by Lisa DeSelm
His eyes roll upwards, as if begging the heavens for patience to accommodate my slow mind.
“I will marry a real woman, Pirouette. But I don’t want just any woman, born and bred in the common way. You’ll find I don’t much care for common things,” he says darkly.
“I daresay you were born in the common way.”
A vein the color of his eyes pulses at his temple. Stepping closer, he wags a pale finger in my face. “Watch your tongue, apprentice. If you refuse, I will resort to whatever measures necessary to render from you what I desire.” He turns away from me, pacing with his hands behind his back. “After that display at the proclamation today, it’s probable you are already losing the few allies you had left—your precious makers. That tailor’s boy especially seems to have turned on you and your father. How tragic.” He rolls his eyes, stopping in front of me.
“Who knows, I may decide to burn you alive after all, at our next fall festival. What a show of force that would be! Then you can return to ash and smoke, to the nothing you came from. Or perhaps I’ll have my saboteur crush the life from your throat first,” he jeers.
Any curiosity about why he called me here has long vanished and is replaced by a feeling I recognize as hatred. It’s not a sensation I’ve had much experience with, but the young Margrave is proving an apt teacher.
“And how am I to make a real bride for you, my lord?” I ask bitingly.
Laszlo whips around with a delighted grin. “Come, my apprentice. Come and see.”
“Do you like it?” Laszlo asks, the wobble in his voice betraying a hint of apprehension.
He has dragged me from the library to a room at the end of another lengthy hallway. Wolfspire’s main estate is built like a rabbit’s warren of tunnels and stairwells and halls; I wonder how anyone finds their way around. Proudly pushing open a set of doors with both hands, he unveiled a gallery unlike any I’ve ever seen. Light tinted amber and gold streams in through the high windows, painting the room like stained glass. Laszlo enters with a holy air, his posture reminding me of a priest coming to the altar for worship.
Dozens upon dozens of marionettes hang from the walls on custom-built pegs and hooks. Some are tucked into their own small creches. Unlike Curio, these marionettes don’t seem meant for play or use, these are for display—a whole museum’s worth of characters in arrested motion. The air in this strange chapel is hollow; sterile. Laszlo’s fingers skim the dangling bodies, setting them swinging like windchimes. My head spins around. Most are pieces I’ve never seen before, their craftsmanship more amateurish and crude than I’m used to.
But some—I blink in surprise at faces I’ve long forgotten. There’s a wood nymph the size of a man’s arm, wearing a tunic of green leaves and sporting long, forked fingers, who reminds me of the old tree woman. It’s surely one of my father’s, and the resemblance to the woman, now that I’ve seen her for myself, is unmistakable.
I reach out to poke the stuffed belly of a dangling circus clown with a rotund, jeering face.
“Ah, ah, ah,” Laszlo warns. “Don’t touch, unless I say so. Some of these are priceless. Irreplaceable. No one is to touch them unless I give the word. Not even my puppetmaster.”
I pull my hand back. In between the ones I recognize are marionettes carved from every color and type of wood, some painted, some plain, with only their natural grain to lend them any features. The marionettes seem voiceless here, afraid to speak. My fingers itch to lift some of them from their hooks, to shake out their strings and set them free.
“Well?” he asks expectantly.
“It’s … certainly the largest collection I’ve seen outside Curio,” I mumble, desperately trying to say something true.
Laszlo’s chest puffs. “Of course it is. The largest in all the territories.” He clears his throat in pride, a rough sound that nearly erupts into a cough. “I’ve been collecting since I was a boy. My father gave them to me, in place of real companions, since he feared contact with lesser-born children might taint or sicken me like it did Mother. And this is only the half of it, my most favorite pieces. Here,” he says, plucking a marionette of a small boy from the wall. He thrusts the crossbar control at me, this time forcing me to take it. I lift the puppet up to the light.
The face looks familiar. Too familiar.
“My father had it commissioned in my likeness when I was a child. Gephardt Leiter did it, no doubt.”
I brush my fingers against the legs of the wooden figurine, taking in the delicate features, the pale hue my father brushed on the skin, the overlarge and imploring eyes set into the small face that fits in my hands. An unusual series of deep, scarring marks span the legs and back of the puppet. The puppet’s face is unmarked, but terrible gouges and scrapes and chipped bits are visible on the back, arms and legs. This puppet seems like it was close to being destroyed—more than once. One leg hangs crookedly from the knee, the foot warped below it. An arm dangles by mere thread.
Laszlo notices me examining the damage and his jaw tightens again. He snatches the puppet back. “Yes, well. When I misbehaved, Father would have the puppet punished in my stead. A whipping boy, of sorts. One can’t very well whip the Duke of Tavia.” He sniffs. “Apparently I was a very trying child.”
Laszlo’s puppet-counterpart makes me feel sad. The real Laszlo, though, has an inspired ability to make me remember my anger.
“Why show me all of this?”
He returns the little wooden duke to his hooks, where he stares at me, a pendulous portrait of pain.
“This gallery will be your workshop. I’ve had a worktable laid out for you with some tools. You’ll have space to build here. And you’ll have plenty of company, see?” He points to a dark corner on the far side of the room. Tiffin’s rack is tucked into the shadows, and from it hangs the saboteur, returned from her spectacle in front of the village. She appears lifeless, but I know what she’s capable of under Laszlo’s spell.
“I am to build you a marionette … here? I can’t possibly! I need Curio, my own tools and pigments,” I sputter. “And you still haven’t answered my question. Even if I build you a beautiful woman of wood, how is she to become real?”
He gestures to a pair of glass doors on the far side of the gallery, unlocks them and flings them open. Warm air rushes in. He nods for me to follow and I do, reluctantly, my sense of unease growing with every step. We emerge in a steamy, elegant courtyard studded with plants greedily drinking in daylight from the foggy, glass-paned roof sitting above us like a domed lid on one of Nan’s pots.
“This is the botanical conservatory. Here I will have uninhibited exposure to the light of the blue moon. Perhaps the glass may even magnify its effects—one can only hope. I’ve done much study on astronomy and the powers of magnification. We will bring her out here for the awakening. I take it there is a set of words, an incantation?” He takes in the raise of my eyebrows. “Yes, well, your father didn’t go into specifics on that part. But I gather you know enough of what must be said and what to do so that I will be able to awaken my bride and welcome her to my side.”
“This is madness,” I dare to breathe out.
Remembering the tree woman’s words, I know it’s also a chance to release me from my curse. A wild, terrifying chance. Could it work?
“One man’s madness is another man’s magic. Nil volentibus arduum,” he says in a low voice. “Nothing is impossible for the willing, is it, apprentice? I deserve someone made just for me, a true companion.”
I fold my arms across my chest, rocking back and forth uneasily on my feet. My mind cannot wrap itself around the fact that I am in the heart of Wolfspire Hall contemplating such a feat.
“You will begin right away,” the duke insists.
I stare at him, balking at the task set before me. The trees in the conservatory cluck like mother hens; I can tell they don’t approve.
Fearing I am stuck, I look to strike a bargain. Every good maker knows you haggle before settling on a price.
“Before I can do this, can even attempt the task you ask of me, I require a few things.”
“Require?” he says testily.
“First, you must tell me how you animated the saboteur and the wooden soldiers.”
“First? Is this to be a long list?” he says indignantly.
“Why? How did you do it?” I demand.
He sighs, his patience with me running low. “I needed additional troops in reserve to take on Brylov’s men, if that becomes necessary. I also needed a skilled assassin for some special circumstances, as you’re now aware. My father has been trying for years to build an alliance with his sister in Brylov, but alas, my dear old Tante Emmaline was never cooperative. She always hated my father.
“So, I needed something to help hasten her end. Something, or someone, I should say, who would go undetected by her guards. Poison was always my father’s preferred weapon of choice and that at least started the process, gave the saboteur something to administer on her errand across the border. The wooden soldiers were sent to make a show of force, to frighten and confuse the people in her wake. I’ve just had word the Margravina hangs on by a thread, though not for long.”
“But how did you do it?” I ask, as we return to the gallery.
He grins. “For years I have been collecting marionettes, studying their origins. Though I suppose it all really came together when I made a tour to Elinbruk last year. I hadn’t been since I was a child. Have you ever been? No? You really should go. It’s spectacular in the spring.
“Well,” he continues lightly, enjoying watching me squirm, “while my father was busy nosing about for a duchess to woo on my behalf, I found something far more useful in the old royal Bibliothek. I’d heard rumors of it, from my studies, but I honestly wasn’t even sure it existed.”
“What existed?”
“Hearth tales are never a reliable source of magic legacy; too many tellings and retellings by uneducated fools to be trusted. Full of half-truths and all sorts of moral nonsense, the blatherings of old women, best suited for children in breeches. But,” he says, absentmindedly straightening the cap of a wizard hanging nearby, “some of the old masters did write things down that my great-great-grandfather never got around to burning. Their spells, their poisons, their histories. I’ve just never had access to them. Father always kept me penned up here, having to rely on what my tutors brought me. It was buried deep in the Bibliothek, hidden inside an old text about trees and the properties of wood. I guarantee you the cleric that brought it to me thought little of it. ‘Archaic gibberish,’ I believe he called it.
“I wish now that I’d taken the whole book! If I’d only had more time …” He sighs. “As it was, I could only take a page with me, but the cleric was never the wiser. Then it was simply a matter of convincing my father to commission the wooden soldiers, speaking the right words over them and then pointing them in the right direction. The directive to kill or maim means nothing to the marionettes; they have no moral objections. With very little effort, they were able to greatly aid my cause.
“I’ve been waiting for many years for my chance to rule, to not have to sit in a corner and watch a fool give all the orders any longer. He was many things, my father, but a visionary was not one of them. He never appreciated art the way I do,” he says, looking fondly at his collection. “He never understood my interest in puppets, never saw their full potential as I do. Now they are proving themselves far more loyal and capable than my human servants.”
His eyes glow. I wonder if he envisions a whole estate filled with wooden creatures to do his bidding, serving him without question or reservation. I shudder at the thought.
“But the soldiers, they are not alive. Just … set in motion?” I prod, thinking of how the saboteur seemed to listen to me, to respond.
“The only magic I know of to give a wooden figure a fully human life is the blue moon enchantment your father spoke of. And that I have never found in a book … though I’ve searched. Believe me. But until your father told me your whole tale, a puppet turning to living flesh was something I only dreamed possible. I never imagined when I first watched your little show in the square weeks ago that I was watching the work of a creature who represented my grandest notions. I was there just observing the masses, studying them in preparation for my plan to become the Margrave sooner than Father intended. The people were so taken in by it all, eating up your stories like they were starved.
“I must thank you for that, for it was your dramatics that inspired me to request the saboteur in the first place. I was planning to poison my aunt and Father the old-fashioned way, you know, by hand. But after seeing your theatricality, suddenly using a puppet seemed far more elegant.”
I blanch, feeling sick. He used the saboteur not only to poison the Margravina of Brylov and mortally wound Emmitt and the soldier in the wood, but to kill his own father. The count keeps rising.
“What will happen to the masses, to the people of Tavia if I am to make this bride for you? Surely there is a better way to force a union between us and Brylov than a battle.”
I think of the Maker’s Guild and all the village people who will suffer if we are forced into a war.
“I am loathe to discuss politics, especially with a maker. It’s so dreary.”
“Concerned the terms are too difficult for a commoner such as myself, my lord?” I ask in a huff. My attitude is well beyond the bounds of propriety, but I have ceased caring. It’s this or the Keep, and all his efforts tell me the new Margrave needs my skills here.
He glares at me. “You are making my point. But, if you must know, with Tante Emmaline nearly sleeping on death’s pillow, I’ve already sent a dispensation to Elinbruk to petition the king to allow me to rule both territories. I’m sure he will agree; Tante Emmaline has no children, and I am my father’s only heir. A von Eidle has held the territories in the southern seat for generations. It seems only right that I join both of our lands together. Together, the south will be even stronger.”
And your own pockets far fuller, I think.
“And if Brylov resists?” I ask. “Or the king disagrees?”
“He won’t. My father was one of his favorites. But, in that rare case,” he says, “I not only have my own regiments whose ranks are bolstered by my new wooden soldiers, but I also have a whole village of common men to call up at my command. If we must go to war to unite the territories, we will.”
He brightens. “And won’t the citizens of Brylov and Tavia be delighted to attend the wedding of their new Margrave? People will be so tired of death and squabbling by then. Think of it, the feasting and dancing! Such a celebration will surely unite us all!”
I nod grimly, letting him think I am in agreement with his preposterous plan. If we actually make it to a wedding, I’ll be the first to dance a jig at the feast—if I’m not strung up by my neck.
“Is there anything else, apprentice, to add to your odious list of requirements? You should know that ordinarily I would not brook such demands from a maker. I am the one who gives the orders here.”
“If I am to build for you anything remotely resembling a princess,” I quickly begin thinking out loud, “then I shall need the best materials.”
“Naturally.”
“I must return to the woods to secure the right pieces. And to Curio to select the tools I will need. What you have here is … adequate,” I gesture to the tools that have been laid out for me in the gallery, “but they are not my own. A maker can’t be expected to work with tools they are not comfortable with.”
Laszlo grimaces. “Fine. But you will be shackled and accompanied by my steward and return here later tonight. You will sleep here and stay here, so that I may keep an eye on your progress. We haven’t much time. The blue moon is less than a month away, and I want her to be perfect. Can you really do it, Pirouette Leiter?” he asks, clasping his hands. The marbled knuckles turn purple where he presses his fingertips in between their ridges. His eyes remind me of the puppet in his own
likeness hanging behind him: far too earnest. “Can you make me a princess? A Margravina to put all others to shame?”
If I don’t answer honestly, I’ll be explaining splinters to him. I’m not eager to give the new Margrave anything else to hold over my head.
“Yes. I can.” I sigh.
Cursed if I do, cursed if I don’t. I don’t wish to, but I will make him a princess marionette unlike any he’s ever dreamed of.
“Though if she is to live—that, my lord, I have no control over. I’ve never attempted what you speak of … an awakening.”
“Leave it to me to arrange the perfect conditions,” he says confidently. “If you know the spell, it can’t be that difficult, no more than a few magic words spoken in moonlight. After all, your father, a mere maker, did it. And look at you now!”
Yes, I think, my stomach turning sour, as I am ushered out and turned over to a waiting guard. Look at me now.
CHAPTER 20
JUST OUTSIDE THE ENTRANCE TO CURIO, THE STEWARD WAITS impatiently, having sent another guard round back to make sure I don’t escape. I hurry inside to find most of my makers cloistered in the workshop, looking miserable—Bran, especially. I cannot bring myself to meet his eyes.
“Piro!” Nan throws her arms around me. “Where did they take you? What have you been sentenced with? Are you free to go? Surely this is all a terrible mistake!”
“Don’t believe a word of it, Piro,” groused Fonso. “He’s a barmy liar! None of this is your doing. He’s just using you!”
“A fool always looks for an easy mark,” Tiffin growls, clapping me on the shoulder. “I’m so sorry he chose you.”
Bran stares at me helplessly.
“I’ll be all right. But I must make a special order for the duke—er, the new Margrave. I’m just here to get my things and am ordered to return to Wolfspire Hall. I’ll be staying there now,” I say stiffly, motioning to the broad back of Baldrik keeping watch at the door.
“Staying there?” Bran repeats dismally.