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

by Holly Black

  Not a virtue I share.

  “Oh?” says the Ghost. “Maybe you’ll have to teach it to him.”

  “Come,” I say, getting up. “Let’s see if I can teach you.”

  At that, the Ghost laughs outright. Madoc raised me to the sword, but until I joined the Court of Shadows, I knew only one way of fighting. The Ghost has studied longer and knows far more.

  I follow him into the Milkwood, where black-thorned bees hum in their hives high in the white-barked trees. The root men are asleep. The sea laps at the rocky edges of the isle. The world feels hushed as we face each other. As tired as I am, my muscles remember better than I do.

  I draw Nightfell. The Ghost comes at me fast, sword point diving toward my heart, and I knock it away, sweeping my blade down his side.

  “Not so out of practice as I feared,” he says as we trade blows, each of us testing the other.

  I do not tell him of the drills I do before the mirror, just as I do not tell him of all the other ways I attempt to correct my defects.

  As the High King’s seneschal and the de facto ruler, I have much to study. Military commitments, messages from vassals, demands from every corner of Elfhame written in as many languages. Only a few months ago, I was still attending lessons, still doing homework for scholars to correct. The idea that I can untangle everything seems as impossible as spinning straw into gold, but each night I stay awake until the sun is high in the sky, trying my hardest to do just that.

  That’s the problem with a puppet government: It’s not going to run itself.

  Adrenaline may turn out not to be a replacement for experience.

  Done with testing me on the basics, the Ghost begins the real fight. He dances over the grass lightly, so that there is barely a sound from his footfalls. He strikes and strikes again, posing a dizzying offensive. I parry desperately, my every thought given over to this, the fight. My worries fade into the background as my attention sharpens. Even my exhaustion blows off me like fluff from the back of a dandelion.

  It’s glorious.

  We trade blows, back and forth, advancing and retreating.

  “Do you miss the mortal world?” he asks. I am relieved to discover his breath isn’t coming entirely easily.

  “No,” I say. “I hardly knew it.”

  He attacks again, his sword a silvery fish darting through the sea of the night.

  Watch the blade, not the soldier, Madoc told me many times. Steel never deceives.

  Our weapons slam together again and again as we circle each other. “You must remember something.”

  I think of my mother’s name whispered through the bars in the Tower.

  He feigns to one side, and, distracted, I realize too late what he’s doing. The flat of his blade hits my shoulder. He could have cut open my skin if he hadn’t turned his blow at the last moment, and as it is, it’s going to bruise.

  “Nothing important,” I say, trying to ignore the pain. Two can play at the game of distraction. “Perhaps your memories are better than mine. What do you recall?”

  He shrugs. “Like you, I was born there.” He stabs, and I turn the blade. “But things were different a hundred years ago, I suppose.”

  I raise my eyebrows and parry another strike, dancing out of his range. “Were you a happy child?”

  “I was magic. How could I fail to be?”

  “Magic,” I say, and with a twist of my blade—a move of Madoc’s—I knock the sword out of the Ghost’s hand.

  He blinks at me. Hazel eyes. Crooked mouth opening in astonishment. “You…”

  “Got better?” I supply, pleased enough not to mind my aching shoulder. It feels like a win, but if we were really fighting, that shoulder wound would have probably made my final move impossible. Still, his surprise thrills me nearly as much as my victory.

  “It’s good Oak will grow up as we didn’t,” I say after a moment. “Away from the Court. Away from all this.”

  The last time I saw my little brother, he was sitting at the table in Vivi’s apartment, learning multiplication as though it were a riddle game. He was eating string cheese. He was laughing.

  “When the king returns,” the Ghost says, quoting from a ballad. “Rose petals will scatter across his path, and his footfalls will bring an end to wrath. But how will your Oak rule if he has as few memories of Faerie as we have of the mortal world?”

  The elation of the win ebbs. The Ghost gives me a small smile, as though to draw the sting of his words.

  I go to a nearby stream and plunge my hands in, glad of the cold water. I cup it to my lips and gulp gratefully, tasting pine needles and silt.

  I think of Oak, my little brother. An utterly normal faerie child, neither particularly called to cruelty nor free of it. Used to being coddled, used to being whisked away from distress by a fussing Oriana. Now growing used to sugary cereal and cartoons and a life without treachery. I consider the rush of pleasure that I felt at my temporary triumph over the Ghost, the thrill of being the power behind the throne, the worrying satisfaction I had at making Vulciber squirm. Is it better that Oak is without those impulses or impossible for him to ever rule unless he has them?

  And now that I have found in myself a taste for power, will I be loath to give it up?

  I wipe wet hands over my face, pushing back those thoughts.

  There is only now. There is only tomorrow and tonight and now and soon and never.

  We start back, walking together as the dawn turns the sky gold. In the distance I hear the bellow of a deer and what sounds like drums.

  Halfway there, the Ghost tips his head in a half bow. “You beat me tonight. I won’t let that happen again.”

  “If you say so,” I tell him with a grin.

  By the time I get back to the palace, the sun is up and I want nothing more than sleep. But when I make it to my apartments, I find someone standing in front of the door.

  My twin sister, Taryn.

  “You’ve got a bruise coming up on your cheek,” she says, the first words she’s spoken to me in five months.

  Taryn’s hair is dressed with a halo of laurel, and her gown is a soft brown, woven through with green and gold. She has dressed to accentuate the curves of her hips and chest, both unusual in Faerie, where bodies are thin to the point of attenuation. The clothes suit her, and there is something new in the set of her shoulders that suits her as well.

  She is a mirror, reflecting someone I could have been but am not.

  “It’s late,” I say clumsily, unlocking the door to my rooms. “I didn’t expect anyone to be up.” It’s well past dawn by now. The whole palace is quiet and likely to stay so until the afternoon, when pages race through the halls and cooks light fires. Courtiers will rise from their beds much later, at full dark.

  For all my wanting to see her, now that she is in front of me, I am unnerved. She must want something to have put in all this effort all of a sudden.

  “I’ve come twice before,” she says, following me inside. “You weren’t here. This time I decided to wait, even if I waited all day.”

  I light the lamps; though it is bright outside, I am too deep in the palace to have windows in my rooms. “You look well.”

  She waves off my stiff politeness. “Are we going to fight forever? I want you to wear a flower crown and dance at my wedding. Vivienne is coming from the mortal world. She’s bringing Oak. Madoc promises he won’t argue with you. Please say you’ll come.”

  Vivi is bringing Oak? I groan internally and wonder if there’s a chance of talking her out of it. Maybe it’s because she’s my elder sister, but sometimes it’s hard for her to take me particularly seriously.

  I sink down on the couch, and Taryn does the same.

  I consider again the puzzle of her being here. Of whether I should demand an apology or if I should let her skip past all that, the way she clearly wants.

  “Okay,” I tell her, giving in. I’ve missed her too much to risk losing her again. For the sake of us being sisters, I will try
to forget what it felt like to kiss Locke. For my own sake, I will try to forget that she knew about the games he was playing with me during their courtship.

  I will dance at her wedding, though I am afraid it will feel like dancing on knives.

  She reaches into the bag by her feet and pulls out my stuffed cat and snake. “Here,” she says. “I didn’t think you meant to leave them behind.”

  They’re relics of our old mortal life, talismans. I take them and press them to my chest, as I might a pillow. Right now, they feel like reminders of all my vulnerabilities. They make me feel like a child, playing a grown-up game.

  I hate her a little for bringing them.

  They’re a reminder of our shared past—a deliberate reminder, as though she couldn’t trust me to remember on my own. They make me feel all my exposed nerves when I am trying so hard not to feel anything.

  When I don’t speak for a long moment, she goes on. “Madoc misses you, too. You were always his favorite.”

  I snort. “Vivi is his heir. His firstborn. The one he came to the mortal world to find. She’s his favorite. Then there’s you—who lives at home and didn’t betray him.”

  “I’m not saying you’re still his favorite,” Taryn says with a laugh. “Although he was a little proud of you when you outmaneuvered him to get Cardan onto the throne. Even if it was stupid. I thought you hated Cardan. I thought we both hated him.”

  “I did,” I say, nonsensically. “I do.”

  She gives me a strange look. “I thought you wanted to punish Cardan for everything he’s done.”

  I think of his horror at his own desire when I brought my mouth to his, the dagger in my hand, edge against his skin. The toe-curling, corrosive pleasure of that kiss. It felt as though I was punishing him—punishing him and myself at the same time.

  I hated him so much.

  Taryn is dredging up every feeling I want to ignore, everything I want to pretend away.

  “We made an agreement,” I tell her, which is close to the truth. “Cardan lets me be his advisor. I have a position and power, and Oak is out of danger.” I want to tell her the rest, but I don’t dare. She might tell Madoc, might even tell Locke. I cannot share my secrets with her, even to brag.

  And I admit that I desperately want to brag.

  “And in return, you gave him the crown of Faerie.…” Taryn is looking at me as though struck by my presumption. After all, who was I, a mortal girl, to decide who should sit on the throne of Elfhame?

  We get power by taking it.

  Little does she know how much more presumptuous I have been. I stole the crown of Faerie, I want to tell her. The High King, Cardan, our old enemy, is mine to command. But of course I cannot say those words. Sometimes it seems dangerous even to think them. “Something like that,” I say instead.

  “It must be a demanding job, being his advisor.” She looks around the room, forcing me to see it as she does. I have taken over these chambers, but I have no servants save for the palace staff, whom I seldom allow inside. Cups of tea rest on bookshelves, saucers lie on the floor along with dirty plates of fruit rinds and bread crusts. Clothes are scattered where I drop them after tugging them off. Books and papers rest on every surface. “You’re unwinding yourself like a spool. What happens when there’s no more thread?”

  “Then I spin more,” I say, carrying the metaphor.

  “Let me help you,” she says, brightening.

  My brows rise. “You want to make thread?”

  She rolls her eyes at me. “Oh, come on. I can do things you don’t have time for. I see you in Court. You have perhaps two good jackets. I could bring some of your old gowns and jewels over—Madoc wouldn’t notice, and even if he did, he wouldn’t mind.”

  Faerie runs on debt, on promises and obligations. Having grown up here, I understand what she’s offering—a gift, a boon, instead of an apology.

  “I have three jackets,” I say.

  She raises both brows. “Well, then I guess you’re all set.”

  I can’t help wondering at her coming now, just after Locke has been made Master of Revels. And with her still in Madoc’s house, I wonder where her political loyalties lie.

  I am ashamed of those thoughts. I don’t want to think of her the way I have to think about everyone else. She is my twin, and I missed her, and I hoped she would come, and now she has.

  “Okay,” I say. “If you want to, bringing over my old stuff would be great.”

  “Good!” Taryn stands. “And you ought to acknowledge what an enormous act of forbearance it was for me not to ask where you came from tonight or how you got hurt.”

  At that, my smile is instant and real.

  She reaches out a finger to pet the plush body of my stuffed snake. “I love you, you know. Just like Mr. Hiss. And neither of us wants to be left behind.”

  “Good night,” I tell her, and when she kisses my bruised cheek, I hug her to me, brief and fierce.

  Once she’s gone, I take my stuffed animals and seat them next to me on the rug. Once, they were a reminder that there was a time before Faerieland, when things were normal. Once, they were a comfort to me. I take a long last look, and then, one by one, I feed them to the fire.

  I’m no longer a child, and I don’t need comfort.

  Once that is done, I line up little shimmering glass vials in front of me.

  Mithridatism, it is called, the process by which one takes a little bit of poison to inoculate oneself against a full dose of it. I started a year ago, another way for me to correct for my defects.

  There are still side effects. My eyes shine too brightly. The half moons of my fingernails are bluish, as though my blood doesn’t get quite enough oxygen. My sleep is strange, full of too-vivid dreams.

  A drop of the bloodred liquid of the blusher mushroom, which causes potentially lethal paralysis. A petal of deathsweet, which can cause a sleep that lasts a hundred years. A sliver of wraithberry, which makes the blood race and induces a kind of wildness before stopping the heart. And a seed of everapple—faerie fruit—which muddies the minds of mortals.

  I feel dizzy and a little sick when the poison hits my blood, but I would be sicker still if I skipped a dose. My body has acclimated, and now it craves what it should revile.

  An apt metaphor for other things.

  I crawl to the couch and lie there. As I do, Balekin’s words wash over me: I have heard that for mortals the feeling of falling in love is very like the feeling of fear. Your heart beats fast. Your senses are heightened. You grow light-headed, maybe even dizzy. Is that right?

  I am not sure I sleep, but I do dream.

  I am tossing fitfully in a nest of blankets and papers and scrolls on the rug before the fire when the Ghost wakes me. My fingers are stained with ink and wax. I look around, trying to recall when I got up, what I was writing and to whom.

  The Roach stands in the open panel of the secret passageway into my rooms, watching me with his reflecting, inhuman eyes.

  My skin is sweaty and cold. My heart races.

  I can still taste poison, bitter and cloying, on my tongue.

  “He’s at it again,” the Ghost says. I do not have to ask whom he means. I may have tricked Cardan into wearing the crown, but I have not yet learned the trick of making him behave with the gravitas of a king.

  While I was off getting information, he was off with Locke. I knew there would be trouble.

  I scrub my face with the calloused heel of my hand. “I’m up,” I say.

  Still in my clothes from the night before, I brush off my jacket and hope for the best. Walking into my bedroom, I scrape my hair back, knotting it with a bit of leather and covering the mess with a velvet cap.

  The Roach frowns at me. “You’re wrinkled. His Majesty isn’t supposed to go around with a seneschal who looks like she just rolled out of bed.”

  “Val Moren had sticks in his hair for the last decade,” I remind him, taking a few partially dried mint leaves from my cabinet and chewing on them to ta
ke the staleness from my breath. The last High King’s seneschal was mortal, as I am, fond of somewhat unreliable prophecy, and widely considered to be mad. “Probably the same sticks.”

  The Roach harrumphs. “Val Moren’s a poet. Rules are different for poets.”

  Ignoring him, I follow the Ghost into the secret passage that leads to the heart of the palace, pausing only to check that my knives are still tucked away in the folds of my clothes. The Ghost’s footfalls are so silent that when there’s not enough light for my human eyes to see, I might as well be entirely alone.

  The Roach does not follow us. He heads in the opposite direction with a grunt.

  “Where are we going?” I ask the darkness.

  “His apartments,” the Ghost tells me as we emerge into a hall, a staircase below where Cardan sleeps. “There’s been some kind of disturbance.”

  I have difficulty imagining what trouble the High King got into in his own rooms, but it doesn’t take long to discover. When we arrive, I spot Cardan resting among the wreckage of his furniture. Curtains ripped from their rods, the frames of paintings cracked, their canvases kicked through, furniture broken. A small fire smolders in a corner, and everything stinks of smoke and spilled wine.

  Nor is he alone. On a nearby couch are Locke and two beautiful faeries—a boy and a girl—one with ram’s horns, the other with long ears that come to tufted points, like those of an owl. All of them are in an advanced state of undress and inebriation. They watch the room burn with a kind of grim fascination.

  Servants cower in the hall, unsure if they should brave the king’s wrath and clean up. Even his guards seem intimidated. They stand awkwardly in the hall outside his massive doors—one barely hanging from its hinges—ready to protect the High King from any threat that isn’t himself.

  “Carda—” I remember myself and sink into a bow. “Your Infernal Majesty.”

  He turns and, for a moment, seems to look through me, as though he has no idea who I am. His mouth is painted gold, and his pupils are large with intoxication. Then his lip lifts in a familiar sneer. “You.”