The Wicked King by Holly Black
As the Hunter’s Moon approaches, the level of debauchery in the palace increases. The tenor of the parties change—they become more frenetic, more wild. No longer is Cardan’s presence necessary for such license. Now that rumors paint him as someone who would shoot a lover for sport, his legend grows from there.
Recollections of his younger days—of the way he rode a horse into our lessons, the fights he had, the cruelties he perpetrated—are picked over. The more horrible the story, the more it is cherished. Faeries may not be able to lie, but stories grow here as they do anywhere, fed on ambition and envy and desire.
In the afternoons, I step over sleeping bodies in the halls. Not all of them are courtiers. Servants and guards seem to have fallen prey to the same wild energy and can be found abandoning their duties to pleasure. Naked Folk run across the gardens of Elfhame, and troughs once used to water horses now run with wine.
I meet with Vulciber, seeking more information about the Undersea, but he has none. Despite knowing that Nicasia was trying to bait me, I go over the list of people who may have betrayed me. I fret over who and to what end, over the arrival of Lord Roiben’s ambassador, over how to extend my year-and-a-day lease on the throne. I study my moldering papers and drink my poisons and plan a thousand parries to blows that may never come.
Cardan has moved to Eldred’s old chambers, and the rooms with the burned floor are barred from the inside. If it makes him uncomfortable to sleep where his father slept, he gives no sign. When I arrive, he is lounging nonchalantly as servants remove tapestries and divans to make room for a new bed carved to his specifications.
He is not alone. A small circle of courtiers is with him—a few I don’t know, plus Locke, Nicasia, and my sister, currently pink with wine and laughing on the rug before the fire.
“Go,” he says to them when he sees me at the threshold.
“But, Your Majesty,” begins a girl. She’s all cream and gold, in a light blue gown. Long pale antennae rise from the outer edges of her eyebrows. “Surely such dull news as your seneschal brings will require the antidote of our cheer.”
I’ve thought carefully about commanding Cardan. Too many orders and he’d chafe under them, too few and he’d duck beneath them easily. But I am glad to have made sure he’d never deny me admittance. I am especially glad that he can never countermand me.
“I am sure I will call you back swiftly enough,” Cardan says, and the courtiers troop out merrily. One of them carries a mug, obviously stolen from the mortal world and filled to the brim with wine. I RULE, it reads. Locke shoots me a curious glance. My sister grabs hold of my hand as she goes, squeezing it hopefully.
I go to a chair and sit down without waiting for an invitation. I want to remind Cardan that over me, he has no authority.
“The Hunter’s Moon revel is tomorrow night,” I say.
He sprawls in a chair opposite mine, watching me with his black eyes as though I am the one to be wary of. “If you wish to know details, you ought to have kept Locke behind. I know little. It is to be another one of my performances. I shall caper while you scheme.”
“Orlagh of the Undersea is watching you—”
“Everyone’s watching me,” Cardan says, fingers fiddling restlessly with his signet ring, turning it round and round again.
“You don’t seem to mind,” I say. “You said yourself that you don’t hate being king. Maybe you’re even enjoying it.”
He gives me a suspicious look.
I try to give him a genuine smile in return. I hope I can be convincing. I need to be convincing. “We can both have what we want. You can rule for a lot longer than a year. All you have to do is extend your vow. Let me command you for a decade, for a score of years, and together—”
“I think not,” he says, cutting me off. “After all, you know how dangerous it would be to have Oak sit in my place. He is only a year older than he was. He’s not ready. And yet, in only a few months, you will have to order me to abdicate in favor of him or make an arrangement that will require us to trust each other—rather than my trusting you without hope of being trusted in return.”
I am furious with myself for thinking he might agree to keeping things the way they are.
He gives me his sweetest smile. “Perhaps then you could be my seneschal in earnest.”
I grit my teeth. Once, a position as grand as seneschal would have been beyond my wildest dreams. Now it seems a humiliation. Power is infectious. Power is greedy.
“Have a care,” I tell him. “I can make the months that remain go slowly indeed.”
His smile doesn’t falter. “Any other commands?” he asks. I ought to tell him more about Orlagh, but the thought of his crowing over her offer is more than I can bear. I cannot let that marriage happen, and right now I don’t want to be teased about it.
“Don’t drink yourself to death tomorrow,” I say. “And watch out for my sister.”
“Taryn seemed well enough tonight,” he says. “Roses in her cheeks and merriment on her lips.”
“Let’s be sure she stays that way,” I say.
His brows rise. “Would you like me to seduce her away from Locke? I could certainly try. I promise nothing in the way of results, but you might find amusement in the attempt.”
“No, no, absolutely not, do not do that,” I say, and do not examine the hot spike of panic his words induce. “I just mean try to keep Locke from being his worst self when she’s around, that’s all.”
He narrows his eyes. “Shouldn’t you encourage just the opposite?”
Perhaps it would be better for Taryn to discover unhappiness with Locke as soon as possible. But she’s my sister, and I never want to be the cause of her pain. I shake my head.
He makes a vague gesture in the air. “As you wish. Your sister will be wrapped in satin and sackcloth, as protected from herself as I can make her.”
I stand. “The Council wants Locke to arrange some amusement to please Grimsen. If it’s nice, perhaps the smith will make you a cup that never runs out of wine.”
Cardan gives me a look up through his lashes that I find hard to interpret and then rises, too. He takes my hand. “Nothing is sweeter,” he says, kissing the back of it, “but that which is scarce.”
My skin flushes, hot and uncomfortable.
When I go out, his little circle is in the hall, waiting to be allowed back into his rooms. My sister looks a bit queasy, but when she sees me, she pastes on a wide, fake smile. One of the boys has put a limerick to music, playing it again and again, faster and faster. Their laughter floods the hallway, sounding like the cawing of crows.
Heading through the palace, I pass a chamber where a few courtiers have gathered. There, toasting an eel in the flames of a massive fireplace, sitting on a rug, is the old High King Eldred’s Court Poet and Seneschal, Val Moren.
Faerie artists and musicians sit around him. Since the death of most of the royal family, he’s found himself at the center of one of the Court factions, the Circle of Larks. Brambles are coiled in his hair, and he sings softly to himself. He’s mortal, like me. He’s also probably mad.
“Come drink with us,” one of the Larks says, but I demur.
“Pretty, petty Jude.” The flames dance in Val Moren’s eyes when he looks my way. He begins picking off burnt skin and eating the soft white flesh of the eel. Between bites, he speaks. “Why haven’t you come to me for advice yet?”
It’s said that he was High King Eldred’s lover, once. He’s been in the Court since long before the time my sisters and I came here. Despite that, he never made common cause of our mortality. He never tried to help us, never tried to reach out to us to make us feel less alone. “Do you have some?”
He gazes at me and pops one of the eyes of the eel into his mouth. It sits, glistening, on his tongue. Then he swallows. “Maybe. But it matters little.”
I am so tired of riddles. “Let me guess. Because when I ask you for advice, you’re not going to give it to me?”
He laughs, a dry, hollow sound. I wonder how old he is. Under the brambles, he looks like a young man, but mortals won’t grow old so long as they don’t leave Elfhame. Although I cannot see age in lines in his face, I can see it in his eyes. “Oh, I will give you the finest advice anyone’s ever given you. But you will not heed it.”
“Then what good are you?” I demand, about to turn away. I don’t have time for a few lines of useless doggerel for me to interpret.
“I’m an excellent juggler,” he says, wiping his hands on his pants, leaving stains behind. He reaches into his pocket, coming up with a stone, three acorns, a piece of crystal, and what appears to be a wishbone. “Juggling, you see, is just tossing two things in the air at the same time.”
He begins to toss the acorns back and forth, then adds the wishbone. A few of the Larks nudge one another, whispering delightedly. “No matter how many things you add, you’ve got only two hands, so you can only toss two things. You’ve just got to throw faster and faster, higher and higher.” He adds the stone and the crystal, the things flying between his hands fast enough that it’s hard to see what he’s tossing. I suck in a breath.
Then everything falls, crashing to the stone floor. The crystal shatters. One of the acorns rolls close to the fire.
“My advice,” says Val Moren, “is that you learn to juggle better than I did, seneschal.”
For a long moment, I am so angry that I can’t move. I feel incandescent with it, betrayed by the one person who ought to understand how hard it is to be what we are, here.
Before I do something I will regret, I turn on my heels and walk away.
“I foretold you wouldn’t take my advice,” he calls after me.
