The Wicked King (The Folk of the Air 2)

“Murder the heads of the smaller Courts?” I ask.

He smiles. “Of all the Courts. Perhaps at first it will seem like a series of accidents—or a few foolish orders. Or maybe it will be another bloodbath.”

I study him carefully. After all, the last bloodbath was at least partially his doing. “And do you disagree with Orlagh’s philosophy? Would you have done much the same were you the power behind the throne?”

“I wouldn’t have done it on behalf of the sea,” he says. “She means to have the land as her vassal.” He reaches for the table and picks up a small figurine, one carved to represent Queen Orlagh. “She believes in the forced peace of absolute rule.”

I look at the board.

“You wanted to impress me,” he says. “You guessed, rightly, that I would not see your true potential until you bested me. Consider me impressed, Jude. But it would be better for both of us to stop fighting each other and focus on our common interest: power.”

That hangs in the air ominously. A compliment delivered in the form of a threat. He goes on. “But now, come back to my side. Come back before I move against you in earnest.”

“What does coming back look like?” I ask.

He gives me an evaluating stare, as though wondering just how much to say out loud. “I have a plan. When the times comes, you can help me implement it.”

“A plan I didn’t help make and that you won’t tell me much about?” I ask. “What if I’m more interested in the power I already have?”

He smiles, showing his teeth. “Then I guess I don’t know my daughter very well. Because the Jude I knew would cut out that boy’s heart for what he did to you tonight.”

At the shame of having the revel thrown in my face, I snap. “You let me be humiliated in Faerie from the time I was a child. You’ve let Folk hurt me and laugh at me and mutilate me.” I hold up the hand with the missing fingertip, where one of his own guards bit it clean off. Another scar is at its center, from where Dain forced me to stick a dagger through my hand. “I’ve been glamoured and carried into a revel, weeping and alone. As far as I can tell, the only difference between tonight and all the other nights when I endured indignities without complaint is that those benefited you, and when I endure this, it benefits me.”

Madoc looks shaken. “I didn’t know.”

“You didn’t want to know,” I return.

He turns his gaze to the board, to the pieces on it, to the little figurine that represents me. “That argument’s a fine strike, right at my liver, but I am not so sure it does as well as a parry. The boy is unworthy—”

He would have kept on talking, but the door opens and Randalin is there, peering in, his robes of state looking hastily tugged on. “Oh, both of you. Good. The meeting is about to begin. Make haste.”

As I start to follow, Madoc grabs my arm. His voice is pitched low. “You tried to tell us that this was going to happen. All I ask from you tonight is that you use your power as seneschal to block any alliance with the Undersea.”

“Yes,” I say, thinking of Nicasia and Oak and all my plans. “That I can guarantee.”

The Living Council gathers in the High King’s enormous chambers, around a table inlaid with the symbol of the Greenbriar line, flowers and thorns with coiling roots.

Nihuar, Randalin, Baphen, and Mikkel are seated, while Fala stands in the middle of the floor singing a little song:

Fishies. Fishies. Putting on their feet.

Marry a fish and life will be sweet.

Fry her in a pan and pick out her bones.

Fishy blood is cold ’top a throne.

Cardan throws himself onto a nearby couch with dramatic flair, disdaining the table entirely. “This is ridiculous. Where is Nicasia?”

“We must discuss this offer,” says Randalin.

“Offer?” scoffs Madoc, taking a seat. “The way it was delivered, I am not sure how he could marry the girl without seeming as though the land feared the sea and capitulated to its demands.”

“Perhaps it was a trifle heavy-handed,” says Nihuar.

“Time for us to prepare,” Madoc says. “If it’s war she wants, it is war we will give her. I will pull the salt from the sea before I let Elfhame tremble over Orlagh’s wrath.”

War, exactly what I feared Madoc would rush us into, and yet now it arrives without his instigation.

“Well,” says Cardan, closing his eyes as though he is going to nap right there. “No need for me to do a thing then.”

Madoc’s lip curls. Randalin looks slightly discomposed. For so long, he wanted Cardan at meetings of the Living Council, but now he isn’t quite sure what to do with his actual presence.

“You could take Nicasia as your consort instead of your bride,” says Randalin. “Get an heir on her fit to rule over land and sea.”

“Now I am not to marry at Orlagh’s command, only breed?” Cardan demands.

“I want to hear from Jude,” Madoc says, to my enormous surprise.

The rest of the Council turns toward me. They seem utterly baffled by Madoc’s words. In meetings, my only value has been as a conduit between themselves and the High King. Now, with his representing himself, I might as well be one of the little wooden figures on a strategy board for all they expect me to speak.

“Whatever for?” Randalin wants to know.

“Because we didn’t heed her before. She told us that the Queen of the Undersea was going to move against the land. Had we attended her, we might not now be scrambling for strategy.”

Randalin winces.

“That’s true enough,” says Nihuar, as though she is trying to think of a way to explain away this troubling sign of competence.

“Perhaps she will tell us what else she knows,” Madoc says.

Mikkel’s eyebrows rise.

“Is there more?” Baphen asks.

“Jude?” prompts Madoc.

I weigh my next words. “As I said, Orlagh has been communicating with Balekin. I don’t know what information he’s passed on to her, but the sea sends Folk to the land with gifts and messages for him.”

Cardan looks surprised and clearly unhappy. I realize that I neglected to tell him about Balekin and the Undersea, despite informing the Council. “Did you know about Nicasia as well?” he asks.

“I, uh—” I begin, foundering.

“She likes to keep her own counsel on the Council,” Baphen says with a sly look.

As though it’s my fault none of them listens to me.

Randalin glowers. “You never explained how you learned any of this.”

“If you’re asking whether I have secrets, I could easily ask the same of you,” I remind him. “Previously, you weren’t interested in any of mine.”

“Prince of the land, prince under the waves,” says Fala. “Prince of prisons, prince of knaves.”

“Balekin’s no strategist,” Madoc says, which is as close to admitting he was behind Eldred’s execution as he’s ever done. “He’s ambitious, though. And proud.”

“Spurn the Sea once, we will have your blood,” says Cardan. “That’s Oak, I imagine.”

Madoc and I share a swift look. The one thing we agree on is that Oak will be kept safe. I am glad he’s far from here, inland, with both spies and knights looking out for him. But if Cardan is correct about what the line means, I wonder if he will need even more protection than that.

“If the Undersea is planning to steal Oak, then perhaps they promised Balekin the crown,” says Mikkel. “Safer for there to be only two in the bloodline, when one is needed to crown the other. Three is superfluous. Three is dangerous.”

Which is a roundabout way of saying somebody should kill Balekin before he tries to assassinate Cardan.

I wouldn’t mind seeing Balekin dead, either, but Cardan has been stubbornly against the execution of his brother. I think of the words he said to me in the Court of Shadows: I may be rotten, but my one virtue is that I’m not a killer.

“I will take that under advisement, advisors,” says Cardan. “Now, I wish to speak with Nicasia.”

“But we still haven’t decided…” Randalin says, trailing off when he sees the scorching glare Cardan levels at him.

“Jude, go fetch her,” says the High King of Elfhame. Another order.

I get up, grinding my teeth, and go to the door. The Ghost is waiting for me. “Where’s Nicasia?” I ask.

It turns out that she’s been put in my rooms, with the Roach. Her dove-gray dress is arranged on my divan as though she’s posing for a painting. I wonder if the reason she rushed off was so she could change clothing for this audience.

“Look what the wind blew in,” she says when she sees me.

“The High King requires your presence,” I tell her.

She gives me a strange smile and rises. “If only that were true.”

Down the hall we go, knights watching her pass. She looks majestic and miserable at once, and when the huge doors to Cardan’s apartments open, she goes inside with her head high.

While I was gone, a servant brought in tea. It steeps in a pot at the center of a low table. A cup of it steams in the cage of Cardan’s slender fingers.

“Nicasia,” he drawls. “Your mother has sent a message for us both.”

She frowns, taking in the other councilors, the lack of an invitation to sit, and the lack of an offer to take tea. “This was her scheme, not mine.”

He leans forward, no longer sleepy or bored but every bit the terrifying faerie lord, empty-eyed and incalculably powerful. “Perhaps, but you knew she’d do it, I’ll wager. Do not play with me. We know each other too well for tricks.”

Nicasia looks down, eyelashes brushing her cheeks. “She desires a different kind of alliance.” Perhaps the Council might see her as meek and humbled, but I am not yet so foolish.

Cardan stands, hurling his teacup at the wall, where it shatters. “Tell the Queen of the Undersea that if she threatens me again, she will find her daughter my prisoner instead of my bride.”