“You’re going to feed it?” she asks sulkily.
He does not answer her, and after a moment of stony silence, she seems to remember herself. With a bow, she leaves.
I go to the table. The pixie regards me with her inkdrop-black eyes, like Tatterfell’s. I notice the extra joint in her fingers as she reaches for an eggroll. “Go ahead,” she says. “There’s plenty. I used most of the hot mustard packets, though.”
Roiben waits, watching me.
“Mortal food,” I say, in what I hope is a neutral way.
“We live alongside mortals, do we not?” he asks me.
“I think she more than lives beside them,” the pixie objects, looking at me.
“Your pardon,” he says, and waits. I realize they really expect me to eat something. I spear a dumpling with a single chopstick and stuff it into my mouth. “It’s good.”
The pixie resumes eating noodles.
Roiben gestures to her. “This is Kaye. I imagine you know who I am since you snuck into my camp. What name might you go by?”
I am unused to such scrupulous politeness being afforded to me—he’s doing me the courtesy of not asking for my true name. “Jude,” I say, because names have no power over mortals. “And I came to see you because I can put someone other than Balekin on the throne, but I need your help to do it.”
“Someone better than Balekin or just someone?” he asks.
I frown, not sure how to answer that. “Someone who didn’t murder most of his family onstage. Isn’t that automatically better?”
The pixie—Kaye—snorts.
Lord Roiben looks down at his hand, on the wooden table, then back at me. I cannot read his grim face. “Balekin is no diplomat, but perhaps he can learn. He’s obviously ambitious, and he pulled off a brutal coup. Not everyone has the stomach for that.”
“I almost didn’t have the stomach to watch it,” Kaye says.
“He only sort of pulled it off,” I remind them. “And I didn’t think you liked him very much, given what you said at the coronation.”
A corner of Roiben’s mouth turns up. It is a gesture in miniature, barely noticeable. “I don’t. I think he’s a coward to kill his sisters and father in what appeared to be a fit of pique. And he hid behind his military, letting his general finish off the High King’s chosen heir. That bespeaks weakness, the kind that will inevitably be exploited.”
A cold chill of premonition shivers up my back. “What I need is someone to witness a coronation, someone with enough power that the witnessing will matter. You. It will happen at Balekin’s feast, tomorrow eve. If you’ll just allow it to happen and give your oath to the new High King—”
“No offense,” Kaye says, “but what do you have to do with any of this? Why do you care who gets the throne?”
“Because this is where I live,” I say. “This is where I grew up. Even if I hate it half the time, it’s mine.”
Lord Roiben nods slowly. “And you are not going to tell me who this candidate is nor how you’re going to get a crown on his head?”
“I’d rather not,” I say.
“I could get Dulcamara to hurt you until you begged to be allowed to tell me your secrets.” He says this mildly, just another fact, but it reminds me of just how horrific his reputation is. No amount of takeout Chinese food or politeness ought to make me forget exactly who and what I am dealing with.
“Wouldn’t that make you as much of a coward as Balekin?” I ask, trying to project the same confidence I did in the Court of Shadows, the same confidence I did with Cardan. I can’t let him see that I’m scared or, at least, not how scared I am.