The Black Queen (Book 6) (38 page)

What had happened to him? And how had it happened so very quickly?

“I assume you came to see me for a reason,” he said.

His comment jolted her back to herself. By the Powers, she couldn’t talk to him now. She might not ever be able to talk with him about this, not with Rugad dominating him. The plan she and the other Healers had devised would fail if she told him of it. She only hoped Sebastian would think of shattering all by himself.

How could she trigger it without tipping her hand to Rugad? She didn’t know.

“Seger?” he said, sounding so much like the Rugad who had been her commander for years that when she looked at him, she almost expected to see the craggy imperial face.

She swallowed. “I had heard you were using Rugad’s voice.” She made herself sound calm, gave her own voice that slight patronizing tone so many people used with Sebastian. She was hoping he wouldn’t realize she knew that Rugad was completely in charge of the golem. “I wanted to warn you about it, remind you about its dangers, and then to tell you that if you don’t stop, I will have to tell your sister.”

He laughed, a deep throaty sound that carried across the courtyard. Several of the Infantry looked over at him, with startled expressions on their faces. The Infantry Leader, a woman who had served with Rugad, actually looked frightened for a moment before she could control her expression.

“What would Arianna do?” he asked. “Send me to my room without supper?”

Lies always created trouble. Seger licked her lips. They were dry and cracked. She hadn’t noticed before. “She would probably make me remove the voice.”

“I thought you were going to do that anyway.”

“Is this your last fling with it, then?”

He smiled, but turned his face away from her, as if he didn’t want her to see his expression. She had never seen this sort of change in a golem, but she had seen it in creatures that Shifters changed into. A bird that was really a Shifter would sometimes get a very Fey expression on its face. It would move in ways that a Fey moved, not the way that bird moved. That was because its main form was Fey, and it sometimes forgot that other creatures moved differently. Rugad was so used to fluid movement that it bent Sebastian’s stone body in all sorts of forms the body had never used before. Seger wondered if that would harm the golem. She wasn’t sure.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said when he didn’t respond to her last comment, “that perhaps removing the voice is the worst thing I can do.”

This got his attention. He stood up straighter. Sebastian was slightly taller than she was. She had never realized it before. “Why?”

“It’s so integrated into your stone, I figure the only way to rid you of it is to shatter you, and I’m not sure you can survive another shattering.”

“It’s certainly not something I look forward to,” he said. “That last shattering was difficult enough.”

For Rugad. For Sebastian it had been the same. But it had nearly killed Rugad, and it had caused him to lose his voice in the first place.

It was confirmation that she wasn’t dealing with Sebastian. Very subtle confirmation that went with all the rest.

The clang of swords began again. She turned toward the fighters, just because she didn’t want to look at the golem any more. The men were in the ring now, fighting each other with measured movements. He had been right; it looked more like dance than war.

She watched. The men moved together. Even the parries came at the same angle, and almost at the same time.

The older Fey would be happy to have Rugad back in the form of Arianna or they would think she had simply come to her senses. The younger Fey wouldn’t know what to do, how to behave. Already some of the old ways were being lost.

He was watching her, a wry and vaguely amused expression on his face. It surprised her that Sebastian’s cracked skin could have such a range of movements, such a repertoire of expression. Sebastian had none.

What surprised her even more was that she could read Rugad as well as she always could. That had been the secret to her healing him—knowing when he really needed help and when he didn’t. He would never tell her, of course. He expected to fight through everything. But sometimes he would listen to her—those times when he was the most damaged, and needed the most care.

He raised his eyebrows in an unspoken question. He wanted to know what she was thinking. Fortunately, she hadn’t lost her ability to hide from him either.

“I had forgotten how beautiful fighting could be,” she said, knowing it was what he wanted to hear.

He smiled. It was Sebastian’s smile, with a cruel edge to it. “Beautiful,” he said, “and profitable.”

She nodded once. To say any more would raise his suspicions. Then, with a single last glance at the Infantry practice, she said, “Be careful with that voice.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said and saluted her in the Islander fashion.

She smiled. She had to. It was supposed to be a joke. But she couldn’t suppress a shudder as she walked away. She only hoped he didn’t see it.

The clang of swords followed her as she crossed the flagstones. She could almost predict when she would hear the sound. Cross, scrape, clang. Repeat. So orderly. So unFeylike.

The Fey had been a perfect warrior people under Rugad. They had conquered half the world, stopped only by the unexpected wild magick of Blue Isle. She had been raised in the warrior culture, raised as a healer whose work depended on a constant stream of injured. When she had been young, she had appreciated the challenge—always something new, always something impossible to attempt—but now that she was older she hated it. She saw the waste, saw too many lives cut short. Even the impossible hadn’t been able to save some of her favorite people.

She had been burning out when she was approached by Rugad to be his personal Healer and she had taken the opportunity. The work was easy most of the time, and when it wasn’t, it was so challenging that she created new frontiers in Healer magick. How to save a Black King, over and over again, and yet allow him to maintain his power, maintain his rule? When he had been stabbed in the throat, his head nearly severed from his body, she had kept him alive using techniques Healers had only discussed. He was back on his feet within a few weeks, as strong as ever.

The logical thing to do would be to turn her back on what she saw. Sebastian was gone. Rugad had the golem’s body, and Rugad would rule the Fey again, in one way or another. It would only be a matter of time before he had Arianna under his complete control.

Seger wondered if he had known—or somehow divined—her plan, the plan that would not work now. She couldn’t put the construct into the golem, not with part of Rugad already there, and active. He might know ways to cover the cracks in the skin. It had been years since anyone had seen Gift. All it would take would be some simple maneuvering, and Rugad could transform the golem into his template. Rugad would rule through a stone body, pretending to be Gift.

When she reached the wooden door leading into the Fey wing of the palace, she pulled it open and stepped inside. The doorway was cool and dark and empty. She closed the door behind her and leaned against it.

The logical thing. She sighed. Her heart didn’t want her to do the logical thing. She had liked Arianna, liked the way that the Fey were learning to live within their own empire. They could be warrior people, Arianna had once said, tough people, whom no one invaded, no one picked fights with, no one conquered. The difference was that they didn’t have to do any of those things to anyone else either.

Seger had heard sense in that. She saw no need in taking over the entire world. She saw only loss in it. And there had been no uprising with the ranks of Fey, as she had expected initially, no complaints about the new policy.

Could a people grow tired of movement and conquest as well? Or had they simply needed another rest?

She didn’t know. What she did know was that Arianna, with her lack of Fey training, her lack of a traditional Fey government, had left herself vulnerable to a kind of magick so rarely used that Seger hadn’t paid much attention to it.

If she was going to save Arianna, if she was going to save the new future of the Fey—the one that meant fewer deaths and richer lives—then she had to find a way to fight Rugad’s construct. She had to find a way to stop the magick that was recreating the most ruthless Black King the Fey had ever known.

She would need help, and she wasn’t sure she had time to find it. She needed to act with stealth. So far Rugad didn’t suspect that she knew as much as she did. But once he knew, he would make certain she would never come near him again.

Seger stood, straightened her shoulders, and headed deeper into the Fey quarters. She needed to send Gull Riders and Wisps over half the world, and she had to do so without the knowledge of Arianna—or Rugad. It would be tricky. And whatever help came first was the help she had to use.

She would only get one chance at this. She had to do everything right. For all their sakes.

And for the sake of the world.

THE RESCUE

(Three Days Later)

TWENTY

THE SKY was a brilliant blue. The ocean itself picked up the vibrant blue, and mixed it with its own natural grays and greens, making it seem as if they were sailing on majestic woven carpet, made especially for them. The breeze was light, but enough to fill their sails, and the temperatures had grown warmer. The storm that threatened three days before had been a small one, easily dissipated by Bridge’s Weather Sprites, much to the surprise of the Nyeian crew. Nothing serious loomed ahead, but Bridge’s Navigators told him that this balmy section of ocean—called the Evil Warmth by most sailors—would disappear shortly, and then they would hit an area of the sea that all dreaded for its unpredictable weather. More ships had been lost in the upcoming section of ocean, his Navigators told him, than in any other part of the Infrin Sea.

That didn’t worry him, not yet. Besides, part of the problem was that non-Fey vessels were lulled into a kind of contentment in the Evil Warmth, and would then come upon the treacherous waters unprepared. Bridge’s ships were prepared, and there were Bird Riders ahead, scouting the area, ready to warn them about anything unusual.

Bird Riders. Normally he liked them, but one particular Bird Rider was setting his teeth on edge. Bridge was standing on the deck near the captain’s area—he never could remember nautical terms—watching his daughter flirt with Ace. Ace was young and talented and smart, everything Bridge wanted in a Gull Rider. But not what he wanted in a son-in-law.

What was it about Lyndred that made her so needy? She was a beautiful girl with a glorious future. The last thing she needed was to be bound to a Bird Rider whose entire life would be one of service.

At least she wasn’t flirting with the Nyeian crew. Bridge had been afraid of that, but she had surprised him with this Rider.

Ace was hanging onto the railing as he spoke to her. She was leaning against the railing herself, but not paying much attention to how she was grounded. A sudden swell would knock her into the water. Apparently Ace noticed that too, for he kept one hand behind her at all times.

The boy was cautious, if nothing else. Cautious and infatuated with Bridge’s daughter.

Lyndred had tried to be coy about the whole thing. A few days ago, when Ace had brought news of the storm, Lyndred had come to Bridge, ostensibly to find out what such news meant. Actually, she watched him from the corner of her eye as she talked about Ace, trying to see if Bridge approved.

He approved of Ace. He didn’t approve of a union with Ace and his daughter. And he didn’t know how to tell her that, but he would have to.

Or he would have to forbid the boy from getting near her. That, of course, would make things worse. Kids their age thought it romantic to be denied each other’s company—he certainly had with his first wife. That was a match he would regret for the rest of his life, if it weren’t for the fact that it gave him Rugan. The boy didn’t have Vision like Lyndred but he did have sense, which she somehow lacked.

His second wife, whom Bridge married after his father died, had been a gem. By then, though, Bridge had known who he was and what he wanted. Lyndred was too young to know any of that.

But if he told her that, she would get angry. He loved this child, his youngest—more than any of the others, truth be told—but she exasperated him. His only girl, and his hope for the future, and she was determined to screw it up.

Bridge sighed. He wished he were as clever as his father or as manipulative as his grandfather. Then he would know how to handle this daughter of his. But he didn’t. And so he watched, in complete frustration, knowing one day she would take it too far, and he would have another fight with her, like he had over that silly Nyeian poet with the ridiculous name.

Something white against the blueness above caught the corner of his eye. He turned, saw a Gull Rider spinning out of control, attempting a dive toward the deck and failing. Instead, it landed in the water, still in Gull form. He didn’t hear a splash. If he hadn’t seen it, he wouldn’t have known that it landed.

He ran to the railing, and so did one of the Nyeian sailors. The Gull Rider was floating on the surface, wings spread, beak down. Only its tiny Fey body remained out of the water. Its small head was back, and its arms dangled. It was going to drown.