My heart thuds dully. I consider pretending I didn’t get the message and simply not go, but that would be cowardice.
If Madoc still has hopes of scheming Oak onto the throne, he can’t let a marriage to the Undersea happen. He has no reason to know that, in this at least, I am entirely on his side. This is a good opportunity to get him to show his hand.
And so, I head reluctantly to his war room. It’s familiar; I played here as a child, under a large wooden table covered in a map of Faerie, with little, carved figures to represent its Courts and armies. His “dolls,” as Vivi used to call them.
When I let myself in, I find it dimly lit. Only a few candles burn low on a desk beside a few stiff chairs.
I recall reading a book curled up in one of those chairs while beside me violent plots were hatched.
Looking up from the very same chair, Madoc rises and gestures for me to sit opposite him, as though we are equals. He is being interestingly careful with me.
On the strategy board, there are only a few figures. Orlagh and Cardan, Madoc and a figure I do not recognize until I study it more carefully. It is myself I am looking at, rendered in carved wood. Seneschal. Spymaster. Kingmaker.
I am abruptly afraid of what I have done to make it onto that board.
“I got your note,” I tell him, settling into a chair.
“After tonight, I thought you might be finally reconsidering some of the choices you made,” he says.
I begin to speak, but he holds up a clawed hand to stop my words. “Were I you,” he goes on, “my pride might lead me to pretend otherwise. The Folk cannot tell lies, as you know, not with our tongues. But we can deceive. And we are as capable of self-deceit as any mortal.”
I am stung by his knowing I was crowned Queen of Mirth and laughed at by the Court. “You don’t think I know what I’m doing?”
“Well,” he says carefully, “not for certain. What I see is you humiliating yourself with the youngest and most foolish of princes. Did he promise you something?”
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from snapping at him. No matter how low I already feel, if he thinks me a fool, then a fool I must allow myself to be. “I am seneschal to the High King, am I not?”
It’s just hard to dissemble with the laughter of the Court still ringing in my ears. With the foul dust of those mushrooms still in my hair and the memory of Cardan’s obnoxious words.
Excruciating. Alarming. Distressing.
Madoc sighs and spreads his hands in front of him. “Whether I like it or no, so long as Cardan wears the Blood Crown, he’s my king. I am sworn to him as surely as I was to his father, as surely as I would have been to Dain or even Balekin. The opportunity that presented itself at the coronation—the opportunity to change the course of destiny—is lost to me.”
He pauses. However he phrases it, the meaning is the same. The opportunity was lost because I stole it from him. I am the reason Oak is not the High King and Madoc isn’t using his influence to remake Elfhame in his image.
“But you,” Madoc says, “who are not bound by your words. Whose promises can be forsworn…”
I think of what he said to me after the last Living Council meeting, as we walked: No oath binds you. If you regret your move, make another. There are games yet to play. I see he has chosen this moment to expand upon his theme.
“You want me to betray Cardan,” I say, just to make things clear.
He stands and beckons me to the strategy table. “I don’t know what knowledge you have of the Queen of the Undersea from her daughter, but once, the Undersea was a place much like the land. It had many fiefdoms, with many rulers among the selkies and merfolk.
“When Orlagh came into power, she hunted down each of the smaller rulers and murdered them, so the whole Undersea would answer only to her. There are yet a few rulers of the sea she hasn’t brought beneath her thumb, a few too powerful and a few more too remote. But if she marries her daughter to Cardan, you can be sure she will push Nicasia to do the same on land.”
“Murder the heads of the smaller Courts?” I ask.
He smiles. “Of all the Courts. Perhaps at first it will seem like a series of accidents—or a few foolish orders. Or maybe it will be another bloodbath.”
I study him carefully. After all, the last bloodbath was at least partially his doing. “And do you disagree with Orlagh’s philosophy? Would you have done much the same were you the power behind the throne?”
“I wouldn’t have done it on behalf of the sea,” he says. “She means to have the land as her vassal.” He reaches for the table and picks up a small figurine, one carved to represent Queen Orlagh. “She believes in the forced peace of absolute rule.”
I look at the board.