And this time, she does.
There is winter in her words, the same Sovabin cold in me, the scars of old ice tearing at the stone for years as it drags itself down to the valley. We know the wounds we’ve left on each other, and we have answered for them. We have crossed the thorns. We know the way off the mountain.
When she is done, Justice asks Adalbrecht, “How do you respond?”
He plants his feet in the ring, barely hiding his confidence. “Everything I did, I did because I believed it the best for everyone.”
Truth wheels and spins, twisting and twisting and twisting. Finally they say, “He believes it to be . . . mostly true.”
Justice taps her fingers against her staff. I can tell she’s unhappy, and I know why.
We’ve laid out the damage done. We’ve explained why Adalbrecht had motive to do it. We have shown how he benefited from it. But without the letters or the skull, we have nothing that irrefutably shows he’s responsible. Even though there was power to seize, loopholes to exploit, and murder to solicit, we cannot prove that Adalbrecht deliberately did so.
But I know what can.
So when Justice turns to me and asks, “Do you have anyone else to call?” I smile.
“Yes.” Then I turn to Gisele and ask, “What was your horse’s name?”
She gives a tiny shake of her head, almost in disbelief. “What?”
“From Sovabin. I can never remember.”
Emeric goes still. I see that fire light in his eyes. He’sdefinitelygoing to kiss me when all this is over.
“Falada,” Gisele says. “But—”
“I call Falada,” I tell Justice.
“Thehorse?” Justice asks, as bewildered as Gisele. I nod. She raises her hands as if to say,Sure, why not, let’s bring in the horse.Then she raps her staff against the ground.
Chips of bone rattle toward us from all across the plaza.
Adalbrecht’s face is almost enough to bring me back to life on the spot.
See, here’s the other thing about Adalbrecht von Reigenbach. He’ll spend money onhiswedding,hisarmies,hisplans, even if he’s digging it out of other people’s pockets. And he’ll be cheap about everything else.
Before he bound himself to all thenachtmärenwith Klemens’s tattoo, he bound himself to enough of them to keep terrorizing us. And he did it with the skull on his wall, one whose ghost seeped into everymahrit made.
I know a thief when I see one, little or great. And I know if he was going to sacrifice a horse for a binding spell, he wouldn’t use his own.
The shattered skull pulls itself together before us as Gisele covers her mouth, tears welling in her eyes. Wisps of silvery light weave into a long muzzle and graceful withers, and then the ghost of the gelding stands before us, shaking his head.
“Falada,” I say conversationally, “you were used to bindnachtmärento Adalbrecht von Reigenbach, correct?”
“Let me get a translator.” Justice twists to wave at the assembly behind her. Something lets out a cry that sounds like every language in the world at once. Justice tilts her head. “That’ll work.”
A forlorn, eldritch wail shudders from Falada. When he speaks, it sounds like mourning. “By margrave’s hand was I slain, to bind himself to sleeper’s bane.”
Ofcoursethe dead talking horse is rhyming. I’ll put up with it, though, because there’s a much more important question for him to answer: “Through your bond, did you know his intentions? His choices?”
“I saw every choice, twisted and cruel. I saw his desire to devour and rule.”
(This is where I have to admit I’m impressed he’s coming up with the rhymes on the fly. Not bad for, you know, a horse.)
“Falada, did he use you to try to kill us?”
“Bone by bone, he fed me to the beasts.Mahraftermahron his foes was unleashed.”
