Those Who Fight Monsters Part 18

"Used to," Rowan said. "When people and the Fae were much closer. We shared a great deal."

He hopped from the platform and started to walk. "The court is this way."

Pete shivered. Things lived in the dark, of the Black and of the light world. That she knew. Demons, murderers, angry ghosts. If it was a toss-up between the Fae and the dark, Pete knew which she'd choose. She hopped the platform, her feet crunching into shifting gravel between the ties, and followed Rowan into the tunnel.

The Seelie Court loomed from nowhere, when Rowan and Pete emerged onto a rail trestle. Below her, in the dark, Pete heard the rush and burble of a creek, and laughter that sounded like water on rock. Selkies, or naiads. Maybe a kelpie.

"I thought it was always summer here," she said to Rowan. Another tidbit from Jack.

"It is," he said. "The Prince's death has changed that."

Prince. "b.l.o.o.d.y f.u.c.king h.e.l.l," Pete muttered to herself. Not only was she supposed to Sherlock Holmes a culprit out of the thin Fae air, the victim was royalty. Pete had worked an overdose case once, an MP's son, and the MP himself, his supercilious face and veiled threats, still haunted her. He'd wanted it swept neatly under the rug, had actually sent a bloke in a dark suit to Pete's flat to offer her fifteen thousand pounds to say his son'd had a heart attack and blot out all mention of the pharmacy floating in his bloodstream.

Pete had told him to f.u.c.k off, in exactly those words. But she had a notion that her usual routine wouldn't play well with the ruling members of the Seelie.

She wasn't even a DI any longer. Why the f.u.c.k had she agreed to come?

Before she could find a decent answer, they had been swept through a private entrance, past a coterie of guards armed with billy clubs and short, brutal swords that Pete had no doubt would do the job they were intended for, and into chambers guarded with a twined seal of two oak leaves. "Bow your head," Rowan muttered. "You're about to receive an honor few humans ever dream of."

"Aren't I a f.u.c.king prizewinner," Pete said under her breath. Then she remembered those blades, and thought better of finishing the thought.

The Queen of the Seelie wasn't a person Pete had ever fancied meeting, and she could tell the reverse was also true. The Queen drew herself up and in when Pete and Rowan came in, patting at her cheeks with a handkerchief spun from something white and translucent. She wore a simple black gown, the kind of thing you saw in old photos of Victorian mourning. Flanking her were three more Fae, two men and a girl.

Pete took their measure even as she smiled and inclined her head. She'd treat this like any other homicide. "You're the mother?"

The Queen's throat worked, tightening, but not with sorrow. "I am the Queen."

Pete nodded, as if that explained everything. "I'm sorry for your loss, madam." It all came back, like getting on a b.l.o.o.d.y bike. The somber tone, the sympathetic yet determined demeanor, letting the family take the lead to get the information you really needed. "I realize this is hard for you," Pete said, "but anything you can tell me about your son's last hours will likely be helpful."

The bigger of the two men stepped in. "Anything you need to know, ask me."

Pete gave him the eye. "Don't tell me you're the family barrister."

The Fae's lip curled back. His two front teeth came to points. "I am the captain of the Ash Guard."

"Ah," Pete said. A security heavy. This was familiar ground as well. "And your name, Captain...?"

"Tolliver," the Fae said gruffly. "The Queen is indisposed. You speak to me."

"Tolliver," Pete said, grasping him by the arm, "can I speak to you over here, please?" She led him to a shadowy corner, where a leaded window looked out on the storm-tossed hills of Faerie. "I understand," Pete told him.

Tolliver blinked, clearly having expected to be lectured. "You do?"

"'Course," Pete said. "You're responsible for the family, and the boy getting done in was your c.o.c.k-up. But being a pillock to me is not going to find the bloke, so how about you step aside while the chance is still there to catch him? Or her?"

His throat worked. Pete saw a scar there, under his jaw. His clothes were fine as the rest of the group, but his hands were roughed at the knuckles, bent and square from bare-fisted fighting. Tolliver was a man who believed in blunt force. Pete hoped that also meant he believed in honesty.

"I found him," he said, and his voice went rough. "I came to get him for our daily fencing lesson and he was on the floor, like a doll with all of the stuffing gone out..." Tolliver's jaw worked and he looked away from her, out at the boiling thunderheads illuminated by a sickly green light in the eastern sky. "Unseelie land," he murmured. "They'll be putting up a ruddy festival. This is their dream come true."

"Could an Unseelie have done this?" Pete asked. Her hands felt restless and she wished for her leather-bound reporter's notebook. Ollie, her old partner in the met, had used his PDA to take notes, but Pete preferred the feel of paper and ink.

"No." Tolliver was back in control. "Our borders prevent it. The Courts are neutral ground. So it's been since the accords long past, when we made the Seelie and Unseelie lands half each of Faerie."

"So who's your money on?" Pete asked. Tolliver's eyes expanded, then contracted. Wrinkles sprouted like weeds at his cheekbones. After a moment he said, "That's your job, isn't it?"

Pete allowed herself a flicker of a smile. "You thought of someone," she said. "When I asked. You have an answer back there behind that big, ugly scar."

"I protect the Queen," Tolliver said brusquely. "I protect the family. And I've told you all I'm fit to tell." He turned his back, and stared out the window.

Pete sighed, and returned to the icy stare of the Queen. She was beautiful, of course. It was hardly remarkable in Faerie. Her beauty was that of statues, and ice - remote, chill and unearthly. Hair of the whitest white, like Rowan's, skin to match, traced only by blue veins. A young face with eyes ancient as the stones under Pete's feet. There was a little pink around them from crying, and they made Pete think of animal eyes. Hungry eyes.

"Tolliver's given me leave to ask you a few questions," Pete said.

The magic in the room, slithering and sliver, came to a boil when the Queen spoke. "I am in mourning. I have nothing to say."

Pete normally didn't open herself to the Black. Being a Weir meant she was a repository rather than a conductor, and too much magic could turn her to cinder, surely as fire. She felt it, though. Every flux and flow. Every push and pull. And the Queen was at the center of something that was alien and frozen as the surface of another planet. Pete bit her lip, and let the magic lap at the back of her mind.

"You know who we look at in my world, when someone dies?" she asked quietly. "Family. Parents. Wives. Brothers. Family knows you best. Family can hate you more than anyone else in the world."

The Queen shot a glance at the other man, who was slender as Tolliver was enormous. He cleared his throat. "Perhaps Miss Caldecott would care to examine the body and the scene of the deed?"

Pete knew when she was being brushed off, but she didn't expect the young woman next to the Queen to pipe up. "I'll come."

"s...o...b..ood, no," the man insisted. "You'll only upset yourself."

"Shut up, Crowfoot," she hissed. "You may have my aunt fooled but you don't fool me!"

"s...o...b..ood!" The Queen's voice snapped like the lightning outside. "That's enough."

"All right," Pete spread her hands. "You, young miss - you're with me. The rest of you, stay put. I'll have more questions once I've seen the body."

The prince was kept in a chamber below the Court, older than the building above, cool arches dripping water into drains that lead to places only rats would know. Pete scented the familiar rotten-orchid scent of decay, along with something foreign, a bit like char. Blood, she guessed. Fae blood.

"s...o...b..ood's quite a name," she said to the girl. "You the queen's niece?"

"Yes," s...o...b..ood said tightly. "And the prince's intended."

The body was covered with a sheet, whiter than white - like any white in Faerie - but dotted all over with blossoms of red, like a first bloom after a snowfall. Pete stopped her hand before she moved it back.

"The prince ... he's your cousin."

s...o...b..ood lifted one boneless shoulder. "That's the way it works, isn't it?"

Pete let that one go. It wasn't like royals and inbreeding were strangers. "And Crowfoot?"

"He's the leader of the majority. The Seelie Council." s...o...b..ood paused. "He's perfectly hideous."

"Politicians usually are," Pete said, and twitched the sheet back. She wasn't looking at the prince, but at s...o...b..ood's face. The girl betrayed absolutely no reaction. Her eyes were dull and gla.s.sy as a stagnant pond.

"Crowfoot wanted to marry me. Before my cousin," s...o...b..ood said. Pete looked at the body. It was a clean job, exit wounds in the chest ragged and black and, when she rolled the body, two stab wounds in the back, angled upward into the heart and lungs.

Pete realized something. "I don't know his name,"

"Oh," s...o...b..ood said carelessly. "Don't you? It's Caliban. Like the play."

"Half-savage mortal man?" Pete said. "b.l.o.o.d.y odd choice, for your firstborn son."

"Yes," s...o...b..ood agreed tonelessly. "For your firstborn."

"Mind if I ask you some questions while I get this business done?" Pete asked. The little stone room didn't have any tools, but she got out her pen light and flashed it over Caliban's hands and fingers. They were limpid, like flower bulbs. The damp wasn't doing him any favors of preservation.

"I suppose not," s...o...b..ood sighed. She sat on a ledge, kicking her feet and dislodging mortar.

"Caliban was a fencer?" Pete asked. She examined the wounds more closely. They hadn't even had time to bleed much.

"A good one," s...o...b..ood said, perking for the first time. "He could beat any man but Tolliver. Tolliver wanted him made a captain of the Ash Guard, rather than taking up his royal duties. Caliban was merciless in battle and in the court. Tolliver said he didn't have the delicacy for politics, but he had the blood for battle. They're similar, I suppose."

"Both big smashy b.a.s.t.a.r.ds?" Pete peeled back the prince's eyelid and checked his eyes. Wishing for a glove, she stuck a finger in his mouth and checked his tongue as well.

"I suppose," s...o...b..ood said. "Tolliver knew him better than anyone. Better than me."

"Ah," Pete said. She stepped back and looked at the dead prince. She had a fair notion now, but it was only a notion. She didn't have any facts.

"And the Queen, at last," she asked s...o...b..ood. "Some dodgy magic on her - what's that about?"

s...o...b..ood chewed one shockingly crimson lip. "The Unseelie took her, many years ago, kept her for a time before Tolliver and the Ash Guard brought her back. They placed a wasting curse. It's held at bay with other magic, but she was with them a long time. It clings."

It did, indeed. The winding, smoky trail of the curse was apparent to Pete even now, here, layers and layers below the Queen's chamber. "Bit of a short stick for her," Pete said. "Might explain that temper."

"Rowan did the right thing bringing you here," s...o...b..ood said suddenly. Pete c.o.c.ked an eyebrow at her as she pulled the b.l.o.o.d.y sheet over Caliban's face once more.

"Really?"

"This is rotten," s...o...b..ood said. "It's not the kind of thing we do. Not the Fae."

"*Course," Pete muttered, thinking that every fairy tale in her world would disagree with the slender girl. "I'm done. Can you do me a favor and get everyone together in one room? The smaller and hotter the better?"

s...o...b..ood looked curious, but she bit down on her question and merely nodded. "Of course."

"I'll be in after a time," Pete said. "Can you have Rowan show me the place where he died?"

That'd give the Queen and her entourage time to get good and p.i.s.sy about being locked up.

"Just you and me," Pete told Caliban, after s...o...b..ood's footsteps faded away. The prince made no reply.

Caliban's rooms would be opulent even by Las Vegas standards. Heavy velvet in waterfalls of blue and green and midnight purple cascaded from the walls. The bed was gold, and enormous. A mirror made in the shape of an oak leaf stared back at Pete from the ceiling.

"He did like his creature comforts, eh?" she said to Rowan.

He shrugged, staying far away from the bloodstain in the center of the rich blue carpet. Pete didn't even smell the coppery - or charred, she supposed, as this was a Faeascent that usually accompanied a fresh stabbing scene. The prince's chamber was heavily perfumed, and a garden of scents cloyed at Pete's nose.

She noted that the door locked from the inside with a heavy bolt, and the windows were barred over with grates that had rusted into place.

Pete brushed off her knees reflexively and stood, coming back to Rowan. "I've seen enough. Go join the others, and I'll make an entrance in a bit."

Rowan obeyed, and Pete was alone again, with the last moments of Caliban's life.

She could hear the Fae long before she came upon the door to what the guard told her was Crowfoot's private library. They were complaining. Vociferously. That was good. She wanted them off balance and receptive to the truth.

The member of the Ash Guard outside the door tightened his grip on his short blade when she approached. "Lady," he said, just the proper amount of deference in the tone.

"You can just call me Pete," Pete told him. "What's your name?"

"Juniper," he said. Pete winced. The flower names, to her mind, were just cruel.

"You know how to use that pig-sticker, Juniper?" she inquired. He gave a curt nod, much less polite. He could use it well enough that the question had offended him.

"Good," Pete said. "Stay sharp." She shoved the door open. Tolliver exploded out of the seat he occupied next to the Queen, jabbing his finger into her face.

"How dare you herd us together like cattle? Like we're criminals?"

Crowfoot was on his heels. "Do you have any idea my position in the Seelie Court? I am Senechal... I brought you here."

The Queen didn't get up, she just raised her voice. "I am the Queen of all Faerie..."

Only Rowan and s...o...b..ood stayed silent, and they looked anxious as pigs on market day.

"Oi!" Pete made a slashing motion through the air at the trio of shouters. "Simmer down, yeah? The lot of you. You're in here for a reason."

Tolliver's scarred throat worked. "And that'd be...?"

Pete shooed them back to the four corners of the room. She went to Tolliver, then Crowfoot. Rowan, s...o...b..ood, and lastly the Queen. She asked them each a question. Then she went to the fire and warmed up her hands. It was stuffy in the library, but outside the storm was only getting worse.

"Lady Caldecott," Crowfoot huffed. "I really must insist that you share your findings."

"Yeah, yeah," Pete rubbed her hands together and then faced them. As a point of self-preservation, she made note of the heavy fireplace poker near her right hand. "I know who killed your Prince Caliban."

"First," Pete held up a finger. Her stomach was twisting and her heart was thudding, even though she kept her face blank. Hercule Poirot never had to face down a roomful of f.u.c.king Fae. "s...o...b..ood tells me that Caliban was one h.e.l.l of a fighter, and he was a big b.a.s.t.a.r.d besides. n.o.body was taking him by force."

"So?" Crowfoot said rudely. Pete crimped her mouth into her smuggest smile just for him.

"So he was topped by someone he trusted, someone he opened the door to."

"And?" Crowfoot demanded. Pete reached up and patted his bony shoulder.

"And that lets you out. You're a bit of a slimy f.u.c.kwit, according to everyone here, and you were sniffing around his woman. Sorry, mate."

Crowfoot blinked, confusion and relief flitting on his features. "I didn't ... I mean ... of course I didn't! My loyalty is to the Court!"