The real Adalbrecht sputters in fury, reaching for his own buttons— then stops.
Emeric and I have skirted the edge of the plaza, ducking around the flower arches and behind flags, and we’re close enough now to see the moment it dawns on the margrave.
If he takes off his shirt, everyone will see the horseshoe nailed to his heart, the dead man’s tattoo on his back.
And if the assembled nobility of the Blessed Empire of Almandy have questionsnow, they are nothing compared to the ones that will follow.
Adalbrecht looks from Ragne, merrily unbuttoning her waistcoat, to Gisele, staring at him in wide-eyed dismay. Then he looks to the gallows—and finds it empty.
The real nail in the coffin, though, is when Barthl steps out of the Falbirg ceremonial house, holding the horse skull from the study.
You know, the one covered in the runes of a binding spell that scream,I am up to some illegal and blasphemous shenanigans?Thatskull.
Adalbrecht sees that. And Barthl. And then he does thelastthing I, personally and professionally, would recommend: he panics.
Adalbrecht slashes a hand through the air. Blue light sweeps across the Göttermarkt, and the wedding guests slump in their seats, out cold. I hear a shuddering thud as the crowds all around the plaza fall where they stand.
But Emeric, Gisele, Joniza, Barthl, Ragne, and I all stay on our feet.
We weren’t quite sure what we were up against with Adalbrecht, so we came prepared. Ulli Wagner worked all through the night after sabbath, forging the coins I gave them into warding charms at the Order of Prefects’ outpost. The copper forgrimlingenwas easy enough to salvage from pennies, and for curses . . . I just happened to have a few spare bits of gold.
With everyone fallen, Adalbrecht finally sees me and Emeric. His eyes widen with comprehension—then rage.
His lips start moving in a silent chant. There’s a whispery, songlike rush, a vicious lullaby, and thenmahraftermahrappears from thin air, crouching on the shoulders of every sleeper. Adalbrecht’s jacket smokes and blackens over the iron horseshoe, his eyes smoldering blue with power and hate.
Here’s the thing about men like Adalbrecht von Reigenbach: They assume that once something’s in their control, it willstayin their control. They tell their subordinates that they want an entire temple district to go silent? It goes silent. They see little things like lost signet rings as inconveniences, not liabilities. They can never imagine a world in which someone else commands the same kind of power.
Which is why Gisele spent a decent part of her day yesterday shepherding a group of older orphans around to the temples closest to the plaza, explaining that she had persuaded her fiancé to do a bit ofcharity. Couldn’t these bright young orphans be the ones to sound the wedding bells from the (convenientlygrimlingen-proof) temples?
And no one would refuse written orders, all sealed with the margrave’s own signet ring.
Adalbrecht von Reigenbach thinks he’s in control, because I want him to think he’s in control. So he doesn’t see it coming when Joniza leans over to the officiant’s staff, which will carry her voice all across the Göttermarkt, and calmly says: “All right, little monsters. Let ’em ring.”
Bells peal from their towers, throaty and raucous and undeniable. It’s not the measured blow of hour-bells chiming, but all-out war on every side. Thenachtmärenscream, glass bursting around the plaza. Below their howls I hear Adalbrecht screaming too. Thenachtmärenare splitting like the horse-mahrdid in Lähl, fraying in every direction, peeling into a fractured host.
The bells keep ringing. Adalbrecht crashes to his knees, hands over his ears. Emeric and I grip each other’s hands tighter. This is it. We have the horse skull, we have the letters, we have a margrave on his knees. We can call the Godly Court and bring this to an end.
Then I hear a horrid, splintering whine.
I look over to Barthl. The horse skull is shaking—thrashing—in his hands. Every rune blisters and smokes. Fissures spiderweb across the bone.
And then the skull—you know, the binding skull? The key piece of evidence?
The one that keeps all these monsters leashed together, bound to Adalbrecht’s will?—thatskull . . .
. . . shatters.
That was not in the plan.
Thenachtmärenspiral into a shrieking, giggling, sobbing wheel, a thousand blazing blue eyes darting through putrescent white flesh.
Then they converge on Adalbrecht. He doesn’t even have time to scream.
Gisele pulls Joniza and Ragne back from the altar as boiling gray-white swells around the margrave in a mass of shifting limbs. Then, horribly, it begins to warp into—what, exactly, I cannot tell you.
It’s like themahrfrom the night of the ball, reeling between horse and man. I see Adalbrecht’s eyes in a human face stretched sickeningly over a horse’s skull; I see a long, muscled neck lined with hundreds of gnashing mouths; I see blond hair in a stringy, dirty mane; I see arms like a man’s but stretched and gnarled into a horse’s forelegs, the fingers ending in hard iron hooves.
Oh, and perhaps I should mention—it’s almost as tall as the nearest temple. And it’s still growing.
