“Me,” Gáspár says. “If he takes the throne while I’m still breathing, he’s compromised all that he stands for. Patritian law decrees that it must be the eldest son, the true-born son. But even if he kills me, his reign will be plagued by doubt and uncertainty. What he really wants is for me to step aside willingly, then live the rest of my life in exile or obscurity, until he can have me killed later, when everyone has stopped paying attention.”
I feel as if I’ve been scraped clean of anger and hate, scraped clean of everything but exhaustion. Fear. “And then he can massacre the pagans as he pleases.”
Gáspár nods. A silence falls over us, the wind bristling through the dead grass. Finally, Katalin says, “It might have been a lot simpler if you’d only left me to die.”
I choke out a laugh. “Are you sincerely saying you’d rather I let the king slit your throat?”
“No,” Katalin says. The bruise on her cheek is throbbing violet. “I’m only saying that you could easily have left me. It’s what Virág would have done.”
My mouth opens mutely, then closes again. Katalin has turned away from me, staring off into the distance, at the clouds gathering like fat white birds on the horizon. I think it is the closest she will ever come to thanking me.
“The king would not have been able to end the war with your magic anyway,” I say. “He didn’t understand that a seer can’t choose her visions.”
Katalin’s lips quiver. “That’s not quite true.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, sometimes visions will come when we least expect them,” she goes on slowly. “But there are ways to force them. Just like cutting off your pinky—surely you remember how Virág would go down to the river.”
I frown at her, trying to conjure the memory. It comes back to me in jagged pieces, just a flash of Virág’s six fingers, her knees blackened with river mud. Her white hair spidering out through the water. Someone’s hand on the back of her neck.
“Yes,” I say, feeling my stomach fill with a slick nausea.
“So it’s no perfect method, but what about the gods’ magic is perfect, anyway?” Katalin runs a hand through her hair. “You can ask a question, and if you offer enough of yourself, the gods will give you some kind of hazy answer.”
“But it’s not the omniscience that my father imagines,” says Gáspár. His eye shifts uneasily between Katalin and me. “And it’s not enough to stop Nándor either.”
“No,” Katalin says. Her mouth twists, certainly displeased that she has agreed with a Woodsman.
I stare down at the water, the gray sky reflected on its murky surface. The clouds wash downriver. Quietly, I say, “But the turul is.”
I expect Katalin to scowl, to swear. To laugh in derision at my suggestion. But she only arches her eyebrow at me, bemused. “I thought you loathed all of Virág’s stories with every bone in your body.”
“I didn’t loathe her stories. Only that I was made to hear them so many times. And that they were coming from Virág’s wicked mouth.” But I don’t know whether I mean the words or not. I hated Virág’s stories because I never felt like they belonged to me. “Anyway, that doesn’t matter. The turul will give us enough power to stop Nándor, if we can find it and kill it.”
Gáspár’s breathing quickens. I know he wants to argue with me, to tell me that the Woodsmen have been searching for ages and have never found a trace, to remind me how we already tried to find it and failed. He stays silent, though. Katalin blinks her disbelief.
“Even if that were true, what makes you think you can find the turul?” Her nostrils flare, and for a moment it feels like the old days again: her preening, me scowling, our shared history littered with slurs and bolts of blue flame.
“I can’t find it,” I tell her, drawing a breath. “But you can.”
Confusion creases Katalin’s perfect face. It takes her a moment, gaze traveling over me and down to the water, then back up to me again. Then she hardens, her eyes like bits of ice.
“Don’t let me drown,” she says.
I’m so relieved, I almost laugh. “What if this was my grand plan all along, to save you from the king’s hands so I could kill you myself? I might have the perversity for such a thing, but not the forethought.”
Katalin sniffs. “I could hardly blame you for having your vengeance.”