Master of One

by Jaida Jones

  Surprise made even Inis look soft.

  There was hope now. Something out there that could give them the power to resist Morien. Something that could free their hearts. They might be able to undo Morien the Last after all. Their future hadn’t yet been sealed with his yoke around their necks.

  Though Rags didn’t do his best work in groups, he was powerless against the connection he felt between them. They’d gone from begrudging servants to budding rebels. The knowledge bound them together.

  “And perhaps,” Somhairle added quietly, “it might be different for me. Mirrorcraft takes its toll on a body, and my body is already weak. I know my blood tie to Her Majesty means little in the face of courtly paranoia, but perhaps that, coupled with my poor health, will allow me to remain unmirrored. I’ll see what I can do to convince Morien the Last of my frailty.”

  One of the Queen’s own sons plotting against a sorcerer. It was better than a money grabber at the Gilded Lily, the kind of play everyone loved because it was pure fantasy.

  “Sounds like a plan.” Even without a script—couldn’t’ve read it if he had one—Rags was the one talking. “’Cause we’ve only got two of these blindfolds.”

  57

  Somhairle

  Three the owl was an owl in name only. She was the idea of an owl, imagined by a nobler mind to exist in a nobler time, wrought of wisdom, the hunt, and the purest fae silver.

  She was worth more than a full menagerie of sightless, soundless carousel beasts, with a heart and mind and voice of her own. She was every bird that had ever alighted on Somhairle’s windowsill. He was hers, and she was his.

  You survived weeks with a Lying One stinking up the place. Three stood beside him, the ruined half of her face to the ruined half of Somhairle’s body, as he sank into his study chair, fortified only by a tray holding two cups and a pitcher of iced barley tea. As fine a weapon as any to use in the fight against a sorcerer like Morien the Last. New understanding of him as a blight on the earth ached in Somhairle’s fevered joints, shared knowledge that bristled Three’s wingfeathers. That’s my boy.

  I was hardly exemplary, Somhairle replied.

  I wasn’t either, was I? Couldn’t do a thing for the birds, but rules are rules.

  What are the rules, exactly?

  Plenty of time for that when a Lying One isn’t stinking up the place, Three offered. She’d grown smaller since they’d first met, as though she thought to diminish herself in Morien’s eyes.

  Somhairle intended to use a similar tactic.

  Morien appeared without fanfare in the doorway, sinister, scarved, silent. Somhairle offered him a smile that trembled, channeling real fear into the role of weak cripple. “At last,” he said, “I can be of use to my mother in her fight against her enemies. This is glorious news, is it not? Please, sit, and have some tea with me, and allow me to offer—”

  He doubled forward. Used a napkin he’d already dipped in ice water to cover his face in a chill sheen of wet.

  Does this make me a Lying One, too? Somhairle asked as the moments passed. Not too much time that the act went over the top, but enough to remain in keeping with the courtly estimation of Somhairle’s bad health. He straightened stiffly, good hand braced on the table, pale from the strain of containing his excitement and letting Morien make of it what he wished.

  There are two kinds of lying, Three replied.

  Morien stood directly across the table from Somhairle now. He cast no shadow, was himself a shadow. The scarlet scarves around his head and shoulders had been sloppily wrapped, as if wound in a hurry, and his eyes were the endless dark tunnels of an underground ruin. His gaze rested on Three.

  “A passing pain, nothing more. I intend to be strong enough to bear this honor for the crown,” Somhairle continued, hoping to shift Morien’s attention. His hand shook as he poured the first glass, slid it across the table. “Please, Morien the Last, for all you have done for my mother . . . sit with me awhile.”

  “In service to Her Majesty, I have been custodian to wonder and horror.” Morien didn’t sit. “Are you prepared for the same, Prince Somhairle?”

  Queen Catriona wouldn’t suffer weakness. If Somhairle overplayed his suffering, Morien might attempt to find Three a more durable master.

  It doesn’t matter what he thinks, Three said. If you can call what he does thinking.

  “Please sit,” Somhairle insisted softly. Insistence was an easy mask to don with the silver owl at his side. “Can there be any reply to your question but yes?”

  Morien made no sound as he settled weightlessly into the waiting chair. His dark gaze couldn’t be gauged as it passed from Somhairle to the tea he’d poured.

  “When the Ever-Loyal girl directed us to Ever-Land, I raised the possibility with Her Majesty that one of her beloved sons might be honored with his own piece of the Great Paragon.”

  Somhairle didn’t miss the way Morien referred to Inis without her title. However accurate it may have been, it felt pointed.

  “So wise of you.” He didn’t need Three to remind him that there was more than pride on the line. Instead, Somhairle slumped slightly in his chair, looking defeated. He’d hoped to speak with his mother before Morien got the chance. Now that he’d felt his connection with Three, he could tell the Queen they had nothing to fear from the fae. He had to find the words to make her understand what he knew, to reveal fae science for the beauty it was. It would be difficult, but not impossible—for how could anything be impossible in a world where he’d found Three? “I wish I could have heard her reply in person, but my health . . .” Trailing off, he rubbed his knee, then spoke again with sudden inspiration. “It will take some time, I imagine, for the royal smiths to construct a new brace and crutch to my specifications?”

  Morien inclined forward in a subtle bow. Instead of drinking, he touched his finger to the tea Somhairle had poured. Its surface rippled, then settled, mirror-bright, haloed by the earthenware cup, which trembled once, then stilled on the tabletop.

  Ick, Three said. Lying Ones had to use a real mirror in my day, couldn’t make one out of any old thing.

  “Gaze into the mirror, Prince Somhairle,” Morien said. “Your mother waits to speak with you.”

  Somhairle lifted his head and was struck dumb. Not by what he saw in the black, glassy surface of his tea, but by Morien himself.

  As a prince, Somhairle had grown accustomed to mirrorcraft, having been swaddled by its cool embrace through so many fevers. But he’d never been entirely comfortable with sorcerers, shrouded in red and secrecy.

  What he was seeing now was a glimpse beneath the shroud.

  A long, dark sliver where neck met chest. No flesh. A thick, purple vein that twitched rhythmically next to its threadier cousins. It extended over a glister of muscle and stark white bone tucked where the hollow of Morien’s throat should have been.

  Where was his skin?

  There was no skin.

  Somhairle’s hand froze, curved around the swell of his knee. He had to stop staring.

  You know the story about the lady and the tiger? Remember, some people would rather kill what they love than grant it freedom, Three said. Somhairle forced a blank smile. He met Morien’s eyes with a guileless expression, pretending not to notice the sorcerer adjusting the fall of his scarves and robes to obscure the skinless nightmare that lurked beneath.

  Somhairle found his voice and the mirror, half paralyzed by the thought of what lay under Morien’s scarves. “I’m grateful my mother has you at her side to think of everything.”

  Nobody thinks of everything, Three commented.

  Must I do as he says? Somhairle asked.

  With scum like this, you have to. Though a bird couldn’t scowl, Somhairle heard the expression clearly in Three’s voice. Don’t worry. I’ve got your back. You’re as safe as you can be, even with a Lying One. ’Cause you’re with me.

  Somhairle lowered his eyes to the still surface of the tea, and the world washed silver around him. He re
coiled as his surroundings vanished into bare, blinding light. The air fogged his nose with steel and heat.

  Breathing shallowly, he tried not to panic as he realized he was alone. No brace and crutch. No Three.

  Only Queen Catriona, who sat waiting for him in a column of light, as regal in this nothing place as on her throne. She was no more than a voluminous silhouette, but she radiated authority.

  “We must be brief.” Catriona’s voice tinkled like glass chimes. “The Last’s energies are better spent elsewhere, and my time is much in demand. Approach your mother, Prince Somhairle.”

  In contrast with Morien, Somhairle couldn’t imagine disobeying the Queen. He was before her, bare and unworthy, diminished further by the intensity of her presence. She was an inverted shadow, as was he.

  Her hands were ice cold when he clasped them with his good one. White shadows on white light.

  “It’s everything I could have dreamed, Mother,” Somhairle said to remind himself he had a purpose he couldn’t abandon. “A wonder of the long-lost world. I intend to—”

  “Oh, fledgling.” Somhairle felt, rather than saw, her solemn, searching gaze. “You share our will, if not our constitution. Such strength, for such a little bird. Come. We have told you every tale but one. Will you sit with us to hear it?”

  There was power in knowing when to kneel. Somhairle had no body here, no true form, but as he melted closer to the Queen, it was difficult not to feel like a boy again. Sitting in his mother’s lap awaiting a nursery story before bedtime.

  “Once upon a time,” Catriona began in her flute-sweet voice, “there was a beautiful young woman, cursed by Oberon Black-Boned to wander a barren desert. She would have suffered this fate willingly herself, but she had many other mouths to feed, and many other hearts to guard against evil.

  “The good woman built shelter. Every day, she tilled the bleak land and watered the mutinous soil. With her strength and cunning, with her refusal to be bested by the black-boned fae king, she brought abundance to the valley.

  “In time, with great personal suffering, her labors bore fruit, and her crops grew tall in the sun. But some were sickly, stunted, damaged in the seed before they passed through the soil. They would never provide the sustenance she required for her children.”

  Somhairle’s brow wrinkled. His tongue rested heavy and thick in his mouth.

  His mother’s gaze came from twin silver eyes—a result of the mirrorcraft—when she turned it on him, gone in a flash. Perhaps this column of relentless light was his mother’s true form, not the woman’s body she wore over that core.

  What a treasonous thought.

  “The young mother culled the weak season’s growth,” Catriona said. “She pulled each out at the roots before it had a chance to flourish and poison her other crops, though she loved each one the moment it was planted, and mourned each loss terribly. Because I would not see my children suffer for anything, Somhairle. Not even life may have that privilege, not now that I am her master. Do you understand what I am telling you?”

  Somhairle’s throat worked. His body, distant but real, burned and tingled as if he’d been thrown into a thicket of glorynettles.

  He’d always assumed he was his mother’s final attempt at procreation. That his less-than-perfect appearance had been deterrent enough against more children.

  She hadn’t culled him as a poisonous crop.

  But there had been others.

  “Mother,” Somhairle began. “I have something to tell you, too.”

  If he believed there were others born crippled, like him, who she had culled, then he had no excuse for sudden boldness. Now was the time for meek acquiescence. But Three was on his mind. In his heart.

  They didn’t have to fear the fae. He could make Catriona understand that she had spared him for a reason. To give her an incomparable gift. To mend this rift, to heal this wound.

  “There’s more than beauty in the Folk,” Somhairle said with pure feeling, no desire to calculate his remarks, although speaking extemporaneously in front of his mother felt uncomfortably like baring his neck for the executioner’s greatsword. “I’ve felt it—”

  His mother’s sharp ha shattered into a thousand brittle pieces, her laughter echoing in the dark space. Their features had always been similar enough that sitting near Catriona was like looking into a broken mirror. Now he felt like a moon staring in terror at an exploding sun.

  He fell silent until she subsided, lifting her golden head.

  “We would call that talk treason on any other’s tongue. Remember this: we will always protect you. We will not have Morien the Last use mirrorcraft on your royal person, as he has with others.” Her cold fingers caressed Somhairle’s cheek. He bit his tongue as they grazed his throat. “Know this also: that the fae ruin all that they touch. Do not give in to their trickery and deceit. For we would not hesitate to cut the head off the snake if a fae were to corrupt even the most precious flesh of our flesh.”

  A promise and a threat. Gold and iron.

  How very fae, Mother, Somhairle thought. He was glad he could be seen as little more than a shining silhouette. Just now he didn’t trust himself to hide his expression.

  “Thank you, Mother,” Somhairle said.

  She was smiling when the illusion dissolved, throwing Somhairle back to his study, to Three, to a world lacking light.

  To Morien the Last.

  After the conference with his mother, Morien’s presence was almost a relief. Somhairle sank, shaking, against the plush back of his chair.

  You survived. See? You can trust me and pretty much no one else. Three craned her noble head toward Somhairle. The Lying One’s mad as a wet house cat that he can’t sink his claws or his mirrorglass into you.

  Not me. Somhairle smiled so he wouldn’t appear dazed or sullen. Morien watched him closely. But how many others?

  Inis Fraoch of House Ever-Loyal. Rags the little thief. The missing ex-Queensguard Somhairle hadn’t met.

  And, Somhairle suspected, it could be used to ensure loyalty anywhere—not just in masters.

  If it had been a point of debate to shard a prince, there was no reason to expect that Lord Faolan of House Ever-Learning would be exempt from this treatment. It was infallible insurance he could never act against the Queen’s desires.

  It would either explain everything, or reveal Somhairle’s real weakness to be wishful thinking, not a half-withered body.

  Neither is a weakness, actually, Three said. Any weakness can be forged into weaponry.

  My mother didn’t want to hear it, Somhairle said. He had to say it to make it real, but he couldn’t trust the words aloud.

  Not to Morien, who worked in service of the Queen.

  I could’ve told you that, honeyflower. Even as she chided him, there was warmth in Three’s voice.

  Somhairle breathed. Tasted metal. Of the Queen’s imperfect children, he was the only one to survive. Catriona would rather kill her own than let Oberon’s curse touch them.

  He’d tried to give her the key to freedom from her fears, only to have her slam the cage door in his face.

  “Your skill with mirrorcraft is surely unparalleled, Morien.” Strength flowed from Three into Somhairle to steady his shaking. “A pity it takes such a toll on the body.”

  Three’s feathers ruffled as she shook her wings out in silent laughter.

  “It would be ill-advised to give Her Highness a reason to regret her generosity,” Morien said, in the political tone of voice that meant If I could, I’d flay your skin from your bones.

  And also, I might still do that.

  Somhairle’s thoughts swirled. Three inspected her talons as a reminder that she had them, and they were sharp as knives. Morien’s scarves remained tucked tightly in place. There was no further chance of seeing beneath them. He reached out, closing red-gloved fingers over his cup of tea, and drank through the red scarf over his mouth.

  58

  Cab

  Sil hadn’t been at f
ull strength after pulling the mirror out of Cab’s chest, and she’d begun to feel faint as they approached the catacombs.

  “I’m sorry,” she’d explained with a wan smile ill suited to her childish face. “It’s the iron. We have a natural antipathy to it—as it is the only metal that can kill the fae.”

  They were close to the Hill. To that foul room of torture beneath the palace, and the catacombs below that.

  “Let me go.” Cab had felt the eyes of every remaining member of the Resistance on him as he knelt before Sil’s small form. “I’ll get whatever you need, then bring it back to you.”

  Einan’s hand landed heavily on his shoulder. “Not without me, you won’t, handsome. And we’ll just be taking a look around. Nothing more.”

  She was nice in front of Sil. But when they were alone, she changed her tune.

  “If,” she said, “you fuck this up . . . if you give her hope, only to snatch it away, I’ll let Uaine cut you open and use your guts to string me a fiddle.”

  Colorful. Threats came with Queensguard training, but they weren’t so imaginative. Civilian cityfolk were about as unpredictable as it got. Cab found it remarkable that the Resistance had grown with such little experience governing their ranks.

  They believed in what they were doing. Sometimes that was enough.

  And sometimes it earned you death in the Far Glades at the hands of a sorcerer.

  “I didn’t know you played,” Cab replied. He knew Einan’s quarrel wasn’t with him so much as what he represented, and that made it easier to bear.

  He resented his association with the Queensguard, too.

  “I’m a girl of many talents,” Einan said.

  Cab considered taking her threat more seriously.

  “Sil saved me,” he pointed out. “Hit me on the head first, kidnapped me, tied me up, but saved me. I don’t intend to repay that with betrayal.”

  Einan snorted.

  Then One mimicked the sound, which made Einan jump. She eyed One the way someone looked at an unfamiliar dog they badly wanted to pet.