She was so very tired of intrigue. Tired of having no one she could honestly call “friend.”
“Too much mortal bread,” Lune whispered to herself, just to break the silence. A year of it had changed her, softened her. Made her regret the loss of such mortal things as warmth and companionship. She was inventing memories now, losing herself in delusion like Tiresias, pining for a world that could never be.
It wasn’t true, though. There were fae like that, fae who could be friends. The Goodemeades were living proof of its possibility.
Not in the Onyx Hall, though.
And if Lune wanted to survive, she could not afford to indulge such fancies. She gritted her teeth. To escape the intrigue, first she had to scheme her way free. The only way out was through.
Keys rattled outside her cell. The lock clanked and thunked, and then the familiar protest of the hinges as the door swung open. Light flooded through. Lune stood, using the wall to steady herself, and looked flinchingly toward the opening, raising her gaze a degree at a time as her eyes could bear the light.
A figure came through. Not twisted enough for a goblin. Not tall enough for Kentigern. But not Tiresias, either. The sihouette had a broad, triangular base: a woman, in court dress.
“Leave the door open,” an accented and melodious voice said. “She will not flee.”
The goblin outside bowed, and stepped back.
Lune’s eyes were adjusting at last. Her visitor moved to one side, so she was no longer backlit, and with a confused shock Lune recognized her. “Madame,” she said, and sank into a curtsy.
The ambassador from the Cour du Lys seemed all the more immaculate for her dirty surroundings, wearing a crystalline gown in the latest fashion, her lovely copper hair curled and swept up under a pert little hat. Malline le Sainfoin de Veilée eyed Lune’s filthy skin with distaste, but inclined her head in greeting. “The chevalier has given me permission to speak with you, and a promise of discretion.”
Kentigern would probably keep that promise, if only because he was not subtle enough to seek out a buyer for his information. “Is discretion needed, madame ambassadrice?”
“If you choose to accept the bargain I offer you.”
Lune’s mind felt as rusty as the door hinges. That the French envoy was offering her help, she could understand, but why? And what did she want in return?
Madame Malline did not explain immediately. Instead she snapped her jeweled fingers, and when a head appeared in the doorway — a sprite belonging to the embassy, not the goblin jailer — she spoke imperiously in French, demanding two stools. A moment later these were brought in, and Madame Malline arrayed herself on one, gesturing for Lune to take the other.
When they were both seated, and Madame Malline had arranged her glittering skirts to her satisfaction, she said, “You may know I am in negotiations with your Queen, regarding the conflict with the Courts of the North, and which side my king will take. You, Lady Lune, are not valuable enough as a bargaining piece to be worth much in that debate, but you are worth a little. I am prepared to offer Invidiana certain concessions of neutrality — minor ones, nothing more — in exchange for your freedom from this cell.”
“I would be in your debt, madame,” Lune said reflexively. Sitting in the light, on a cushioned stool, had warmed up the stiff muscles of her mind. She remembered now how she might repay that debt.
She hoped the ambassador meant something else.
“Indeed,” the French fae murmured. “I know of you, Lady Lune, though we have not spoken often. You have more between your ears than fluff; you would not have survived for so long were it not so. You know already what I will ask.”
Lune wished desperately for a bath. It seemed a trivial thing, her unwashed state, when laid against her political predicament, but the two were not unconnected; grimy, with her hair straggling around her face in strands dulled from silver to gray, she felt inferior to the French elf. It would undermine her in the bargaining that must come.
But she would do her best. “My Queen,” Lune said, “also knows what you will ask. I would be foolish indeed to betray her.”
Madame Malline dismissed this with a wave of one delicate hand. “Certainement, she knows. But she, knowing, permitted me to come here. We may therefore conclude that she does not see it as a betrayal.”
“What we may conclude, madame ambassadrice, is that it amuses her to grant me enough rope with which to hang myself.” Lune gestured at the walls of her cell. “That I have been kept here means she has not made up her mind to destroy me. This might be her way of making her decision: if I tell you more than she wishes me to, then she will declare it treason and execute me.”
“But then the bird would already have flown, non? I would have the information she does not wish me to have. Unless you suggest she would strike you dead even as you speak.”
Invidiana could do it, with that black diamond jewel. But she had not used it on Lune, and the envoy had a point; by the time Lune was dead, the information would already have been passed on. And despite everything, Lune did not think Invidiana would breach protocol so inexcusably as to kill a foreign ambassador on English soil. She often bent the rules of politics and diplomacy until they wept blood, but to break them outright — especially during such negotiations — would ensure an alliance against her that even the Onyx Court could not survive.
It was a slim enough thread on which to hang her life. But what was her alternative? Invidiana might yet decide to kill her anyway — or worse, forget her. One day the door would cease to open, and then Lune would dwindle to nothingness, alone in the dark, screaming away her final years inside a stone box.
“I am willing to negotiate,” she said.
“Bon!” Madame Malline seemed genuinely pleased. “Let us speak, then. I will have wine brought, and you will tell me—”
“No.” Lune cut her off as the French elf raised her hand to summon a servant again. She stood and straightened her skirts, resisting the urge to brush dirt off them. It wouldn’t help, and it would make her look weak. “You secure my release, and then I tell you what I know.”
The warmth in the ambassador’s smile dwindled sharply at the insinuation. She could not be surprised, though; distrust and suspicion were the daily bread of the Onyx Court. And indeed, she played the same card in return. “But once you are free of this cell, what is to reassure me I will have what I seek?”
Lune had not expected so obvious a trick to succeed, but it had been worth a try. “I will tell you some things now, and more once I am free.”
Madame Malline pursed her full lips, considering it. “Tell me, and I will see to it you are moved to a better cell, and so on from there.”
The alternative was to give her word, and Lune’s half of the bargain was necessarily too vague for that to work. “Very well.”
Servants appeared again. One sprite poured the wine, while another bowed deeply and presented Lune with a platter of fresh grapes. She made herself eat these slowly, as if she did not really need them. Negotiations were not over. She still could not afford to look weak.
“The folk of the sea,” she said when the sprites had bowed and retreated to the edge of the room. “They take offense if you call them fae, and in truth I do not know if they are. ’Tis a question for philosophers to debate. I went among them for politics.”
Madame Malline nodded. “The mortal Armada, yes.”