“No!” I say, holding my ground. “Think about it. If I knew what was going to happen, if I was on Madoc’s side, the only way I would be here is with a retainer of knights. You’d have been shot coming in the door. I would hardly have come alone, dragging along a prisoner that my father would dearly love to have.”
“Peace, both of you. We’re all of us reeling,” the Roach says, looking at the damage he has done. He shakes his head, then his attention goes to Cardan. He walks toward him, studying the prince’s face. The Roach’s black lips pull back from his teeth in a considering grimace. When he turns back to me, he’s obviously impressed. “Although it seems that one of us kept her head.”
“Hello,” Cardan says, raising his brows and regarding the Roach as though they were sitting down to tea together.
Cardan’s clothes are disarranged, from crawling under tables or being captured and tied, and his infamous tail is showing under the white lawn of his shirt. It is slim, nearly hairless, with a tuft of black fur at the tip. As I watch, the tail forms one wavering curve after another, snaking back and forth, betraying his cool face, telling its own story of uncertainty and fear.
I can see why he hides that thing away.
“We should kill him,” says the Ghost, slouching in the hallway, light brown hair blown across his forehead. “He’s the only member of the royal family who can crown Balekin. Without Cardan, the throne will be forever lost, and we will have avenged Dain.”
Cardan draws a sharp breath and then lets it out slowly. “I’d prefer to live.”
“We don’t work for Dain anymore,” the Roach reminds the Ghost, the nostrils of his long green knife of a nose flaring. “Dain’s dead and beyond caring about thrones or crowns. We sell the prince back to Balekin for everything we can get and leave. Go among the low Courts or the free Folk. There’s fun to be had, and gold. You could come along, Jude. If you want.”
The offer is tempting. Burn it all down. Run. Start over in a place where no one knows me except the Ghost and the Roach.
“I don’t want Balekin’s money.” The Ghost spits on the ground. “And other than that, the boy prince is useless to us. Too young, too weak. If not for Dain, then let’s kill him for all of Faerie.”
“Too young, too weak, too mean,” I put in.
“Wait,” Cardan says. I have imagined him afraid many times, but the reality outstrips those imaginings. Seeing the quickening of his breath, the way he pulls against my careful knots, delights me. “Wait! I could tell you what I know, everything I know, anything about Balekin, anything you’d like. If you want gold and riches, I could get them for you. I know the way to Balekin’s treasury. I have the ten keys to the ten locks of the palace. I could be useful.”
Only in my dreams has Cardan ever been like this. Begging. Miserable. Powerless.
“What did you know about your brother’s plan?” the Ghost asks him, peeling himself off the wall. He limps over.
Cardan shakes his head. “Only that Balekin despised Dain. I despised him as well. He was despicable. I didn’t know he’d managed to convince Madoc of that.”
“What do you mean, despicable?” I ask, indignant, even with the still-healing wound on my hand. Dain’s death washed away the resentment I had for him.
Cardan gives me an indecipherable look. “Dain poisoned his own child, still in the womb. He worked on our father until he trusted no one but Dain. Ask them—surely Dain’s spies know how he made Eldred believe that Elowyn was plotting against him, convinced him that Balekin was a fool. Dain orchestrated my being thrown out of the palace, so that I had to be taken in by my elder brother or go without any home at the Court. He even persuaded Eldred to step down after poisoning his wine so that he became tired and ill—the curse on the crown doesn’t prevent that.”
“That can’t be true.” I think of Liriope, of the letter, of how Balekin wanted proof of who got the poison. But Eldred couldn’t have been poisoned with blusher mushroom.
“Ask your friends,” Cardan says, with a nod to the Roach and the Ghost. “It was one of them who administered the poison that killed the child and its mother.”
I shake my head, but the Ghost doesn’t meet my gaze. “Why would Dain do that?”
“Because he’d fathered the child with Eldred’s consort and was afraid Eldred would find out and choose another of us for his heir.” Cardan seems pleased with himself at having surprised me—surprised us, from the looks on the faces of the Roach and the Ghost. I do not like the way they watch him now, as though he might have value after all. “Even the King of Faerie doesn’t like to think of his son taking his place in a lover’s bed.”
It shouldn’t shock me that the Court of Faerie is corrupt and kind of gross. I knew that, just as I knew Madoc could do gruesome things to people he cared about. Just as I knew Dain was never kind. He made me stab my own hand, clean through. He took me on for my usefulness, nothing more.
Faerie might be beautiful, but its beauty is like a golden stag’s carcass, crawling with maggots beneath his hide, ready to burst.
I feel sick from the smell of blood. It’s on my dress, under my fingers, in my nose. How am I supposed to be worse than the Folk?
Sell the prince back to Balekin. I turn the idea over in my mind. Balekin would be in my debt. He’d make me a member of the Court, just as I once wanted. He’d give me anything I asked for, any of the things Dain offered and more: land, knighthood, a love mark on my brow so all who looked upon me would be sick with desire, a sword that wove charms with every blow.
And yet none of those things seems all that valuable anymore. None of those are true power. True power isn’t granted. True power can’t be taken away.
I think of what it will be like to have Balekin for a High King, for the Circle of Grackles to devour all the other circles of influence. I think of his starveling servants, of his urging Cardan to kill one of them for training, of the way he ordered Cardan beaten while professing his love for their family.
No, I cannot see myself serving Balekin.
“Prince Cardan is my prisoner,” I remind them, pacing back and forth. I’m not good at much, and I’ve been good at being a spy for only a very short time. I am not ready to give that up. “I get to decide what happens to him.”
The Roach and the Ghost exchange glances.
“Unless we’re going to fight,” I say, because they’re not my friends, and I need to remember that. “But I have access to Madoc. I have access to Balekin. I’m our best shot at brokering a deal.”
“Jude,” Cardan cautions me from the chair, but I am beyond caution, especially from him.
There’s a tense moment, but then the Roach cracks a grin. “No, girl, we’re not fighting. If you’ve got a plan, then I’m glad of it. I’m not really much of a planner, unless it’s how to prize out a gem from a nice setting. You stole the boy prince. This is your play, if you think you can make it.”