“People know when you left, other people know when you arrived. I could crawl that distance in half an hour, so why did it take you that long to walk it?”
“I don’t know.” She seemed genuinely surprised by this information.
“Nothing unusual happened? No one accosted you or spoke to you or anything?”
“No. In my memory, I went straight to the nursery. You’re right, though, it couldn’t possibly take that long.”
She overdid the sincerity just a hair, but it was enough for me to catch it. She knew something she wasn’t telling me. I decided to change tactics.
“Look,” I said, resting my arms on my knees, “I don’t know what the hell to do here. I want to help Phil, but I’ve got jack to go on. Nobody hates him, nobody hates you, so why the hell would someone go to this much trouble? And if they did get into the nursery undetected, why fake a murder? Why not just go ahead and kill the little bozo? No offense.”
I watched her closely, but the only thing she let show was confusion. With all apparent honesty, she answered, “Mr. LaCrosse, I don’t know.”
I sat back. So much for polite tactics. “You’re lying to me.”
“You think I’m this Epona person,” she said.
“I don’t know. I do think something scares you so bad that you’d actually prefer people to think you’d killed and eaten your son.”
“That would be insane,” she said to the floor.
“If you’ll be honest with me, I promise I won’t tell anyone else. Not even Phil. And if he’s told you anything about me at all, you’ll know that’s true. I keep my word.”
She looked down at her bare feet for a long moment, one elegant toe tracing idle circles on the stone floor. Finally she asked, “Are you helping Philip because of what happened to his sister?”
Epona knew about it, and it also made sense Phil would tell his wife. However she found out, though, it was still a low blow. “I want to help because he’s my friend,” I said through my teeth.
I stood. I really wanted out of that room, and a big drink, in that order. When I reached for the door, she cried, “That’s all? You’re leaving?”
I almost laughed. “You either can’t or won’t tell me what I need to know, Your Majesty, so this is pointless. I’ll have to do this without you.”
“You’re going to find my son?” Now she sounded hopeful.
“I’m going to find out the truth. Because like I said, Phil’s my friend. If I find your son in the process, great. If I find out why you’re lying to me, I’ll be sure to let Phil know so that he can decide if it’s for a good reason.”
Of all things, that finally broke her facade. “No!” she almost screamed. “You can’t tell him-” Then she caught herself.
But I was already across the room, clutching the bars and inches from her face. “Tell him what? ” I hissed. “I know you’re Epona Gray, or at least you used to be. You know me. Who did all this? And why? ”
Tears rolled down her face, and she wrapped her arms around her upper body. “What I know, just as I know the sun will rise tomorrow and that a dropped apple will hit the ground, is that I’ll die if Philip doesn’t love me.”
“Do you love him? ”
“Oh, God, yes,” she sobbed. “With all my heart. Like I could love no other man.”
Enough time had passed that this statement inspired no jealousy. Well, okay, only a bit. “Then who hates you? ”
She didn’t answer, just repeatedly shook her head. She began to cry in earnest, and sank to the edge of the hard bunk, still hugging herself. I smacked the bars in frustration.
“When I find out the truth,” I almost snarled at her, “it better be damn well worth all this shit. Eppie.” Then I turned and knocked to be let out of the room.
TEN
Wentrobe gave me directions to the spot where Phil originally met-or found, rather-Rhiannon. It was deep in the woods on the royal hunting preserve. I could’ve gone with Wentrobe, or Sergeant Vogel, or even Phil, but I wanted to see it alone. I needed some time away from Arentia City and the palace to sort through what I’d learned, and not learned, from the queen.
The preserve was usually a bastard to sneak onto and off of. But I’d learned a lot of the old trails when I was a kid, and it seemed the current crop of guards knew even fewer of them than they had back then. I only had to duck off into the trees once to avoid an oblivious game warden on patrol. Poaching only became an issue when there was some famine, and Arentia was anything but starving.
It seemed unlikely I’d find any clues after six years, but I still wanted to see the place. I was reasonably certain that the plot surrounding the mysterious queen originated in her life before Phil met her; and since she claimed to remember nothing prior to that meeting, I had to work backwards from day one.
I found the area easily enough; a soft, low clover-covered hill in a clearing next to a stream. A good hunter like Phil would’ve checked this area for deer tracks, because the slope down to the water showed several in sharp, clear relief. I dismounted and tied my horse to a low branch; the beast looked at me with her typical equine arrogance. She seemed to have no trouble changing her loyalty from whichever border bandit owned her before, to me. Fickle tramp. I walked up the hill, scanning the ground for… I had no clue what.
The blue and gray clover flowers shone in the bright sun, and a light breeze made them wave a little. I sat down and surveyed the stream, the forest, even the sky. They all seemed normal, as any crime scene would after half a decade. Especially when you’re not sure of the nature of the crime.
I picked one of the gray clover flowers. I stared at it, and something went ping way back in my head. I couldn’t quite drag it forward, though, and sat there for a long moment until it hit me.
Clover doesn’t have gray flowers.
I bent and looked at the plant very closely. A gray one grew next to a purple one, and other than the color of the blooms they were identical. Then I stood and looked at the whole hill.
Atop the rounded peak was a circle of gray clover about nine feet across. From one point, a narrow trail of the gray flowers led down the hill into the woods. The trail ended at the leaf litter, where the overhead branches blocked the sun.
A large crow cawed from a limb overhead and flew away into the forest. My eyes inadvertently followed the movement, which seemed to sparkle like the birds I’d seen on Rhiannon’s window sill. On the tree he’d vacated, a trail of silver-tipped moss grew in a narrow, thick line down the trunk, in the dead center of a burn scar from an old lightning strike. It, too, disappeared under the leaves. When I kicked the litter away, I saw that the moss continued in an unbroken line along the ground, green and alive despite being covered. I followed it, knowing it would eventually turn into the trail of gray clover. It did.
Okay, I’d found a clue. But it told me nothing. Actually, it took away some certainties, so it was more of an anti-clue. Eddie LaCrosse, reverse investigator.
So, divorced from its context, what did this tell me? Something apparently came down the tree, across the ground and landed on the very spot where my pal Phil had found his bare-assed bride, and left a trail conducive to the growth of slightly off-kilter flora. Had the lightning scar been there before the moss? Could whatever left the trail have also split the bark of the tree? I’d seen burning rocks fall from the sky; I’d seen lightning. I’d encountered all manner of animals that flew. What combination could result in what I now saw? Nothing came to mind. Except the obvious idea that Queen Rhiannon herself had left the trail after she’d fallen from the heavens and crawled out into the sun. But I wasn’t ready to put my weight behind that.
“Hey!” a harsh male voice said behind me. “Hands where I can see ’em!”
I slowly complied. “I’m not a poacher. I’ve got authorization to be here.”
“Not without me knowing about it, you don’t,” the voice said much nearer. I hadn’t heard any steps; the guy knew his way around the forest. Suddenly I also recognized the voice.
“Terry?” I said. “Terry Vint?”
