Standing in front of them is always intimidating, and Madoc’s presence makes it worse. He makes me feel like a child, overeager to say or do something clever. A part of me wants nothing more than to prove I am more than what they suppose me to be—the weak and silly appointee of a weak and silly king.
To prove that there is another reason for Cardan to have chosen a mortal seneschal than because I can lie for him.
“I am here in his place,” I say. “To speak in his stead.”
Randalin’s gaze is withering. “There is a rumor that he shot one of his paramours last night. Is it true?”
A servant sets the asked-for pot of tea at my elbow, and I am grateful both for the fortification and for an excuse not to immediately answer.
“Today courtiers told me that girl wore an anklet of swinging rubies sent to her as an apology, but that she could not stand on her own,” says Nihuar, the Seelie representative. She purses her small green lips. “I find everything about that to be in poor taste.”
Fala the Fool laughs, clearly finding it to his taste. “Rubies for the spilling of her ruby-red blood.”
That couldn’t be true. Cardan would have had to arrange it in the time it took me to get from my rooms to the Council. But that doesn’t mean someone else didn’t arrange it on his behalf. Everyone is eager to help a king.
“You’d prefer he’d killed her outright?” I say. My skills in diplomacy are nowhere near as honed as my skills in aggravation. Besides, I’m tired.
“I wouldn’t mind,” says the Unseelie representative, Mikkel, with a chuckle. “Our new High King seems Unseelie through and through, and he will favor us, I think. We could give him a debauch better than the one his Master of Revels brags over, now that we know what he likes.”
“There are other stories,” continues Randalin. “That one of the guard shot High King Cardan to save that courtier’s life. That she is bearing the royal heir. You must tell the High King that his Council stands ready to advise him so that his rule is not plagued by such tales.”
“I’ll be sure to do so,” I say.
The Royal Astrologer, Baphen, gives me a searching look, as though reading correctly my intention not to talk to Cardan about any of this. “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.” He speaks quietly, and yet somehow his voice carries. “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.
“Things have been seen in the forests,” he goes on. “Ancient things, long thought gone from the world, come to peer at him.
“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 blood falls, things grow.
“And so you see,” says Randalin, unaware that I am freaking out, “the High King’s every decision changes Elfhame and influences its inhabitants. 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.”
“We need to watch the Queen of the Undersea, too,” I say. “She’s got a plan and is going to move against us.”