CAELAN

The first courtesy of the Hollow Court, taught to us before we can walk: never give your name.

The second, which no one has needed in a thousand years: lose it, if you must, to someone who deserves it.

I have never lost a hand of cards.

Tonight I sit down at hers.

ADA

A fae prince is cheating at my table, in my favour, and I have never been so insulted.

Hand after hand now. Every time the deal comes round to him, he gives me exactly what I need. He does it off the bottom of the deck, so smoothly I'd miss it if I didn't do it for a living.

I know, because I've been doing it to him all night.

I need two more good hands. Win them, and the attic over the taproom is mine until the thaw: the stove, the shutters that close, the cat who came with the room and has opinions. Win them, and I don't sit at this table again till spring.

My hands are steady. They always are. It's the rest of me that's misbehaving: my pulse up in my throat, the heat climbing my neck every time his eyes leave the cards and settle on my mouth.

He came in at nightfall, under the iron horseshoe over the door, and every fae in the taproom stood up. Not fast. The way you stand when a hearse goes by.

He's tall and black-haired, in a black coat with snow still on the shoulders, and his eyes are the pale grey of frost on glass. He hasn't touched his wine. He hasn't stopped watching my hands.

My mother taught me two things at this table: how to deal from the bottom, and never to take anything from a fae that he'd come back for.

So I play them for silver, and buttons, and the odd glass of something that tastes of June. Never names. Never years. Nothing that keeps them up at night thinking about me.

This one is thinking about me. I can tell from here.

"Fold," says the old woman on my left. She comes in every Thursday with a basket of eggs, loses one shilling, and pats my hand as if I've done well. She pats it now, takes her basket and goes out into the snow.

That leaves the prince, me, and a fae lord with moth-wing lace at his cuffs, who has lost a great deal to me tonight and would very much like to know how.

The prince gathers the cards. Shuffles. Deals.

Two queens and a nine. Exactly what I need. Again.

"You're frowning," he says. His voice is low and unhurried, as though we're the only two people in the room. "Is it a bad hand?"

"It's a lovely hand. I'm frowning at the dealer."

"Has he made a mistake?"

"Several. He keeps giving money away."

"Perhaps he's tired of it."

"Then he could give it to someone outside, and save us both the evening."

That gets him. His mouth doesn't move, but something round his eyes gives, the way ice gives under the first boot.

The moth-wing lord looks from him to me and doesn't care for either of us.

Fae can't lie. Every child this side of the hedge knows that. Every card sharp knows what it actually means: they can't lie, so they never stop talking, because the truth said sideways is worth twice as much.

"You deal well," I tell him.

"I've had a long time to practise."

"At losing?"

"Not until tonight."

I take the hand. The moth-wing lord pushes his chair back, and the prince says, without looking at him, "Sit. You'll want to see this."

The lord sits.

The prince lays both hands flat on the table.

"One more," he says. "I'll stake my name."

The taproom goes quiet. Somebody's tankard stops halfway to his mouth and stays there.

"Your name," I say.

"My true one."

"Against what?"

He looks past my shoulder, at the end of my plait, where my one good ribbon is tied. Red silk. A shilling a yard. "That."

"My ribbon."

"Your ribbon."

"That isn't a stake. That's an insult with a bow on it."

Somebody near the fire laughs, and turns it into a cough.

Here is what a sensible woman does now. She sweeps up her winnings, says goodnight, and goes upstairs to the cat. Winning a fae prince's name is how mortals end up in songs, and nobody in those songs gets a happy last verse.

Here is what I do. I put my hand on the table next to his, close enough that the side of my little finger rests against the side of his. His skin is cold. He doesn't move it away.

"Deal," I say.

He deals. He doesn't even pretend. Five cards off the bottom, slowly, so I'll see every one of them land.

The last one is the queen of hearts.

I turn my hand over. He turns his. He's given himself nothing, a scatter of low black cards, as though he wanted to make certain nobody in the room could call it close.

"The lady wins," says the moth-wing lord, very softly.

The prince gets up, comes round the table and bends to me. His mouth stops a breath from my ear. He doesn't touch me.

He says it.

I couldn't tell you what it sounds like. There's a sound in it my mouth has no shape for. It goes into me warm and settles under my tongue.

"You won my name, mortal," he says, into my hair. "Say it, and I'll do anything you ask."

He straightens up. He's very tall, and I'm very sat down, and the room has started to tilt.

"Oh, sit down," I say. "You're giving me a crick in my neck."

He sits.

All at once, like a coat dropping off a hook. One moment he's over me, and the next he's in the chair beside me, hard enough to rattle the cups, and his face is perfectly calm. His knuckles are white.

"I didn't say it," I say. "The name. I didn't use it."

"No." He lays his hands flat again. "That's the formal version. The small print is that you don't have to."

"Where's the small print?"

"Anywhere I can hear you." He says it gently. "With my name, an order lasts until you lift it. Without, until it's done."

I think of everything I say in a day. Pass the salt. Mind the step. Shut that door.

"Every order?"

"Every one."

The moth-wing lord leans across the table. His smile is all teeth and good manners. "Miss Thorne. Let me take that off your hands before it takes you somewhere you'd rather not go. Ten years of luck. Twenty."

Every fae in the room is looking at me now, like I'm a purse someone's left on a pew.

The prince doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't even turn his head.

"Cousin," he says, "the Queen believes you've spent the last month in mourning. Shall I tell her how much you've lost at a mortal's table while you grieved?"

The lord stands up. He takes his gloves and leaves his coat, and he goes out under the iron without a word, and I somehow know the county won't see him again this side of spring.

The room finds its drinks. I find my voice.

"Outside," I say. "Now—"

He's already on his feet.

I hear it. I hear exactly what I've done, and my stomach drops through the floor.

"No. I mean." I swallow. The name sits under my tongue, warm and patient. "Would you come outside with me? You can say no."

He looks at me for a long moment.

"Yes," he says. "I'd like that."

The yard behind the inn is all snow and woodpile, lit gold by the taproom window. It's coming down thick and quiet. I'm in my green coat with the nine pockets, and I'm still cold.

"You let me win," I say.

"You'd have won. I only hurried it."

"I didn't need hurrying."

"You'd been at that table since ten to seven. You ordered tea and didn't drink it. Your left hand was getting slow on the cut."

"Everybody in that taproom knows when I sat down."

"Everybody in that taproom wasn't watching you, Ada."

My face is hot in the snow. "That's a horrible thing to say."

"It's a true one. I don't have the other kind."

"Then tell me why."

His jaw locks.

I watch it happen. The answer starts coming out of him like a rope being hauled up a well, hand over hand. "Because at midwinter—" His throat works against it. His hands are fists at his sides. "—the Queen—"

"Stop."

He stops. Just like that, mid-word, mouth still open on it.

"Don't. You don't have to. God, I'm sorry." My hands are shaking now, both of them, for the first time in years. "That was horrible. I'll ask. From now on I'll only ask."

He looks at me as though nobody has ever apologised to him in his life.

"And if I don't answer?"

"Then you don't."

The snow comes down between us. He doesn't move. Neither do I.

Then I reach up and pull the ribbon out of my plait.

"You lost," I say. "You don't get a ribbon."

"I know."

"I'm not paying you. I'm giving it to you. That's different."

"It's very different."

"Would you hold out your hand?"

He holds it out, palm up, slowly, as if I might change my mind.

I tie the ribbon round his left wrist. It takes me a long time. My fingers are clumsy with cold, and his skin is colder, and under my thumb, where his pulse should be, something is going very fast.

He's holding still. Not calm. Holding still, the way you hold a lit candle through a draught. His fingers are open and straining to stay open. A muscle jumps in his cheek.

"How long?" I ask.

"Since you lost a hand on purpose to a shepherd who'd staked his dog."

That was last winter. "You weren't there. I'd have seen you."

"You saw a tinker with a bad cough. And a miller's boy, twice."

I laugh, and it comes out wrong. "Did I win?"

"Every time. You put the boy's money back in his coat pocket while he was crying about it."

I finish the knot. I don't let go.

Behind him, the taproom window is black glass and firelight. His reflection stands in it, tall and dark, with snow on its shoulders.

It's wearing a crown. Gold thorns, low on the brow.

The man in front of me isn't.

I look at it for exactly as long as I'd look at a card I'm not supposed to have seen. Then I look at him, and I don't say a word.

"I won't come back unless you ask," he says.

"Why?"

"Because you didn't ask for any of this tonight. You should get to ask for the rest."

"How would I even—"

"Say my name. I'll hear it. Anywhere."

The word is right there behind my teeth. Stay. I have never in my life asked anyone to stay. I'm not going to start by making him.

So I let go of his wrist, and he walks away across the yard towards the hedge, and the snow closes over his footprints, and I stand there until I can't feel my feet.

The cat is on my pillow. She came with the room, along with the stove and the damp. Her name is Penny, because that's what she cost.

"Don't," I tell her. "Not one word."

She yawns at me. I sit on the bed in my coat.

The name is still under my tongue. Warm. Patient. I can feel the shape of it every time I swallow, and I keep swallowing.

I could tell him anything. Come back. Kneel. Tell me everything. Never leave.

I lie back and look at the beams and think of every order a woman could give a man like that, and my whole body goes hot, and I hate myself a little, and then not at all.

I'm not going to give him a single one.

I cheat fae for a living. I know a bad bet when I see one, and this is the worst I've ever been dealt.

I get up. I cross the cold boards in my stockings and unlatch the shutters, and the snow blows in over the sill and Penny swears at me from the bed.

Out past the yard, past the lane, the blackthorn hedge is a long dark line against the white.

I lean out into the snow and say his name.