by Lisa DeSelm
My face cracks a smile at the tailor’s provision and Laszlo, who has just turned to face us to begin his vows, notices. His eyes darken. The air around us is still tinged blue from the moonlight, though it’s quickly losing its deep luster.
“Cleric, you may commence with the ceremony and do what you came here to do.”
“I object,” I say staunchly, letting my splinter drop from my sleeve, keeping it hidden in my palm.
Laszlo rolls his eyes. “You get no say in the matter. I am the Margrave of Tavia, and this woman is to be my Margravina.”
“I object,” Prima calmly repeats after me.
“The lady objects,” I concur.
“I do,” she agrees.
“Oh my, there are objections already,” Vincenzo stammers. “We’ve not even begun!”
“Shut up! All of you!” Laszlo screeches. “You,” he says, pointing to Prima, “you were made for me. Made to my exact specifications. If you have any semblance of a brain in your head, it’s only because I told the puppetmaster’s apprentice to put it there. I’ve half a mind to string you both back up inside with the others. Like it or not, Ulrika, I own you.” He grabs her roughly by the shoulder and pulls her to him. “Now, cleric, begin,” he growls impatiently.
The cleric licks his lips nervously and begins to shuffle through the pages of his leather-bound book of prayers. I wait for just the right moment, intending to surprise Laszlo with my splinter—but the princess beats me to it.
CHAPTER 29
AS SOON AS VINCENZO BEGINS MUMBLING THE HOMILY, Prima throws off Laszlo’s grip and uses a well-heeled wedding slipper to kick the book from the cleric’s hands and shove the bewildered old man out of the way. Quicker than he can blink, Laszlo is her prisoner. Her arm wraps unflinchingly around his neck, pressing his own knife against his throat. She is nearly as tall as he, and, it appears, outranks him in strength.
“My name, you gutless man-creature,” she says evenly into his ear, not even breathing hard, “is not for you to choose. I already have a name.”
“Let me guess,” he says, his windpipe bobbing under the blade. “Is it Prim or Prissy or Pretentious? It’s clearly not Prudence,” he spits, followed by a hollow cough that seizes his chest in its own spell.
“My name,” she says, twisting his collar tighter like a noose, “is Prima. I am the first of my kind, the firstborn of my maker’s blood.”
She heard me. She knows her name.
“And you, one born the common way, couldn’t possibly understand.” Every time she speaks aloud, her voice grows in strength and eloquence. Pride breaks open in my chest.
I am somewhat useless now, brandishing my splinter in Laszlo’s face, but I don’t let that stop me. “You’re going to let us go now, my lord,” I say, dripping with sarcasm. “Neither of us belongs to you and we never will. One cannot buy or collect the things you need most: love and companionship, for starters. But don’t worry, you shan’t be left alone. You can be grateful we let you keep your head intact, and your precious collection for company. I would say you have the cleric as well, except he seems to have fled and left you in the capable hands of your bride,” I say, noting the empty place remaining where Vincenzo scrabbled off in fear, his lantern left behind, upset on its side.
Laszlo remains frozen beneath the princess’s knife, hating us both with a vicious smile.
“No. It’s you who don’t understand, my wooden darlings. What can you possibly know, one of you an ignorant maker, and the other only alive for five minutes? I have given my life to the study of puppets, of dark animation—mostly the conjurer’s kind. If I can’t have the bride I wish, then at the very least I will have a show.”
He chants an incantation in a language that sounds like it’s from another time. I don’t have to understand it to know it means something ruinous.
“Exsurgencia, exitarneum. Exsurgencia, exitarneum … leben-surge.” His eyes gleam with expectation as his voice builds. Prima instinctively tightens her hold on him.
A flash of movement among the trees catches my eye. The marionettes. The ones the Margrave brought out to watch … every marionette in the courtyard and in the gallery begins to quiver. The moonlight hangs over the slow ballet beginning in the conservatory like a curtain. Laszlo continues to spew his spell and though Prima hurriedly clasps a hand over his mouth, it’s too late. His words have taken hold.
The magic unfolds as a series of sharp twitches, bolts of lightning to the puppets’ strings. The moon only knows what secrets Laszlo uncovered in his late nights of research in the library; all I know is that in the last few weeks, when he wasn’t in the gallery with me he was there, studying. My blood turns to ice.
The marionettes gain vitality with every passing second. Soon they rip free from their strings, tearing away with hands and paws at branches and wire, away from the pegs that brace them, away from anything holding them back. One by one, they drop to the ground or gambol down the limbs of the trees to encircle us.
They are all here: the wolf-faced man, the clown and witches and wood nymph, even those crafted by my father, Lady Cosima included, all under Laszlo’s spell. Among their number are masked and jeering faces, knights and soldiers, wizards and plain stick men whose ancient, bare faces have only their arms and legs to commend them to a human form. The emptiness of their faces fills me with fear.
They perch on the princess’s wooden pyre, crouch among the trees and roost on the edge of the fountain at the center of the conservatory. There are dragons and birds, beasts and monsters. None of them breathe, none of them speak or question. They just wait. Wait for the next tweak of their strings.
Laszlo is ecstatic at his accomplishment; his laughter bubbles out high-pitched and delighted. Prima hasn’t abandoned the knife at his throat, but the fear in her eyes matches my own. Together we are strong, but there are only two of us against dozens of mindless marionettes, each ready to spring into action at Laszlo’s words. More trickle in from the gallery walls every second. When the saboteur steps from the shadows to join them and cocks her head, listening for her next command, my heart sinks. I saw how she captured Bran and handled him as if he weighed no more than a feather.
The cleric chooses this moment to return with two guards, and the three men rush into the conservatory, only to quickly realize the Margrave’s call for help has been answered in the most absurd and astonishing way.
“My lord?” Vincenzo squeaks, clinging to the arm of the nearest guard for fortitude. “I have brought … help.”
The Margrave bites down hard on Prima’s fingers, triggering release of his mouth.
“Captismarenach! Captismarenach!” he shouts.
The puppets act without question. They surround Prima and me, pulling her from Laszlo. I begin kicking them as fast as I can, but they swarm me like ants. No sooner is one flung aside than another takes its place. Prima heaves them into the trees. The unmistakable smash of broken glass abounds as the conservatory windows are severely battered from her efforts. I cannot hear the voices of any of the marionettes or trees in the thrall of the battle; the sounds of struggle are too chaotic.
While I slash wildly at the oncoming horde with my splinter-dagger, Prima rips the head off a large dragon puppet, swinging the broad tail-end around to knock others away. But the Margrave’s marionettes are just too numerous; they climb her elegantly moving body and soon, Prima is restrained under their weight. Before I can blink, the saboteur, who was lingering at the edges, has seized me, swiftly bolting my arms to my sides. She lifts me easily off the ground and holds me in front of her, never flinching while I kick and twist.
“You’re a little late, cleric,” says Laszlo, rubbing his throat and glowering at the man. “I clearly don’t need your help to subdue my rebellious bride. Now get over here and perform your duty.”
The Margrave’s own disfigured boy-puppet has capered up into his arms like a puppy, where it stares balefully at Prima. Vincenzo slinks closer to Laszlo, stepping delicately over and
around the marionettes covering the ground like a swarm of locusts. He and the guards can’t quite believe their eyes; the full depths of the new Margrave’s eccentricities are illuminated like never before. This is magic like no one living has seen. Wooden soldiers walking among us was just a foretaste. The guards back away, slinking off to wait in the hall.
My arms ache where the saboteur’s claw-like hands clench with steadfast pressure. It hurts worse, though, to have looked into her empty eyes and realize that my own creation has betrayed me, that I have unleashed upon the world a figurine that can destroy and kill. I strain to hear her voice, to gain some reassurance in our shared connection, but I sense nothing; she is an empty vault. She must be completely consumed by Laszlo’s spell.
In the ghostly glow of the blue moon, we appear to be the cast of a deranged theatrical, with the bride pinned to the ground like a furious butterfly and the groom giddy, holding a miniature likeness of himself in his arms. The cleric clears his throat and begins to address the wedding party.
“Leben sorgere, leben consurge,” Laszlo commands. Slowly, the puppets begin to lift the princess, forcing her to stand. Her eyes blaze and she struggles, but the strength of many hands and wooden paws on her body is resolute. Under their insistence, she stands and stays put.
“Don’t do this!” I protest. “Just let us go! Please! You could have any bride in all of Elinbruk or Tavia or Brylov that you wish! What you truly want cannot be bought, or made, or forced.”
“Proceed,” he says to the cleric, ignoring me. Though he seems calmer now, he keeps himself a safe distance from Prima and her wooden sentries.
Vincenzo wipes his graying brow and licks his thumb, trying ungracefully to locate the place in his book at which he might be given some words to address the unseemly crowd before him.
At last, he finds them. “Let us celebrate today, the union of these two souls, who wish to be joined together in accordance with the laws of the territory of Tavia, and the greater laws of Elinbruk, which guide us all, in the most sacred of—”
“I. Do. Not. Wish. It.” Prima says through clenched teeth.
Still rattled, Vincenzo looks to Laszlo. “She objects, my lord.”
“Proceed,” the Margrave says nonchalantly. Because of the spellbound puppets, he now has everything he wants: the princess and the upper hand.
The cleric swallows and continues his ramble.
My thoughts are racing as I try to work out how to maneuver Prima away from here. I’ve given up hope of connecting to the saboteur. She’s lost to me.
When it comes time for the princess to say her vows, she refuses, of course, and Laszlo commands the puppets to move her mouth for her. All that comes out is a garbled snarl, but that is apparently good enough for the Margrave and the cleric and the sovereign territory of Tavia. A jeweled ring, beset with emeralds, is jammed roughly onto her finger by a small monkey marionette; his tiny paws make quick work of prying open her resistant fist.
“And now, by the power vested in me,” Vincenzo hurries, only too glad to be at the end of his part in this whole debacle, “I pronounce you man and wife, Margrave and Margravina.” He bites his lip. “You may, should you wish to, er, kiss your bride?”
Laszlo takes one look at Prima’s incensed face and turns even paler. “Later, perhaps,” he says, handing the boy-marionette to the cleric with an air of loftiness. “We’ll save such things for later. When we can be alone.”
Swiveling away from his bride, he saunters up to me, admiring the immoveable strength of the saboteur holding me in place.
“As for you—I’m finished with you now, puppetmaster.” He grins, his face thrust far too close to my own. “We,” he says, spreading his arms wide to include the entire bastion of marionettes and Prima, “have no need of you or your craftsmanship any longer. The moon is nearly drained, and your father’s precious spell, which I have now memorized for the future, has done its work. And while I would find it vastly amusing for one of your own kind to do the honors,” he says, picking his knife off the floor from where it had been tossed free of Prima’s grasp, “as you know, I have a bad habit of saving the best things for myself.”
CHAPTER 30
FEAR NESTS IN MY BELLY LIKE A BIRD DIGGING ITS TALONS. I look to Prima; her eyes are wide and ferocious. Were it not for the many puppets holding her back, I have no doubts Laszlo would be flattened on the ground, crushed beneath her fury. I squirm in the saboteur’s hands, but no matter how I thrash, I cannot free myself. I cannot help myself at all.
Sudden laughter bubbles out of me, sad and surreal. This is how it must feel. For all of them. To not be able to move of their own accord. Your body cannot obey your will when it is restrained by stronger forces, even one as simple as a string.
Laszlo looks at me as if I’ve gone mad, shaking his head in mock sorrow. “Better for this to happen now. I’m doing you a kindness, Pirouette. Better to die here, a puppetmaster in the company of a Margrave, than a wretched corpse in the bowels of the Keep, eh? What else could someone like you wish for, than a better death than your father’s?”
“You forget that this will be my second death, my lord. I have lived two lives, and one of those began long before you were ever born or thought of,” I spit. “If I die under the light of a blue moon, the same light to which I was born, who knows what will happen? It’s never been done. Perhaps I’ll become everlasting, like an evergreen. Or perhaps my body will be buried, biding its time like a seed, and at the first drop of rain I’ll return to haunt your every sleepless night. Either way, if you kill me now, neither of us knows what will happen next.” I sound far more brash than I feel.
With one final, angry roar he thrusts the knife toward my chest. Prima screams and my eyes squeeze shut. My last breath inflates my lungs like a bellows heaved full of air. I wait for it, for the piercing finality of the blade, but it never comes. Instead, the knife strikes something hard. Something more solid than flesh and blood.
I open my eyes. It’s the saboteur. She’s lifted an arm on my behalf to ward off Laszlo’s blow. Enraged, Laszlo rears back and tries again, this time attempting to slash across my throat. He’s blocked again by a nimble swipe of the saboteur’s gloved hand.
“No!” he shouts at her. “Arrestivan!” he commands, parrying and thrusting with his short blade like it’s a rapier. “Arrestivan! Mertenhalten!”
But his commands don’t work on the saboteur. Somehow, she is fully animated, but able to ignore his desires. The rest of the puppets, however, cannot. One by one, the marionettes holding Prima loosen their grip at their master’s command to halt. Like ropes falling away, the spell’s hold is shed and she begins to shake them off.
“No!” Laszlo shrieks at his tiny army. “No, no! Not you! Don’t you stop! Leben consurge!”
But Prima is already fully unleashed from her prison of clawing hands. She tears a long, thin switch from her awakening bed and thrashes it about like a whip, knocking puppets from the trees and the fountain’s rim, scattering them away. The old cleric himself is knocked to the floor by the soaring marionette of a shepherdess who smacks him soundly across the face with her staff.
Laszlo seethes. “You will obey me, saboteur. You’ve killed for me before and you’ll do it again. Valder mortifikanto.” He repeats the directive to kill over and over again while trying uselessly to butcher me with his blade.
The saboteur doesn’t seem to hear him. She shoves me behind her, her whole body now a shield between me and the Margrave. When she fights, she is a thing to behold; Laszlo has studied the art of fencing and fighting, to be sure, but only ever with an opponent who wished to keep his head at the end of a lesson. The saboteur is a creature who cares not for her own welfare. She is focused solely on winning the fight.
Her arms and legs fly so fast, Laszlo can’t see them coming; the saboteur interrupts every strike. He begins screaming for the guards, but they have retreated in fear, leaving the cleric, Prima, and I to fend for ourselves against the Margrave’
s horde.
The call to kill was heard by the other marionettes. They skitter toward Prima and me and Vincenzo, who has scrambled to our side, hoping to find sanctuary behind the saboteur. Puppets who can still crawl or march come at us in waves. They’ve broken off branches of the trees, snatched up the gardeners’ tools, grabbed whatever they can find to use as weapons. The wounded ones twitch on the ground, some with limbs missing or still dangling like forsaken fruit from the trees. A few heads roll haphazardly on the ground, searching in vain for their wayward bodies.
In the distance, through the domed roof, above the uproar, bells begin to chime. It’s the unmistakable song of the glockenspiel, fully resurrected, bells and all. The eerie melody rouses Laszlo to a new level of fury, no doubt reminding him of the victory he thought he had claimed over the clockmaker.
My heart surges with the bells, knowing who climbed up there and set them in motion, completing what Emmitt was never able to. Though I normally detest the glockenspiel’s song, right now it renews the fight in every swing of my arms.
The saboteur delivers a powerful blow to Laszlo’s jaw, sending him flying back into the fountain. Blood pools in the water. Eventually, he lifts his head and comes up sputtering. The saboteur turns toward Prima and me, who are still battling with the other puppets, I with my splinter and she with her whip of wood.
The saboteur seizes the cleric’s lantern from where it fell and holds it high, turning to face us while Laszlo struggles to emerge from the fountain. Her gaze is still the same as when I’d painted it, intense and sure. Her mechanical chin drops like an open door, and the only word I’ll ever get to hear her speak aloud is released from its depths.
“Run.” The command is a sharp bark, the sound of heavy boards clattering together.
I falter. It feels wrong to leave her, especially now. There’s something in her, some spark of me or my father, some element of goodness itself ingrained in her wood. Something the blue moon brought to light tonight. Something impenetrable to Laszlo’s misery and destructive spells.