It’s a puzzle, like picking a lock, trying to nudge each of the tumblers just right until the way is clear.IfI arrange a visit to another noble family . . . no, Gisele is too high-profile, especially with the upcoming wedding, and will surely be connected to the crime. If we host celebrations at Castle Reigenbach? That could be something . . .
It takes a moment for me to realize the coach isn’t moving anymore.
I peek out from the furs. The muted drumrolls of hoofbeats have fallen silent, and beyond the coach windows I only see pitch-black night, and torchlight sweeping down spruce boughs. My brow furrows with confusion. We’re deep into the forest of Eiswald, with no need to stop.
Then I see it.
The torchlight is steady, unmoving, like the flame itself has frozen. And if I look carefully, I can see the crumbling ash of my fortune taking a turn for the worse.
There’s no sound but my heartbeat rattling in my ears as the coach door slowly, quietly swings open.
Nothing is there.
Prickles run up the back of my neck. This could be the work of agrimling, a wicked, hungry spirit looking for a meal.
Then again, agrimlingwouldn’t bother with these theatrics. I’ve dealt with two Low Gods since I was four; I know when one’s at work.
And if I’ve learned anything, it’s that there’s only one way to do business with a Low God: Get it over with as soon as possible. I roll my eyes, peel myself from my nest of fur, and draw my hood up against the cold as I climb out of the coach.
Sure enough, an inhuman figure towers in the road outside, wreathed in the forest’s mists, perhaps twice as tall as a man. The only reason my escort isn’t fleeing is that they don’t see her, or anything at all. Every rider, every soldier, every attendant has gone still, their torch flames stuck in place like lanterns of molten glass. That means whichever Low God this is, they’re at least powerful enough to halt time a moment.
That does not bode well.
This Low God has a bear skull for a head, twin red-tinged lights glowing in each eye socket. Two antlers branch from the crest of the skull, their tips blooming into blood-red leaves. A strange shadowy sphere floats between them. Long hair falls around the skull, parted perfectly down the middle, fading from jet-black roots to snow-white ends and laced with bands of scarlet hemp. Two gaunt human arms thrust from a heap of shifting pelts like ribs from a long-dead corpse’s jerkin, bone-pale everywhere but the joints, which blush an unnaturally deep crimson. A raven is perched on one of the branch-antlers, its eyes also glowing red.
Life and death, beast and vine, blood and bone, the teeth of a predator and the horns of prey. The goddess of this forest, then. Of course Eiswald is strong enough to hold time. Her woods reach nearly all the way to the border itself.
I curtsy with a bit more sincerity than I had for the junior prefect. “Eiswald. What—”
“Silence, thief.” It’s a howl, a hiss, a snarl all in one.
Oh, that can’t be good.
“It’sLadyEiswald to the likes of you. Did you think you could come into my lands and take whatever you pleased? Did you think you would never pay?” Eiswald’s voice rises to a shriek. I blink and she’s suddenly closed the distance, looming taller than even the coach, eyes burning scarlet. “Did you think you could steal from mine?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I gasp, stumbling back.
There’s a bang. A glittering cloud pours from the open coach door: everything I took from the Eisendorfs, hanging in midair like hornets.
The pewter ring rises above them all, its moonstone shimmering in cold talons. “This,” Eiswald snaps. “This is a token of my protection. It is not yours to take.”
“Ezbeta and Gustav don’t need your protection,” I fire back.
Eiswald only gnashes her teeth. “Everyonein my woods needs my protection. They make their sacrifices every solstice. They respect the old ways. They respectme.”
“Easy to respect a god,” I mutter, thinking of the look on Hans’s face when Ezbeta screeched his name. “Anyway, yourtokenwas just gathering dust in the bottom of a jewelry box. They weren’t using it.”
“But they are far from your only trespass, aren’t they, little Vanja?”
The sound of my name knocks any answer from my tongue.
For the last year, I’ve been Marthe, Gisele, thePfennigeist. I have not answered to Vanja.
I can’t remember the last time someone called me by name. I’ve forgotten what it feels like.
Eiswald pushes closer, and I smell night and yarrow and rot. “Do not think your godmothers can help you now. Take, take,take, that’s all you’ve done for the last year, taken whatever you desired. But you have come into my woods tonight, and stolen from those under my ward. So now . . .”
One pale hand reaches out, knuckles flushed red. My hood falls back on its own, the mink trim coiling around my throat like a noose. I try to move, try to scream, but—nothing. I can’t even breathe, lungs afire, my sight filling with the coal dust of terrible luck.
