“What did you say?” he whispered.
She wet her lips before she could suppress the nervous movement. “The Principal Secretary has begun to suspect that someone unknown to him has a hand in English politics.”
“What has he seen?”
The question lashed out like a whip. But it was easier for Lune to retain her composure, even with the knife still against her skin, now that her body was not pressed to Vidar’s in violently intimate embrace. “Seen? Nothing. He suspects only.” She had to give him more than that. “The recent events concerning Ireland have caught his attention. He is beginning to look back at past matters, such as the Queen of Scots.”
Vidar’s shoulders rose fractionally with tension. Lune knew that one would worry him.
“And what,” Vidar said, his voice now hard with control, “will he do with his suspicions?”
Lune shook her head, then froze as she felt the knife scrape her throat once more. “I do not know. Deven does not know. Walsingham spoke of it only briefly, and that in a confused fashion. He has not been well; Deven thinks this a feverish delusion brought on by overwork.”
She stood motionless, briefly forgotten as Vidar considered her words. The black dog — if that was the watcher in question — could not have heard them over the racket the other hounds were making. He had only seen them talking, and surmised from her reaction that whatever Deven spoke of was important. Vidar’s sharp reaction to her first declaration had made that plain.
Which meant that she could afford to bend the truth — within limits.
Vidar’s gaze sharpened and turned back to her. “So,” he said. “You learned of this — a clear and immediate threat to the Queen’s grace and the security of our people — and you chose to keep the information to yourself.” His lips peeled back from his teeth in mockery of a smile. “Explain why.”
Lune sniffed derisively. “Why? I should think it obvious, even to you. This is the kind of situation that makes people stop thinking, sends them into a blind panic wherein they strike out at the perceived threat, thinking only to destroy it. Which might be a terrible waste of opportunity.”
“Opportunity.” Vidar relaxed his arm; the knife moved away, though it still glimmered in his hand, unsheathed and ready. “Opportunity for Lady Lune, perhaps — at the expense of the Onyx Court, and all the fae who shelter under its power.”
She wondered if this rhetoric came from their habit of copying mortals. The greater good of the Onyx Court, and the faerie race as a whole, was occasionally deployed as a justification for certain actions, or an exhortation to loyalty. It might have carried more force had it not been only an occasional device — or if anyone had believed it to be more than empty words. “Not in the slightest,” she said, keeping her voice even and unperturbed. “I am no fool; what gain could there possibly be for me, betraying her Majesty in such a manner? But I am better positioned than any to see which direction Walsingham moves, what action he takes. And I tell you that quick action would be inadvisable here. Far better to watch him, and to move subtly, when fortune should offer us a chance.” She allowed herself an ironic smile. “Even should he uncover the times and places in which we have intervened, I hardly expect he will imagine fae to be the culprits.”
And that was true enough. But Vidar’s malicious smile had returned. “I wonder what her Majesty would think of your logic?”
Beneath the facade of her composure, Lune’s heart skipped several beats.
“I might not tell her.” Vidar examined the point of his dagger, scraping some imagined fleck of dirt off it with one talonlike fingernail. “It would be a risk to me, of course — if she found out… but I might be willing to offer you that mercy, Lady Lune.”
She had to ask; he was waiting for it. “At what price?”
His eyes glittered at her over the blade in his hands. “Your silence. At some point in the future, I will bid you keep some knowledge to yourself. Something commensurate with what I do for you now. And you will be bound, by your word, to keep that matter from the Queen.”
She could translate that well enough. He was binding her to be his accomplice in some future bid to take the Onyx Throne.
Yet what was her alternative? Say to him, So tell the Queen, and be damned, and then warn Invidiana of Vidar’s ambition? She knew of it already, and he had not said anything specific enough to condemn him. At which point Lune would be dependent on nothing more than the mercy of a merciless Queen.
Lune kept from grinding her teeth by force of will, and said in a voice that sounded only a little strained, “Very well.”
Vidar lowered the knife. “Your word upon it.”
He was leaving nothing to chance. Lune swallowed down bile and said, “In ancient Mab’s name, I swear to repay this favor with favor, of commensurate kind and value, when you should upon a future occasion ask for it, and to let no word of it reach the Queen.”
That, or remove him as a threat before he ever had occasion to ask. Sun and Moon, Lune thought despairingly, how did I reach such a state, that I should be swearing myself to Vidar?
The dagger vanished as if it had never been. “Excellent,” Vidar said, and smiled that toothy smile. “I look forward to hearing your future reports, Lady Lune.”
OATLANDS PALACE, SURREY: March 14, 1590
Standing at attention beside the door that led from the presence chamber to the privy chamber, Deven fixed his eyes on the far wall and let his ears do the work. It was a tedious duty, and a footsore one — shifting one’s weight was frowned upon — but it did afford him a good opportunity to eavesdrop. He had come to suspect that Elizabeth’s penchant for conversing in a variety of languages was as much an obfuscatory tactic as a demonstration of her learning; her courtiers were a polyglot assortment, following the lead of their Queen, but few could speak every language she did. He himself was often defeated by her rapid-fire speech, but he had enough Italian now to sift out the gist of a sentence, and his French was in fine practice. So he stared off into the distance, poleax held precisely upright, and listened.
He listened particularly for talk of Ireland.
A hidden player, Walsingham had said. Deven had already calculated that any such player must either have the right of entrée to the presence chamber — likely the privy chamber as well — or else must have followers with such a right. The former made more sense, as one could not effectively influence the machinery of court at a distance for long, but he couldn’t assume it too firmly.
Unfortunately, though a great many people were barred from entry, a great many were not. Peers of the realm, knights, gentlemen — even some wealthy merchants — ambassadors, too. Could it be one of them? Neither the Spanish nor the French would have reason to urge Mary’s execution on Elizabeth, and they had little enough reason to care what happened in Ireland, though part of the accusations against both Perrot and the Earl of Tyrone were that they had conspired with the Spanish.
But ambassadors came and went. If Walsingham was correct, this player had been active for decades. They made poor suspects, unless the true players were their more distant sovereigns — but those were already on the board, so to speak.
Round and round Deven’s thoughts went, while out of the corners of his eyes he watched courtiers come and go, and he eavesdropped on every scrap of conversation he could.
A tap on his brocade shoulder roused him from his reverie. Focusing so much on the edges of the room, he hadn’t paid any attention to what was in front of him.