“By height of night and light of moon, I so swear to you. You will be my people and shelter within my bones until the end of the Age.”
And Coppertomb’s sigh was what told me it was finished. For I had never heard such a sigh of defeat before.
“And so it is done,” he said bitterly as he plucked off his glove and revealed his missing finger for all to see.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-TWO
“But not all done,”Bluebeard said. And to my utter surprise, he slit his cheek with the tip of his sword to make his mark, and then, taking a drop of his blood on his fingertips, he flicked it out over the crowd and the ground shook, and the mortal world fell away and there was a feeling of being ripped from the earth and transplanted.
I reached for his hand and gripped it tightly as the almost-familiar madness of traveling between worlds gripped me, shook me, caved me in, puffed me out, and sent me spinning into the madness.
And when I recovered, we were once more within the Wittenhame, in that familiar place where the trees rose miles above the ground and the mushrooms were as large as houses, where the roots of trees were roads and the flowers could shade a whole family.
Everyone — the entire assembled crowd — had come with us, and they were arranged among the bramble vines exactly as they had been in the mortal world, but without their mortal servants or their weapons. Instead, between them, were banquet tables loaded with piping hot food and drink, covered in white cloths and piled with white flowers and dazzling with leaping sparks as if from a crackling fire.
It was day here — high noon, if I was any judge — and bunting was strung around the clearing, a strange kind of bunting made of clouds and shifting rainbows. Frogs the size of horses leapt from table to table with more good things borne on their sleek backs.
When my mind finished reeling and sanity began to trickle back in to join the memories that mixed with nightmares that mixed with hopes, I realized we stood at what must be a head table, placed on roots high above all the others. And to one side, was the glittering sea. It shone soft azure under the light of the brilliant sun and mermaids flipped up out of the water with porpoises beside them like huntsmen with their Hounds.
“Welcome,” Bluebeard said, pollen swelling around him and tiny songbirds darting down to cover his shoulders and arms. The birds sang riotously. “Welcome, my folk, to my marriage supper.”
There was a general cheer, though that was just as likely for the food as for anything else.
“Be at ease. Eat. Drink. Delight. For my bride is worthy of celebration, and she who bore me through death is worthy of your honor. But before I feast with you, it is customary for a new-crowned king to receive gifts, and the gift I demand is from my queen.”
He turned his body to me, and I turned to him also, but with a raised eyebrow. What was this gift to be? Was I now to kiss all the mermaids in the sea and watch them be slaughtered for their trouble?
“Willst thou, bride of mine, pass judgment in my name, as your gift to me,” he asked, offering me his hand. I placed mine in his.
“I will give whatever you ask of me,” I said steadily. But I hoped this would be the last of the tasks, for I was tired and even the smells of roast chicken and peaches and honey rolling out from the supper table were not enough to tempt me. I needed sleep.
“Then stand now, in judgment of my enemies,” he said, sweeping a hand to where I found Coppertomb, Ki'e'iren, and Grosbeak still embedded in vines.
“I have never been your enemy,” Grosbeak said, pouting. “And have you not already run me through with your sword?”
But I could see that his outburst had directed the eyes of my husband’s people toward him as if to question whether this would be tolerated, and an acid rose in my throat. I needed to get this right or my Bluebeard would lose the respect of his newly sworn people.
The Bramble King flung himself into one of two large oaken chairs at the head of the assembly — Wittenbrand thrones, I realized. His moved with a constant shifting that made the knots in the wood look like faces. No, not looklikefaces. Theywerefaces. I caught sight of the former Bramble King within and my heart caught in my throat, even as my husband lounged with one leg flung over the arm of his throne and a bunch of grapes in his fingers.
He smirked at me, lifting a brow.
I was up for his challenge. So, with a pale face, I stepped up onto the seat of the other throne-like chair. Fortunately, this one seemed to shift from flower to flower rather than face to face, though that still was unsettling in a piece of furniture.
“You cannot mean for her to judge us,” Coppertomb said in a low, throaty voice. He sounded like he might growl at any moment. “She is mortal.”
“No more,” Bluebeard said, pausing to suck a grape from the vine before seeming to remember that he was speaking. “I have granted her equal share in my days.”
There was a gasp from the crowd. And I will never understand the Wittenbrand because, as if this declaration were a signal, they all seated themselves and began to dig into the spread, watching me from time to time as if I were their entertainment.
“Do go on, wife. I am burning with curiosity to see what fates you will find fitting for my enemies.”
“You have already defeated your enemies, my Lord,” I said clearly. “You have stood on the neck of Death.” His pleased laugh made me bold. “But under your authority, I will speak so that each here receives what is fitting.”
“I have every confidence in you, as do we all,” Bluebeard said and then winked dramatically at the crowd. They laughed, but it was a nervous laugh as if they were afraid they might be caught up in “receiving what is fitting.” They had good reason to be worried. They had been complicit in all of this.
“To Ki'e'iren who tried to usurp my place,” I said forcefully so that all would hear, “I assign this fate: go back to your time and place and dream no more of the Wittenhame. Be mortal in every way, and remember forever how you betrayed us.”
“Ooohhh,” the crowd whispered together. To them, the fate for forgetting this place was a fate far worse than death.
