He’s forging.
I’ve never seen a Woodsman do it before, and not even a whisper of a prayer has left the king’s lips. The guests are flashing their eyes now, like prey animals at the mouths of their burrows.
The room starts to shrink away, candlelight pinwheeling through my darkening vision. My heart thrums like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. I try to count how many wolf-girls have been taken from Keszi. One every two or three years, for all the years that János has been king. It tallies to twelve girls, not including me.
Twelve girls. Ten fingernails each. Is it enough to cobble together into King János’s bone crown? Enough to leach the magic from his victims’ cold skin and give the king the power that he craves?
The king takes a seat and coughs into the luxurious sleeve of his mente.
“Now,” he says in a phlegmy voice, once he has finished, “bring in the counts.”
I push myself onto my toes, still feeling the thrust of Lajos’s ax between my shoulder blades, and wait to see more men come swathed in silk and velvet. But the first man who enters is dressed plainly, in a pagan’s brown tunic and woolen cloak. The recognition gives way to terrible grief, like the first bite of an apple before you taste the curdle of its rot. He is wearing a grand headdress of antlers, and two men beside him are leading a massive buck, its own antlers sawed to sad nubs. The deer strains and strains against its bounds, fur matted with blood where the rope has cut in.
My stomach floods with ice. Szarvasvár was once the land of the Deer Tribe, and its count is the great-grand-nephew of a tribal chieftain. He is dressed precisely like a tribal chieftain now, even though so many laws have been passed since, to forbid the worship of our gods.
The deer is brought in front of the dais, before the king. Its eyes are twin pools that hold the candlelight, black as a new-moon night. A Woodsman with a missing ear steps away from the wall, ax held aloft.
Blood arcs over the white tablecloth, narrowly missing the king himself. It kisses the sleeve of Nándor’s dolman, like a napkin dipped in wine. As the deer slumps over, the guests come alive again, a scale toppled over and then righted again with the weight of a second, identical stone. Their approval whisks through the air.
The Woodsman drags the deer away. My eyes are burning, my throat is burning, and then the next man comes in, the count of Kaleva, dressed in a black bear cloak, escorted by some pitiful shaved mongrel that could be Bierdna’s brother or sister. The bear makes its frantic, desperate honking sounds, fighting until the Woodsman’s ax comes down and even after, against the choke of blood and the quivering splay of its limbs.
The count of Farkasvár is next. I know his face without ever having seen him before, and he is draped in a russet wolf cloak. I can barely look at the shorn, whimpering dog that the soldiers drag in after him, the thing that no man with eyes could call a wolf. Its bald tail lashes, teeth grinding against the leather muzzle.
I have seen things die before. I have killed them myself, birds and rabbits and mean, hissing badgers with their white-planked faces that had the audacity to steal from our winter vegetable stores. I have even seen a man killed and watched the light drain from his mad, manic eyes. I can’t watch this. I squeeze my eyes shut, but when I do, Lajos prods me sharply in the back, and then grips my head with his gloved hand, turning my face toward the dais.
The wolf dies howling. By this time, blood has soaked the stone floor so thoroughly I know it will take some serving girl a day and a half to clean, scrubbing on her hands and knees until her own palms are soaked too. I try to meet Gáspár’s gaze, but he is looking down at his goblet, his empty plate. He has one hand over his younger brother’s eyes.
Even though I know what’s coming next I have to raise my hand and bite down on my straining knuckles to keep from crying out. The count of Akosvár sweeps in wearing a cloak of white feathers, candlelight streaming off each one. He carries the golden cage himself, and inside it is the plucked falcon, shuddering and scrawny, looking like someone’s supper. I sob against my palm, tasting my own salt-damp skin.
The count of Akosvár is not the true heir of the White Falcon Tribe. Hardly anyone remembers that Saint István was born with a pagan name （which has now been struck from any record books and almanacs, and is forbidden by Régyar law to be uttered aloud）， because his grandfather, a pagan, was the blood chieftain.
The king clears his throat, but he doesn’t speak, only nods.
Nándor is looking on with bright, glassy eyes. They are blue rimmed with an even paler blue, like frost ossifying around a window frame. He plucks a knife from the table, forged by the king only moments ago, and steps lightly off the dais. The falcon beats its bald wings, shrieking hoarsely. Nándor wedges the knife through the bars of the cage and twists it into the bird’s naked breast.