I don’t swallow my laughter; the king can punish me for it if he likes. I have been in Király Szek long enough to know when a trap has been laid at my feet.
In the dim corridor that leads to the king’s Great Hall, Katalin stands straight and tall, like a winter bird on its branch. The drench of candlelight makes the wounds on her face look wet and lush, but her silvery hair has been braided back so that not even a strand obscures them. Her finely shaped chin is raised haughty, high. Her straight-backed certainty ought to be a comfort to me, but I have only recently begun to think of her as an ally, not an enemy, and in comparison I feel as whimpering-weak as a struck dog. If she can walk into the king’s feast with scars on her face and still manage to look down her nose at everyone, I’m a coward for wanting to hide in my wolf cloak. When Katalin sees me putting my hood up, she marches over to me and locks her hand around my wrist.
“Stop it,” she snaps. “You’re acting like a child.”
“How else should I act, now that my magic is gone?” I have no words to explain the emptiness that I feel, now that ?rd?g’s threads have shriveled up like flowers in the frost, leaving me bereft. I’m just as weak as the day I left Keszi.
Katalin fixes me with an icy stare. One of the cuts has dragged down the corner of her left eye and dyed the white of it with a needle-prick of blood.
“So you don’t have your magic,” she says. “That never stopped you from being wicked and spiteful before.”
I give the scar on my eyebrow a pointed rub. “You made me that way, by tormenting me every chance you got.”
“Fine—are you asking me to torment you again?”
“No.”
“Well, then, stop looking like Virág has just given you a lashing,” she says. “There’s no reason to feel guilt over what you’ve done. I would’ve done the same.”
“And what if Isten punished you for it?”
She snorts. “You are starting to sound like a Patritian.”
Face flushing, I begin to formulate a reply, but Katalin pushes through the doors to the Great Hall before I can say another word. Mute and cowed, I follow her.
The feast is nothing like I expect. There’s no gouged pig, no plucked swans, no red-currant soup with clouds of sweet cream. No carafes of coveted Ionik wine. There is only one silver dish and a single goblet, and they are both set out in front of the king. His guests are strewn like precious stones around the empty tables, jeweled silks gleaming. Their eyes dart up to the dais, then back to their neighbors, sharp and bright as blade points. I catch whispers of their conversation as I walk.
“。 . . don’t approve of it, not one bit . . .”
“。 . . cavorting with pagans, for saints’ sake . . .”
“。 . . rather the érsek, if anything . . .”
A pang of worry makes my footsteps falter, but only for a moment. King János was certain he could silence his detractors once he had the turul’s power. But until he makes a demonstration of its magic, their whispers will go on unstemmed.
The king’s dais has been set with a long table, and Nándor is seated beside him. Gáspár sits to his father’s left, and when he sees me starts to rise, but I give my head a quick shake and he sinks down again. I don’t want more gazes drawn my way. The king’s younger sons, Matyi among them, line the table to its end. A group of Woodsmen press along the far wall, and beside them, the érsek, as squint-eyed and blank-faced as ever. A thrill of loathing goes through me, something old and perfunctory, scarcely less rote than the instinct to breathe. Nothing will ever stop these Patritians from bristling at me, from wrapping their red belts tight to keep me away.
The wooden doors push open. A small, pale-haired serving girl carries a silver tray, her arms trembling under the weight of it. She lays it in front of the king and removes the lid. Inside, garnished with sprigs of elderflower and fleshy red slices of pomegranate is the turul.
It’s been perfumed with herbs to mask the faintly rotting smell, and its feathers seem to have a renewed, if artificial, glow. A fine layer of gold leaf is plastered to its wings and breast, not quite the right shade for its amber plumage. It lies flat on its back, wings stretched to their downy tips, as if it’s just been shot out of the sky.
Seeing the turul like this makes my stomach turn as hard and tight as a stone. Virág would weep, I think. She would throw herself in front of the king and beg to be taken instead. For all that I railed against her, she loved us all more than she loved any one of us, and much more than she loved herself.