“How?” Katalin stutters out. “Could you always—”
“Do you think I would have endured half your wickedness if I could?” I interrupt, gritting my teeth as another wave of pain rocks through me. “Follow me.”
“Follow you where?” Her gaze darts between Gáspár and me. “I’m not going anywhere with you, or a Woodsman.”
Anger curdles in my belly. Despite my wooziness, I reach through the bars and grab her with my good arm, yanking her out of the cell.
“I’m saving your life,” I snap. “One more word and I’ll change my mind.”
Katalin fixes me with a cool stare. She slowly extricates herself from my grasp and then wipes her borrowed wolf cloak clean.
“Your hand is covered in blood,” she says.
This time, I scarcely resist the urge to strangle her and save King János the trouble. I look up at Gáspár, as if to steel myself, and the resolve on his face invigorates me. When we turn to walk back up the dungeon stairs, I hear the soft padding of Katalin’s footsteps behind us. She doesn’t speak again until we reach the top of the steps.
“You are bleeding,” she says, eyes wide.
I only nod, not particularly keen on explaining that I lost a battle of blades with a tiny serving girl.
“Here,” Katalin says. She pushes back my wolf cloak—her wolf cloak—and unties Gáspár’s makeshift wrappings underneath. I take a deep breath before looking at the wound, an ugly gash like an old woman’s blackened mouth. But Katalin only waves a hand over it, and the cut stitches itself shut.
I am deciding whether to thank her when Gáspár jerks me back into the threshold. A Woodsman’s shadow passes across the torchlit wall.
“How do you plan on getting us out of here?” Katalin demands, once the shadow has vanished.
“There’s another way out of the city,” says Gáspár. “Through the Woodsman barracks.”
I laugh at him openly. “You must be joking.”
“He’s joking?” Katalin scoffs. “What was your plan?”
There is enough blood left in my body for me to flush.
“They’ve all gone now,” Gáspár says, before Katalin can ridicule me further. “There are only the Woodsmen in my father’s retinue, who are stationed around the palace at night, and the ones loyal to Nándor, who are still at his side. The barracks are empty.”
Katalin makes a derisive sound, but she doesn’t argue. And then Gáspár leads us through the palace halls and down into another cellar, this one furnished with wood and crammed full of cots. Filmy bubbles of torchlight yellow the walls, illuminating the racks of weapons. Ax blades glint in blind crescents. Every mounded shadow looks like it could be a Woodsman in his black suba, but there are no footsteps on the ground except our own. Distantly, I hear a trickling of water, and as we go on, I see the wooden floors give way to slick gray stone. Like the church, the barracks have been built into the cliffside.
We gather what we can: a bow and quiver for me, a sword for Gáspár. Katalin’s mouth pinches shut as she watches; I can tell that she is repulsed by the prospect of wielding a Woodsman blade. Mercifully, she has not mentioned the wolf cloak that was once hers strung over my back. I was sure to retrieve it before we went down to the dungeon, its white fur matted with my blood. Maybe Katalin thinks me more worthy of it now.
My breath comes in white clouds as we pause at the mouth of a tunnel. Now that the pain has ebbed and my mind has cleared, there is room for all my misgivings, all my bewilderment and despair. I think of Yehuli Street and the taste of challah bread. I think of the star-dappled temple ceiling and the way my father held me to his chest. I may be damning them all.
“évike.” Gáspár’s voice is stern, but not ungentle. “You have to come now. You’ve already made your choice.”
He is right, though the thought of it makes me want to weep. I follow him through the tunnel and out the other side, stepping into the cool wash of moonlight. Katalin’s hair and cloak are as pale as a dewy pearl.
Numbly, we go to the stables, saddling three black Woodsman steeds. They stomp the earth with a sound like far-off thunder. As we mount them, I stare and stare at the sweep of the landscape before us, the flat grasslands of Akosvár and the craggy topography of Szarvasvár. Beyond it, farther than I can see, winter is holding Kaleva in its white-toothed maw.