anarchist_queen | Noble Assembly, Faerie

To Leda, who had seen a few cop shows in her time in the World it had been an old, and tired strategy. But Secretary Leigha had never seen those shows. She fell for it hook line, and sinker. Actually it wasn't quite a trick.

They had offered her a choice. She could cooperate, tell them everything she knew, and in exchange she would be able to save face in Faerie. Or she could keep mum, and they would send her back home in disgrace, or if they were really feeling ornery, they would send her back with a little extra heavy purse. Make whoever was ultimately behind it all think she had cooperated.

Leigha had cooperated. She'd told them everything. Lord Corwyn of the House of Dark Shadows had concieved of the plan. He had his alchemists come up with the drug, which he hired the House of the Weeping Birch to distribute. The idea was to use the changed humans as a rallying cry. Point to them and say 'see?! They plan to invade!' Or at the very least he hoped the controversy would tear Bordertown apart. The disease was an unforeseen, but fortunate side effect. He had indeed been planning to address the council and point to the plague as yet another reason to shun humans.

But Leda got there first.

"I'm please to relate that due to the efforts of Hawthorn, who agreed to community service, and those of the doctors from the Human world, that a vaccine is expected within the week." She smiled. There were murmurs in the crowd. "And with aid of those same human doctors, the expected death toll has not happened. There have been a few fatalities, but nowhere near what we feared."

"I also come before you this eve, to reveal to you the architect behind this plot. Secretary Leigha of the House of the Weeping Birch has confessed all." She began to scan the crowd, she wanted to see Corwyn's face when she called him out.

It wasn't quite calling him on the death of her parents, the attempted kidnapping and assasination of herself, but it was a start. With this she could start a formal investigation, and they would get the proof she needed. He was going down. If it was the last thing she-

Her breath cut off as an invisible force constricted around her neck and lifted her off the ground.

"I," Corwyn spit the words out as he rose, "Have had, enough, of you!" Strider had called in the guard, who rushed to the rescue, but they were met by the Unseelie Lord's own men. "I have tried to be merciful. I have tried to be subtle. But you, you insolent whore just had to have your own way. You would poison our land, our very souls with the taint of the False Realm, just as you have polluted your own body and mind with the ways and touch of Mortals!"

Leda was able to get only enough breath to remain conscious as her life long enemy strode down through the panicking nobles towards her dangling body. She tried to reach the knife she had concealed up the sleeve of her dress, but with a twitch of his fingers, Corwyn dislocated both of her shoulders.

Her scream of pain was too choked to be audible. In her peripheral vision, Leda saw Strider battling to get to her side.

"I have tolerated your blasphemies for too long. I only pray I am not too late to put things right. If they beg to my satisfaction I will allow your friends to flee back to that Purgatory they love so well. My first act as King. My second will be to seal the border for all time. If they do not, I will raze your precious Bordertown to the ground and sow the soil with blood. But you, I have no further use for."

He raised his hand. "For you Crystaviel, my Daughter." Clenching his fist, he struck Leda in the jaw. The force of his blow, enhanced by magic sent her flying the length of the chamber, and crashing through the wall, plummeting to a certain, quick death on the street far below.

[What's This? A Diabolical Diatribe from the Unscrupulous Unseelie Usurper? A perilous plummet for our Plucky Progressive? Stay tuned True Believers!]