Cleave together lest
You face the rising tide.
Spurn the Sea once,
We will have your blood.
Spurn the Sea twice,
We will have your clay.
Spurn the Sea thrice,
Your crown will away.
The gathered Folk of the land, courtiers and petitioners, servants and Gentry, grow wide-eyed at the words.
“Is that a proposal?” Locke asks. I think he means to speak so that only Cardan hears him, but in the silence, his voice carries.
“A threat, I’m afraid,” Cardan returns. He glares at the girl, at the gray-skinned man, at everyone. “You’ve delivered your message. I have no bit of doggerel to send back—my own fault for having a seneschal who cannot double as my Court Poet—but I will be sure to crumple up some paper and drop it into the water when I do.”
For a moment, everyone stays as they were, exactly in their places.
Cardan claps his hands, startling the sea Folk. “Well?” he shouts. “Dance! Make merry! Isn’t that what you came for?”
His voice rings with authority. He no longer just looks like the High King of Elfhame; he sounds like the High King.
A shiver of premonition goes through me.
The Undersea courtiers, in their sodden garments and gleaming pearls, watch him with pale, cold eyes. Their faces are unexpressive enough that I cannot tell if his shouting upset them. But when the music begins again, they take one another’s webbed hands and sweep away into the revel, to leap and cavort as though this was something they did for pleasure themselves beneath the waves.
My spies have remained hidden through this encounter. Locke melts away from the throne to whirl with two mostly naked selkies. Nicasia remains nowhere to be seen, and when I look for Dulcamara, I cannot spot her, either. Dressed as I am, I cannot bear to speak with anyone in an official capacity. I tear the stinking crown from my head and toss it into the grass.
I think about shimmying out of the tattered gown, but before I can decide to actually do it, Cardan waves me over to the throne.
I do not bow. Tonight, after all, I am a ruler in my own right. The Queen of Mirth, who is not laughing.
“I thought you were leaving,” he snaps.