“How could they be expecting us?” said Honey. “We didn’t know we were coming here just a few hours ago.”
“They know because they’re elves,” I said.
“Is this bad?” said Peter.
“It’s not good,” I said. “But then, I never thought it would be.”
Queen Mab leaned forward on her throne, and we all stopped talking. The darkness fell away from her like a discarded cloak, and the sheer impact of her appearance was like a slap in the face. Mab was huge, greater in size and scale than any other elf. Ten feet tall, supernaturally slender and glamorous, naked save for blue-daubed signs and sigils glowing fiercely against her iridescent pearly skin. She was beautiful beyond bearing, personifying power and authority. I couldn’t have looked away if I’d wanted to. Her eyes were pure gold, with no pupil. Her mouth was a deep crimson, the red of heart’s blood, red as sin itself. Queen Mab was a first-generation elf, and it showed. There are records at Drood Hall, in the Extremely Restricted section of the old library, that suggest she might be older than the Nightside, older than humanity itself. Perhaps even older than our world . . . But then, you can’t trust anything you read, when it comes to elves.
No one knows how or why Mab was removed from power and replaced by Oberon and Titania. It’s dangerous even to ask.
Queen Mab looked down on me and my companions like an artist considering early sketches and wondering whether they should be erased. Meeting her gaze was like staring into a searchlight. One wrong word and she’d kill me with just a gesture. But I’m a Drood, and we don’t take shit from anyone.
“So, Mab, how’s it going?” I said pleasantly. “Getting much?”
There was an audible stirring among the massed ranks of elves behind me and angry hissings from the four favourites grouped at Mab’s feet. They actually started to rise up, flexing their clawed hands, only to stop abruptly at some unheard command from their Queen. They sank reluctantly back, curling around her pale feet like sulky pets. The Queen did not move, did not look away, didn’t even seem to be breathing. But another elf stepped out from behind her throne, coming forward to the edge of the dais to look down on me. He was tall, long-limbed, clad in diaphanous silks, his skin so pale as to be almost translucent. Long-stemmed roses plunged in and out of his skin, the heavy-thorned stems skewering his flesh. They wrapped around his limbs and plunged through his torso, and from deep inside the points of the thorns rose and fell, rose and fell, breaking his skin again and again. Golden blood dripped endlessly. And one great white rose blossomed from his left eye socket, completely replacing the eye. As I watched, the tips of thorns pressed up against the underside of his face, threatening and then retreating, biding their time.
I couldn’t even imagine the kind of agony he must be in, but his step was sure and certain as he descended from the dais to face me, and when he spoke, his voice never wavered once.
“I am the Herald,” he said, fixing me with his one golden eye. “Mab’s Herald. I speak for her to lesser things. And yes, I am being punished, for sins beyond your comprehension. Or appreciation. Still, it is good to have you here, Drood. It’s been so long since we had anything human to torment.”
I armoured up and took him out with one punch to the head. His skull broke audibly under the impact of my golden fist, and he sat suddenly down, as though someone had pulled the floor out from under him. Start as you mean to go on, I always say. The massed ranks of elves stirred again, and the four favourites hissed with rage, but Queen Mab raised one perfect hand and immediately all was still and silent again. The Herald rose slowly to his feet, the bones of his head creaking and cracking as they moved slowly back into place. Golden blood ran steadily down the side of his face and dripped off the lobe of his pointed ear. The blow would have killed anyone else, but elves are hard to kill. You couldn’t slow an elf down with a wrecking ball. Not in their own world.
“I am Edwin Drood,” I said flatly to Queen Mab, ignoring the Herald. “The Droods are bound to the Fae, and the Fae to the Droods, by ancient pact and treaty. Or have the elves forsaken honour?”
“The elves are honour,” said Queen Mab in a slow heavy voice like poisoned honey, as though she was half dreaming. “More than can ever be said for humankind. But be you welcome to our lands, Edwin Drood, and your companions. Do keep them under control. If they make a mess we’ll have them disciplined.”
“They’re with me,” I said. “And therefore protected by the Drood protocols.”
“Speak,” said Queen Mab, neither agreeing nor disagreeing for the moment.
“You did not inform us of your return, Your Majesty,” I said carefully. “We would have sent envoys to welcome you home.”
“We have returned,” said Queen Mab. “Let all the worlds tremble and all that live beware.”
“Well, yes,” I said. “Quite. So, what’s happened to Oberon and Titania?”
“Is that what you came here to ask, Drood?”
“No; just making conversation.”
“They are gone. Mention them not in our presence.”
“All right,” I said. “Where have you been, Your Majesty? You’ve been gone a long time.”
“Oberon sent us away.” Her dark red mouth widened slowly in a terrible smile. She had the look of the Devil contemplating a new sin. “He really should have had us killed, but he always was too sentimental for his own good. It took us a long time to claw our way back and take our long-anticipated revenges on all those who betrayed us . . .”
“Where did he send you?” I said, honestly interested. “Where could he send someone of your undoubted power?”
“Where all the bad things go, little Drood. He sent us to Hell. Damned us to the Pit, to endure the eternal Inferno.” She was still smiling her awful smile, her golden eyes fixed on me. And even inside my impenetrable armour, I could feel beads of sweat popping out on my forehead. “While we were in Hell, little Drood, during our long sojourn in the Houses of Pain, we met your precious witch, Molly Metcalf. Such a sweet little thing. Shall we inform you of the deals she made, of all the awful things she agreed to, in return for power?”
“Let us make a deal, Your Majesty,” I said. “I will not talk of Oberon and Titania, and you will not talk of my Molly. Yes?”
“Speak, little Drood,” said Queen Mab. “Tell us what brings you here to our recovered court, to our noble presence. Tell us what brings you here with the blood of so many of our noble cousins still wet and dripping on your armoured hands.”
“Ah,” I said. “I wondered when we’d get around to that. They attacked me, Your Majesty. They really should have known better. I might have been rogue at the time, but I was still a Drood, and they were just elves. Even if they had been armed with strange matter by a traitor within my family.”
Peaseblossom hissed loudly and started to rise up again. Queen Mab shot him a glance, and he flinched and fell back as though he’d been hit.
“Keep your pets on a leash, Your Majesty,” I said. “Or I might find it necessary to discipline them.”
The Queen considered me silently for an uncomfortably long moment. There was no sound in the Unseeli Court apart from the heavy breathing of my companions. I should have been able to hear the massed breathing of the thousands of watching elves, but there was nothing. I didn’t look back, but I knew they were still blocking the only way out, and it was highly unlikely they’d step aside for me again without Mab’s command. Unless I won the argument with the Queen, got the information I needed, and struck some kind of deal that would get me and my companions out of here with our organs still on the inside. The odds were not good, but I’m a Drood, and when you wear the golden armour, the odds do what they’re told, if they know what’s good for them. In the end Queen Mab nodded very slightly, and I felt a great weight rise off me. She was ready to listen, at least.