As we pass through the marketplace, air roiling with smoke and paprika smell, I push myself to my knees and peer through the bars, hoping to catch a glimpse of Yehuli Street. Of Zsigmond’s house. I can’t smell any pig’s blood, and the windows are yellow with light. The relief that goes through me is enough to make my eyes mist. We clatter into the courtyard, right to the mouth of the barbican, where the cart grinds suddenly to a halt.
One by one, the Woodsmen yank us out of the cage, checking to make sure our bindings are still tight. I want to tell them there’s no use binding my hands, because I couldn’t forge a blade or turn their axes to dust even if I thought it would help, or if I were simply feeling rash and vengeful, but I can’t find my voice.
“We’re meant to take the wolf-girls right to the king,” Lajos tells Gáspár. “The others can go to the dungeons.”
“So we can rot there until some tribunal packed with Patritians finds us guilty and the king has our heads off?” Tuula asks. She straightens, and Bierdna gives a low, shackled growl. “Is that your god’s justice?”
“Keep your mouth shut, Juvvi scum,” Lajos snarls, jabbing her with the blunt end of his ax.
“My father could be convinced of your innocence,” Gáspár says evenly, though there’s a pulling between his brows. “Once he has the turul, he—”
Tuula interrupts him with a laugh. “And you, the false prince, Fekete, think you can comfort me? You let them take your power from you, hang you in a Woodsman’s suba, and send you into the bleak wilderness while the king sits in his castle tending to his bastards like pretty sheep? I’d rather die with a blade in my hand, or at least with fire in my heart, than live as the shadow of a shadow.”
Gáspár doesn’t reply, his mouth quivering, but Tuula’s words kindle a simmering anger in my belly.
“Leave him alone,” I snap. “You’ll only shorten your life here in Király Szek if you can’t stop yourself from snarling like an animal.”
The hair on Bierdna’s back is bristling. Tuula’s lips twist with a smile.
“I never thought I’d see you so toothless, wolf-girl,” she says. “Lying with a Woodsman has snuffed all your flame.”
Before I can reply, Lajos jerks his head. The rest of his retinue circle Tuula and Szabín like black birds, crowding them toward the barbican. It takes another four Woodsmen to wrangle the bear, dragging her into the palace hall. Her claws leave long gouges in the stone floor.
We don’t make it very far down the corridor when a figure crosses through the archway. The collar of a blue dolman parts like two strewn tulips over the pale column of his throat. Nándor.
Seeing him stops my heart. He strides toward us, lithe as a mountain cat, parting the gathered Woodsmen. For a single panicked beat I think he’s approaching me, but he pauses before Szabín, instead, clasping his hands over his chest.
“It’s been a long time, sister,” he says. “You look less holy than when I left you.”
Szabín’s lips tremble, but she doesn’t reply, only lifts her chin to meet his eyes.
“Cavorting with Juvvi, I see.” His gaze flickers to the bear, pitifully muzzled. “I thought better of you—you always seemed to have greater devotion than the rest.”
He flicks off her hood and runs his knuckles gently along her cheek, the gesture wavering somewhere between loathing and tenderness. Szabín shivers, and I see Tuula’s chest swell like she wants to speak, but there is still a Woodsman’s ax at her back. Relief pools in me, seeing her submission. Though there is little love between us, I don’t want to watch her die. Bierdna growls, one yellow tooth sliding over her lip.
“And you.” Nándor turns to me. “I don’t know how you managed to survive, but I suspect you had help from my traitor brother. Either way, now that your bargain has been broken, I suspect you’re not much longer for the palace, or this mortal world.”
I have been afraid of Nándor for a long time, but only in a hazy, indistinct way, the same way that I feared the Woodsmen as a child before I knew the fate of the wolf-girls they carried away. Now I cannot look at him without imagining the wound on his chest knitting itself shut again, flaps of skin stitching up the horrible gash that I’d left. The gash that ought to have ended his life. I feel like I have been plunged into Lake Taivas again, this time going stiff in the black water.