I nodded. "I'm told that some did question the severity of the punishment. You had many friends at court."
"I had allies at court. No one truly has friends there."
I gave her credit for that. "As you like, you had many allies at court. I am told they did question your fate."
"And?" There was a little too much eagerness to that one word.
She seemed to really want to know. I wanted to say, you answer my questions and I'll answer yours, but that was a little too crass. Subtlety, that was what was needed. Subtle had never been my natural bent, but I had learned. Eventually.
"I was beaten for asking about your fate," I said.
She blinked at me. "What?"
"As a child I asked why you were exiled, and the King himself beat me for asking."
She looked puzzled. "Had no one asked before?"
"They asked," I said.
The expression on her face was enough to urge me on, but I didn't finish the thought. I avoided letting her turn around the conversation, because I wanted to know why she'd been exiled. If she'd kept her silence for a hundred years, then I couldn't trust that she'd easily break it now.
"By the time I came along, people had stopped asking."
"What happened to my allies at court?" It was a very direct question, and I couldn't pretend not to understand anymore.
"The king killed Emrys," I said. "After that, everyone was afraid to ask after your fate."
It was hard to tell, but I think she paled under that golden tan. Her eyes went wide before she dropped her gaze to her lap. She started to take a drink and found the tumbler empty.
She yelled, "Nancy!"
The maid appeared, almost but not quite as if by magic. She had a tray with a tall dark glass of rum, a pair of white-rimmed sunglasses folded beside the drink. She'd also brought three swimsuits draped on her arm. They were all expensive, lovely, and tiny. Most of the underwear I owned covered more than those suits, and I owned a lot of lingerie.
They looked like ordinary, if elegant swimsuits, but appearance could be deceiving. Things can be done to clothes so the spell takes over only when the garment is worn. Nasty spells, some of them. For the first time I wondered, not if Maeve wanted to join our court, but if there were people at the Seelie Court who wanted me dead. Would my death be enough to undo her exile? Only if the king himself wanted my death. To my knowledge, Taranis didn't like me, but he didn't fear me, so my death should mean nothing to him.
Maeve had stopped talking. She was staring out at the pool, but I don't think she truly saw it. She was quiet for so long that I filled the silence. "Why the swimsuits, Ms. Reed?"
"I said to call me Maeve." But she never looked at me, and the phrase had a rehearsed quality, as if she wasn't truly listening to her own words.
I smiled. "Fine, why the swimsuits, Maeve?"
"I thought you might want to get more comfortable, that's all." Her voice still sounded flat, like dialogue that she'd planned to say but no longer cared about.
"Thank you, but I'm fine as I am."
"I'm sure I can find suits for your gentlemen, too." She finally looked at me while she spoke, but her voice was still muted.
"No, thank you." And I put enough force into the thank you that I thought she'd take the hint.
Maeve set the empty glass on the tray, slipped the sunglasses on, and only then took the new drink in hand. She drained a quarter of it in one long swallow, then looked at me. The glasses were large and round with fat white rims, and they were mirrored so that I could see a distorted reflection of myself as she moved her head. Her eyes and a large part of her face were completely hidden. She didn't need glamour now; she had something else to hide behind.
She pulled the robe closer to her neck and sipped the black rum. "Even Taranis would not dare to have Emrys executed." Her voice was low, but clear. I think she was working on not believing me. She'd given herself enough time with her rehearsed bit about the swimsuits that she'd thought about what I'd said. She didn't like it, so she was going to try to make it not true.
"He wasn't executed," I said, and again I watched her, waited for her to ask for more. You often learned more by saying less.
She looked up from her drink, making those mirrored glasses glint in the sun. "But you said Taranis had had him killed."
"No, I said he killed Emrys."