I shivered. Death and life had different meanings here. But I had my clue and it was time to move.
“A word of caution,” one of the heads said in a thin reedy voice. I had to lift the candle very high to see a man ancient, with sallow cheeks. “I saw a man living with no heart once, surviving only on magic. Has he spoken to you?”
“Hardly,” Grosbeak snickered. “He’s decorative now, nothing more. Izolda’s trophy husband.”
“I’d not discount him yet,” the voice said, “and I’d not leave us here when you’ll need his advisors.”
“She can hardly carry you all around on poles,” Grosbeak said dismissively.
But the head was right. I should take them with me.
“The man I saw,” the querulous head said, “was as if in a dream, living again other times of his life and unable to grasp what time or space he found himself in at the present. If you speak to him, I caution you to watch for signs of that.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“You’re thanking him for that nonsense?” Grosbeak objected. “Where is my thank you? When have I failed to be useful? And yet I receive no thanks.”
“Your thanks is your continued life,” I warned him. “And now, I must hurry. We have little time.”
“Finally, she understands!” he said with a dramatic eye roll, but his drama was cut off when I took out my golden key, turned it to open the Room of Wives, and marched to the shelves, scooping up heads by the hair, four to a fist, and hurrying to stack them inside the room around the pillar meant for me.
“What are you doing?” he objected. “You’re wasting time.”
But he had to speak loudly over the screaming protests of the heads.
“This is not what we agreed to!” they shrieked. “We are not prizes for the taking!”
“I have few resources,” I huffed, not stopping in my task. “Best not to waste them.”
“I would like to file an official complaint,” Grosbeak called after me as I disappeared with the rest of the heads. “This is not an egalitarian society! Everyone does not have equal value. I am your pet.Me!”
I ignored him, as I ignored the many protests of my husband’s defeated enemies and when they were all secured, I marched to where Bluebeard had left Sparrow’s head and body, her arms crossed respectfully over her chest. I leaned down and snatched up her head.
Her eyes snapped open. “What is this?”
I ignored her and marched out of the room, trying my best not to listen to the hiss of the garnets as they ran out faster than I could spend days, locked the room behind me, and tied her head by its hair to the other hook on the pole.
“No, you can’t do this!” she screamed.
“You are too mad for even the Wittenhame!” Grosbeak agreed, his voice a ringing shout.
“On the contrary. Only the sanest person can deal with complete insanity,” I said coolly. “She neutralizes it, removing the poison by her mere presence. Heed me and be wise.” I paused. “Also, though you both hate me, I believe I’ll find your counsel useful, so it’s both of you or neither.”
“Neither,” they said in unison.
“Both it is,” I said firmly, scooping up the lantern pole, and I left the empty room with my candle held high and my jaw set with determination.
CHAPTERTHREE
I hurried up the stairs,balancing my double-headed lantern pole in one hand and my single candle in the other. Human heads are very heavy. Two at once would make me strong as a knight in the king of Pensmoore’s training if I kept this up. A memory of Svetgin’s proud grin when my father told me he’d been accepted as a knight seared through my mind and with it came a sudden vision of the knights of Pensmoore charging onto a dust-worn battlefield with my nephew Rolgrin at their head, a flag unfurling behind his foaming horse — a black horse sigil over a field of green proudly displayed upon it. Blood was splashed over his dark tunic and flashing sword. I blinked away the memory. It was not mine.
Grosbeak muttered a steady stream of curses and I clung to them to steady me. I wasn’t in the mortal world right now. I was here in the Wittenhame, fighting for my husband’s life and more than just my happiness rode on his slumped shoulders. Fail, and Pensmoore would fail with me. If she had not already.
“Teeth of the Gods! The indignity. Blights and barnacles!”
Sparrow maintained a dignified silence as my old friend painted the air bright blue with his words. She looked the worse for being dead, but her eyes were sharp and she seemed to be thinking very hard. I could only hope she was thinking to our advantage and not to trip me up. What would she give more weight to? Her love of Lord Riverbarrow, the Arrow, my Bluebeard, or her disdain that he’d married me, a mere mortal, in the Wittenbrand way?
My candle guttered as the air shifted and the boards squeaked under my feet. I swallowed down tremors of worry. What I was about to undertake would be an enormous task for one of the Wittenbrand, never mind a mere mortal. And this time, there would be no magical husband swooping in to pluck me free of a trap I’d sprung. Instead, he was counting on me for success.
