“Ah, time,” he says. “You’re the only one short on that, mortal.” He nods at Vulciber. “You may escort her out.”
“Let’s go,” the guard says, giving me a none-too-gentle shove toward the steps. As I ascend, I glance back at Balekin’s face, severe in the green torchlight. He resembles Cardan too much for my comfort.
I am partway up when a long-fingered hand reaches out from between the bars and grips my ankle. Startled, I slip, scraping my palms and banging my knees as I go sprawling on the stairs. The old stab wound at the center of my left hand throbs suddenly. I barely catch myself before I tumble all the way down the steps.
Beside me is the thin face of a faerie woman. Her tail curls around one of the bars. Short horns sweep back from her brow. “I knew your Eva,” she says to me, eyes glittering in the gloom. “I knew your mother. Knew so many of her little secrets.”
I push myself to my feet and climb the steps as quickly as I can, my heart racing faster than when I thought I was going to have to fight Vulciber in the dark. My breath comes in short, rapid gasps that make my lungs hurt.
At the top of the stairs, I pause to wipe my stinging palms against my doublet and try to get myself under control.
“Ah,” I say to Vulciber when my breathing has calmed a little. “I nearly forgot. The High King gave me a scroll of commands. There are a few changes in how he wishes his brother to be treated. They’re outside in my saddlebags. If you could just follow me—”
Vulciber looks a question at the guard who sent him to guide me to Balekin.
“Go quickly,” the shadowy figure says.
And so Vulciber accompanies me through the great door of the Tower of Forgetting. Illuminated by the moon, the black rocks shine with salt spray, a glittering coating, like that on sugared fruit. I try to focus on the guard and not the sound of my mother’s name, which I haven’t heard in so many years that, for a moment, I didn’t know why it was important to me.
Eva.
“That horse has only a bit and bridle,” Vulciber says, frowning at the black steed tied to the wall. “But you said—”
I stab him in the arm with a little pin I kept hidden in the lining of my doublet. “I lied.”
It takes some doing to haul him up and sling him over the back of the horse. She is trained with familiar military commands, including kneeling, which helps. I move as quickly as I can, for fear that one of the guards will come to check on us, but I am lucky. No one comes before we are up and moving.
Another reason to ride to Insweal, rather than walk—you never know what you might be bringing back with you.
You’re styling yourself as a spymaster,” the Roach says, looking over me and then my prisoner. “That ought to include being shrewd. Relying only on yourself is a good way to get got. Next time, take a member of the royal guard. Take one of us. Take a cloud of sprites or a drunken spriggan. Just take someone.”
“Watching my back is the perfect opportunity to stick a knife in it,” I remind him.
“Spoken like Madoc himself,” says the Roach with an irritated sniff of his long, twisted nose. He sits at the wooden table in the Court of Shadows, the lair of spies deep in the tunnels under the Palace of Elfhame. He is burning the tips of crossbow bolts in a flame, then liberally coating them with a sticky tar. “If you don’t trust us, just say so. We came to one arrangement, we can come to another.”
“That’s not what I mean,” I say, putting my head down on my hands for a long moment. I do trust them. I wouldn’t have spoken so freely if I didn’t, but I am letting my irritation show.