A Thief in the Night

chapter Seventy-seven

Every elf Malden had seen was beautiful—their graceful, exotic features, perfect clean skin, and shining hair mocked his own human looks. But if they stood beside their queen, even the elfin lords and ladies resembled a herd of warthogs.

She had the delicacy of aspect of the shadows moonlit leaves make on the surface of a tranquil pool. She had copper-colored hair that fell across her shoulders in perfect ringlets, hair held back only by the spun-silver filigree of her crown. She had eyes the color of the last day of winter, lips the soft red of the interior surface of a rose petal.

She wore a long yellow gown with tight sleeves that trailed on the floor. The garment was a rag on a woman like this. Malden could see it must have been quite elegant once—perhaps eight hundred years ago. Unlike the robes he and Slag wore, it was made of true silk. The cuff of one sleeve looked as if it had been nibbled at by mice, and round blotches of mold, in black and white, decorated its hem.

Behind her the waterfall closed again, hiding whatever lay beyond.

“You must be Sir Croy’s squire,” she said. Her voice was clear and musical. “Your name is Malton?”

“Yes,” the thief told her.

Slag slapped him across one ear. Not hard enough to hurt, but it must have looked like a nasty blow, so he ducked his head and raised his hands as if to ward off another strike.

“Yes, your highness,” Malden said, and bowed his head.

“Rise, please, and be welcome to my apartments. I fear Sir Croy has been quite at odds and ends without your services. If you ease a trifle of his cares, I shall be very glad for your company, and will find you a proper reward.”

“I’ll try to do that. Ease his cares. Sir Croy’s cares,” Malden said.

“I’ve grown very fond of your master,” she said, and came over to the divan. She reached down and tousled Slag’s hair, then walked over toward the sideboard to pour herself a goblet of wine.

When her back was turned, Malden shot a questioning glance at Slag.

The dwarf could only shrug in return.

The queen turned back to face them. Slag frowned and stared up at the ceiling.

“Your highness—” Malden began.

“You must call me Aethil,” she told him. “As we are all friends in this room.”

“Thank you, Aethil,” Malden said. “I wonder if I might trouble you for that reward in advance, perhaps—”

“Friends!” Slag moaned. “Friends, she says. For fie!”

Aethil’s face fell and she rushed over to the divan to kneel next to him. “Don’t say that, Sir Croy!”

“She calls us friends. Yet when I ask her for a simple favor, she refuses me. It’s like she doesn’t care for me at all. Isn’t it, squire?”

Malden held his tongue.

“I said, lass, and I thought I made this f*cking clear, that I require both my servants if I’m to be imprisoned in this cramped cell.” Slag pulled away as she tried to stroke his face. “My squire, and my shieldmaiden.”

Malden saw instantly what he was driving at. “Yes, of course, you can’t possibly be expected to be at peace without Cythera here to—to—bear your shield,” he said.

The dwarf scowled at him. “Quiet, boy,” Slag said, and made to slap him again. Perhaps he saw the steel in Malden’s eye because he did not complete the blow.

“But, Sir Croy,” Aethil protested, “it was so hard getting them to release just Malton to my custody. And you don’t even have a shield here. And you certainly don’t need one to protect yourself from . . . me.”

“She has other duties,” Malden said. “The shieldmaiden. Vital duties. Really, she must be brought here, to live with us.”

“She must be brought here at once,” Slag insisted.

Aethil pouted. “I’ll do my best.”

“Milady,” Malden said, and before Slag could slap him, corrected himself, “your highness. Aethil. You are the queen here. Could you not simply command it and have it done? Cythera could be brought here on the moment.”

“It’s not that easy,” Aethil sighed. “I am the queen, yes, and in theory I’m quite powerful. At least, I am among the working classes. The warriors and the nobility tend to see me as a figurehead, though, and give the Hieromagus and his council of lords all authority.”

“Oh, for fie! They’ve foisted me off on a creature of convenience. A f*cking puppet,” Slag said. “How I deplore this.”

Aethil’s eyes went wide and she rushed to the door. “Don’t fret, Sir Croy! You know I can’t stand it when you fret!”

“Without my shieldmaiden I feel as if I can’t so much as get up off this couch. You do understand, Aethil? Don’t you?” Slag said. “How hard it can be to get through the day without a little help.”

Malden thought the dwarf was pushing it too far, and that at any moment the elf queen would roll her eyes and tell Slag to find a way, somehow, to make do with only one servant. But she didn’t. “There are political necessities,” she said, in that tone people use when they’ve already been convinced, when they are going to give you what you ask for but they want you to feel sorry for what it’s going to cost them. “The lords won’t like it, having so many humans around me, but . . .”

“But?” Slag asked.

“I hate to deny you anything,” Aethil said. And then she pouted.

Malden had to remind himself that this was the queen of an ancient race of evil warriors who tortured men for sport and had nearly driven his ancestors off the continent.

“Will you make me beg?” Slag asked, his tone hard.

“Let me see what I can do.” She pulled the door open and hurried out.

The instant she was gone, Malden turned and glared at the dwarf.

“What did you do?” he demanded.

“Nothing, lad! It was all her f*cking notion. She’s as mad as that poncing wizard-priest thing in the black bedsheet. She knows absolutely nothing about humans, except what she read in some epoch-old storybook. Piece of bloody fiction, all about valiant knights slaying dragons and winning the hearts of lovely bits of tail like her. When she heard there was a knight in her arse-smelling dungeon, she just knew she had to have it for a pet. So she summoned Sir Croy.”

“And she got you instead.”

“I’ll admit, I expected a certain level of disillusionment,” Slag said, almost grinning. He seemed to find the situation as bizarre as Malden did. “I thought she would just send me back, as deficient to specification. I mean, clearly I’m not a storybook knight with a rearing charger and a six foot bloody lance. But the look in her eyes, lad.” Slag shook his head. “You’d think I was some piece of delectable man-meat wrapped up in too-tight hose and a ripped tunic. I feared for my virtue, I did!”

“Your . . . virtue.”

Slag lifted his hands in confusion. “Son, you have never known real fear till you’ve seen a woman half again as tall as you are rushing forward to embrace you and smother you in kisses.”

“It sounds just terrible,” Malden agreed.

“I didn’t know she was going to fall in love with me. It just happened!”

“She fell . . . in love . . . with a dwarf,” Malden said.

“Shh! A very short human, remember! And a f*cking knight of f*cking blasted, misbegotten Skrae. You bloody well better remember!”

Before Malden could reply, the door opened again, and Aethil stepped through, beaming.