The Wicked King

When she’s ready to go, she pulls up her skirts and takes a long hunting knife out of a sheath attached to a garter. In that moment, it’s clear we grew up in the same house.

She puts the knife onto the coverlets beside a charm she takes from her pocket. “Here,” she says. “Take them. I know they’ll make you feel safer. But you must rest. Tell me you won’t do anything rash.”

“I can barely stand on my own.”

She gives me a stern look.

“Nothing rash,” I promise her.

She embraces me before she goes, and I hang a little too long on her shoulders, drinking in the human smell of sweat and skin. No ocean, no pine needles or blood or night-blooming flowers.

I doze off with my hand on her knife. I am not sure when I wake, but it’s to the sound of arguing.

“Whatsoever the Grand General’s orders, I am here to see the High King’s seneschal and I won’t be put off with any more excuses!” It’s a woman’s voice, one I half-recognize. I roll off the bed, heading dizzily out into the hall, where I can look down from the balcony. I spot Dulcamara from the Court of Termites. She looks up at me. There is a fresh cut on her face.

“Your pardon,” she calls in a way that makes it clear she means nothing of the sort. “But I must have an audience. In fact, I am here to remind you of your obligations, including that one.”

I recall Lord Roiben with his salt-white hair and the promise I made him for supporting Cardan half a year ago. He pledged to the crown and the new High King, but on a specific condition.

Someday, I will ask your king for a favor, he said.

What did I say in return? I tried to bargain: Something of equal value. And within our power.

I guess he’s sent Dulcamara to call in that favor, though I do not know what use I am to be when I am like this.

“Is Oriana in her parlor? If not, show Dulcamara to it, and I will speak with her there,” I say, gripping the railing so that I don’t fall. Madoc’s guards look unhappy, but they don’t contradict me.

“This way,” says one of the servants, and with a last hostile look at me, Dulcamara follows.

This leaves me time to make my unsteady way down the stairs.

“Your father’s orders were that you not go out,” one of the guards says, used to my being a child to be minded and not the High King’s seneschal with whom one might behave with more formality. “He wanted you to rest.”

“By which you mean he didn’t order me not to have audiences here, but only because he didn’t think of it.” The guard doesn’t contradict me, only frowns. “His concerns—and yours—are noted.”

I manage to make it to Oriana’s parlor without falling over. And if I hold slightly too long to the wooden trim around windows or to the edges of tables, that’s not so awful.

“Bring us some tea please, as hot as you can make it,” I say to a servant who watches me a little too closely.

Steeling myself, I let go of the wall and walk into the parlor, give Dulcamara a nod, and sink into a chair, although she has remained standing, hands clasped behind her back.

“Now we see what your High King’s loyalty looks like,” she says, taking a step toward me, her face hostile enough that I wonder if her purpose is more than speaking.

Instinct wants to push me to my feet. “What happened?”

At that, she laughs. “You know very well. Your king gave the Undersea permission to attack us. It came two nights ago, out of nowhere. Many of our people were slain before we understood what was happening, and now we are being forbidden from retaliating.”

“Forbidden from retaliating?” I think of what Orlagh said about not being at war, but how can the land not be at war if the sea has already attacked? As the High King, Cardan owes his subjects the might of his military—of Madoc’s army—when they are under threat. But to deny permission of striking back was unheard of.

She bares her teeth. “Lord Roiben’s consort was hurt,” she says. “Badly.”

The green-skinned, black-eyed pixie who spoke as though she were mortal. The one that the terrifying leader of the Court of Termites deferred to, laughed with.

“Is she going to live?” I ask, my voice gone soft.

“You best hope so, mortal,” Dulcamara says. “Or Lord Roiben will bend his will to the destruction of your boy king, despite the vows he made.”

“We’ll send you knights,” I say. “Let Elfhame rectify our mistake.”

She spits on the ground. “You don’t understand. Your High King did this for you. Those were the terms under which Queen Orlagh would return you. Balekin chose the Court of Termites as the target, the Undersea attacked us, and your Cardan let her. There was no mistake.”

I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose. “No,” I say. “That’s not possible.”

“Balekin has long had a grudge against us, daughter of dirt.”

I flinch at the insult, but I do not correct her. She may rail at me all she likes. The High Court has failed the Court of Termites because of me.

“We should never have joined the High Court. We should never have pledged to your fool of a king. I have come to deliver that message and one message more. You owe Lord Roiben a favor, and it best be granted.”

I worry over what he might ask me for. An unnamed favor is a dangerous thing to give, even for a mortal who cannot be forced to honor it.

“We have our own spies, seneschal. They tell us you’re a good little murderer. Here is what we want—kill Prince Balekin.”

“I can’t do that,” I say, too astonished to weigh my words. I am not insulted by her praise of my skill at killing, but setting me an impossible task is hardly flattery, either. “He’s an ambassador of the Undersea. If I killed him, we’d be at war.”

“Then go to war.” With that, she sweeps from the room, leaving me sitting in Oriana’s parlor when the steaming tray of tea comes in.

Once she is gone and the tea is cold, I climb the steps to my room. There, I take up Taryn’s knife and the other one hidden under my bed. I take the edge of one to the pocket of my dress, slicing through it so I can strap the knife to my thigh and draw it swiftly. There are plenty of weapons in Madoc’s house—including my own Nightfell—but if I start looking for them and belting them on properly, the guards are sure to notice. I need them to believe I have gone docilely back to bed.

Padding to the mirror, I look to see if the knife is concealed beneath my dress. For a moment, I don’t know the person looking back at me. I am horrified at what I see—my skin has a sickly pallor, my weight has dropped enough to make my limbs look frail and sticklike, my face gaunt.

I turn away, not wanting to look anymore.

Then I go out onto the balcony instead. Normally, it would be no small thing to climb over the railing and scale the wall down to the lawn. But as I put one leg over, I realize how rubbery my legs and arms have become. I don’t think I can manage the climb.

So I do the next best thing: I jump.

I get up, grass stains on my knees, my palms stinging and dirty. My head feels unsteady, as though I am still expecting to move with the current even though I am on land.

Taking a few deep breaths, I drink in the feeling of the wind on my face and the sounds of it rustling the leaves of the trees. I am surrounded by the scents of land, of Faerie, of home.

I keep thinking about what Dulcamara said: that Cardan refused to retaliate for the sake of my safe return. That can’t have made his subjects happy with him. I am not sure even Madoc would think it was a good strategy. Which is why it’s difficult to imagine why he agreed to it, especially since, if I stayed stuck in the Undersea, he’d be out of my control. I never thought he liked me enough to save me. And I am not sure I’ll still believe it unless I hear his reasons from his lips.

But for whatever reason he brought me back, I need to warn him about the Ghost, about Grimsen and the crown, about Balekin’s plan to make me into his murderer.

I start toward the palace on foot, sure it will take the guards far longer to realize I have gone than it would take the stable hands to discover a missing mount. Still, I am breathing hard soon after I start. Halfway there I have to stop and rest on a stump.

You’re fine, I tell myself. Get up.

It takes me a long time to make it to the palace. As I walk toward the doors, I square my shoulders and try not to show just how exhausted I am.

“Seneschal,” one of the guards at the gate says. “Your pardon, but you are barred from the palace.”

You will never deny me an audience or give an order to keep me from your side. For a delirious moment, I wonder if I’ve been in the Undersea for longer than Taryn told me. Maybe a year and a day is up. But that’s impossible. I narrow my gaze. “By whose command?”

“Apologies, my lady,” another knight says. His name is Diarmad. I recognize him as a knight Madoc has his eye on, someone he would trust. “The general, your father, gave the order.”

“I have to see the High King,” I say, trying for a tone of command, but instead a note of panic creeps into my voice.

“The Grand General told us to call you a carriage if you came and, if necessary, ride in it with you. Do you expect you will require our presence?”

I stand there, furious and outmaneuvered. “No,” I say.

Cardan couldn’t refuse me an audience, but he could allow someone else to give the order. So long as Madoc didn’t ask for Cardan’s permission, it didn’t contradict my commands. And it wouldn’t be so hard to figure out the sort of things I might have commanded Cardan—after all, most of it was stuff Madoc would probably have ordered himself.

I knew that Madoc wanted to rule Faerie from behind the throne. It didn’t occur to me that he might find his way to Cardan’s side and cut me out.

They played me. Either together or separately, they played me.

My stomach churns with anxiety.

The feeling of being fooled, the shame of it, haunts me. It tangles up my thoughts.     PrevNextTip: You can use left and right keyboard keys to browse between pages.

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