I let my muscles unclench from the back of my mare, belly gnawing with hunger. When I suggest to Gáspár that we stop so I can hunt, he gives me a morose stare.
“You can’t possibly have an appetite after that,” he says.
I consider telling him that he sounds as waspish as Virág, since the comparison always makes him scowl, but thinking of her or anyone in Keszi makes my throat tighten, all that bold certainty curdling like sour milk. “If I’m to die Király Szek, as you’re so certain I will, I would like to die with a full stomach.”
His face darkens. He has never appreciated my black humor, but it seems to rankle him differently now, when I speak with a flippant smile about the possibility of my death. Now it doesn’t make him flush with anger, only go thin-mouthed and silent.
“We’ll have to get a bit further down the river first,” he says finally, voice curt, “if we’re to arrive in time for Saint István’s feast.”
I bite my tongue on a reply. Though I’ve mentioned it in jest, I have not truly allowed myself to think of what awaits me when we reach the city; I have only held on fiercely to my coin and to the conviction that I will be able to find my father, and of course protect myself with my magic. If I let my mind wander long enough to consider so many grisly possibilities, fear will wither me up like a wildflower that has been cut and I will walk into one of the sod houses and wait for the soil to close over my head.
“We ought to stop for water at least,” I tell him. “You look woozy.”
He does scowl at that, but he doesn’t argue. We bring our horses to a halt and leap down, boots soundless in the wet soil. I lead my silver mare toward the water to drink while Gáspár kneels at the riverbed. It’s true enough that I wanted to stop, but I wasn’t lying about Gáspár’s appearance: though hours have passed since we left the witch’s house, his face looks particularly pale, and there is a fold of worry between his brows that makes my stomach twist with a mirrored concern. It seems almost impossible to remember that I had been so terrified of him once, that I had wished him dead. He removes his gloves and dips his cupped hands into the water, shoulders bowing. In the early days of our journey I would have considered how easy it would be to put a knife between his shoulder blades while his back was turned. Now I am looking only at the way that water clings to his lips, almost iridescent in the late-afternoon light, delicate as drops of dew.
I bend beside him and lift a handful of water to my own mouth. I think of my trysts by a different riverside, the one near Keszi. Mostly quick and shameful, my knees in the dirt so our eyes would never meet, sometimes brusque enough that it bloodied the insides of my thighs. I imagined that when the same boys took Katalin to the riverside, they had her like an oyster strokes out its pearl, delicate and slow, and when they finished, they helped her brush the dirt from her cloak and untangle the dead leaves from her hair. Gáspár wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and squints through the light, watching me. It is frighteningly easy to envision him on his back in the dirt: he would be as fumbling and gentle as a fawn, I think, and afterward anxious to conceal any bruises he had left.
Of course, he would sooner curl his lip and bristle at a wolf-girl’s touch. Since leaving Kaleva behind, there’s no need to anchor each other against the cold, and if he’d felt my hands run over his bare chest, he would have leapt away from me with a start.
The question rises in me anyway. “Are Woodsmen forbidden to wed?”
Gáspár’s shoulders lift, and I hear him draw in a breath. “Yes. It’s a holy order—none of the men are permitted to take wives, or to father children.” He hesitates, a breeze feathering his black curls over his forehead. “Why?”
“Because I know you Patritians have your silly laws,” I say, almost regretting it even as I do. “Laws that forbid you from coupling outside of your marriage bed.”
I expect Gáspár to make a noise of reproach and stand, flicking my question off his back like a horse ridding itself of a fly. Instead he blushes profoundly, all the way from forehead to chin, but he doesn’t look away from me.
“Of all our laws, that one is perhaps the most frequently violated,” he says. “Most of the Woodsmen are boys of eight or nine when they first make their vows. They don’t know what they’re promising when they make them. I suppose it’s easier that way, never knowing what you have to live without.”