Ill Met by Moonlight (11 page)

Oh, she was good, Quicksilver thought. She not only had understood his warning, but she spoke as if she meant it. Malachite, head averted from such an unmaidenly declaration, blushed.

Quicksilver sighed with false reluctance. “You know, my lady, that I am too young and have not my brother’s license to commit myself to matrimony, and that—”

“Oh, I would just speak to you!” Ariel yelled. Her hands fretted at the lace of her skirt, grabbing it in twin handfuls, then letting it go, marked with wrinkles that her ineffective hands could not smooth. She stamped her foot, her small white slipper slapping the floor with force. “I want to speak to you, of your feelings and your intentions.”

Malachite looked as if he’d like to hide. A human, kidnapped in infancy and brought up in the fairy world, he nevertheless seemed to have an odd idea of propriety and never fully to accept the freedom-loving ways of most elven ladies.

“Very well,” Quicksilver said, seeming cold and distant, though he admired Ariel more than ever. What a performance the maiden could put on. What an amazing performance. It made her look more beautiful than ever in his eyes and he found himself wondering whether the dark rings around her eyes were his doing, or the marks of her job as seeress. “Very well. Malachite, see to my room. Alter the brocade doublet as I’ve told you and have my bath ready for when I return tonight. I might be late. I have an excursion planned.”

“Milord,” Malachite said, and bowed primly. Only his half closed, averted eyes, betrayed what he was thinking: that Quicksilver’s “excursion” would be to Ariel’s bed, and he disapproved.

Quicksilver gave his arm to Ariel and together they walked out of the palace and through a magic portal to the world of men outside.

Away from the palace, he turned to her. “Ariel. How well you dissembled in there. I must compliment you on your performance.” He grinned at her.

She stepped back, eyes rounded in shock. “Milord?” she said. And, in the wake of that, she blinked and her eyes shone as if filled with tears.

Tears? Why tears? Hadn’t it been a performance? What was the foolish girl doing now?

She put out a hand to grasp his shoulder, though she never dared touch it, and let her hand fall awkwardly to her side. “You’re not attending tonight’s revels?”

Oh, so that was it. The infatuated little elf maid would require his attendance. Silly, ridiculous, but there it was and it must be borne. Though . . . to come to his room for just that purpose . . .

His smile widened as he explained with a vague, airy gentleness: “No. I have . . . ah . . . plans. Things to do.” For one, he must visit Will in his mortal—and no doubt smelly—abode, and instruct him in the finer points of elven regicide.

His smile seemed to disquiet Ariel. She frowned into the full flow of it and asked in a voice little more than a whisper, “You’re going to him, are you not?”

“
Him?
” Quicksilver asked. Who was the little fool jealous of now? Had he so much as glanced at anyone last night in the salon? Been near anyone?
Him?
Why, he hadn’t even looked at a male in . . . An image of Kit Marlowe, lovely and vulnerable and all too, too mortal, passed through Quicksilver’s mind and was pushed away.

“The human,” Ariel said. “The human boy. Nan’s husband.”

Nan’s husband? So the peasant was Nan, now, was she? Friends with Ariel? He looked at the duchess, bewildered. You never knew what stray Ariel might bring home, what bird with a broken wing, what faun with an injured hoof. But a human? A human that Sylvanus lusted after? Her folly was greater than Quicksilver’s understanding.

“What speak you of?” he asked. “Of what?”

She blinked at him and spoke in a flat, serious voice. “Of Will. Nan’s husband. I saw you with him yesterday. In the forest. I followed you, milord. I followed you and wish I hadn’t. Nightlong I spent awake, thinking. Milord, do you love him?”

Ariel had followed him? Ariel had seen it, then, his transformation, his conversation with the mortal? At another time, this realization might have dismayed Quicksilver. He rarely let anyone see him transform and, since his parents’ death, had taken great pains not to be seen in his female aspect. He’d spent the greater part of his time controlling what would have been involuntary changing.

But his having so readily found a mortal to commit his vengeance, his conversation with Will, the look in the boy’s eye, his pleasing comeliness, and that oh-so-willingly returned kiss, all of it combined to give Quicksilver a feeling like that of full-moon madness, when parties raged all night and too much mead was drunk.

He turned a full smile on Lady Ariel, and chuckled a little as he answered, “In love? With a mortal, milady? I? You forget yourself, milady. And you mistake me.”

Ariel looked like something made of yellowish wax. The hue robbed her of her delicate beauty and made her features appear stark and harshly etched. Her hands hung on either side of her body, as though she’d forgotten they existed. Were it not for the rise and fall of her chest, the rasping of breath in and out through her parted lips, she might well have been a statue.

She opened her mouth, but only to draw breath, with a gasping sound. She nodded, once—a quick ducking of the head down and up again. “You kissed him.”

“Well?” Quicksilver smiled, still, though he managed not to chuckle. Why was Lady Ariel this upset? So she had seen him kiss the mortal. Why did she care? His smile grew wider, remembering. “And what if I did, milady? What would it matter? He is a mortal, my lady, not our kind.”

Hell, but the boy could kiss. Where had he learned that? From his broad-hipped country wife? Perhaps Sylvanus would indeed get more than he had bargained for from the goodwife turned royal nursemaid. The thought of Sylvanus brought with it memories of Quicksilver’s parents and of the dark task that hung over his head like an ax balanced on a fool’s hand. “Milady, I’m waiting. Talk or be gone.”

Ariel drew breath once more. “The mortal. You . . . You . . . kissed the mortal. You let him see you in your other form.” She paused and opened her hands, palm out, on her skirt, as though those hands would go on talking where she could not.

So, that was it. A simple kiss had upset her. His familiarity with the mortal had galled her. He stepped beside Ariel, and wound his arm through hers. Hers felt smaller, so much frailer than the muscular arm of the peasant boy. She held herself stiffly, away from Quicksilver, refusing to budge at his cajoling pull.

He sighed. “Milady Ariel, the boy is only an instrument for what I truly seek. And what I truly seek is vengeance, as vengeance I should seek, for the foul deed against my parents.” His voice fell to grave accents, as he spoke. “And if the crime came through a mortal, then through a mortal can it be remedied.” He tugged at her again, gently, and she started walking beside him.

“But you let him—You—”

“I must convince him to kill the murderer.” Quicksilver pulled Ariel along amid the tall, rustling trees. She looked small and frail enough to wring his heart. He remembered what it was like to feel small; he knew very well what it was like to be powerless. Yet, this passion of Lady Ariel’s for him must be discouraged, for his good and hers. Nevertheless he needed friends. He must proceed carefully. “I must convince that mortal to do my vengeance and must keep him confused enough that he won’t look beyond the pretty scenery I am drawing for the harsh truth beyond.”

Ariel opened and closed her mouth. Color came and went in waves on her face, now tingeing her high cheekbones pink, now leaving them harsh and waxy-dreary. “If he—milord—If you do try vengeance, you will both die. And Nan will be left without a husband . . . and I will be . . . Nan and I . . .”

She wailed too loudly.

Quicksilver looked toward the lighted palace behind them, and wondered if such a lament might not be heard by the guards, even through the veil between the realms. He fancied the rustling along the forest floor had changed, from the random slithering of forest creatures to the purposeful movements of Sylvanus’s spies.

Forcing a laugh, he covered Ariel’s mouth with his hand. “Hush, milady, hush. I have no intention of dying,” he said. “The mortal, now . . . Who knows what mortals do and why? Their lives are cheap and they whelp three to a season, like blind kittens behind a barn, and they die the same way, blind and foolish, for no reason at all, in a war they don’t understand, or in a tavern brawl, to a dagger wielded by one they thought a friend. If he dies, nothing much is lost.” Quicksilver spoke in an urgent, eager tone, but barely loud enough to be called a whisper. He felt Ariel’s warm lips move against his palm, and lowered his hand slightly.

“You do not care, then, if he dies?” Ariel asked. She whispered too, but in such a rush that it gave her words the feeling of a long-suppressed scream. “If the boy dies? The boy Will? Nan’s boy? But you seemed—Oh, you seemed to care for him. I know it is rare, almost impossible, for one of us to truly love a mortal. Even when we do, our love is not enough to satisfy them. Their love, as ephemeral as they are, is the sturdier brew. And yet there are legends of elves who love mortals and, in thus stooping toward their inferiors, become like gods in their intensity. And you seemed, you seemed to care for him. But you don’t? You truly don’t? You’re that cold, then, milord, that cold that you’d send him to his death?”

“It is all a play, my dear, nothing but a play. The play’s the thing, but the thing we play at is not always that which we are.” He grinned at her. Color had returned to her face, tinting her cheeks and lips a deep pink and making her look lovely and alive. As they were, chest to chest, face to face, he could feel her hot breath on his face. Her dress rustled against his doublet, as breath made her chest rise and fall.

“What would make you think, fool girl, that I cared for that mortal, or any other?”

“Once you cared for a mortal.” Ariel’s hands rose, to rest on his shoulders, but she held them in tight little fists as she spoke. “There was that other mortal, the one whose name I forget, the one who became an actor.”

Kit. The name came into Quicksilver’s mind like an arrow, carrying with it the memory of the exquisite auburn-haired divinity student, whose bed he had shared for a scant summer. He thought of Kit’s large questing eyes, his searching lips. How long had it been? Three? No, two years. A fine one Kit had been, though he’d turned a little mad, as mortals always did, who tasted fairy love. “Kit Marlowe,” he said gently.

Remembering both young men made Quicksilver feel that Ariel looked paler, less real in his arms. That was the thing about mortals. Dumb and ephemeral they might be, and yet life coursed through their veins so strongly; their hearts beat with such desperate force.

Ariel nodded, her gaze worried, as though she sensed that Quicksilver had gone beyond her, to memories she didn’t share.

“We were so young,” Quicksilver said quietly, as one who reads an ancient epitaph. “Both so young.” Kit had accepted both of Quicksilver’s forms and Quicksilver had been innocent and foolish enough to hope that it might last, that they might . . . He let the dream drop into the night of forgotten chimeras. “He went a little insane. He no longer believes in the religion he studies and instead he lives a mad, perilous life, a barbarous one full of intrigue and danger. He craves excitement and passion such as even I can’t give.”

Ariel nodded. “But that’s what we do to mortals, don’t you see? Loving us makes them mad, because even when we return their love, it is only with elf love, designed neither to endure death, nor to taste sickness. Even our love for each other is a cold flame that gives no heat, and our love for them is not even that. What they crave . . .” Her eyes spoke on, of craving and foolish hopes. “If one of us could truly love a mortal, forgetting what they are, truly love their weakness as well as their fleeting beauty . . .” She shook her head. “If love like that existed, then maybe the mortal would not go mad. Yet maybe he still would. Maybe the greatest elf love can’t equal humans’ loyal attachments. It is because of us and other creatures like us that they speak of the love of gods driving humans to madness.” She spoke as if to herself, as though studying a difficult lesson in a forgotten primer.

Quicksilver nodded gently, and took her fists from his shoulders, first one, and then the other, smoothing them into open hands, and setting them back against his doublet. His own hands went around her waist, which was small enough that his hands nearly encompassed it. “I know, my dear, but there’s no danger of it for this boy, because once he does what I—” He stopped short of naming the fatal task. “If he fulfills what I want him to do, then he’ll be dead, dead for daring to touch the king of the hill. The power of the hill will kill him, like a hand squashing a mayfly. And mad or not, it will not matter.”

“Then you don’t care?” she asked again anxiously. “You truly don’t care for him?” She looked odd, not so much eager as scared.

Scared of which answer? Quicksilver shook his head. He tracked a new rustling on the forest floor and pulled Ariel toward him as she stepped back. He had no time to wonder at her fright.

Chances were that anyone, even his brother’s spies, seeing them like this, would suspect Quicksilver of no worse thing than intending to seduce Ariel. To make it more plausible, he lowered his head toward hers and kissed her lips, tentatively. Her lips felt soft, like the petals of a newly opened rose. There might be more sport here than just throwing off Sylvanus’s spies.

“When you were with that other youth, Marlowe . . . When you spent time with him, I thought to die of jealousy. I thought you loved him truly.”

“Impossible to love a human.” Such attachment and so foolish. Yes, Lady Ariel would need to learn her lesson, would need to leave Quicksilver and his dark path, his twining, confused nature, alone. But not yet. Not yet. Ariel’s loneliness called to his own, like the live, warm sun called to the buried seed. He pulled her to him. “There will never be any reason for you to be jealous over me, milady.”

“Oh,” she said.

He pressed her close to him, and lowered his lips to her trembling ones, and kissed her, sucking at her tongue, feeling her chest against his, tasting the mint flavor of her mouth, hearing her heartbeat speed up.