by Lana Popovic
“Whatever it is, mistress, I am happy to do it for your own sake,” he says, taking me by the shoulders. “But tell me, and I mean no insult—are you well? You look peaked, and I’ll tell you, this place is damnably strange. I’m like to jump out of my skin since I arrived. If there’s aught I can do to help . . .”
I bite the inside of my cheek, fighting back a tide of tears. I’m terrified, unspeakably afraid, but I cannot let this chance pass me by. “Then here is what I would have you do.”
Come dusk, when the wine peddler’s covered cart rattles down the steep road leading away from the keep, the three remaining sculls go with it. I yearned to go with them myself, so badly I could nearly taste the freedom of the mountain wind scouring that open road. But while Elizabeth will likely not chase these poor girls down once she discovers they are gone—even her influence only extends so far—I know she would hunt me to the ends of the earth.
For the rest of the day, I sit at a window and nervously watch the empty road winding down the hill, my jaw clenched so hard it nearly cracks under the strain. I even pray under my breath, though it is not my wont, wishing them fleet-footed steeds and many miles of distance. It is only when the moon tears a hole in night’s black fabric, letting in the light, that I relax a little and allow myself to breathe. Perhaps I have done it, achieved some small measure of good. Even then I keep my vigil long, as though my presence in the window has become a good-luck token ushering the escapees to safety.
Midnight finds me dozing against the sill, jarred roughly into wakefulness by a sudden racket below. Bleary with sleep, I stumble to my feet and trip down the corridor, following the sounds of commotion to the keep’s great hall.
The sight that meets me robs me of my breath.
The escaped sculls stand with hands bound behind their backs, one restrained by Janos and the other two by Elizabeth’s guards. Elizabeth looms before them in her plum-and-gold dressing gown, her neck and face still rosy from where she must have hastily scrubbed herself clean.
“Your doing, I suppose?” she snaps off, barely curling the end into a question. Under Thorko’s tutelage she hasn’t left her room in weeks, and her eyes look fearfully huge against her sun-starved face. Like pits that might yawn open and swallow me at any moment. I see nothing left of her but dark Elizabeth, the rest scorched away and fallen like a husk. “The wine merchant swore up and down that he did not know of his clandestine cargo, but these meek simps hardly burrowed amongst his barrels of their own accord. This one . . .”
She strides over to the oldest of the bunch, a spirited brunette who was one of Ilona’s better friends. She takes the girl casually by the hair and rattles her head about. “Terezia here was more than ready to give you up in exchange for her life. Weren’t you, you shrew?”
Terezia is so petrified she can barely summon the courage to swallow. “Yes, mistress,” she chokes out desperately, her eyes flitting to me. “We didn’t want to, but she—she made us go! Said she would ensorcell us if we went against her wishes!”
Those implacable dark eyes slide back to me, and I can nearly see the flames licking in their depths. “Well, is it true? Did you turn on me, Anna, like some treacherous trull? Bite the hand that loved and fed you?”
“I did,” I say readily, inclining my head. If she truly believes that this was all my design, she might let them live. “I—I have been sorely irked by the loss of your favor, Elizabeth, and—”
She cocks her head sharply, like a hawk. “Did you truly just say ‘Elizabeth,’ you traitorous bitch? Even now you presume to refer to your own mistress, the lady you so baldly tossed over, by her given name?”
“Forgive me, my lady,” I eke out. “I will not forget myself again.”
“And do you truly expect me to believe that you freed these chits, my property, solely to gall me? Come now, Anna. Do you think me such a fool?” Her face turns saccharine, lower lip jutting in a pout. “You did it to save their worthless little lives, didn’t you? Out of the tenderness of your pathetic heart. Go on, admit it—tell me you did, and I may even let them live.”
“Forgive me, my lady,” I repeat, trembling so hard I can feel my flesh tugging minutely at my bones. “But it’s as you say.”
She watches me keenly, shaking her head in tiny, almost involuntary movements. “How could I have thought you to be so different than you are?” she wonders in a tone of genuine curiosity. “You know why I require them—and yet you value their paltry, meaningless lives over my needs. How can you say you ever loved me and not make yourself a liar?”
“I did love you, my lady,” I say simply, my voice hoarse with grief. “At first, when I knew no better. But whatever guise you choose to take, you kill for sheer pleasure just as much as any gain beyond it. Because you like it, revel in their pain.”
“And what if I do?” she demands, blazing with fury. “They are mine, to do with as I will. How dare you judge me for it?”
I shake my head, so awash in devastation I can barely stand. “I do not know whether you have always been so—or whether it is this woman’s life that cages your spirit, that has twisted you into a creature so misshapen by choler. But whichever it is, it does not excuse you in my eyes.”
She is across the room like an arrow, my ear ringing from her slap almost before I register that she has moved. The crack of her palm against my face echoes through the room.
With that first blow, the only time she has laid a hand on me in anger, she shatters even the memory of any fondness between us.
“How can you be such an ungrateful bitch, after all the good I’ve done you?” she hisses into my face, spittle flying between us and flecking my cheeks. “Lifted you from that village’s godforsaken muck? Wrested you out from your father’s grip when he would have crushed you to death?”
“But . . .” My lips have gone so numb I can barely feel the words escape through them. “What do you mean? My father died, else I could have never—”
“Oh, don’t be such an imbecile,” she spits, rolling her eyes. “Of course he did not die by accident. What, you think the cosmos revolves around you, caters to your whims such that it would strike him dead the very day you needed him to be so?”
“You killed him.” The truth of it tolls inside me, undeniable as church bells. “To get to me.”
“Not with my own hands, but yes, of course I did. Thorko was in my employ even then—he accompanied Janos to fetch you, should there be any trouble. When that blasted ruffian wouldn’t yield you to me . . .” She shrugs elaborately. “Well. Stirring a horse into pique can be a simple thing, and Thorko is a man of many talents. From what I am told, the world did not much mourn your father’s passing. You certainly did not.”
I glance over at Thorko, where he skulks in the shadows by the hearth. As if feeling my regard, he looks over at me slyly, a glimmer of satisfaction flashing across his face. My father’s murderer—or the hand that slayed him, anyway.
“That may be true,” I say, marveling at the breadth of her depravity. That she would so blithely kill a man just to win possession of a person, as if I were no more than a coveted toy. “But you are worse, far, far worse than he ever was. You did mean for me to kill your husband. And you never truly believed me to be deranged, did you? All of it—just a ploy to hide your intentions, and your own true nature from me.”
“And if that is true, does it really matter?” she murmurs, her dark gaze still locked on mine. She reaches out and draws a strand of my hair through her fingers, twirling it around her knuckle. “You cannot deny that I also treated you like a queen, like my own equal. Festooned you with finery, elevated your mind, tended to you when you ailed. Why can you not simply set aside your useless scruples, let things be as they were?”
“That is impossible, my lady,” I say, shaking my head, though it tightens her grip on my hair, sets my scalp to prickling. “Because we are not equals. Unlike you, I have never killed or maimed for pleasure.”
Her face twists, contorts into that draconic visage that
haunts my days and dreams. She whips me tight against her, my back to her front, and I freeze when I feel the icy edge of a blade beneath my chin. “Then perhaps it has come time for you to serve me better, little traitor,” she hisses into my ear, breath rushing through her gritted teeth. I can feel her heart battering against my back, and I don’t dare move a muscle for fear of provoking her. “Silently, for once, with your blood rather than your tiresome mind.”
Thorko materializes beside us as though from the ether, his hand alighting on her shoulder. “Do not forget that we still need her, my lady,” he mutters to her, even as I tremble in her grip. “To work her magic with the herbs. And perhaps beyond that as well . . .”
She holds me tight for an endless, agonizing moment, shuddering with indecision—then releases me abruptly and steps back, twitching her head at her men. As one, they unsheathe their knives and twist the women to face them—plunging the blades into their bellies.
I stifle a gasp as they crumple, falling to their knees before collapsing onto the unforgiving stones.
“It is a terrible death, you know,” she whispers, moving to stand beside me, her lips hovering near my ear. My skin crawls in revulsion, stirring in response to the warm fan of her breath. “To be run through the gut. Hours of agony. And you will sit here and watch it all unfold, and not move so much as a finger to ease their suffering. Or I will have Janos make you wish you were in their place.”
I stand like a stone while she sweeps out of the room, two of the men trailing after her. Janos sprawls his bulk into a chair, blithely unconcerned.
I do not allow myself to weep until I’m sure she cannot hear me—then I sink to the floor myself and dissolve into sobs like I have never known.
It takes the women hours to shuffle off this mortal coil, just as she said. By the time their pitiful moans whittle away to nothing, I have drained myself dry of water, shed all my salt. The sky is fracturing with dawn when I come to my feet, rising reborn and newly forged. No longer caring if she kills me, nor what miserable end I shall come to once she’s finished with her games.
As long as I can somehow take her with me at the end.
Wrestle her, screaming, into the deepest pit of hell.
Chapter Twenty
The School and the Sister
I haunt Csejthe’s corridors, drifting through them like a specter through fog, unable to sit still. Tormented by the relentless torrent of my thoughts. Nobody disturbs my wandering; Elizabeth must be either distracted or still too wroth to summon me for any herb work. And I am content to keep out of her sight for as long as she will allow it.
But I cannot stop thinking of her schemes, her many machinations, wondering how far back they stem, winding into the loam of our shared past like spidery rivers. Did she plan all this, I ask myself, in the held-breath moment when our eyes first met? When she saw me snared like a fish on the hook of her beauty, did a vision rush over her in the space of a breath—all the ways in which a pet witch could be put to use? Did she think even then to seduce me, beguile me into killing her husband for her? Was she already dreaming of the elixirs I might devise and brew?
Though it makes me shudder with mortification and self-loathing, I begin to believe that our lovemaking was always for some other gain. Feigned from the very inception.
I would not put any of it past her.
A few days later, the insistent rumble of carriage wheels from the road draws me to a window. We are visited by merchants whenever the keep’s supplies run low, but I’ve never heard such a sustained rattle, one carriage after another like a processional. I lean on my forearms and crane out the window, to see a young woman’s shining head catch the sun as she alights from her carriage with a footman’s help. As soon as it pulls away, a new carriage draws up, disgorging another girl.
They continue to arrive all day. The carriages each bear a different crest; these young women must be of noble birth, though from what I can gather from my perch, none of their gowns are so fine as Elizabeth’s. Which means all of them must hold some lesser status.
What is this new perfidy? I wonder to myself, my stomach assailed with misgiving. What does she want of them, when she cannot possibly need so many ladies-in-waiting?
I watch the parade anxiously, nibbling on my knuckles, until night falls and music strikes up in the great hall, wreathing faintly through the corridors. I make my way there with dragging, leaden feet, at odds with the lighthearted music emanating from within. Margareta and Judit are long dead, I think grimly. One of the new arrivals must be similarly gifted.
As I step over the threshold, my heart lifts reflexively at the bright chatter of conversation—it’s been so long since I heard anything like it here. The keep has been about as lively as a crypt, but now my gaze skims over a dozen gathered girls, ranging from young womanhood to twelve or thirteen. They sit on chairs or lounge on pillows, as Margareta and Judit used to do—with Elizabeth by the hearth, occupying the center of the room. She looks gorgeous, jubilant, more effervescent than I’ve seen her since we first met. Scrubbed clean and clad in one of her finest ruby-colored gowns, its snowy ruffles cascading beneath her chin.
One of the new girls stands behind her, painstakingly dressing her hair. She’s small, clearly much younger than the rest, her dress coarse and a bit tattered. At first my eyes nearly drift over her, distracted by the hubbub and the crowd.
Then I see the achingly familiar, buttery hue of her hair.
“Klara?!” I cry, despair wrenching my fist against my stomach. My heart feels like a battering ram inside my chest.
The girl’s head flicks up, and there can be no mistake.
My sister’s face breaks open like the sun bursting through clouds, and she abandons her post to dash across the room toward me, dancing nimbly between the gathered girls. In a moment she has flung her little arms around my waist, pressed her head into my chest. She is a great deal more solid than I remember, more robust girl and less will-o’-the-wisp.
At least I’ve managed that much for her, before failing her so utterly.
“Annacska,” she squeals into my bosom, nestling so tightly against me I can feel the hammering of her own heart, though I know hers beats with joy. “Surprise!”
“What,” I manage, the edges of my sight blackening like something being burned. “What is my sister doing here, Elizabeth?”
I am so distraught, so far beyond my own grasp, that I do not even remember to call her “my lady.” She doesn’t seem to mind, crossing her arms loosely over her chest. A smile slinks across her face, her eyes gleaming bright with spite above it.
“Welcome to my new finishing school, Anna,” she says, the smile widening into a toothy grin. “The silence was becoming so stifling, wouldn’t you agree? And of late, we’ve had such undue difficulty procuring good help.” She shrugs, as though bewildered, though I can see that she nearly overflows with self-satisfaction. “One would almost think the poor have no true desire to uplift themselves by seeking good, honest work under my roof.”
Because you killed most of your household, I want to scream. And no one in their right mind will come work for you any longer.
“So, a while ago, I thought to myself,” she continues, laying a pensive finger against her cheek. “What better time than now to fulfill a long-held dream? You see, I’ve always wished to mentor the daughters of noble families less fortunate than my own. Give them the opportunity to grow, open their minds to new things.”
New things like flogs and whips and blades, no doubt.
“But . . .” My voice emerges as an airless rasp, as if I am already entombed. “But my sister, she’s no noble, just a commoner . . .”
“I thought I would extend the invitation to her, regardless, as a very special favor.” She draws her lower lip between her teeth, releasing it with excruciating slowness. Savoring this victory over me like a cat licking blood off its whiskers. “Given that I hold you, her elder sister, in such high esteem. Your mother was only too happy to hand her
over, I’m told.”
“The lady’s man left her such a large bag of coin, Anna!” Klara pipes up happily, grinning at me. “And Mama said I would be even better here, with so much more to eat. She said I would be with you!”
Of course she did, I think bleakly. What choice did she have, when faced with the countess’s men?
“What was it that you told me about Klara, Anna? That she was like your mirror?” Elizabeth continues. “But sweeter, even more obliging, more tractable than you?”
Great wings of panic beat inside me, overwhelming me with their buffeting force. How could I have ever trusted this slouching monster with the knowledge of my sister? Because all this is my fault, the punishment for my faithlessness, for betraying Elizabeth by attempting to rescue those girls from her. Now they are dead, and my dandelion clutched in the palm of her ruthless hand, soon to be crushed between her fingers along with all the rest.
I should have known she would never stop finding ways to make me sorry.
My next mad thought is to simply spirit Klara away, but I can see Elizabeth’s men in every corner of the room.
There is no escape, not unless I wish to cost both of us our heads.
“Please,” I manage, clutching Klara so tightly against me she gives a surprised yelp, squirming in my grip. “Elizabeth—my lady—do not do this. She, she has done nothing to you!”
“Nothing besides being born of the same blood as you, my dearest dove,” she rejoins with a sarcastic twist to the last words, her voice winking with a vicious edge. “Which renders her exquisitely suited to serve as my chambermaid, just as you once did.”
“Send her back, please,” I wail, clutching her against me. “You do not need her, not when you have me. I will do anything, I swear it, whatever you require . . .”
Frightened by my terror and the desperate force of my grip, Klara tugs away from me, peering up with huge, unsettled eyes.
“Nővér?” she whispers uncertainly, her pale lashes fluttering with confusion. “Why are you yelling at the lady?”