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

by Holly Black

“Who slept there before Cardan?”

“Lovers,” I say, finally putting it together. “The High King’s lovers who weren’t consorts.”

“And that’s the place our High King chose to sleep?” The Roach gives me a significant look, as though I am supposed to know the answer to this puzzle, when I didn’t realize it was a puzzle at all.

The Living Council was assembled during Eldred’s time, ostensibly to help the High King make decisions, and they have calcified into a group difficult to oppose.

It’s not so much that the ministers have raw individual power—although many are themselves formidable—but as a collective, it has the authority to make many smaller decisions regarding the running of the kingdom.

The kind of small decisions that, taken together, could put ev...

After the disrupted coronation and the murder of the royal family, after the irregularity with the crown, the Council is skeptical of Cardan’s...

Randalin, the Minister of Keys, sits in the High King’s chair; the wooden back of the throne-like seat is burned with the royal crest. I note the move—and the assumptions inherent in it.

“The High King is tied to the land and to his subjects. A king is a living symbol, a beating heart, a star upon which Elfhame’s future is written.”

“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.

“When he becomes drunk, his subjects become tipsy without knowing why. When his blood falls, things grow. Why, High Queen Mab called Insmire, Insmoor, and Insweal from the sea. All the isles of Elfhame, formed in a single hour.”

My heart speeds faster the longer that Baphen talks. My lungs feel as though they cannot get enough air. Because none of this can be describing Cardan. He cannot be connected to the land so profoundly, cannot be able to do all that and yet be under my control.

I think of the blood on his coverlet—and beside it, the scattered white flowers. When his...

During Eldred’s reign, when children were born, they were perforce brought before him to pledge themselves to the kingdom. But in the low Courts, some heirs were fostered in the mortal world, growing up outside of Eldred’s reach. Those changeling children returned to rule without making vows to the Blood Crown. At least one Court has made such a changeling its queen. And who knows how many wild Folk managed to avoid making vows. And the general of the Court of Teeth, Grima Mog, seems to have left her post. No one is sure what she intends. We can ill afford carelessness on the part of the High King.”

“We need to watch the Queen of the Undersea, too,” I say. “She’s got a plan and is going to move against us.”

“Balekin has been meeting with her representatives,”

“I have it from more than one source. If their alliance was with Eldred, then it’s over.”

I wish I could tell Madoc that the only reason he still sits on the Council is because of me. Despite his running Dain through with his own hand, he is still the Grand General.

I could say that I want to keep him busy, that he’s a weapon better deployed by us than against us, that it’s easier for my spies to watch him when I know where he is, but a part of me knows he is still Grand General because I couldn’t bring myself to strip so much authority from my dad.

“I have also been told that a representative from the Court of Termites will be attending the Hunter’s Moon revel.”

I try not to let my surprise show. The Court of Termites, led by Lord Roiben, was helpful in getting Cardan onto the throne. And for their efforts I promised that when Lord Roiben asked me for a favor, I’d do it. But I have no idea what he might want, and now isn’t a good time for another complication.

“You don’t believe that I could care about you, even after you betrayed me?” He watches me with his cat eyes. “I’m still your father.”

“You’re my father’s murderer,” I blurt out. “I can be both,”

“Which is why neither of us should pretend you’re not furious with me.” “Oh, I’m angry, daughter, but I am also curious.”

“As I thought. I didn’t appreciate you properly. I dismissed your desire for knighthood. I dismissed your capacity for strategy, for strength—and for cruelty. That was my mistake, and one I will not make again.”

“Cardan is the High King now, and so long as he wears the Blood Crown, I am sworn to serve him,” he says.

“But no oath binds you. If you regret your move, make another. There a...

Maybe she is warning me that a spy is in my confidence or maybe she’s alluding to Taryn’s having it off with Locke.

“There was no assassin. It was a romantic misunderstanding.”

“Our king is a lucky duck,” the Bomb says. “I’d like a bed like this, big enough to have a guest or two.”

“The Roach?”

I went into the human world and became a small-time crook. I wasn’t particularly good at it. Mostly I was just using glamour to hide my mistakes. That’s when the Roach spotted me. He pointed out that while I might not be much of a thief, I was a dab hand at concocting potions and bombs. We went around together for decades. He was so affable, so dapper and charming, that he’d con people right to their faces, no magic required.”

Red Flag!

“Then he had this idea we were going to steal from the Court of Teeth in the North. The con went wrong. The Court carved us up and filled us full of curses and geases. Changed us. Forced us to serve them.” She snaps her fingers, and sparks fly. “Fun, right?”

“Then we screwed up a job, and Dain got hold of us. He had a scheme for us to betray the Court of Teeth and join him. So we did. The Ghost was already by his side, and the three of us made a formidable team.

I think of the boy in the crystal, of his proud smile and his balled fist. I think of the horned faerie woman, who must have been his mother, shoving him away from her. I think of his father, the High King, who didn’t bother to intervene, didn’t even bother to make sure he was clothed or his face wiped. I think of how Cardan avoided these rooms. I sigh. “I wish I could think of a place he’d be safer.”

My king, I think. But only for a year and a day, and five months are already gone.

“And I brought some sketches,” she says, taking out a pad of paper and sitting cross-legged on my bed. Neither of us is a great artist, but her drawings of clothing are easy to understand. “I want to take them to my tailor.”

“They can measure me,” she says. “You won’t even have to go to the fittings.”

I don’t think she wants to help me, but the effort she’s put into this, especially as her own marriage is imminent, seems extraordinary.

Red Flagsssss errWhere

Her not immediately asking about that should have been my first clue that she wanted something.

“Fine.” She sighs. “It’s not a big deal, but there is a thing I want to talk to you about.”

“I don’t want Locke to be Master of Revels.”

“Locke craves dramatic experiences. And as Master of Revels, he can create these—I don’t even know what to call them—stories. He doesn’t so much think of a party as food and drinks and music, but rather a dynamic that might create conflict.”

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 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.”

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.

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.”

mortals won’t grow old so long as they don’t leave Elfhame.

“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.”

“My advice,” says Val Moren, “is that you learn to juggle better than I did, seneschal.”