Bedtime Story (68 page)

One step at a time.

Mareigh pulled the stool from beside her bed over to the cupboard. Balancing on one foot, she stretched her arms deep into the highest shelf. Her fingers searched blindly for a moment before they brushed against the smooth corner. Stretching a little farther, she managed to grip the box and pull it free.

She had screamed at him when he tried to give it to her. Had told him that she would never use it, that as far as she was concerned, he was already dead to her. Her soldier. Her hero. Riding away from her. She had made a mistake, and would accept and deal with the consequences.

As the memories came back to her, thoughts that she had suppressed for almost two decades, she stepped down and set the box on the bed.

It was a plain wooden box. It wasn’t even locked—there was no use in securing things that she didn’t care about.

“But there has to be something I can do?” he had pleaded, uncomfortable in his sudden powerlessness.

“Yes,” she said, her right hand cradling, unconsciously, the small swell of her belly. Something that would make a difference to her, that would enable a life for her and for their unborn child. For a mother to raise a child alone meant destitution; this, at least, would address a few concerns.

When she told him what she wanted, he stared disbelievingly at her for a moment, then burst into laughter.

“A tavern?” he said. “I would give you anything in the world, and all you want is a tavern?”

“A tavern is a life. My life. Our child’s future.”

Her hand shook now as she opened the box.

He had eventually agreed. “Is there nothing else?”

Oh, there was so much else she had wanted, but those things were not hers to have, and she knew better than to even mention them.

When she shook her head, he reached into the pocket of his tunic. “I understand why you have asked for what you have. But there will come a day when you may require something else. For yourself. Or for our child.”

“There won’t.”

He withdrew an envelope and held it out to her. “If that day should ever arrive, come to me. Bring this letter”—he’d placed it in her hand—“and this.” He twisted the large signet ring off his finger. When she tried to wave it away, he pressed it on her. “You are carrying my child,” he said, in a voice of exquisite pain and sadness.

She took the ring and the letter, and put them into the box that same day. And later, when she and Dafyd, then weeks old and still hungry at the breast, had moved across the channel from Colcott Town to the city inside the walls, from the scullery of the inn to the tavern that bore the name she had given it, she put the box on the highest shelf and tried to forget about it.

“If there is anything I can do …”

Yes. Yes, darling, there is.

“How did you get this?” I gestured at the book on the desk.

“It always comes back,” Cat said. “It’s part of the charm.” She smiled. “Well,
a
charm, actually. A homing spell, you might say. This time it happened exactly the way you thought it would, Chris. Tony Markus called me, saying that we needed to talk about Lazarus’s ‘legacy,’ as he called it. And here we are.”

I could barely speak. “He just … gave it to you?” And I knew, even as I formed the words, that this wasn’t what had happened.

She smiled even more widely, baring her teeth. “Eventually.”

The coldness of her voice was almost enough to take the legs out from under me.

“So you know,” I said. “You knew about this all the time?”

“Of course I did, Chris.” She looked at the book. “It’s mine.”

“But did you … Did you know what it did? What it would do to my son?”

She entered the room, holding the gun casually, as if without a care. The barrel, however, never wavered.

“Let me take it,” I said, grasping at the last strands of hope. “Let me just borrow it. I’ll take it home, and let my friends look at it, and I’ll bring it right back. I swear. I’ll drive it back down myself.” My voice was growing ragged, desperate. Pleading.

“Why would I let you do that?” she asked.

“To save my son.”

She took another step toward me. “And undo all the hard work I put into this?”

“What?” I had to brace myself against the desk.

“Did you really think that Lazarus Took could have done something like this?” she asked, pointing at the book. “Please. Lazarus was a second-rate dabbler, at best. He had a few charms, and a knack for separating people from their money, but really he was little better than those pathetic kitchen witches of yours, with their praising of the goddess”—she made the word sound like a sneer—“and their crystals.” The stone that Nora had given me still hung on the leather thong under my shirt. “Lazarus couldn’t have cast a spell like that if his life depended on it.”

She took another step forward, so only the desk separated us. She leaned forward, her smile so wide and close that, for a moment, I thought she might sink her teeth into me.

“It was mine,” she said plainly, almost laughing as she watched my expression.

“But that’s impossible,” I said, turning it over in my mind. Even if she had faked the publication date inside the book, she was clearly younger than Matthew Corvin—she wouldn’t have been born at the time the book had claimed him.

She bobbed her head girlishly. “I’ve already told you everything you
need to know, Chris. For someone who seems to have all the answers, you’re not very good at putting things together, are you. Tell me, didn’t it strike you as odd that there wasn’t any mention whatsoever of children in anything you read about Lazarus Took? No mention of family in the papers at the Hunter Barlow? Didn’t that ever occur to you?”

I hadn’t even noticed it. No children meant no grandchildren …

The only possible explanation was growing within me with a sickly power. She must have seen it on my face.

“I even told you,” she said, clearly relishing the moment, “back in that very first e-mail, who I was.”

I thought back, trying to ignore the undeniable presence of the gun, trying to visualize the e-mail.

C. Agatha Took. But please call me Cat
.

“Cat Took,” I muttered. “Cora Agatha Took?” My mind rebelled at the thought, buzzing hysterically.

“In the flesh,” she said, turning a little, showing herself off. “And quite nice flesh it is, too, don’t you think? Your friend Tony Markus certainly thought so. Poor man. All those hopes and dreams and …” She jerked the gun in her hand. “Bang.”

I flinched, and she laughed.

“You must be—”

“I celebrated my hundredth birthday last year,” she said. “Well, it was a quiet celebration. Just the two of us.”

Two of us? I shook my head, still trying to understand what she was telling me. This couldn’t be Cora Took—Cat looked like she was in her mid-twenties, at the oldest.

“How?”

She rolled her eyes in mock exasperation. “You’re holding the answer, Chris.”

She extended her hand for the book.

The Queen was sitting on her throne at the far end of the marble hall, wearing a gown so colourful it might have been made of peacock feathers, her pale face flat and expressionless.

David hesitated a few steps away from her, his feet refusing to take him any closer. It lasted only for an instant, but it was too much for the captain, who shoved him forward with a blow that took his breath away. He stumbled, catching himself before he fell to the tiles.

“Kneel before the Queen,” the captain snarled, pushing down on his shoulder. David’s knee hit the tiles hard, and he winced.

“You are right to fear me,” the Queen said.

David didn’t speak, but stared down at the floor, anything to avoid looking her in the eye.

“You may rise,” the Queen said, her voice cold.

The captain pulled at David’s shirt, hauling him to his feet.

The magus was slower in rising.

After several moments of silence, David couldn’t fight the impulse and he glanced at the Queen, only to find her staring back at him.

“I believe you have something that belongs to me.” She extended her hand.

Something in her voice …

David had to force himself not to reach into his tunic and hand her the Stone. The power of her gaze was almost impossible to resist. More than that: he
wanted
to give it to her. He could feel the urging in his muscles. The thought of just handing it to her, of seeing her smile of satisfaction. He wanted so badly to please her. Just hand it over. The fight for the Sunstone had nothing to do with him anyway. Just hand it over. He could save himself.

He reached up—

The magus stepped forward. “Your Majesty.”

“You dare speak in my presence?” the Queen roared.

As her attention shifted to the magus, David felt an easing in his mind, a quieting of the imploring voice.

The Queen turned her head slightly, and the captain slapped the old man across the face so hard that he stumbled to one side. He didn’t fall, however, and pulled himself to his full height.

“I stand before you, one of the Brotherhood, the keepers of the Stone, sworn in allegiance to the kings of Colcott.” His voice was unflinching. “It is my right and obligation to speak.”

“In the absence of the King, your allegiance is to me,” the Queen said, almost dismissively. “The Stone—”

“The Stone is in our keeping. And the King is not absent,” the old man said, his voice growing stronger. “He is here. Still the rightful heir, and the rightful owner of the Stone.” As he spoke, he lifted his hand to his chest as if scratching himself unconsciously.

“The Stone belongs to the one who holds it,” she said, rising slightly, coiling herself, turning her attention back to David. “Dafyd, give it to me.”

She seemed to have two voices: the one which he heard her speak, and a low, insinuating whisper that echoed in his skull:
Give her the stone. Give her the stone
.

“Dafyd,” the magus said. “Don’t listen to her. Don’t—”

David raised his hand to his tunic, slipped it into the opening.

Give her the stone
.

His fingers curled around the leather bag, feeling the warmth there.

“Dafyd!” The magus barked his name in a commanding tone that drowned out the Queen’s voice in his head.

David dropped his hand, turned to look at the old man.

The magus was facing him, his right hand extended, his left hand tight around his amulet.

“You fool,” the Queen cried at Captain Bream. “He has a moonstone!”

As the captain lunged, David could hear the magus’s voice inside his head. Run, it said.
Run to the King
.

David didn’t hesitate. As the captain reached out for the magus, David spun away and raced toward the curtain behind the dais.

“Get the boy!” the Queen screamed. “Get him!”

His feet slipped on the slick tiles, but he found his balance. He could hear the captain behind him, too close. Too fast for him to outrun.

He pushed the curtain aside, throwing himself into the King’s chamber. He had just long enough to see the King on the bed, his haggard, shrunken face looking at him in surprise, before the captain tackled him to the floor.