“They…they were nice.” The boy sounded uncertain, as though struggling to grasp a fading dream. “They gave me honey cakes.”
Maeve kissed his forehead again. Cuan could sense her glamour wrapping around the boy, scouring away his memories of the kidnapping. “I shall give you much more than mere honey cakes. You shall feast on candies spun from starlight, and meat salted with the distilled tears of your foes, and soulwine rich and sweet. Whatever you desire shall be yours.”
“Can I have a puppy?” the boy asked hopefully.
“At once,” Maeve promised. “Roasted or stewed?”
Cuan cleared his throat. “I believe he meant as a pet, my lady.”
“Can you not recognize when I am making a jest?” Maeve snapped, in a way that convinced Cuan she hadn’t been. She clapped her hands together. “Steward! Have my hounds any litters at present?”
Maeve’s house steward—an elderly, wizened hobgoblin with a face like a gnarled knot of wood—stepped forward from the shadows where he’d been politely lurking. “One of the hellhounds has whelped five fine puppies, my lady.”
“Take my dearest boy to them at once, that he may have his pick of the litter,” Maeve instructed. She turned back to her changeling, her expression softening with fondness. “You shall have the fiercest and strongest to guard your dreams and foretell doom unto your enemies.”
Cuan was fairly certain that this was not precisely what the boy desired in a canine companion.
“Come, young master,” the steward said, perhaps also reading the boy’s hesitation. “I shall help you pick a pup that will be a faithful and loyal friend.”
The boy nodded, looking happier. He started to follow the elderly hob, then paused, looking back over his shoulder at Cuan. “Thank you for rescuing me. Can you come see me again?”
Cuan sketched a bow. “I would be honored, but my duties mean that I am rarely at court.”
“Nonsense, my dear beast.” Maeve slid her hand through his arm, her long crimson nails digging into his skin in a rather disconcerting way. She simpered up at him, eyes gleaming beneath her demurely lowered eyelashes. “It is you who find excuses to absent yourself. You know that my court is always delighted when you grace us with your presence. You are so very amusing, after all.”
Cuan gritted his teeth, trying not to let the sting of the barb show in his expression. He knew all too well how ‘amusing’ the pure-blood high sidhe found him.
The steward led the changeling child away. Cuan opened his mouth to take his own leave, but Maeve tightened her possessive grip on his arm, cutting him off.
“Since my darling child requests your presence, you simply must stay.” Maeve turned, tugging him off balance. Maeve might look as slender as a reed, but like all high sidhe she had the strength of a full-grown water bull. “Perhaps I should have given you to him as his pet. You would look simply darling with a collar of roses and thorns. He could lead you about on a silken ribbon and have you leap through hoops for the entertainment of all.”
“What a charming picture.” Cuan prayed to the Shining Ones that this time she was joking. “Yet I fear it would leave your eastern border undefended. The seelie raiders grow bolder with every moon. If you would excuse me, I must return to my duties protecting your land and loyal subjects.”
Maeve patted his arm, much as she might pat the flank of her favorite steed. “Ah, my loyal beast. Always so serious. Yet I must insist that you put duty aside and join us in tonight’s revel. After all, I owe you a great boon for returning my dear child to me. And no true high sidhe would wish to miss this rare entertainment.”
She strolled away, leaving Cuan with the choice of either coming with her or chopping off his sword arm. Since that would have been an awkward feat to achieve left-handed, he resigned himself to his role as unwilling escort.
“And what entertainment would that be, my lady?” Cuan could only hope that it would be a hunt or tournament of arms rather than one of the more refined courtly past-times favored by the high sidhe.
With my luck, he thought morosely, it will turn out to be poetry.
Well, he had endured the mockery of the entire court before. And perhaps they had finally run out of unflattering rhymes for ‘beast.’
Maeve’s crimson mouth curved in a hungry smile. “A tithe.”
Cuan started, taken aback. “A tithe? From the human world?”
“Who else would seek to bargain with us?” The swirling lines and dots of Maeve’s faemarks shimmered with a faint red light, betraying the genuine excitement underneath her elegant manner. “There are still some few humans who remember the old ways. Who know the correct way to appease us and beg our blessing.”
Cuan had heard rumors of tithes made to other courts over the past years, but he had dismissed them as mere gossip. He had never thought to witness one at his own sidhean.
“What blessing does this human seek from us?” he asked.
Maeve waved a hand in a dismissive gesture. “Oh, the usual. Riches, power, magic. That matters not. Of greater interest is what he gives us.”
In the olden days, when the sidhe were still feared and respected by all sensible humans, every farm and hamlet would have paid an annual tithe to the nearest sidhean. Anything from a small token of appeasement—a bottle of mead, a dish of cream, a skein of wool—to more lavish sacrifices.
Cuan had a sinking feeling that Maeve would not be this energized by a pouch of nutmegs or an unblemished white lamb.