“Quickly, unless you wish to lose one of our landholds before the game has even begun.”
That was all he needed to say. I hustled around to the back of the screen and began to dress in what he’d given me. It had a corset, but no back – to my relief. The boning of the corset merely kept the bodice in place, leaving my wounds free to air and heal.
Designed to look like a breastplate, the corset was trimmed in silver with sections that looked like overlapping plate armor. It fell to a frothy skirt and the lace at the top of the corset draped around the neckline in a way that hinted more than revealed. Dark and mysterious, the entire expanse of the full skirt was sewn in what looked like a battle scene, complete with charging horses, flying arrows, and dying corpses. I wasn’t sure if I should be impressed or horrified. I felt a little of both.
The people in the scene, I realized, were both human and Wittenbrand. And the Wittenbrand seemed to be leading them or cheering them on from behind the frontlines. I hoped it was not a picture of what was to come.
I strapped my sword belt back on over the dress. I was going to have to find someone to teach me how to use the sword.
I paused as I tucked the golden key into my neckline. Seeing it made me think of the riddle that the first of Bluebeard’s wives had left behind. I was almost certain it was the words I’d heard when I first entered the room myself.
I am sudden death to calm.
My roar breaks the hush.
My song the mind’s somnolence.
Was the answer a scream? That seemed appropriate for this strange land. But if that was the answer, then why had the first queen written it down? Was it some esoteric way to tell us she was screaming inside? She could have just come out and said that.
I shook my head and stepped out from behind the screen.
Chapter Twenty-Two
If I’d known then about the kinds of rituals the Wittenhame loves, I would have been a lot more nervous to see another of them. I might have even demanded a lesson in using the weapon at my side. But I was still flushed with pride at my triumph in securing my husband as an ally and I had not yet realized that even together we were not enough to rival this world.
Bluebeard had dressed in a midnight blue doublet slashed with crimson. He’d re-cut his cheek and with a quick flick of his little knife he recut mine so that the blood could drip and form that long red teardrop that apparently told everyone who we were. I gritted my teeth at the sting. For the sake of my nation, I could bear a tiny wound.
He looked grimly pleased and devastatingly handsome as his black hair shone with water and his short blue beard clung to the sharp angles of his face. There were tiny threads of silver at his temples and I wondered yet again exactly how old this husband of mine was.
His cat’s eyes gleamed and narrowed. They made my stomach do little flip flops as if this were my lover escorting me to a feast rather than my co-conspirator leading me to battle.
I gave him a tiny nod.
“You look well, wife,” he said, his eyes gleaming with something I couldn’t quite place. “Did I mention that your sword has a name? I called it Angstbite when it was mine.”
He led me down the stairs to the room below.
I lifted Grosbeak’s pole and he yawned dramatically. “Ready to go?”
“For all the good you did me last time,” I said sourly. “You were supposed to be a help to me, but you said nothing about what was going on and I had to figure it out on my own.”
“Yeah, yeah, don’t get too big for your britches.”
“I’ll remind you,” I said primly, “that you do not wear britches and therefore require my good graces – which you will only have if you remain useful.”
I was still frowning when Bluebeard draped a white fur stole over my shoulders. The ends of it had pockets for my hands and there was a deep hood attached.
“Keep your back visible,” he said, looking at me like he was weighing me with his eyes. He raised the hood so it framed my face. “Yes, I think that’s best. Let them all see your wounds.”
Just the mention of them reminded me of their steady ache. I tried to push the thought aside. As long as I concentrated on other things, the pain of the cuts was easier to bear.
“We must make a grand entrance. When we arrive, I will make a bold move. If you want to be a help to me as you’ve said, then it would be good if you played along.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Do you agree?”
I nodded. This was one way I could prove my worth to him. This, and maybe solving the riddle.
He offered me his hand and I followed him out the door and into the night.
“Why does everything happen at night?” I asked Grosbeak.
“In the Wittenhame, we live in the shadows and dusk and we sleep in the heat of the day.”
I shook my head as I looked up at the crystal-clear stars. They splashed across the sky like a handful of snow flung into the air. Low on the horizon, the full moon clung to the edge of the earth as if afraid to show its face. Perhaps even the moon was wary of this mad place.
The Grouse House had moved while we were inside it, and now we were situated in a forest made entirely of tall, purplish mushrooms. They glowed just enough to make out their outlines in the darkness.
Bluebeard offered me a hand and leaned in close. “You’re as wild-looking as this land and as lovely as the night and yet you feel as real as a stone in a world of shimmering shadow. You are cold iron to my Wittenbrand magic, hard bronze to my wafting vapor, heavy lead to my tumbling feathers. Anchor me, you obelisk. Keep me tethered to what is real.”
It was an odd request, but it made sense that he would make it. Who wouldn’t want to be firmly planted in reality? I nodded solemnly and then, with eyes that held a warmth I didn’t recognize, he swept me into his arms.
“Ride with me to Hazard Hall. We have amusement to set to flight and revelry to take captive.”
He leapt and we landed on something living. As he settled me on its back in front of him, I realized – to my surprise – that we were riding a black salamander with little flecks of blue in its shiny skin. It skittered along the ground so quickly that it almost felt like flying as we slid through the mushrooms all around. The salamander moved in a serpentine pattern so it looked as if we were hurrying straight for the stalk of a mushroom, only to suddenly avoid striking it as we veered in the other direction, and then the process repeated itself. I had to close my eyes to keep from being ill.
But closing my eyes was no help at all. It only made me more conscious of Bluebeard at my back, his warm body and all its hard and soft parts pressed against me. If we could be allies, couldn’t we also be friends? If friends, why not a married couple in truth?
My cheeks flared hot at the thought.
There were the other wives to think of.
And the fact that when he had run me out of days, that I would be replaced by yet another girl who would look at my blank book with scorn and wonder if she should try to find happiness in the arms of this beautiful, wicked man while she could. The thought made me feel both cold and hot at the same time. And it also made me feel like a fool.
No man, no matter how pretty or fascinating, was worthy of having me for just a time. I wasn’t a trinket to be enjoyed for an evening and discarded. I was more like a marriage sword, to be worn with honor for all your life.
I frowned at the thought. I wore Bluebeard’s sword at my side, and he wore the one I’d given him. There had been a variety of weapons in his room, but no other fancy swords. No other marriage swords. And there had been none in the room with the wives. Had none of them exchanged swords with him?
“Keep your eyes open,” he whispered in my ear. “When your days are limited, you shouldn’t waste even an hour of one of them. What if that hour is your very last?”
I wanted to ask him how a salamander was awake in such cold weather – didn’t they sleep the cold months away? – but once again my question would go unanswered. If I could change one thing about m
y predicament, it would be that. To be able to speak and be spoken to was a gift I’d never fully realized before. I missed it sorely.
By the time we reached Hazard Hall, I was sick to my stomach and my head was spinning – but I’d enjoyed every minute of the ride. I’d let myself really look as the mushroom-covered landscape melted into a land with a mantle of snow and then went from flat to rocky and from rocky to the edge of an endless lake – calm and still as a summer pond and rimmed in giant cattails coated in frost. The edge of the lake was stiff with a ledge of ice, but a few steps out from the shore the water was still warm, and it lapped against the ice like a lover stealing kisses again and again.
We rounded a tuft of reeds and the sand of the beach opened to a cove where someone had painstakingly set blue stones into patterns that formed a mosaic in the sand. At the apex of the mosaic was a high stone that made a kind of platform or maybe an altar. It was set against the surrounding cliffs.
Beside it, a blue banner hung, with the names of those competing in the games and the nations they would represent emblazoned upon it. I saw Bluebeard’s name immediately. Riverbarrow – Pensmoore.
On the other side of the rock, another banner hung that said “Hazards” at the top, but the rest of the banner was empty.
Behind the rock, set into the cliffside, the Sovereign slumbered. But this time he was not encased in ice, but rather mostly buried in sand, as if someone had begun to uncover him before growing bored and wandering away.
The other competitors were already arranged below the altar at a table heaped with so many kinds of food I couldn’t have guessed at what some of them were.
The Sword was hacking flesh from a fish large enough to swallow me. His blade had carved through its silver, crackling skin to the soft orange flesh below. Beside him, Coppertomb bit into a golden apple and Marshyellow poured two separate jugs into one stein – one with a stream of silvery liquid and one with bronze.
And around them, tiered as they climbed the cliffsides, were the Wittenbrand gathered to watch. Their tables were also laden with food and each table was lit by a forest of white candles – some taller than I was. Some as thick as trees. Clusters of them wove between the tables and tiers of them in the spaces between groups of people. Thousands ringed the altar and the table where the players sat. Dancing and glinting, the lake reflected their light back to them in long smudges of brightness across its calm surface.
But in the shadows, I saw people whispering, and others kissing, and still others fighting with blades or fists. There was laughter everywhere and the occasional scream and something about the whole event that felt like the edge of a nightmare when a pleasant dream turns to something malevolent.
I shuddered and Bluebeard gripped my hand in his as he helped me down from the salamander.
“Do you think what you see is madness?” Bluebeard asked as I caught sight of a man grinning with teeth stained red. I could only hope that wasn’t blood. “Then think about those folk you saw in my home. They wanted my help. Do you remember that? The people you’re looking at right now are why they need help. These people took their whole lives from them.”
“Lives worth no more than a beetle’s,” Grosbeak said from his place at the end of the pole. “Don’t listen to your grandstanding husband, Izolda. The people you are watching now are those the gods truly love. The Tuathan. The true princes and princesses of all living things. And today they place their bets on the great game that will determine the fates of all the rest. If that isn’t power, then what is? And having that power makes them almost immortal. It certainly sets them above all mortal ken.”
“I think I preferred your pet when he didn’t talk so much,” Bluebeard said. “But do not fear. I have a use for him that will make listening to his ravings well worth the pain.”
“You make it seem, Grosbeak,” I said, “as if these people are not people at all but merely living versions of stories.”
To my surprise, Bluebeard spoke, his eyes far away so that it looked like he was speaking to himself and not to me.
“We are stories. There’s nothing more to us. This world we live in is no more real than any other. Life, death, these are ephemeral things no more solid than the steam that wafts from your cup of tea. We can none of us prove the world we see is the same as the world another sees. Our minds take in the sights but then they interpret those things into a story told just for us. We hear, we see, we touch, and our mind translates it to a tale. By rights, our hands should pass through each other, no more solid than the space between the stars. But one day, when we fly from this earth like the arrow loosed from the bow, we will enter whatever life comes after, and all we will have to bring with us will be the story – for that is what we are. We are the story of our choices, our grim failures, our crippled successes. We are the story of our molten passions, our loves and hates, our tears in the silence. We are the story of how others touched or shunned us, of loves returned, revenges enacted. When all flesh and glory melts away and there is nothing left of us, we will be only the story going on to what comes next.”
I shivered at his words. No wonder he was willing to spend other people’s days so blithely if he thought we were nothing more than stories. Did he think he was writing my story? If he did, he should think again. I would not let it be written by anyone else but me.
Bluebeard took something from a saddlebag hanging across the salamander’s back. I hadn’t even seen it was there until he slung a quiver over one shoulder and quickly strung a bow. The salamander dipped its head to my husband and slid away.
Bluebeard winked at me when he was finished.
“They call me Arrow and with good reason, wife. I fly just as fast and true.”
I watched him as he arranged them the way he liked. He looked like an arrow himself – he was so slender and pointed and quick in his movements. His eyes flashed in the candle-light with intelligence and charm. If he hadn’t been a murderer, I’d be proud to be a wife to a man like this. If he hadn’t been so terribly unpredictable, I might have even liked it.
True to form, he reached for me, surprising me as he drew the wild curls of my hair forward with a gentle touch, making sure my back was exposed. Then he took my hand, lifting an eyebrow as if asking for permission, and when I nodded, he tucked it into his arm and began to stroll toward the party.
“So, what’s your plan?” Grosbeak murmured. He was swaying in time with my steps, his expression flickering from worry to intensity and back to worry again. What would it be like to have your fate so much in the hands of another?
“You shall see and understand soon enough,” Bluebeard murmured.
But I had other ideas. “Tell me what gossip you know about the players of this game, Grosbeak,” I said. “Surely, you must know something.”
“Ah! Finally, you are tapping into my potential. I can help you here. The Sword is – of course – a formidable player. Sharp and brutal, he will strike first and hardest. He is not known for finesse or spycraft.”
Bluebeard snorted.
“Didn’t he turn you on the Arrow?” I asked, watching Bluebeard stiffen a little out of the corner of my eye. “That seems like spycraft.”
“Some people make it easy to betray them. The selfish. The arrogant.”
“Keep talking,” Bluebeard said in a low, calm voice that hinted at violence. “And we shall see whose arrogance makes them easy to betray.”
He stalked beside me in a flowing stride that made me think of a black cat crossing a courtyard. His eyes were everywhere as if he were memorizing the position of each person and object in the riotous revel.
“Coppertomb is known for his callowness. This is his first time playing. They say he murdered his father to take his place. He used bitterbark poison – a woman’s weapon.”
I laughed and Bluebeard shot me a surprised glance. “Is the insult in the death or the manner? You make it sound like it was worse that his death was womanish than that he was killed.”
Grosbeak
frowned. “Dying should be dignified. Look at how well I did it. The grandest of kings could not have surpassed me.”
“At least we know your skills,” I said glibly. “So, we should watch our cups around Coppertomb.”
“Watch your cup around everyone,” Bluebeard murmured. “You have no friends here but me. And possibly Vireo.”
He nodded to the side and I saw Vireo with Bluebeard’s band, playing a game of cards around a low table. There were already empty steins around them, and a half-eaten three-tiered cake to one side. Frosting dripped down like a waterfall across the cut side and my mouth watered. There was even a round orange fruit on top of it.
“In fact, it would be better if you didn’t eat or drink anything until we return home. And now – no more gossip. We are nearly there.”
We kept our eyes on the head table as we made our way forward, our path determined by the forest of white candles. They made the journey surprisingly warm in the frosty night and kept me from shivering despite my backless dress.
I heard murmurs as we passed tables and dancing couples. People were watching us.
At first, I thought it was because I was carrying a severed head, but after a while, I realized they were whispering about my back.
“Claws,” someone said, curiosity thick in his voice. “Do you think he marked her on their first night?”
“Why not?” his companion asked but her voice sounded intrigued. “He looks the type to mark what’s his.”
My face was hot when I realized what they were saying. They thought my husband had done this to my back – and rather than being repelled by that, they were intrigued.
When we reached the table, it was Lady Tanglecott who greeted us, her neutral expression unshakable.
“Will you bring your wife for every round, Riverbarrow? It seems somewhat gauche.”
“Where I go, she will go, and what I despise, she shall despise also,” he said lightly, but I noticed that everyone at the table was watching us. “Besides. I need her to set my target. Put your new pet over on that table, wife.”
Fly with the Arrow: A Bluebeard Inspired Fantasy (Bluebeard's Secret Book 1) Page 17