Abruptly, Gáspár’s face shutters. His shoulders rise around his ears, swelling as if with guilt. For a mute, shameful moment I almost want to heft the burden from his back to mine, take the blame for their deaths, even if it will damn me further in front of these Woodsmen. But Gáspár speaks first.
“Dead.” His voice is flat. “Ambushed by monsters as we journeyed from Ezer Szem. The wolf-girl and I barely survived.”
All at once, as though moved by invisible threads, both Woodsmen press two fingers to their chests. Their eyes close penitently. When they open them again, Ferenc says, “Three good Patritian men dead, and for what? So the king can have his—”
“Careful,” Gáspár says shortly, and Ferenc falls silent at once. “Your blades are still sworn to my father as long as he sits the throne.”
“Yes, and we’d prefer he stay there, despite his affinity for pagan magic,” Miklós says, cutting another glare toward me. “Nándor has only grown more insufferable in your absence, Bárány. He’s like a child, and this city is a toy he doesn’t want to share. He’ll be loath to see you again, but I think the shock of it will be enough to shake him loose—for now. You ought to get to the palace as quickly as you can.”
A knot of fear curls in my throat, but Gáspár doesn’t flinch at his words. “I’ll go as soon as I’ve dealt with the wolf-girl. If you can find Count Korhonen, you may be able to stall Nándor.”
Ferenc dips his head in assent. He and Miklós draw back their horses, and the crowd sweeps them away like driftwood on a river, streaming toward the palace. As soon as they’re gone, Gáspár turns to me, his face hardening all over again.
“I’ll take you to Yehuli Street,” he says—perfectly smooth, save for the flicker in his eye, like a candle flame seizing in the wind. “I’ll leave you there once you find your father.”
I nod, not trusting myself to speak without weeping, or else saying something damningly stupid. The same bell tolls again, a gonging that echoes through the ground and vibrates through my fingers and toes. The wind carries the smell of ash and smoke toward us, and I loop the reins twice around my hand, driving my horse against the current of the crowd.
Yehuli Street is as silent as a winter morning in the woods, before even the foxes rouse white-coated from their dens. Wool stockings and muslin dresses hang out on lines that stretch from window to window, fluttering emptily, like clothespinned ghosts. I had expected to feel some bolt of recognition, the illumination of instinct long-buried, my memory struck up like a match. But I feel nothing. Yehuli Street spools out before me, each squat gray house the same as the last, like pale fingerprints against the darkening sky.
“Where is everyone?” I whisper. The silence feels precarious, and I don’t want to be responsible for breaking it.
He frowns at me, jaw set sharply. I am keeping him from his task, but I can’t bring myself to care, not when my mouth has gone dry and my heart has stirred to a manic beat.
“It’s a Yehuli holy day,” he says. “On this day their god forbids them from working.”
“And are all these houses . . .” I trail off, gaze running down the length of the street, edged by hovel after hovel.
“Yehuli houses. They are forbidden from occupying any other part of the city that the king himself has not ordained.”
The wind snarls through my hair and blows the fur of my wolf cloak flat. I feel unspeakably cold. One of Katalin’s chants burrows its way into my mind: Yehuli slave, Yehuli scum, Yehuli bow to anyone.
“Do you know where my father lives?” I ask, voice small.
I see the moment that Gáspár’s face softens, his jaw losing its whetted edge, and then the instant when it goes hard again, like he has only just remembered that he is supposed to loathe me.
“No,” he says. “You’ll have to knock and see.”
This is where he would take his leave, disappear down Yehuli Street and let fate decide what will become of me. But Gáspár only sits stiffly on his mount, back straight as a blade. A swell of fierce gratitude and painful affection rises in my chest, but I swallow it back down.
I leap off my horse, blood roaring hot in my ears. The direness of the situation occurs to me all over again, my mind racing with thoughts of disembodied livers and hearts, Virág’s desperate warnings. Here in Király Szek my wolf cloak may as well be a death shroud. Every moment that I am without my father is an opportunity for a Patritian to take my head off.