In comparison, the Queen’s was a constant Festival of Fools – the unexpected, the frivolous, the wild always hovered at the edges, occasionally slamming up through the very centre of things. It reflected the Queen’s own temperament, her capacity for impatience and caprice.
That was one of the things that made it so appealing – and so extremely dangerous.
Behind him, the vines shifted, whispering, back into place.
The Queen was draped across her throne. Her colours today were all blues, delphinium and cornflower, harebell and sapphire, her gown stitched with a thousand tiny pieces of gem-bright silk that stirred and shimmered like butterfly wings. She seemed to have acquired a new pet – a small girl. Her curls were as bright as a polished copper kettle, sitting in the hearth reflecting the firelight. Liu felt a jarring pang as the image conjured up the kitchen in the private part of the school – Beth, frowning over some bit of metal; Madeleine, small round glasses perched on her nose, at the other end of the table, reading or stitching, sometimes exclaiming over the latest scientific development; and Evvie, his Lady Sparrow, scowling over accounts, a swear word throttled at birth as she remembered her Mama was in the room, or plotting something. He could always tell when she had some new scheme brewing, there was a particular mischievous tilt to her smile.
He had always put his fox-self, his Folk-self, first. Footloose and without attachments, charming, risk-taking, irresponsible. Apart from his duty to his father, of course. But until now, that duty had hardly been an onerous one – his father had required little of him, neither company, obedience, or affection. And now... now he was at risk of torture, because Liu had not danced quick enough.
Evvie never required obedience either, of course – but company, and affection, yes. And to protect her he must risk her misery and fury, must risk her believing that he, like Aiden before him, had abandoned her...
He supposed he had his father to thank for that revelation. Caring about someone makes you so much, so terribly much more vulnerable, than only caring about yourself.
The Queen terrified him, even as she fascinated him. And he would not risk her knowing that he had become entangled with the humans. It was just the kind of knife she would love to twist.
He could not see – or hear – the Harp anywhere. Perhaps it had fallen out of favour? He felt a brief hope almost immediately followed by anxiety. If she no longer favoured it, then it would be easier to get it away – but if it had fallen out of favour, then it would not be so valuable to Ao Guang... though if he could keep Ao Guang from knowing... perhaps he could tell Ao Guang that she pretended not to care about its loss to save her own face – he would, might, accept that.
Even as his agile brain was shuffling possibilities, Liu was scanning the Court. Here it was harder to tell who was up and who was down; signs of favour shifted with the breeze.
“Why, it’s my Little Fox!” the Queen said. Her fingers twined in the human girl’s bright curls. The girl looked up at her with an expression of delighted adoration. Liu knew it well – he’d worn it himself. The Queen beckoned him with one pale, jewelled hand. The girl watched with bright interest as he bowed and walked towards the throne. “Have you brought me a gift, Little Fox?”
“I am desolated that I have found nothing that would even approach sufficiency, Lady,” Liu said. “I have searched the courts of this world and all others within my reach, but the memory of your beauty reduced everything I saw to dullness and inadequacy.”
“Flatterer,” she said, but she smiled. “
Empty
flatterer, to come thus empty-handed.”
“Oh, not quite, most radiant majesty. I have information that may please you, a little, though it is of course of the least consequence.”
“Information?”
“Perhaps I had better call it... gossip?”
Her eyes brightened, tilting up at the corners. For a moment she looked mischievously young, almost as young as the girl seated at her feet.
“Gossip! How delightful. What nature of gossip? Come, sit by me.”
He felt the waves of irritation and disapproval break against his back as he took his seat at the other side of her throne from the red-headed girl, and despite the more than slightly desperate nature of the circumstances, he could not help but take pleasure in it. Some of them tried far too hard to win her favour. And here he was, dancing along the edge of disaster, gambling with barely a card to his name...
He felt her fingers in his hair, and shivered. “So different,” the Queen marvelled. “Midnight and fire. Here rough curls like a little dog, and here so straight and silken. Perhaps I shall keep you both, to decorate my throne room. What say you, Little Fox?” Her fingers ran down his nape, to feel the tremble of his skin.
“Who could ask a more decorative fate?” Liu said. “But I fear, that without the chance to leave your side and pick up my little fragments of chatter, my petty and unworthy gifts, you would soon find me dull company, and wish you had never seen me. Then my heart would be broken.”
“Perhaps,” the Queen said. “Tell me your gossip.”
So he launched into a set of the kind of trivia best calculated to appeal to the Queen: fragments he had heard from the wild Folk who never came to court, minor bitcheries, small tragedies, the proud brought low and the cunning triumphant. He would not mention Ao Guang, yet; it would not be politic.
She smiled and even laughed once or twice, but soon her fingers tightened on his nape, the threat of her nails pressing chilly crescents into his flesh. “Nothing from the human world? No new gifts that might please us, no news of the clumsy attempts of Our rivals to decrease Our influence there?”
“The human world grows ever more dull,” Liu said. “Noisy, and stinking, and tedious. They work and work like ants, and look only at what is in front of them; not what is behind, and around, and below. I beg you, Lady, do not ask me to speak of them, for I fear I cannot find a single entertaining thing to say on the matter.”
“Strange,” she said, sliding her fingers under his chin and forcing his head up, so he must look into her eyes. “I thought you most captivated by them. You have spent a deal of time there of late.”
“Being what I am...” He shrugged. “I felt something – I know not what. Sorrow? Despair? For I will never truly be one of your Court, Lady – never truly be one of your own. I am here only by your great grace and indulgence. I am a half-thing, and I know it. I sought some comfort, perhaps some brief escape from this knowledge, among the humans, but there is nothing there to compare with this. Yes, I am a traveller by nature, but if ever I thought I could be truly one of them, I know now that I cannot. For this, this wonder, this festival of all that is beautiful, and capricious, and terrible, and ever-new, and ever-old, and you, my Queen, at its glimmering heart – how could I not prefer it? I must travel there again, for that is what I am – a traveller. I am doomed to belong nowhere. But always my heart is here.”
His heart was, in fact, jittering along at some speed; he wondered if he had laid it on too thick. Her eyes were opaque as she gazed at him, then she blinked, like a lizard, and they were clear as the sky of a perfect June day, even to the tiny fluttering speck of a rising lark, in each.
He managed a smile at this little conceit, and its message. He was, for now, in her good books. She released her grip.
“Then by all means let us talk of more pleasant things. I shall introduce you to my latest pet; stand up, Pearl my jewel, and show my Little Fox how well you curtsey.”
The girl did, neatly and calmly, though Liu could see the hem of her dress tremble as she held it out. It seemed she had learned something of what manner of place she now dwelt in. Already her eyes followed the Queen constantly. Or perhaps she was just young, and fascinated to find herself living in a tale.
He hoped it ended better for her than it did for most of the Queen’s pets.
“I think her a great deal prettier than Aiden’s, though of course, that one is grown now,” the Queen said, patting the girl on the head.
Liu, listening with great care, detected a note, like struck metal, when she mentioned her son; something sharp and unpleasant to bite on.
“Soon,” the Queen went on, “his pet will become all crumpled, and bent, and I wonder how he will like her then?”
“Surely he will barely notice,” Liu said. “After all, when he must compare every human woman to you, Lady, such minor differences between them must seem trivial. What is one star a little duller than another, when they are all overshadowed by the brilliance of the moon?”
“I see that life among the humans has not dulled your tongue, at least. If you visit my son, you may see her, and make the comparison for yourself.
He
will certainly ask you for news of the Lower World.” Oh, there was definitely something there. Liu’s mind raced. Aiden had offended somehow; the two were on outs. Of course, the Prince would be reaching his majority. Perhaps he was already testing his strength against her.
Yes.
He tucked the knowledge away.
“Lady?” The girl said. Her voice struck Liu immediately – it was unusually deep for such a young girl, with a resonance to it like a violin. “May I ask a question?”
The Queen smiled. “What a curious child it is! Go on, then.”
“Why do you call him your Little Fox?”
“Oh, he can explain it to you. Run along, the pair of you, I have webs to weave.”
T
HE GIRL LOOKED
up at Liu with a kind of clear curiosity. He shrugged. “She calls me her Little Fox because I am a fox-spirit. Not completely. My father is one. My mother was human.”
“Sir, what is a fox-spirit?”
“Someone who can be human sometimes, and a fox other times. Part of me is a fox all the time.” He lifted his robe a little, to show her the tuft of his tail.
“Oh! How pretty!”
He bowed. “Thank you, that is most kind. I am fond of my tail, but it makes it troublesome to pass for human, sometimes. Though I have some other talents, which help.”
“Can you do magic?”
“A little. I can do some things a fox can when I am human and some things a human can when I am a fox. And some other things. I don’t always have to look like this.”
I can deceive and persuade and steal and lie and hide and sneak and hunt. Better than most humans, better than most foxes.
But he didn’t want to say those things to this small, vulnerable girl. “How did you come here?”
“I was brought by a man, sir. Because Papa has no work and they can’t pay the rent.”
“Oh... and how are you finding it?”
She looked up at him with those clear eyes, and he could see her calculating what would be safe to say, and what would not. “It is very beautiful,” she said. “And I have plenty to eat, and no-one is allowed to hurt me, because the Queen would not like it.”
Except the Queen herself.
That truth hung in the air, unspoken.
“Tell me, have you met Charlotte?”
“Aiden’s pet? Yes.”
“And do you like her?”
“She has been very kind to me,” Pearl said. “But I think...” She glanced away, and pointed. “Look, apples!” She ran towards a grove of trees, where rich red fruit hung gleaming among thick drifts of pink and white blossom.
Liu considered telling her that she was safe saying what she wished to him, but was it true? If he showed too great an interest in her the Queen might question whether he was as bored with humans as he claimed. Sending them off together this way could have been a ploy; in this place there were always a dozen eyes and ears ready to collect titbits for the Queen.
The girl came back with an apple in each hand, and held one up to Liu. “Would you like one?”
“Thank you,” he said. “I will save it for later.” He knew the Queen’s tricks, or some of them, at least. He wouldn’t eat the apple, not here. For the girl... but she had already bitten into it, with loud relish. “You must please the Queen very much,” he said. “She used to have another pet, but I did not see him. Perhaps she has tired of his music.”
“Oh, the Harp?” Pearl said, around a mouthful of apple, and shook her head. She swallowed. “She sent him away, sir.”
“Oh?”
“I didn’t mean for her to,” Pearl said, looking down at the remains of the apple. Its flesh was very white, like frost. “It was just I couldn’t help it, he sang so sad, and it made me cry. She didn’t like that.”
“Well, no, who wants to see little girls cry?”
“She might.” Pearl looked up at him with those clear green eyes. “She might if I displeased her.”
“Then I hope you will not,” Liu said. His tone was light, but he knew his eyes were telling a different story. Oh, he did not need this, to worry about this stray scrap of humanity. She was a bright girl, and already, it seemed, had found her feet as best she could in the ever-shifting dance of the Queen’s favour. She must make her own fate. He had enough to worry about keeping Eveline from the Queen’s notice. And rescuing his father.
He had never been sure what exactly had set Min on such a vengeful course. Min, it seemed, being very traditional, had never approved of Chen Shun’s rise to Ao Guang’s favour – but they were hardly rivals. Min’s rank and status were so long-established as to be carved in granite.
Perhaps he was just of a vengeful nature. It was not something Liu himself much understood – if one was bested, one was bested. Better, surely, to move on, and find something more amusing to occupy oneself with.
Such as getting Eveline what she wanted, saving his father’s skin and, preferably, his own.
He looked at the girl again. “Do you know where he was sent?”
“Somewhere called the Valley of Sighs, sir.”
Liu sighed himself. “Of course he was. You need not call me sir, you know. I’m not of so much consequence as all that!”
“Oh. May I ask you something?”
“By all means.”
“Will you be going ho...” She corrected herself. “Back to the Lower World?”
“Oh, yes, I fear I must.”
The child looked around. From a nearby waterfall came the sound of laughter, chilly and clear. Some small, glimmering creature, about the length of Liu’s hand, flew past the girl, circled them both briefly, and paused, its wings a blur of rainbow mist, its small pointed face with glittering faceted eyes atilt as it watched them.