The Wicked King by Holly Black

I drum my fingernails against Dain’s old desk as the Roach leads the prisoner in.

“Her name is Asha,” he says. “Lady Asha.”

Asha is thin and so pale that she seems a little gray. She does not look much like the laughing woman I saw in the crystal globe.

She is looking around the room in an ecstasy of confusion. It’s clear that she’s pleased to be away from the Tower of Forgetting. Her eyes are hungry, drinking in every detail of even this rather dull room.

“What was her crime?” I ask, downplaying my knowledge. I hope she will set the game and show more of herself that way.

The Roach grunts, playing along. “She was Eldred’s consort, and when he tired of her, she got tossed into the Tower.”

There was doubtlessly more to it than that, but all I have discovered is that it concerned the death of another lover of the High King’s and, somehow, Cardan’s involvement.

“Hard luck,” I say, indicating the chair in front of my desk. The one to which, five long months ago, Cardan had been tied. “Come sit.”

I can see his face in hers. They share those ridiculous cheekbones, that soft mouth.

She sits, gaze turning sharply to me. “I have a powerful thirst.”

“Do you now?” the Roach asks, licking a corner of his lip with his black tongue. “Perhaps a cup of wine would restore you.”

“I am chilled, too,” she tells him. “Cold down to the bone. Cold as the sea.”

The Roach shares a look with me. “You tarry here with our own Shadow Queen, and I will see to the rest.”

I do not know what I did to deserve such an extravagant title and fear it has been bestowed upon me as one might bestow an enormous troll with the moniker “Tiny,” but it does seem to impress her.

The Roach steps out, leaving us alone. My gaze follows him for a moment, thinking of the Bomb and her secret. Then I turn to Lady Asha.

“You said you knew my mother,” I remind her, hoping to draw her out with that, until I can figure out how to move on to what I really must know.

Her expression is of slight surprise, as though she is so distracted by her surroundings that she forgot her reason for being here. “You resemble her very strongly.”

“Her secrets,” I prompt. “You said you knew secrets about her.”

Finally, she smiles. “Eva found it tedious to have to do withouteverythingfrom her old life. Oh, it was fun for her at first to be in Faerieland—it always is—but eventually they get homesick. We used to sneak across the sea to be among mortals and take back little things she missed. Bars of waxy chocolate. Perfume. Pantyhose. That was before Justin, of course.”

Justin and Eva. Eva and Justin. My mother and my father. My stomach lurches at the thought of their being two people Asha knew better than I ever did.

“Of course,” I echo anyway.

She leans forward, across the desk. “You look like her. You look like them both.”

And you look like him, I think but do not say.

“You’ve heard the story, I’ll wager,” Asha says. “How one or both of them killed a woman and burned the body to hide your mother’s disappearance from Madoc. I could tell you about that. I could tell you how it happened.”

“I brought you here so you could do just that,” I tell her. “So you could tell me everything you know.”

“Then have me thrown back in the Tower? No. My information is worth a price.”

Before I can answer, the door opens, and the Roach comes in carrying a tray piled with cheese and brown bread and a steaming cup of spiced wine. He wears a cape over his shoulders, and after setting down the food, he sweeps it onto her like a blanket.

“Any other requests?” he asks.

“She was just getting to that,” I tell him.

“Freedom,” she says. “I wish to be away from the Tower of Forgetting, and I wish safe passage away from Insmoor, Insweal, and Insmire. Moreover, I want your promise that the High King of Elfhame will never become aware of my release.”

“Eldred is dead,” I tell her. “You have nothing to worry about.”

“I know who the High King is,” she corrects sharply. “And I don’t want to be discovered by him once I am free.”

The Roach’s eyebrows rise.

In the silence, she takes a big swallow of wine. She bites off a big hunk of cheese.

It occurs to me that Cardan very likely knows where his mother was sent. If he has done nothing to get her out, nothing to so much as see her since becoming High King, that’s intentional. I think of the boy in the crystal orb and the worshipful way he stared after her, and I wondered what changed. I barely remember my mother, but I would do a lot to see her again, even just for a moment.

“Tell me something of value,” I say. “And I will consider it.”

“So I am to have nothing today?” she wants to know.

“Have we not fed you and clothed you in our own garments? Moreover, you may take a turn around the gardens before you return to the Tower. Drink in the scents of the flowers and feel the grass beneath your feet,” I tell her. “Let me make myself clear: I do not beg for comforting reminiscences or love stories. If you have something better to give me, then perhaps I will find something for you. But do not think I need you.”

She pouts. “Very well. There was a hag who came across Madoc’s land when your mother was pregnant with Vivienne. The hag was given to prophecy and divined futures in eggshells. And do you know what the hag said? That Eva’s child was destined to be a greater weapon than Justin could ever forge.”

“Vivi?” I demand.

“Her child,” says Asha. “Although she must have thought of the one in her belly right then. Perhaps that’s why she left. To protect the child from fate. But no one can escape fate.”

I am silent, my mouth a grim line. Cardan’s mother takes another drink of wine.

I will not let any of what I feel show on my face. “Still not enough,” I say, taking a breath that I hope isn’t too quavering and focusing on passing the information I hope will find its way to Balekin. “If you think of something better, you can send me a message. Our spies monitor notes going in and out of the Tower of Forgetting—usually at the point they’re passed to the palace. Whatever you send, no matter to whom it is addressed, if it leaves the hand of the guard, we will see it. It will be easy to let me know if your memory comes up with anything of more value.”

With that, I get up and step out of the room. The Roach follows me into the hall and puts a hand on my arm.

For a long moment, I stand there wordlessly trying to marshal my thoughts.

He shakes his head. “I asked her some questions on the way here. It sounds as though she was entranced by palace life, besotted with the High King’s regard, glorying in the dancing and the singing and the wine. Cardan was left to be suckled by a little black cat whose kittens came stillborn.”

“He survived on cat milk?” I exclaim. The Roach gives me a look, as though I’ve missed the point of his story entirely.

“After she was sent to the Tower, Cardan was sent to Balekin,” he says.

I think again of the globe I held in Eldred’s study, of Cardan dressed in rags, looking to the woman in my chamber for approval, which came only when he was awful. An abandoned prince, weaned on cat milk and cruelty, left to roam the palace like a little ghost. I think of myself, huddling in a tower of Hollow Hall, watching Balekin enchant a mortal into beating his younger brother for poor swordsmanship.

“Take her back to the Tower,” I tell the Roach.

He raises his eyebrows. “You don’t want to hear more about your parents?”

“She gets too much satisfaction in the telling. I’ll have the information from her without so many bargains.” Besides, I have planted a more important seed. Now I have only to see if it grows.

He gives me a half smile. “You like it, don’t you? Playing games with us? Pulling our strings and seeing how we dance?”

“The Folk, you mean?”

“I imagine you’d like it as well with mortals, but we’re what you’re practiced in.” He doesn’t sound disapproving, but it still feels like being skewered on a pin. “And perhaps some of us offer a particular savor.”

He looks down his curved goblin nose at me until I answer. “Is that meant to be a compliment?”

At that, his smile blooms. “It’s no insult.”