Deaf to everything but the torrent of blood in my ears, I lurch to my feet, hauling Katalin up with me. I shove my way through the crowd with half the savageness of a real wolf, trying to find my father. When I do, it’s because I slam hard into his back, and nearly topple both of us to the ground.
“évike,” he gasps, gripping my bound hands. “We have to flee this city at once.”
I shake my head mutely, thinking of that star-dappled temple ceiling, heavy with all its histories. I think of the white columns like cracked ribs, and all the pale rubbed spots on the benches where so many men and women and children have sat, generations wearing through the wood varnish.
“There’s no shame in fleeing, when it’s a choice between that and death. More than anything, God wants his children to live. To be good, and to survive.”
His words make my throat close, something raspy and hot rising in it. I remember that he whispered the true name of God in my ear, like it was the best and truest story he ever told, and only a secret because you had to be sure you were ready to handle it gently, the way a doe noses its newborn fawn toward the softest grasses.
“You go,” I whisper. “I have to stay.”
“Where you go, I go,” my father says.
“Please,” I say. “Take Batya and Jozefa and the rest and leave Király Szek as quickly as you can.”
Zsigmond doesn’t reply. He begins to undo the bindings on my hands. I remember the pressure of his fingers from when he taught me to hold a quill. Then he reaches up to cup my face.
“My daughter,” he says. “Do you remember the true name of God?”
I roll its syllables under my tongue, tasting them like I would a bite of bread or a sip of wine, measuring their heft. “I do.”
“Then you have the strength that you need.”
He kisses me once on the forehead, and then lets go. I watch him vanish through the crowd, eyes blurring over the shape of his retreating back. I reach up to wipe my tears, still tasting God’s name on my tongue. In the story, Esther went to the king, even though she knew she risked her own life, and the rabbi made his clay-man even though he knew he might be punished for it. Whatever strength and shrewdness they had, I have, too, as long as I can remember how to make the letters.
When Zsigmond has gone, I lift my chin and try to peer over the city gates, to the crest of the tallest hill beyond. There is a line of pale wolf cloaks glimmering along the horizon.
It must have taken them seven days, all the warriors in all the villages of Ezer Szem, riding as straight as a dagger toward the capital. Easy once they made it out of the woods, gliding through the yellow grass of the Little Plain, past villages that shuttered their doors and hid their children’s faces as the convoy went by. Hair braided with bramble and eyes gleaming with singular, ill-omened purpose.
I can’t hear it, but I know that they are singing as they descend, singing their way into oblivion.
Katalin is still beside me, her head ducked low under the lattice of reaching arms. I loosen her bindings and drag her through the crowd, cutting a narrow path to the barbican.
“Are you mad?” she spits. “We’re going the wrong way!”
“I’m not leaving them,” I say, though my words are nearly swallowed by the din.
I know the way to the dungeon well enough to walk it blindfolded, and even now the castle is empty, its hallways hushed like a cold hearth, until we turn the corner. The next corridor is painted in blood. It’s caulked onto the walls and smeared into the stone floor, in a gruesome trail that leads to a heap of bodies beneath a carved archway. Blood crusts on the black wool of their cloaks, bruises fresh on the skin of their shaven heads. Woodsmen.
Ice in my veins, I kneel beside the nearest one and examine his wounds. He’s been cut several times in the torso, clear through the fabric of his dolman. Broad, deep slashes that cleaved off whole hunks of flesh—cuts made by an ax, not a sword. Tiny grains of dark metal are flecked all over the ruptured skin. They must be the loyalist Woodsmen, the ones who refused to yield to Nándor, though I don’t know if he only lied about imprisoning them, or if his rebel Woodsmen just had them killed anyway, against his orders.
One of the men still has a bow strapped to his back, and I find a quiver of arrows nearby. I pick up both and hold them to my chest with shaking hands.
We descend the stairs by muted torchlight. Tuula and Szabín are huddled in their cell, and Bierdna is an unmoving mass of matted fur, looking already half-killed. When Tuula sees me she stands slowly, rousing the bear too.