Midnight Never Come (28 page)

The ministering cloth paused. A heartbeat later, it resumed its work. “Something touching on my sister and me, I expect. We shall see.”

Lune opened her eyes as Rosamund began daubing her wounds with a cool, soothing ointment. “Lord Valentin questioned me before I left. Where I had gotten mortal bread — I told him a simple lie — and how I had found out about Corr. They found Francis’s body while I was there. I led Aspell to believe the two were connected.”

“Then we must be sure they do not catch the messenger. Does this feel better?”

“Very much so. Thank you.” The fire seemed to have the knack of warming the room just enough; the cool, damp chill of an underground chamber was perfectly offset, so Lune did not shiver as Rosamund fetched bandages from a small chest. At least not from cold.

The brownie swathed her ribs and collarbone in clean white linen, with soft pads over the cuts themselves. “They should be well in three days,” Rosamund said, “and you may take the bandages off after one.”

Before Lune could say anything more to that, footsteps sounded above. She had not heard anyone speak through the rosebush, as she had when Dame Halgresta came the previous night. Gertrude, no doubt, but her entire body tensed.

The floor bent open, and the brownie’s feet appeared on the top stair, in stout slippers. But a pair of riding boots followed, belonging to someone much larger.

Lune snatched up the bodice of her gown just as Michael Deven came into view.

“Oh!” Gertrude exclaimed, as Deven flushed scarlet and spun about. The floor had already closed behind him; unable to escape, he kept his back resolutely turned. “My lady, I am so very sorry. I did not know you were here.”

Lune did not entirely believe her. Irritation warred with an unfamiliar feeling of embarrassment as Rosamund helped her into the stained remnant of her clothing. Fae were often careless of bodily propriety among themselves, particularly at festival time, but mortals were another matter. Especially
that
mortal.

“I just wanted to give Master Deven a token,” Gertrude said, opening a chest that sat along one wall. “So our birds can find him if he isn’t at home. They will carry messages for you, Master Deven, should you need to send to us. Lady Lune, I would give you one as well —”

“But it might be found on me,” Lune finished for her. The sleeves of her dress were not yet reattached, but at least she was covered now. “I quite understand.”

“Aye, exactly.” Gertrude carried something over to where Deven yet stood on the staircase; it looked like a dried rosebud, but seemed much less fragile. “Here you are.”

He moved enough to accept the token and examine it. “Roses again, I see.”

Gertrude clicked her tongue. “
I
would have planted something other than a rosebush, but my sister was so very fond of the notion. Now everything we do is roses, and everyone always thinks of her. I should have had a flower in my name.”

Rosamund answered her with mild asperity, and the two sisters bickered in friendly fashion while they helped Lune finish dressing. It lowered the tension in the room, as no doubt they intended, and after a few moments Deven risked a glance over his shoulder, saw Lune was decent again, and finally turned to face them all.

“I did not mean to burst in thus,” he said to her, with a stiff bow. “Forgive me.”

The rote apology hit Lune with far more force than it should have. His eyes were a lighter blue than the seer’s had been, and his hair brown instead of black — he had none of the fey look brought on by life in the Onyx Hall — but in her memory, a wavering, nearly inaudible voice echoed him,
“Forgive me.”

“Rosamund,” she said, cutting into the amiable chatter of the two sisters. “Gertrude. Last night . . . I did not think to ask; too much else was happening. But before he died, Tiresias — Francis spoke a name. Begged forgiveness of her. A fae woman, I think. Suspiria.”

She expected the brownies would recognize the name. She did not expect it to have such an effect. Both sisters gasped, their faces suddenly stricken, and tears sprang into Gertrude’s eyes.

Startled, Lune said, “Who is she?”

Rosamund put one arm around her sister’s shoulders, comforting her, and said, “A fae woman, aye. Francis loved her dearly, and she him.”

Such romances often ended in tragedy, and more so under Invidiana’s rule. “What happened to her?”

The brownie met her gaze gravely. “She sits on a throne in the Onyx Hall.”

The notion was so incredible, Lune found herself thinking of the Hall of Figures, trying to recall any enthroned statues there. But Rosamund met her gaze, unblinking, and there was only one throne in all the buried palace, only one who sat upon it.

Invidiana.

The cold, merciless Queen of the faerie court, who could no more love a mortal — love anyone — than winter could engender a rose. Who kept Tiresias as the most tormented of her pets, bound by invisible chains he could only break in death. That Francis Merriman might once have loved her, Lune could almost believe; mortals often loved where it was not wise. But Rosamund said Invidiana loved him in return.

Gertrude said to her sister, through her sniffles, “I told you. He remembered her. Even when his mind was gone, when everything else was lost to him, he did not forget.”

Deven was staring at them all, clearly lost. Lune was not certain even she followed it. “If this is true — why did you not speak of it before? Surely this is something we needed to know!”

Rosamund sighed and helped Gertrude onto a stool. “You are right, my lady. But last night, we had no time; we had to get you back to the Onyx Hall, before someone could suspect you of Francis’s death. And you were distraught, Lady Lune. I did not wish to add to it.”

Lune thought of her confrontation with Invidiana that morning. “You mean, you did not wish me to face Invidiana, try to regain her goodwill, knowing the man who died at my feet had once loved her.”

The brownie nodded. “As you say. You are good at dissembling, Lady Lune — but could you have done that, without betraying yourself?”

Claiming a seat for herself, Lune said grimly, “I will have to, now. What have you not said?”

Deven leaned against the wall, arms folded over his chest and that shuttered look on his face; it was a mark of Rosamund’s own distress that she did not try to coax him into sitting down, but perched on the edge of one of the beds and sighed. “ ’Tis a long story; I pray you have patience.

“Gertrude and I once lived in the north, but we came here . . . oh, ages ago; I don’t remember when. Another inn stood on this spot then, not the Angel. The mortals had their wars, and then, when a new king took the throne, the first Henry Tudor, a woman arrived on our doorstep.

“She . . .” Rosamund searched for words. “We thought she was in a bad way when we saw her. Later, we saw how much worse it could be. Suspiria was cursed, you see, for some ancient offense. Cursed to suffer as if she were mortal. ’Twasn’t that she was old; fae can be old, if ’tis in their nature, and yet be very well. She
aged.
She sickened, grew weak — suffered all the infirmity that comes with mortality, in time.”

Deven made a small noise, and the brownie looked up at him. “I know what you must think, Master Deven. Oh, how terrible indeed, that one of our kind should suffer a fate every mortal faces. I do not expect you to have much sympathy for that. But imagine, if you can, how it would feel to suffer so, when ’tis a thing
not
natural to you.”

Whether he felt sympathy or not, he gave no sign.

Rosamund went on. “She told us she was condemned to suffer thus, until she atoned for her crime. Well, for ages she had thought her suffering
was
atonement, like the penance mortals do for their sins. But she had come to realize that she must do more — that her suffering would continue until she made up for what she had done wrong.”

“A moment,” Deven said, breaking in. “How elderly was she, if she had suffered ‘for ages’? There’s a limit to how old one can become. Or was she turning into a cricket, like Tithonus?”

Gertrude answered him, her voice still thick. “No, Master Deven. You are quite right: it cannot go on forever. She grew old, and when the span a mortal might be granted was spent, she . . . died, in a way. She shed her old, diseased body and came out young and beautiful once more, to enjoy a few years of that life before it all began again.”

Lune felt sick to her stomach. It was one thing to don the appearance of mortality, as a shield. To sicken and die like a mortal, though — to crawl out of rotting, degraded, liver-spotted flesh, and know to that she must come again —

“We helped her as best we could,” Rosamund said. “But her memory suffered like a mortal’s; she could not clearly recall what the cause was for which she had been cursed. She knew, though, that her offense had happened here, in the place that became London, and so she had returned here, to seek out those who might know what she should do.” The brownie laughed a little, more as if she remembered amusement than felt it. “We thought her mad when she told us what plan she had formed, to lift her curse.”

A hundred possibilities sprang to Lune’s mind, each madder than the last. More to stop her own invention than to prod Rosamund onward, she said, “What was it?”

The brownie shook her head, as if she still could not believe it. “She vowed to create a faerie palace, beneath all the city of London.”

Lune straightened. “Impossible. The Onyx Hall — she cannot have made it.”

“Oh?” Rosamund gave her a small smile. “Think, my lady. Where else in the world do you know of such a place? Where else is faerie magic so proof against the powers of iron and faith? Fae live in forests, glens, hollow hills — not cities. Why is there a palace beneath London?”

Rosamund was right, and yet the thought stunned her. Miles of corridor and gallery, hundreds or even thousands of chambers, the Hall of Figures, the night garden, the hidden entrances . . . the magnitude of the task dizzied her.

“She had help, of course,” Rosamund said, as if that somehow reduced it to a manageable scale. “Oh, tremendous help — but one person especially.”

Gertrude whispered, “Francis Merriman.”

Her sister nodded. “A young man Suspiria had come to know. She met him after her body had renewed itself, and she was desperate to keep him from ever seeing her old, to lift her curse before it came to that. But I think he knew anyhow. He had the gift of sight — visions of the future, or of present things kept secret.” Her expression trembled, holding back tears. “She often called him her Tiresias.”

Deven looked on, not comprehending. Of course: he did not understand how that name had been warped. It wasn’t just that Francis Merriman had been obliterated; the man had become one of a menagerie of human pets, a term of love become a term of control.

“So she lifted her curse,” Lune said. Gertrude was sniffling again, making the silence uncomfortable.

To her surprise, Rosamund shook her head. “Not then. She created the Hall, but when it was done, Suspiria still aged as she had before. She hid behind glamours, to keep Francis from knowing. And oh, it pained her — seeing him stay young, living as he did in the Onyx Hall with her, while she grew ever older. But he knew, and a good thing, too; ’twas him helped her lift the curse at last, one of his visions. Not long after that Catholic woman took the throne, it was.” The look of sorrow was back. “We were all so happy for her.”

Deven shifted his weight, and the tip of his scabbard scraped against the plastered wall. “Four or five years later — if my sums are right — you say she formed this pact.”

Rosamund sighed. “She did
something.
In one day, not only did she become the only faerie queen in all of England, she erased Suspiria from the world. After her curse was lifted, she had begun to gather a court around her; that, Lady Lune, is when Vidar came to the Onyx Hall. Before she was crowned. But he would no more recognize the name Suspiria than he would remember the court he once belonged to. To him, as to everyone else, there has only ever been Invidiana: the cruel mistress of the Onyx Hall.”

Attempting to dry her face with a mostly soaked handkerchief, Gertrude whispered, “But we remember her. And that is why we do not help the Wild Hunt. They would tear down the Onyx Hall, every stone of it, scatter its court to the four corners of England . . . and they would kill Invidiana. And though she is lost to us, we do not wish to see Suspiria die.”

Deven straightened and fished a clean handkerchief out of his cuff, offering it to Gertrude. She took it gratefully and repaid him with a watery, wavering smile.

Lune sat quietly, absorbing this information, trying to fit it alongside the things she had seen during her years in the Onyx Court. Fewer years than she had thought. Even the palace itself was new, by fae standards. “You were fond of Suspiria.”

“Aye,” Rosamund said, unapologetic. “She was warmer then, and kinder. But all kindness left her that day. You have never known the woman we helped.”

Nor the woman Francis had loved.

Deven came forward and placed his hands along the edge of the table, aligning them with studious care. “So how do we break the pact?”

Now Rosamund gave a helpless shrug. “We only just learned of its existence, Master Deven. And I imagine the list of people who know its terms is short, indeed. If Francis knew, he died before he could say.”

“Which leaves only two that must know,” Lune said. “Invidiana and Elizabeth.”

“Assuming we are right to begin with,” Deven still had his eyes on his carefully placed hands. “That the pact was formed with her.”

“Assuming
you
are right,” Lune countered, a little sharply. “You are the one who suggested it last night.”

The minuscule slump in his shoulders said he remembered all too well, and regretted it — but his silence told her he had no better explanation to offer in its place.

A muscle rose into relief along his jaw, then subsided. “I do not suppose you could trick your Queen into revealing the terms of the pact?”

The sound Lune made was nothing like a laugh. “You are asking me to trick the most suspicious and politically astute woman I have ever met.”