Balekin’s face darkens, and his grip on the staff tightens. This time he jabs Cardan in the stomach, striking suddenly and with enough force for Cardan to sprawl on the stone floor. “I have tried to improve you, but you insist on wasting your talents on revels, on being drunk under the moonlight, on your thoughtless rivalries and your pathetic romances—”
Cardan pushes himself to his feet and rushes at his brother, swinging his sword wildly. He wields it like a club. The sheer frenzy of the attack makes Balekin fall back a step.
Cardan’s technique finally shows. He becomes more deliberate, attacking from new angles. He’s never shown much interest in swordsmanship at school, and, although he knows the basics, I am not sure he practices. Balekin disarms him ruthlessly and efficiently. Cardan’s sword flies from his hand, clattering across the floor toward me.
I scuttle back deeper into the shadows of the chair. For a moment, I think that I am going to be caught, but the servant is the one to pick up the blade, and his gaze does not waver.
Balekin cracks his staff against the back of Cardan’s legs, sending him to the ground.
I am delighted. There’s a part of me that wishes I were the one wielding that staff.
“Don’t bother to rise.” Balekin unbuckles his belt and hands it over to the servant. The human man wraps it twice around his palm. “You have failed the test. Again.”
Cardan doesn’t speak. His eyes are glittering with a familiar rage, but for once it isn’t directed at me. He’s on his knees, but he doesn’t appear in any way cowed.
“Tell me.” Balekin’s voice has gone silky, and he paces around his younger brother. “When will you cease being a disappointment?”
“Maybe when you stop pretending that you don’t do this for your own pleasure,” Cardan answers. “If you want to hurt me, it would save us both a lot of time if you got right down to—”
“Father was old and his seed weak when he sired you. That’s why you’re weak.” Balekin puts one hand on his brother’s neck. It looks affectionate, until I see Cardan’s flinch, the shifting of his balance. That’s when I realize Balekin is pressing down hard, pinning Cardan in place on the floor. “Now, take off your shirt and receive your punishment.”
Cardan begins to strip off his shirt, showing an expanse of moon-pale skin and a back with a delicate tracery of faded scars.
My stomach lurches. They’re going to beat him.
I should be glorying in seeing Cardan like this. I should be glad that his life sucks, maybe worse than mine, even though he’s a prince of Faerie and a horrible jerk and probably going to live forever. If someone had told me that I’d get an opportunity to see this, I would have thought the only thing I’d have to stifle was applause.
But watching, I cannot help observing that beneath his defiance is fear. I know what it is to say the clever thing because you don’t want anyone to know how scared you are. It doesn’t make me like him any better, but for the first time he seems real. Not good, but real.
Balekin nods. The servant strikes twice, the slap of the leather echoing loudly in the still air of the room.
“I don’t order this because I am angry with you, brother,” Balekin tells Cardan, causing me to shudder. “I do it because I love you. I do it because I love our family.”
When the servant lifts his arm to strike a third time, Cardan lunges for his blade, resting on Balekin’s desk where the servant put it. For a moment, I think Cardan is going to run the human man straight through.
The servant does not cry out or lift his hands to protect himself. Maybe he is too ensorcelled for that. Maybe Cardan could stab him right through the heart and he wouldn’t do a single thing to defend himself. I am weak with horror.
“Go ahead,” Balekin says, bored. He makes a vague gesture toward the servant. “Kill him. Show me you don’t mind making a mess. Show me that at least you know how to land a killing blow on such a pathetic target as this.”
“I am no murderer,” says Cardan, surprising me. I would not have thought that was something to be proud of.
In two strides, Balekin is in front of his brother. They look so alike, standing close. Same inky hair, matching sneers, devouring eyes. But Balekin shows his decades of experience, wrenching the sword from Cardan’s hands and knocking him to the ground with the crossbar.
“Then take your punishment like the pathetic creature that you are.” Balekin nods to the servant, who rouses from somnolence.
I watch every blow, every flinch. I have little choice. I can shut my eyes, but the sounds are just as terrible. And worst of all is Cardan’s empty face, his eyes as dull as lead.
Truly, he has come by his cruelty honestly in Balekin’s care. He has been raised up in it, instructed in its nuances, honed through its application. However horrible Cardan might be, I now see what he might become and am truly afraid.
Disturbingly, it is even easier to gain entrance to the Palace of Elfhame in my servant’s gown than it was to enter Balekin’s household. Everyone, from goblin to the Gentry to the High King’s mortal Court Poet and Seneschal, barely gives me a passing look as I find my clumsy way through the labyrinthine halls. I am nothing, no one, a messenger no more worthy of attention than an animated twig woman or an owl. My pleasant, placid expression, combined with forward momentum, gets me to Prince Dain’s chambers without so much as a second look, even though I lose my way twice and have to retrace my steps.
I rap on his door and am relieved when the prince himself opens it.
He raises both brows, taking in the sight of me in the homespun dress. I make a formal curtsy, as any servant might. I do not alter my expression, for fear of his not being alone. “Yes?” he asks.
“I am here with a message for you, Your Highness,” I say, hoping that sounds right. “I beg for a moment of your time.”
“You’re a natural,” he tells me, grinning. “Come inside.”
It’s a relief to relax my face. I drop the inane smile as I follow him into his parlor.
Furnished in elaborate velvets, silks, and brocades, it’s a riot of scarlet and deep blues and greens, everything rich and dark, like overripe fruit. The patterns on the material are the sorts of things I have become accustomed to—intricate braids of briars, leaves that might also be spiders when you looked at them from another angle, and a depiction of a hunt where it is unclear which of the creatures is hunting the other.
I sigh and sit down in the chair he is pointing me toward, fumbling in my pocket.
“Here,” I say, drawing out the folded-up note and smoothing it against the top of a cunning little table with carved bird feet for legs. “He came in while I was copying it, so it’s kind of a mess.” I had left the stolen book with the toad; the last thing I want Prince Dain to know is that I took something for myself.
Dain squints to see the shapes of the letters past my smudges. “And he didn’t see you?”
“He was distracted,” I say truthfully. “I hid.”