Peti’s livid face floats up at me, the name that he choked out between the blood and bile in his mouth. “Do you mean Nándor?”
Gáspár gives a tight, silent nod.
“Your brother,” I say.
“Half-brother,” Gáspár says, too quickly. “And if you think my father is a pious fanatic—he doesn’t have even a fraction of Nándor’s fire, or his gift for beguiling crowds. He gives his sermons in the street, gathering his followers who want to blame the pagans or the Yehuli for Régország’s misfortune. It’s not an unpopular sentiment in the capital, especially with the Merzani army at our door.”
His voice catches when he says Merzani. I wonder, with a prickle of guilt, whether the epithet “black prince” has more to do with his Woodsman garb, or with the stain of his Merzani blood. I wonder if he ever touches the contours of his own face, trying to find some memory of his mother in them, and feels equal parts relieved and distressed at the result. We kept no mirrors in Keszi, but I would spend hours kneeling at the riverside, watching my reflection crease and wrinkle like it was an embroidery on silk, puzzling over whether my nose belonged to my mother or my father, and what it would mean either way.
There was no answer that didn’t hurt to swallow. I almost tell him that, before I remember that he’s no friend of mine.
“Nándor’s not the prince,” I say. “You are.”
Gáspár’s mouth goes thin. For a moment, we’re both silent enough to hear the gentle lap of lake water, a frothing collar along the shoreline.
“It’s not nearly as simple as that,” Gáspár says with a note of finality. “The line of succession matters little when there are thousands of peasants rallying for you, and a sect of Woodsmen whispering your name, and the king’s council weighing the pros and cons of sedition—not to mention the érsek praying every day for you to take the throne.”
His voice sharpens as he speaks; by the end, it’s as whetted as the blade of his ax. Gáspár’s fingers tighten around the handle of it, and though I knew he held the fate of my village, of my mother’s people, now I realize with a stutter of alarm that he might hold the fate of my father’s too. I think of Peti’s lip curling back, and the lambent whites of his eyes gleaming as he arched over me in the dark. I feel the sting of the wound on my throat. It stills me with terror to imagine how vicious the man he worshipped must be.
Yet an old hesitation quivers up. Perhaps I have no right to worry over the fate of the Yehuli when the only slender threads yoking me to them are a coin I can’t read and a father I can scarcely remember.
“But you’re the prince,” I say again, this time with a mortified uncertainty. “And your father, the king . . .”
“Does not wish to name a bastard to succeed him, but the pressure mounts with each moment, with each Régyar soldier slain on the front line,” Gáspár finishes. His gloved fingers are slick with blood—his own. “In less than a month Király Szek will celebrate Saint István’s Day, which Nándor has taken to claiming as his name day as well. If there’s any moment for him to make his challenge, it will be then.”
My head clouds. Suddenly all my forgotten weariness surges back, and I take a breath to steel myself against the blurring at the edges of my vision. “You think that Nándor will—what? Try to kill the king on this holiday?”
“There’s a contingent of Woodsmen who support his claim, and from what I can tell, several members of the king’s council, and of course the érsek. He has the support. He needs the opportunity.”
I let out a breath. “And is the king sipping wine and practicing his needlework while the whole city rises up against him?”
“The king has his own fetters.” Gáspár’s voice is flat. “But he’s the best hope for Régország’s survival, and for your own people—pagan and Yehuli both. I’m sure you would prefer to hand over one wolf-girl a year than see your whole village slaughtered and burned, or the Yehuli expelled from the city.”
His words knot in me, a particular coil of bewilderment and fear. All my life I’ve hated nothing more than the Woodsmen, except the king, like one of the shadows that moved along the tree line outside Keszi, too dark and distant to see. To hear he might be my savior, to imagine that I might even play a small part in keeping him on the throne, makes my stomach lurch with a dizzying revulsion.