Still not willing to make peace, I say, “I’m not convinced that this arrangement is preferable to spending a night on the plain.”
Gáspár gives me a dour look. “You seem to be enjoying the fire, though.”
“We could’ve had a fire there too.”
“But not a roof over our heads.”
“You just wanted an excuse to imagine me as a scullery maid. Scrubbing floors in penance for my impiety.” I let out another laugh: shorter, humorless. “Is that really why the king takes girls from Keszi? To clean his chamber pot?”
“No,” he says. “And you would make a poor scullery maid.”
“Pity. Now I’ll never be redeemed.”
“You could be.” Gáspár’s black eye is on me, with a sudden intensity that makes my face heat. “Godfather Life does not consider anyone beyond redemption.”
“And what of Godfather Death?” We learn very little about the Patritian faith from our village in the woods, but I’m glad I know enough to prick at him.
“You don’t understand. They’re one god—two halves of the same whole. Godfather Life is the bestower of mercy, and Godfather Death is the arbiter of justice. Both justice and mercy have their place, and I know Godfather Life would grant the latter to you and your kind if you wished to change your ways.”
“Two sides of the same coin.” As I speak, I turn my father’s coin over in my hand, tracing the unreadable symbols on each side. Yehuli script on one, Régyar letters on the other. Gáspár watches me, unblinking. “Your god can keep his mercy. Perhaps you should ask me for mine, since you just damned us both to fighting a monster.”
“I couldn’t ignore their plea,” Gáspár says, shaking his head as if my reticence disappoints him terribly. “I took the Woodsman vow. Even if I hadn’t—it’s the right thing to do.”
Ever the noble Woodsman. I think of the way he refused to reveal himself, how he accepted Kajetán’s rebuffs and impudence, and it angers me all over again. What’s the point of having power if you balk at every chance to wield it?
“I’m tired of this honorable Woodsman pretense,” I tell him. “You’re a prince. Act like one.”
“You wouldn’t like it much if I did.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’d gag and bind you for talking to me the way you do.”
My mouth goes fiercely dry. I feel stupid for treating him like an acquaintance, like an ally, like anything but a Woodsman. I remind myself again that he’s far too young to have taken my mother.
But he might as well have.
“Is that your brand of justice?” I ask him blackly.
“Not mine, wolf-girl. The king’s, perhaps.” His voice is light, but there’s a furrow in his brow. “And you may have noticed I’ve not gagged you yet.”
Király és szentség. The words that Peti spluttered as Gáspár’s ax loomed over him come flickering back to me. I go stiff at the memory: royalty and divinity are twin blades to cut through pagan flesh. Gáspár slips off his suba and rests his ax against the wall of the tent. He lies down on a silver cowhide, facing the fire instead of me.
I stare at the black outline of his body, light pooling on each crease in his dolman. I should only be thinking about his ax and his horrible missing eye. But instead I am wondering why he cares so much for his oath and so little for his crown. Why he seems to suggest that it’s easier to be a Woodsman than a prince. I curl onto one of the cowhides on the other side of the tent, closer to the fire, and sleep claims me before I can begin to wonder why I am thinking of him so much at all.
Chapter Six
By morning, frost lies over the Little Plain, a garland on each blade of grass. The sky is seething and gray, clouds swollen, all of it a bad omen. These are signs that Virág taught me could portend a monster, but Gáspár and I can find no trace of one.
The plain isn’t like the woods—there are no tree holes to hide in, no shadows to conceal the presence of something large with fangs and claws. No prophetic smears of blood or masticated piles of bone. As we trace a two-mile perimeter around the village, tents swaying scantly in the distance, Gáspár’s shoulders coil with frustration.
“I don’t understand,” he says. “People don’t simply disappear.”
“I know,” I say. The forest could swallow things up, but not the plain. “Maybe they’re lying.”