The Unicorn Hunters: A Novel(42)

Isabeau said, frowning, “Yes, for I need you to help me. I want to talk to the korrigan-king. I have an idea.”

Talk to the— Isabeau had lost her mind. Elesbed, hanging back in the doorway, stared at her in horror.

Moreau hid his reaction better. His gaze flicked from Isabeau to Elesbed, and then he said, haltingly, “I don’t remember the name or the face of any korrigan-king. I do not know if a korrigan can come into castles of worked stone. What would you say to this king?”

Isabeau had her hands clasped, her whole body taut with eagerness. “That I ought to marry him and not my sister. And for my marriage settlement I want him to use his enchantments to drive the French away, back across their borders, and never come to trouble us more.”

“Oh, no,” Elesbed whispered.

Moreau said, with swift urgency, “Demoiselle, you ought not say such things aloud.”

“I said it aloud because I mean it! My sister shouldn’t leave. The only thing I can do for Brittany is to help her stay here.”

Elesbed found herself listening rigidly to the room’s silence, as though a tall korrigan with clawed hands would step out of the fireplace and claim Isabeau as his bride.

Nothing stirred in the fireplace.

But something moved outside.

There was a hissing step on the stairs. A long, long sigh. A rattling exhale.

Isabeau paled, as though realizing that the consequences of her rashness might walk through the doorway in that very moment. But when the door swung creaking back, it was no korrigan at all. No man even. It was a woman, and she was dead.

She shouldn’t be here in daylight, Elesbed thought. The anaon belonged to the night.

She wore a sort of robe, with an underdress. A veil over her hair and a rope round her neck. The rope had dug into her gray skin. Her eyes started from her head; her lips were black. Her skin seemed lit with cold moonlight, though it was a midsummer day. Her mouth opened and closed.

“Who are you?” cried Isabeau. “Anaon, what happened to you?”

But the woman could not speak, because she had been strangled.

Of them all, only Moreau moved. He darted a hand out to his cup sitting on a coffer. He looked into it, his lips moving, his face white. Suddenly the lady was gone. Just like that. “God in Heaven,” he said fervently, sinking back in his chair.

Another, thought Elesbed. A third dead lady. They said there’d been one in the convent chapel, there was one in the duchess’s chamber. And now this one.

“I don’t understand,” said Isabeau. “Monsieur, did you send her away?”

He was looking down at his own hands in perplexity, touching his thumbs to his fingertips as though relearning how they worked. “That was mere instinct. God, was there ever a more miserable state for man? Some torment of the korriganed, undoubtedly.” Shamefacedly he added to Isabeau, “Demoiselle, I have been using the wine in my cup as a poor mirror. I know it is not sanctioned.”

Isabeau whispered, “You banished that—that wicked ghost with wine in a cup?”

“I—think I did. The wine makes reflections, a little. If I had a proper mirror, I could do more. Perhaps remember more. God smite me, but I am sure I learned something in that place, though it is all forgot. Perhaps I myself learned enchantments, and I could help you and the duchess with my own hands. I do not know. I have no way to make trial of it. And the duchess is rightly cautious. But I beg you will not offer yourself to the korrigan-king.”

Isabeau only said, “If I find you a mirror, you will help us?”

The knuckles of his hands tangled white in his russet hair, and then he whispered, “Yes. With all my heart.”

“Swear on the Blessed Jesu that you will help us. And on your immortal soul.”

“I swear.”

“Then I will find you a mirror.”

His answer was a look of piercing gratitude. But as they left the room and climbed down the narrow stairs, Elesbed said, “I think we ought to tell the duchess.”

“If we tell her she might say no. She might learn I offered to be the korrigan-king’s bride and be angry. I don’t think we should tell her.”

“She would be right to be angry!”

“Maybe,” said Isabeau. “But you see, I have to save my sister, even if she doesn’t want my help.” Isabeau turned to face Elesbed in the concealing shadows at the base of the wall. The main ch?teau glimmered on the other side of the courtyard. “And you are not to tell anyone. I order it.”

Elesbed said, “Don’t you know what you’ve done? Invited him. All the stories say that’s what gives them power over you. He is a wicked bad creature, the king of the korriganed.”

“You don’t know that!” flared Isabeau. “And it doesn’t matter. I’ll make that bargain, if he can keep my sister in Brittany. It is what I am born for, what I must do because I have horses and pretty dresses and a castle. Sacrifice. My sister told me. We are born for sacrifices. My life is not mine, I will give it for my realm. And the best thing I can do for Brittany is keep my sister here.”

“You can’t make bargains with the korriganed!” Elesbed had been told at some point that servants didn’t shout, but she was too incensed to care. “They’ll twist your words, they’ll trick you. You know this. You know as many stories as I do.”