“He survived on cat milk?” I exclaim. The Roach gives me a look, as though I’ve missed the point of his story entirely.
“After she was sent to the Tower, Cardan was sent to Balekin,” he says.
I think again of the globe I held in Eldred’s study, of Cardan dressed in rags, looking to the woman in my chamber for approval, which came only when he was awful. An abandoned prince, weaned on cat milk and cruelty, left to roam the palace like a little ghost. I think of myself, huddling in a tower of Hollow Hall, watching Balekin enchant a mortal into beating his younger brother for poor swordsmanship.
“Take her back to the Tower,” I tell the Roach.
He raises his eyebrows. “You don’t want to hear more about your parents?”
“She gets too much satisfaction in the telling. I’ll have the information from her without so many bargains.” Besides, I have planted a more important seed. Now I have only to see if it grows.
He gives me a half smile. “You like it, don’t you? Playing games with us? Pulling our strings and seeing how we dance?”
“The Folk, you mean?”
“I imagine you’d like it as well with mortals, but we’re what you’re practiced in.” He doesn’t sound disapproving, but it still feels like being skewered on a pin. “And perhaps some of us offer a particular savor.”
He looks down his curved goblin nose at me until I answer. “Is that meant to be a compliment?”
At that, his smile blooms. “It’s no insult.”
Gowns arrive the next day, boxes of them, along with coats and cunning little jackets, velvet pants and tall boots. They all look as though they belong to someone ferocious, someone both better and worse than me.
I dress myself, and before I am done, Tatterfell comes in. She insists on sweeping back my hair and catching it up in a new comb, one carved in the shape of a toad with a single cymophane gem for an eye.
I look at myself in a coat of black velvet tipped with silver and think of the care with which Taryn chose the piece. I want to think about that and nothing else.
Once, she said that she hated me a little for being witness to her humiliation with the Gentry. I wonder if that’s why I have such a hard time forgetting about what happened with Locke, because she saw it, and whenever I see her, I remember all over again how it felt to be made a fool.
When I look at my new clothes, though, I think of all the good things that come from someone knowing you well enough to understand your hopes and fears. I may not have told Taryn all the awful things I’ve done and the terrible skills I’ve acquired, but she’s dressed me as though I had.
In my new clothes, I make my way to a hastily called Council meeting and listen as they debate back and forth whether Nicasia took Cardan’s angry message back to Orlagh and whether fish can fly (that’s Fala).
“Whether or not she did doesn’t matter,” says Madoc. “The High King has made his position clear. If he won’t marry, then we have to assume that Orlagh is going to fulfill her threats. Which means she’s going to go after his blood.”
“You are moving very fast,” says Randalin. “Ought we not yet consider that the treaty might still hold?”
“What good does it do to consider that?” asks Mikkel with a sidelong glance at Nihuar. “The Unseelie Courts do not survive on wishes.”