“PASS,” I mumble emphatically against Emeric’s mouth, with a rude gesture for a flourish. “I’m busy.”
He pulls back anyway, consternation in his face. We both know gifts from gods are rarely good news.
But Eiswald doesn’t have riddles up her bearskin sleeves this time. “I think you will enjoy this one. I give you a choice: What shall become ofMarkgrafAdalbrecht von Reigenbach?”
There are very few things in this world as delicious as the look of a man who has spent his life adored, believed, stepping on everyone, answering to no one . . . realizing who, exactly, has come to settle the account.
I look at Eiswald, then at the rubies and pearls I have shed. And then I smile.
“I think,” I tell her, resting my cheek on Emeric’s chest, “he should learn the price of being wanted.”
Ragne lets out a ferocious cackle, back to her human form and looking better in Adalbrecht’s second-finest suit than he currently does in the remains of his best. For someone who seems allergic to sitting in a chair properly, she’s still figured out the right way to sit on Irmgard’s back to keep her from going anywhere.
Eiswald’s red eyes flare with glee. She turns to Adalbrecht.
“No,” he protests, “you don’t understand, my father—”
“You killed your father, and you were not satisfied.” Eiswald reaches through the glowing ring and seizes his head in one red-knuckled hand. “So you will become your greed.”
She tosses him into the middle of the plaza. He lands on all fours, convulsing, as the statue of Kunigunde rises, then kneels before Eiswald. Time is bleeding back into motion.
A tinge of gold begins to blush through Adalbrecht’s hands.
Kunigunde rises, the dents in her bronze gone—but she isn’t just Kunigunde anymore. She has Gisele’s face, my twin braids, her own eyes. A torn wedding dress, an ancient crown, a pair of broken manacles. She strides across the plaza to pick up her spear.
When she returns to Adalbrecht, he’s fallen on his side, writhing as his limbs swell and bend. Molten gold sprouts in tufts from his shifting flesh.
And then they go still: the statue of a great golden wolf cowering on his back, and the bronze girl holding her spear to his throat, greater still.
“Poetic,” Emeric drawls.
I cling to his jacket, wide-eyed. “Do you know how much that statue is worth?”
“Five horses?”
“So manyhorses!”
“It cannot be melted down or destroyed,” Eiswald says dryly. “It is meant to be a warning, not an inspiration.”
“Fine, but do Irmgard now,” I say.
Eiswald shakes her head. “I think she is best left to your justice. I am going back to my trees, to fix the damage he did to them. May we meet next on a friendlier road.”
I narrow my eyes, doing a bit of unpleasant math as she begins to fade away. Adalbrecht’s battlefields were just beginning to chew into Eiswald’s domain. “Wait. Stop. Wait. You didn’t . . . Eiswald. Did you curse me so I would stop Adalbrecht?”
The bear skull seeps into the night sky, but I’d swear she’s laughing. “I told you, it would be what you made of it.”
Emeric is shaking. It takes a moment to realize he’s laughing too.
“It’s not funny,” I growl.
“She trickedyou,” he says with unabashed delight, “into deposing a tyrant. That’sveryfunny.”
Fortune’s voice breaks between us. “Vanja, dear. We need to talk.”
She and Death are still here. And something about the way she’s knotting her hands sends a chill down my spine. “You called the court. And that means you called us for help.”
I go still as the statues in the plaza. I was hoping,hopingthey wouldn’t make that connection.
