I was growing weary of all the stairs and every stitch in my back felt like it was pulling, but I didn’t dare pause. Even if the servant hadn’t looked about to cry, leaning against the wall was out of the question. It would mean leaning against the poor victims trapped within it.
Instead, I dug deep inside, battling both the pain of my stitches and the nausea and light-headedness that made it hard to concentrate.
Grosbeak remained silent, his expression turning smug. He was getting the reaction he wanted – though I didn’t know why he wanted it.
We rounded another corner and Bluebeard spun me so my back was to the wall, but though his actions were full of frustration, he was careful not to press my wounded back against the ice . He let go of my hand and braced himself against the wall with a hand on either side of my head. He peeked a little look out at the worried servant on one side and his anxious men on the other, as if this was some grand joke that he was wasting time when he should be hurrying.
“You have a name for me, you stone-faced certainty?” His eyes were lit with some emotion I couldn’t understand, and his lips parted slightly in anticipation. “It’s not ‘honey’ or ‘darling,’ is it?”
I lifted a single eyebrow. I thought he said he was in a hurry. And even he should realize I was not a girl who would call him that.
“Please, for the love of the wind’s name and the forest’s caresses, please!” the servant begged, swaying side to side with urgency.
Bluebeard frowned as if he’d heard my thoughts and then tilted his head to one side, his cat’s eyes still teasing. “It’s not ‘illegitimate son of a donkey’ either, is it? What might that name be, wife of mine?”
I lifted the other eyebrow. Did he really want me to break my pact and speak aloud to him?
He waited a heartbeat before smiling savagely and winking at me.
“My prince?” Vireo said nervously. Now he sounded as nervous as the servant. “The edge of darkness lifts.”
“I shall hear the name at dawn, fire of my eyes,” Bluebeard murmured for only my ears to hear.
I tilted my head as if asking, “But will you?”
Bluebeard growled in his throat, snatched my hand back, and led me up another spiral of the stairs to where they finally came out to a wide balcony. We stepped up into the bright moonlight there, where the thick lip of fungus made a fine, long hall looking out over the Wittenhame all around.
Though a fall from the edge of the fungus lip would be fatal, no railing was erected, nor a low wall. No provisions were made at all to guard guests.
A long table was laid out, made of woven bones and a tangle of interwoven weapons – bows, axes, swords, and anything else I could think of. Around it, were chairs that left my pulse racing. Who in all the world would choose chairs like these? I feared the stains on the dark wood were not made of age but of blood. Leather straps were dangling from them as if someone had once been strapped to them – or may still become imprisoned there.
The servant who had led us bowed until he was bent almost in half, and on either side of the door, a pair of other servants bowed in the same way.
They murmured something, but I was not listening to them. I was not even looking at the people surrounding the table as Bluebeard hustled me toward the one empty chair – the one at the end of the table.
I was looking at the figure seated at the head of the table.
He looked like a very large man – a head taller than Bluebeard and twice as thick. He was seated on a throne made of bones I didn’t recognize – large bones that were almost bird-like, or maybe lizard-like – and both he and the throne were half-encased by the ice of the wall. Frost covered what was still unencumbered by ice, coating his eyelids and his beard, decorating his grand crown with a lace of frostwork. His eyes were half-closed and his voice was speaking very quietly – and yet it seemed to fill the room.
“... wait no longer,” it said slowly as Bluebeard drew me to the table. Someone had scattered fat white and blue hyacinths all over the table and everyone’s drinks were interspersed with the sonsy blooms. “Only those who are seated ...”
Bluebeard sat so quickly that it almost didn’t look graceful – the first ungraceful movement I’d ever seen from him – and he pulled me down to sit on his knee like a child.
“...now, will be qualified to enter.”
And when Bluebeard breathed out, I realized he’d been holding his breath.
Around the table, everyone else seemed to let out a breath, too, though their sighs sounded more like disappointment or resignation.
All the other eyes were on us. And they were the eyes from the portraits leading up the stairs.
“Did you feel the lack of my presence? Was it a howling wind echoing through your hearts?” Bluebeard asked lightly, throwing his leg up over the arm of his chair casually. He looked for all the world like a cat coming in late after a night of prowling.
Someone farther down the table growled.
A thrill of fear shot through me and with it the very strong desire to be ill for there was murder in every set of those eyes.
Chapter Nineteen
“Let the game dawn,” the sovereign’s voice announced, and then his eyes closed as if he were going back to sleep.
“That’s our sovereign,” Grosbeak hissed to me. “He rules all of the Wittenhame. Any seated here could be his successor – if they earn the role.”
I swallowed and very carefully did not touch the blood dripping down my cheek that everyone around the table was staring at.
Out on the horizon between the great trees, the first golden ray of dawn split the sky.
“You’ve married again,” one of the men halfway down the table said, putting his feet up among the hyacinths as he spoke and crossing the ankles of his knee-high patent leather boots with delicate care.
I noted that he was absolutely not looking at Grosbeak’s head and Grosbeak was looking very attentively at him, his mouth a straight line of fury. This, then, must be his master.
He wore a jacket like Bluebeard’s, but it was crimson and trimmed in white. I counted three swords on his person. Two were crossed over his breast as if to show just how very addicted to swords he really was. He put his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair as if he were going to fall asleep right here. Maybe they all were. After all, the man encased in ice seemed to be somnolent. Every now and then, his great face twitched under the frost as if he were dreaming.
Servants began to move quietly between those sitting, bringing steins, mugs, and glasses that steamed or seeped or bubbled depending on what manner of brew was within. One seemed to be hissing and another gave off a whine like a kettle at a boil. Those sitting around the table barely noticed the drinks or the servants, simply accepting them or waving them off as they chose. Bluebeard took a steaming, thick drink of a very pale green that smelled powerfully of mint. He must really like that flavor.
“And who exactly did you marry?” one of the women asked. She had dark hair and was missing two fingers and an ear. She’d placed a pair of small bearded axes before her, wedged into the table as if she thought she’d need them at a moment’s notice.
Across from her, another woman laughed – one with pale blonde hair, but I barely looked at her hair. My breath froze in my throat when my gaze turned to a pet she was feeding from her hand. There was one on either side of her and they were silvery-bright, striped with black slashes, and bearing four small, feathered wings on their backs.
I froze, my eyes widening at the sight of them. Would I find my own flesh under their claws?
“I’m still finding out,” Bluebeard said coldly, shifting me so that I had to meet his eye.
His gaze locked onto mine as a ray of gold washed over his face.
He wanted me to tell him what I called him to myself. His name. I could see the frustration building behind his visage just as it built in me when I couldn’t speak to him in the night.
I bit my lip and thought about it.
If I told it to him right now, it would tell him I was on his side, but it would also tell him that I could be cowed into doing whatever he said.
“I respond better to honey than to stings,” I whispered. But I did not say his name, and though his lip twitched irritably right where that little scar nicked it, there was nothing he could say because dawn was bathing the sky.
“Do keep this one around longer than the last one,” the man in the red coat said. He was missing the smallest finger on his left hand. “I like the taste of her spirit. Like black pepper and limes.”
“You can still taste the spirits, Sword?” Bluebeard said with innocent eyes. “And here I thought you lost that ability in the last game.”
There was laughter around the table and the Sword’s expression went stiff. He was not amused.
Bluebeard caught my eye and there was something steely in his. He held my gaze and reached for the cords tying my cloak. I shied away but his free hand grabbed my knee and pinched it – hard – as if trying to tell me wordlessly to allow this.
I swallowed. It felt like a power game. And I was the one being made to look foolish. But showing my wounds to the table – which was what would happen if he removed my cloak and my backless dress showed everyone my stitched flesh – didn’t make any sense to me. Why bother? What did it prove?
I was angled on his lap so that my back was to the table. I took a deep breath and judged the calculated look in Bluebeard’s eye. He was planning something. If I wanted to know what it was – or know about any of this so I could report it to the King – then I needed to play along. I gave an infinitesimal nod and let him loosen the string.
The cloak fell to the floor and behind me I heard a gasp.
“Someone has not been playing very nicely with his toys,” the Sword drawled. “What a naughty boy. You should be conserving her. You’ll need every bit of her you can barter.”
Barter? Fear shot through me, and Bluebeard – his eyes still locked on mine – gave such a tiny shake of his head that I wasn’t sure I’d seen it at all.
Someone cleared his throat – a man seated opposite to the Sword. He wore an opulent plum doublet with a jagged collar and golden powder surrounded his eyes. Unlike his fellows, he wasn’t missing any fingers or ears.
His eyes held a calculating glance as he said, “As youngest and newest to the table, it is on my oath to offer the bones for the telling of the fates.”
“Offer the bones then, boy,” Bluebeard said in a bored tone. “Don’t bore us all with talking about it.”
Again, there were snickers, but the Sword spoke sourly. “We wouldn’t have waited here until the exact last second if you hadn’t delayed, Arrow. Your snide remarks notwithstanding. To be frank, I grow weary from a long night of indulgence. And you are its maker, not its victim.”
The young man swallowed, looking back and forth between them as if waiting for someone to give him permission to move. Eventually, the woman from the first portrait I had seen on the stairs – Lady Tanglecott – raised an imperial hand. She was the one with the mist lion pets. Just glancing at them made my mouth taste sour. I did not like turning my back in their direction.
“Throw the bones, Coppertomb.” She sipped on her pink drink and tiny pink sparks flew off of it when she blew on it, leaving black singes on the table and any clothing they hit.
The young man looked grateful. He lifted a horn up above his head and then stood, swirling it carefully in his hand before dashing the contents onto the table.
They looked something like dice but double the length and half the width. They were dark in color and etched with white, and they all landed face down except one.
Everyone around the table stared for a long minute at that one piece before Coppertomb gathered them up again with care.
The eyes of the Sword lit with what I thought might be pleasure or anticipation, but everyone else was properly stone-faced.
“What did that mean?” I whispered to Grosbeak.
“Shhh,” he whispered back. “I’m concentrating.”
“Leash your pet, Lord Riverbarrow,” Lady Tanglecott said, and around me there were snickers. I realized, to my horror, that she was referring to me. My face felt hot.
“If I ever took a pet, Lady Tanglecott,” Bluebeard said with care. “I would be sure to choose one that would claw your eyes out. And I don’t mean those tame kitties you keep beside you. I think I would require something nearly as fearsome as I am.”
“Enough.” The word was cold, and it came from the other woman at the table – the one missing the eye and two of her fingers. She twirled one of the ones left in her dark hair. “We know the game. All that remains for today is to choose the playing piece. I grow weary and my pillow calls to me, so let’s have this done and be off to our beds so that when darkness descends again, we are ready for the hazards.”
“Why the hurry?” a man from the other end of the table whispered. He hadn’t spoken until now, and he still didn’t look up from a book he was reading. His head was crowned with antlers and his feet were up on the table just like the Sword’s.
“I prefer my moves made in the game, not in boasting before it begins,” the dark-haired lady said.
“I agree with Lady Wittentree,” Lady Tanglecott said.
I committed the name to memory. If I was going to give a report on midsummer night, I would need all the information I could gather – surely, this was what he must have meant by spying. For we had no information about their rulers or courts or ways and that was something that I alone could discover for my people. And if I chose instead to throw in my lot with my husband, these details would make me a more canny ally.
“Bring the pieces,” Coppertomb said nervously, and a pair of servants hurried through the ice door bearing a large copper cauldron between them on a pair of poles.
The servants wore padded gloves and long leather aprons, and they were both red-faced and sweating. After a heartbeat, I realized they were mortal just like me.
They struggled forward with the heavy cauldron and placed it alongside the table, next to Bluebeard. I could feel the heat of the cauldron from where I sat as the servants retreated, bowing and sweating, as they backed away from the swirling pot. It looked as though it were full of molten lead, and the top was streaked and crackled with impurities.
To my utter shock, Bluebeard thrust his left hand into his mug of minty drink and then into the molten lead beside us.
I screamed, clutching my throat. He was going to lose his hand. Cold sweat broke out across my brow and I leapt up from his lap, backing up to make space for him to crumple.
He did not crumple.
Along the table, vicious laughter rang out. Bluebeard brought his hand out and opened his fist to reveal a little figure in his palm. It looked exactly like the king of Pensmoore but it was the size of my index finger. Whoever had carved it had made his costume and features so perfect and so carefully detailed that he looked alive. That streak of grey in his hair was exactly as in life.
To my horror, the tiny figure blinked at me and then opened his mouth and screamed in silent, writhing agony.
“Pensmoore,” Bluebeard announced casually, showing the others.
I clapped my hand over my mouth and he pocketed the piece, motioning to me with his hand to sit on his knee again.
His hand was untouched. Not even pink from the heat.
I felt like I might faint. Or perhaps be ill. Or perhaps throw myself off the edge of the fungi to end this madness. This could not be happening. Maybe I was still trapped in that wave of madness between the worlds. Maybe I’d never managed to get free of it.
Bluebeard’s strong hand whipped out, snatched my wrist, and used it to guide me back to his knee.
The Sword was already getting up, swaggering over to the pot. He plunged his hand in the beer stein and then into the cauldron and came out with a glittering princess wrapped in silver swaths of fabric.
“Ayyadmoore,” he said easily and sat again.
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Behind him, a man in mason clothing began to tap chisel and hammer against the wall. Above him, I realized, were lists of countries and players. Tanglecott was listed beside Fraedrann. But the nation of Fraedrann had died in a terrible plague that swept the nation hundreds of years ago. My brow furrowed. What was this list?
The man’s chisel began to tap and I could have sworn he was writing “Pensmoore” on the wall. My blood felt like ice.
“Ilkanmoore,” Lady Tanglewood announced as she made her way back to her seat. The dark figure in her fist struggled, tiny arms and legs flailing.
“Rouranmoore,” Lady Wittentree announced, leading a man made – it would seem – entirely of white roots that formed hair and beard and clothing. Two blue eyes peered from under the mass of roots while Lady Wittentree dipped his hand for him. When it emerged she announced, “And for Lord Marshyellow we have Moravidmoore.”
Antlerdale never looked up, merely showing his piece to the others. Only the Sword’s mutter of “Ptolemoore” tipped me off to who he had chosen.
“They play against each other,” Grosbeak whispered to me. “The fates of mortals are their pieces and the whims of chance their dice. Although, that should be obvious to anyone possessing half a brain.”
A thickly built man with jutting lower incisors and very thick black hair pulled his hood back and emerged from behind Antlerdale. I didn’t even notice him until he moved. He swayed as if he were under the influence of a substance.
“Gods have mercy,” he muttered as he reached in and then cursed when he pulled out a woman with thick layers of skirts and a tall, conical hat on her head. “Qaramoore.”
And that left only Coppertomb who hurried over, carefully soaking his hand in water until the sleeve was wet and the Sword was waggling his eyebrows at him, before reaching in and out as fast as a blink.
“Leaving me with Salamoore,” he said, seeming relieved. But hadn’t that been inevitable if it was the only piece left? The expressions on the other faces around the table suggested that maybe it was not.
Fly with the Arrow: A Bluebeard Inspired Fantasy (Bluebeard's Secret Book 1) Page 14