Nicca closed the lid of the makeup case and tested the latch, though I think we all knew that wasn't the problem.
"The queen seems quite taken with the idea that Meredith must take more than one lover at the same time. When she finds out that this has already been done and no baby has come..." He shook his head, and looked at me. "The queen seems calmer of late, Meredith, but in some ways more determined. Once set upon a course of action, she is no longer distractible by putting an attractive man in her way, or an opportunity to torture. Her hobbies do not seem to interest her as they once did."
That sex and torture were my aunt's hobbies had always made her difficult to deal with, or so I'd thought. Barinthus was saying the opposite.
"Are you saying that you used sex and pain to distract her over the years?" I asked.
He nodded. "It was like offering a child candy. They take their sweets and forget what they were angry about. But in the last few weeks, no amount of painful candy derails her thoughts. She will take the diversion, use it up, and then come right back to where you wanted her not to go." He was frowning. "On the one hand, it is good to see her thinking with her head instead of her groin. On the other hand, we at court had become accustomed to dealing with her groin. The head is not so easily distracted."
"If she's thinking with her head and not lower, then why is she fixated on me with multiple lovers?"
"She seems determined that that is the only way you will become pregnant. That, and she is choosing plant and agricultural deities for you. She seems equally fixated on that."
"And you have no idea why?" Doyle asked.
He shook his head. "I know that something has happened. She tortured Conri, tortured him personally."
"Didn't he just get tortured for trying to kill me last time I was here?"
"Yes, but he had done nothing wrong. He seemed as shocked as the rest of us when she took him. She paraded his broken body in the great room, made everyone walk by him and see what had been done to him, but he was gagged the entire time, so he could not speak. He lies isolated in a cell, seen only by Fflur, the queen's healer."
"Conri was one of Cel's staunchest supporters among the guards," Doyle said.
Barinthus nodded. "Yes, and what a scrambling there was among Cel's people, who had persisted in making it clear that they considered Meredith unfit for the throne. They toadied, and did everything and anything they could dream up to win the queen's favor."
"Was Conri the only one she tortured?" I asked.
"As of now, but the rest of Cel's allies are frightened."
"You made mention of him not being able to speak," Doyle said. "Do you think he told the queen something, something she doesn't want others to know?"
Barinthus nodded. "I do."
"Do you have any idea what it is?"
"Only that it was after Conri's torture that the queen began to fixate on multiple lovers for Meredith and that most of them should be plant or agricultural deities." He shrugged. "You now know what I know. If you can make more sense of it than I, I will be happy to hear it."
Doyle shook his head. "I will think upon it."
"We all will," Rhys said.
The others nodded.
The driver's voice came back on the intercom. "They're starting to let cars through. The river just went back down. Weird."
Someone gave a nervous laugh. I said, "Well, it could have been worse."
They all looked at me. "We may have flooded every river and stream around St. Louis," Doyle said. "How much worse could it be?"
"St. Louis used to be part of a great inland sea, about a million years ago, give or take a millennium," I said, softly.
The silence in the car was suddenly thicker than before, heavy with a sort of shared horror. "Kitto got a small earth tremor. Nicca and Sage got a windstorm," Galen said. "I don't think bringing Barinthus back into his godhead would rate sinking most of a continent."
I knew exactly which of us knew that Barinthus was Manannan Mac Lir by who looked at him, and then away. Galen didn't know. But I did, and the thought of raising that much power without a formal circle of protection made my blood run cold. Though that could have been the puddle of water I was sitting in, too.
Chapter 25
It was a long, cold walk from the parking area to the faerie mounds. The snow was knee-deep on me, and there was no way for my mortal body to wade through it in four-inch spike heels and a miniskirt. Not without breaking an ankle or getting frostbite. So I was carried, and the only one who wasn't wet through was Barinthus. Everyone else's clothes began to freeze in the icy wind, and those who had no magical protection against the elements shivered as we waded through the snow.
Barinthus carried me easily. What would have had me floundering in the powdery depths was nothing to his height. I'd always known he was two feet taller than me, but as he carried me in his arms pressed against his broad chest, I was aware as I had never been before how physically imposing he was.
It was both comforting to ride in his strong arms, and unnerving. Curled up in his arms, I felt quite the child. He had carried me many times as a child, but now I had memories of him that did not match being child-like in his arms. I lay against his body and felt not embarrassed, but not comfortable, either.
I looked up at him from the nest he'd made of his coat for me. If he was cold without it, I could not tell. He looked out before him, and not at me, at all, as if I were indeed a child that filled his arms. Maybe I was to him. Maybe what had happened at the press conference hadn't changed how he saw me. The magic had meant something to him, that I knew, but as for the rest, perhaps I was no more than his old friend's daughter. He had always been more of a true uncle to me than any to whom I was related by genetics.