“He rewards us with salvation.” Gáspár’s face is stony, but there’s a hitch in his voice. “Not that you would understand such a thing.”
“I’m glad I don’t,” I reply, skin itching angrily. “I’m glad I don’t live my life at the mercy of a god who takes body parts from ten-year-old boys.”
Gáspár angles his body away from me so that I can only see the unmarred half of his face, and the brief pall of shame that flits across it.
“If we continue this way,” he says slowly, “it will be a very long journey.”
My knuckles are white around my horse’s reins. After a moment I let my muscles relax, shoulders slumping beneath my wolf cloak.
“Fine,” I say. But in my head, I think, Stupid prince.
The night seems hazy and incomplete on the plain, nothing like the dense blackness of the woods. Gáspár’s lantern swings out long shafts of light, knifing a path through the grass. Farther ahead there’s another light, just a filmy orange smudge on the horizon. I glance at Gáspár, a look of uncertainty passing between us. Finally, he gives a small, curt nod, and we continue toward the light, which throbs brighter with every step.
A series of tents is set out against the murk and darkness, craggy triangles like the fins of some spectacularly large river carp. There’s a cluster of pale gray cattle, horns twisted as hugely as tree roots. A mop of a dog with coiled fur whines as we approach, wet nose twitching. Inside the knot of tents is a massive hearth, flinging its orange light, and above the fire is a spindly stick sculpture, carved roughly to resemble the Prinkepatrios’s three-pronged spear.
“I don’t think we can beg their hospitality,” I murmur. The fire coughs out sparks that look like a flock of molten insects.
“Of course we can,” he says. “I’m a prince. Better yet, a Woodsman.”
Before I can reply, one of the tents’ flaps open. A woman comes dashing out. Her hair is gathered into a limp brown plait, streaked through with gray, and her eyes are wild, wheeling.
“It’s a Woodsman!” she cries. “Godfather Life has answered our prayers, we are saved!”
More tents part, calfskin fluttering. Men and women filter out, chasing their children. It’s a poor village, I can see that at once—most of the children wear homespun tunics, pitted with tiny holes. The men’s coats are pulling at the seams. Their obvious desperation embarrasses me, because I’ve never thought to wonder about the plight of small villages like this one—villages not unlike Keszi, but without magic to dull the jagged edges of hunger and scarcity.
Gáspár, holy as he is, looks down at the woman with nothing but compassion, no artifice at all in his eye. “What has happened here?”
“We have been afflicted by a terrible evil, Sir Woodsman. We—” The woman stops, gaze fallen on me. Horror and repugnance pull dark clouds over her face.
“Perhaps it was this wolf-girl!” someone in the crowd cries out. “Look, there’s blood on her cloak!”
Peti’s blood, I think, anger rising in my throat. The blood of one of your blessed killers. My hand goes to the dagger in my pocket, but I find the length of my mother’s braid first, like some small animal slumbering.
“That’s impossible,” Gáspár says, his voice gentle but firm. “The wolf-girl has been under my watch since she left her village. She is not your monster.”
Not your monster, but a monster all the same. I reach past my mother’s braid and grasp the knife, chafing under all these Patritians’ flint-eyed stares.
“Please, Sir Woodsman,” the woman goes on. “An early frost killed all our crops and half our herd, and now our people are vanishing too. It must be a monster, drawn out of Ezer Szem by the smell of our blood. Last week, Hanna wandered off and never returned, but we found her handkerchief floating red in the water. Then Balász—we found nothing but his scythe and hoe. And last night, little Eszti left the village to play and still hasn’t come back. We’ve found no trace of her at all.”
The hairs rise on the back of my neck. The only living things we saw on our journey were grousing crows, but for all I know, the crows are as illusory as those black hens: ready to bare their teeth and claws as soon as the sun goes down.
“And have you kept your faith staunchly?” Gáspár asks.
“Yes, sir,” says the woman. “Our fire has burned steadily all this time, even without much dry wood to stoke it. This cannot be a punishment from the Prinkepatrios, or else he would have taken our fire too. It must be the work of Thanatos.”