The Puppetmaster's Apprentice

by Lisa DeSelm

  Laszlo makes an inane series of speculative sounds, little grunts and murmurs, the sounds of an expert surveying a new treasure. He finally pops his head up, looking extraordinarily pleased.

  “Exceedingly lifelike. I would never have thought clay and iron together could make something of such elegance.”

  Nan takes his back-handed compliment in stride, throwing her satchel over her shoulder. “It’s amazing what a maker can do with such simple elements, isn’t it, my lord?”

  “Indeed. I will keep note of your names for future projects,” Laszlo says, trying to sound magnanimous.

  “Delighted, my lord,” Nan replies. “Might Pirouette see us out? I want to make sure she understands my instructions for proper drying and ventilation of the clay.”

  Laszlo’s pale brow wrinkles. He hasn’t let me off this floor since I arrived. I’ve taken all of my meals here, used a chamber pot in the conservatory that’s emptied for me daily, and have generally only been keeping company with him, the guards, and the marionettes in the gallery.

  “No,” he replies, though I can tell he struggles to resist the allure of Nan. “She must stay here and keep working. My guards will see you out. Back to work,” he bids me, gliding out after them.

  When the moon rises that night, I allow myself one candle for light and creep from my closet, praying Laszlo isn’t underfoot in the gallery, consorting with his marionettes. Bran wrote that when a gift came for the Margrave, so would my means of escape. Nan also intimated as much, though she didn’t tell me specifics.

  What would it be? A door left unwatched? Help from the kitchen porter? I’ve had no interruptions from anyone for hours and the saboteur still hasn’t returned to her cage.

  “Keep watch!” the trees call from the conservatory.

  Drawn to her like a moth to the flame, I pull the Lady Cosima down from her hooks. Perhaps she’s my means of escape. She was the gift, after all.

  Heart thundering, I pilfer her dress, feeling along the seams and under her voluminous skirts for where a key or weapon might have been sewn in along the ribbing. Nothing. Feverishly, I turn her upside down, sliding my fingers along her joints and body, tapping my fingernails against her skull. I shake her. Nothing comes loose. She’s not hollow; her body is solid linden. When I’ve gone over every inch of her, turning out every possible place to hide something sharp, I nearly throw the puppet to the floor; I barely stop myself from destroying a piece that was so important to my father.

  Nan clearly said, “Take the gift of freedom when it’s offered to you,” didn’t she?

  That’s when my eyes fall on the chest Lady Cosima arrived in, still open on the worktable. Cautiously, I run my hands over the lid and pull out all the paper stuffing, shaking it out. The small chest is empty. Except, if this was my father’s …

  “Remember,” the trees jabber from outside.

  I trace a fingertip on the floor of the little wooden chest, examining the grain for any hint of inconsistency, for something unusual but inconspicuous. Suddenly, a small pit in the wood, a tiny blond knothole, just barely catches against my skin. Breathlessly, I tug along one of the walls of the chest and feel the whole inner wall give ever so slightly.

  My fingers follow the steps of an old dance from childhood; they know exactly what to do. Pulling the left interior wall up and out of place, where it shimmies free like a sliding tile, I flip it around and press it back down in position. With a soft plink a hidden tray pops out from the base of the chest, gliding open like a shallow drawer. There, in the tray, lies a small blackened key.

  How on earth did they manage it?

  I know that even with a key I’ll have to get past the Margrave’s guards. I never sent word through the kitchen porter to Bran, so he won’t be waiting for me below. I’m on my own. I console myself that it might be safest to go now, when no one, not even Bran or the makers suspect it. That way, if I fail, I fail alone and put no one else at risk. Even the kitchen porter would be in danger for aiding me. Shakily, I palm the key, sweating through my dress, still wavering.

  Do I go now? Or do I wait? Should I take my chance at freedom from the Margrave and run, or wait and hope to gain freedom from my splinters?

  I know without question who snuck into Curio through my bedroom cupboard and discovered the chest and the Lady Cosima and knew how to use them to help me. I hate to leave my marionettes, but like a stick honed to a point, my resolve to take the chance to be out from under the Margrave’s thumb and free to be with the boy I love grows sharper. Bran and all my makers have sacrificed so much to help me escape. Do I dare scorn their hard-won gift by staying here?

  Seeing Prima, her hands still wet and drying, tears fill my eyes and I know what I must do. Regardless of her final end, I know I’ve done something good by building her, something worthwhile. She may never be finished, but perhaps that’s for the best. The Margrave will be forced to find a bride elsewhere, and she’ll never be awakened to suffer his presence. As much as it hurts to leave her behind, I convince myself I am doing her a kindness. Giving Prima a final kiss on her bare scalp, I grab my cloak and walk around the gallery, saying my goodbyes.

  In just a few short days, the Margrave will be expecting just as much from me as he will from the blue moon. I still haven’t given him the words of the spell that awakened me; I avoid the subject whenever he brings it up. I fear that both of us, the moon and I, shall prove to be a grave disappointment.

  CHAPTER 25

  PLACING MY HAND ON THE THICK WOODEN DOOR OF THE GALLERY, I put my ear to the crack. At this hour, the halls are silent. Hopefully the man stationed at my door is drowsy. Do I create a disturbance, bringing him in so the door is unlocked for me, or do I attempt to use the key? I’m unsure of how to talk my way past the guard once the door is unlocked, so I opt for a diversion. Unlike Nan, I have no faith in my feminine wiles.

  Thinking quickly, I grab the Margrave’s little whipping boy and wrench the nearly broken arm completely from his body. Using my candle, I pass the torn arm through the fire, charring the wood and rapidly setting it aflame. I toss it through the open glass doors onto the stone floor of the conservatory and throw the rest of the body after it, hearing it crash to the floor in a pathetic tangle.

  Good riddance. I despise that ugly, sad little puppet.

  Then, I scream. In seconds, the door opens and a guard rushes in.

  “Quickly!” I implore him. “There’s a fire in the conservatory; it’s one of the Margrave’s favorite marionettes!”

  At the mention of fire, the guard turns ashen and runs into the domed greenhouse. Like a wraith I slide through the open door and into the hall, free for the first time in weeks. I decide not to go the way I remember being brought in, figuring that will take me past the Margrave’s main living quarters and library, and instead look for a back hall or passage, one the servants might use.

  Drawing my hood up and clutching my key, I trail my fingers on the stone walls, watery torchlight my only guide. I make a left, and then a right, trying to scurry but not outright run, keeping my feet light, as I imagine my saboteur would.

  Where is she now?

  Up ahead, I see a glowing doorway, overflowing with men’s voices droning over ale and cards. I press myself against the wall and slide along, flattening around a far corner, attempting to move without making a sound. I breathe a sigh of relief when I succeed in remaining out of sight.

  Ducking around the next corner, I inhale a scream as I come face to face with new obstacles. Wooden ones. The Margrave’s animated wooden soldiers stand sentry in the narrow hallway, three abreast, each with a fresh sword from the blacksmith in their grasp.

  Seeing me, they tilt their heads and square their legs for a fight. Their eyes remain wide and unblinking, seeming to see everything and nothing all at once. I cannot go back the way I came, knowing the guard at my door will have put the fire out and realized I escaped. He will be on me in a moment. I spot a far door past the wooden soldiers and decide that’s where
I need to go.

  The wooden soldiers tower over me. How did we construct such massive pieces?

  I remember each of their grim faces, which appear sullen in the dim torchlight. They are still under whatever spell Laszlo is using to keep them at his beck and call. If only I had some way to break the hold he maintains over them, some way to get them to listen to me instead—but other than my blue moon lullaby, I possess no magic words.

  Quickly, I take a step forward, to see what they’ll do. They hold their position steady, waiting. I take another. They stare, weapons held at the ready. The closer I get, the more they seem unsure of themselves, possibly recognizing me as one of their makers, yet fighting an internal directive not to let an intruder pass. The confusion within them rattles their joints, their arms trembling. I shuffle closer. They waver on their feet, but don’t advance on me.

  If I can just get close enough to touch one of them, to hear their voices …

  Cautiously, I reach out and grasp the middle one’s wrist, at the base of the carved fist where a sword handle has been tucked. The other two draw their swords on me in an instant and I am breathing hard, trapped in the middle of their blades. The soldier’s voice comes to me through the wood, vague and shallow, “Schützen consurgé! Guard and protect … rise up and protect … sister …”

  Despite their spell, they recognize something in me that is like them, wood calling to wood.

  “Let me pass,” I whisper. “Please, let your sister pass. I don’t wish to fight you.”

  Slowly the shaking soldiers lower their swords, and I keep my hold on the middle one until I am sure they aren’t going to run me through.

  “Thank you! Keep watch,” I tell them, willing my voice to bleed through their wooden ears into their hearts, into whatever part of them might still understand me. “Don’t let the others come after me.”

  Then I drop the soldier’s hand and dart between them, running as fast as I dare now down to the end of the hall they were guarding. A stairwell!

  I tear down the steps two at a time, clutching my key. I pass the first floor and continue down, down, until the twisted stairway runs out and I am forced to another door. Pressing my hand against it, I wait a moment, listening. I hear a faint clatter and scraping sounds from above.

  I must go through.

  I try the handle unsuccessfully.

  Time to use the key. I probe the latch, the seconds passing like eons, waiting for the moment when it gives. The key slides around, but eventually, after some fearful wrangling, I feel it catch. Quietly as I can, I nudge the door open.

  Large barrels tower in pillars on the other side, stacked three high. The weinkellar. I’ve got to be close.

  I lock the door, hoping to slow down anyone coming behind, and quickly dash among the oaken barrels storing Wolfspire Hall’s supplies of ale and mead. I have to unlock the next door as well; it opens into another cave-like room lit by a single lantern, this one filled floor to ceiling with brimming baskets and crates. I discern tipsy piles of vegetables and overflowing heaps of fruit and sacks of grain from the lumpy shadows.

  This is where he’s storing all the hoarded food, that greedy swine.

  My instincts note that the cellars seem empty of what I imagine is the usual swarm of servants. This seems too easy, my gut warns. It’s far too quiet.

  My eyes seek among the teeming shelves and baskets, searching for any sign of a guard or the kitchen porter. I see no one, though I can hear voices nearby. I move quickly, to keep the voices from catching up. Weaving my way through the maze of the rathskeller, I finally open a door that turns me out into a room with no light. It’s as dark as a tomb in here, but the smell of fresh cut wood is bracing. I breathe deep, comforted by the familiarity.

  This supply of kindling and firewood must feed the great stoves and hearths. Once I shut the door behind me, the lantern light from the previous cellar fades and I am left to wander by touch through the stacks, looking for a door on the other side.

  A hand strikes like an adder from the blackness, grabbing me.

  I shriek, but my voice is muffled when I am pressed into a warm body and hugged tight.

  “Piro, it’s me!” Bran whispers.

  I melt into him, my heart a thunderstorm.

  “How did you—”

  “Shhh … I hoped you would try tonight. I’ve been waiting in here for hours. Marco let me in. Quickly, we have to keep moving,” he murmurs in my ear.

  He takes my hand and I follow him into a low side passage that requires crouching.

  “I take it you found the key?” he whispers.

  “How’d you steal it?”

  “Didn’t. Tiffin made it, from a mold of Nan’s clay,” he murmurs proudly. “It’s the steward’s skeleton key. Supposedly opens everything from the Margrave’s parlors to the cells in the Keep. She snuck a tile of wet clay to the kitchen porter, who managed to bump into the steward on his return from Brylov, carrying a tray full of food, knocking that vulture flat on his back and heaping him in hot parsnips. He keeps the key at his belt, on a long chain. Marco was nearly flawless, landing right atop him! The fall left an impression in the clay and the steward was never the wiser.”

  He stops me short. “Here, this is where they bring in the kindling. When I open the door, be prepared to run.”

  I squeeze his hand to show I understand.

  “Piro, there’s so much I want to say to you, but there’s not time. It will have to wait. You ready?”

  I nod, my stomach seething, knowing freedom is so close at hand. If I can just make a stop at Curio under the cover of darkness I can flee to the woods, or perhaps, to Brylov. I will have to hide anywhere I can, to escape Laszlo’s grip.

  Bran puts his hand to the door and gives it a shove. Together we peer into the night, finding ourselves looking up from the dug-out cellar door into Wolfspire Hall’s kitchen farmyard. The way is clear. Bran mounts the steps and starts to run. I am right on his heels.

  We make it to edge of the sheep pens before a shadow drops like a poacher’s net from a steeply pitched barn roof. The shadow tackles Bran to the ground, pinning him soundly. The silhouette binds him with ease and then looks to me, seeming to judge whether I am going to run or join in the struggle.

  It’s the saboteur, of course. I move toward her, hoping to employ the same trick I did with the wooden soldiers, to see if I can read the spell ensnaring her, but I am stopped by heavy boot-falls. A hand clamps roughly around my neck.

  “Only you would try something as foolhardy as this.” The gravelly voice of the steward rakes across my ears. “It’s getting tiresome, having to fetch you puppetmasters back over and over again. If I have my way, you’ll be going straight to your own cell.”

  “Please,” I plead, “if you let us go, we’ll leave and go far from here. The Margrave never has to know you helped us. We can’t let him continue to do this, to practice the old spells and harm his own people. It’s all against the old laws! You know it’s not right. It may cost me my life!”

  “That’s the price you pay for being a maker,” Baldrik growls, turning me around to march me back into Wolfspire Hall. “You must do what you’re told. Your services to the Margrave have yet to be rendered, and you’ll not fail to meet them on my watch.”

  The saboteur keeps in step with us and carries Bran handily over her shoulder, unconscious and limp as a sack of grain.

  “He’ll be heading to the Keep. As for you, you’re going straight back to your room and I don’t envy you the consequences of the Margrave learning of this indiscretion. The young lord doesn’t take kindly to treason.”

  He stops suddenly and pats me down, feeling in all my pockets. He quickly comes up with the key and utters several choice curses while sticking it deep into his vest pocket.

  I failed. I failed everyone who risked themselves to save me.

  “You’ll be watched now, closer than you’ve ever been watched before. And you’ll not rest until you’ve made that thing you’re buildi
ng exactly as he wants it.”

  “But don’t you see what he’s doing?” I cry in protest. “He’s using the very magic he claims is unlawful. And he’s using it against us all! Surely you’re in as much danger as I, if he were to turn on you!”

  “I have served him and his father since he was a spindly lad, knee-high. I know my place and am well compensated for it,” he snarls, shoving me ahead. “And if you’d like to keep your head attached to your neck, little puppet-wench, you’d best learn yours.”

  CHAPTER 26

  THE MARGRAVE RAGES AND BELLOWS AT ME FOR HOURS THE next morning, after learning of my near escape. He’s irate about the damage done to his little whipping boy, and slices me across the knuckles with the remains of a broken, charred arm while the steward holds me firm.

  “I hoped you could see the benefit of what you were doing, Pirouette Leiter. Hoped you understood the great gift I’ve offered you, to see another life given by the power of the blue moon. I would gladly do worse to you and your hands right now, if I didn’t need you to finish my bride.

  “You obviously cannot be trusted. So, in addition to the guard at the door, I’ve set the saboteur to keep watch on you, so that her keen eyes may keep you at your task when my own cannot. And now,” he sneers, “you must be chained. I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this.”

  A shackle is brought in and I am cuffed at the ankle, tethered by a long chain to one of the beams holding up the roof in the corner of the gallery. I can reach my small room to lie down and hobble over to the worktable, but I cannot go out into the observatory any longer to talk to the trees.