But that has always been true. The moment that I entered Király Szek with a wolf cloak on my back I knew I was more likely to die than to ever step beyond its gates again. I think of how Esther spoke to the king so shrewdly, how she handled him so gingerly, the way you might eat around the spot of black in your apple. I can only try and do the same now.
“You’ll kill her, then.” My voice is soft, careful. Gáspár would commend me for speaking with such little venom. “Just like you did all the others. Add her fingernails to your crown.”
“She is not like the others,” says the king. “She’s a seer.”
“And what sort of power do you think her death will grant you?” My mind conjures images of Virág, writhing in the dirt. “A seer’s magic isn’t what you think. Their visions come at random, and what they see is never what you really want. You think her power will put you inside the mind of the bey, will anticipate his moves before he makes them, but it won’t. It wouldn’t be like—”
I almost mention the turul. My jaw snaps shut.
King János’s eyes film over. He wanders toward the long window, his face turning gray-washed in the gridded squares of rheumy light. I can’t help but think of his father’s statue in the courtyard, hunched by the legacy of his failures.
“If I can end the war,” he says, “then I can end what ails us here too. When food is scarce and sons are dying, the people always look for someone to blame. Nándor has pointed toward the Yehuli, the pagans. Now I am blamed for protecting them.” His gaze shifts to me, a turbid look in it, like the pond water made murky by the thrashing of some fish. “Truly, wolf-girl, what would you have me do? Tell me—your counsel can be no less useful than that of my insipid advisers, who have only their own hoards behind their eyes.”
His words stun me, not to mention the beseeching tenor of his voice. He is not nearly as much a buffoon as I have thought, sipping his wine, oblivious to the knives being drawn at his back. I remember Count Reményi’s face in the crowd, and all those Woodsmen, black as shadows. Perhaps the king is as fettered as I am, as fettered as Gáspár, surviving in whatever shameful way he can. The truth of what the king is brings me no comfort. I almost wish I could still imagine him a monster, some seven-headed beast with lashing tongues, swallowing up wolf-girls for his supper. Now I see only a skinny dog gnawing on an old bone, already stripped of all its lustiest bits.
“Why protect them, then?” I ask, when I can manage to speak again. “Why not finish what Saint István started?”
“You already know,” the king says.
And it strikes me then that I do. I have known ever since I first saw his gruesome crown, since I saw the counts in their pagan garb, trussed with feathers and draped in bear cloaks. They cannot kill the old ways entirely, or else they will lose their power. They will only take and take the parts that they like, the fingernails and the titles that their pagan blood right grants them, one girl every few years, not the whole village. Nándor told me that the Patrifaith was what made Régország, but that’s not true. It is made of a thousand different threads twining together like tree roots, shooting up tall and thick, aching toward some impossible whole. Mithros and Vilm?tten are like a two-headed statue, or a coin with a different face on either side.
I cut off my finger so that I could survive. Gáspár let his father take his eye so he would not cut his throat. And now Katalin must die, so that the rest of Keszi can live.
“So it is, then,” I say, my voice thick with pain. “Another girl dead to keep the wolves from the door.”
The king lifts one shoulder, gaze steady. For a moment, I can see a bit of Gáspár in him, like a trick of the light.
“I know you must hate me, wolf-girl,” he says. “But I am certain you hate my son more.”
There is nowhere else for me to go, so I return to my chamber. My mind and body feel heavy, weighed down with a thousand unmade decisions. By now the sky is black, depthless and starless. It has been mere hours since my father held me in Batya’s house, but the memory seems irretrievably distant, and even though I try to summon it, I can recapture none of its warmth. All I can see is Katalin vanishing down the hall, like a white stone tossed into a well. All I can see is Nándor’s face, livid gold in the torchlight.
The collar of Jozefa’s dress feels stifling now, the starched wool painting a rash of red across my throat. As if moved by some invisible hand, I go toward the trunk at the foot of my bed and retrieve my wolf cloak. Katalin’s wolf cloak. The wolf’s teeth look yellower than I remembered. When I touch one, a tiny shard of bone comes away in my fingers. I search the pockets and find my mother’s braid, coiled around itself like a cold snake. I squeeze it tight in my fist.