Page 21 of The Wolf and the Woodsman

Spitefully, I laugh. “There’s nothing to gain by trying to prove them false either. I could have been the most humble, abasing wolf-girl you’ve ever seen and it wouldn’t have changed a thing. Do you think Saint István stopped to measure each pagan’s character before he cut them down with his sword? Do you think he cared how toothless their smiles were?”

Gáspár’s jaw sets, and he doesn’t reply. I think of the way his voice caught on the word Merzani. I wonder if he’s spent half his life with his belly to the ground, lowing to every man or woman who curled their lip at him. The thought mollifies me, dulling a bit of my blade-sharp anger.

“Will you please untie me?” I ask finally, teeth gritted.

I watch his shoulders slacken with a sigh. Gáspár crosses the tent in a single pace and begins to loose the rope around my wrists. “I’ll have to put it back in the morning, you know.”

“I don’t care. Do you know how hard it is to scratch an itch when your hands are bound?”

“I don’t, actually.”

I flex my newly freed fingers with a scowl. “Lucky you.”

The tent is small, cowhides and wool pelts heaped around a small hearth. Gáspár clasps his hands to light a fire, and it paints our murky, moving shadows against the tent’s calfskin walls. I lean closer, letting it warm my cheeks and my freezing pink nose.

Still not willing to make peace, I say, “I’m not convinced that this arrangement is preferable to spending a night on the plain.”

Gáspár gives me a dour look. “You seem to be enjoying the fire, though.”

“We could’ve had a fire there too.”

“But not a roof over our heads.”

“You just wanted an excuse to imagine me as a scullery maid. Scrubbing floors in penance for my impiety.” I let out another laugh: shorter, humorless. “Is that really why the king takes girls from Keszi? To clean his chamber pot?”

“No,” he says. “And you would make a poor scullery maid.”

“Pity. Now I’ll never be redeemed.”

“You could be.” Gáspár’s black eye is on me, with a sudden intensity that makes my face heat. “Godfather Life does not consider anyone beyond redemption.”

“And what of Godfather Death?” We learn very little about the Patritian faith from our village in the woods, but I’m glad I know enough to prick at him.

“You don’t understand. They’re one god—two halves of the same whole. Godfather Life is the bestower of mercy, and Godfather Death is the arbiter of justice. Both justice and mercy have their place, and I know Godfather Life would grant the latter to you and your kind if you wished to change your ways.”

“Two sides of the same coin.” As I speak, I turn my father’s coin over in my hand, tracing the unreadable symbols on each side. Yehuli script on one, Régyar letters on the other. Gáspár watches me, unblinking. “Your god can keep his mercy. Perhaps you should ask me for mine, since you just damned us both to fighting a monster.”

“I couldn’t ignore their plea,” Gáspár says, shaking his head as if my reticence disappoints him terribly. “I took the Woodsman vow. Even if I hadn’t—it’s the right thing to do.”

Ever the noble Woodsman. I think of the way he refused to reveal himself, how he accepted Kajetán’s rebuffs and impudence, and it angers me all over again. What’s the point of having power if you balk at every chance to wield it?

“I’m tired of this honorable Woodsman pretense,” I tell him. “You’re a prince. Act like one.”

“You wouldn’t like it much if I did.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’d gag and bind you for talking to me the way you do.”

My mouth goes fiercely dry. I feel stupid for treating him like an acquaintance, like an ally, like anything but a Woodsman. I remind myself again that he’s far too young to have taken my mother.

But he might as well have.

“Is that your brand of justice?” I ask him blackly.

“Not mine, wolf-girl. The king’s, perhaps.” His voice is light, but there’s a furrow in his brow. “And you may have noticed I’ve not gagged you yet.”

Király és szentség. The words that Peti spluttered as Gáspár’s ax loomed over him come flickering back to me. I go stiff at the memory: royalty and divinity are twin blades to cut through pagan flesh. Gáspár slips off his suba and rests his ax against the wall of the tent. He lies down on a silver cowhide, facing the fire instead of me.