“Any other requests?” he asks.
“She was just getting to that,” I tell him.
“Freedom,” she says. “I wish to be away from the Tower of Forgetting, and I wish safe passage away from Insmoor, Insweal, and Insmire. Moreover, I want your promise that the High King of Elfhame will never become aware of my release.”
“Eldred is dead,” I tell her. “You have nothing to worry about.”
“I know who the High King is,” she corrects sharply. “And I don’t want to be discovered by him once I am free.”
The Roach’s eyebrows rise.
In the silence, she takes a big swallow of wine. She bites off a big hunk of cheese.
It occurs to me that Cardan very likely knows where his mother was sent. If he has done nothing to get her out, nothing to so much as see her since becoming High King, that’s intentional. I think of the boy in the crystal orb and the worshipful way he stared after her, and I wondered what changed. I barely remember my mother, but I would do a lot to see her again, even just for a moment.
“Tell me something of value,” I say. “And I will consider it.”
“So I am to have nothing today?” she wants to know.
“Have we not fed you and clothed you in our own garments? Moreover, you may take a turn around the gardens before you return to the Tower. Drink in the scents of the flowers and feel the grass beneath your feet,” I tell her. “Let me make myself clear: I do not beg for comforting reminiscences or love stories. If you have something better to give me, then perhaps I will find something for you. But do not think I need you.”
She pouts. “Very well. There was a hag who came across Madoc’s land when your mother was pregnant with Vivienne. The hag was given to prophecy and divined futures in eggshells. And do you know what the hag said? That Eva’s child was destined to be a greater weapon than Justin could ever forge.”
“Vivi?” I demand.
“Her child,” says Asha. “Although she must have thought of the one in her belly right then. Perhaps that’s why she left. To protect the child from fate. But no one can escape fate.”
I am silent, my mouth a grim line. Cardan’s mother takes another drink of wine.
I will not let any of what I feel show on my face. “Still not enough,” I say, taking a breath that I hope isn’t too quavering and focusing on passing the information I hope will find its way to Balekin. “If you think of something better, you can send me a message. Our spies monitor notes going in and out of the Tower of Forgetting—usually at the point they’re passed to the palace. Whatever you send, no matter to whom it is addressed, if it leaves the hand of the guard, we will see it. It will be easy to let me know if your memory comes up with anything of more value.”
With that, I get up and step out of the room. The Roach follows me into the hall and puts a hand on my arm.
For a long moment, I stand there wordlessly trying to marshal my thoughts.
He shakes his head. “I asked her some questions on the way here. It sounds as though she was entranced by palace life, besotted with the High King’s regard, glorying in the dancing and the singing and the wine. Cardan was left to be suckled by a little black cat whose kittens came stillborn.”
“He survived on cat milk?” I exclaim. The Roach gives me a look, as though I’ve missed the point of his story entirely.
“After she was sent to the Tower, Cardan was sent to Balekin,” he says.
I think again of the globe I held in Eldred’s study, of Cardan dressed in rags, looking to the woman in my chamber for approval, which came only when he was awful. An abandoned prince, weaned on cat milk and cruelty, left to roam the palace like a little ghost. I think of myself, huddling in a tower of Hollow Hall, watching Balekin enchant a mortal into beating his younger brother for poor swordsmanship.
“Take her back to the Tower,” I tell the Roach.
He raises his eyebrows. “You don’t want to hear more about your parents?”
“She gets too much satisfaction in the telling. I’ll have the information from her without so many bargains.” Besides, I have planted a more important seed. Now I have only to see if it grows.
He gives me a half smile. “You like it, don’t you? Playing games with us? Pulling our strings and seeing how we dance?”
“The Folk, you mean?”
“I imagine you’d like it as well with mortals, but we’re what you’re practiced in.” He doesn’t sound disapproving, but it still feels like being skewered on a pin. “And perhaps some of us offer a particular savor.”
He looks down his curved goblin nose at me until I answer. “Is that meant to be a compliment?”
At that, his smile blooms. “It’s no insult.”
Gowns arrive the next day, boxes of them, along with coats and cunning little jackets, velvet pants and tall boots. They all look as though they belong to someone ferocious, someone both better and worse than me.
I dress myself, and before I am done, Tatterfell comes in. She insists on sweeping back my hair and catching it up in a new comb, one carved in the shape of a toad with a single cymophane gem for an eye.
I look at myself in a coat of black velvet tipped with silver and think of the care with which Taryn chose the piece. I want to think about that and nothing else.
Once, she said that she hated me a little for being witness to her humiliation with the Gentry. I wonder if that’s why I have such a hard time forgetting about what happened with Locke, because she saw it, and whenever I see her, I remember all over again how it felt to be made a fool.
When I look at my new clothes, though, I think of all the good things that come from someone knowing you well enough to understand your hopes and fears. I may not have told Taryn all the awful things I’ve done and the terrible skills I’ve acquired, but she’s dressed me as though I had.
In my new clothes, I make my way to a hastily called Council meeting and listen as they debate back and forth whether Nicasia took Cardan’s angry message back to Orlagh and whether fish can fly (that’s Fala).
“Whether or not she did doesn’t matter,” says Madoc. “The High King has made his position clear. If he won’t marry, then we have to assume that Orlagh is going to fulfill her threats. Which means she’s going to go after his blood.”
“You are moving very fast,” says Randalin. “Ought we not yet consider that the treaty might still hold?”
“What good does it do to consider that?” asks Mikkel with a sidelong glance at Nihuar. “The Unseelie Courts do not survive on wishes.”
The Seelie representative purses her small insect-like mouth.
“The stars say that this is a time of great upheaval,” says Baphen. “I see a new monarch coming, but whether that’s a sign of Cardan deposed or Orlagh overturned or Nicasia made queen, I cannot say.”
“I have a plan,” says Madoc. “Oak will be here in Elfhame very soon. When Orlagh sends her people after him, I mean to catch her out.”
“No,” I say, surprising everyone into looking my way. “You’re not going to use Oak as bait.”
Madoc doesn’t seem particularly offended by my outburst. “It may seem that’s what I am doing—”
“Because you are.” I glare at him, remembering all the reasons I didn’t want Oak to be High King in the first place, with Madoc as his regent.
“If Orlagh plans to hunt Oak, then it’s better we know when she will strike than wait for her to move. And the best way to know is to engineer an opportunity.”
“How about removing opportunity instead?” I say.
Madoc shakes his head. “That’s nothing but the wishes Mikkel cautioned against. I’ve already written to Vivienne. They plan to arrive within the week.”
“Oak can’t come here,” I say. “It was bad enough before, but not now.”
“You think the mortal world is safe?” Madoc scoffs. “You think the Undersea cannot reach him there? Oak is my son, I am the Grand General of Elfhame, and I know my business. Make any arrangement you like for protecting him, but leave the rest to me. This is no time for an attack of nerves.”
I grind my teeth. “Nerves?”
He gives me a steady look. “It’s easy to put your own life on the line, isn’t it? To make peace with danger. But a strategist must sometimes risk others, even those we love.” He gives me a significant look, perhaps to remind me that I once poisoned him. “For the good of Elfhame.”
But I bite my tongue again. This is not a conversation that I am likely to get anywhere with in front of the entire Council. Especially since I’m not sure I’m right.
I need to find out more of the Undersea’s plans, and I need to do so quickly. If there’s any alternative to risking Oak, I mean to find it.
Randalin has more questions about the High King’s personal guard. Madoc wants the lower Courts to send more than their usual allotment of troops. Both Nihuar and Mikkel have objections. I let the words wash over me, trying to corral my thoughts.
As the meeting breaks up, a page comes up to me with two messages. One is from Vivi, delivered to the palace, asking me to come and bring her and Oak and Heather to Elfhame for Taryn’s wedding in a day’s time—sooner even than Madoc suggested. The second is from Cardan, summoning me to the throne room.
Cursing under my breath, I start to leave, then Randalin catches my sleeve.
“Jude,” he says. “Allow me to give you a word of advice.”
I wonder if I am about to be scolded.
“The seneschal isn’t just the voice of the king,” he says. “You’re his hands as well. If you don’t like working with General Madoc, find a new Grand General, one who hasn’t previously committed treason.”
I knew that Randalin was often at odds with Madoc in Council meetings, but I had no idea he wanted to eliminate him. And yet, I don’t trust Randalin any more than I do Madoc.