The Prince of Secrets

by A J Lancaster

  He stuck the feather in his trouser pocket. Feathers were not the issue right now. He’d chosen one of the highest altitude shepherd’s huts as his destination. It was as unoccupied as he’d hoped, but he didn’t go inside. Instead, he made his way to a patch of dying grass in the lee of the hut. The wind stirred the lifeless blades, ruffling his coverts with its cool touch, promising snow.

  Despite his elevated position, Stariel House wasn’t visible, hidden by forests and the folds of the landscape, but he wasted a moment gazing in that direction anyway. Hopefully, Hetta would forgive him for what he was about to do. Storms above, he hoped Stariel would forgive him.

  Before he could change his mind, he inscribed a rough circle around himself in the grass with the end of a sharp stick. To fae that did not have permission to enter Stariel, the land exerted a repelling pressure that grew weightier the longer one resisted it. To lesser fae, it was as impenetrable as a literal wall. To the greater ranks of Faerie, it was permeable, but only at great cost, and only if Hetta wasn’t actively forcing her will down upon the invader. Wyn had been exempt from that pressure for nearly all his time at Stariel, first by the permission of the old Lord Henry, then by his daughter’s.

  Now Wyn extended that exemption with an effort of will, until it blanketed the space inside the circle. He sent a mental apology in the direction of the faeland. It wouldn’t like this, and he could feel its presence already gathering around his little piece of magic suspiciously.

  “Lamorkin,” he called. “I summon thee. Lamorkin! Lamorkin!”

  There was power in the names of fae, and in this case there was an additional bond between him and the fae he summoned. He invoked it as he called, throwing the name along with his will out along the bond. He must remember to teach Hetta to set the spells that would prevent translocation into the estate, but it was convenient that there was no such spell in place right now or his summons could not have worked.

  He waited, and the bond pulled tight. A faint popping noise like pressure equalising against his eardrums, and then he was no longer alone in the circle.

  The fae he’d summoned gave a slow and deeply unsettling smile, showing pointed teeth. “Why hello, my dear Hallowyn.”

  “Hello, Godparent,” he said.

  8

  Lamorkin

  Lamorkin was currently presenting the appearance of a short, blue-skinned androgyne with slate-grey hair that matched the colour of their teeth and long claws. Since they were a shapeshifter without a primary form and took pleasure in disconcerting their audience, this was far from the strangest shape Wyn had seen Lamorkin in. Consequently, he merely bowed the correct degree of acknowledgement. Lamorkin pursed their bluebell lips, slightly piqued at his lack of reaction.

  “Nearly ten years without a word, and now you summon me twice in one moon, princeling.” Their voice, which was usually the same no matter what shape they took, was high-pitched and oddly resonant, as if they were speaking from more than one voice box simultaneously. They were also prone to making a complex clicking noise when in thought that no human was capable of reproducing. Lamorkin made such a sound now, their beetle-black eyes taking him in in rapid flickers. “Have you brought me a gift to compensate me for your rather abrupt summons? I was occupied elsewhere.”

  “Please accept this as thanks,” Wyn said, holding out the bottle of sloe gin he’d brought with him from the house. Fresh bread was traditional, but Wyn knew his godparent’s taste better than that.

  Lamorkin’s eyes gleamed, but they accepted the gift with unhurried grace. It disappeared with a similar pop to the one that had heralded Lamorkin’s arrival.

  “Well, now. I’m pleased to see you haven’t forgotten your manners entirely, living with the mortals. Now let me look at you. You didn’t give me time to properly examine you last time. You were far too rushed for a godchild who has not seen their godparent in years.” Last time had been a few weeks ago, after the draken attack. Wyn had been desperately in need of information on the state of the fae courts. Prior to that, no one in Faerie had known his location—not even his godparent.

  Lamorkin made a show of walking a slow path around Wyn, keeping inside the boundaries that he’d drawn. Wyn kept his expression impassive, though he greatly disliked having Lamorkin at his back. Habit, more than anything else; if Lamorkin had meant him harm, he’d have died ten years ago, on his father’s orders.

  “Well,” said Lamorkin when they’d completed their circuit. “Well, indeed. Grown, haven’t you? Perhaps time spent in the Mortal Realm wasn’t so foolish a choice after all. You have changed much, letting yourself be subject to mortality.” Their eyes slitted. “I see your blood feathers are starting to grow in. Very like your sire’s they will look when they are finished.”

  Wyn flinched, an infinitesimal movement that most of his mortal friends would’ve missed, but Lamorkin caught it. They smiled a shark-tooth grin of satisfaction.

  “You have grown too trusting,” they said, shaking their head. They meant, of course, that Wyn was out of practice at hiding his reactions after so long away from the fae courts. The fae lived for such signs of weakness.

  Wyn was too preoccupied by Lamorkin’s comment about his wings to answer. He knew he resembled his father—a bit of knowledge so familiar he’d thought it lacked any power to hurt. But the news that his wings had begun to sprout his father’s distinctive red patterning…it hit him bitterly, a betrayal he hadn’t anticipated. King Aeros’s wings were the same silvery white as Wyn’s, except for the blood crimson of his primaries, a difference that Wyn had always found reassuring. But a stormdancer’s colours sometimes changed as they aged. ‘Bloodfeathers’ was the term for the final stage of mature plumage.

  He resisted the urge to fan his wings around to see the change for himself. It would be a futile exercise anyway, if the new feathers were starting between his shoulder blades; the change clearly hadn’t yet reached even as far as his secondaries based on the untouched feather he’d plucked earlier, which meant he’d need a mirror to check. It didn’t stop him imagining the change in his minds’ eye, a thin line of small red feathers stark against white. How long till his bloodfeathers came in fully? Even if they do eventually match Father’s, it’s only a superficial change, he told himself sternly. It means nothing. But he wasn’t sure he could’ve said the words aloud.

  Lamorkin began to move again, pacing the boundaries of the circle that kept them from crossing over into the rest of Stariel.

  “Hmmm.” They made a liquid gurgling noise in their throat. “Busy, busy, boy, I see.” Their shape began to distort with their restlessness, smooth blue skin growing lighter, scalier, fingerbones shifting so that what had been relatively human-shaped appendages now appeared as many-jointed as millipedes. Lamorkin wriggled their still shifting fingers in satisfaction as their ears migrated upwards on their skull, becoming long and floppy for a few seconds before drawing upwards and hardening into horned protrusions. It was always thus with one of the maulkfae; they changed as often and as easily as breathing.

  “I would ask for your advice, godparent,” Wyn said politely, standing as still and straight as he could manage under their appraisal.

  The maulkfae paused and tilted their now serpentine neck to one side. Their beetle-black eyes narrowed, framed by poisonous green scales that transformed into tiny feathers as he watched. “I give nothing for free, boy. This you already know.”

  “Yes, godparent,” Wyn said, not letting a trace of the frustration he felt into his voice. “But you have already been paid for your advice and protection.”

  “Not limitless advice and protection,” Lamorkin argued, but they seemed pleased with his words. Lamorkin had always appreciated a certain degree of assertiveness, so long as it was tempered with respect. And, in their own deeply strange way, they were probably as fond of Wyn as of any living creature. A line of green feathers grew down from their eyes up and around their ears, darkening in hue and lengthening into graceful, decorative plumes. />
  “Not limitless, no,” agreed Wyn. “But as far as you are able, if I ask it and it does not endanger you. So you agreed to my mother.”

  Lamorkin made another oddly liquid sound of satisfaction. “Your mother. Yessss. The price was paid.”

  Wyn didn’t like to dwell on exactly what his mother had bargained. She’d never told him, and she’d disappeared before he’d been old enough to pursue the matter. Lamorkin, too, would not tell him. He suspected the price had been high. Godparents were rare and valuable. Traditionally, only royal fae both needed and could afford to bargain for them. Children were rare for greater fae and even more so for royal fae. But ThousandSpire was an exception, its bloodline unusually fecund. By the time Wyn had been born, King Aeros was of the view that he had sufficient children that any one requiring a godparent to reach adulthood was not worth the expense, so Wyn’s mother had made the arrangements for her sixth child entirely herself. The wider court thought Wyn without one; one of his earliest memories was of his mother explaining to him that he must never reveal otherwise. He wondered, sometimes, if all his siblings had such secret godparents.

  “I hope you’ve been well in the time since our last meeting.”

  Lamorkin’s cheeks crinkled as they smiled, their mouth now much wider than it had been. “And that is why you are my favourite, Hallowyn. Your good nature will probably be the death of you, but it is so refreshing to be welcomed with such sincerity!”

  “I do try to please you.”

  They laughed, a beautiful, disturbing sound made of harmonics and echoes, like a hundred songbirds trapped in a cave. “Oh, oh! I have missed you, clever one! But what a fuss you have caused.”

  “Will you tell me exactly what kind of fuss I have caused of late?”

  Lamorkin paused in their circling and bared their teeth in wicked pleasure. Their body began to elongate, and two bony knobs protruded out from their spine. They had played this trick before, so Wyn wasn’t outwardly discomposed when less than a minute later he found himself facing a fair approximation of King Aeros. Of course, his father’s skin didn’t ripple constantly, and nor did he have the habit of twitching his fingers as if unable to keep from intermittently testing his finger-joints. The key difference, however, was that King Aeros’s eyes were burnished gold rather than the beetle black of the maulkfae.

  Lamorkin extended their newly grown wings tentatively, the movement limited by the size of the circle. They glinted silver and crimson in the sunset. Lamorkin could have broken through Wyn’s circle—it wasn’t a construction designed to withstand forceful opposition—but then the full weight of Stariel’s displeasure would fall on them. Already Wyn could feel Stariel’s attention growing, aware that something was amiss within its borders. Hetta was probably getting a hell of a headache from it, he thought with a twinge of guilt.

  Lamorkin spoke. This time it wasn’t in their usual too-complex pitch, but in a voice that Wyn hadn’t heard for nearly a decade and hadn’t missed.

  “It seems the old adage remains true, though I had begun to doubt it: ‘The same storm that sinks ships brings unexpected treasure.’” The King of Ten Thousand Spires had a deep, rich voice, and he spoke with a precise accent that was—if one set aside what he might be saying in it—pleasant to listen to.

  Wyn swallowed. It was hard to remember that it wasn’t really his father standing in front of him.

  Lamorkin-Aeros went on, and it became clear that he was replying to someone, though Lamorkin didn’t bother to reproduce the other side of the conversation. “Hmmm. Your proposal has merit, Rakken, though I am inclined to prefer Aroset’s suggestion. We shall see.” Lamorkin-Aeros chuckled, a bright, happy sound. “But in any case, perhaps my youngest will not be such a disappointment after all.”

  It became clear that was the end of the little display, for Lamorkin tilted their head and began to shift their form in earnest once more. White and red feathers became layers of delicate spines—completely impractical for actual flight, but still quite fetching—growing over Lamorkin like a cloak.

  Cold that wasn’t due to the weather crept down Wyn’s spine so that he had to fight the urge to huddle into his wings.

  “My siblings,” he said. Aroset was the heir presumptive, second-oldest but first in cruelty; Rakken was third in line, the most ambitious and probably the most ruthless. Wyn doubted he would enjoy either of their schemes.

  “Yessss,” agreed Lamorkin.

  “Do you know what either of them are proposing?” Was his father playing them against each other, dangling favour as the reward for whichever of them could strike at Wyn first? It wouldn’t be the first time King Aeros had encouraged that kind of game. His heart sank. Did his siblings want him as dead as his father did? All of them? “And what of my other siblings?”

  Lamorkin shrugged. “It’s a fair warning, Hallowyn.”

  It was. Maulkfae were bound by their own peculiar rules; they had told him what they could.

  Wyn paused. “Is there any way to free me from my oath to DuskRose’s princess?” Before he’d fled, he had promised to marry Princess Sunnika. That had been before he’d realised his father planned to murder him and pin the blame for it on DuskRose, neatly providing an excuse to reignite the war between the courts. By fleeing, he’d broken the oath between him and DuskRose’s princess and given both courts a strong motivation to retrieve him—dead or alive. On a personal level, the broken oath had also fractured Wyn’s power.

  “Yessss,” Lamorkin said, clearly enjoying themself.

  Wyn’s lips twitched at the very fae bit of humour. He had walked straight into that. “Please, Godparent, tell me what you know about those ways.” Before Lamorkin could speak, he held up a finger. “And I know you are about to say that my death will free me, but whilst I always appreciate your sense of humour, I’m in some kind of haste today.” He gestured at the world beyond the circle’s bounds. “Stariel grows increasingly upset at my bending of its boundaries. So I would ask you to take pity on your impatient godson.”

  Lamorkin pouted. “You are no fun, Hallowyn. I have years’ worth of mockerings to work through.”

  “And I do look forward to hearing them another time.”

  Lamorkin frowned at him, as if they were certain that Wyn was mocking them but couldn’t quite figure out how. They fluffed up their spines, much like a sparrow settling into a dust bath, and grumbled, “Oh, very well then. But you cannot ask me to speak in straight lines entirely, my princeling. It is against my nature.”

  Wyn inclined his head.

  “If you reject the solution of your own death, there are always other parties to consider,” Lamorkin said slyly.

  He frowned. “Princess Sunnika? Even if I were the murderous sort, that would not free me of my oath. If anything, it would only break it more resoundingly than before.”

  “I wasn’t speaking of DuskRose’s princess.”

  “Then who—oh, you mean my father,” Wyn said with a sigh. “My own oath-debt will still stand, but the one affecting ThousandSpire will no longer hold, since it was between my father and DuskRose’s queen. Which would free me of some of the political consequences of my broken oath, at least.” He shook his head. “That is not a path open to me, godparent, although I thank you for the suggestion.” Lamorkin had no true moral compass—like many of the older fae—so it was useless to try to explain to them why Wyn could not murder anyone, let alone his own father.

  The Lamorkin nodded graciously. “Of course. You cannot reclaim the power that is your birthright that way.”

  Wyn didn’t bother to refute this assertion. “Is there another way to heal the broken oath? Short of marrying Princess Sunnika,” he added, to prevent Lamorkin’s otherwise inevitable response.

  “You could persuade DuskRose to voluntarily release you from your half of the promise,” Lamorkin said, their eyes gleaming in appreciation as they found the loophole he hadn’t closed. If DuskRose were even willing to negotiate, they would demand a high price to absolve h
im of his oath. Wyn had already considered that angle but had failed so far to think of anything he could offer DuskRose that might tempt them. Not when Wyn’s broken oath tilted the balance in their favour in the war against ThousandSpire.

  “Thank you, godparent. And other than that?” Patience, Wyn had found, was the key to a great many things.

  Lamorkin tilted their head to one side. They were now covered with thick, luxuriant black fur, with small, bear-like ears. They had shrunk in size so that they had to look up to meet Wyn’s gaze. “If you wish for more power, you had not yet passed through the Maelstrom when you left the Spires.”

  “I had not thought…” Wyn trailed off, unable to find a proper ending to his sentence that wasn’t false. The Maelstrom was a permanent magical storm at the heart of ThousandSpire. Legend said that it bestowed power upon those it deemed worthy. In reality, it mainly bestowed death.

  Lamorkin ran their shining claws through their coat, letting out a little murmur of pleasure at the sensation. “You had thought, my Hallowyn. But you are afraid.” Abruptly, they straightened, growing taller. “You are right to be afraid. You cannot survive the Maelstrom by playing at being human.”

  “What makes you think the Maelstrom will grant me any more power than I possess now?” Wyn countered.

  Lamorkin made a disparaging sound. “There are no guarantees with such matters, foolish princeling. This you know. You asked for possibilities; I have given them to you.”

  Wyn shook his head again, the churning, lightning-shot clouds of the Maelstrom rising in his mind’s eye. “I cannot reach the Maelstrom even if I wished it.” Portals were the main magical method of moving between two locations in Faerie, but even if he’d been able to find an appropriate resonance point here in the Mortal Realm, the Court of Ten Thousand Spires had perhaps the strongest wards against all types of translocation in all of Faerie, built up over the years of its war with DuskRose. Trying to link to anywhere inside his home faeland was like hitting a wall of solid diamond. And he would never be able to reach the heart of ThousandSpire overland, not before his father detected his presence. It was a relief to have these excuses to fall back on.