Page 38 of The Wolf and the Woodsman

I look between the two of them, stippled with their Patritian scars. Tuula places her hand on the flat of the bear’s head, eyes narrow and sharp. “Just because we’re godless heathens doesn’t mean you can speak as if we’re not here.”

In another circumstance her remark might have made me laugh. Szabín smiles thinly. “You’ve heard this story before.”

“Yes, but not the wolf-girl. Tell it again, for her sake. She has more to fear from Nándor than any of us.”

My heart skips. Unlike these Patritians, Tuula doesn’t seem one for grim theatrics. I trust the bleak tenor of her words. “Tell me.”

Szabín draws a breath. “Nándor was a monstrous child, indulged in his every whim by the Érsek and his mother, Marjatta. He tormented the other children while their backs were turned, and when they came to him again, he was smiling and sweet as a lamb.”

Gáspár huffs a sound that’s almost a laugh. Even without looking at him, I can hear the change in his breathing, feel the stiffening of his muscles as his weight shifts on the floorboards. The keen awareness of him is both comfort and curse. I close my four fingers into a fist.

“He was fussed over,” Szabín goes on. “There was scarcely a moment he didn’t spend cradled at his mother’s breast, or balanced on the Érsek’s knee. But he was just as keen to buck their warnings. During the bitterest months of winter, we were all shut inside the monastery, for day after cold, dreary day. So Nándor roused his little rebellion, leading the other young Sons and Daughters outside and onto the frozen lake to play. No matter his moments of cruelty, we all were desperate for his favor—he had the oddest way of doing that. Marjatta said he could make a chicken bat its lashes at him while he carved it up for supper.”

“Chickens are hardly the best judge of character,” I say, but the words come out bloodless, no humor in them.

Szabín scarcely flinches at my interjection. “So we all played on the ice, our breath white, laughing. We didn’t notice how it was groaning under us. And then when it split, it seemed impossible—Nándor dragged down beneath the surface, so quick he didn’t even scream.

“We were all frozen with terror. It felt an eternity, but it could only have been a few moments before one of us ran back to the monastery for help. I remember watching the little dagger of dark water, the tiniest slit where Nándor had fallen through, waiting to see his body float up to the top. I was certain he was dead. We were all certain of it, by the time the Érsek and Marjatta came. It must have been the Érsek who fished him out, blue-white and cold as the ice itself. His lashes were frozen together, his eyes stuck shut. I was so scared that I wept.

“The other children were weeping, too, but Marjatta was screaming. She was cursing God in the Northern tongue and in Régyar and even in Old Régyar. The Érsek had Nándor in his lap, and he was praying. The ice was still creaking under our feet. And then Nándor opened his eyes. I thought for a moment I had imagined it; his heartbeat had faltered, there was no pulse in his throat. But he opened his eyes and then he pushed himself up and the Érsek took him by the hand and led him off the ice, with Marjatta following them. And the next day during our morning prayers, the Érsek said that Nándor had been made a saint.”

“That’s impossible,” I say, too quickly, before silence is allowed to settle. I want to say that there’s only one man who went to the Under-World and returned, and Nándor is no Vilmötten. But I don’t think they will appreciate my pagan fairy tales.

“I saw it,” says Szabín, without lifting her gaze. “We all did.”

“Nándor is in the capital now,” Gáspár says. “He’s been there for years, gathering his support. With the Érsek’s help he’s turned half our father’s council to his side, and a cabal of Woodsmen on top of it. I suspect that he plans to try and steal the crown during Saint István’s feast.”

I can hear Tuula shift in her chair, letting out one close breath. Szabín stares at him, slack-jawed. “Saint István’s feast is eight days from now.”

“I know.”

My heart has started a feverish drumbeat. “That’s not nearly enough time—”

“I know,” Gáspár says again, sharply, and glares at me. I fall silent, face heating. Though I can’t quite articulate why, I have a bone-deep feeling that it would be unwise to reveal our plan to Tuula and Szabín, to tell them about the turul.

“Yet here we sit with the true-born prince, who we fished off the ice alongside his wolf-girl consort.” Tuula leans forward, eyes narrowing to slits. “You must forgive me for asking why you haven’t ridden back to the capital to take your usurper brother’s head off.”

My flush deepens at the word consort. Gáspár’s ear tips redden in turn.

“If only court politics were so simple,” he says. “Nándor has drawn half the population of Király Szek to his side, not to mention the Woodsmen and counts. If their imagined savior is killed, there will be riots in the square. And the first place the mob will turn is Yehuli Street.”

“What?” I wheel toward him, shock and fear like a sharp arrow in my chest. “You never said anything about that.”

Gáspár inclines his head, as if holding himself against my sudden fury. “I warned you that Nándor has roused more loathing toward the Yehuli, and he will do worse if he manages to take the throne.”

“Worse,” I repeat slowly. My throat is terrifically dry. “Tell me what that means.”

“The Patritian countries in the west have already begun to expel their Yehuli to Rodinya. I suspect that Nándor will want to follow suit—it would please the Volken envoys, certainly, to see a caravan of Yehuli trailing out of the city, and all their houses turned to ash.”

A fire heats my blood and rises into my cheeks, and then I am pushing myself to my feet and shoving through the door into the cold. The rope ladder sways beneath me in the dark, and I nearly trip off the narrow ledge trying to clamber onto it. Tuula calls after me, but the wind muffles her words. My boots crunch the frost below and I curl my fingers around the bristling rope, feeling it chafe against my palm. I exhale, my breath misting in front of me, some poor effort to keep my tears at bay.

My heart is thrumming so loudly in my ears that I don’t hear Gáspár coming down the ladder until he is already at my side. For one long moment, the wind unfurls across the empty plain and we both stare straight ahead in silence.

“I thought you understood,” he says at last. “Nándor and his followers want to purge the country of everything that is not Patritian, everything that is not Régyar.”

I had understood, but only in the vague way of what-ifs and maybes, like squinting at a blurry shadow-shape in the dark. I had made peace, as best I could, with what it meant to be a wolf-girl, to always fear that the Woodsmen might knock down your door and steal away your mother or your sister or your daughter. But I had not allowed myself to consider the other half of what I was: it hurt to hold, like an iron poker left to bathe too long in the hearth. I find the coin in my pocket and press my thumb along its grooved edge.

The wind brushes past us, blowing back my hood. I turn to gauge the look on his face: no furrowed brow, no narrowed eye, no hard, haughty mouth. His head is tilted, lips parted slightly. In the silvery moonlight, I can see the sweep of his dark lashes against his cheek. It is easy to imagine, in this suspended, silent moment, that all the Woodsman has leached out of him. He is only the man who held me in the husk of that huge tree. The man who dove into the frigid water to save me.