A Lick of Frost by Laurell K. Hamilton Read Free Book Online Page A

those birds, flying up in confusion.
    “Don’t be giving our case away before we’ve even begun,” Cortez said, not sounding happy with his colleague.
    “This isn’t a case, Cortez, this is a disaster we’re trying to avert,” Veducci said.
    “A disaster for whom, them?” Cortez said, pointing at us.
    “For all of faerie, potentially,” Veducci said. “Have you read your history about the last great human–faerie war in Europe?”
    “Not recently,” Cortez said.
    Veducci looked around at the other lawyers. “Am I the only one here who read up on this?”
    Grover raised his hand. “I did.”
    Veducci smiled at him as if he were his favorite person in the world. “Tell these intelligent people how the last great war started.”
    “It began as a dispute between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts.”
    “Exactly,” Veducci said. “And then spilled over all the British Isles and part of the continent of Europe.”
    “Are you saying that if we don’t mediate these charges, the courts will go to war?” Nelson said.
    “There are only two things that Thomas Jefferson and his cabinet made unforgivable offenses for the fey on American soil,” Veducci said. “They are never again to allow themselves to be worshipped as deities, and they are never to have a war between the two courts. If either of those things happen, they will be kicked out of this, the last country on earth that would have them.”
    “We know all this,” Shelby said.
    “But have you considered why Jefferson made those two rules, especially the one about war?”
    “Because it would be damaging to our country,” Shelby said.
    Veducci shook his head. “There is still a crater on the European continent almost as wide as the widest part of the Grand Canyon. That hole is what is left of where the last battle of the war was fought. Think about if that happened in the center of this country, in the middle of our most productive farming country.”
    They looked at each other. They hadn’t thought about it. To Shelby and Cortez it had been a high-profile case. A chance to make new law involving the fey. Everyone had taken the short view, except Veducci, and maybe Grover.
    “What do you propose we do?” Shelby asked. “Just let them get away with it?”
    “No, not if they are guilty, but I want everyone in this room to understand what might be at stake, that’s all,” Veducci said.
    “You sound like you’re on the side of the princess,” Cortez said. “The princess didn’t give a United States ambassador a bespelled watch so he would favor her.”
    “How do we know the princess didn’t do it, to trick us?” Shelby said. He sounded like he even believed it.
    Veducci turned to me. “Princess Meredith, did you give Ambassador Stevens any object magical or mundane that would sway his opinion of you and your court in your favor?”
    I smiled. “No, I did not.”
    “They really can’t lie, if you ask the questions right,” Veducci said. “Then how did Lady Caitrin accuse these men by name and description? She seemed genuinely traumatized.”
    “That is a problem,” Veducci admitted. “The lady in question would have to be lying, an outright lie, because I asked the questions right, and she was unshakable.” He looked at us, at me. “Do you understand what that means, Princess?”
    I took a deep breath and let it out, slowly. “I think so. It means that Lady Caitrin has everything to lose here. If she is caught in an actual lie, she could be cast out of faerie. Exile is considered worse than death to the Seelie nobility.”
    “Not just the nobility,” Rhys said.
    The other guards nodded. “He is right,” Doyle said. “Even the lesser fey would do much to avoid exile.”
    “So how is the lady lying?” Veducci asked us.
    Galen spoke, voice low, a little uncertain. “Could it be an illusion? Could someone have used glamour so strong that it fooled her?”
    “You mean made her think she was being attacked when she wasn’t?”