Kae knelt before the northern wind because she had no other choice. But she wondered: When will be the last time I bend a knee to you?
“Kae,” Bane said, drawing her name out with feigned patience. “Why have you kept me waiting?”
She thought of numerous answers, all of them hinged on truth. Because I loathe you. Because I am no longer your servant. Because I am finished with your orders.
But she said, “Forgive me, my king. I should have come sooner.”
“What news of the bard?” he asked. And while he tried to sound languid, Kae heard the hitch in his voice. Jack Tamerlaine made the king incredibly paranoid.
Kae straightened. The silver web of her armor chimed as she moved.
“He is languishing,” she replied, thinking of how she had left Jack, kneeling in the weaver’s kail yard, staring at the loam in his hands.
“And does he play? Does he sing?”
Kae knew her kind couldn’t lie. It made answering Bane a challenge, but ever since Lorna . . . Kae had become good at deflecting him.
“His sorrow seems to weigh him down,” she said, which was truth. Ever since Adaira left, Jack had been a mere shadow of himself. “He doesn’t want to play.”
Bane was quiet.
Kae held her breath as whispers began to spin in the hall. She resisted the temptation to glance over her shoulder, to look at her kindred.
“This bard appears to be weak, just as the orchard showed us,” she started to say but cut her words short when Bane stood. His long shadow rippled down the dais stairs, touching Kae with a shock of cold.
“He appears to be weak, you say,” the king echoed. “And yet he has summoned us all. He dares to play in the open. I was merciful to him, was I not? Over and over I have given him time to amend his ways and set aside his music. But he refuses, which leaves me no choice but to punish him further.”
Kae shut her mouth, her pointed teeth clinking together. Lorna had been a shrewd musician; she had learned from the Bard of the East before her, who had also been mindful of Bane and the spirit realm and had played for decades unscathed. But Jack had been given no such opportunity, Lorna having died before he returned to Cadence. Sometimes Kae watched him, as she was ordered to do of late, and she wanted nothing more than to materialize and tell him—
“I want you to carry a message to Whin of the Wildflowers,” Bane said, catching Kae by surprise.
“What message, my king?”
“That she is to curse the weaver’s kail yard.”
Kae exhaled, but a chill traced her spine. “Mirin Tamerlaine’s garden?”
“Yes. The one that feeds this bard. Whin is to ensure that all crops, all fruit, all sustenance withers at once and remains dormant until I say they can grow again. And that goes for any other garden that tries to feed him. If it is every eastern kail yard, then so be it. Let famine come. It would not hurt the mortals to suffer at the expense of the bard.”
More whispers laced through the court. Remarks and exclamations, punctures of delight. Kae surmised that half of the wind spirits—the ones who made up the king’s court—were in favor of Bane’s cruelty. It would be entertaining to watch this unfold on their routes. But the ones who were quiet . . . Kae wondered if they were as weary of this as she was. Of watching Bane give the earth and the water and the fire commands that were utter nonsense. Of making humankind suffer for his entertainment.
“You hesitate, Kae?” Bane said, taking note of her silence.
“My king, I only wonder if Whin of the Wildflowers and her earth spirits will find this order inane and perhaps far-reaching.”
The king smiled. Kae knew she had overstepped and yet she held her ground as Bane descended the dais stairs. He was coming to stand face-to-face with her, and she began to tremble.
“You fear me, Kae?”
She could not lie. She said, “Yes, King.”
Bane halted before her. She could smell the tang of lightning in his wings and wondered if he was about to strike her.
“Whin will find my order inane,” he agreed. “But tell her if she refuses to starve this bard off the isle, then I will see it as a challenge to my reign and I will spread my blight further. She will watch her maidens fall, one by one, and her brethren will sicken, from root to stone to branch to blossom. There will be no end to what I will do to devastate the earth, and they need to be reminded that they serve me.”
There was no simple way forward, Kae realized. Even if Whin chose to heed Bane’s order, the humans and the earth spirits would still suffer. It was evident to most of the folk that the northern wind was threatened by the earth spirits, who were the second most powerful spirits beneath him. Whin often refused to do the king’s senseless bidding. She was not afraid of him; she did not cower when his lightning or his blight struck, and Kae couldn’t help but marvel at her.