The Queen of Nothing (The Folk of the Air 3)

Iam halfway down the hall when a pixie knight rushes up to me, her armor polished to a shine that reflects her cerulean skin. “Your Majesty, you must come quickly,” she says, putting her hand to her heart.

“Fand?” When we were at the palace school, we both dreamed of knighthood. It seems that one of us achieved it.

She looks at me as though surprised at being remembered, although it wasn’t very long ago. I suppose she, too, believes I have ascended to dizzying and perhaps memory-altering heights.

“Sir Fand,” I correct myself, and she smiles. I grin back at her. Although we were not friends, we were friendly—and for me, in the High Court, that was a rarity. “Why do I have to come quickly?”

Her expression goes grave again. “A battalion from the Undersea is in the throne room.”

“Ah,” I say, and let her escort me through the halls. Some Folk bow as I pass. Others quite pointedly do not. Not sure how to behave, I ignore both.

“You ought to have your own guard,” Sir Fand says, keeping pace just behind me.

Everyone seems very fond of telling me how I should do this job. But, at least in this case, my silence is apparently enough of an answer for her to fall silent.

When we get to the brugh, it is mostly empty. Randalin is wringing his wizened hands as he studies the soldiers of the Undersea—selkies and the pale-skinned Folk that make me think of those they called drowned ones. Nicasia stands in front of them, in armor of iridescent scales, her hair dressed with shark teeth, clasping Cardan’s hands in hers. Her eyes are red-rimmed and swollen, as though she’s been weeping. His dark head is bent toward hers, and I am reminded that they were once lovers.

She whirls when she sees me, wild with anger. “This is your father’s doing!”

I take a step back in surprise. “What?”

“Queen Orlagh,” Cardan says with what seems like slightly exaggerated calm. “Apparently, she was struck with something like elf-shot. It burrowed deep into her flesh, but it seems to have stopped short of her heart. When there is an attempt to remove it, it seems to resist magical and nonmagical extraction. It moves as though it’s alive, but there may be some iron in it.”

I stop, my mind reeling. The Ghost. That’s where Madoc sent him, to the sea. Not to kill the queen, which would anger the sea Folk and bring them more firmly to Cardan’s side, but to wound her in such a way that he could hold her death over her. How could her people risk fighting Madoc when he would stay his hand so long as Orlagh stayed put?

“I’m so sorry.” It’s an utterly human thing to say and utterly useless, but I blurt it out anyway.

Nicasia curls her lip. “You ought to be.” After a moment, she releases Cardan’s hand with some apparent regret. She would have married him once. I very much doubt that my appearance has made her give up the notion. “I must go to my mother’s side. The Court of the Undersea is in chaos.”

Once, Nicasia and her mother held me captive, locked me in a cage, and tried to take my will from me. Sometimes, in dreams, I am still there, still floating in the dark and the cold.

“We are your allies, Nicasia,” Cardan reminds her. “Should you need us.”

“I count on you to avenge my mother, if nothing else,” she says. Then, with another hostile glance in my direction, she turns and leaves the hall. The Undersea soldiers fall into step behind her.

I cannot even be annoyed with her. I am reeling from the success of Madoc’s gambit—and the sheer ambition of it. The death of Orlagh would be no small thing to engineer; she is one of the ancient and established powers of Faerie, older even than Eldred. But to wound her in such a way seems harder still.

“Now that Orlagh is weak, it’s possible there will be challengers to her throne,” Randalin says with a certain amount of regret, as though doubting Nicasia would be up to what was required of her. “The sea is a brutal place.”

“Did they catch the would-be assassin?” I ask.

Randalin frowns at me, as he often does when I ask a question to which he doesn’t know the answer but doesn’t wish to admit it. “I do not believe so. Had they, I am sure they would have told us.”

Which means he may come here after all. Which means Cardan is still in danger. And we have far fewer allies than we did before. This is the problem with playing defense—you can never be sure where your enemy will strike, so you expend more resources trying to cover every eventuality.

“The generals will wish to adjust their plans,” Randalin says with a significant look in Cardan’s direction. “Perhaps we should summon them.”

“Yes,” says Cardan. “Yes, I suppose we should.”

We repair to the strategy rooms and are greeted by a cold dinner of duck eggs, currant bread, and paper-thin slices of roasted boar. The master of servants, a large, spidery woman, waits for us, along with the generals. The discussion quickly takes on a festival air, with half of it turning to entertaining the coming lords and ladies of the low Courts and the other half planning a war.

The new Grand General turns out to be an ogre named Yorn. He was appointed during my exile. I know nothing to his detriment, but he has a nervous demeanor. He sweeps in with three of his generals and a lot of questions about the maps and materials the Living Council passed on from me. Tentatively, he begins to reimagine our naval strategy.

Once more, I try to guess what Madoc’s next move might be. I feel as though I have so many pieces of the puzzle but fail to see how they fit together. What I do know is that he’s cutting off the exits, pruning the variables, reducing our ability to surprise him, so that his plans are most likely to succeed.

I can only hope that we can surprise him in turn.

“We should just attack the moment his ships appear on the horizon,” says Yorn. “Not give him a chance to call for parlay. It will be harder without the aid of the Undersea, but not impossible. We still have the greater force.”

Due to the Folk’s customs of hospitality, if Madoc requests it, he and a small party will be welcomed into Elfhame for the purpose of discussing alternatives to war. So long as he doesn’t raise a weapon, he can eat and drink and talk with us for however much time he likes. When he is ready to depart, the conflict will start right where it left off.

“He’ll send a bird ahead,” says Baphen. “And his ships may well come shrouded in fog or shadows. We do not know what magic he has at his disposal.”

“He wants to duel,” I say. “As soon as he draws a weapon, he will break the terms of parlay. And he will not be allowed to bring a large force onto the land for the purposes of discussing peace.”