“Wise,” the word whispered in my ear.
My breath caught. Had that been my imagination, or was it my husband barely whispering to me?
“Wise, stone-faced certainty.”
I twisted my head to look at his face and saw only his slitted eyes and parted lips. It seemed that I had his approval — if that had been him whispering to me, and who else would it be? — and the notion put strength into my limbs and heart.
Husband?I asked within my mind.Can you hear me?
There was no reply, but for a moment I thought I felt a flash of emotion that was not mine. Tenderness, I thought. Like watching a new foal take to its feet.
I shook my head. That was not the right emotion for dealing with Bluebeard’s advisors.
I made my way into the musty gloom below. Without the fire leaping to join us, the room full of the heads of my husband’s enemies was a horror. The chair on which he had sat and dandled me on his knee was threadbare and collapsed. The shelves leaned at awkward angles, and for a moment I thought I might be too late — that the heads also would be gone, rotted away to nothing but empty-eyed skulls.
“You should be running,” Grosbeak complained. “Do you want to be backed into a corner when the Hounds arrive? Perhaps we can leap into Riverbarrow.”
I’d never endanger my husband’s home that way. Grosbeak should know better. It was to be the mortal realm for us, or the Wittenhame, or nothing.
“Who disturbs our imprisonment?” The voice that came from the darkness of the shelves was the firm voice of Vireo.
I lifted my candle high so that he could see me.
He began to smile a gleeful, wicked smile when his eyes set on me, but it collapsed when his gaze shifted to my shoulder.
“The Arrow,” he gasped. “What has come to pass?”
“Only the beginning of a cataclysm, Death riding a pale horse, the sky turned to ash, the moon to blood, and all that,” Grosbeak said, and he seemed to be gloating that he knew this and Vireo did not. I leaned his pole against the shelves and he scowled but kept talking. “Oh, and now Coppertomb is the Bramble King.” Vireo hissed at that. “His coronation was scarce an hour ago. And for the confirmation of it, the Arrow had his heart plucked from him and shoved into the grave.”
“His heart?” Was I mistaken or did Vireo’s eye turn to me for a bare second before returning to Grosbeak?
All up and down the wall, the severed heads stored there murmured their appreciation or apprehension, excitement passing over the faces of those I could see in my candle’s light.
“It’s all precisely as it was prophesied!” Grosbeak crowed, “and I got to be there for all of it! I was there to watch his heart feed the barrow and watch the triumph of Coppertomb. And now I will get to watch the mortal bride run with the slathering jaws of the Hounds of Heaven snapping at her heels, her bright shrieks painting the midnight with sparkles of terror, and her wet mortal life running out like water from a spring. Do you not envy me?”
“Mortal wife of Lord Riverbarrow,” Vireo said very precisely. “As the only one here with hands, you would do us all a favor, if you were to cuff Grosbeak for his insolence. Your pet is terribly ill-mannered.”
I cleared my throat. I was not in the habit of cuffing people. That wasn’t what I’d come for.
“I’m here to consult with you, Wall of Wisdom, Vault of the Fallen Enemies of the Arrow. Will you hear my question? Will you consult on my riddle?”
“Only if you strike your pet,” Vireo said. “Payment for services rendered.”
“Hear, hear!” someone else said and I thought it might be Grosbeak’s father.
Grosbeak snickered. “She’d never, weak mortal that she —”
Fast as lightning, my hand shot out and I slapped Grosbeak.
“Enough,” I said and let my voice ring with authority. “I have no time for more stipulations. Either hear my riddle or ignore my plea but do not waste what little time I have.”
“Speak then, mortal,” the woman who looked like a mermaid said, her tongue coming out forked and green. Her tangled seafoam hair curled around her. “Tell us this conundrum and we will advise you if we see fit.”
“We will?” Grosbeak’s green-faced father snickered nastily. “We owe the mortal nothing.”
“We owe her for a slap,” Vireo said, considering. And his face now, after life had passed, held none of the ill will he had bourn me while he lived.
“She wears his blood,” the head with the silver crown said. Her eyes were still closed, her mouth a perfect cupid’s bow. “We can deny her nothing while she is sealed with that.”
