The man circles my father with the lithe grace of a hawk just before it snatches its prey.
“What do you say, Zsidó Zsigmond, to these charges?” he asks, sounding terribly pleasant, as though he were inquiring to a merchant about the price of some coveted ware. “Do you confess that you were indeed working on the last Lord’s Day?”
“I am paid to work on the Lord’s Day,” Zsigmond says. “Commissioned by your own father to—”
I don’t hear the rest. Gáspár has shoved his way to my side, his hand closing around my wrist.
“You need to leave,” he rasps. “If you only heed my warning once in your life, wolf-girl, please sheathe your claws now.”
My four fingers curl into a fist at my side. ?rd?g’s magic is there, coiled like a snake ready to strike, but the ragged desperation in Gáspár’s voice stills me, just for a moment, as the crowd pushes around us.
“These sorts of trials aren’t unusual,” he goes on, quickly, now that he’s gotten me to falter, “but they make a mockery of the very notion of justice. Yehuli men and women are charged with a number of invented, flimsy accusations, and then paraded around in chains for the crowd to gnash their teeth at. It’s an easy way to win the favor of peasants who loathe the Yehuli.”
Ice edges into my veins. “And the pig . . . ?”
Gáspár lets out a breath. “Yehuli scripture forbids them from eating or touching pig.”
And then I think I really will be sick, with the smell of the pig’s blood and viscera stiff and heavy in the air, and Nándor’s gloating voice running over me like water in a stream bed, and I grab hold of Gáspár’s arm to steady myself. He tenses under my touch but doesn’t jerk away.
“He can’t,” I manage. “Please—you have to say something. You have to stop him.”
“Your father is in no real danger, at least not yet,” Gáspár replies, but a swallow ticks in his throat. “Our protestations are better spent at the king’s feet, or later, when there’s no audience to preen for. Nándor won’t abandon his fun while there are half a hundred peasants looking on, cheering for a Yehuli man’s debasement.”
The evenness of his voice, the pinched-nose rationality of his proposal, makes my vision glaze with fury. Nándor might as well be Virág, standing over me with her reed whip, or Katalin—they have the same gleeful venom in their eyes. I let go of Gáspár’s arm as brusquely as I can, hoping to leave marks.
“Will you only move to prevent injustice when no one is watching?” I ask, with as much meanness as I can muster. “It’s no wonder the people prefer Nándor—at least he’s not a coward.”
“I suppose a coward is anyone who acts with forethought, who doesn’t hurl themselves into the jaws of the beast only to prove their own heroism?” Gáspár’s eye is as black as pitch. “Surviving in Király Szek is a test of shrewdness, not of bravery. You will not last long here unless you understand that.”
There is an undercurrent of desperation to his words, even concern, but I am too angry to be moved. I have done plenty of kneeling. It has never earned me any mercy. The crowd’s chanting rises, louder, like a flock of birds taking flight into the gray sky, and Nándor smiles and smiles as pig’s blood soaks my father’s boots.
“Stop!”
The word shudders out of me, unbidden, before I can think to prevent it. And because I’ve already started, I say again, “Stop, let him go!”
The onlookers go quiet. Nándor’s eyes lift, scanning the crowd until they find me—his lambent, laughing eyes. He considers me for a moment, blinking once, and then his gaze shifts, landing on Gáspár.
“Is this an illusion of Thanatos?” he asks, and then pauses, although it is not a question anyone is supposed to answer. “Or is it my brother back again, with a wolf-girl by his side?”
Nándor leaves my father and strides toward us. Instinctively, my hand goes for my knife, but then I remember that it’s gone, along with my braid and my coin.
My four fingers open, unfurling like a flower, as Nándor nears. If he reaches for me I will grasp him first and see what ?rd?g’s power can do, but here before all these Patritians, and four Woodsmen guards, I realize with a slippery feeling in my stomach that it will not be enough. It can’t be. The beautiful man stalks toward me, his eyes searing right through my skin, and I think I finally understand Gáspár’s dire warnings.