it was almost the same thing as being unarmed.

He stared at me with those grey eyes, clearly suspicious.

I found my voice, anything to fill the silence. Distraction was what was needed. I let go of Doyle's hand and took a step forward. Frost was vain about his appearance and his clothes. “Frost, what a bold fashion statement.” My voice came out strong, somewhere between teasing and mockery.

His fingers went to the edge of the tunic before he could stop himself. He frowned at me. “Princess Meredith, a pleasure as always.” A slight change in tone made mockery of his polite words.

I didn't care. He wasn't wondering about what Doyle was hiding. That was all I had wanted to accomplish.

“What about me?” Rhys said.

I turned to find my third-favorite guard. I didn't trust him as I did Barinthus or Galen. There was something weak about Rhys, a sense that he wouldn't exactly die for your honor, but right up to that point you could depend on him.

He put his cape and the waist-length spill of white wavy hair over one arm so I'd have an unobstructed view of his body. Rhys was a full half foot under six feet, short for a guard. To my knowledge he was full-blooded court. He just happened to be short. His body was encased in a white bodysuit so tight that you knew at a glance that there was nothing under it but him. There was white-on-white embroidery on the cloth edging the round collar and the slight flare of the long sleeves, and encircling the cutout over his stomach, which revealed his cobblestone abs like a woman showing off her cleavage.

He let the cape and his hair fall back into place. He smiled his full cupid-bow lips at me. They matched the round boyishly handsome face and the one pale blue eye. His eye was a tricircle of blue; cornflower blue around the pupil, sky blue, then a circle of winter sky. The other eye was lost forever under a furrow of scars. Claw marks cut across the upper right quarter of his face. One single claw mark parted an inch from the rest, cutting across otherwise perfect skin to cross from his upper right forehead to cut down the bridge of his nose and the lower left cheek. He'd told me a dozen different stories about how he lost his eye. Great battles, giants, I think I remember a dragon or two. I think it was the scars that made him work so very hard on his body. He was small, but every inch of him was muscled.

I shook my head. “I don't know whether you look like the top of a pornographic wedding cake or a superhero. You could be Ab Boy, or Abdominal Man.” I grinned happily.

“A thousand sit-ups a day does wonders for your abs,” he said, running a hand over them.

“Everyone needs a hobby, I guess.”