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

by Holly Black

  “Where is the High King?” Nihuar asks. I didn’t notice the Seelie representative until she was beside me, and I startle.

  “How ought I to know?” I demand. “I wasn’t even allowed inside the palace until today.”

  It is at that moment that Cardan finally enters the room. Ahead of him are two knights of his personal guard, who step away from him once they’ve escorted him safely to the brugh.

  A moment later, Cardan falls. He sprawls across the floor in all his fantastic robes of state, then begins to laugh. He laughs and laughs as though this is the most amazing trick he’s ever performed.

  He’s obviously drunk. Very, very drunk.

  My heart falls. When I look over at Nihuar, she is expressionless. Even Locke, staring over from the dance floor, looks discomfited.

  Meanwhile, Cardan snatches a lute from the hands of an amazed goblin musician and leaps up onto a long banquet table.

  Strumming the strings, he begins a song so vulgar that the entire Court stops their dancing to listen and titter. Then, as one, they join in the madness. The courtiers of Faerie are not shy. They begin to dance again, now to the High King’s song.

  I didn’t even know he could play.

  When the song is over, he falls off the table. Landing awkwardly on his side, his crown tilts forward so it’s hanging over one of his eyes. His guards rush over to help him up off the floor, but he waves them away. “How is that for an introduction?” he demands of Lord Roiben, although they have in fact met before. “I am no dull monarch.”

  I look over at Balekin, who is wearing a satisfied smirk. Lord Roiben’s face is like stone, unreadable. My gaze goes to Madoc, who watches Cardan with disgust as he fixes his crown.

  And yet, grimly, Roiben goes through the motions of what he’s come here to do. “Your Majesty, I have come to ask you to allow me vengeance for my people. We were attacked and now we wish to respond.” I have seen many people unable to humble themselves, but Lord Roiben does it with great grace.

  And yet, with a look at Cardan, I know it won’t matter.

  “They say you’re a specialist in bloodshed. I suppose you want to show off your skills.” Cardan wags a finger in Roiben’s direction.

  The Unseelie king grimaces at that. A part of him must want to show off immediately, but he makes no comment.

  “Yet that you must forgo,” Cardan says. “I’m afraid you’ve come a long way for nothing. At least there’s wine.”

  Lord Roiben turns his silvery gaze on me, and there’s a threat in them.

  This is not going at all the way I hoped.

  Cardan waves his hand toward a table of refreshments. The skins of the fruit curl back from the flesh, and a few globes burst, spilling out seeds and startling nearby courtiers. “I’ve been practicing a skill of my own,” he says with a laugh.

  I go toward Cardan to try to intercede when Madoc catches my hand. His lip curls. “Is this going according to your plan?” he demands under his breath. “Your puppet is drunk. Get him out of here.”

  “I’ll try,” I say.

  “I have stood by long enough,” Madoc says, his cat eyes staring into mine. “Get your puppet to abdicate the throne in favor of your brother or face the consequences. I won’t ask you again. It’s now or never.”

  I pitch my voice low to match his. “After barring me from the palace?”

  “You were ill,” he returns.

  “Working with you will always be working for you,” I say. “So, never.”

  “You would really choose that over your own family?” he sneers, his gaze going to Cardan before cutting back to me.

  I wince, but no matter how right he is, he’s also wrong. “Whether you believe me or not, this is for my family,” I tell him, and to Cardan I lay my hand on his shoulder, hoping I can guide him out of the room without anything else going wrong.

  “Oh ho,” he says. “My darling seneschal. Let us take a turn around the room.” He grabs me and pulls me toward the dance.

  He can barely stand. Three times he stumbles, and three times I have to hold most of his weight to keep him upright.

  “Cardan,” I hiss. “This is no meet behavior for the High King.”

  He giggles at that. I think of how serious he was last night in his rooms and how far he seems from that person.

  “Cardan,” I try again. “You must not do this. I order you to pull yourself together. I command you to drink no more liquor and to attempt sobriety.”

  “Yes, my sweet villain, my darling god. I will be as sober as a stone carving, just as soon as I can.” And with that, he kisses me on the mouth.

  I feel a cacophony of things at once. I am furious with him, furious and resigned that he is a failure as High King, corrupt and fanciful and as weak as Orlagh could have hoped. Then there is the public nature of the kiss, parading this before the Court is shocking, too. He’s never been willing to seem to want me in public. Perhaps he can take it back, but in this moment, it is known.

  But there is also a weakness in me, because I dreamed of him kissing me for all my time in the Undersea, and now with his mouth on mine, I want to sink my nails into his back.

  His tongue brushes my lower lip, the taste heady and familiar.

  Wraithberry.

  He’s not drunk; he’s been poisoned.

  I pull back and look into his eyes. Those familiar eyes, black, rimmed in gold. His pupils are blown wide.

  “Sweet Jude. You are my dearest punishment.” He dances away from me and immediately falls to the ground again, laughing, arms flung wide as though he would embrace the whole room.

  I watch in astonished horror.

  Someone poisoned him, and he is going to laugh and dance himself to death in front of a Court that will veer between delight and disgust. They will think him ridiculous as his heart stops.

  I try to concentrate. Antidotes. There must be one. Water, certainly, to flush the system. Clay. The Bomb would know more. I look around for her, but all I see is the dizzy array of courtiers.

  I turn to one of the guards instead. “Get me a pail, a lot of blankets, two pitchers of water, and put them in my rooms. Yes?”

  “As you wish,” he says, turning to give orders to the other knights. I turn back to Cardan, who has, predictably, headed in the worst direction possible. He’s walking straight toward the councilors Baphen and Randalin, where they stand with Lord Roiben and his knight, Dulcamara, doubtlessly trying to smooth the situation over.

  I can see the faces of the courtiers, the glitter of their eyes as they regard him with a kind of greedy scorn.

  They watch as he lifts a carafe of water, tipping it back to cascade over his laughing mouth till he chokes on it.

  “Excuse us,” I say, wrapping my arm through his.

  Dulcamara greets this with disdain. “We have come all this way to have an audience with the High King. Surely he means to stay longer than this.”

  He’s been poisoned. The words are on my tongue when I hear Balekin say them instead. “I fear the High King is not himself. I believe he’s been poisoned.”

  And then, too late, I understand the scheme.

  “You,” he says to me. “Turn out your pockets. You are the only one here not bound by a vow.”

  Had I been truly glamoured, I would have had to pull out the stoppered vial. And once the Court saw it and found wraithberry inside, any protest would come to nothing. Mortals are liars, after all.

  “He’s drunk,” I say, and am gratified by Balekin’s shocked expression. “However, you are unbound as well, ambassador. Or, shall I say, not bound to the land.”

  “Have I drunk too much? Merely a cup of poison for my breakfast and another for my dinner,” Cardan says.

  I give him a look but say no more as I guide the stumbling High King across the floor.

  “Where are you taking him?” asks one of the guard. “Your Majesty, do you wish to depart?”

  “We all dance at Jude’s command,” he says, and laughs.

  �
��Of course he doesn’t wish to go,” Balekin says. “Attend to your other duties, seneschal, and let me look after my brother. He has duties to perform tonight.”

  “You will be sent for if you’re needed,” I tell him, trying to bluff through this. My heart speeds. I am not sure if anyone here would be on my side, if it came to that.

  “Jude Duarte, you will leave the High King’s side,” Balekin says.

  At that tone, Cardan’s focus narrows. I can see him straining to concentrate. “She will not,” he says.

  Since no one can gainsay him, even in this state, I am able to finally lead him out. I bear up the heavy weight of the High King as we move through the passageways of the palace.

  The High King’s personal guard follows us at a distance. Questions run through my mind—how was he poisoned? Who actually put whatever he drank in his hand? When did it happen?

  Grabbing a servant in the hall, I send out runners for the Bomb and, if they are unable to find her, an alchemist.

  “You’re going to be okay,” I say.

  “You know,” he says, hanging on to me. “That ought to be reassuring. But when mortals say it, it doesn’t mean the same thing as when the Folk do, does it? For you, it’s an appeal. A kind of hopeful magic. You say I will be well because you fear I won’t be.”

  For a moment, I don’t speak. “You’re poisoned,” I say finally. “You know that, right?”

  He doesn’t startle. “Ah,” he says. “Balekin.”

  I say nothing, just set him down before the fire in my rooms, his back against my couch. He looks odd there, his beautiful clothes a contrast to the plain rug, his face pale with a hectic flush in his cheeks.

  He reaches up and presses my hand to his face. “It’s funny, isn’t it, how I mocked you for your mortality when you’re certain to outlive me.”

  “You’re not going to die,” I insist.

  “Oh, how many times have I wished that you couldn’t lie? Never more than now.”

  He lolls to one side, and I grab one of the pitchers of water and pour a glass full. I bring it to his lips. “Cardan? Get down as much as you can.”

  He doesn’t reply and seems about to fall asleep. “No.” I pat his cheek with increasing force until it’s more of a smack. “You’ve got to stay awake.”

  His eyes open. His voice is muzzy. “I’ll just sleep for a little while.”

  “Unless you want to wind up like Severin of Fairfold, encased in glass for centuries while mortals line up to take pictures with his body, you’re going to stay awake.”

  He shifts into a more upright sitting position. “Fine,” he says. “Talk to me.”

  “I saw your mother tonight,” I say. “All dressed up. The time I saw her before that was in the Tower of Forgetting.”

  “And you’re wondering if I forgot her?” he says airily, and I am pleased that he’s paying enough attention to deliver one of his typical quips.

  “Glad you’re up to mocking.”

  “I hope it’s the last thing about me to go. So tell me about my mother.”

  I try to think of something to say that isn’t entirely negative. I go for carefully neutral. “The first time I met her, I didn’t know who she was. She wanted to trade me some information for getting her out of the Tower. And she was afraid of you.”

  “Good,” he says.

  My eyebrows go up. “So how did she wind up a part of your Court?”

  “I suppose I have some fondness for her yet,” he admits. I pour him some more water, and he drinks it more slowly than I’d like. I refill the glass as soon as I can.

  “There are so many questions I wish I could ask my mom,” I admit.

  “What would you ask?” The words slur together, but he gets them out.

  “Why she married Madoc,” I say, pointing to the glass, which he obediently brings to his mouth. “Whether she loved him and why she left him and whether she was happy in the human world. Whether she actually murdered someone and hid her body in the burnt remains of Madoc’s original stronghold.”

  He looks surprised. “I always forget that part of the story.”

  I decide a subject change is in order. “Do you have questions like that for your father?”

  “Why am I the way I am?” His tone makes it clear he’s proposing something I might suggest he ask, not really wondering about it. “There are no real answers, Jude. Why was I cruel to Folk? Why was I awful to you? Because I could be. Because I liked it. Because, for a moment, when I was at my worst, I felt powerful, and most of the time, I felt powerless, despite being a prince and the son of the High King of Faerie.”

  “That’s an answer,” I say.

  “Is it?” And then, after a moment. “You should go.”

  “Why?” I ask, annoyed. For one, this is my room. For another, I am trying to keep him alive.

  He looks at me solemnly. “Because I am going to retch.”

  I grab for the bucket, and he takes it from me, his whole body convulsing with the force of vomiting. The contents of his stomach appear like matted leaves, and I shudder. I didn’t know wraithberry did that.

  There’s a knock on the door, and I go to it. The Bomb is there, out of breath. I let her in, and she moves past me, straight to Cardan.

  “Here,” she says, pulling out a little vial. “It’s clay. It may help draw out and contain the toxins.”

  Cardan nods and takes it from her, swallowing the contents with a grimace. “It tastes like dirt.”

  “It is dirt,” she informs him. “And there’s something else. Two things, really. Grimsen was already gone from his forge when we tried to capture him. We have to assume the worst—that he’s with Orlagh.

  “Also, I was given this.” She takes a note from her pocket. “It’s from Balekin. Cannily phrased, but breaks down to this—he’s offering the antidote to you, Jude, if you will bring him the crown.”

  “The crown?” Cardan opens his eyes, and I realize he must have closed them without my noticing.

  “He wants you to take it to the gardens, near the roses,” the Bomb says.

  “What happens if he doesn’t get the antidote?” I ask.

  The Bomb puts the back of her hand against Cardan’s cheek. “He’s the High King of Elfhame—he has the strength of the land to draw on. But he’s very weak already. And I don’t think he knows how to do it. Your Majesty?”

  He looks at her with benevolent incomprehension. “Whatever do you mean? I just took a mouthful of the land at your behest.”

  I think about what she’s saying, about what I know of the High King’s powers.

  Surely you have noticed that since his reign began, the isles are different. Storms come in faster. Colors are a bit more vivid, smells are sharper.

  But all of that was done without trying. I am certain he didn’t notice the land altering itself to better suit him.

  Look at them all, your subjects, he’d said to me at a revel months ago. A shame not a one knows who their true ruler is.

  If Cardan doesn’t believe himself to be the true High King of Elfhame, if he doesn’t allow himself to access his own power, it will be my fault. If wraithberry kills him, it will be because of me.

  “I’ll get that antidote,” I say.

  Cardan lifts the crown from his head and looks at it for a moment, as though somehow he cannot fathom how it came into his hand. “This can’t pass to Oak if you lose it. Although I admit the succession gets tricky if I die.”

  “I already told you,” I say. “You’re not going to die. And I am not going to take that crown.” I go in the back and change around the contents of my pockets. I tie on a cloak with a deep hood and a new mask. I am so furious that my hands shake. Wraithberry, which I was once invulnerable to, thanks to careful mithridatism. If I had been able to keep up the doses, I could have perhaps tricked Balekin as I once tricked Madoc. But after my imprisonment in the Undersea, I have one less advantage and far higher stakes. I have lost my immunity. I am as vulnerable to poison as Cardan.
/>   “You’ll stay with him?” I ask the Bomb, and she nods.

  “No,” says Cardan. “She goes with you.”

  I shake my head. “The Bomb knows about potions. She knows about magic. She can make sure you don’t get worse.”

  He ignores me and takes her hand. “Liliver, as your king, I command you,” he says with great dignity for someone sitting on the floor beside the bucket he’s retched in. “Go with Jude.”

  I turn to the Bomb, but I see in her face that she won’t disobey him—she’s made her oath and even given him her name. He’s her king.

  “Damn you,” I whisper to one or maybe both of them.

  I vow that I will get the antidote swiftly, but that doesn’t make it any easier for me to leave when I know the wraithberry could yet stop his heart. His searing gaze follows us out the door, blown pupils and crown still in his hand.

  Balekin is in the garden as he promised, near a blooming tree of silver-blue roses. When I get there, I note figures not too distant from where we stand, other courtiers going for midnight strolls. It means he cannot attack me, but neither can I attack him.

  At least not without others knowing about it.

  “You are a great disappointment,” he says.

  It’s such a shock that I actually laugh. “You mean because I wasn’t glamoured. Yes, I can see how that would be very sad for you.”

  He glowers, but he doesn’t even have Vulciber beside him now to threaten me with. Perhaps being an Ambassador to the Undersea makes him believe he’s untouchable.

  All I can think about is that he poisoned Cardan, he tormented me, he pushed Orlagh to raid the land. I am shaking with anger, but trying to bite back that fury so I can get through what must be done.

  “Did you bring me the crown?” he asks.

  “I’ve got it nearby,” I lie. “But before I hand it over, I want to see the antidote.”

  He pulls a vial from his coat, nearly the twin of the one he gave me, which I take out of my pocket. “They would have executed me if they’d found me with this poison,” I say, shaking it. “That’s what you intended, wasn’t it?”