Prigurd’s shoulders jerked, and the chain binding his wrists rattled. He shrank even further into himself. “Y—Your Grace remembers the execution. I was there. I was protected. When Hipley started singing…it didn’t hurt me at all.”
It was so unexpected, Lune’s anger faltered. Was he telling the truth? She remembered the psalm washing over her, deflected by the tithe.
Which all of them had eaten, before going to Westminster. Not Essain and Mellehan, who did not accompany them—but Prigurd had.
She should have noticed the incongruity. Had she been thinking at all clearly that day, she would have. But with the death of the King ringing in her bones and Vidar upon her throne, such lesser considerations had fled her mind. And later, when she had more leisure, she had not given it a second thought.
Yet why should he have carried out such a ruse?
Irritation sparked, irrationally. She had granted him this audience believing she knew what path she would follow. Now, thanks to his revelation, she could not condemn him out of hand—however much she wanted to. Having chosen to hear him publicly, she had to ask him the question all her subjects, like her, wanted answered. “Why?”
Prigurd’s head rose just a hair, then dragged itself farther down. Had he tried to look her in the face, she would have ordered him to drop his gaze, and he knew it. He had lost the right to behave so familiarly. “I wanted to be loyal, your Majesty.”
If that was supposed to excite mercy, it failed; her rage recovered from its stumble. Rising from her throne, Lune spat, “Then why did you betray me to Vidar?”
“Because of Kentigern.” The anguished whisper, tearing from the giant’s great chest, still carried through the hall. “Majesty—he was my brother. He asked it of me, he—he told me we owed it to Halgresta—he was all the family I had left!”
She did not want to pity him. Prigurd was an idiot, a blind fool, too easily led by others; she should never have given him command of the Onyx Guard. But the mistake was of her own creation: she had always known him to be the only one of the three Nellt siblings moved by true duty and loyalty.
Which bound him from two directions. His sister dead, his brother exiled, Prigurd must have felt his failure keenly. And Kentigern—less cunning than Halgresta, but just as vicious, and utterly without principles—had used that to manipulate Prigurd into betraying his Queen on behalf of his kin.
An error Prigurd had tried, in his pathetic way, to remedy.
Lune gestured sharply at Bonecruncher. “During the retaking of the Hall—what did the traitor do?”
The barguest pointed one hooked claw at a fetch in his group. “He brought the giant in. Said he found him hiding in his chambers.”
“I didn’t fight,” Prigurd insisted.
“Silence!” Lune’s shoulders ached with tension. Kneeling humbly, awaiting judgment, Prigurd infuriated her, because now she had to decide what to do with him. A mortal could be imprisoned, to be let out when old, or left there until dead; Lune had no such luxury with her immortal subjects. Locking him back in the dungeon would only postpone the problem.
Unless, of course, the Onyx Guard murdered him in his cell. Which was entirely possible.
I must execute him myself, or send him away; he cannot stay here. And if she killed him, it would annihilate any chance of healing the breach in her court. No one could expect mercy from her then. If exiled, though, he would be a ready pawn for her enemies.
Once, this court had possessed a gem that could bind anyone, faerie or mortal, to a specified ban, bringing death to those who broke it. And for one sick, horrifying instant, Lune wished she still had it to hand.
She turned to hide her face from the watching fae, and seated herself once more upon the throne when she had mastered her wrenching repugnance. Must this be my fate? By ruling London, am I doomed to become like Invidiana?
It must not be. “Prigurd Nellt,” she said, coldly calm once more. “Do you abjure Ifarren Vidar, Nicneven of Fife, Conchobar of Ulster, and all their allies?”
The giant raised his gaze as far as the hem of her skirts and placed one massive fist over his heart. “Your Majesty—I will never again oppose you, the Prince, or the Onyx Court. I will take no action against you, and I will keep no secret that might threaten you. I will never again raise my hand against you or any of your subjects. This I swear, in ancient Mab’s name.”
Her heart beat painfully in her breast. An oath had not been her intent—not after Cerenel. She had some idea of how to frighten Prigurd sufficiently to keep him away from her opponents. And a vow so broad… his choice of terms was nothing short of asinine. It rendered him as useless to her as he was against her.
But bound in such manner, she could release him without fear.
Sun and Moon. Were my courtiers bound half so stringently, I need never again fear rebellion from within.
Another sickening thought. Parliament and the Army had tried that course, demanding varied and repeated oaths from members of the puppet Commons and other officials. The result had been to cheapen them into mere words. She would not risk the same here.
She had to reply. Lune gathered her wits and said, “We accept and recognize your vow. Despite it, however, your face is an unwelcome reminder of your treachery, and the price this court has paid for it. We therefore exile you from London and its environs, not to come within one day’s journey, on pain of imprisonment and further punishment. Go now, and let us not look upon you again.”
Prigurd’s breath caught. Slowly, awkwardly, he bowed until his face almost touched the floor. Then he stumbled to his feet and stood, broken-shouldered, while Bonecruncher unlocked his chains. No one spoke a word as he turned and made his way from the chamber, steps dragging, and out the shattered doors.
When he was gone, Lune said, “And now to our third matter.”
Every eye was upon her as she formed the words, enunciating them with razor-edged precision. “Bring me Ifarren Vidar.”
ST. MARTIN’S LANE, LONDON: August 14, 1659
“You should have waited for me,” Antony said.
“I could not.” Lune wore a different guise today, a younger version of the stern woman he had accompanied to the King’s execution. Whether she wished not to show the Montrose face again, or was thinking back to that terrible day, he could not guess. “I must return the court to order as quickly as I can, and that means addressing such matters.”
Impatience flared at the edges of his temper. That was good, in its way; he had the vigor to feel impatient. Owing, at least in part, to the vast meal he was currently gulping down. He had gone to church that morning, for the first time in far too long, and thanked God for the gift of his life—and the wife who had preserved it. “I am not so far away. You could have sent a messenger for me.”
The faerie woman shook her head. “No. You must stay above, and reestablish your roots in this world.”
There was a grotesque irony in her words: that, having wasted halfway to death because he was too long outside the Onyx Hall, he should nearly have killed himself by flinging his spirit so deeply into its embrace. In his waking moments, Antony could remember little of what he felt after pulling the ceiling down, but it returned to haunt him in dreams.