by Holly Black
Chapter 13
"Thou art the unanswered question;
Couldst see thy proper eye,
Alway it asketh, asketh;
And each answer is a lie.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Sphinx"
Kaye pushed through the crowd with Corny and Luis, shoving lavender-skinned bodies and batting aside clouds of pin-size sprites. A phooka with a goat head and dead white eyes called to her as she passed, licking its teeth with a cat's tongue. "Licksy tricksy pixie!”
Ducking beneath the arm of an ogre, Kaye leaped onto a grave marker to avoid three spindly hobmen locked in an embrace in the dirt.
From the top of the marker, she surveyed the court. She saw Ruddles drinking from a bowl and passing it to a number of other animal-headed beings. Ellebere stood beside him—hair fading from wine to gold as it fell over his shoulders, his armor a deep and mossy green.
Roiben himself was talking animatedly to a woman as slim as a wand, her long black hair knotted into a jeweled cape that draped over her back to match the long and twitching tail that was also hung with jewels. From where she was, Kaye couldn't tell whether or not they were arguing, only that he leaned far forward and the woman was gesturing with her hands.
Then, abruptly, Roiben turned and looked in Kaye's direction. Kaye was so surprised that she fell. She forgot to flap her wings. Her head hit a stone, and tears sprung to her eyes. For a moment she just lay there, resting her head against the ground and listening to the folk milling around her. It was awful to be so near him, awful how her heart leapt.
"You shouldn't eat the bones if you chew them like that." She heard someone say nearby. "They're too sharp. Cut up your insides.”
"Haven't you become a little beetleflower?" said another voice. "Marrow's better than meat, but you've got to go through the bones to get it.”
Corny reached out a hand to pull Kaye to her feet. "I don't think he saw you.”
"Perhaps not, but I did." A woman, her wings so tattered that only the veins hung from her back, looked down at Kaye. She held a knife that curved like a snake, and her armor gleamed the same shining purple as the carapace of a beetle.
"Dulcamara," Kaye said, standing. "My friends need to talk to Roiben.”
"Perhaps after the duel," she said. Her pink eyes regarded Kaye with contempt.
"They have to talk to him now," said Kaye. "Please. He can't duel. He has to call it off.”
Dulcamara licked the edge of her blade, painting it with her mouth's blood. "I will play messenger. Give me your words and I will carry them to him with my own tongue.”
"They have to tell him themselves.”
Dulcamara shook her head. "I will allow no more distractions from you than he has already borne.”
Corny stepped up. "Just for a moment. It'll only take a moment. He knows me.”
"Mortals are liars. They can't help it," said the faerie knight. Kaye could see her teeth were as sharp as the knife in her hand, and unlike the mermaids', hers were bone. She smiled at Corny. "It's your nature.”
"Then let me go," Kaye said. "I'm no mortal.”
"You can't." Luis put his hand on her shoulder. "Remember? He's not allowed to see you.”
Mortals are liars. Liars.
"Indeed," Dulcamara said. "Get close to him and I will run you through. No more of the glamoured games you played in the Seelie Court.”
Over and over Kaye heard the words repeat: Liars. Untruth. Lie. Lying. Dying. Dead. She thought about Corny's fairy chess. She had to change the rules of the game. She had to solve the quest. She had to be the single variation. But how could she lie without lying?
Kaye looked over at where Roiben stood, his armor being strapped onto his back. His long hair had two plaits braided in the front, each one wrapped with a sharp silver clasp at the end. He looked pale, his face pinched, as with pain.
"Oh," Kaye said, and then she leaped into the air.
"Stop!" Dulcamara shouted, but Kaye was already in the air, her wings flapping frantically. For a moment, she had a view of the lighthouse on the far shore of City Island, and the glimmering city lights beyond, and in that moment she realized that she could keep flying—up and up and up. She half landed, half fell at Roiben's feet instead.
"You," he said, and she couldn't parse the tone of his voice.
Ellebere grabbed her wrists and wrenched them behind her back. "This is no place for a pixie.”
Ruddles pointed at her with a clawed hand. "To stand before our Lord and King, you must have completed your quest. If not, custom allows us to rend you—”
"I don't care what custom dictates," Roiben pronounced, waving off his chamberlain. When he looked at Kaye, his eyes were empty of any emotion she knew. "Where is my sister?”
"Silarial's got her," Kaye said in a rush. "Ethine's what I came to talk to you about." For the first time since the Tithe, she was afraid of him. She no longer believed that he would not hurt her. He looked as though he might relish it.
Lick the Queen of the Seelie Court's hand, Rath Roiben Riven. Lick it like the dog you are.
"My Lord," said Ruddles, "though I would not choose to contradict you, she may not remain in your presence. She hasn't completed the quest you bestowed on her.”
"I said leave her!" Roiben shouted.
"I can lie," Kaye choked out, her heart beating like a drum against her skin. The ground tilted under her feet and everyone around her went silent. She had no idea if she could pull this off. "I can lie. I am the faery that can lie.”
"That's nonsense," said Ruddles. "Prove it.”
"Are you saying that I can't?" Kaye asked.
"No faery can tell an untruth.”
"So," Kaye said, letting out her breath in a dizzy rush. "If I say I can lie and you say I can't, then one of us must be telling an untruth, right? So either I am a faery that can lie, or you are. Either way, I have completed my quest.”
"That reeks of a riddle, but I see no fault," the chamberlain said.
Roiben made a sound, but she couldn't tell if it was an objection. She thought it might have been a laugh.
"Clever." Ruddles's grin was full of teeth, but he patted her on the back. "We accept your answer with pleasure.”
"I suppose you have succeeded, Kaye," said Roiben. His voice was soft. "From this moment forward your fate is tied to the Unseelie Court. Until the time of my death, you are my consort.”
"Tell them to let me go," Kaye said. She'd won, but her victory felt as hollow as a blown egg.
"Since you're my consort, you may tell them yourself," said Roiben. He did not meet her eyes. "They ought not deny you now.”
Ellebere dropped Kaye's arms before she could speak. Stumbling, she turned to glare at him and Ruddles. "Go," she said, trying to sound commanding. Her voice broke.
They looked to Roiben and moved at his nod. It was still hardly privacy, but it was the closest she was likely to get.
"Why have you come here?" he asked.
She wanted to beg him to be the Roiben she knew, the one who said she was the only thing he wanted, the one who hadn't betrayed her and didn't hate her. "Look at me. Why won't you look at me?”
"The sight of you is a torment." His eyes, when he raised them, were full of shadows. "I thought if I kept you out of this war, it would be the same as keeping you safe. But there you were in the middle of the Seelie Court as though to prove me a fool. And here you are again, courting danger. I only wanted to save one thing, just one thing, to prove there was some good in me after all.”
"I am not a thing," Kaye told him.
He closed his eyes for a moment, covering them with long fingers. "Yes. Of course. I shouldn't have said that.”
She caught his hands and he let her draw them from his face. They were as cold as the falling snow.
"What are you doing to yourself? What's going on?”
"When I became King of the Unseelie Court, I thought we could not win the war. I thought that I would fight and I would die. There is a
kind of mad glee in accepting death as an inevitable cost.”
"Why?" Kaye asked. "Why bind yourself to such a miserable fate? Why not just say 'screw this, I'm going to make birdhouses' or something?”
"To kill Silarial." His eyes glittered like chips of glass. "If she isn't stopped, no one will be safe from her cruelty. It was so hard not to crush her neck when I kissed her. Could you tell it from my face, Kaye? Did you see my hand tremble?”
Kaye heard her own blood pounding at her temples. Could she really have confused loathing with longing? Recalling the blood on Silarial's mouth, she thought of the way his eyes had seemed glazed over with passion. Now it seemed closer to madness. "Then why did you kiss—”
"Because they're my people." Roiben swept his hand over the field, taking in the graveyard and the prison. "I want to save them. I needed her to believe I was in her power so she might agree to my terms. I know it must have seemed—”
"Stop." Kaye felt a cold finger of dread shiver up her spine. "I came here to tell you something," she said. "Something I figured out about the battle.”
He raised a single silvery brow. "What is it?”
"Silarial's going to choose Ethine as her champion.”
His laugh was almost a sob, short and terrible.
"Call off the duel," Kaye said. "Find some excuse. Don't fight.”
"I wondered what terrible thing she might set against me, what monster, what magic? I forgot how clever she is.”
"You don't have to fight Ethine.”
He shook his head. "You don't understand. Far too much is at stake tonight.”
Coldness spread from her heart to freeze her body. "What are you going to do?" Her voice came out sharper than she'd intended.
"I'm going to win," he said. "And you would do me a great service if you told Silarial that I said so.”
"You wouldn't hurt Ethine?”
"I think it's time that you went, Kaye." Roiben swung a strap with his scabbard attached over his shoulder. "I won't ask you to forgive me, because I don't deserve it, but I did love you." He looked down as he said the words. "I do love you.”
"Then stop doing this. Stop not telling me shit. I don't care if it's for my own good or whatever stupid reason—”
"I am telling you shit," Roiben said, and hearing him swear made her laugh. He smiled back, just a little, like he got the joke. In that one moment he seemed heartrendingly familiar.
He reached out, still smiling, as though he were going to touch her face, but he traced the shape of her hair instead. It was not even a real touch, feather-light and never coming to rest, as though he were afraid to dare more. She shivered.
"If you really can lie," he said, "tell me this will end well tonight."
Icy air blew up a thin flurry of snow and tossed back Roiben's hair as he strode past graves to the area marked for the duel. The Night and Bright courts waited restlessly in a loose circle, whispering and chittering, pulling their cloaks of skin and fur closer. Kaye hurried behind the edge of the crowd to where the Bright Queen's courtiers stood, their shimmering gowns blown by the wind.
Ellebere and Dulcamara walked beside Roiben, their insect-like armor glittering against the frost-covered landscape and the stone markers. Roiben dressed as gray as the overcast sky. Talathain and another knight flanked Silarial. They wore green-stained leather with gilt bumps that studded their shoulders and their arms like the markings on a caterpillar. Roiben bent in so deep a bow that he might have touched his lips to the snow. Silarial made only a shallow bob.
Roiben cleared his throat. "For decades there has been a truce between the Seelie and the Unseelie courts. I am both proof of and witness to that old bargain, and I would broker it again. Lady Silarial, do you agree that if I defeat your champion, you will concede a concord between our two courts?”
"If you deal my champion a mortal blow, I so swear," Silarial said. "If my champion lies dying on this field, you will have your peace.”
"And do you have a further wager in this battle?" he asked her.
She smiled. "I will also give over my throne to the Lady Ethine. Gladly I will set the crown of the Seelie Court upon her head, kiss her cheeks, and step down to be her subject should you win.”
Kaye could see Roiben's face from where she stood, but she could not read his expression.
"And if I die on the field of battle," Roiben said, "you shall rule over the Unseelie Court in my place, Lady Silarial. To this I agree.”
"And now I must name my champion," said Silarial, a smile slitting her face. "Lady Ethine, take up arms for me. You are to be the defender of the Bright Court.”
There was a terrible silence among the gathered throng. Ethine shook her head mutely. The wind and the shifting snow came down as the tableau held.
"How you must hate me," Roiben said softly, but the wind seemed to catch those words and blow them out to the audience.
Silarial turned in her frosting-white dress and strode from the field to her bower of ivy. Her people clad Ethine in a thin armor and placed a long sword in her limp grip.
"Go," Roiben told Ellebere and Dulcamara. Reluctantly, they left the field. Kaye could see the doubt in the faces of the Unseelie Court, the tension as Ruddles ground his teeth together and watched Ethine with gleaming black eyes. They had thrown in their lot with Roiben, but his loyalties were uncertain and never more so than at this moment.
Hobmen paced the outside edge of the ring, scattering herbs to mark its boundaries.
At the center of the snowy bank, Roiben made a stiff bow and drew his sword. It curved like a crescent moon and shone like water.
"You don't mean to do this," Ethine said, but in her mouth it was a question.
"Are you ready, Ethine?" Roiben brought his sword up so that the blade seemed to bisect his face, casting half into shadow.
Ethine shook her head. No. Kaye could see Roiben's sister shiver convulsively. Tears ran down her pale cheeks. She dropped her sword.
“Pick it up," he said patiently, as if to a child.
Hurrying, Kaye walked to where the Bright Lady of the Seelie Court sat. Talathain raised his bow, but did not stop her. The sound of blades crashing together made her turn back to the fight. Ethine staggered back, the weight of her sword clearly overbalancing her. Kaye felt sick.
Silarial looked down from her perch, coppery hair plaited with deep blue berries knotting a golden circlet atop her head. She smoothed the skirt of her white gown.
"Kaye," she said. "What a surprise. Are you surprised?”
"He knew it was going to be Ethine before he went out there, you know.”
Silarial frowned. "Oh?”
"I told him." Kaye sat down on the dais. "After I figured out his stupid quest.”
"So you're consort to the King of the Unseelie Court?" Silarial raised one eyebrow. Her smile was pitying. "I'm surprised you still want him.”
That stung. Kaye would have protested, but the words twisted in her mouth.
"But then, you will only be his consort as long as he lives." The Bright Lady turned her gaze to the two figures fighting in the snow.
"Oh, come on," Kaye said. "You act like he's the same kid you sent away. Do you know what he did when I told him about Ethine? He laughed. He laughed and said he'd win.”
"No," said Silarial, turning too quickly. "I cannot believe he would play cat and mouse first if he intended to kill her.”
Kaye squinted. "Is that what he's doing? Maybe it's just not easy to murder your own sister.”
Silarial shook her head. "He craves death, just as he craves me, though perhaps he wishes he didn't want either. He will let her stab him and perhaps tell her some sweet thing with a mouth full of blood. All this taunting is to make her angry, make her swing hard enough for a killing blow. I know him as you do not.”
Kaye closed her eyes against that thought, then forced them open. She didn't know. She honestly didn't know if he would kill his sister or not. She didn't even know what to want, both choices were so terri
ble. "I don't think so," she said carefully. "I don't think he wants to, but he's killed a lot of people he didn't want to kill.”
As if on cue, there was a great cry from the audience. Ethine lay in the snow, struggling to sit up, the tip of Roiben's curved blade at her throat. He smiled down at her kindly, as if she had merely fallen and he was about to help her up again.
"Nicnevin forced him to kill," Silarial said quickly.
Kaye let the anger she felt bleed into her voice. "Now you're forcing him.”
Roiben's words carried over the field. "Since it seems that the crown of the Bright Court will come to you after your death, tell me upon whom you wish to bestow it. Let me do this last thing for you as your brother.”
Relief flooded Kaye. There was a plan. He had a plan.
"Hold!" Silarial shouted, leaping up from her makeshift throne and striding out onto the field. "That was not part of the bargain." As she passed through the ring of herbs, they caught with greenish fire.
Wailing rose from the Unseelie folk while the Bright Court went deathly silent. Roiben stepped back from his sister, taking the blade from her throat. Ethine fell back in the snow, turning her head so that no one might see her face.
"Neither was your interrupting this fight," he said. "You may not reconsider our bargain now that it no longer favors you." His words silenced the Unseelie Court's cries, but Kaye could hear the rest of the crowd murmur in confusion.
Ethine stumbled to her feet. Roiben extended his hand to help her, but she didn't take it. She looked at him with hate in her eyes, but there was no less hate when she looked toward her mistress. She picked up her sword and held it so tightly her knuckles went white.
"My oath was that the crown would go to Ethine if you killed my champion. I did not promise that she could choose a successor." Silarial's voice sounded shrill.
"That was not yours to promise," Roiben said. "What is hers in death, she may give with her last breath. Perhaps she will even pass it back to you. Unlike the Unseelie crown that is won by blood, the Seelie successor is chosen.”
"I will not have my crown bestowed by one of my own handmaidens, nor will I be lessoned by one who once knelt at my feet. You are not one part what Nicnevin was.”