Benz frowned again, looking puzzled, and smoothed his hands down the front of his suit. It was almost as if he knew that something had just affected him in a more than normal way, but he wasn’t sure what it had been. I was betting the ambassador was carrying some kind of charm against our magic. He’d need it.
“It is the last country on the planet that would allow your people to immigrate,” Benz said.
“That is true, but the goblins would not see it as harming you, but as your proving unworthy to deal with them as a representative of the government.”
“Are you saying that an ambassador to the goblin court would have to be a soldier?”
“Unless you’re willing to shoot someone when you step through the door, no, not a soldier,” I said.
“What then?” he asked.
“A human witch or wizard, though it’s a more patriarchal society, so a wizard would be better.”
“A wizard with military training would be your best bet,” Rhys said. He came closer to the ambassador and raised the eye patch that was covering the smooth scars of his empty eye socket. “The goblins took my eye, Ambassador Benz, and I’m a lot harder to injure than a human.”
Benz did a long blink but didn’t flinch, which earned him another point. I wondered what he’d think if he saw the goblins. They prided themselves on extra limbs and eyes, so that females that looked like humanoid spiders were the height of beauty among the goblins. For that matter, he hadn’t seen Sholto with his extra tentacles visible. Benz was going to have a lot more chances to practice not flinching.
“Are you saying the goblins would attack me?”
I stepped in. “No, it is perfectly possible to visit and negotiate with the goblins in safety, but it requires an understanding of their culture that is rare even among the sidhe. I know of no human who has ever been that successfully intimate with the goblin court.”
Rhys snugged his eye patch back into place. “I’ve learned that my injury came through a lack of cultural understanding.” His voice was only a little bitter. He lost his eye hundreds of years ago, but I’d explained the misunderstanding to him only about a year ago. He’d hated the goblins and blamed them for it for a very long time, and had only a short time to get used to the idea that his injury was as much his fault as that of the goblin who took his eye.
“My goal is to be a true ambassador to both of the high courts of faerie, both Unseelie and Seelie, but no one in our government has spoken to me of the goblins, or even of Lord Sholto in his role as king.”
“Perhaps if your post as ambassador goes very well, we could escort you through the other courts at some point,” I said.
“I would be most grateful for the education in your wider culture,” he said, with a very nice smile. Even his brown eyes were shining with pleasure. I still felt we’d presented him with something he wasn’t prepared for, but he covered it better than most envoys, human or faerie.
I smiled, and turned carefully away in my designer sundress, not sure I could equal his pleasant falseness. He really was very good.
“Now, Princess Meredith, I had my own security wait outside the room with yours, since those inside the room are fathers and royal consorts, and security stays out. I’ve acted in accordance with your wishes this time.”
“Thank you, Ambassador,” I said with a smile.
“But I also have additional diplomatic security for you.”
“We discussed this, Ambassador; they are not needed.”
“Not meaning any insult to your bodyguards, but you were allegedly kidnapped by the king while under their care.”
“We’ve explained that I told them all to leave me alone, and they had to obey my orders.”
“But don’t they still have to obey your orders, Princess?”
“We’ve all agreed that Merry is never to be left alone without guards, and the same is true of the children,” Rhys said.
“Even if she orders you to do so?” Benz asked.
Rhys and Galen both nodded. “She will never be left alone again,” Galen said, and his voice held that new seriousness. I knew he meant it, and he was well trained as a fighter, but he didn’t have the skill level of Rhys, or Doyle, or Frost. I wasn’t sure if it was just the difference in years of practice, or if it had been a willingness to do deadly harm. The other men had been in real wars and had learned what it meant to kill and be killed. Galen had never had that; he’d had very few “real” fights. Honestly, I’d always thought that it wasn’t just lack of battle hardness, but that his personality, the very gentleness that I loved him for, prevented him from being the warrior he could have been. Now I was no longer sure of Galen, or of many things.
He came to me then, took my hand in his, and smiled down at me, his green eyes filling with that warmth they’d always held. “You look sad, my Merry. I would do anything to chase that look from your eyes.”
How could I tell him that it was his new resolution that made me sad? I couldn’t; we were all being changed by the events of the last year. We were parents now, and that would change us more.
“Kiss me, my green knight, and it will wipe the sadness from my eyes.”
I was rewarded with that brilliant smile of his, the one that had been making my heart skip a beat since I was fourteen, and then he leaned over, bending that six feet of muscle down to lay his mouth upon mine. The kiss was chaste by our standards, but the ambassador finally cleared his throat.
I had to break away from the kiss and explain, “Throat clearing is a human way of expressing awkwardness, or impatience with something sexual, or romantic.”
Galen glanced at the ambassador. “That wasn’t sexual by court standards, not by Unseelie standards anyway.”
“I’ve been told that sexuality is freer among the sidhe,” he said.
“If you try the throat-clearing routine with my aunt, the queen, either it will prompt her to say something scathing, or she will be more vigorous at whatever is bothering you.”
“It was not the kiss, but the fact that I think you are changing the subject from the princess having extra security from our government, that made me want to interrupt. I think of myself as fairly bohemian.”
“Bohemian,” Rhys said, “that’s not a term I’ve heard in a while.”
Benz looked at him, and there was intelligence in all the charm, which was good; he’d need it. “Is it the wrong word to use?”
“No, but to thrive at the Unseelie Court, you’ll need to be a little bit more than bohemian.”
“What would you suggest?”
“Profligate, perverse, but perhaps not.” Rhys looked at Galen and me.
“You’ve thought of something,” Galen said.
“I was just thinking that the queen never allows the human media to see her at her most flagrant. I was wondering if a human ambassador to our court might have a … calming effect.” His eye was full of humor at the very mildness of his word choice. If Queen Andais had to behave for human sensibilities, then torture as dinner entertainment might be over. It was always mild torture, by her standards, and it wasn’t common, but her love of true torture might have to be more controlled if Benz was visiting our court—if she could control herself and hadn’t gone so far into her own madness that nothing would help her regain herself. That was actually the question that stood in the way of her visiting the babies. Was she truly mad or just aiming her grief at her own court because she could? If she had to find other outlets for her grief, I wondered if I could talk her into grief counseling. She’d gone to human fertility specialists; maybe she’d do therapy.
Rhys came to join Galen, adding his arms to the other man’s so he had an arm around both my waist and Galen’s. “Now it’s you who’ve thought of something interesting, our Merry.”
I nodded. “We’ll discuss it later.”
“When I’m not here to listen in,” Benz said.
I glanced at him. “Yes,” I said.
He laughed then, and said, “You know that most humans would have denied it, just to be polite.”
“It’s too close to a lie, and a lie that you would know was one. Why should I bother?”
“Ah, Princess Meredith, I think I am going find being ambassador to you a very interesting, even educational, experience.”