now. Something out there that could give them the power to resist Morien. Something that could free their hearts. They might be able to undo Morien the Last after all. Their future hadn’t yet been sealed with his yoke around their necks.
Though Rags didn’t do his best work in groups, he was powerless against the connection he felt between them. They’d gone from begrudging servants to budding rebels. The knowledge bound them together.
“And perhaps,” Somhairle added quietly, “it might be different for me. Mirrorcraft takes its toll on a body, and my body is already weak. I know my blood tie to Her Majesty means little in the face of courtly paranoia, but perhaps that, coupled with my poor health, will allow me to remain unmirrored. I’ll see what I can do to convince Morien the Last of my frailty.”
One of the Queen’s own sons plotting against a sorcerer. It was better than a money grabber at the Gilded Lily, the kind of play everyone loved because it was pure fantasy.
“Sounds like a plan.” Even without a script—couldn’t’ve read it if he had one—Rags was the one talking. “’Cause we’ve only got two of these blindfolds.”
57
Somhairle
Three the owl was an owl in name only. She was the idea of an owl, imagined by a nobler mind to exist in a nobler time, wrought of wisdom, the hunt, and the purest fae silver.
She was worth more than a full menagerie of sightless, soundless carousel beasts, with a heart and mind and voice of her own. She was every bird that had ever alighted on Somhairle’s windowsill. He was hers, and she was his.
You survived weeks with a Lying One stinking up the place. Three stood beside him, the ruined half of her face to the ruined half of Somhairle’s body, as he sank into his study chair, fortified only by a tray holding two cups and a pitcher of iced barley tea. As fine a weapon as any to use in the fight against a sorcerer like Morien the Last. New understanding of him as a blight on the earth ached in Somhairle’s fevered joints, shared knowledge that bristled Three’s wingfeathers. That’s my boy.
I was hardly exemplary, Somhairle replied.
I wasn’t either, was I? Couldn’t do a thing for the birds, but rules are rules.
What are the rules, exactly?
Plenty of time for that when a Lying One isn’t stinking up the place, Three offered. She’d grown smaller since they’d first met, as though she thought to diminish herself in Morien’s eyes.
Somhairle intended to use a similar tactic.
Morien appeared without fanfare in the doorway, sinister, scarved, silent. Somhairle offered him a smile that trembled, channeling real fear into the role of weak cripple. “At last,” he said, “I can be of use to my mother in her fight against her enemies. This is glorious news, is it not? Please, sit, and have some tea with me, and allow me to offer—”
He doubled forward. Used a napkin he’d already dipped in ice water to cover his face in a chill sheen of wet.
Does this make me a Lying One, too? Somhairle asked as the moments passed. Not too much time that the act went over the top, but enough to remain in keeping with the courtly estimation of Somhairle’s bad health. He straightened stiffly, good hand braced on the table, pale from the strain of containing his excitement and letting Morien make of it what he wished.
There are two kinds of lying, Three replied.
Morien stood directly across the table from Somhairle now. He cast no shadow, was himself a shadow. The scarlet scarves around his head and shoulders had been sloppily wrapped, as if wound in a hurry, and his eyes were the endless dark tunnels of an underground ruin. His gaze rested on Three.
“A passing pain, nothing more. I intend to be strong enough to bear this honor for the crown,” Somhairle continued, hoping to shift Morien’s attention. His hand shook as he poured the first glass, slid it across the table. “Please, Morien the Last, for all you have done for my mother . . . sit with me awhile.”
“In service to Her Majesty, I have been custodian to wonder and horror.” Morien didn’t sit. “Are you prepared for the same, Prince Somhairle?”
Queen Catriona wouldn’t suffer weakness. If Somhairle overplayed his suffering, Morien might attempt to find Three a more durable master.
It doesn’t matter what he thinks, Three said. If you can call what he does thinking.