He traces and traces until the gold turns to something like clay in his hands. He holds it in a way that reminds me of Virág kneading dough. Sweat pearls around his hairline, dampening his curls. And then, into the soft gold, he traces something else, letters I don’t recognize at first. But he traces them so many times that eventually I can make out the shapes of the kaf and the tav and the resh and the little dots and dashes that fill in the rest of the sounds. He is tracing the Yehuli word for crown.
It seems to come into the shape almost by itself, as though he’s imbued the gold with its own sort of mind, a lumbering cleverness, the way the rabbi did the clay-man that he carved up from the riverbed. The crown is a thick circlet with a domed top, lined with filigree plates and strands of gilt beads that hang down and finally, at its peak, the three-pronged symbol of the Prinkepatrios. My father traces more words, words that I don’t know, and they etch delicate patterns into the gold, the heads and shoulders of saints and feathery outlines of holy fire. When Zsigmond finishes, he’s panting.
Nándor leans close to the workbench, candles casting the crown’s golden light along the curves of his face. He runs the pad of his thumb around the edge of it, tracing the shapes of the saints, every filigreed frond of flame. He smiles again, but he does not put it on.
“Stories of Yehuli craftsmanship have not been exaggerated,” he murmurs. “And you, Zsidó Zsigmond, are gifted even for your kind.”
“Yes,” Zsigmond says evenly, placing one trembling hand flat on the workbench. “I have upheld my oath and made your crown. Now you must uphold yours: leave the Yehuli be.”
The word oath strikes my heart like an arrow. I strain against Lajos’s grasp, but it’s useless, and I’m far too late, anyway. Far too late to have told Zsigmond what he needed to know: that you should never strike a deal with a Bárány.
Nándor’s gaze travels lazily to the Woodsmen beside the dais.
“Soldiers,” he drawls, “seize him.”
They have Zsigmond’s arms behind his back before I can even scream again. By the time they are dragging him away, Lajos has pinched his fingers over my nose once more, leaving me breathless, head throbbing and vision warping as tears burn salt trails down my cheeks. Putting my faith in King János was like boarding a ship with green rot in its hull and hoping that it wouldn’t sink. But Zsigmond making a deal with Nándor is like asking the river for mercy as its black water fills your lungs.
I think of Yehuli Street, looted and empty, Jozefa and Batya fleeing as torchlight shines bright on their terrified faces.
The érsek ambles toward the dais. “But won’t you let me crown you today, my lord, in the sight of all your honored guests?”
“No,” Nándor replies, and the érsek gives a little shudder, as if unmoored by his defiance. “No, my coronation will take place tomorrow, and it is my dear brother who will place the crown on my head.”
He has all four of his brothers at blade point but it’s Gáspár he addresses, Gáspár he bounds up the dais to see. He leans close to him, their noses nearly touching. From my vantage point they look like skewed mirror images of each other, Nándor’s face washed and pale, no more than a vague, jagged shape under ice.
“Never,” Gáspár says, his throat bobbing beneath the Woodsman’s blade.
“I suspected you might refuse,” Nándor says. “You would easily offer your own life as forfeit, being the gallant Woodsman that you are, but what about the lives of your brothers?”
He shifts toward Matyi, who is shivering in his bright-green dolman, eyes pressed tightly shut. Gáspár flinches, but he doesn’t rise to Nándor’s threat. Blood from his earlier wound is gleaming ruby-bright in the hollow of his collarbone.
“If you do as I say and place the crown on my head, I will take your other eye and let you leave with your life, so long as you never return to Régország again. Perhaps the Merzani will welcome their blind, half-breed son back home.”
Gáspár swallows. “And the wolf-girl. évike. You won’t lay a hand on her.”
As Nándor’s head swivels toward me, so does every gaze in the room. A smile curves over his face, thin and red as a knife wound.
“That I will not swear to you, brother,” he says. “Tomorrow, at my coronation, the wolf-girl will die by my hand, and a hundred more deaths will echo in its wake, for my first act as king will be to destroy the pagan villages in Ezer Szem.”