Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde, #3)(21)
“Your Highness?” a woman said. To my infinite relief, she was mortal, a tall, pretty woman with dark brown skin and black hair cropped close to her scalp. She seemed to be blind, and held a simple cane made from willow reeds, but I caught the flash of silver woven into the construction. Her dress was of plain dark silks, but there too was a subtle silver stitchery along the cuffs. I understood from this that the woman possessed some status among these Folk.
“How did you know me?” I said.
She smiled. “I have lived among Folk for thirty years, by the mortal reckoning. I am used to the sound of their footfalls. Your tread is different.”
I let out my breath and sank into a chair. “One of the common fae is fond of referring to me as a blundering mortal oaf.” I gave a shaky laugh that perhaps went on too long.
She had stopped smiling and now looked concerned. “Are you all right?”
I rubbed a hand over my face. “Who were those Folk with—with the papers and awls?”
“The bookbinders? The king summoned them to court last night. They have been hard at it ever since. Does their work not please you, Your Highness?”
I made an inarticulate sound and poured myself a cup of tea. “Please don’t call me that.”
“Oh, thank God.” My words—or perhaps the raggedness of them—seemed to break the tension between us, and she sank into a chair across from me with a sigh of relief. “I had to be certain you weren’t one of those mortals who had grown big-headed from finding favour with faerie royalty, and would toss me into the dungeons for presumption. Do you know me, Professor Wilde?”
I examined her—I saw nothing familiar in her face, but it did not take me long to work it out. “You’ve spent thirty years in Faerie,” I murmured, mentally thumbing through the list of scholars who had vanished into the Silva Lupi. “You are not Dr. Proudfit? Niamh Proudfit, of the University of Connacht?”
She grinned. “Steady on. You would think I was queen of this realm. You need not be impressed by me.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, trying to get my emotions in hand. “I have never seized the throne of a faerie kingdom before. I’m afraid I find the experience somewhat trying.”
She laughed—it was a rich, warm sound, which, coupled with her boisterous manner of speaking, gave an impression of conviviality and open-heartedness. I recognized in her a particular variety of professor, the sort most likely to receive glowing student reviews, who displays an infectious enthusiasm for her chosen subject and an easy command of a podium. Now, as this sort is furthest from my own type—my reviews are decidedly mixed—I tend to view such individuals with a touch of resentment, but I felt none of this now. My relief at meeting a fellow scholar was too great.
“You were a friend of Farris Rose’s, were you not?” I found myself asking, though we had more important things to talk about.
Her face brightened, and I sensed that she was just as pleased as I to speak of academic matters. “We co-authored an article on the Black Hounds of Cumbria! How is he getting on? Has he grown dignified and venerable with age? When I knew Farris, he was still stammering during speaking events.”
We spent several minutes discussing Rose; I gave Niamh an account of his career since her disappearance, and she told me a story of how he had once locked himself outside his boardinghouse before a conference and had to deliver his presentation in his slippers. She was also fascinated to hear of our association with Danielle de Grey and Bran Eichorn, two other famously vanished scholars. Both have returned to academia—to fanfare I doubt I need describe, other than to say that they are, unsurprisingly, now the most talked about dryadologists in all of Europe—with Eichorn following de Grey to her old alma mater, the University of Edinburgh. I confess I am not disappointed that they decided against remaining at Cambridge; our relations at present could best be described as polite but frosty. With Eichorn, this can be explained as being in harmony with his nature, but regarding de Grey, I have at times had the impression that she resents how intertwined our names have become, given that I am the one being credited with her rescue (Wendell asked that his role in the whole business be omitted). She seems the sort who prefers being at the centre of things.
“Most of academia has given you up for dead,” I told Niamh. “This is the Silva Lupi, after all. But what are you doing here, in their court? You are not a prisoner?”
“Not at all,” she said. We had tucked in to breakfast, and Niamh paused to wash down her toast with some tea. Several of the red-faced servants had returned, unobtrusively keeping our plates and cups filled. I felt more comfortable with them now that I was not the only person being waited on.
“I was the old king’s scribe,” she said. “That means right hand, here; the head of his Council and general fixer. The queen sacked me, of course, when she had the royal family murdered and took Prince Liath’s throne—King Liath, I mean.”
I was impressed; not only by her position, but that she had survived the queen’s purge. “How did you—”
“Keep my head?” She laughed again, though there was a brittleness about it that undercut the irreverence. “The queen always liked talented mortals. She appreciated my intellect—she said so, anyhow. She continued to consult me occasionally on political matters, but by and large she let me be, which suited me well enough. I have been able to focus on my research these last few years.”