How awkward he felt in his curtain suit, in his own home, in the seat of his power, the chancellor’s judgmental eyes upon him. He looked to his royal secretary, hoping for salvation from that quarter, but none came. The royal secretary was gazing somberly upon their guests, and so the king turned his attention back there. With what preening was the knight congratulating himself! And that construction worker should never have been allowed in the palace.
He loathed manual laborers. They were made of such coarse and heavy materials that it was a wonder this one’s very presence didn’t crush his beautiful glass. And the man’s sister must be even worse.
Feeling his self-control evaporating, and conscious of the presence of outsiders, King Emil gathered his royalty about him like a cloak. “Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention,” he told his visitors. “You will be fed and cared for. Lord Chancellor, Lord Secretary, attend us.” He swept to his feet and strode off, not looking back.
Out from under the strangers’ observation, an ikari dragon exploded in the king’s chest. Its foul breath scorched his throat, and its sinewy, reptilian body squirmed in his belly. Every thrash of its tail struck against the memory of his conversation with Prefect Lindo in the rose garden, of her brief but formal renewal of vows.
This was how she repaid his lenience? This was how she responded to his trust? He had forgiven much in her sister’s memory, but he would not forgive this. Not when he had heard her voice, her very own voice.
And yet . . .
The king faltered mid-step, not noticing his companions’ alarm.
And yet, what if he made a mistake? No one would really want to murder him, would they? Carina was a civilized nation. He shouldn’t have to worry about things like murder and treason and other savage crimes.
“Sire?” The chancellor’s voice broke through Emil’s paralysis. “Sire, shall I contact the high marshal?”
“Don’t be hasty,” the royal secretary scolded, twirling his cape around his arm. “You know His Majesty prefers to consult the Tree before making any major decisions. You must not rush him: it may not yet be time for action.”
“You take hesitation too far,” the chancellor shot back. “If now is not the time for action, when we have every proof, when we are within hours of the treasonous attempt, then when?”
The royal secretary smirked. “A wise strategist considers his timing—he doesn’t take impulsive action the moment he receives news.”
Some part of the king’s mind noted once again how greatly his advisors’ mutual dislike seemed to have deepened, but most of his mind spiraled into the far distance. The Tree, his thoughts echoed. The terrible, terrible hanging tree. You may trick them, but you won’t trick me. You are mine, as I am yours.
“How is this impulsive?” the chancellor snapped. “We’ve known what they were up to for months. We’ve only been waiting for irrefutable proof, and now we have it!”
“We agree,” said Emil, although he had little idea of what either of his advisors had said. “There is something afoot, and we intend to find out what. We fear the prefects have been misled—even that they may have turned against us—but we will not act prematurely. All may not be as it seems. Where is our seidkonur?”
The royal secretary bowed. “On her way, Your Majesty. I took the liberty of summoning her to await you—as, no doubt, my lord chancellor took the liberty of contacting your high marshal.”
“You are mistaken,” the chancellor corrected frostily. “I would never take liberties with His Majesty.” He fell blessedly silent then, falling in step behind the king and beside his rival.
Before long, they arrived at the central courtyard. Nothing ever changed in there, neither with the season nor with the passage of years. The bare cobbles remained bare; the sorry attempts at grass cringed and withered far from the Tree. And the Tree itself—the Tree! The looming Tree, its limbs reaching out as if to sweep a glass king from his feet! Its branches snakes of Medusa’s hair, frozen by her stony glare. The malaise of its presence like fog upon the ground. There stood the Tree. It had stood for hundreds of years, and it might stand for hundreds more.
There, waiting by the trunk—nearly touching it, but not quite daring—stood the seidkonur. And, for some reason, the skald.
“Your Majesty,” said the seidkonur, coming forward the moment she saw him. Emil beheld her in turn, approving that she had made herself ready on this occasion—unlike her hurried entrance of last time. She wore a flowing, old-fashioned velvet dress as white as her hair, and her fingernails and toenails had been painted to match.
As she approached him, the skald followed, carrying the seidkonur’s staff and satchel. So she was feeling her age today, Emil thought. “You haven’t come to bombard us with more rhymes, I hope,” he said to the bard distastefully.
The young man, balancing his load with the ease of long practice, swept a bow. “I come only to be of service to my king and his seidkonur,” he assured Emil. Since he restrained his cheeky grin and lowered his sparkling eyes, Emil accepted this explanation and forgot him.
“Madame Seidkonur,” he said. “We have come on an urgent matter, having received most disturbing intelligence, and we seek the Tree’s guidance. Commune with it on our behalf. Ask it to give us a sign if the time has come for us to move against our prefects.”
With an accepting bow and a few murmurs of assurance, the seidkonur took up her staff. It was curiously plain, that staff: six feet long, dowel-straight ashy wood no larger than the circle of her thumb and forefinger. No mystic signs adorned it. No polish had touched it, save for the natural polish of use and wear. And yet it seemed absolutely a part of her as she took her place beneath the Tree.
A whirl of white beneath dusky boughs, she danced. Her bare feet swam in plumes of dust; her staff spun precise figures; her cloudy eyes shut against distraction. Emil watched raptly—staring first at her and then at the Tree behind her. It seemed to him that the branches danced in time with her movements—no. Not seemed. They were dancing with her. The razor edges of twigs minced the air—slivers of movement never before seen in that dead, windless place.
Color shifted, the dirt surrounding the Tree darkening with moisture. Liquid oozed up, staining the seidkonur’s feet red, squelching and tugging at her until she staggered and slowed. Above her, branches creaked and protested under unaccustomed weight, under the looped ropes cast over their petrified bark.
A fresh breeze of ages past swept the courtyard. Beside and before and behind Emil, men shouted and grunted with effort, and ropes scraped the branches harder, wild with desperate thrashing. Emil caught flashes of kicking feet, bulging eyes, loose fabric. Then living movement stilled and there was only the gentle swaying in the wind. Fabric and flesh rotted and fell away, and bones bleached under the memory of ancient sun.
Time sped by, and the sky closed into a roof. The earth dried, and the dust settled. There were no ropes, no hangmen, no corpses. The Tree brooded motionless and empty.
The seidkonur leaned on her staff, blanched and shivering with astonishment.
“Well,” said the skald. “I guess that’s a ‘yes,’ then.”
Chapter 34:
Child Abuse
By morning, you’d never have known anything untoward had occurred in front of Edenfield Manor. The knights’ vehicles had been hidden and the prefects’ cars—minus Hemmel’s, which had been carried into the garage and abandoned there, stinking of smoke—had been driven onto the grass, leaving the gravel loop clear for the king. Unlike the prefects, the king traditionally brought a small party with him, both for his protection and to suit his royal status.
I came last to breakfast. My frozen sojourn down memory lane, courtesy of Ignorance, had left me unexpectedly rested, but I still wanted to catch whatever hours I could. It wasn’t like I’d miss anything by not pulling myself out of bed before eight-thirty, and I wanted to be at my best.
Besides, there’s nothing like being late for making an entrance.
/> I dressed in sunny yellow cashmere, on the theory that yellow was the last color anyone associated with sneaking around the woods in the middle of the night, and threw open the dining room’s double doors. “Good morning!” I proclaimed. “Everyone have a restful night? Quite the fireworks we had.”
The other prefects groaned or answered, according to how much sleep they’d managed, how full they’d stuffed their mouths, and what they thought of me. I went to the sideboard to pick out some eggs scrambled with unidentifiable fish, a slice of bread, and a bit of cheese. A hearty breakfast that my stomach didn’t want, but I sat and stuffed it in my face despite the internal objections. Today of all days, I needed my energy.
Sr. Nordfeld sat at the far end of the breakfast table, on Avior’s left. Want and Ignorance, as before, waited behind Avior’s right shoulder. Upon reflection, I wasn’t surprised they were back from patrolling; no doubt Avior preferred to impress the other prefects.
And, I thought, no doubt he’d prefer they not know what he’d been up to.
“Your children look dreadful, Lucio,” I said, when I’d shoved about as much cheese down my throat as I could manage. “Positively starving. Have you forgotten to feed them?”
Avior didn’t have to say anything; the revelation on his face screamed his answer.
“You haven’t fed them?” Batata cried, outraged.
Having such a lowly prefect question him was too much. Avior straightened and sniffed. “Relax. These aren’t actual children; they are demon spawn. They don’t work by the normal rules. Not like the rest of us.”
Sr. Nordfeld’s brow furrowed. “Actually—”
My snort overrode him, and he broke off in astonishment. I kept my attention on Avior. “What do you think they live on, air?” I demanded. “It’s bad enough that you expect them to work after not letting them sleep a wink last night.”
Avior started. “What?”
“It is bad enough,” I said, exaggerating my diction, “that the children did not get any sleep last night because they were busy, on your orders, patrolling the woods.”
“How do you know that?” he demanded. “How could you possibly know that?”
“Piffling question,” I replied, waving a dismissal. “Important question.” I inclined my head to Prefect Lindo. “How many of your knights have gone missing?”
Flawed Prefect Lindo was, but stupid she was not. Her hands had fisted on the edge of the table, her back ramrodded, her jaw clenched. “Eight,” she ground out.
I nodded, forestalling a rant as I calculated. There were the three I’d pepper sprayed, which I assumed my knights had taken care of. That left five unaccounted for. Had my knights been busy? Or had some of Lindo’s wandered a little too far from the manor?
I put that puzzle aside and moved on to Prefect Hemmel. “I saw the blaze. I’m sorry it happened on Edenfield property, and I’m sure Lucio here would be happy to reimburse you.”
Prefect Avior scowled. “Now wait a second—”
I cut him off with a look. “We don’t live on air, Lucio. They’re hungry, and you haven’t fed them. What did you expect? Prefect Lindo, if you have any knights in the kitchen, I highly recommend you clear them out. I would hate for the children to get . . . carried away.”
What a lot of uncomfortable shifting that comment elicited. But more importantly, from my perspective, it got Lindo to stomp thin-lipped to the kitchen and order everyone out. No doubt, it’d soon also get Lindo into a nice, distracting screaming match with Avior.
“Lucio,” I said, “release the children into my care long enough for me to feed them.” In my periphery, I couldn’t help seeing Sr. Nordfeld’s uncertainty, the way he wondered what I was up to and whether he should try to stop me. Was this a trick? Was I trying to impress him with this public show of repentance? Don’t try anything, I silently begged him—and could see him deciding that pleasing him would be the most important thing in the world to me.
Well, he had plenty of evidence to go by, didn’t he? That was the face I’d always tried to show him.
“I decide whether they get fed or not,” Avior said, “assuming they need feeding, which I’m not convinced of. They’re mine, and I—”
I was by his side in an instant, fingers tucking inside the knot of his tie, pulling his face close to mine. The children stirred but did not interfere. “Let’s get this straight,” I growled. “Your deal is with the red-haired witch, not with me. Screw with the children, and I’ll let you be the one to feed them.”
Avior’s fingers clenched the table to support his weight, to keep from choking on his own tie. He was made of stouter stuff than Silvertip, though, and said, “Jon won’t let you hurt me.”
“My loyalty to Jon Nordfeld,” I said, releasing Avior and stepping back, granite-faced and marble-voiced, “stretches so far and no further. But out of what loyalty and respect I can be said to have, I will ask politely once more. Prefect Avior, would you please permit me to borrow these children from you for the purpose of fueling them that they might better serve you?”
The dining room connected to the kitchen through two sets of doors: the first leading to a little connecting passage, where staff could enter and exit without giving guests an unsightly view of the kitchen; and the second leading from the entry area to the kitchen itself. Prefect Lindo flapped through the passage and paused in the doorway. She cleared her throat harshly. “The kitchen,” she told me, “is clear.”
I nodded and thanked her, letting the brief interruption reset the atmosphere. I was uncertain how much Avior cared about saving face, but he took the opportunity sure enough. “Go with her,” he told Want and Ignorance. “We want you at your best.”
I offered a hand to each child, ignoring Sr. Nordfeld’s grateful look. Ignorance took my left hand without complaint—and, indeed, without looking at it. He kept his opposite hand over his face, and it was a wonder he knew anything that was going on. Want took my right hand and immediately tried to shove it in her mouth, but I torqued our wrists sharply, pressing our joint hands to her cheek. “Patience,” I warned her.
Whether she reacted to the words or to the tone, I don’t know, but she didn’t try to bite me again as I led her through the dining room and the closet-sized connecting passage to the kitchen.
Once both doors shut, I dropped the children’s hands and pulled two prep stools up to the central island counter. One at a time, I boosted them onto their stools. “If you eat your breakfast like good children,” I told them, “you can have ice cream for dessert.”
Want clasped dirty hands before her mouth, eyes round, breath hiccupping. Ignorance made neither sound nor movement.
This kitchen was much older than the one in the auction house, and its wood structures and cast iron tools had not been converted to a sea of stainless steel. I’d gotten to know it a little, during my rabbit roasting experiment. It had a small, homey, used feel to it, but the pantry was plenty large enough to hold food for the conference, and the walk-in freezer had one half put aside for meat. Evidently, someone connected to Edenfield liked to hunt.
I set plates before the children, then a loaf of bread. It took a minute to find butter and marmalade, and by the time I turned back, holding them, the loaf of bread was gone. Not a crumb of it remained on its paper, nor on the prep table, nor on the lips of the children. Want stared at me with wide, ravening eyes and parted lips. Beside her, Ignorance chewed slowly. As I watched, he swallowed and his mouth fell open again. Not to eat more—the way he constantly plugged his nose necessitated it. That explained the receded jaw of a perpetual mouth breather, and I wondered if he shut his nose against smells even as he slept—if he slept.
“All right,” I said slowly. “I saw some rolls.” I put the butter and marmalade before them, but this time I watched. Want immediately snatched up the brick of butter and dug out a pat with her fingers. She placed the pat in her brother’s mouth, and he shut his lips around it. As he sucked on it, Want stuffed the rest of the butter in h
er own mouth. It shouldn’t have been possible, for that big brick to fit in that child’s mouth, but she swallowed it in a bite. The marmalade went the same way, every sticky blob scooped into her mouth before Ignorance had finished with his butter. The marmalade was gone in a literal two seconds, and then Want stared at me, trembling for more.
In a daze of horrified fascination, I got her more. I put out boxes of cereal, leftovers, cheese, condiments, and desserts. When they were gone, I tried raw meat and flour, and they disappeared too. It worked the same way for each item: I placed the food on the table, Want put the first bite in Ignorance’s mouth, and then she ate the rest herself. Around the point we got to a gingerbread house that looked about a year old, Ignorance turned away, full and content.
Want kept eating. She ate and ate until there was nothing left in the cupboards, but her belly never grew fuller, and her face never lost the strain of desperate starvation.
“You’ve done a good job on your breakfasts,” I praised them, stomach churning. “You’ve more than earned your ice cream. Why don’t you help me pick it out?”
Want leapt off her stool and helped her brother down. Hand in hand, they joined me outside the walk-in freezer. I unlocked the door and held it open, letting them enter first. It was negative forty degrees inside there—not bad to stand in for half a minute when you’re overheated from working in a hot kitchen, but I wouldn’t want to vacation in there. Our breath froze in midair, and the children began shivering immediately and prancing so their bare feet didn’t stick to the frosty floor. They clearly wanted to leave, but the possibility of ice cream was too tempting.
“There it is,” I said from the doorway. I pointed at a shelf in the back, where two tremendous tubs of chocolate and strawberry ice cream waited. “I’ll hold the door for us, because it’s pretty heavy. Go ahead and choose the one you’d like.”
Bargaining Power Page 38