“An interesting thought,” I say in what I hope is a neutral manner before making my escape.
Cardan is lounging sideways on the throne when I come in, one long leg hanging over an armrest.
Sleepy revelers party yet in the great hall, around tables still piled high with delights. The smell of freshly turned earth and freshly spilled wine hangs in the air. As I make my way to the dais, I see Taryn asleep on a rug. A pixie boy I do not know slumbers beside her, his tall dragonfly wings twitching occasionally, as though in dreams of flight.
Locke is wide awake, sitting on the edge of the dais, yelling at musicians.
Frustrated, Cardan shifts, legs falling to the floor. “What exactly is the problem here?”
A boy with the lower half of a deer steps forward. I recognize him from the Hunter’s Moon revel, where he played. His voice shakes when he speaks. “Your pardon, Your Majesty. It is only that my lyre was stolen.”
“So what are we debating?” Cardan says. “A lyre is either here or gone, is it not? If it’s gone, let a fiddler play.”
“He stole it.” The boy points to one of the other musicians, this one with hair like grass.
Cardan turns toward the thief with an impatient frown.
“My lyre was strung with the hair of beautiful mortals who died tragically young,” sputters the grass-haired faerie. “It took me decades to assemble and was not easy to maintain. The mortal voices sung mournfully when I played. It could have made even yourself cry, begging your pardon.”
Cardan makes an impatient gesture. “If you are done with bragging, what is the meat of this matter? I have not asked you about your instrument, but his.”
The grass-haired faerie seems to blush, his skin turning a darker green—which I suppose is not actually the color of his flesh but of his blood. “He borrowed it of an eve,” he says, pointing toward the deer-boy. “After that, be became obsessed and would not rest until he’d destroyed it. I only took his lyre in recompense, for though it is inferior, I must play something.”
“You ought to punish them both,” says Locke. “For bringing such a trivial concern before the High King.”
“Well?” Cardan turns back to the boy who first claimed his lyre was stolen. “Shall I render my judgment?”
“Not yet, I beg of you,” says the deer-boy, his ears twitching with nerves. “When I played his lyre, the voices of those who had died and whose hair made the strings spoke to me. They were the true owners of the lyre. And when I destroyed it, I was saving them. They were trapped, you see.”
Cardan flops onto his throne, tipping back his head in frustration, knocking his crown askew. “Enough,” he says. “You are both thieves, and neither of you particularly skilled ones.”
“But you don’t understand the torment, the screaming—” Then the deer-boy presses a hand over his mouth, recalling himself in the presence of the High King.
“Have you never heard that virtue is its own reward?” Cardan says pleasantly. “That’s because there’s no other reward in it.”
The boy scuffs his hoof on the floor.
“You stole a lyre and your lyre was stolen in turn,” Cardan says softly. “There’s some justice in that.” He turns to the grass-haired musician. “And you took matters into your own hands, so I can only assume they were arranged to your satisfaction. But both of you have irritated me. Give me that instrument.”
Both look displeased, but the grass-haired musician comes forward and surrenders the lyre to a guard.
“Each of you will have a chance to play it, and whosoever plays most sweetly, you will have it. For art is more than virtue or vice.”
I make my careful way up the steps as the deer-boy begins his playing. I didn’t expect Cardan to care enough to hear out the musicians, and I can’t decide if his judgment is brilliant or if he is just a jerk. I worry that once again I am reading what I want to be true into his actions.
The music is haunting, thrumming across my skin and down to my bones.
“Your Majesty,” I say. “You sent for me?”
“Ah, yes.” His raven’s-wing hair falls over one eye. “So are we at war?”
For a moment, I think he is talking about us. “No,” I say. “At least not until the next full moon.”
“You can’t fight the sea,” Locke says philosophically.
Cardan gives a little laugh. “You can fight anything. Winning, though, that’s something else again. Isn’t that right, Jude?”
“Jude is a real winner,” Locke says with a grin. Then he looks out at the players and claps his hands. “Enough. Switch.”
When Cardan doesn’t contradict his Master of Revels, the deer-boy reluctantly turns over the lyre to the grass-haired faerie. A fresh wash of music rushes through the hill, a wild tune to speed my heart.
“You were just going,” I tell Locke.
He grins. “I find I am very comfortable here,” Locke says. “Surely there’s nothing you have to say to the king that is so very personal or private.”
“It’s a shame you’ll never find out. Go. Now.” I think about Randalin’s advice, his reminder that I have power. Maybe I do, but I am still unable to get rid of a Master of Revels for a half hour, no less a Grand General who is also, more or less, my father.
“Leave,” Cardan tells Locke. “I didn’t summon her here for your pleasure.”
“You are most ungenerous. If you truly cared for me, you would have,” Locke says as he hops down from the dais.
“Take Taryn home,” I call after him. If it wasn’t for her, I would punch him right in the face.
“He likes you this way, I think,” Cardan says. “Flush-cheeked and furious.”
“I don’t care what he likes,” I spit out.
“You seem to not care quite a lot.” His voice is dry, and when I look at him, I cannot read his face.
“Why am I here?” I ask.
He kicks his legs off the side of the throne and stands. “You,” he points to the deer-boy. “Today you are fortunate. Take the lyre. See that neither of you draw my notice again.” As the deer-boy bows and the grass-haired faerie begins to sulk, Cardan turns to me. “Come.”
Ignoring his high-handed manner with some difficulty, I follow him behind the throne and off the dais, where a small door is set against the stone wall, half-hidden by ivy. I’ve never been here before.
Cardan sweeps aside the ivy, and we go inside.
It is a small room, clearly intended for intimate meetings and assignations. Its walls are covered in moss, with small glowing mushrooms climbing them, casting a pale white light on us. There’s a low couch, upon which people could sit or recline, as the situation called for.
We are alone in a way we have not been alone for a long time, and when he takes a step toward me, my heart skips a beat.
Cardan’s eyebrows rise. “My brother sent me a message.” He unfolds it from his pocket:
If you want to save your neck, pay me a visit. And put your seneschal on a leash.
“So,” he says, holding it out to me. “What have you been about?”
I let out a sigh of relief. It didn’t take long for Lady Asha to pass the information I gave her to Balekin, and it didn’t take long for Balekin to act on it. One point to me.
“I stopped you from getting some messages,” I admit.
“And you decided not to mention them.” Cardan looks at me without particular rancor but is not exactly pleased. “Just as you declined to tell me about Balekin’s meetings with Orlagh or Nicasia’s plans for me.”
“Look, of course Balekin wants to see you,” I say, trying to redirect the conversation away from his sadly incomplete list of stuff I haven’t told him. “You’re his brother, whom he kept in his own house. You’re the only person with the power to free him who might actually do it. I figured if you were in a forgiving mood, you could talk to him anytime you wanted. You didn’t need his exhortations.”
“So what changed?” he asks, waving the piece of paper at me. Now he does sound angry. “Why was I permitted to receive this?”
“I gave him a source of information,” I say. “One it’s possible for me to compromise.”
“And I am supposed to reply to this little note?” he asks.
“Have him brought to you in chains.” I take the paper from him and jam it into my pocket. “I’d be interested to know what he thinks he can get from you with a little conversation, especially since he doesn’t know you’re aware of his ties to the Undersea.”
Cardan’s gaze narrows. The worst part is that I am deceiving him again right now, deceiving by omission. Hiding that my source of information, the one I can now compromise, is his own mother.
I thought you wanted me to do this on my own, I want to say. I thought I was supposed to rule and you were supposed to be merry and that was supposed to be that.
“I suspect he will try to shout at me until I give him what he wants,” Cardan says. “It might be possible to goad him into letting something slip. Possible, not likely.”
I nod, and the scheming part of my brain, honed on strategy games, supplies me with a move. “Nicasia knows more than she’s saying. Make her say the rest of it, and then use that against Balekin.”
“Yes, well, I don’t think it would be politically expedient to put thumbscrews to a princess of the sea.”
I look at him again, at his soft mouth and his high cheekbones, at the cruel beauty of his face. “Not thumbscrews. You. You go to Nicasia and charm her.”
His eyebrows go up.
“Oh, come on,” I say, the plan coming together in my mind as I am speaking, a plan that I hate as surely as I know it will be effective. “You’re practically draped in courtiers every time I see you.”
“I’m the king,” he says.
“They’ve been draped over you for longer than that.” I am frustrated having to explain this. Surely he’s aware of the response of the Folk to him.