Wolrijk followed the king’s gaze. “It shall be done by me, good king,” Wolrijk said with a bow. “His majesty’s priority is nothing if not my own.”
Just before dawn, Sadora slipped her hand into Wittendon’s. “Have you saved me one last dance?” she asked.
“It has cost me several painful hours of my life,” Wittendon said. “But yes, I suppose I have.”
She held his neck tightly and pulled him close to her. He could feel the sharp edges of the necklace she’d created against his chest. He could smell her perfume and the scents of every other Verander she’d danced with that night. But underneath it all he could smell her—the sweat, the earth, the grasses and flowers, the water she drank from a stream at the top of the hill, the musk of the tunnels underneath. She leaned in and pressed her cheek against his neck, pushing his hand firmly against her waist so they were as close as Wittendon had formerly dreamed them to be. So close, in fact, that Wittendon wondered for a moment if her other suitors had been bringing her wine all night long. They hadn’t. She moved her lips near his ear and whispered clearly, “I’ll meet you at the ledge above the mines exactly ten minutes after midday. You will be there or one more persuasive than I will be sent after you.”
“I assure you, good lady, you are quite persuasive enough,” Wittendon replied, brushing her ear with his lips and wishing just a little bit that it had been too much wine that had caused her to press close to him.
He pulled away as soon as the dance had ended and bowed stiffly. She smiled brightly though something like hurt blinked through her eyes. Wittendon wished he could have caught that look and held it there just as she had held his ear to her mouth when she needed to speak. As it was, she gave him her hand, which he touched to his forehead, and then she was gone.
A wolf had not been found dead. But a wolf had been found with an awl to the eye. The news flowed through the villages like rains off a roof, dumping the stories at Pietre’s house. The human—an impetuous youth just half a decade older than Pietre, had been caught in the woods well after dark on an overgrown path that led to a deep wood. He had been killed of course—his body picked clean. But not before he’d jabbed an awl into the eye of the wolf.
Pietre’s mother pressed her lips together when the story came to them on the wrinkled lips of the toothless old maid who was their nearest neighbor.
“No good will come of it,” Carina said, as the old woman hunched over her knitting, counting stiches.
“Perhaps not, but it warms my bones to hear it,” the old woman said, pulling out a row and beginning again.
“It will warm your bones, till those needles have been confiscated by the Veranderen and you can’t clothe yourself.”
Beyond their hut, the tall legs of two gallows had gone up. The king was having them built in every town, ready for any who pressed in the smallest way against his rule. The workers were supervised by Veranderen, then paid with gold and liquors so that at the day’s end, their minds could forget the work of the day’s hands.
The clicking of the old woman’s needles had begun again—rhythmic, soothing—a song, a story in the clatter of the age old task.
Pietre, Carina, and the old woman stared out the small window, watching the work on the gallows. Pietre’s mother looked away. The old woman only knitted faster—something in her eyes was deep and frightened, but flickering like the pages of a book blown in the wind—pages that fluttered and flashed with words from a story Pietre couldn’t quite see to its end.
Chapter 29
Wittendon met Sadora at the ledge just as promised. She had changed from her gown and necklace into a rust-red cloak with the simple locket she always wore.
“Come,” she said simply when he arrived.
He followed, obedient, but annoyed. “So the necklace last night,” he said, “a clever symbol of your power over me.”
“Do you think so?” she asked, shifting into her wolken form and sprinting over rocks and twigs towards a tall, bare hill ahead of them.
Wittendon shifted as well and followed. “I see, too, that you don’t need it here now that you are back in your own comfortable realm.”
“I have never needed it,” Sadora said, stopping and looking her prince squarely in the face. “And as for it being a symbol of my power over you, you are very much mistaken. If anything, I have begun to wonder if it is just the opposite—a symbol of your power over the rest of us.” She paused and looked to the hill ahead of them.
“A Verander who can break a hilt?” He laughed, angry. “Hardly the most powerful thing ever accomplished.”
“A Verander who can break a hilt into slender, metallic petals.” She paused, lifting her nose into the breeze. “Something to think about.”
They crested the hill in silence and before them stood the darkest, greenest wood Wittendon had ever seen. The trees stood thick, yet shadows moved between them as though the branches were ever changing.
Sadora stopped just outside of it, next to a stream flanked by two willows. “I have brought you,” she began, “to someone who might better be able to explain who you are—you who can empower a metal with his mother’s essence in a place where only his father’s influence should be felt.” She stood by the stream, panting, though she did not drink. Wittendon bowed by the clear waters, but she stopped him. “Things here,” she said, “are not at all as easy as they seem. Do not yet drink until you have made your choice. Within those woods lies—possibly—a great key to your past and parentage—who you truly are and your potential in the kingdom at this time. It is also a place where great burdens are placed upon the shoulders of those hoped great enough to bear them. You do not have to go in. You do not have to comply with me, my rebellion, and my ideals.”
Wittendon laughed. “Of course not. I’m sure I could refuse and thereby choose to be murdered by those of your band before I reveal any precious secrets.”
“No,” she said firmly, placing her hand on his and leaving it there for longer than Wittendon thought necessary. “A few draughts at this stream and you will forget all. When you wake, I will sit here with a picnic basket and sweet meats. You can go back to being the king’s son in pursuit of a beautiful, frolicsome, frivolous girl. Or you can join us, as I believe one of those dearest to you would have if given the chance. Enter the woods with a commitment to find yourself and meet your fate. Or drink and forget.”
“And may I ask a question?”
She shifted to her flesh form and nodded formally.
“Which of those dearest to me might have gone on with me? Not my father or brother. Not even my own closest friend—your twin.”
Still without looking at him, she said, “Surely you do not believe that your mother was only a pretty face?”
Wittendon paused. His father had chosen his mother on account of her face. Wittendon, however, had barely noticed his mother’s face. Instead he had felt her love, heard her laughter, relished their evenings in the nursery, and felt in some indescribable way that she would have run through demons to get him if she’d had to. These were the pieces of her that had remained after her physical face had settled into the dust. These were the things that her death had not been able to take from him. “She was,” he said slowly, “a source of goodness.”
Sadora turned from him, her gown catching in the wind. “It is time to make your choice.”
Wittendon realized suddenly that he had made very few choices in his short life and none of any importance. “This choice,” Wittendon said. “You cannot give it to me.”
“No,” she replied. “I merely open your eyes to it.”
Sadora walked several steps away from him, adjusted her hair with a golden comb, and set out a picnic basket, which came magically from a pocket in her cloak.
He looked at her cinnamon hair. For two years he had wanted to touch it. It would be easy—wonderful in a way—to forget who she really was, to put behind him all the confusing things that had happened in the last several weeks. To stay would mean to have
the pretty girl everyone wanted and with that a bit of the acceptance he’d never enjoyed. To stay would mean more practices with Sarak and a shot at maybe finding his magic, at performing solidly at the Mal, a chance at pleasing his father.
To stay would mean having anything he wanted—as long as what he wanted was not virtue or love or goodness, as long as what he wanted could be bought, promoted, or pried from the hands of another.
In front of him Sadora had spread out a red silk cloth stacked with the finest foods his kingdom could offer. Her hair had been pinned back, showcasing her bare slender neck. She looked every bit like the lady of the court he’d thought her to be. Wittendon did not look at her again. He turned to walk toward the wood. He did not need a frolicsome girl any more than he had needed a frolicsome mother. A shadow shivered in the wood. It seemed to breathe and he followed it.
Sadora sat in the empty silence of the wood. She ate a few of the sweet meats by herself, then magically folded the picnic basket into the size of a coin, and began the long walk home alone. She had a feeling Wittendon would be several hours in the wood and that he wouldn’t be much interested in seeing her very soon afterwards. Encounters with the witch Zinnegael could be…jarring.
Sadora walked in flesh form, happy to slow the hours down. As she walked she fingered the locket her nanny had wrapped around her neck all those years ago. In the one half was an image of her mother—young, beautiful, with the same deep russet eyes Sadora had grown into. In the other half, instead of a portrait of her father, was an elaborate coat of arms—a circle of rushing water that surrounded seven tiny flowers, each with seven tiny petals. At its center was a long thin line that pointed upward. She had spent years looking for a crest similar to this one and had so far been unable to find such a design among any of the royal writings, history books, or pictures.
Lately, she had begun to wonder if she even really wanted to find out. Not knowing who she was had allowed her to be many people—to slip almost effortlessly from socialite to soldier. Knowing might change all that—might set her arrow to a course nearly as straight as that of the great Wittendon himself. Not that she didn’t envy her prince. Even when he did not fully realize who he was, he moved forward instead of jumping back and forth between different selves. He was as steady as the star that hung to the moon’s right every hundredth year, and she suspected he would always be.
Fingering the crest on the inside of the locket, she could almost feel it hum in her hand. That feeling had been growing stronger in recent months—as though the metal itself was trying to tell her something. She dropped the locket so that it hung at her heart. That was, after all, where it belonged. On the back was an inscription, written in a language so ancient her dying nanny had barely been able to interpret it. “Key to my heart,” her nanny had whispered softly.
Sadora smiled at the sentiment. It sounded a good deal better in the old language. In her own tongue, it seemed something to be hung out at a souvenir shop run by silly, tottering women. Yet she wondered—she suspected—that it really was somehow the key to her heart, the thing that would hold her on a steady course, and give her purpose. Many would argue that as spy and the leader of the Septugant she had plenty of purpose already. Yet she knew that a shifting girl was always a shifting girl. At some point the façade would have to end. At some point, she would have to take a stand. She had done so with Wittendon already. She had shown him who she really was and, although he would never believe her now, this had made her feel closer to him than any late night conversation or clinging dance ever could.
The locket hummed against her bosom. Soon she knew she would have to follow its call, and then there would be no returning to the girl she oft pretended to be. This afternoon, however, she murmured, “Hush, now, I wish to walk for a few days more with the grass under my feet and the dew in my hair.” Obediently, almost lovingly, the locket fell still.
Chapter 30
Pietre didn’t dare call it luck that the General Wolrijk had not yet reported him. Luck had nothing to do with it. The wolf was waiting for him. Planning. Twice Pietre had seen a guard wolf on their property going through their things when he was only supposed to be dropping off food. And lately Pietre had felt something too—the impression of footsteps behind him, the hint of air on his neck like breath that wasn’t his own, the terrifying instinct to run.
This morning he walked past the newly finished gallows, the teardrop ropes swaying in the wind.
It had been foolish for Pietre to attack the wolf—foolish when it meant that he or his mother could hang for it from a noose braided by the hands of their own friends.
But what else could he have done? The wolf had planned to kill them anyway.
Pietre walked out of their village in search of firewood for their breakfast. He passed the gravesite of Humphrey’s brothers and sisters—now a flat piece of land with flowers and grasses springing up. He fingered the stone in his pocket, then went to the creek and bent to take a drink. He heard the crack behind him first. And the crack above him after. He stumbled over sticks, running along the creek. Behind him he heard hard breathing, many footsteps, and then a curse. The sound of pursuit stopped.
It was idiocy to turn and look, but he couldn’t help it. He needed to see what followed him, what wanted the stone. When he turned, he saw two nearly black wolves—not a surprise. And in front of them stood two enormous cats—one dark as midnight and one fire-striped like the noonday’s sun. Deep in his bones Pietre had known the wolves wanted something from him just as deep in his bones he had known the cats existed. But seeing them all there and facing off made his head swim.
“Can it be?” one of the wolves said to the cats, lurching toward them.
“Of course not,” the black cat said. “We’ve been killed and then forgot.” The cats moved lightly, dancing away. They might have seemed perfectly at ease except that Pietre could see the hair along each of their backs rise, like the spikes of the desert lizards. He couldn’t stop looking at them—these creatures from the bedtime tales of his childhood. They moved slowly at first and then like wind. Their claws seemed to work much the same way. When they brought them up to strike, they started off as fluffy, padded feet and then out sprang five nails, sharp as mine picks. Pietre gasped. He had never seen an animal do such a thing. The largest wolf jumped at the black cat, biting at her paw. She scratched his face, but that only made him laugh.
“We have not come for you,” the large wolf said. “Our general sent us only after the boy. But if you wish to fight, it will be our pleasure.”
“Our race has destroyed you once,” the smaller wolf chimed in. “It should not be too hard to do it again.”
“And we trust,” the flame-streaked cat said, calmly looking to the large wolf and then the smaller one, “that you will do just as bad a job now as you did then.”
“To the hunt,” the smaller wolf growled. He ran at the flame-marked cat. Pietre could feel the speed and weight of the wolf as his feet hit the earth. But she was quicker, streaking away like a beam of light. The wolf changed direction to cut her off and caught her shoulder, knocking her down so that she skidded and rolled through the dust. It seemed to make her angry. Her eyes were orange, except for tiny slivers of black that ran from top to bottom like a poisonous snake’s. Pietre stepped back, but the wolf did not. He was running again toward her, but this time she ran toward him as well, springing over the wolf and using her back claws to scrape him before jumping off his back. Pietre sucked in his breath as all four of her paws hit the ground at the same time. “It’s true,” he whispered to himself. “All four feet. Humphrey will never believe me.”
The black cat had scratched the large wolf’s face into ribbons of blood, though he had torn a piece of her ear. Pietre couldn’t help but think she looked like a princess with a ripped gown. Both of the cats met and stood shoulder to shoulder now. They walked slowly forward and began to talk.
The race that rises from the dust,
Surprise for king
and country must
Awake the fear and awe of those
Who years ago tried to dispose.
And now if it is up to us,
We’ll skin your bones, and hind legs truss.
The wolves growled, but Pietre could tell they hesitated in their attack. The cats moved forward again, repeating their words, louder and with a hum to their voices that made Pietre’s skin rise in tiny bumps. The largest wolf struck first. It charged between the cats, as though hoping to knock them both down like pins in a game. Instead each cat raised a paw and scratched the wolf in even lines from his muzzle to the tip of his back—deep scratches that began to drip blood as he fell moaning.
The other wolf barreled forward. He chose the flame cat and landed on her with a howl and a thud that Pietre knew would have broken his own back. The cat hissed and yowled—a sound Pietre had only ever heard in his childish nightmares, but the black cat jumped onto the wolf, holding his flesh with her claws as though he was a tree she intended to climb. She opened her mouth and Pietre could see the thin white spears that lined her gums. She inserted them like ivory needles into the wolf’s neck and just like a man being bled by a human surgeon, the wolf collapsed, rolling to the side, without a moan.
“Sister,” she said to the striped cat, and to Pietre’s surprise the streaked cat rose, with a gentle whine. The black cat licked her sister’s wounds gently as the flamed cat tested each paw against the ground. “Stupid beast,” she said. And then, as one, the two cats looked at Pietre.
During the fight he had not thought to fear them. The cats moved like the women of his kind. But now that their slitted eyes stared straight at him, he stepped back.
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