The Sword-Edged blonde by Alex Bledsoe Page A

through the window blew a strand of golden hair in her eyes, and she absently tucked it behind her ear. “Then what may I do to help you, sir?” she asked.
    “Here’s what I think happened. Somebody hates either you or Phil an awful lot to go to this much trouble. And since this couldn’t have been a spur-of-the-moment thing, it was probably someone who’s had a grudge simmering for a long time. Maybe even further back than six years.”
    Her eyes met mine, and there was no denying their candor. “Let me tell you
my
version of how I met Philip, Mr. LaCrosse. I awoke in the woods, lying in the sun in a patch of clover, naked and with no memory of anything except my name. Philip was hunting, and he’d broken away from his guard, and found me.” She held my gaze. “And that is truthfully my earliest memory, as ludicrous as it may sound.”
    “Phil always knew how to meet the girls. So were you injured?”
    “No. I seemed to be fine. I
always
seem to be fine. I’ve never even been sick a day since. I was only in labor for an hour with Pridiri. I can’t explain it.”
    Epona’s voice rang in my memory.
Ripping myself open reminds me there
is
life
. “Maybe you’re just living right. So have you pissed anyone off in the last six years?”
    “No one of whom I’m aware. We lead a very sedate life, for royalty. And I don’t really participate in the government, I’m more of a public relations person.” She smiled, but her eyes remained sad. “There are schools named after me, did you know that? They’ll probably change that now, though.”
    If this was genuine, her real personality showing through, then I was baffled. It was like she had none of the skills everyone else in the world had developed to mask her emotions; whatever she felt came through as pure and clear as sunlight after a summer rain. I felt bad questioning her, like you might feel kicking a puppy. And that annoyed me. If she
was
Epona Gray, she was reeling me in like a suicidal bass.
    “Then let’s try something different. On the night of the, ah, incident in question, why did it take you thirty minutes to get from the dining room to the nursery?”
    She blinked in surprise. “It did?”
    “People know when you left, other people know when you arrived. I could
crawl
that distance in half an hour, so why did it take you that long to walk it?”
    “I don’t know.” She seemed genuinely surprised by this information.
    “Nothing unusual happened? No one accosted you or spoke to you or anything?”
    “No. In my memory, I went straight to the nursery. You’re right, though, it couldn’t possibly take that long.”
    She overdid the sincerity just a hair, but it was enough for me to catch it. She knew something she wasn’t telling me. I decided to change tactics.
    “Look,” I said, resting my arms on my knees, “I don’t know
what
the hell to do here. I want to help Phil, but I’ve got jack to go on. Nobody hates him, nobodyhates you, so why the hell would someone go to this much trouble? And if they did get into the nursery undetected, why
fake
a murder? Why not just go ahead and kill the little bozo? No offense.”
    I watched her closely, but the only thing she let show was confusion. With all apparent honesty, she answered, “Mr. LaCrosse, I don’t know.”
    I sat back. So much for polite tactics. “You’re lying to me.”
    “You think I’m this Epona person,” she said.
    “I don’t know. I
do
think something scares you so bad that you’d actually
prefer
people to think you’d killed and eaten your son.”
    “That would be insane,” she said to the floor.
    “If you’ll be honest with me, I promise I won’t tell anyone else. Not even Phil. And if he’s told you anything about me at all, you’ll know that’s true. I keep my word.”
    She looked down at her bare feet for a long moment, one elegant toe tracing idle circles on the stone floor. Finally she asked, “Are you helping Philip because of what happened to his