The Wicked King (The Folk of the Air #2)(24)

It’s my bad luck that tonight is when she chooses to barge in, with Cardan’s clothing scattered over my rug and a heap of his bloody bandages still on a low table.

“I persuaded Madoc to gift the remainder of Tatterfell’s debt to you,” Taryn announces. “And I’ve brought you all your coats and dresses and jewels.”

I look into the imp’s inkdrop eyes. “You mean Madoc has her spying for him.”

Tatterfell’s lip curls, and I am reminded how sharply she pinches. “Aren’t you a sly and suspicious girl? You ought to be ashamed, saying such a thing.”

“I am grateful for the times you were kind,” I say. “If Madoc has given your debt to me, consider it paid long ago.”

Tatterfell frowns unhappily. “Madoc spared my lover’s life when he could have taken it by right. I pledged him a hundred years of my service, and that time is nearly up. Do not dishonor my vow by thinking it can be dismissed with a wave of your hand.”

I am stung by her words. “Are you sorry he sent you?”

“Not yet,” she says, and goes back to work.

I head toward my bedroom, picking up Cardan’s bloody rags before Tatterfell can. As I pass the hearth, I toss them into the flames. The fire flares up.

“So,” I ask my sister, “what did you bring me?”

She points to my bed, where she has spread my old things on my newly rumpled sheets. It’s odd to see the clothes and jewels I haven’t had in months, the things Madoc bought for me, the things Oriana approved. Tunics, gowns, fighting gear, doublets. Taryn even brought the homespun I used to sneak around Hollow Hall and the clothes we wore when we snuck to the mortal world.

When I look at it all, I see a person who is both me and not. A kid who went to classes and didn’t think the stuff she was learning would be all that important. A girl who wanted to impress the only dad she knew, who wanted a place in the Court, who still believed in honor.

I am not sure I fit in these clothes anymore.

Still, I hang them in my closet, beside my two black doublets and a single pair of high boots.

I open a box of my jewels. Earrings given to me for birthdays, a golden cuff, three rings—one with a ruby that Madoc gave me on a blood moon revel, one with his crest that I don’t even remember receiving, and a thin gold one that was a present from Oriana. Necklaces of carved moonstone, chunks of quartz, carved bone. I slide the ruby ring onto my left hand.

“And I brought some sketches,” she says, taking out a pad of paper and sitting cross-legged on my bed. Neither of us are great artists, but her drawings of clothing are easy to understand. “I want to take them to my tailor.”

She’s imagined me in a lot of black jackets with high collars, the skirts slashed up the sides for easy movement. The shoulders look as though they’re armored, and, in a few cases, she has drawn what appears to be a single shiny sleeve of metal.

“They can measure me,” she says. “You won’t even have to go to the fittings.”

I give her a long look. Taryn doesn’t like conflict. Her manner of dealing with all the terror and confusion in our lives has been to become immensely adaptable, like one of those lizards that changes color to match its surroundings. She’s the person who knows what to wear and how to behave, because she studies people carefully and mimics them.

She’s good at picking out clothes to send a certain message—even if the message of her drawings appears to be “stay away from me or I will chop off your head”—and it’s not like I don’t think she wants to help me, but the effort she’s put into this, especially as her own marriage is imminent, seems extraordinary.

“Okay,” I say. “What do you want?”

“What do you mean?” she asks, all innocence.

“You want us to be friends again,” I say, sliding into more modern diction with her. “I appreciate that. You want me to come to your wedding, which is great, because I want to be there. But this—this is too much.”

“I can be nice,” she says, but does not meet my eyes.

I wait. For a long moment, neither of us speaks. I know she saw Cardan’s clothes tossed on the floor. Her not immediately asking about that should have been my first clue that she wanted something.

“Fine.” She sighs. “It’s not a big deal, but there is a thing I want to talk to you about.”

“No kidding,” I say, but I can’t help smiling.

She shoots me a look of vast annoyance. “I don’t want Locke to be Master of Revels.”

“You and me both.”

“But you could do something about it!” Taryn winds her hands in her skirts. “Locke craves dramatic experiences. And as Master of Revels, he can create these—I don’t even know what to call them—stories. He doesn’t so much think of a party as food and drinks and music, but rather a dynamic that might create conflict.”

“Okay…” I say, trying to imagine what that means for politics. Nothing good.

“He wants to see how I’ll react to the things he does,” she says.

That’s true. He wanted to know, for instance, if Taryn loved him enough to let him court me while she stood by, silent and suffering. I think he’d have been interested in finding out the same about me, but I turned out to be very prickly.