Page 58 of The Wolf and the Woodsman

My stomach floods with ice. Szarvasvár was once the land of the Deer Tribe, and its count is the great-grand-nephew of a tribal chieftain. He is dressed precisely like a tribal chieftain now, even though so many laws have been passed since, to forbid the worship of our gods.

The deer is brought in front of the dais, before the king. Its eyes are twin pools that hold the candlelight, black as a new-moon night. A Woodsman with a missing ear steps away from the wall, ax held aloft.

Blood arcs over the white tablecloth, narrowly missing the king himself. It kisses the sleeve of Nándor’s dolman, like a napkin dipped in wine. As the deer slumps over, the guests come alive again, a scale toppled over and then righted again with the weight of a second, identical stone. Their approval whisks through the air.

The Woodsman drags the deer away. My eyes are burning, my throat is burning, and then the next man comes in, the count of Kaleva, dressed in a black bear cloak, escorted by some pitiful shaved mongrel that could be Bierdna’s brother or sister. The bear makes its frantic, desperate honking sounds, fighting until the Woodsman’s ax comes down and even after, against the choke of blood and the quivering splay of its limbs.

The count of Farkasvár is next. I know his face without ever having seen him before, and he is draped in a russet wolf cloak. I can barely look at the shorn, whimpering dog that the soldiers drag in after him, the thing that no man with eyes could call a wolf. Its bald tail lashes, teeth grinding against the leather muzzle.

I have seen things die before. I have killed them myself, birds and rabbits and mean, hissing badgers with their white-planked faces that had the audacity to steal from our winter vegetable stores. I have even seen a man killed and watched the light drain from his mad, manic eyes. I can’t watch this. I squeeze my eyes shut, but when I do, Lajos prods me sharply in the back, and then grips my head with his gloved hand, turning my face toward the dais.

The wolf dies howling. By this time, blood has soaked the stone floor so thoroughly I know it will take some serving girl a day and a half to clean, scrubbing on her hands and knees until her own palms are soaked too. I try to meet Gáspár’s gaze, but he is looking down at his goblet, his empty plate. He has one hand over his younger brother’s eyes.

Even though I know what’s coming next I have to raise my hand and bite down on my straining knuckles to keep from crying out. The count of Akosvár sweeps in wearing a cloak of white feathers, candlelight streaming off each one. He carries the golden cage himself, and inside it is the plucked falcon, shuddering and scrawny, looking like someone’s supper. I sob against my palm, tasting my own salt-damp skin.

The count of Akosvár is not the true heir of the White Falcon Tribe. Hardly anyone remembers that Saint István was born with a pagan name (which has now been struck from any record books and almanacs, and is forbidden by Régyar law to be uttered aloud), because his grandfather, a pagan, was the blood chieftain.

The king clears his throat, but he doesn’t speak, only nods.

Nándor is looking on with bright, glassy eyes. They are blue rimmed with an even paler blue, like frost ossifying around a window frame. He plucks a knife from the table, forged by the king only moments ago, and steps lightly off the dais. The falcon beats its bald wings, shrieking hoarsely. Nándor wedges the knife through the bars of the cage and twists it into the bird’s naked breast.

The falcon dies slowly, pooling pink at the floor of its cage like a baby bird in its nest, made small again in its death. Tears come streaming down my cheeks. Nándor tosses the knife to the floor, where it clatters against the blood-slick stone. He lifts his chin to the heavens and to the Upper-World.

“Let the old ways die,” he says, “and the false gods with them.”

Chapter Fifteen

Amidst the murmurs of approval, the tear-stricken prayers, Nándor turns and fixes his eyes on me. They are terrifying in their two-toned blue, pale and bright as quartz glinting out of a cave mouth, as if the ice has never left him. Lajos gives me a cruel jab with his ax, and I stumble forward in front of the dais, in front of Nándor, on my knees. Voices hum in my periphery, as nasal and oblivious as insect wings. I try to pull out a word, a phrase, something small enough to bite down on. Monster, from one woman in a white box hat. Heathen, from a man in a smoky-gray dolman. From a dozen more: justice, justice, justice. Godfather Death will have me slit open like a crow on an augur’s workbench.

“Your people cry for justice,” Nándor says, looking to his father. “Will you answer them?”

The king stares at him for a moment. But instead of nodding assent, he says, “Come here, my son.”

Shoulders slackened, Nándor returns to his place at the table, but I catch the corner of his mouth puckering, almost turning to a frown. His finger strokes along the edge of his empty plate. I remember that Gáspár said he would make a move against his father at Saint István’s feast, and I find myself measuring the distance between Nándor’s hand and his knife. Not that it matters very much—I will be dead before I witness any monarchs falling.

“Gáspár has brought this wolf-girl on a long journey from Keszi,” says the king. He pauses, wiping his sweat-dewed forehead. “She is not a seer, I am told, but she may prove to have strength in one of the other three skills.”

Some of the nails on the king’s crown are cracking, yellowing. Eventually they will sliver into nothing, and he will need more warm wolf-girl bodies when they do.

“Father—” Nándor begins, but the king holds up his hand.

“Bring me a lump of coal and some kindling,” the king says.

The Woodsman with the missing ear vanishes for a moment, and then comes back laden with coal and wood. I only recognize him now as the same Woodsman from before, the one who spoke with Gáspár: Ferenc. He drops the wood in front of me, scowling, and then grabs my hand and pries it open, pressing the coal into my palm. Disgust carves long furrows into his cheeks and brow.

“Now, then.” King János draws himself up, blinking down at me. “Show me what magic your gods have granted you. Light a fire with this wood.”

The king has brown eyes, not blue, and his face is nearly as ugly and aged as Virág’s, but I could swear in this moment he looks like Katalin, dangling death over my head while demanding the impossible.

I pick up one of the pieces of wood and run my finger down the splintering length of it. I do it twice, three times, until the king makes a disgruntled noise and shakes his head.

“Not a fire-maker, evidently,” he says. “Then take that coal, wolf-girl, and turn it into iron or silver.”

The coal is still clenched in my four-fingered hand, blackening the rivulets of my palm. King János has seen pagan magic before; he has watched a dozen wolf-girls cower before him this way, like cattle on an auction block, squirming to prove the value of their deaths. And so I start to sing, softly, just loud enough for my words to reach the king’s long table.

“First came King István, his cape as white as snow,

Then his son, Tódor, who set the North aglow,