Another campion withered and lost its head. I stamped it down before Lileas could notice.
“Some of Una’s council have since retired, and some, no doubt, will not suit your personality.” Here she shifted in her seat, staring down at her entwined fingers. “You may also find some of them predisposed against you, I’m afraid, those who faulted the queen for bearing a child to a mortal.”
I frowned. “But surely that was the queen’s business, and not theirs.” I recalled the handsome Aos Sith who had asked me to dance, how complicated the matter had been. Was the queen permitted any business that was all her own?
Lileas shrugged. “’Twould have been different had she already borne an heir. Half-mortal offspring can be useful, often better able to stomach iron and the rountree than true bloods, and frequently underestimated. But for one’s only child to be half-mortal, permitting it to take the throne...” Her pretty cheeks went rosy with shame, and her gaze dropped to the ground. “Not my sentiments, Your Majesty, of course.”
I patted her hand. “I take no offense. Your candor is worth more to me than petty reassurances would have been.”
She gave me a wan smile, then her brows dipped into a frown. “I have heard nothing ill of the others, although...” She trailed off.
The wind battered against the walls. The leaf windows grew thicker, less translucent in response.
“Although?” I prompted.
“There was some question surrounding the queen’s death. Her palm was marked with a puncture wound, and an iron nail was found under her bed. Only someone very close to the queen could have done it. Most suspected the mortal midwife, but...”
A tree limb slammed across the window, tearing even the thickened leaf with its clawlike branches.
My pulse raced and my mouth went dry. “But...?” I could not credit that Mairi Grieve would ever do such a thing; it was inconceivable for her to harm a patient so.
Lileas shook her head. “I do not believe she did. Her own child was held as hostage for her good behavior. It makes no sense.”
Bess Grieve.Mairi would not have risked Bess by doing harm to the queen, not the Mairi I knew. And if she had wished to kill Queen Una, she knew enough of herbs and plants she could have done so far more subtly, without pointing the blame in her direction.
Mairi lost her child anyway. Too much of mortal guilt remained inside me at the thought, and there was still that abrasive sense of wrongness from Bess and me being too close to the same place.
I recalled the moment Mairi had taken ill. I saw a long hand with slender fingers reach for the side of her face. I watched her eye slacken, and those fingers coax the corner of her mouth to droop.
No mortal illness had struck her. Someone among the fae had taken Mairi’s life.
Heaviness filled the room, like smoke from a poorly vented fire. My throat felt thick, constricted by the rose-shaped torc I wore; my vision blurred.
“Your Majesty looks troubled. If there were aught I might do to comfort ye... Wait! There is.”
I blinked in confusion, and my vision began to clear.
Lileas walked over to the bedroom wall or at least what I had taken for one. At her touch, it parted like the slow unfurling of blossoms with the warmth of spring, opening onto a small landing, where stood a basin of marble upon a slender stand.
“I found it when we were readying your chamber,” she explained. “Queen Una’s scrying pool, where she came to see what visions she might upon the water’s surface.”
Like the well at Carterhaugh. I stepped out onto the landing. Ferns curled all around us, and the scent of gorse and bluebells reminded me of the forest near my mortal home. My attention, however, was on the surface of the water. It shone clear now, reflecting nothing but the sky overhead, thick with clouds.
I looked to Lileas. “Is there some trick to it?”
She examined me for a moment, then brushed the hair back from my brow. All at once she pulled a strand out, causing me to cry out in alarm, then clutch my scalp.
The air crackled, like a cat’s fur in the night.
“Forgive me, Your Majesty, but the pain does increase the effect.” And she dropped the hair into the scrying pool.
I watched it float, blood red and curved like a serpent, then sink to the bottom of the pool. The water went dark and cloudy at first, then revealed the figure of a woman, a peasant from the state of her clothing, many layers to cover up worn edges and holes. A wimple covered her head and at first concealed her face. In her arms she held a small bundle, a babe in swaddling clothes.
She looked around, eyes darting about.
The woman was Mairi Grieve.
And the child—it was me.
