Crimson Bound

by Rosamund Hodge

  Zisa would have gladly lost hands and feet and eyes and tongue for her brother. But she knew that if she waited for him to pick up the sword, he would refuse and die beside her, and his death was the one thing she could not endure.

  So she picked up the sword and cut off his right hand.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  Wind gusted down the twisting nighttime streets of Rocamadour, whipping up the soft rain into a lash. Crouched atop the house’s gable, Rachelle slitted her eyes against the sting and looked across the rooftops. There was no moonlight, but to Rachelle, the air gleamed with hidden currents, whorls and eddies of power unseen by normal human eyes. She could not only see the great hulk of the cathedral far off to her left, but also distinguish the silhouette of every gargoyle clinging to its spires. Three streets over, a carriage rattled homeward, and she could spot the individual spatters where the horse’s hooves struck mud.

  And all around her, she could see the shadow of the Great Forest.

  Something happened when cities grew large enough. When the labyrinths of their grimy cobblestone streets became as twisted as the interwoven branches of the forest canopy, the power of the Great Forest began to seep through. Ordinary humans might only have a vague feeling that there was something uncanny about the darkened streets. But Rachelle was bloodbound. Within the shadows of the buildings, she could see darker shadows cast by phantom leaves and branches. Within the whistle of the wind, she could hear the ghostly forest whispers.

  It was time to hunt.

  Rachelle took off running along the ridgepole. Ahead of her, the roof came to an end, and she leaped. For one moment she sliced, weightless, through the air and darkness; then her feet hit the next roof and skidded. In a heartbeat she had her balance back and was running again.

  East of the cathedral, there was a neighborhood that had suffered five woodspawn attacks in the last two weeks. That wasn’t just a series of random incursions; that was a pack, returning again and again to the place where they had found prey.

  They were not going to hunt anyone else tonight.

  Another roof, and another. Then Rachelle reached the wide, paved expanse of the Place du Gloire. She ran straight across, dropping from the rooftops to the ground.

  At the center of the square stood two bronze statues of Tyr and Zisa holding the swords Joyeuse and Durendal. The bases of the statues were papered over with broadsheets—more dissidents asking how the King could dare to raise taxes when crops were failing because of the shortening days. To resist naming an heir when rumor said his health was ailing. To let the bloodbound live when everybody knew the Forest was growing stronger.

  She’d been seeing a lot of broadsheets lately. Soon there would be another set of fools trying to attack the King’s bloodbound. And another round of arrests.

  Rachelle swarmed straight up the face of the building on the other side of the square, and put both King and rebels out of her head. Everything was simpler on the roofs. She ran and leaped, nothing to push her back but the wind itself, until she reached the neighborhood where the woodspawn kept attacking. Then she settled herself on a ridgepole to watch and wait.

  And wait.

  The night slowly wore on. The fire that had burned in her veins as she raced across the city was gone. Now she was cold and stiff; her eyes throbbed from lack of sleep and her fingers, still clutching the hilt of her sword, were almost completely numb. But she had promised herself she wouldn’t sleep until she took care of this pack.

  To keep herself awake, she stared at the glowing red string that was tied to her finger and trailed away off the roof. The string—invisible to everyone but her—was a reminder of why she couldn’t stop hunting. If she looked at it long enough, she knew the scar on her right palm would start aching. That, too, was a reminder.

  She would never deserve to stop hunting.

  As if in answer to the thought, she heard a chorus of soft, almost musical moans.

  Then she saw them on the street below: five doglike woodspawn, whippet-thin, their white bodies translucent, their muzzles bloodred. They looked like the ghosts of a court lady’s lapdogs, but Rachelle had seen them tear a man to pieces in minutes.

  One of the hounds slowed, lagging behind the others, and tilted its head up to sniff the air.

  Rachelle drew her sword and flung herself down.

  The hound had dodged before her feet hit the mud. But it didn’t move fast enough to escape her sword. The blade cut through translucent flesh and bone; blood spurted, suddenly vivid and corporeal, but by the time the body hit the ground, it was already turning to mud.

  The other hounds had wheeled to face her. They growled, lips curling as they faced the obscene enigma of a creature who was filled with the power of the Great Forest and yet turned against them. Then they sprang.

  Rachelle grinned. Rain and wind and blood flung against her face as she whirled among them, her blade slicing. Moments later she was alone, the bodies of the spectral hounds melting into the mud around her.

  Gasping for breath, she listened: nothing but the patter of the rain, the whispers of the wind, the faint shouts and clatters that filled the city air even at night. She couldn’t sense anything, either.

  The hunt was over, and as she realized that, all her earlier exhaustion washed back over her.

  She also realized that the hunt had ended in front of a place where she could get a hot drink. Two doors down, light spilled from the windows of a coffeehouse; its wooden sign rocked in the wind. Rachelle strode through the puddles. As she reached for the door, the wind whirled up again behind her back and shoved her forward. She clattered into the coffeehouse on her toes.

  Rachelle squinted against the sudden glare of the oil lamps. She’d never been in this coffeehouse before—it was east of the cathedral, well away from her normal territory—but it seemed nice enough. The air was warm, thick with the scent of coffee. Despite the hour, there were still eight men sitting at the tables. After the cold loneliness of the night, their presence crowded the room: the stubble on their chins, the trim on their coats, the little human noises they made as they breathed and muttered. Behind them, an artist more willing than skilled had painted a swirling promenade of figures from history and legend. By the counter hung a bronze foot enameled red at the ankle-stump: the Dayspring’s left foot, the common devotion for tradesmen.

  Glances drifted up to her and stopped. Voices fell silent. It was unusual for a young woman to walk into a coffeehouse alone—especially this late at night—but they didn’t care a whit about that. They didn’t even care that she was one of the rare women with permission from the King to carry a sword and a dispensation from the Church to wear men’s clothing. Not when her red coat was embroidered on each shoulder with a black fleur-de-lis, symbol of the Royal Order of Penitents. The King’s bloodbound.

  The King’s pet murderers. That was what the illegal broadsheets plastered on the alley walls called them, and all the people who met her knew it. Rachelle had long since stopped choking when she saw that name in their eyes.

  But this time there was more fear than usual. And hatred. These people had probably marched in penitential processions and pasted up broadsheets that all but called for rebellion. They thought that the growing darkness was the judgment of God, brought down by the King’s willingness to make use of the bloodbound’s unholy powers.

  She thought, I could kill them all if I had to.

  A girl stepped in front of her. She was no older than fourteen, with big eyes and big elbows and pale, twiglike arms that Rachelle could have snapped between her hands.

  “What can we do for you, mademoiselle?” she asked, her voice respectful but her gaze flickering nervously around the floor.

  Rachelle could take them all. But she didn’t want to. She wanted to get a cup of hot coffee and sit in a corner, warming herself amid the human clatter while e
veryone looked past her, the way she could in the coffeehouse back on the rue Grand-Séverin, where the people knew her and remembered the night she had saved four children from woodspawn.

  This place was warm and human but hated her, and suddenly the cold, wet night seemed more appealing.

  Then she noticed the man seated in the corner, his long legs stretched out in front of him. His coat collar was turned up and his cap was pulled down over his face, but she would know those sharp cheekbones and lush, arrogant lips anywhere. It was Erec d’Anjou, captain of the King’s bloodbound, masquerading as a common citizen so he could spy out the King’s enemies.

  Damned if she was going to turn tail and run while he was watching.

  Rachelle planted her feet a little more firmly. “I need coffee,” she said.

  Abruptly an older man shoved the girl aside. He had similar lines to his face—father, maybe, or uncle—and corded muscles.

  “This is a respectable coffeehouse,” he said, his voice low and rumbling.

  “Good,” she said. “I would hate to ruin my reputation.”

  “You don’t need to trouble us,” said the man. “For the love of the Dayspring, go somewhere else.”

  He was brave, she had to give him that. Her senses had sharpened as they always did when somebody nearby was afraid; she half saw, half heard the swift, desperate pulse in his throat. But he was staring her down as if she couldn’t draw her sword, cut his neck open, and walk away. As if she didn’t know what it felt like to have blood beneath her fingernails and spattered across her face.

  She forced the memories back. “I’m a servant of the King. A respectable house would be honored to serve me.”

  “You know, you can threaten all you want,” Erec said from his corner, “but they’re still going to spit in your coffee.” He gave her a look of bored weariness. “Why don’t you come back when you’ve learned how to make people do what you want?”

  Her throat tightened in helpless frustration. Erec always found ways to tease her when she couldn’t get back at him.

  Without a word, she strode to his corner and sat herself down in his lap. “What a considerate young man you are,” she said loudly. “Tell me all about persuading people.”

  Nobody could embarrass Erec—it was as impossible as water running uphill—but at least she could make sure that his evening of being inconspicuous was thoroughly ruined.

  He slid his hand up her cheek, hooking a thumb under her jaw. “Some things are better shown than told, hm?”

  Heat blossomed across her cheeks. Two years ago, he’d found it very easy to persuade her to kiss him, back before she’d learned to tell when he was joking and when he was serious. Before she’d realized his kisses were never serious.

  “I don’t need to be shown anything,” she said. “I already know what you are.”

  “Do you?” asked Erec, with that oblique tilt of his eyebrows that she knew so well, and her heart thudded.

  Then she heard a soft chorus of clicks.

  She looked over her shoulder and cursed herself for letting Erec distract her. Because there were twelve men now, and four of them were holding muskets, their wide brass mouths gleaming in the dim light.

  “Step away from him,” said the owner of the coffeehouse.

  Rachelle’s mind was whirling through cold calculations. She had thought she could kill them all. She probably still could, with Erec’s help, because while some fools thought that killing bloodbound was as simple as pointing the musket and pulling the trigger, human hands were slow and muskets had terrible aim.

  But sometimes fools were lucky. And even bloodbound couldn’t survive a musket ball in the face.

  “You really should have left when I told you to,” Erec murmured.

  “You really should have arrested them as soon as they got muskets,” Rachelle muttered back.

  “I was waiting for them to implicate all their friends.”

  “I said step away,” the owner growled. “We’re done with bowing and scraping to murderers.”

  “Well, then I should probably be leaving as well,” said Erec. “Because I’m Erec d’Anjou, captain of the King’s bloodbound, and you would not believe the blood on my hands.”

  “I really think they would,” said Rachelle.

  “You traitor,” snarled one of the men.

  “Not to the King,” said Erec, wrapping his arms around Rachelle. She knew that he was preparing to fling her in one direction while he threw himself in the other. The real risk was in the very first moment, when they were still in front of the muskets; once moving, they would be almost safe, because muskets were only as good as the hands that held them and the eyes that guided them.

  She could feel the cold-hot thrill of battle starting to hum in her veins.

  If she hadn’t been readying herself to fight, she might not have noticed the flicker of movement at the edge of her vision. She looked at the mural, at the wonderfully lifelike leaves painted in the background.

  Then she realized they were moving. They weren’t part of the painting, they were growing out of the wall, rippling in a breeze she couldn’t feel.

  It was a glimpse of the Great Forest like she’d had in the rainswept streets. But that didn’t happen indoors. No bloodbound, no matter how strong her second sight, could see the Forest from within a human home.

  Unless the Forest was beginning to actually manifest, enough of its power seeping through to take physical form in the human world.

  “Erec,” she said quietly. The thrill of battle was turning into a sick expectation. “The Forest’s here.”

  Now she could feel the sour, humming presence of the woodspawn. Right here in this room, surrounded by hateful and hostile and terribly fragile humans.

  “Inconvenient,” said Erec.

  Suddenly he threw himself to the side, dragging Rachelle along with him. She rolled free of his grasp and back onto her feet. Where they had stood a moment before crouched another spectral hound, red tongue lolling between its fangs.

  The muskets went off in a deafening chorus.

  “Everybody out,” Rachelle yelled, shifting her grip on her sword as she realized that she had drawn it. Then something rustled above her. She looked up.

  The whole ceiling of the room was completely overgrown, and at least ten of the doglike woodspawn crouched among the branches, staring down at her with glittering eyes.

  This wasn’t a chance eddy in the Forest’s power. This was a full manifestation, and she hadn’t seen one this bad since—since—

  The rest of the woodspawn dropped. The humans, at last seeing them, started screaming. Rachelle ducked one way, Erec the other, and all thought was seared away by the glorious, white-hot delirium of movement. Human words and human fears didn’t exist anymore, just simple, instinctive knowledge: lunge here, slice there. Vault the table, and there was Erec at her back as they took down another knot of the creatures.

  Then, diving to avoid another woodspawn, she stumbled straight into the coffeehouse girl—why hadn’t those idiots gotten her out before attempting murder? Rachelle shoved her under the nearest table, and was turning when a woodspawn hit her in the shoulder and slammed her to the ground.

  With a wet thud, Erec’s dagger plunged into the woodspawn’s head.

  “Watch yourself!” he snapped, already turning away.

  Rachelle sat up, pulled the blade out of the writhing creature’s head, and threw it to land between the eyes of the woodspawn closest to him. She grabbed her sword and gave the twitching woodspawn beside her a final, fatal slash across the middle. It shivered and dissolved into mud.

  She realized that only two of the woodspawn were left alive, and Erec was fighting both of them with a lethal grace that promised the hounds didn’t have long left.

  “You saved me.”

  The girl’s voice was quiet, trembling. Rachelle looked back under the table: she was very pale. Her eyes were wide, her lips parted in fear.

  No.

  That
was hope in the girl’s face, and it was hope that made her voice tremble as she said, “You’re not really a monster, are you? People like you—they can still be saved.”

  Rachelle bolted to her feet, ice running through her veins. Because she knew why this girl was agonized with hope. She knew why the Forest had manifested this way.

  And she knew what was waiting for them upstairs.

  “Erec,” she said, “finish them,” and bolted up the steps. Ivy grew down the walls of the stairway and little red birds flashed among the leaves.

  The door at the top was bolted shut. Rachelle kicked it once, twice, and then it gave way.

  Inside was the Great Forest.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  The Forest was just like her dreams. The dark, tangled growth of trees, branches, and roots woven together. The cold air, pulsing with half-heard laughter, that tasted of blood and smoke. The glint of a bonfire in the distance.

  This was the Great Forest, the Forest of Dreams and Dreadful Night: the dark, primeval wood that had once covered all the world in the days before the sun and moon. She’d seen its phantom shadow a thousand times, haunting the streets of Rocamadour, blossoming around her when she met the forestborn in the wood near Aunt Léonie’s cottage. She’d dreamed of it night after night.

  She had never imagined that when she finally walked all the way inside, it would feel like home.

  Rachelle stepped over the threshold. The cold darkness rippled over her skin, kissed her eyes, and unfurled her hair.

  The longing hit her like a kick to the stomach. For just one moment, she was convinced that the distant bonfire was the only light in all the world—that the sun was a dream and the moon a delirium—and she wanted nothing but to drop her sword and run for that fire. She wanted to forget her foolish human name, relinquish it to the sweet, secret darkness, and run to that fire-lit world of dancing.