Crimson Bound

by Rosamund Hodge

  “Yes, mademoiselle,” he whispered. “By all means, let’s avoid pretending.”

  And for a moment, she could see the Forest. Shadowy trunks rose through the crowd like pillars; vines wound up statues and draped over the paintings; the candelabras cast leaflike shadows. Crimson, four-winged birds fluttered among the dancers. She couldn’t hear the music or the chatter of the crowd, only the soft, vast susurration of wind among infinite branches.

  Then she blinked and it was gone, so quickly that she might have imagined it. She must have imagined it: Château de Lune was far too well-protected for the Forest to manifest here, and if it did, she would see it for more than a flickering instant.

  That was how much power Erec had over her: he could make her think she was seeing the Forest.

  And now he was smirking at her. “I don’t think I’ve ever rendered you speechless before.”

  She wanted to slap his face. She had told him never to kiss her again. She also wanted to forget what she’d said and pull him close for another kiss. But either reaction would amuse him. That was the problem with Erec: everything was always a game to him, and he always won.

  Instead she tried to look bored. But she knew she was blushing, and anyway it was already too late. He would be insufferable the rest of the evening.

  “Thank you for the dance,” she said flatly, turning away.

  “Don’t tell me you’re leaving already.”

  “Good night.” She hadn’t actually been planning to leave the reception, but now that he had asked her to stay, she refused to give him the satisfaction.

  “What about your charge?”

  “I’ll take him with me.” The dance had started up again; she marched straight through the wheeling couples to Armand, and seized his hand out of la Fontaine’s.

  “We’re leaving,” she said, and dragged him with her through the crowd—they were all staring, but who cared?—and out a pair of great glass-paneled doors into the garden. Outside was a long, grassy walk lined by oak trees hung with lanterns.

  “Where are we going?” said Armand after a few moments, as she continued to drag him down the walk.

  Rachelle had not considered that, but she wasn’t about to tell him. “That way,” she said, and didn’t slow down.

  “Not that I mind the fresh air,” said Armand, after another few moments, “but you do realize that everyone in there thinks you dragged me out either to kill me or to kiss me senseless?”

  Then she did stop, so she could drop his hand and turn on him. “What?”

  “Well, after that display. And you know what people say about bloodbound.”

  The anger was so sudden and furious, she was surprised she didn’t strike him.

  “I know a good deal better than you do,” she said, “unless you’ve been called a whore to your face.”

  Ladies tittered and made eyes at Erec. But men of any kind only made catcalls at Rachelle, unless they were cursing her.

  Armand winced. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Why? Don’t pretend you think I’m an innocent.” Before he could speak, she went on, “But your second cousin just boasted to us about sleeping with the King. How am I the shocking one?”

  Armand’s mouth twisted wryly. “Accepting a man’s favor is elegant. Kissing in public is vulgar.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “Welcome to the court. Also, she is mistress to the King, and you know how much royal favor can excuse.”

  “Such as being bloodbound?” she asked bitterly.

  “But you’re not really excused, are you? I was thinking more about what the royal family gets up to.”

  Rachelle pushed a strand of hair out of her face. The sweat had started to cool on her skin. In the distance, the wind rustled in the trees. The night was opening up around her again; Armand, his face half-lit by the flickering lamplight, looked strange and ominous.

  Not that he sounded it. “Why are you spouting this nonsense?” she demanded.

  “I suppose because it’s easier than thinking about the fact that we’re all alone so there’s nobody to hear me scream.”

  “Do you really think I dragged you out here to kill you? I’d get in trouble for that, and you’re not worth it.”

  He laughed. It was a curiously open laugh, his shoulders shaking and his eyes crinkling. “You’re very comforting.”

  “No,” said Rachelle, “just honest. If I were trying to comfort you, I would promise not to hurt you.”

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  The next morning, they had to attend the King’s levée. Apparently it looked strange if the King’s beloved son did not attend his father at every opportunity, so after a hasty breakfast, Rachelle and Armand squeezed their way into the royal chambers along with half the court so that they could watch the Duc de Bonne fulfill his lifelong dream of handing the King his undershirt.

  Rachelle found the levée boring beyond all belief, but she supposed it wasn’t worse than any of the other court functions they might have been dragged to. The most trying part was watching everyone pretend not to notice the weakness in the way the King moved, in his overstudied gestures. The rumors were right: he was ill, no matter how little he wanted to admit it.

  Just like the world was ending, no matter how little the entire court wanted to admit it.

  A courtier stammered a joke, and the King let out one of his famous booming laughs. Everyone pretended not to notice when it turned into a cough. Rachelle sighed and looked up at the ceiling.

  The royal chambers here at the Château were just as elaborate as those of the Palais du Soleil back in Rocamadour. But here, instead of the gold curlicues splattered across the ceiling, there was a huge painting of the moon, decorated with gold-and-silver traceries. It was an oddly stylized painting, and as Rachelle stared at it, she realized it wasn’t much like any of the other portraits that hung framed all over the Château. It was old. She knew very little about art, but she was sure that it was much older than any of the other decorations.

  Her heart started beating faster, but she didn’t let herself think what she was hoping until Erec’s laugh rang out above the babble of the crowd, and she glanced at him. He sat, again, at the King’s feet, glorying in his position. He was dressed all in black velvet today, with black leather boots, and the tesserae of the mosaic floor glittered around him. Gold tesserae. The pattern was huge; she couldn’t quite make out what it was, besides golden and swirling.

  Rachelle looked down at her feet. She saw wavy golden rays against dark blue.

  It was the sun. The entire floor of the King’s apartments was covered in a mosaic of the sun. Below a giant moon painted on the ceiling.

  She was careful to keep her body still, her face smooth, but under her skin, her blood was pulsing with excitement, because what if the door was right here?

  It seemed like a stupid thought. Mad King Louis had nearly torn the kingdom apart when he tried to burn all the woodwives and melt down Joyeuse. Surely anyone seeking to save the ancient sword would want it as far away from him as possible. Surely, if the door were here, someone of the royal line besides Prince Hugo would have opened it already.

  But it made a curious sort of sense. If the nameless woodwife had hidden Joyeuse anywhere at the Château, that meant hiding it under the king’s nose. Perhaps she had simply decided to go all the way and hide the sword in the one place that King Louis would never expect a woodwife to dare go. And there were some woodwife charms, Rachelle knew, that only operated in response to the will of the one holding them. The door might open only for somebody who already knew it was there.

  It was worth trying.

  But she would have to wait until there were not a hundred people crowded into the room.

  Late that night, when the Château had finally begun to still, Rachelle slipped into the King’s chambers.

  Ther
e were guards standing outside the doors, but they weren’t bloodbound—or even that well trained, in Rachelle’s opinion. They didn’t hear a thing when she slipped in through the windows that nobody had bothered to lock.

  Of course, nobody expected a bloodbound to be sneaking into the King’s chamber to look for an ancient sword hidden behind a magic door.

  That morning, the King’s sitting room had felt like a tiny glittering cage. Now—empty of the crowd and filled with shadows—it seemed much larger. A hidden doorway felt actually possible in this silent, dreaming room.

  Rachelle turned around slowly in a circle, looking up at the painted moon, down at the mosaic sun. It looked like the perfect spot, but the only doors she could see were the solid, normal doors into the bedchamber and out into the hall.

  She had been thinking about the door all day. If it had remained hidden from the kings of Gévaudan for three hundred years, it had to be concealed with a woodwife charm. It probably was a woodwife charm, and that meant she ought to be able to sense it. But she didn’t feel anything.

  Wind stirred against her neck.

  The windows were shut.

  Rachelle went still, heart thudding. And then she saw it: shadows on the wall, in the shape of leaves rustling in the wind, even though there were no branches outside the window to cast them.

  A cold breeze traced her cheek and then was still. The shadow leaves faded into simple, normal shadows. The Forest was gone—but it had been here, just for a moment. She was sure she hadn’t imagined it this time. The Forest had manifested in Château de Lune, where any trace of its power should be impossible.

  Perhaps the Forest was simply getting too strong for the protections on the Château. Or perhaps she was standing right next to the door into the Forest.

  She still didn’t sense anything. But she knew how well hidden some woodwife charms could be until they were awakened.

  Rachelle stepped to the nearest wall and laid her hand against it. It was simple wood covered in paint and gilt, but she closed her eyes and reached.

  Awakening charms had never been one of her strengths. It was a strange, sideways movement that used none of her body. For the first six months of her training, all that had happened when she tried was that she wiggled her ears. Even after she learned how to do it right, the skin on her scalp still twitched whenever she woke a charm.

  Now she concentrated until her head ached, but she felt no answering power in the wall beneath her fingertips.

  With a sigh, she opened her eyes and looked around the dim room. Charms had to be touched to be awoken; just standing near them was not enough. It wasn’t a large room, but it would take her a long time to lay hands on every part of the wall.

  She had to try. What could she lose?

  Rachelle took one step forward and pressed her hand to the wall again. And again. And again. Awakening a charm was such a little thing—she wasn’t even really drawing any power—and yet the effort was starting to make her dizzy. Still she kept trying, moving slowly around the room. She had to find the door, even if it meant crawling through every room in the Château.

  In the hallway outside, somebody was singing—probably drunken courtiers staggering back to their rooms—but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except finding the door.

  The ragged singing stopped, which was a relief; the caterwauling made it hard to concentrate—

  Then she realized that the people were still in the corridor, chattering and laughing just outside the door.

  And the door was opening.

  Rachelle whirled around. Light dazzled her: the corridor was lit outside, and the people carried several lamps. La Fontaine stood in the doorway, pale blue crystals glistening in her hair and on her dress. To either side of her, a small crowd of nobles stood, swayed, and leaned on each other, cheeks flushed and wigs slightly askew. They seemed to have all been laughing over a common joke a moment before.

  They were all staring at her now.

  La Fontaine arched one pale eyebrow. “I hope I do not intrude,” she said.

  Rachelle couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t tell them what she was doing, but if she didn’t tell, would they think she was trying to assassinate the King? Would the King consider her to have disobeyed orders by leaving Armand asleep in his room? If she wasn’t executed, she could be sent home to Rocamadour, and then how would she find Joyeuse—

  “I don’t mind if you want to try your luck with him,” said la Fontaine, “but you must know that I will win. Though you will find you get further if you actually enter the bedroom.”

  —and Rachelle’s face heated as she realized that nobody in the room suspected her of any kind of violence.

  “I’m here to patrol,” she said, her voice absurdly harsh and rustic in her ears. “I needed to see if the King’s rooms were safe.”

  “I promise I am taking good care of him,” said la Fontaine, which set everyone snickering.

  Rachelle wanted to snarl, I have no interest in kissing a sick old man, but she knew that if she showed anger, la Fontaine would arch an eyebrow and make a joke of that as well.

  She wondered if she could simply bolt across the room and throw herself out the window. It could hardly make things worse.

  La Fontaine stepped closer. “But I really do wonder,” she said more softly, the idle amusement gone from her voice, “what are you doing here?”

  Then the door behind her opened, and there stood King Auguste-Philippe, wrapped in a dark red robe.

  She bowed stiffly, along with everyone else. Her body was numb with embarrassment.

  The King ignored everyone to look at la Fontaine. “My dear little friend,” he said, “what keeps you out so late at night?”

  There was an odd shift to la Fontaine. She lost none of her poise, but she looked suddenly younger and more fragile.

  “My duty to your subjects,” she said, extending a hand for him to kiss. “How could I leave them lonely?”

  He kissed the hand and drew her close to him. The crowd at the door he continued to ignore, but he looked at Rachelle. “And, you, what are you doing here?”

  Rachelle straightened her spine. She reminded herself that she had nothing to lose. She was already sentenced to death.

  “I was patrolling, sire,” she said. “I thought I heard something.”

  He looked her up and down. “I thank you for your devotion,” he said. “But my dear friend”—he settled a hand on la Fontaine’s shoulder—“is all I need. You may go.”

  Humiliated, she fled.

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  For the next week, Rachelle kept looking.

  There was a fountain in the east gardens that had a mosaic of the sun in its basin. She sat by it for an hour while the moon shone high overhead. She trailed her fingers through the water and closed her eyes and tried, but she could not find any hidden charm in it.

  There was a moon-shaped clock set into the ceiling in a room whose carpet was covered in little sunbursts. The King held audiences there, and at night it was locked, the windows barred; Rachelle tried to find where the keys were kept, gave up, and broke in one night. There was nothing inside, and the next day she had to help Erec hunt for the nonexistent thief.

  It was maddening. Hunting woodspawn was simple: she heard where they had been glimpsed, then sat on a roof in the neighborhood until she saw them, or felt the swelling power of the Forest. Then she chased and then she killed.

  But this door wasn’t something that could be hunted or chased; it had to be searched out and found, and she had nothing to guide her but a cryptic riddle that every day seemed more useless. And yet she couldn’t stop trying, so night after night she roamed the Château. By the time she crawled into her bed, she was nearly ready to weep from frustration as well as exhaustion.

  The days were just as bad. Hour after wasted hour standing next to Armand in pa
rty after audience after court function. It was deadly boring. At first she ignored what the people around her were saying, but then she realized that while anything was better than the return of Endless Night, she didn’t want to save Gévaudan from the Devourer only to have it be ruled by the Bishop. So she watched the people who approached Armand. They bowed to him, and kissed his sliver hands, and begged to have his blessing. But if there was any plotting being done amid the glittering chatter, she couldn’t hear it.

  Armand hardly said a word to her. He smiled and nodded and babbled an ocean of pleasantries to the rest of the court. But when they were alone, he stared at the wall and said nothing.

  Amélie was always trying to persuade Rachelle to let her start applying cosmetics. “You said I could practice on you,” she said. “We had a bargain.”

  “I know,” said Rachelle. “You will. Just not yet.”

  She knew that if she sat down and let Amélie start painting on her face, she would relax. The awful, drumming pressure inside her chest would cease. And she couldn’t bear that. She couldn’t bear to let that agonized tension go when all that stood between her and defeating the Devourer was a single door and she couldn’t find it.

  Rachelle started to wonder if Armand had been lying when he told her the story about Prince Hugo.

  Then one night, after hours wandering the Château, she sat staring into the darkness and rubbing at the phantom string tied to her finger.

  Once she had wound yarn around her fingers every day, and it hadn’t been a curse.

  The memory clutched her suddenly, like hands around her throat: Aunt Léonie sitting beside her, gently untangling the snarl she had made when she tried a new pattern.

  It had been a charm for revealing hidden things. The pattern itself was very simple, but once woven, it had to be awakened with careful concentration, or the power contained in it would go terribly wrong. Rachelle had given herself headaches trying, but she had never managed it, and Aunt Léonie had kept snatching the charm away from her before it went too wrong.