His argument is laced through with conceits that I hardly understand, words that almost make me feel like a stranger to this language after all. It reminds me that he’s spent years learning at the knee of royal tutors, and I am a wolf-girl from a flyspeck of a village who can’t even spell her own name. A coil of shame rises in my throat. I fight back with the only weapon I have.
“Your mother is a Northerner,” I say, remembering Szabín’s story. “Régyar words must curdle in her Kalevan accent. If I’m a foreigner in this land, then you are half a foreigner as well.”
I expect him to balk, to give me another baleful stare, but Nándor hardly blinks. His smile deepens. It is the smile of an assured victory.
“You think that this is a problem of blood, wolf-girl?” He lifts a brow. “Saint István was born a pagan, as you well know. Some of my compatriots wish to forget that fact, but I see no reason to efface the truth. It was his choice to relinquish the false gods that matters, in the end. And you pagans, the Juvvi, the Yehuli—they all have been given so many chances to do the same.”
I bite my lip on a derisive laugh. “I saw what you did to Zsigmond. You wouldn’t welcome a Yehuli with open arms even if he swore his undying devotion to the Prinkepatrios.”
It is the same logic I have been made to swallow my whole life, the same way Boróka tried to wheedle me into keeping my head down and my eyes trained on the ground, into evading Katalin’s stare and mumbling my soft-bellied deference. But I had tried kindness. I had tried sheathing my claws. It only made it easier for her to strike me down again.
“Certainly I would,” says Nándor, “if his soul was truly repentant. I would even welcome you with open arms, wolf-girl—you look almost like a true Patritian already. If you stay in this city long enough, perhaps I can get you on your knees.”
His casual remark blinkers me for a moment, like a trick of light. Nándor is beautiful enough that I think even Katalin would go dry-mouthed at the veiled proposal. I, too, might have been tempted by his entreaty if I hadn’t just watched him drench my father in pig’s blood, if all the words bracketing his guileful suggestion weren’t so ugly. I wonder how many girls in Király Szek have fallen to their knees in front of him, babbling in reverence, pleasuring him with their promises. I will not allow myself to think of it further, and banish all the lurid fantasies from my mind. Nándor’s smile is all too innocent, both of us keenly aware of the flush painting my cheeks.
Now desperate to change the subject, I turn to the final statue. It is hewn roughly in the shape of a man, but his face is featureless, his robes carved only in the vaguest lines. “Is this meant to be King János?”
“Yes,” Nándor says, sounding supremely pleased with himself, and certainly noting the tremor in my voice. “His legacy is yet to be written. The statue will only be completed after he dies, when we can judge properly what sort of kingdom he has left behind. Surely you can see as well that the people of Régország want a king who will move their country further toward its Patritian ideal, rather than mingling with pagans and Yehuli, and suffusing himself with pagan magic.”
His words are close to treasonous. I try to remember them very precisely, and their exact cadence, so I can tell János when I see him, but the plan dies before I even finish making it. I think of the king’s rheumy eyes, trained vaguely in the middle distance. He won’t see his son’s sedition until Nándor’s knife is in his throat.
For now, the threat is only for my ears. I clench and unclench my fingers, considering the same dismal possibilities. I could grasp his wrist and see what my magic would do to him, but Gáspár is right—I would never leave Király Szek alive, and Nándor’s followers would find a way to avenge him, likely fixing their gaze upon Yehuli Street. A wind picks up, raising gooseflesh on my bare forearms. Standing perfectly still in the wash of cold sunlight, Nándor looks half like a statue himself, carved by the hand of some lonely, salacious woman, a marble cast of her most torrid fantasies. I blink, and for a moment I can see him as Vilm?tten after all, golden-haired and sapphire-eyed, with long fingers made for plucking lute strings. I imagine he could sing his way out of the Under-World too.
I blink again, and the illusion fractures like glass. Nándor is no more my hero than Saint István.
As if he could hear my thoughts, Nándor wanders back across the courtyard, toward his great-great-grandfather’s statue, and lets his fingertips drift across the dead king’s holy cheekbone.