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

by Holly Black

  And although I know I ought to fight, that once upon a time I would have, I don’t. I let her shut the door of the carriage. I lean back against the seats and close my eyes.

  When I wake, the horses are kicking up dust in front of Madoc’s stronghold. The knight opens the door, and Gnarbone lifts me bodily from the carriage as easily as I might have lifted Oak, as though I am made of twigs and leaves instead of earthly flesh. He carries me to my old bedroom.

  Tatterfell is waiting for us. She takes down my hair and strips off my dress, carrying away Nightfell and putting me into a shift. Another servant sets down a tray holding a pot of hot tea and a plate of venison bleeding onto toast. I sit on the rug and eat it, using the buttered bread to sop up the meat juices.

  I fall asleep there, too. When I wake, Taryn is shaking me.

  I blink hazily and stumble to my feet. “I’m up,” I say. “How long was I lying there?”

  She shakes her head. “Tatterfell says that you’ve been out for the whole day and night. She worried that you had a human illness—that’s why she sent for me. Come on, at least get in bed.”

  “You’re married now,” I say, recalling it suddenly. With that comes the memory of Locke and the riders, the earrings I was supposed to give her. It all feels so far away, so distant.

  She nods, putting her wrist to my forehead. “And you look like a wraith. But I don’t think you have a fever.”

  “I’m fine,” I say, the lie coming automatically to my lips. I have to get to Cardan and warn him about the Ghost. I have to see the Court of Shadows.

  “Don’t act so proud,” she says, and there are tears in her eyes. “You disappeared on my wedding night, and I didn’t even know you were gone until morning. I’ve been so frightened.

  “When the Undersea sent word it had you, well, the High King and Madoc blamed each other. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. Every morning, I went to the edge of the water and looked down, hoping I could see you. I asked all the mermaids if they could tell me if you were okay, but no one would.”

  I try to imagine the panic she must have felt, but I can’t.

  “They seem to have worked through their differences,” I say, thinking of them together at the beach.

  “Something like it.” She makes a face, and I try to smile.

  Taryn helps me into my bed, arranging the cushions behind me. I feel bruised all over, sore and ancient and more mortal than ever before.

  “Vivi and Oak?” I ask. “Are they okay?”

  “Fine,” she says. “Back home with Heather, who seems to have gotten through her visit to Faerieland without much drama.”

  “She was glamoured,” I say.

  For a moment, I see anger cross her face, raw and rare. “Vivi shouldn’t do that,” Taryn says.

  I am relieved not to be the only one to feel that way. “How long have I been gone?”

  “A little over a month,” she says, which seems impossibly brief. I feel as though I have aged a hundred years beneath the sea.

  Not only that, but now I am more than halfway through the year and a day Cardan promised. I sink back on the cushions and close my eyes. “Help me get up,” I say.

  She shakes her head. “Let the kitchens send up more soup.”

  It isn’t difficult to persuade me. As a concession, Taryn helps me dress in clothes that were once too tight and now hang on me. She stays to feed me spoonfuls of broth.

  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 wo
uld 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.

  I recall Cardan sitting atop the dappled gray horse on the beach, his impassive face, furred cloak, and crown highlighting his resemblance to Eldred. I may have tricked him into his role, but I didn’t trick the land into receiving him. He has real power, and the longer he’s on the throne, the greater his power will become.

  He’s become the High King, and he’s done it without me.

  This is everything I feared when I came up with this stupid plan in the first place. Perhaps Cardan didn’t want this power at first, but now that he has it, it belongs to him.

  But the worst part is that it makes sense that Cardan is out of my reach, for him to be inaccessible to me. Diarmad and the other knight’s stopping me at the palace doors is the fulfillment of a fear I’ve had since this masquerade began. And as terrible as it feels, it also seems more reasonable than what I’ve been trying to convince myself of for months—that I am the seneschal of the High King of Faerie, that I have real power, that I can keep this game going.

  The only thing I wonder is why not let me languish beneath the sea?

  Turning away from the palace, I head through the trees to where there’s an entrance into the Court of Shadows. I just hope I won’t run into the Ghost. If I do, I am not sure what will happen. But if I can get to the Roach and the Bomb, then maybe I can rest awhile. And get the information I need. And to send someone to slit Grimsen’s throat before he has completed making the new crown.

  When I get there, though, I realize the entrance is collapsed. No, as I look at it more carefully, that’s not exactly right—there’s evidence of an explosion. Whatever destroyed this entrance did more damage than that.

  I cannot breathe.

  Kneeling in the pine needles, I try to understand what I am looking at, because it seems as though the Court of Shadows has been buried. This must have been the Ghost’s work—although the Bomb’s explosives could have done precise damage like this. When the Ghost said he wouldn’t let me have the Court of Shadows, I didn’t realize he meant to destroy it. I just hope Van and the Bomb are alive.

  Please let them be alive.

  And yet, without a way to find them, I am more trapped than ever. Numbly, I wander back toward the gardens.

  A group of faerie children has gathered around a lecturer. A Lark boy picks blue roses from the royal bushes, while Val Moren wanders beside him, smoking a long pipe, his scald crow perched on one shoulder.

  His hair is unbrushed around his head, matted in places and braided with bright cloth and bells in others. Laugh lines crease the corners of his mouth.

  “
Can you get me inside the palace?” I ask him. It’s a long shot, but I don’t care about embarrassment anymore. If I can get inside, I can discover what happened to the Court of Shadows. I can get to Cardan.

  Val Moren’s eyebrows rise. “Do you know what they are?” he asks me, waving a vague hand toward the boy, who turns to give us both a sharp-eyed look.

  Maybe Val Moren cannot help me. Maybe Faerie is a place where a madman can play the fool and seem like a prophet—but maybe he is only a madman.

  The Lark boy continues picking his bouquet, humming a tune.

  “Faeries…?” I ask.

  “Yes, yes.” He sounds impatient. “The Folk of the Air. Insubstantial, unable to hold one shape. Like the seeds of flowers launched into the sky.”

  The scald crow caws.

  Val Moren takes a long pull on his pipe. “When I met Eldred, he rode up on a milk-white steed, and all the imaginings of my life were as dust and ashes.”

  “Did you love him?” I ask.

  “Of course I did,” he tells me, but he sounds as though he’s talking about long ago, an old tale that he only needs to tell the way it was told before. “Once I met him, all the duty I felt for my family was rendered as frayed and worn as an old coat. And the moment his hands were on my skin, I would have burned my father’s mill to the ground to have him touch me again.”

  “Is that love?” I ask.

  “If not love,” he says, “something very like it.”

  I think of Eldred as I knew him, aged and bent. But I also recall him the way he seemed younger when the crown was taken from his head. I wonder how much younger he would have grown had he not been cut down.

  “Please,” I say. “Just help me get into the palace.”

  “When Eldred rode up in his milk-white steed,” he says again, “he made me an offer. ‘Come with me,’ he said, ‘to the land under the hill, and I will feed you on apples and honey wine and love. You will never grow old, and all you wish to know, you may discover.’”

  “That sounds pretty good,” I admit.

  “Never make a bargain with them,” he tells me, taking my hand abruptly. “Not a wise one or a poor one, not a silly one or a strange one, but especially not one that sounds pretty good.”