“Yes, sir.” Dressed enough to go out once more, Deven took his leave. He would have to find Colsey and put himself together properly, starting with a doublet that wasn’t coming unsewn. His quiet day in private, it seemed, would have to wait.
HAMPTON COURT PALACE, RICHMOND: February 13, 1590
The banked coals in the fireplace cast a dim, sullen glow over the bedchamber, barely enough to highlight its contents: the chests containing clothes and jewels, the bed heaped with blankets, the pallets of sleepers on the floor.
Anne Montrose lay wakeful, eyes on the invisible fretwork of the ceiling above, listening to her companions breathe. A gentle snore began; the countess had drifted off. One of the other gentlewomen made quiet smacking noises and rolled over. A few sparks flared up the chimney as a glowing log end crumbled under its own weight. The snoring ceased as the countess lapsed into deeper sleep.
Silent as a ghost, Anne rolled back her own blankets and stood.
The rushes pricked at her bare feet as she stole across the floor. The hinges did not creak when she opened the door; she took particular care to keep them well oiled at all times. A muted thud was the only sound to betray her when she left.
Midnight had passed already, and the palace lay sleeping. Even the courtiers indulging in illicit trysts had retired by now. The dark cloak she wore was symbolic as well as practical; it served as a useful focal point for the minor charm she called up. Anyone who might be awake would not see her unless she wanted them to.
By the thin bars of light that came in through the courtyard windows, she made her way along the gallery and to the privy stair that led down to the gardens. Snow had dusted the ground during the day. In the moonlight, their shoulders and heads capped with white, the heraldic beasts that marked out the squares of the Privy Garden seemed even stranger than usual, like frosted gargoyles that might leap into motion without warning. She cast sidelong glances at them as she passed, but they remained lifeless stone.
Up ahead, the banqueting house loomed tall and sinister in the Mount Garden, surrounded by trees pruned carefully into grotesques. And on the far side of that, murmuring to itself under a thin shell of ice, the Thames.
A figure waited for her in the shadows of the Water Gallery, just above the river’s edge.
“You are late.”
Lune kept the illusion of Anne Montrose over her features; she did not want the nuisance of reconstructing it. She did not have to think like a human, though, and so she stood barefoot on the icy ground, the cloak now flapping free in the wind off the river.
“I am not late,” she said, as a bell ringer inside the palace clock tower began to toll the second hour after midnight.
Vidar smiled his predatory smile. “My mistake.”
Why Vidar? Ordinarily he dispatched a minor goblin to bring her bread. Lune supposed she would learn the answer soon enough, but she would not satisfy him by asking. Instead she held out one hand. “If you please. I am near the end of my ration.”
She was unsurprised when Vidar did not move. “What matters that? Unless you expect a priest to leap out of the river and bid you begone, in the name of his divine master, you are in no immediate danger of being revealed.”
Months before, Lune had snatched a few days of solitude for herself, pleading an ill kinswoman in London to cover for her absence. Those days spent wearing her true face had allowed her to shift the schedule of her ration; the goblins delivered it on Fridays, but she ate it on Tuesdays. The margin of safety might be important someday. But Vidar did not know that, and so she feigned the apprehension she should have felt, hearing him come so close to naming the mortal God to her face.
“My mistress may wake and find me gone,” she said, sidestepping Vidar’s jibe. “I should not tarry.”
He shrugged his bony shoulders. “Tell her you slipped off for a tryst with that mortal toy of yours. Or some other tale. I care not what lie you give her.” He settled his back against the brickwork of the Water Gallery, arms crossed over his narrow chest. “What news have you?”
Lune tucked her reaching hand back inside her cloak. So. Again she was unsurprised; she knew she was hardly the Onyx Court’s only source of information regarding the mortals. But it meant something, that Vidar considered the matter pressing enough to seek her out here. Like the mistress he strove to emulate and eventually unseat, he rarely left the sanctuary of the Onyx Hall.
“Sir John Perrot has been accused of treason,” she said, allowing the pretense that Vidar did not already know. “He is a political client of Walsingham’s, and so the Principal Secretary is moving to defend him. Deven has been assigned to investigate: who is taking an interest in Irish affairs, and to what end.” That Deven and Walsingham both were at Richmond, she did not say. The Countess of Warwick had been bidden there the other day to attend the Queen, by which fortunate chance Lune had been able to learn of Deven’s assignment; Vidar would be displeased if he knew how rarely she saw him at the moment. He was her link to Walsingham. Without him, she had very little.
Vidar tapped a sharp fingernail against a jeweled clasp that held the sleeve of his doublet closed. “Has your toy asked you to tell him of what you hear?”
“No, but he knows I will do it regardless.” Lune’s eyes went from the tapping fingernail to Vidar’s face, his sunken eyes hidden in shadow. “Is the accusation our doing?”
The fingernail stopped. Vidar said, “You are here to do the bidding of the Queen, not to ask questions.”
How the removal of Perrot would advance Invidiana’s bargaining with the Irish fae, Lune could not guess, but Vidar’s attempt to dodge the question told her it would. “The better I understand the Queen’s intentions, the better I may serve her.”
She startled a bitter but honest laugh out of Vidar. “What a charming notion — understanding her intentions. Dwelling among mortals has made you an optimistic fool.”
Lune pressed her lips together in annoyance, then smoothed her features out. “Have you instructions for me, then? Or am I simply to listen and report?”
Vidar considered it. Which, again, told her something: Invidiana was permitting him some measure of discretion in this matter. He had not come here just as a messenger. And that told her why it was Vidar, and not a goblin, bringing her bread tonight.
She tucked that information away, adding it to her meager storehouse of knowledge.
“Seek out the interested parties,” he said, the words guarded and thoughtful. “Assemble a list of them. What they desire, and why, and what they would be willing to do in exchange.”
Then no bargain had yet been settled with the Irish fae. If it had been, Lune would be assigned more specifically to cultivate a particular faction. Had the accusation of Perrot been simply a demonstration of Invidiana’s power, to convince the Irish of her ability to deliver on her promises?
She could not tell from here, and Lady Nianna, even when feeling friendly, was not enough to keep her informed. It was pleasant to dwell among mortals, close enough to the center of the Tudor Court to bask in its glory without being caught in its net, and to enjoy the illusion of freedom from the ever more vicious intrigues of the Onyx Court, but she could never forget that it was an illusion. Nowhere was safe. And if she ever let that slip her mind, she would discover what it meant to truly fall from favor.
“Very well,” Lune said to Vidar, allowing a note of boredom to creep into her voice. Let him think her careless and inattentive; it was always better to be underestimated. “Now, my bread, if you will.”