by Lisa DeSelm
“What was it like, Piro?” Tiffin asks. “Did you see the weapons Mort and I have been making? Is everything in the living quarters covered in gold? Have you seen the kitchens? I’ve heard they’re storing all the bread a hundred loaves deep in straw, piled to the ceiling!”
Fonso knocks him in the chest with a thump of his hand. “Is food the only thing on your mind at a time like this, you lanky duffer? Piro’s just been given a terrible sentence by the new Margrave, folks are scared witless about a possible skirmish with Brylov, and you’re thinking about bread.”
“I’m blasted hungry,” Tiff mutters, “and I’ve never been inside Wolfspire Hall. If I’m going to die in service of the Margrave, I’d like to know how the other side lives before I go.”
“None of you are going to die in service to our Margrave or his offal,” Nan growls. “Not if I have anything to say about it.”
“It seems like nothing we say makes any difference at this point,” Fonso offers glumly.
Nan utters a blaze of furious oaths in the direction of his despondency.
“Well done, lover boy,” Tiffin rolls his eyes.
“What can we do, Piro? What do you need?” Nan says. “Can Fonso hide you in the theater wagon and spirit you away from here? Anything to keep you from the Keep?”
“There’s nothing you can do for me. What’s done is done. Help me pack. Just you,” I say shoving wordlessly past Bran. Nan follows close behind.
In the workshop, I fill an old trunk with necessary tools and paint to take back to Wolfspire Hall. I can’t help but think of my father as I layer in our best chisels and calipers and spokeshaves.
What would he say if he were here now? What would he do?
My stomach sinks, imagining he might quietly go along with Laszlo’s orders, making whatever the man desired simply because we could use the money. Francs have no allure for me now. I don’t even know if I will be paid for what I am about to do. We never even discussed it. Right now, I don’t have the luxury of considering anything but saving my own neck.
Wedged like a shim between Laszlo’s orders and fear of losing the life I have left, I recall my father’s words, uttered when a board broke or a marionette’s delicate joint vexed him: “A maker will always prevail.”
That’s the only way to make it out of this alive. I tighten my fingers around the comforting weight of a hammer, the handle silky from years of use. Find a way through. The hammer falls into the trunk, ringing like a bell against its fellows.
Next, I will head to the wood to claim the right trees for Laszlo’s princess. I don’t know when I’ll return to Curio again, if ever. After I pack, Nan leaves me to walk briskly from room to room in our tiny home upstairs, hesitating at the doorway of my father’s bedroom where he took his final breaths. I run my fingers over the cracked and fading wallpaper, look through each window to savor the view of the village and the wood in the distance. I miss my father very much. I’d love nothing more than to tiptoe out and see him waiting in his chair by the kitchen fire, glad to see me. He was always glad to see me.
Bran finds me upstairs in the kitchen, after everyone else has said their goodbyes. Baldrik lurks below, stomping about grumpily. I turn my back to Bran, to get one last glimpse of the world outside this window.
“I did it save you, Piro! He said he would let you go if he had the truth. I thought pointing him toward your father would distract him, give him enough to keep him satisfied. I hoped it would set you free. Gep would have wanted it, would have been willing to do anything to save you. I had to! You didn’t say a word. We all know you’re innocent!”
“I couldn’t say anything!”
“I know. And I was a fool. I’m sorry.” His voice breaks. “I’m so sorry.”
I shake my head, still unable to meet his gaze.
“I asked for one thing when I told you about my past, Bran. One thing, in exchange for revealing the truth. And you couldn’t give me that one thing?” I let loose a sob. “I thought I meant more to you than that. I thought you understood. You knew what could happen! And you threw all the blame on my father, cast his reputation and good name out like it was slop for swine! I was protecting him!”
“You do, Piro,” he pleads, taking a few steps closer. “You mean everything to me! I went mad, couldn’t stand to see you bound like that, paraded in front of everyone. I said the only thing I could think of to spare you!”
My heart is a battleground, wanting him to come all the way over here, to hold me and slay the dread overtaking me.
“Please, forgive me.” Bran puts a tentative hand on my shoulder.
I stiffen and shrug it off. For now, I must draw the circle tighter around myself. Bran can’t be fully trusted.
I experience a sudden pang of shame, remembering Laszlo’s chilling examination of my hands and limbs, as if I was something he’d love to tear apart and understand, something to be studied for his own purposes. My scalp crawls. No one else understands what it’s like to be in my skin, and they never will.
“He only knows what he wants to know, Piro,” Bran insists, practically reading my mind. “Men like him only see what they want to see and shut their eyes to the rest.” He falls quiet a moment. “You must protect yourself. Let him think he knows who and what you are. Let him underestimate you.”
“And what am I?” I whisper sharply, needing to hear his answer.
“You, Pirouette Leiter, are beyond. Beyond brave, beyond good, beyond real. Your hands make magic with wood that mine can only hope to make with gears and winding wheels. You exist far beyond anything he can see. So let that ill-bred weakling see what he wants, but do what you must to save yourself.”
“He wants me to make someone like me,” I hiss. “He thinks I can bring another marionette to life by the light of the blue moon. How can I? I don’t have any magic of my own, despite what you might think.”
“You’ll have the blue moon, won’t you?” he offers hopefully. “Perhaps that will be magic enough. A girl like you and the blue moon. What can’t you do?”
Whirling around, I march past him, pocketing the extra key to Curio hidden on the kitchen mantel.
“Thanks to you, I’m about to find out.”
CHAPTER 21
WHERE TO BEGIN? I WONDER, LEANING BACK AGAINST THE long worktable in the gallery room adjoining the botanical conservatory. I was escorted back to this same room with my supplies as soon as I returned to Wolfspire Hall, and this time I was locked in. I’ve been given a closet at the far end of the gallery for myself, a tiny walk-in outfitted with a single bed, rickety old chair, and cracked washbasin.
I am informed by the disgruntled steward that he is leaving to go to Brylov with a regiment of men for surveillance, but that a guard will be posted outside at all hours. Laszlo himself will inspect my work daily until he is satisfied. “See to it that you obey the Margrave, little drudge. We can exchange your living quarters for something more simple in the Keep without any skin off our back. Your father’s cell is still empty and waiting.” He leers.
Until the blue moon’s rising, I will remain here, breathing the dust of a dream Laszlo has been long waiting to animate.
Morning light stretches itself through the windows facing the conservatory courtyard.
Though I just barely convinced the Margrave and his guards a moment ago that I would only be able to begin my work on his princess marionette alone, in here I feel anything but. Laszlo’s prized marionettes hover all around me. In the quiet I can’t help but study their faces and forms, taking in the many eyes that center on me or longingly search the air, dreaming of a handler to materialize and save them from their hooks. Rebelling against Laszlo’s orders, I walk around and touch each one, feeling the weight of a leg here, the length of a creature’s tail there. Who knew what Laszlo saw in each to prize it among his favorites?
I stop before the saboteur.
Whatever magic he summoned to send her on her deadly missions is snuffed out. She rests limply in the cage, tho
ugh I swear when I graze her arm, admiring my own handiwork, I feel a pulse flutter, a quickening within her wooden frame.
“Will we ever be free from here?” I whisper.
A hollow sound threads up my fingers, the barest strand of a voice. “Find courage, and you will find your freedom.”
Courage. Freedom. Let’s hope I live long enough to once again be in possession of both.
Laszlo reviewed all of his sketches with me first thing this morning; there are detailed descriptions of what he envisions his bride looking like, complete with measurements. From the stack of them, he’s been working on them for quite some time. I envision him in his library, sketching away at his conception of a perfect woman. The drawings are a boy’s fancy, what callow youth imagines a perfect bride to be: a sort of hollow, obedient, too-obvious beauty. I take them politely, tucking them away among my tools and nodding agreeably the whole time he animatedly describes how he desires her chin to curve and how daintily her waist should tuck in. And how she should be free from strings. He doesn’t want her mobility facing any impediments. It requires all my fortitude to keep my true thoughts to myself.
At the worktable, I spread out the pieces of raw wood I harvested specifically to build Laszlo’s princess. The Margrave’s guards hauled them up for me, after following me home from the forest. I am pleased to see the clear flesh shining from beneath the bark I’ve stripped for her head and torso is so fine it nearly glows. I focus on it a long time, the way I always do when I begin a piece, asking the wood to tell me how to shape it, how much to keep, how much to take away. I must sit with it for a while, become acquainted.
When the lines of a woman’s face emerge along the creamy grain of the halsa, I pick up my chisel. It is time. The blue moon waits for no one.
The days meld one into the other from the moment I make the first notch into the wood. Within five days, I have a rough body laid out on the table, and piece by piece I set about shaping her legs and feet, her neck and torso. I begin calling her Prima, naming her after the first puppet my father made for me. There’s something about the pattern of this wood that reminds me of her; I hope I can do my father’s miniature justice in full scale.
Missing Bran despite everything that’s happened, and worried for my makers, I throw myself into the labor of construction. The work reaches a feverish pitch I’ve never attained before, my hands moving of their own accord in rhythm with my carving knife, hammer, and saw. I try as much as possible to ignore Laszlo when he appears at odd hours to cast an eye to my progress.
I hate being watched while I work. Some days it’s as if I have a gnat, an insufferable royal gnat, constantly buzzing about my face, making insidious comments. When he makes a suggestion or offers an observation, I make an admirable effort to hold my tongue, or so I think. At night, when I lie down to rest for a few bleak hours, I worry that I may not make it to the blue moon with my sanity, or my bitten tongue, intact.
The more time I spend in his presence, the more Laszlo reminds me of an overgrown child, not unlike his small puppet. He is a man overseeing an entire territory with a Margrave’s part to play, yet he seems to know very little about how the world outside his stone walls works. Having long outgrown his tutors, he seems starved for company beyond his library of books and his collector’s gallery. He would never admit this ineptitude and loneliness to me, but I suspect it explains why he hangs about incessantly, inspecting my tools and questioning my process.
That and his need to converse with his marionettes. I’ve woken more than once to the sounds of his hushed conversations in the gallery. In lieu of real companions, he seems to have built his own small guild of wooden friends to confide in. I cannot judge him too harshly for this, however, since I too talk to the marionettes more than most.
On the morning of the sixth day, as I’m carving the princess’s face, carefully sculpting a high brow with long, subtle strokes, Laszlo drones on beside me about the unique appearance of the light of a gibbous moon. A thought strikes me hard, like the felling of a tree.
“My lord?” I interrupt his prattle.
“What?” he snaps, annoyed I’ve dared intrude upon his line of thought.
“Isn’t it so that I should use only the best materials as I build your princess?”
“Yes, yes, we’ve already gone over that.” He waves his hand, once again appearing to find me inordinately slow-witted.
“Well, as I am about to begin her eyes, I believe no common carved eyes will do, not the sort I might create for any other marionette. We should requisition glass eyes for her. They will be exceedingly lifelike and the most exquisite shade of green.”
The Margrave did request green eyes; I figure I can concede that small detail to his whims. I love green.
Laszlo straightens up, weighing my words. “Glass? Well, of course,” he says, as if I have suggested the most obvious thing in the world. “Much more refined and elegant. Where do you propose we get them?”
“Well, that’s the unfortunate part,” I say with sigh. “I fear we shan’t have any way to get them, though the finest glassblower in all of Tavia happens to be a friend. With the threat of impending skirmish in Brylov and you raising taxes, I imagine his shop must be closed now and his furnace left to grow cold. It takes a day or so to even get it firing hot enough to blow the glass. I suppose I shall just have to carve her eyes by hand and paint them green. I’m sure it will make no difference when she awakens—”
“No! She must see perfectly. I want only the best for her!” he says emphatically. “Give me the name of that glassblower. I will have him brought in.”
“Of course, my lord. Let me write up the requisition for you, so that he might have proper measurements to make for a perfect fit. He will need to be paid, of course, to secure the best materials.”
After I dictate Fonso’s information to Laszlo and hastily write an order, he rushes from the room to send a messenger after my redheaded giant of a glass smith. A small part of my heart untangles itself, finally able to breathe. I feel triumphant. Even if I only spared Fonso from a week’s worth of hunger or lessened his chances of being sent to Brylov to fight, it’s worth it.
While I sit smoothing the forehead of Tavia’s presumed future Margravina, a plan unfolds itself quietly in front of the two of us.
Why didn’t I think of it sooner? Can I help them all and still manage to build a marionette beyond the Margrave’s wildest dreams?
I cast a glance at the saboteur. Remembering when she pressed her own hand to mine in the wood, that moment I felt her strength push back against my own, a smile lifts the corners of my mouth.
The old tree woman foretold that the heart of the maker would determine the course of the marionette. I pick up my small planer with renewed vigor and shave more curls from the princess’s rough scalp. If I can build into the very fiber of this princess the various strengths of the Maker’s Guild—and if she really does wake under the blue moon—she will be a force to be reckoned with. A force the new Margrave will never expect.
I didn’t realize what I was doing back then, building the saboteur. I couldn’t have fathomed then what kind of powerful being might be wrought from wood, couldn’t have imagined how someone might use her for their own desires. And she isn’t even alive!
Though I come from the same place as these two grand figures I’ve labored over, I never considered that I might possess powers of my own. Yet here I stand, an assassin created by my own hand within arm’s length and a princess in bloom on my worktable. The saboteur was built with fevered glee, using the wildest stretches of my imagination. To build this marionette, I must tame that wildness and turn it inward—into cunning.
Laszlo may intend to provoke our neighbors to war and force me to do his bidding, but I will wage war in this gallery of my own accord. I come to this battleground armed with the weapons I know best: a rebellious piece of wood and the tools of my trade. I cannot say yet if I believe Prima can be awakened, but if she can, she should be the best of
all of us. Exactly the match this Margrave deserves.
CHAPTER 22
FONSO ARRIVES AT WOLFSPIRE HALL FIVE DAYS LATER, just as I am carving Prima’s ears. I sense his presence in the hallway before I even hear him enter the locked gallery. With a rush of happiness, I run to him despite the guard hovering at his back. He is wearing a wide smile, clutching a velvet pouch I desperately hope contains the princess’s new eyes. Either that, or a slow-acting poison I might slip undetected into the Margrave’s tea. After enduring a two-hour soliloquy today from Laszlo on the superiority of navigating sea journeys using constellations—from one who has never stepped a single well-shod foot on a ship—I would be grateful to receive either.
It’s all I can do to keep from flinging myself into Fonso’s massive arms. Seeing his dear, coppery head again makes me feel connected to home, to all the makers. But with the guard watching, I know it won’t do to seem over-familiar with the glassblower. For Laszlo and his guards, Fonso’s presence here must be all about the work. They mustn’t suspect my plan.
“Fonso Donati, glassblower, here to deliver and set a pair of glass eyes. Have I arrived at the right place?” he says, trying to keep a laugh from his voice, though I see his eyes are pinched at the corners.
“Indeed,” I say, pointing with a flourish to where the princess lies in bits and bobs all over the worktable at the center of the gallery. “I am ready to place the eyes, if you’ll be so kind as to follow me.”
I am bold with the guard, wanting him gone. “We will need complete silence and no distractions to make sure these are installed properly. Please wait in the hall.”
“The Margrave ordered me to—”
I summon up an icy stare; my best impression of Laszlo. “Well the Margrave ordered me to build him a perfect marionette. If I don’t set her eyes properly and she turns out to be a cross-eyed hag, I will know exactly who to point him to for that, now won’t I?”