“And yet several have kissed me,” I said dryly, meeting his gaze with my steely annoyance.
“So they have, wife, but I suffered none to live.”
“You …” I looked down at the corpse at my feet. The one he had killed while the man was still kissing me. “Oh.”
“He was courageous, that one. To kiss you when he’s seen me kill a dozen others already for the same offense. Courageous, but foolhardy.”
He reached behind me and my bonds fell away.
“Is this perhaps an overreaction?” I asked, chilled as I saw the bloody blade in his hand. How many had kissed me? How many were dead now?
I peered around him to where Grosbeak was nursing a black eye. His clay body was cracked and he was missing one hoof — likely from the fall. A sword stuck straight through his clay body, wedged in the hard torso.
“He stabbed me, too, in case you were wondering, and I’m already dead,” Grosbeak complained. “I set the rules for this game. There was no mention of stabbing.”
“I am Bramble King,” Bluebeard said and as he said it he turned and drew me with him to the edge of the platform, looking out over the gathered mass below him. There was evidence of … a battle among them? I was hard-pressed not to gasp at the sight. Bodies were strewn across the ground, red-flecked weapons in most hands and some were still locked in the conflict, breath heaving, arms grappling, their attention barely even on the platform.
This time his voice snapped like a whip. “I am your Bramble King.”
He made a flicking motion and thorny vines began to grow from his hand. They tumbled to the ground and crawled across the surface, multiplying and blooming with white flowers which turned to dark berries, still growing and branching and tangling around the feet and legs of the crowd, forcing fighting Wittenbrand apart enough to still them. Their wide-eyed silence was all I needed to know that this act was his true win, not this game we’d just played.
“Challenge me with any wall to vault, any sea to cross, any army to fight, and I will show you again and again that I am your sovereign,” he said but he didn’t sound victorious, he sounded like he was threatening them. “But do not think to take or sully what is mine. I will have your respect — whether it is given freely, or whether I must take it with the edge of my blade. Choose today who you will serve. Is it to be me, or Coppertomb?”
And as he spoke, his winding vines rose up in the air, lifting Coppertomb, as if he stood upon the rising back of a sea monster. His teeth were gritted and his cheeks flushed and I realized that for the first time since I’d met him, there was uncertainty in his eyes.
“You thought to win by theft, Coppertomb,” my husband said in a menacing tone. “You thought to steal my sacrifice and pretend it was your own. You thought to pull strings from behind the scenes rather than fight with your own hands. You thought to rip out my very heart and feed it to the grave. And you thought this would make you king.”
He snapped his fingers and the silver arrow slipped from Coppertomb’s hand, slicing his palm as it went and showering red upon the white blooms below his feet. It shot, as if launched from a bow, toward my husband and Bluebeard lifted a hand, and the arrow pierced into the gap in his palm created by the knife that had held him fast to the pillar of the sea. It stuck there, lodged in the ragged gap.
“This,” my husband said, “Is mine. Bought with my deeds. Bought with my blood. Sign of my power.” He turned back to his people. “And you are mine by the same merit. Now, choose. For those who choose to serve me will return with me to the Wittenhame.”
Coppertomb scoffed. “There is no Wittenhame to which we may return.”
“I have rebuilt it from the bones out,” Bluebeard said, and as if on cue a swirl of pollen emitted from him like a cloud. “It will serve as home once more to my people and to their magic.”
I heard a whisper then of, “magic” in the crowd. It sounded almost disbelieving.
“And those who will not serve, will go with Coppertomb to his fate.”
“Fate?” Was the new whisper I heard echoing through the crowd.
“Fate?” Coppertomb said, crossing his arms over his chest and lifting one brow. “It is not for you to determine my fate. You have no authority over me.”
“I am the Bramble King, he who was once the Arrow, Lord Riverbarrow, now your sovereign. All authority is mine for I have conquered Death,” Bluebeard said in a low tone.
“Then what fate have you determined for me?” Coppertomb asked, annoyance in his tone.
“Patience,” Bluebeard said, holding up a single finger to him. He turned back to his people. “Decide, now, or go with this old serpent to his destiny. Any who would go with Coppertomb, raise now your token.”
But though we waited in silence with nothing but the trickle of water and shush of the wind to answer, there was no response.
“Swear, then, before me,” he said and the crowd looked at one another. One of them rose as if to come and kiss his ring but he said, “There will be no pomp and ceremony. Swear now, all together, or await your consequence.”
As one, they fell to their knees, despite the thorny vines, and from the throats of thousands came the rush of their vow, like the sound of a waterfall.
“By height of night and light of moon, we give our fealty. Be ye our sovereign and dispense justice, sanity, and fated destiny to your people to the end of the Age.”
And then Bluebeard spoke,
