The Wicked King (The Folk of the Air #2)(15)

Whoever shot it, shot it from here.

I jump over and keep going. I would expect a passageway like this to have many branches, but this one has none. It dips down at intervals, like a ramp, and turns in on itself, but it runs in only one direction—straight ahead. I hurry, faster and faster, my hand cupped around my candle flame to keep it from going out.

Then I come to a heavy wooden slab carved with the royal crest, the same one stamped in Cardan’s signet ring.

I give it a push, and it shifts, clearly on a track. There’s a bookshelf on the other side.

Until now, I have only heard stories of the great majesty of High King Eldred’s rooms in the very heart of the palace, just above the brugh, the great branches of the throne itself snaking through his walls. Although I’ve never seen them before, the descriptions make it impossible to think I am anywhere else.

I walk through the enormous, cavernous rooms of Eldred’s apartments, candle in one hand, a knife in the other.

And there, sitting on the High King’s bed, her face stained with tears, is Nicasia.

Orlagh’s daughter, Princess of the Undersea, fostered in the High King’s Court as part of the decades-ago treaty of peace between Orlagh and Eldred, Nicasia was once part of the foursome made up of Cardan and his closest, most awful friends. She was also his beloved, until she betrayed him for Locke. I haven’t seen her by Cardan’s side as often since he ascended to the throne, but ignoring her hardly seems like a killing offense.

Is this what Balekin was whispering about with the Undersea? Is this the way Cardan was to be ruined?

“You?” I shout. “You shot Cardan?”

“Don’t tell him!” She glares at me furiously, wiping wet eyes. “And put away that knife.”

Nicasia wears a robe, heavily embroidered with phoenixes and wrapped tightly around herself. Three earrings shine along her lobes, snaking up the ear all the way to their bluish webbed points. Her hair has gotten darker since I saw it last. It was always the many colors of the sea, but now it is the sea in a storm—a deep greenish black.

“Are you out of your mind?” I yell. “You tried to assassinate the High King of Faerie.”

“I didn’t,” she says. “I swear. I only meant to kill the girl he was with.”

For a moment, I am too stunned by the cruelty and indifference to speak.

I take another look at her, at the robe she’s clutching so tightly. With her words echoing in my head, I suddenly have a clear idea of what happened. “You thought to surprise him in his rooms.”

“Yes,” she says.

“But he wasn’t alone.…” I continue, hoping she will take up the tale.

“When I saw the crossbow on the wall, it didn’t seem it would be so difficult to aim,” she says, forgetting the part about dragging it up through the passageway, though it’s heavy and awkward and that couldn’t have been easy. I wonder how angry she was, how unthinking in her rage.

Of course, perhaps she was thinking entirely clearly.

“It’s treason, you know,” I say aloud. I am shaking, I realize. The aftereffects of believing someone tried to assassinate Cardan, of realizing he could have died. “They’ll execute you. They’ll make you dance yourself to death in iron shoes heated hot as pokers. You’ll be lucky if they put you in the Tower of Forgetting.”

“I am a Princess of the Undersea,” she says haughtily, but I can see the shock on her face as my words register. “Exempt from the laws of the land. Besides, I told you I wasn’t aiming for him.”

Now I understand the worst of her behavior in school: She thought she could never be punished.

“Have you ever used a crossbow before?” I ask. “You put his life at risk. He could have died. You idiot, he could have died.”

“I told you—” she starts to repeat herself.

“Yes, yes, the compact between the sea and the land,” I interrupt her, still furious. “But it just so happens I know that your mother is intent on breaking the treaty. You see, she will say it was between Queen Orlagh and High King Eldred, not Queen Orlagh and High King Cardan. It doesn’t apply any longer. Which means it won’t protect you.”

At that, Nicasia gapes at me, afraid for the first time. “How did you know that?”

I wasn’t sure, I think but do not say. Now I am.

“Let’s assume I know everything,” I tell her instead. “Everything. Always. Yet I’m willing to make a deal with you. I’ll tell Cardan and the guard and the rest of them that the shooter got away, if you do something for me.”

“Yes,” she says before I even lay out the conditions, making the depth of her desperation clear. For a moment, a desire for vengeance rises in me. Once, she laughed at my humiliation. Now I could gloat before hers.

This is what power feels like, pure unfettered power. It’s great.

“Tell me what Orlagh is planning,” I say, pushing those thoughts away.

“I thought you knew everything already,” she returns sulkily, shifting so she can rise from the bed, one hand still clutching her robe. I guess she is wearing very little, if anything, underneath.

You should have just gone in, I want to tell her, suddenly. You should have told him to forget the other girl. Maybe he would have.

“Do you want to buy my silence or not?” I ask, sitting down on the edge of the cushions. “We have only a certain amount of time before someone comes looking for me. If they see you, it will be too late for denials.”