Fey 02 - Changeling (26 page)

Jewel nodded.

He let go of her hand, and ran his palm over her belly as if he could trace the shape of his child.
 
Then he put his ear against her.
 
Jewel prayed that he would hear the child laughing with delight, as the old stories said active babies did in the womb.

"What were you doing in the Settlement?" he asked as if the question had no consequence.

But she had known him long enough to know these kinds of casually asked questions meant the most to him.

"I went to ask Burden if he had killed your father."

Nicholas sat up.
 
His face had gone white, but his hand remained on her stomach as if protecting the child inside.
 
"You believe Matthias, then."

"I believe Matthias may have a point," Jewel said.

The shadows under Nicholas's eyes were prominent.
 
He hadn't slept much since his father died, and when he had, he had pulled Jewel so close that his grip around her shoulders almost hurt.

"I thought it was a lone assassin."

"A lone assassin who had that kind of success with one shot and who disappeared into nothing," Jewel said.
 
"It sounds Fey to me.
 
But Burden said I was imagining this.
 
He may be right.
 
If there is a shot as good as all that, I'm sure Lord Stowe will find him down in the Marshes."

"You don't sound convinced."

Jewel shook her head.
 
"It's too convenient.
 
A King dying in the place where an assassination attempt had been made before.
 
The assailant using one arrow and getting away across flat, marshy ground."

"Why didn't you tell me before?" Nicholas asked.

"We haven't had much opportunity to talk in the last few days," Jewel said.

"Did Burden kill him?"
 
Nicholas's voice held fervor.
 
His eyes had narrowed.
 
He looked fierce like her father rather than his.

"No," she said.
 
"If you saw the Settlement, you would understand.
 
They're working too hard to survive.
 
They haven't time for schemes."

"Then someone from Shadowlands, your father, maybe —"

"Nicholas."
 
Her tone was purposely stern.
 
She didn't want to lose him on this tangent.
 
"We don't know."

He closed his eyes, and tilted his head back.
 
"You're right."
 
He let out a long breath of air.
 
"Jewel, I'm too volatile right now.
 
I'm not thinking clearly.
 
I need to be thinking clearly."

"You're doing fine," she said, although she would have preferred cold Fey rationality at this point.
 
She didn't even dare tell him that she would help him.
 
He might hear it wrong, think that Matthias truly was right.

The new Rocaan.
 
Her father had made a lot of mistakes in killing the old Rocaan.
 
The worst was that the death forced this new man into power, a man with a hatred for the Fey so deep that he discovered and promoted the use of holy water as a poison.
 
She and Nicholas would have made more progress on unifying the Isle if Matthias hadn't been in the way.

When she had approached Nicholas with this plan, almost five years ago now, she had thought that if it didn't work, she would take over the palace with the help of the other Fey.
 
The Black King, if he ever arrived, would accept her children and they would all rule the Isle.
 
It was a slower method to accomplish the same end.

But her desire to take over the Isle had lessened with time and the goal she had verbally expressed to Nicholas — that of unifying Fey and Islander — had become more important to her.
 
The Islanders lacked magic, but they had something, a kind of strength, a resilience, that the Fey had lost.
 
She no longer wanted war with her husband's people.
 
She actually believed that both groups could find a kind of parity.

She also believed that, after all this time, the Black King was never going to come.
 
Her grandfather would die in Nye as he had said he would.
 
He would go down in Fey history as the man who conquered the Galinas continent.
 
When he finally died — and it might be decades from now since some Fey Visionaries lived a long time — one of her brothers would take his place.
 
Then and only then would the Black King venture forth again.

By that time, she would be a grandmother, and her children would be part of the Isle.

Even though Sebastian was flawed, he had forced her to think with that long-term perspective.
 
Sebastian and the child in her belly.
 
When her brother arrived, Jewel wanted to have the Isle a Fey stronghold, but one with powerful magic, one that kept the Islander customs intact according to Fey tradition, and one that required no more bloodshed.
 

Perhaps she should have been a Shaman.
 
Her Vision was much more Domestic than a Black King's relative's should have been.

"If it was your father, wouldn't you have been able to See it?" Nicholas asked.

No matter how many times she explained, he still didn't understand the concept of Vision.
 
She took a deep breath, using the moment to consider.
 
She didn't want to tell him about the pain she had felt in her heart.
 
She suspected that pain had arrived the moment his father had died — because her father had killed him.
 
The Black King's family was not supposed to murder other members or horrible tragedy would occur.
 
She didn't know if two men related by the marriage of their children counted in that superstition.

"No, Nicholas," she said quietly.
 
"I wouldn't necessarily have been able to see it.
 
The Visions are random."

"Then how do you know about the baby?
 
How do you know that isn't some other woman you're Seeing?"

"Because of what I was doing at the time," Jewel said.
 
"I can't explain any better than that.
  
If a Fey killed your father, I will be as surprised as you are.
 
I have no special Vision for that event.
 
I have no Vision for your death either or mine, but we will both die someday."

Nicholas shook his head.
 
"Let's pray Lord Stowe finds the assassin.
 
Let's pray it's some crazed, deranged Islander with a vendetta against the Kingship.
 
Let's pray that the killer isn't Fey."

Jewel didn't know how to pray.
 
But she would ask the Powers for any kind of help they could provide.
 
She had taken a great risk tying her fate to Nicholas's.
 
She didn't want one of her own people destroying that future, not when the child within was finally giving her the opportunity for success.

She put a hand over her heart.
  
The physical pain was long gone, but a new feeling had lodged in its place.

Fear.

THIRTEEN

The man who led the group looked as if he had risen from the Marsh itself.
 
Lord Stowe followed the group, his personal guards close to him.
 
Half a dozen men from Kenniland surrounded them, their faces weatherworn and purposeful.
 
The Danite had elected to stay behind.

Because the men didn't have horses, the group had had to walk.
 
Lord Stowe realized quickly how used he was to riding.
 
The man who led them — Hector — walked at a fast clip.
 
The fishermen usually used boats, but the hunters walked or slogged, which seemed a better word, through the Marshes proper.
 
Because Stowe was with them, they took the road.

The spring days were fickle.
 
The sun was out, but thin.
 
The air had a chill it hadn't had on the day the King died.
 
The Marsh smelled of mud and decay, a fetid odor that clung to clothes.
 
The village had it as well, but not as strong.
 
Here the odor was a live thing, more powerful than anything around it.

A long-legged bird stood in the Marsh, dipping its bill into the water.
 
It seemed unconcerned by the group of men passing near it.
 
Another bird cawed overhead, but Stowe did not look up.
 
He had long since learned to do as the other men did, for anything else marked him as unusual.

The flat glare of the sun made the Marsh appear as if it extended forever.
 
Since mid-morning, he had been staring at the small group of trees, the one which the guards had searched for the lone assassin.
 
They had found nothing.
 
The group had stopped for its mid-day meal, and the trees had looked no closer.
 
It was now mid-afternoon, and they were finally approaching the spot where the King had died.

The road looked no different here.
 
Even the blood stain was gone, soaked into the dust.
 
The Marshes were drying from lack of rain while Jahn's winter had been full of water.
 
The differences in climate were one symptom of the problems he had been hearing about.
 
The palace had always governed as if the Isle were one small city with the same problems and the same kinds of people.
 
But not even the weather was the same.
 
And as for the people, Stowe was beginning to think he understood the Fey better than he would ever understand these folks.

They stopped at a point directly across from the trees.
 
Even here, the trees seemed both close and faraway.
 
Stowe's life in the city had left him ill-prepared to judge distances.

"Time to put them boots to use," Hector said, pointing at Stowe's feet.
 

Stowe nodded.
 
He had expected this when the group had insisted on giving him boots that morning.
 
The boots were slightly big, and had rubbed a blister into the bottom of his left foot.
 
But they ran to his thighs and, with luck, would be more than deep enough to keep the mud off his legs.

After the meeting in the kirk, Stowe had investigated a hundred different possibilities.
 
He examined the homes of the people who had shown up at the meeting and found more poverty than he cared to think about.
 
Only one family had even owned a bow and arrow.
 
The others fished to get food, if they were able to get their own food at all.
 
He also discovered a strong anti-Jahn bias, and an even stronger hatred of the palace.
 
He started taking his own guards everywhere, uncertain what would happen to him in this depressing and hostile place.

Finally, days after the meeting, Hector had come to him.
  
Awakened him, actually, in the Danite's small hut near the kirk.
 
Hector was an imposing presence to someone at any time of day.
 
To someone newly awakened, Hector seemed like a creature from beyond.
 
He was broad and square.
 
His clothing was covered in mud so old that most of it would never come off.
 
His boots appeared to be part of his body.
 
His features were so caked that his skin was invisible.
 
The whites of his large eyes were startling against the black mud, and when he spoke, his remaining teeth were a sickly yellow.

He hadn't introduced himself.
 
Instead, he said, "If tis answers ye want, tis answers I got."

Somehow that sentence had led Stowe to this place of death.
 

One of his guards looked at him.
 
"I'll go for you, sir."

Stowe shook his head.
 
He owed Alexander this much.
 
Besides, if he didn't go, he would never be able to explain to Nicholas what had happened.