With a sigh, I made my way to the lamp, but there was no sign of Sparrow within the dancing flames. Not even the ashes or the dust of her passing. It was as if she never was at all. And I would be the same unless I could solve this last puzzle.
CHAPTERELEVEN
There was onlyone door to Coppertomb’s vault and when I tried it, it was locked just as he’d promised me. I looked at every shelf, at the strange drain in the floor, at the items cataloged, and behind them, I even examined the plain chair. There was no way out.
“Trapped, trapped, trapped,” Grosbeak said, laughing wildly, and then every so often he would murmur another “trapped!”
If Tanglecott was the fairy godmother in a Wittentale and Bluebeard was the tortured lord, and Antlerdale the monster-turned-lover, then Coppertomb was the witch who tricked children into ovens and gnawed on their bones. The careful linear way he’d laid things out and the horribly specific way he labeled them, made me feel like I was inside the mind of someone who did not see living organic things at all, but only parts held together by muscle as a model is held together by wire. I could see a mind like this taking us apart and putting us back together again and the idea of it rattled me.
I was searching a shelf of rib cages looking for a door behind them, when I noted they were sorted differently.
“Why catalog two sets of rib cages?” I murmured to Grosbeak. I needn’t have spoken. The bronze plaques spelled it out.
“Human Rib Cages” one said and the other “Wittenbrand Rib Cages.”
“Because they’re different, but noting that won’t help you out of your trap, trap, trap,” he sang.
Different?
I looked from one to the other and then back. They looked much the same. I counted on the human side. Twenty true ribs and four floating ribs. That was normal. Even I, a lower noblewoman, had enough learning to know that.
I turned to the Wittenbrand rib cage and paused. Oh. Sixteen true ribs and eight floating ribs. How odd. But something about it bothered me and kept on bothering me as we searched.
“There’s no way out. You might as well bury him and see what happens,” Grosbeak reminded me.
“I thought you were my ally now,” I told him.
“Your ally. Not his.”
With a huff, I set him on the chair and then crossed to the other end of the vault and eased my stumbling husband down so he could lay with his head pillowed in my lap. Maybe if he could recover enough energy, he could focus and help me figure this out. I had considered myself a clever puzzle solver, but I was stumped. I needed a hint. And his hint about the blood of nations was not enough.
Why was everything blood for these people? It was too much.
Blood and phalanges, hearts and ribs.
Ribs.
Sixteen ribs.
I froze.
We had to go to the place where the rib had been mined, right? And the poem was related to that. Sixteen locks and sixteen keys. Sixteen ribs. Sixteen wives.
My husband, can you hear my mind?I whispered to Bluebeard as I stroked his hair. He nestled in closer so that his face was pillowed against my belly.
Mmmm.
You cannot tell me what to do.
Mmmm.
But perhaps you can listen and tell me if I am right.
My beloved Izolda.I wasn’t sure if that was encouragement to go on, or a sigh of despair.Spirit of my spirit, heart of my own heart, fall what may.
I licked my lips and drew little circles on his back and shoulders, flooded with an overwhelming sense of affection for him as I whispered with my mind.
It’s all connected, isn’t it?I asked him.The Legend of the Sovereign and the world existing within his breast, the rib the people stole and the sixteen ribs of the Wittenbrand … and your wives. Sixteen, right? Fifteen for the unmarred ribs and one more for the stolen rib. That’s why all the rhymes and prophecies keep coming back to the one wife, the one of sixteen, the one rib. You’re repairing the sovereign somehow. Is he also the Bramble King?
