How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories (The Folk of the Air)

It was not so many years after that Cardan found himself staring at the polished door of his eldest brother’s home. On it was a massive carving of a sinister face. As he watched, its wooden mouth twisted up into an even more sinister smile.

You can’t frighten me, Cardan thought.

“Welcome, my princes,” said the door, swinging open to admit him and Balekin into the ominously named Hollow Hall. As Cardan passed through, a wooden eye gave him a companionable wink.

You can’t befriend me, either, he thought.

Balekin led his youngest brother to a room full of furniture covered in velvet and silk. A human woman stood in a corner, dressed in drab gray, her hair streaked with silver and pulled back into a tight bun. A worn leather strap lay across her palm.

“So I am supposed to make you into a proper Prince of Elfhame,” Balekin said, letting his greatcoat, with its bear-fur collar, drop to the floor, kicking it aside to be picked up by some servant, and then settling himself on one of the low and luxuriant couches.

“Or a delightfully improper one,” Cardan said, hoping to sound like the sort of younger brother who might be worth taking under Balekin’s wing. He led one of the largest and most influential circles at Court, the Grackles, who were committed to merriment and decadence. It was well known that the courtiers who attended the revels in Hollow Hall were indolent pleasure seekers. Maybe there was room for Cardan among them. He was indolent! He liked seeking pleasure!

Balekin smiled. “That’s almost charming, little brother. And indeed, you ought to flatter me, because if I hadn’t taken you in, you might have been sent to be fostered in one of the low Courts. There are many places where an inconsequential Prince of Elfhame would be the source of much diversion, none of it comfortable for you.”

Cardan didn’t flinch, but for the first time, he understood that as terrible as things had been up to now, something worse might yet be ahead.

Ever since Dain had tricked him so that the arrow that slew the lover of his father’s seneschal seemed to have belonged to Cardan, ever since his mother had been sent to the Tower of Forgetting for his supposed crime and Eldred had refused to hear the truth, ever since he had been sent from the palace in disgrace, Cardan had felt like the boy in Aslog’s story. His heart was stone.

Balekin continued. “I brought you here because you are one of the few people who see Dain for what he is and are, therefore, valuable to me. But that doesn’t mean you’re not a disgrace.

“You will choose clothing suitable to your station and no longer wear garments that are dirty and torn. You will stop scavenging what you can find from the kitchens or stealing from banquets, but sit at a table with cutlery—and use it. You will learn some modicum of swordplay, and you will attend the palace school, where I expect you to do what they ask of you.”

Cardan curled his lip. He had been forced into a blue doublet by one of the palace servants and aggressively groomed, down to the combing of the tuft of hair at the end of his tail, but the clothing was old. Loose threads hung from his cuffs, and the fabric of his trousers was worn and thin at the knees. But since it had never bothered him before, he refused to let it bother him now. “All will be as you say, brother.”

Balekin’s smile grew lazy. “Now I will show you what happens if you fail. This is Margaret. Margaret, come here.” He gestured to the human woman with the silvery hair.

She went toward them, although something was unsettling about the way she moved. It was as though she were sleepwalking.

“What’s the matter with her?” Cardan asked.

Balekin yawned. “She’s ensorcelled. A victim of her own foolish bargain.”

Cardan had little experience of mortals. Some came through the High Court, musicians and artists and lovers who had wished for magic and found it. And there were the twin mortal children that Grand General Madoc had stolen and insisted on treating as though they were his own born daughters, kissing them on the tops of their heads and resting his clawed fingers protectively on their shoulders.

“Humans are like mice,” Balekin went on. “Dead before they learn how to be canny. Why shouldn’t they serve us? It gives their short lives some meaning.”

Cardan looked at Margaret. The emptiness of her eyes still unnerved him. But the strap in her hand unnerved him more.

“She is going to punish you,” Balekin said. “And do you know why?”

“I am certain you are about to enlighten me,” answered Cardan with a sneer. It was almost a relief to know that curbing his tongue wouldn’t help, as he’d never been very good at it.

“Because I won’t dirty my hands,” Balekin said. “Better you experience the humiliation of being beaten by a creature who ought to be your inferior. And every time you think of how disgusting mortals are—with their pocked skin and their decaying teeth and their fragile, little minds—I want you to think of this moment, when you were lower than even that. And I want you to remember how you willingly submitted, because if you don’t, you will have to leave Hollow Hall and my mercy.

“Now, little brother, you must choose a future.”

It turned out that Cardan didn’t have a heart of stone after all. As he removed his shirt and sank to his knees, as he fisted his hands and tried not to cry out when the strap fell, he burned with hatred. Hatred for Dain; for his father; for all the siblings who didn’t take him in and the one who did; for his mother, who spat at his feet as she was led away; for stupid, disgusting mortals; for all of Elfhame and everyone in it. Hate that was so bright and hot that it was the first thing that truly warmed him. Hate that felt so good that he welcomed being consumed by it.

Not a heart of stone, but a heart of fire.

Under Balekin’s tutelage, Cardan remade himself. He learned to drink a vast variety and quantity of wines, learned how to take powders that made him laugh and fall down and feel nothing at all. He visited the weavers and tailors with his brother, choosing garments with cuffs of feathers and exquisite embroidery, with collars as sharp as the points of his ears, and fabrics as soft as the tuft of his tail—a tail he tucked away, for it showed too much of what he schooled his face to hide. A poisonous flower displays its bright colors, a cobra flares its hood; predators ought not to shrink from extravagance. And that was what he was being polished and punished into being.

And when he returned to the palace dressed magnificently, behaving with perfect deference toward Eldred, shown off by his brother as though he were a tamed hawk, everyone pretended he was no longer in disgrace. Balekin relaxed his rules toward Cardan after that, allowing him to do what he wished so long as he didn’t draw the ire of their father.

That spring, Elfhame bustled with preparations for a state visit from Queen Orlagh and had little time to consider an errant prince anyway.

There were whispers that if Orlagh, known for her brutal and swift conquests over her rivals in the Undersea, didn’t already control everything beneath the waves, she soon would. And she had announced that she wanted to foster her daughter on land. In the High Court of Elfhame.

An honor. And an opportunity, if someone was clever enough to exploit it.

Orlagh hopes the girl will marry one of Eldred’s offspring, Prince Cardan overheard a courtier say. And then the queen will scheme to make that child the next ruler of Elfhame, so her daughter, Nicasia, may rule land and sea.

After which, the spouse will likely meet with an accident, put in another.

But if that was what some thought, others saw only the immediate benefits of such an alliance. Balekin and two of his sisters determined they would be the ones to befriend Princess Nicasia, imagining that friendship could change their balance of power in the family.

Cardan thought they were fools. Their father already favored his second-born child, Princess Elowyn. And if she wasn’t chosen as his heir, it would be Prince Dain, with his machinations. None of the others had the shadow of a chance.

Not that he cared.

He decided he would be thoroughly unpleasant to the girl from the sea, no matter how Balekin punished him for it. He would not have anyone think he was a part of this farce. He would not give her the opportunity to disdain him.

By the time Queen Orlagh and Princess Nicasia arrived, the great hall was draped in blue cloth. Dishes of cold, sliced scallops and tiny shrimp quivered on trays of ice beside honeycomb and oatcakes. Musicians had taken up playing merfolk songs on their instruments, the music strange to Cardan’s ear.

He wore a doublet of blue velvet. Gold hoops hung from his ears, and rings covered his fingers. His hair, dark as the sloes of a blackthorn, tumbled around his cheeks. When courtiers looked at him, he could tell they saw someone new, someone they were drawn to and a little afraid of. The feeling was as heady as any wine.

Then the procession arrived, clad like a conquering army. They were draped in teeth and bone and skins, with Orlagh leading them. She wore a gown of stingray, and her black hair was threaded with pearls. Around her throat hung the partial jawbone of a shark.

Cardan watched Queen Orlagh present her daughter to the High King. The girl had hair the deep aqua of the sea, drawn back with combs of coral. Her dress was gray sharkskin, and her brief curtsy was that of someone who had never questioned her own value. Her gaze swept the room with undisguised contempt.

He watched as Balekin swooped to her side, doubtless making light, charming conversation full of little compliments. He saw her laugh.

Prince Cardan bit into one of the raw, wriggling shrimps. It was foul. He spat it onto the packed dirt floor. One of the Undersea guards eyed him, obviously feeling that this was an insult.

Cardan made a rude gesture, and the guard looked away.

He secured himself a large plate of oatcakes slathered with honey and was dunking them into tea when Princess Nicasia wandered over to him. He paused midchew and hastily swallowed.

“You must be Prince Cardan,” she said.

“And you’re the princess of fishes.” He sneered, making sure she knew he wasn’t impressed. “Over whom everyone is making such an enormous fuss.”

“You’re very rude,” she told him. Across the floor, he saw Princess Caelia rushing toward them, her corn-silk hair flying behind her, too late to prevent the international incident that was her youngest brother.

“I have many other, even worse, qualities.”

Surprisingly, that made Nicasia smile, a lovely, venomous little grin. “Do you now? That’s excellent, because everyone else in the palace seems very dull.”Text © 2024 NôvelDrama.Org.

Understanding came to him all at once. The daughter of fearsome Orlagh, expected to rule over the brutal, vast depths of the Undersea, had cold-bloodedness for her birthright. Of course she would despise empty flattery and have contempt for the silly fawning of his siblings. He grinned back at her, sharing the joke.

At that moment, Princess Caelia arrived, her mouth open, ready to say something that might distract their honored guest from a wretched younger brother who might not be so tame after all.

“Oh, go away, Caelia,” Cardan said before she had a chance to speak. “The sea princess finds you wearisome.”

His sister closed her mouth abruptly, looking comically surprised.

Nicasia laughed.

For all the charm and distinction of his siblings, it was Cardan who won the Undersea’s favor. It was the first time he’d won anything.

With Nicasia by his side, Cardan drew others to him, until he formed a malicious little foursome who prowled the isles of Elfhame looking for trouble. They unraveled precious tapestries and set fire to part of the Crooked Forest. They made their instructors at the palace school weep and made courtiers terrified to cross them.

Valerian, who loved cruelty the way some Folk loved poetry.

Locke, who had a whole empty house for them to run amok in, along with an endless appetite for merriment.

Nicasia, whose contempt for the land made her eager to have all of Elfhame kiss her slipper.

And Cardan, who modeled himself on his eldest brother and learned how to use his status to make Folk scrape and grovel and bow and beg, who delighted in being a villain.

Villains were wonderful. They got to be cruel and selfish, to preen in front of mirrors and poison apples, and trap girls on mountains of glass. They indulged all their worst impulses, revenged themselves for the least offense, and took every last thing they wanted.

And sure, they wound up in barrels studded with nails, or dancing in iron shoes heated by fire, not just dead, but disgraced and screaming.

But before they got what was coming to them, they got to be the fairest in all the land.