The Bomb and the Roach share a disbelieving look.

“If I was really glamoured, would I have told you any of that?”

“Probably not,” says the Bomb. “But it would make for a quite clever piece of misdirection.”

“I can’t be glamoured,” I admit. “It’s part of a bargain I made with Prince Dain, in exchange for my service as a spy.”

The Roach’s eyebrows go up. Cardan gives me a sharp look, as though sure anything to do with Dain can’t be good. Or perhaps he’s just surprised that I have yet another secret.

“I wondered what he gave you to make you throw in your lot with us ne’er-do-wells,” the Bomb says.

“Mostly a purpose,” I say, “but also the ability to resist glamour.”

“You could still be lying,” says the Roach. He turns to Cardan. “Try her.”

“Your pardon?” Cardan says, drawing himself up, and the Roach seems to suddenly remember to whom he’s speaking in such an offhanded way.

“Don’t be such a prickly rose, Your Majesty,” the Roach says with a shrug and a grin. “I’m not giving you an order. I’m suggesting that if you tried to glamour Jude, we could find out the truth.”

Cardan sighs and walks toward me. I know this is necessary. I know that he doesn’t intend to hurt me. I know he can’t glamour me. And yet I draw back automatically.

“Jude?” he asks.

“Go ahead,” I say.

I hear the glamour enter his voice, heady and seductive and more powerful than I expected. “Crawl to me,” he says with a grin. Embarrassment pinks my cheeks.

I stay where I am, looking at all their faces. “Satisfied?”

The Bomb nods. “You’re not charmed.”

“Now tell me why I ought to trust you,” I say to her and the Roach. “The Ghost came, with Vulciber, to take me to the Tower of Forgetting. Urged me to go alone, led me right to where I was to be captured, all because he didn’t want me to have Dain’s Court of Shadows. Were either of you in on it with him?”

“We didn’t know what was going on with the Ghost until it was too late,” the Roach says.

I nod. “I saw the old forest entrance to the Court of Shadows.”

“The Ghost activated some of our own explosives.” He dips his head toward the Bomb, who nods.

“Collapsed part of the castle, along with the lair of the Court of Shadows, not to mention the old catacombs where Mab’s bones lie,” Cardan says.

“He’s been planning this for a while. I was able to keep it from being worse,” she says. “A few of us got out unscathed—Snapdragon is well and spotted you climbing the hill of the palace. But many were hurt in the blast. The sluagh—Niniel—got badly burned.”

“What about the Ghost?” I ask.

“He’s on the wind,” the Bomb says. “Gone. We know not where.”

I remind myself that so long as the Bomb and the Roach are okay, things could have been a lot worse.

“Now that we’re all on the same dreary page,” Cardan says. “We must discuss what to do next.”

“If Balekin thinks he can get me into the masquerade, then let him bend his will toward that aim. I’ll play along.” I stop and turn to Cardan. “Or I could just kill him.”

The Roach claps his hand on the back of my neck with a laugh. “You did good, kid, you know that? You came out of the sea even tougher than you went in.”

I have to look down because I am surprised by how much I wanted to hear someone say that. When I glance back up, Cardan is watching me carefully. He looks stricken.

I shake my head, to keep him from saying whatever he’s thinking.

“Balekin is the Ambassador to the Undersea,” he says instead, an echo of my own words to Dulcamara. I am grateful for a return to the subject. “He’s protected by Orlagh. And she has Grimsen and a mighty desire to test me. If her ambassador was killed, she would be very angry.”

“Orlagh attacked the land already,” I remind him. “The only reason she hasn’t declared outright war is that she’s seeking every advantage. But she will. So let the first blow be ours.”

Cardan shakes his head.

“He wants to have you killed,” I insist. “Grimsen has made that a condition of his getting the crown.”

“You should have the hands of the smith,” the Bomb says. “Cut them off at the wrists so he can make no more trouble.”

The Roach nods. “I will find him tonight.”

“The three of you have one solution to every problem. Murder. No key fits every lock.” Cardan gives us all a stern look, holding up a long-fingered hand with my stolen ruby ring still on one finger. “Someone tries to betray the High King, murder. Someone gives you a harsh look, murder. Someone disrespects you, murder. Someone ruins your laundry, murder.

“I find the more I listen, the more I am reminded that I have been awakened after very little sleep. I am going to send for some tea for myself and some food for Jude, who looks a bit pale.”

Cardan stands and sends a servant for oatcakes, cheese, and two enormous pots of tea, but he does not allow anyone else into the room. He carries the large carved-wood-and-silver tray from the door himself, setting it down on a low table.

I am too hungry to resist making a sandwich from the cakes and cheese. After I eat a second one and wash it down with three cups of tea, I do feel steadier.

“The masquerade tomorrow,” Cardan says. “It is to honor Lord Roiben of the Court of Termites. He has come all this way to yell at me, so we ought to let him. If Balekin’s assassination attempt keeps him busy until after that, so much the better.

“Roach, if you can spirit away Grimsen to somewhere he won’t cause any trouble, that would be most helpful. It’s time for him to choose sides and bend his knee to one of the players in this little game. But I do not want Balekin dead.”

The Roach takes a sip of tea and raises one bushy brow. The Bomb sighs audibly.

Cardan turns to me. “Since you were taken, I’ve gone over all the history I could find on the relationship of the land and the sea. From when the first High Queen, Mab, summoned the isles of Elfhame from the depths, our Folk have occasionally skirmished, but it seems clear that should we in earnest, there will be no victor. You said that you thought Queen Orlagh was waiting for an advantage to declare war. Instead, I think she is trying a new ruler—one she hopes she can trick or replace with another indebted to her. She thinks me young and feckless and means to take my measure.”

“So what?” I ask. “Our choice is to endure her games, no matter how deadly, or engage in a war we cannot win?”

Cardan shakes his head and drinks another cup of tea. “We show her that I am no feckless High King.”

“And how do we do that?” I ask.

“With great difficulty,” he says. “Since I fear she is right.”

It would be a small thing to smuggle one of my own dresses out of my own rooms, but I don’t want Balekin to guess I’ve been inside the palace. Instead, I head to the Mandrake Market on the tip of Insmoor to find something suitable for the masquerade.

I’ve been to the Mandrake Market twice before, both times long past and accompanying Madoc. It is exactly the sort of place that Oriana warned Taryn and I away from—entirely too full of Folk eager to make bargains. It’s open only in the misty mornings, when most of Elfhame is asleep, but if I can’t get a gown and a mask there, I will have to steal one out of a courtier’s wardrobe.

I walk through the stalls, a little queasy from the smell of oysters smoking on a bed of kelp, the scent reminding me forcefully of the Undersea. I pass trays of spun-sugar animals, little acorn cups filled with wine, enormous sculptures of horn, and a stall where a bent-backed woman takes a brush and draws charms on the soles of shoes. It takes some wandering, but I finally find a collection of sculpted leather masks. They are pinned to a wall and cunningly shaped like the faces of strange animals or laughing goblins or boorish mortals, painted gold and green and every other color imaginable.

I find one that is of a human face, unsmiling. “This one,” I say to the shopkeeper, a tall woman with a hollow back. She gives me a dazzling smile.

“Seneschal,” she says, recognition lighting her eyes. “Let it be my gift to you.”

“That’s very kind,” I say, a little desperately. All gifts come with a price, and I am already struggling to pay my debts. “But I’d prefer—”

She winks. “And when the High King compliments your mask, you will let me make him one.” I nod, relieved that what she wants is straightforward. The woman takes the mask from me, laying it down on the table and pulling out a pot of paint from beneath a desk. “Let me make a little alteration.”

“What do you mean?”

She takes out a brush. “So she looks more like you.” And with a few swipes of the brush, the mask does bear my likeness. I stare at it and see Taryn.

“I will remember your kindness,” I say as she packs it up.

Then I depart and look for the fluttering cloth that marks a dress shop. I find a lace-maker instead and get a little turned around in a maze of potion-makers and tellers of fortunes. As I attempt to find my way back, I pass a stall occupied by a small fire. A hag sits on a little stool before it.

She stirs the pot, and from it comes the scent of stewing vegetables. When she glances in my direction, I recognize her as Mother Marrow.

“Come and sit by my fire?” she says.

I hesitate. It doesn’t do to be rude in Faerie, where the highest laws are those of courtesy, but I am in a hurry. “I am afraid that I—”

“Have some soup,” she says, picking up a bowl and shoving it toward me. “It is only that which is most wholesome.”

“Then why offer it to me?” I ask.

She gives a delighted laugh. “If you had not cost my daughter her dreams, I might well like you. Sit. Eat. Tell me, what have you come to the Mandrake Market for?”