A Lick Of Frost   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

But it seemed arrogant to think that my little adventures could affect a being who had once been worshipped as a god.

His white hair curled over his shoulders, and down the broad plane of his back. He was the shortest of my sidhe guards, but I knew that the body under the suit was the most muscled. He took his workouts very seriously. He wore an eye patch to cover the main scars from an injury he'd received centuries ago. The one eye he had left was lovely, three circles of blue like lines of sky from different days of the year. His mouth was soft and rich, and one of the most pouting of the men, as if his lips begged to be kissed. I didn't know what had wrought this new seriousness in him, but it gave him a new depth, as if there was more to him than there had been only a few days ago.

He was the only one of the three who had been outside the faerie mound, our sithen, when the attack was supposed to have happened. He had actually been attacked by Seelie warriors, and accused to his face of the crime. They had come out into the winter snow hunting my men with steel and cold iron, two of the only things that can truly injure a sidhe warrior. Most of the time even duels between the courts are fought with weapons that can't bring true injury, true death, to us. It's like one of those action movies where the men beat the hell out of each other but keep coming back for more. Steel and cold iron were killing weapons. That alone had been a breach of the peace between the two courts.

The lawyers were arguing. "Lady Caitrin alleges that the attack took place on a day that my clients were actually in Los Angeles," Biggs said. "My clients can't have done something in Illinois when they were in California all day. On the day in question, one of the accused was working for the Grey Detective Agency and was in view of witnesses all day."

That would have been Rhys. He loved being detective for real. He loved undercover work, and had enough glamour to be even better at it than a human detective. Galen had enough glamour to do it, too, but he couldn't play the part. Undercover, or decoy, work was only partly looking right. You also had to «feel» right to the person you were trying to catch. I'd done my share of decoy work in years past. Now, no one would allow me near the dangerous stuff.

So how had Lady Caitrin's attack taken place before we got to faerie? Time had started running differently in faerie again. Time had started running very differently in the Unseelie sithen, around me. Doyle had said, "Time is running oddly in all of faerie for the first time in centuries, but it was running even more oddly around you, Meredith. Now that you have left, faerie time is running oddly, but no more oddly for one court than another."

It was both interesting and disturbing that time had run not exactly backward for me, but it had stretched out. It was January for us and the courts, but the date still wasn't the same. The post-Yule ball that my uncle Taranis had been so insistent on me attending was finally safely past. We'd all decided it was too dangerous for me to attend. The accusation against my guards confirmed that Taranis was up to something, but what? Taranis had a plan, and whatever it was, it would be dangerous to everyone but him.

"King Taranis has explained that time runs differently in faerie than it does in the real world," Shelby said.

I knew that Taranis hadn't said "the real world," because to him the Seelie Court was the real world.

"May I ask your clients a question?" Veducci asked. He'd stayed out of the squabbling. In fact, this was one of the first times he'd spoken since we had changed rooms. It made me nervous.

"You can ask it," Biggs said, "but I'll decide if they answer it."

Veducci gave a nod, and pushed away from the wall where he'd been leaning. He smiled at us all. Only a hardness to his eyes let me know that the smile was a lie. "Sergeant Rhys, were you in the lands of faerie on the date that Lady Caitrin accuses you of attacking her?"

"Of allegedly attacking her," Biggs said.

Veducci nodded at him. "Were you in the lands of faerie on the date that Lady Caitrin alleges this attack took place?"

It was nicely worded. Worded so that it was hard to dance around the truth without actually lying.

Rhys smiled at him, and I got a glimpse of that less serious side he'd shown me most of my life. "I was in the lands of Faerie when the alleged attack took place."

Veducci asked the same question of Galen. Galen looked more uncomfortable than Rhys had, but he answered, "Yes, I was."

Abeloec's answer was simply "Yes."

Farmer whispered to Biggs, and asked the next round of questions. "Sergeant Rhys, were you here in Los Angeles on the date of the alleged attack?"

The question proved that our lawyers still didn't quite understand the quandary of time in faerie.

"No, I was not."

Biggs frowned. "But you were, all day. We have many witnesses."

Rhys smiled at him. "But the day in Los Angeles was not the identical day as the day that Lady Caitrin accused us of this alleged attack."

"It is the same date," Biggs insisted.

"Yes," Rhys said patiently, "but just because it's the same date doesn't mean it's the same day."

Veducci was the only one smiling. Everyone else looked like they were thinking too hard, or were wondering if Rhys was crazy.

"Can you clarify that?" Veducci asked, still looking pleased.

"This isn't like a science-fiction story, where we have traveled back in time to redo the same day," Rhys said. "We aren't truly in two places at once. For us, Mr. Veducci, this day is truly a new day. Our doppelgängers are not in faerie reliving this day. That day in faerie is past. This day here in Los Angeles is a new day. It happens to have the same date, so outside of faerie it appears to be the same day, repeated."

"So you could have been in faerie on the day she was attacked?" Veducci asked.

Rhys smiled at him, almost tsking. "On the day she was allegedly attacked, yes."

"This will be a nightmare for a jury," Nelson said.

"Wait until we get done demanding a jury of their peers," Farmer said, smiling almost happily.

Nelson paled under her tasteful makeup. "A jury of their peers?" she repeated softly.

"Could a human juror truly understand being in two places on the same date?" Farmer asked.

The lawyers looked at each other. Only Veducci didn't share in the confusion. I think he'd already thought of all of this. Technically, his job description made him less powerful than Shelby or Cortez, but he could help them hurt us. Of everyone on the opposing side, Veducci was the one I wanted to win over the most.