by Rosalyn Eves
The man swore and flung the blanket back; the dog-girl flinched away from the rough movement.
“There’s naught here. Let’s move on, before we lose her trail completely.”
The men, women, and dogs moved back into the storm. The dog-girl quivered on the blanket for a long moment. When I was sure the others were gone, I set my hands on the finely shaped skull and shifted her back. My stomach curled in on itself, more ravenous than usual from shifting the girl.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It was the only way I could think to save you without hurting anyone.”
Those black, blank eyes scoured across my face. “Thank you,” she said in Hungarian, her voice hissing across the sibilants. “Köszönöm.”
“You should probably stay here tonight—I don’t think the mob will be back before morning.”
I wasn’t sure how much she understood, but she curled back on my blanket, her eyes sliding shut.
“That wasn’t—” I sighed again, abandoning my blankets to the girl. I kindled a small Lumen light and inspected the rest of the barn. I restored some of the fallen items to their shelf, though there wasn’t much I could do about the feed scattered across the floor. In the opposite corner, I found a rough horse blanket. I spread it out, lay down, and pretended to sleep until morning. Mostly, I listened to my stomach complain and calculated if it would be worth the extra expenditure of energy to shift into something that could eat the spilled feed.
Sometime after dawn, I fell into fitful dreams. I saw Noémi at a fancy Viennese ball, dancing with a man whose golden eyes glinted through slits in the mask he wore. A clock chimed, and the masked man released my sister to untie his mask. But as the mask slid down, Noémi began screaming: her hands were fountaining blood, and the face behind the mask was mine.
I woke gasping, my neck aching from a night spent on the ground. The lanky farmer stood nearby, cussing as he made his way through the barn.
I scrambled to my feet. “It wasn’t me.” A quick glance to the far side of the barn showed my blankets were empty. The Fair One, if that’s what she really was, had already vanished.
The farmer shook his head. “I know. Weren’t your fault the mob traced the monster here. Saints be praised the Fair One didn’t find us and murder us in our beds.”
I spent the better part of an hour helping him put his barn back in order. His wife insisted on sending me off with a hearty farm breakfast: sausage, bread slathered thick with butter, milk with a frothy layer of cream. I fell on it like a man who hadn’t seen food for the better part of a week.
Heaven, I am convinced, can contain nothing more divine than freshly cooked farm bread with sweet butter melting into its light-as-air heart.
“Eat more if it tastes good.” Though the invitation was standard hospitality, the good farmwife did not sound as though she meant it. I could almost see her calculating in her head how much this morning’s meal would set her back.
I made sure to press some extra coins on her before leaving. Then, my head still light with lack of sleep but my stomach pleasantly full, I set off again, the intermittent sunshine a halfhearted blessing on my head.
I tried to put the mob’s pursuit of the praetherian girl out of my mind: I had my own troubles to worry about, not dwell on a thin white face with black eyes. The Lady had warned that the major danger threatening Hungary came from the creatures—but surely such small, hunted things couldn’t be a threat. And she had also said not all the creatures sided with the Four.
I shook myself. It wasn’t my business.
It took Holdas and me two days to reach the Duna River. The ferryman charged me extra to bring my horse across, as Holdas refused to let anyone else on the ferry with us, and so the ferryman had to make an extra trip.
“You’re a brute,” I told the horse. He snorted at me, wholly unrepentant.
For three days we traveled eastward at a leisurely pace, seeing nothing otherworldly, passing only a few farmers and their families on the road, and spotting the blue-and-black-clothed gulyások driving their herds of cattle in the distance.
In another day or two I’d reach Debrecen, the largest city in the eastern part of Hungary and a good place to disappear. There was a university there, which meant a large student population that was constantly shifting, opportunities for employment, and a chance to further my studies if I chose to stay that long. Plus, my funds were dwindling more rapidly than I had anticipated, and I’d need to find work if I wanted to feed myself.
I crossed the famous nine-arched bridge across the Hortobágy River. A low, whitewashed csárda rested near the crossroads, a few smaller cottages scattered close by. I stopped for paprika-spiced fish stew and bread, then resumed my journey.
The wind was strong that afternoon, blowing a thick dust up from the road and kicking dirt across the fields. I tied a handkerchief across my nose and mouth to keep from breathing the worst of it. I nearly turned back to the csárda, but winds were unpredictable, and I’d encountered worse.
Not two miles from the crossroads, a glossy black carriage was pulled to the side of the road. I scanned the carriage wheels for signs of accident but saw none. Perhaps the wind had unsettled or spooked the horses.
I drew nearer. The horses were grazing placidly enough on the grass they could reach from their harness. Where was the driver? The riders? The windows, when I tapped at them, brought no answer from inside.
A shriek rang out from the field beyond the carriage. I squinted to find three men standing in a knot together, poking at something on the ground with a stick. Probably just a rabbit. Distasteful, but not my concern.
The shriek sounded again, and I frowned. I probed gently in the direction of the sound with my táltos sense. My mind brushed up against the creature’s, and I recoiled sharply enough that Holdas sidestepped uneasily beneath me. That was no rabbit. Under the heavy weight of its terror, the animal—whatever it was—was nearly sentient.
Damn it.
I nudged Holdas forward. I reminded myself I was outnumbered, and I was not responsible for how a trio of spoiled, bored noblemen chose to spend their time. (Never mind that not so very long ago I had been a spoiled, bored nobleman—and I had never resorted to tormenting animals.)
Wisps of the creature’s terror and anguish trailed after me. We made it perhaps a dozen steps before I sighed and turned Holdas around.
We rode straight at the three men. They didn’t scatter, as I’d half expected. I’ll give them that much.
Following some devil—perhaps inspired by the handkerchief I still wore—I said, “Stand and deliver!”
One of the three squeaked and flung his hands up, exposing a spotted cravat and a brightly colored waistcoat so tightly cinched I wondered how he could breathe. A second began sifting through his pockets. He plucked up a gold watch and thrust it at me.
I tried not to notice the creature on the ground, a small, thin, knobbly thing, slowly creeping away. I didn’t want to draw attention to it.
The third man eyed me dubiously. He was dressed more plainly than the other two—probably their coachman. “He ain’t armed.” He brandished a long, braided whip at me. “There’s three of us to his one; we can take him!”
He cracked the whip and Holdas reared back. It took all of my calming attention to settle him down, and the man was still advancing. Now the other two had gathered what little courage they possessed and were following behind him, carrying the same sticks they’d been using to torment the creature.
I could have simply ridden away—but let it never be said of me that I was so rabbit-hearted. (Or so sage.)
I desperately wanted a drink.
If I was to drive them off, I needed something that would make a statement. I sent my mind out, seeking the faint electricity of living things nearby. There.
“I shouldn’t come nearer if I were you,” I said. Already, the dark specks along the horizon were speeding closer.
“Yeah? Who’s gonna stop me? You? And what army?�
� The coachman raised his whip arm—then screamed as a crow descended, ripped the whip from his hand, and dropped it on the top of his head. A second crow followed, diving at the trio, and then a third. Crows are quite social, and the entire murder descended on my would-be attackers.
“Who are you?” the first man asked.
“Luminate!” the second screamed.
I grinned, and the handkerchief I wore stretched across my cheeks. “Rex Corvus.” The King of Corvids—rooks, ravens, crows—if one was literal-minded. Or a nod to Matthias Corvinus, if one preferred the historical.
The first of the men, the foppish one, goggled at me. I could almost see rusty wheels churning in his brain, converting his grammar-school Latin. “The King of Crows?”
Close enough.
The second man dodged the swooping crows. “Call off your demon-birds! We’ll give you what you want, only leave us alone.”
A small mental nudge and the birds dispersed, though a pair remained behind, circling lazily over our small group to remind the trio what they faced if they challenged me. The two noblemen threw a small purse of coins at me, followed by a couple of jeweled rings. Then they raced back toward their carriage, the coachman in hot pursuit.
One of the crows, drawn to the shiny gems, swooped down to snatch up a ring. “Fair enough,” I said, dismounting to collect the coins and the remaining ring, and by the time I’d remounted, the carriage was already trundling along the road toward Debrecen.
I tracked back across the field, following the faint trail of pain left by the injured creature. I found it at last, by the river’s edge.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
The creature curled more tightly into the fetal position.
“I won’t hurt you.” I wished Noémi were with me. Though we had both belonged to the Luminate order Animanti, I had never been adept at the healing rituals. As a point of fact, I had never really been adept at any of the spoken rites and rituals of the Luminate: most of what I did—the shifting, the animal persuasion—I did by instinct. I had used the rituals, of course, because I’d no wish to draw the Circle’s attention, but I had never really needed them. I suspected the Lady would say this was part of my being born táltos.
The creature did not respond, and having no wish to torment it further, I left a gold coin on the bank beside it, then returned to the road. Holdas was reluctant to give up grazing for riding, but eventually he climbed back onto the road, and I pointed him the way we had come. My desire to reach Debrecen had been superseded by a desire not to overtake the men I had just robbed.
That night I slept in the stiff spare bedroom of a farmer and his wife, beside the formal, unused bed still piled high with the embroidered pillows and blankets the wife must have brought to the marriage as a dowry. I left them another of the gold coins as payment, and the wife kissed my cheeks heartily while her husband glowered at me. I made a rapid escape, before the husband could read his wife’s response as affection for me rather than for the gold.
The spring air was mild and sweet, and birds sang across the prairie grass as I rode back over the nine-arched bridge and past the crossroads.
I whistled, pleased with myself and the world at large.
And that, naturally, is when a well-aimed rock knocked me from the saddle and into the dust of the road.
*
When I came to, I found myself tightly trussed to the trunk of a tree. Judging by the sun overhead, I’d been out for an hour or more. A handkerchief had been stuffed into my mouth, and when I tried to speak, the three strangers in the grove with me turned with one movement to face me.
One of the men held the small velvet bag I’d confiscated from the noblemen the day before; another held the larger saddlebag, where I kept my purse and the few remaining items from Eszterháza. Such is life. I’d inherited my father’s attitude toward money: what came effortlessly could be lost just as easily.
Still, the whole encounter stung. Not because I’d lost my money, but because I’d never even seen it coming.
One of the men, half a head shorter than me with a long, luxuriant black mustache, approached me. “I’m going to untie your gag. If you try to shout, I will shoot you in the knee.”
I nodded to show my understanding, and he stripped the cloth from my mouth.
I smacked my lips, trying to get the dryness and the slightly sour taste of the cloth from my tongue. “I don’t suppose you have any water?”
“We talk first, then give you water. Maybe. If we don’t kill you.”
I shook my head. “If you’re trying to intimidate me, it won’t work. If you meant to kill me, you’d have done it already.”
He slugged me in the gut, and I doubled over.
My damnable tongue. Even János had said it would be the death of me. When I could talk again, I said, “All right. I believe you.”
I knew he meant for me to be intimidated, frightened even, but somehow I could not muster the energy. He might have a gun, but I figured my odds of shifting before he could finish aiming were pretty good, and there were plenty of creatures small enough that he’d have a hard time getting a bead on me. I was more curious than anything.
“You’re not from here,” black mustache said. “You’re carrying goods worth more than the clothes on your back. I think maybe you stole them.”
“And now you’ve stolen them from me. I don’t think I’m seeing your point.”
“We’re looking for someone. Calls himself the King of Crows. Robbed a bunch of noble boys on the road yesterday. You know him?”
“Never heard of him. I’m sorry—but why do you care anyway?”
“This is my territory. Other gangs don’t operate here.”
“And you are?”
He fingered the tips of his mustache. “Fekete László.” László the Black. He announced the name as though he were someone I ought to have heard of, like Rózsa Sándor.
“Ah. Of course! Well then, now that we’ve cleared that bit up, if you’ll kindly return my horse, I’ll be on my way. You can keep the money,” I added generously.
The redhead standing beside László the Black said laconically, “Can’t give you the horse. We shot him.”
A beat of silence. My ears began ringing. I couldn’t seem to feel my toes or the tips of my fingers. Holdas was a brute, but he was the only family I could still claim.
The redhead burst out laughing. “Your face! Your horse is not dead. Followed us here, in fact—though I think he might be possessed. Nasty creature.”
The relief was solid as a punch. With the shock of the announcement no longer blunting my senses, I could, in fact, sense Holdas faintly from a field nearby. “Ha-ha! You bluff excellently well—I don’t suppose you play cards?”
“Naturally.” The redhead grinned. Fekete László eyed me critically. “You talk like a Luminate. Probably there’s someone somewhere who would pay good money for your safe release.”
“I wish that were true! But my parents died some five years ago—my father by his own hand after squandering all our family fortunes. All my earthly goods and all I hope to inherit are in that bag there.” I nodded at the saddlebag László held.
László frowned.
“Do you think I’d be traveling in these clothes if I were lying?” I used my chin to gesture at the outfit I’d worn daily for the past week or more. Despite admittedly haphazard efforts at cleaning them, my shirt and trousers were less than pristine, and probably smelled a bit too. Though not, I’m happy to say, as much as my captors.
“You are Luminate, though? Any magic?”
I shrugged. “Not to speak of.”
“A lot of Luminate lost their magic after the Binding broke,” the redhead said. “He’s probably telling the truth. Might as well let him go. We can blindfold him and take him back to the crossroads.”
The third bandit, a dark-haired, dark-complexioned boy with a long scar across his right cheek, said nothing, only rolled my father’s signet ring from
one hand to the other.
László frowned up at the sky. “That’ll take you an hour or more—and then the time to come back. I can’t spare you so long. Take him far enough from here that he can’t track his way back and let him loose on the puszta. Mayhap he’ll live; mayhap he won’t.”
“Callous,” I said, tsking.
“I’m beginning to dislike you.” László fingered the hilt of a knife at his belt.
“Only beginning to? I’ve clearly failed, then.”
The redhead shouted with laughter. “I like him, László. He’s quick, fearless—or possibly just stupid—and he’s clearly not above the law. We could use someone now that Feri has gotten himself hanged.”
I tried to ignore the kick of excitement in my gut. Were they asking me to be a bandit? Hungarian betyárok were all the rage these days—the romance of the untrammeled life, the lure of illicit encounters and daring escapes.
László folded his arms and surveyed me once more. He glanced back at the scar-faced boy. “Bahadır, what do you say?”
Bahadır. That was not a Hungarian name—or Austrian either. I eyed the boy with interest. There was a story here.
Bahadır shrugged. “Why not?”
László waved at the redhead. “Go ahead, then, Ákos.”
“What do you think, stranger? We work long hours and the pay isn’t great, but you get a share of anything we do get. We’re not violent either, if you’re squeamish about that—killing your mark is as good as asking the army to come after you. Long as we’re mostly peaceable, they don’t hunt too hard for us. Course, if we get caught, it’ll mean the noose.”
I thought for a glancing second. I needed to disappear, and I needed to find work—if this wasn’t quite honest work, it at least promised to be interesting. I could always leave if it got old. Besides, they had my father’s ring—and I wanted it back.
“Deal. Now, if you’ll untie my bonds, we can shake on it.”
The June evening light broke in shafts through the trees surrounding one of the main thoroughfares in Prater Park. Noémi and I strolled arm in arm, a dozen paces or so behind Richard and Catherine. After a lengthy sermon and even longer dinner, we’d collected at the park to see and be seen. In one of the fields a little way down the road, the Furstenfeld family was holding the first of many fetes for the Congress. The roadway was thronged with people: wealthy Viennese merchant families, Luminate nobility with soul signs glimmering like fireflies in the waning light, peasant men and women in traditional lederhosen and dirndls, a pair of Serbian girls with cloth wound around their heads.