Merry Gentry 05 - Mistral's Kiss by Laurell K. Hamilton Read Free Book Online

“Very damn clever.”
    She gave a little bow from the neck. “So glad you appreciate the delicate reasoning of it.”
    “Oh, I do,” and I meant it. “You’ve broken no oath. In fact, technically, you’re doing exactly what Nerys gave her life for. Her clan, her house, her bloodline will live.”
    “That is not living,” Mistral said.
    “Did you really think that the princess had enough influence with me to save them from their fate?” asked Andais.
    “Once I would have gone to Essus, to ask his help with you,” Mistral said.
    “So I sought the princess.”
    “She is not my brother,” Andais snarled.
    “No, she is not Essus,” Mistral said, “but she is his child. She is your blood.”
    “And what does that mean, Mistral? That she can bargain for Nerys’s people? They have already been bargained for, by Nerys herself.”
    “You are pixieing on the spirit of that bargain,” Rhys said.
    “But not breaking it,” she said.
    “No,” he said, and he looked so sad. “No, the sidhe never lie, and we always keep our word. Except our version of the truth can be more dangerous than any lie, and you’d better think through every word of any oath we give our word to, because we will find a way to make you regret you ever met us.” He sounded more angry than sad.
    “Do you dare to criticize your queen?” she asked.
    I touched Rhys’s arm, squeezed. He looked first at my hand, then at my face.
    Whatever he saw there made him take a deep breath and shake his head.
    “No one would dare to do that, Queen Andais.” His voice was resigned again.
    “What would you give for a sign that life was returning to the gardens?”
    Doyle asked.
    “What do you mean by sign ?” she asked, and her voice held all the suspicion of someone who knew us all too well.
    “What would you give for some hint of life here in the gardens?” “A little wind is not a sign,” she said.
    “But would the beginnings of life here in the gardens be worth nothing to you, my queen?”
    “Of course it would be worth something.”
    “It could mean that our power was returning,” Doyle said.
    She motioned with the sword, silver gleaming dully in the light. “I know what it would mean, Darkness.”
    “And a return of our power, what would that be worth to you, Queen?”
    “I know where you are going, Darkness. Do not try to play such games with me. I invented these games.”
    “Then I will not play. I will state plainly. If we can bring some hint of life to these underground worlds, then you will wait to punish, in any way, Nerys’s people. Or anyone else.”
    A smile as cruel and cold as a winter morning curved her lips. “Good catch, Darkness, good catch.”
    My throat was tight with the realization that if he’d forgotten the last phrase, others would have paid for her anger. Someone who would have mattered to Doyle, or me, or both, if she could have found them. Rhys was right: This was a dangerous game, this game of words.
    “For what shall I wait?” she asked.
    “For us to bring life to the dead gardens, of course,” he said.
    “And if you do not bring life to the dead gardens, then what?”
    “Then when we are all convinced that the princess and her men cannot bring life back to the gardens, you are free to do with Nerys’s people as you intended.”
    “And if you do bring life to the gardens, what then?” she asked.
    “If we bring even a hint of life back to the gardens, you will let Princess Meredith choose the punishment of those who tried to have her assassinated.”
    She shook her head. “Clever, Darkness, but not clever enough. If you bring a hint of life back to the gardens, then I will allow Meredith to punish Nerys’s people.”
    It was his turn to shake his head. “If the Princess Meredith and some of her men bring even a hint of life back to these gardens, then Meredith alone decides what punishment shall be meted out to Nerys’s people.”
    She seemed to think about that for a moment or two, then