The Wicked King (The Folk of the Air #2) Read online

  I sigh. “I’ve lived here nearly all my life. I know that!”

  My voice startles his crow, which leaps from his shoulder to fly up into the sky.

  “Then know this,” Val Moren says, looking at me. “I may not help you. It was one of the things I gave up. I promised Eldred that once I became his, I would renounce all of humanity. I would never choose a mortal over a faerie.”

  “But Eldred is dead,” I insist.

  “And yet my promise remains.” He holds his hands in front of him in acknowledgement of his helplessness.

  “We’re human,” I say. “We can lie. We can break our word.” But the look he turns on me is pitying, as though I am the one who is mistaken.

  Watching him walk off, I make a decision. Only one person has a reason to help me, only one person I can be sure of.

  You will come to Hollow Hall when you can, Balekin told me. Now is as good a time as any.

  I force myself to walk, though the path through the Milkwood is not a direct one, and it passes too close to the sea for my comfort. When I look out at the water, a shudder comes over me. It will not be easy to live on an island if I am tormented by waves.

  I pass by the Lake of Masks. When I look down, I see three pixies staring back at me with apparent concern. I plunge my hands in and scrub my face with the fresh water. I even drink a little, even though it’s magical water and I’m not sure it’s safe. Still, fresh water was too dear for me to pass up an opportunity to have it.

  Once Hollow Hall is in sight, I pause for a moment, to get breath and courage both.

  I walk up to the door as boldly as I can. The knocker on the door is a piercing through the nose of a sinister, carved face. I lift my hand to touch the ring, and the carving’s eyes open.

  “I remember you,” says the door. “My prince’s lady.”

  “You’re mistaken,” I say.

  “Seldom.” The door swings open with a slight creak that indicates disuse. “Hail and welcome.”

  Hollow Hall is empty of servants and guards. No doubt it is difficult for Prince Balekin to cozen any of the Folk to serve him when he is so clearly a creature of the Undersea. And I have effectively cut off his ability to trick mortals into the kind of horrible servitude in which he is most interested. I walk through echoing rooms to a parlor, where Balekin is drinking wine surrounded by a dozen thick pillar candles. Above his head, red moths dance. He left them behind in the Undersea, but now that he’s back, they circle around him like a candle flame.

  “Did anyone see you?” he asks.

  “I don’t believe so,” I say with a curtsy.

  He stands, going to a long trestle table and lifting a small, blown glass vial. “I don’t suppose you’ve managed to murder my brother?”

  “Madoc has ordered me away from the palace,” I say. “I think he fears my influence over the High King, but I can do nothing to Cardan if I am not allowed to see him.”

  Balekin takes another sip of his wine and walks to me. “There’s to be a ball, a masquerade to honor one of the lower Court lords. It will be tomorrow, and so long as you are able to steal away from Madoc, I will find a way to get you in. Can you acquire a costume and mask yourself, or will you need that from me as well?”

  “I can costume myself,” I say.

  “Good.” He holds up the vial. “Stabbing would be very dramatic at such a public function, but poison is ever so much easier. I want you to carry this with you until you have a moment alone with him, then you must add it to his wine in secret.”

  “I will,” I vow.

  Then he takes my chin, glamour in his voice. “Tell me that you’re mine, Jude.”

  When he places the vial in my hand, my fingers close over it.

  “I am your creature, Prince Balekin,” I say, looking into his eyes and lying with my whole broken heart. “Do with me what you will. I am yours.”

  As I am about to leave Hollow Hall, I am suddenly beset by a wave of exhaustion. I sit down on the steps, light-headed, and wait until the feeling passes. A plan is growing in my mind, a plan that requires the cover of dark and my being well-rested and reasonably well-equipped.

  I could go to Taryn’s house, but Locke would be there, and he did try to kill me that one time.

  I could return to Madoc’s, but if I do, it’s likely that the servants have been instructed to roll me up in fuzzy blankets and hold me in cushioned captivity until Cardan is no longer under my command, but sworn to obey his Grand General.

  Horrifyingly, I wonder if the best thing to do is to stay here. There are no servants, no one to bother me but Balekin, and he is preoccupied. I doubt he would even notice my presence in this enormous and echoing house.

  I mean to be practical, but it is very hard when it means fighting against instincts that tell me to run as far and as fast from Balekin as I can. But I’ve exhausted myself already.

  Having snuck through Hollow Hall enough times before, I know the way to the kitchens. I drink more water from the pump just beyond it, finding myself desperately thirsty. Then, I wend my way up the steps to where Cardan once slept. The walls are as bare as I remember, the half-tester bed dominates the room with its carvings of dancing, bare-breasted cat girls.

  He had books and papers—now gone—but the closet is still full of extravagant and abandoned clothes. I suppose they are no longer ridiculous enough for the High King. But more than a few are black as night, and there’s hose that will be easy to move in. I crawl into Cardan’s bed, and although I fear I will toss and turn with nerves, I surprise myself by slipping immediately into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  Upon waking in the moonlight, I go to his closet and dress myself in the simplest of his clothes—a velvet doublet that I rip pearls from the collar and cuffs, along with a pair of plain, soft leggings.

  I set out again, feeling less wobbly. When I pass through the kitchens, I find little in the way of food, but there’s a corner of hard bread that I gnaw on as I walk through the dark.

  The Palace of Elfhame is a massive mound with most of the important chambers—including the enormous throne room—underground. At the peak is a tree, its roots worming down more deeply than could come from anything but magic. Just beneath the tree, however, are the few rooms that have panes of thin crystal letting in light. They are unfashionable rooms, like the one Cardan once set fire to the floor of and where Nicasia popped out of his wardrobe to shoot him.

  That room is now sealed, the double doors locked and barred so that the passage to the royal chambers cannot be accessed. It would be impossible to get inside from within the palace.

  But I am going to climb the hill.

  Quietly, stealthily, I set off, sinking my two knives into the dirt, pulling myself up, wedging my feet on rocks and roots, and then doing it again. Higher and higher I go. I see bats circling overhead and freeze, willing them not to be anyone’s eyes. An owl calls from a nearby tree, and I realize how many things could be observing me. All I can do is go faster. I am nearly to the first set of windows when weakness hits me.

  I grit my teeth and try to ignore the shaking of my hands, the unsteadiness of my step. I am breathing too fast, and all I want to do is give myself a rest. I am sure, though, that if I do, my muscles will stiffen up, and I won’t be able to start again. I keep going, although my whole body hurts.

  Then I stab one of the knives into the dirt and try to lever myself up, but my arm is too weak. I can’t do it. I stare down the steep, rocky hill, at the twinkling lights around the entrance to the brugh. For a moment, my vision blurs, and I wonder what would happen if I just let go.

  Which is a stupid thought. What would happen is that I would roll down the hill, hit my head, and hurt myself really badly.

  I hold on, scrabbling my way toward the glass panes. I have looked at the maps of the palace enough times that I only have to peer into three before I find the correct one. It looks down on only darkness, but I get to work, chipping at the crystal with my knife until it cracks.

 
I wrap my hands in the sleeve of the doublet and break off pieces of it. Then I drop through into the darkness of the rooms that Cardan abandoned. The walls and furnishings still stink of smoke and sour wine. I make my way by touch to the armoire.

  From there it is easy to open the passage and pad down the hall, down the spiraling path to the royal chamber.

  I slip into Cardan’s room. Though it is not yet dawn, I am lucky. The room is empty of revelry. No courtiers doze on the cushions or in his bed. I walk to where he sleeps and press my hand over his mouth.

  He wakes, fighting against my grip. I press down hard enough that I can feel his teeth against my skin.

  He grabs for my throat, and for a moment, I am scared that I’m not strong enough, that my training isn’t good enough. Then his body relaxes utterly, as though realizing who I am.

  He shouldn’t relax like that. “He sent me to kill you,” I whisper against his ear.

  A shiver goes through his body, and his hand goes to my waist, but instead of pushing me away, he pulls me into the bed with him, rolling my body across him onto the heavily embroidered coverlets.

  My hand slips from his mouth, and I am unnerved to find myself here, in the very bed that I felt too human to lie in, beside someone who terrifies me the more I feel for him.

  “Balekin and Orlagh are planning your murder,” I say, flustered.

  “Yes,” he says lazily. “So why did I wake up at all?”

  I am awkwardly conscious of his physicality, of the moment when he was half awake and pulled me against him. “Because I am difficult to charm,” I say.

  That makes him give a soft laugh. He reaches out and touches my hair, traces the hollow of my cheekbone. “I could have told my brother that,” he says, with a softness in his voice I am utterly unprepared for.

  “If you hadn’t allowed Madoc to bar me from seeing you, I might have told you all this sooner. I have information that cannot wait.”

  Cardan shakes his head. “I know not of what you speak. Madoc told me that you were resting and that we should let you heal.”

  I frown. “I see. And in the interim, Madoc would no doubt take my place as your advisor,” I tell Cardan. “He gave your guard orders to keep me out of the palace.”

  “I will give them different orders,” Cardan says. He sits up in the bed. He’s bare to the waist, his skin silvery in the soft glow of the magical lights. He continues looking at me in this strange way, as though he’s never seen me before or as though he thought he might never see me again.

  “Cardan?” I say, his name tasting strange on my tongue. “A representative from the Court of Termites came to see me. She told me something—”

  “What they asked in exchange for you,” he says. “I know all the things you will say. That it was foolish to agree to pay their price. That it destabilizes my rule. That it was a test of my vulnerabilities, and that I failed it. Even Madoc believed it was a betrayal of my obligations, although his alternatives weren’t exactly diplomatic, either. But you do not know Balekin and Nicasia as I do—better they think you are important to me than to believe what they do to you is without consequences.”

  I consider how they treated me when they believed me to be valuable and shudder.

  “I have thought and thought since you were gone, and there is something I wish to say.” Cardan’s face is serious, almost grave, in a way that he seldom allows himself to be. “When my father sent me away, at first I tried to prove that I was nothing like he thought me. But when that didn’t work, I tried to be exactly what he believed I was instead. If he thought I was bad, I would be worse. If he thought I was cruel, I would be horrifying. I would live down to his every expectation. If I couldn’t have his favor, then I would have his wrath.

  “Balekin did not know what to do with me. He made me attend his debauches, made me serve wine and food to show off his tame little prince. When I grew older and more ill-tempered, he grew to like having someone to discipline. His disappointments were my lashings, his insecurities my flaws. And yet, he was the first person who saw something in me he liked—himself. He encouraged all my cruelty, inflamed all my rage. And I got worse.

  “I wasn’t kind, Jude. Not to many people. Not to you. I wasn’t sure if I wanted you or if I wanted you gone from my sight so that I would stop feeling as I did, which made me even more unkind. But when you were gone—truly gone beneath the waves—I hated myself as I never have before.”

  I am so surprised by his words that I keep trying to find the trick in them. He can’t truly mean what he’s saying.

  “Perhaps I am foolish, but I am not a fool. You like something about me,” he says, mischief lighting his face, making its planes more familiar. “The challenge? My pretty eyes? No matter, because there is more you do not like and I know it. I can’t trust you. Still, when you were gone, I had to make a great many decisions, and so much of what I did right was imagining you beside me, Jude, giving me a bunch of ridiculous orders that I nonetheless obeyed.”

  I am robbed of speech.

  He laughs, his warm hand going to my shoulder. “Either I’ve surprised you or you are as ill as Madoc claimed.”

  But before I can say anything, before I can even figure out what I might say, a crossbow is suddenly lowered at me. Behind it stands the Roach, with the Bomb at his heels, twin daggers in her hands.

  “Your Majesty, we tracked her. She came from your brother’s house, and she’s here to kill you. Please step out of the bed,” says the Bomb.

  “That’s ridiculous,” I say.

  “If that’s true, show me what charms you’re wearing,” says the Roach. “Rowan? Is there even salt in your pockets? Because the Jude I know wouldn’t go around with nothing.”

  My pockets are empty, of course, since Balekin would check for anything, and I don’t need it anyway. But it doesn’t leave me a lot of options in terms of proof. I could tell them about the geas from Dain, but they have no reason to believe me.

  “Please get out of the bed, Your Majesty,” repeats the Bomb.

  “I should be the one to get out—it’s not my bed,” I say, moving toward the footboard.

  “Stay where you are, Jude,” says the Roach.

  Cardan slips out of the sheets. He’s naked, which is briefly shocking, but he goes and pulls on a heavily embroidered dressing gown with no apparent shame. His lightly furred tail twitches back and forth in annoyance. “She woke me,” he says. “If she was intent on murder, that’s hardly the way to go about it.”

  “Empty your pockets,” the Roach tells me. “Let’s see your weapons. Put everything on the bed.”

  Cardan settles himself in a chair, his dressing gown settling around him like a robe of state.

  I have little. The heel of bread, gnawed but unfinished. Two knives, crusted with dirt and grass. And the stoppered vial.

  The Bomb lifts it up and looks at me, shaking her head. “Here we go. Where did you get this?”

  “From Balekin,” I say, exasperated. “Who tried to glamour me to murder Cardan because he needs him dead to persuade Grimsen to make him his own crown of Elfhame. And that is what I came to tell the High King. I would have told you first, but I couldn’t get to the Court of Shadows.”

  The Bomb and the Roach share a disbelieving look.

  “If I was really glamoured, would I have told you any of that?”

  “Probably not,” says the Bomb. “But it would make for a quite clever piece of misdirection.”

  “I can’t be glamoured,” I admit. “It’s part of a bargain I made with Prince Dain, in exchange for my service as a spy.”

  The Roach’s eyebrows go up. Cardan gives me a sharp look, as though sure anything to do with Dain can’t be good. Or perhaps he’s just surprised that I have yet another secret.

  “I wondered what he gave you to make you throw in your lot with us ne’er-do-wells,” the Bomb says.

  “Mostly a purpose,” I say, “but also the ability to resist glamour.”

  “You could still
be lying,” says the Roach. He turns to Cardan. “Try her.”

  “Your pardon?” Cardan says, drawing himself up, and the Roach seems to suddenly remember to whom he’s speaking in such an offhanded way.

  “Don’t be such a prickly rose, Your Majesty,” the Roach says with a shrug and a grin. “I’m not giving you an order. I’m suggesting that if you tried to glamour Jude, we could find out the truth.”

  Cardan sighs and walks toward me. I know this is necessary. I know that he doesn’t intend to hurt me. I know he can’t glamour me. And yet I draw back automatically.

  “Jude?” he asks.

  “Go ahead,” I say.

  I hear the glamour enter his voice, heady and seductive and more powerful than I expected. “Crawl to me,” he says with a grin. Embarrassment pinks my cheeks.

  I stay where I am, looking at all their faces. “Satisfied?”

  The Bomb nods. “You’re not charmed.”

  “Now tell me why I ought to trust you,” I say to her and the Roach. “The Ghost came, with Vulciber, to take me to the Tower of Forgetting. Urged me to go alone, led me right to where I was to be captured, all because he didn’t want me to have Dain’s Court of Shadows. Were either of you in on it with him?”

  “We didn’t know what was going on with the Ghost until it was too late,” the Roach says.

  I nod. “I saw the old forest entrance to the Court of Shadows.”

  “The Ghost activated some of our own explosives.” He dips his head toward the Bomb, who nods.

  “Collapsed part of the castle, along with the lair of the Court of Shadows, not to mention the old catacombs where Mab’s bones lie,” Cardan says.

  “He’s been planning this for a while. I was able to keep it from being worse,” she says. “A few of us got out unscathed—Snapdragon is well and spotted you climbing the hill of the palace. But many were hurt in the blast. The sluagh—Niniel—got badly burned.”

  “What about the Ghost?” I ask.