Page 64 of The Wolf and the Woodsman

Finally, he stops. Following the line of the castle is a row of marble statues, surveying the courtyard like cold sentinels. If I caught them out of the corner of my eye, I might really have believed they were human soldiers after all. They are etched in remarkable detail, as if drawn up out of the earth by Isten himself.

“This is Saint István,” Nándor says, gesturing toward the largest. “The first true king of Régország. He united the three tribes and banished paganism to the furthest reaches of the country.”

Saint István’s statue has been carved from marble of purest alabaster. His long cape tumbles to the ground behind him, the folds draping and crinkling like water, frozen in a moment of cold, immaculate suspension. The sword he holds in his hand is real—a simple thing, only a bronze hilt and a silver blade, speckled with rust. It must be King István’s actual sword, or else they would have replaced it with something shining and new.

The old king is holding something else in his left hand, its shape distorted and bulging around his curled fingers. It takes me a moment to recognize that it’s a human heart.

“The heart of the chieftain of the Wolf Tribe,” Nándor says. “He had them dismembered, and their body parts nailed to the gates of the fortress in his newly united city.”

I almost want to laugh at such an artless attempt to frighten me. “I know the story. Every boy or girl in Keszi hears it first at their mother’s breast. You can’t think you can spook me with tales of hundred-year-old atrocities. A wet nurse could tell me worse.”

Nándor doesn’t rise to my challenge, but his eyes narrow, almost imperceptibly, like night edging up onto the horizon. The next statue is carved of darker marble, but it grasps and holds the early-morning sunlight, making the king’s cheekbones gleam like twin knives. This man has no sword, but in his outstretched hand he grasps an iron pendant, identical to the one Gáspár wears, engraved with the Woodsmen’s seal.

“Bárány Tódor,” Nándor says. “Conqueror of Kaleva, he founded the Holy Order of Woodsmen. But you’re quite familiar with the Woodsmen already, aren’t you?”

I sense a hidden jest in his voice, something that means to carve a deeper wound. My stomach quivers with uncertain trepidation. Nándor’s face was so close to the bruise on Gáspár’s throat. His hand was on my lips. I wonder if he has managed to trace a line between the two, and what he will do with that realization, if he has. Nándor watches me expectantly, as though he can see me turning the idea over in my mind.

I decide not to give him the satisfaction of a reply. Instead I stare at Tódor’s statue, studying the way his ivory fingers hold the pendant like a hawk’s talon clutched around its unfortunate prey. The carved outline of the turul is hardly visible, obscured by Tódor’s marble thumb.

“He was made a saint too,” Nándor goes on, eyes still narrowed. “In every way, he was his father’s son.”

This time I cannot resist a jape of my own. “Was he a true-born son?”

The lovely pink color drains from Nándor’s face, and it’s his turn to say nothing. For a moment I worry that I have damned myself further, but I don’t think there is much I could do to make Nándor loathe me more. He wanted me dead when I was mute and lowing under his father’s blade, and he still wants me dead now, when I am snarling back at him and showing all my teeth.

He stares at me blackly for a moment, and then moves on without a word.

The next statue is of Tódor’s eldest son, Géza the Gray. Géza’s statue depicts him as an old man, small and stooped, leaning heavily on a cane and half swallowed by his dark robes. But this one is all wrong—Géza was never an old man. He lived only to early middle age before succumbing to the same fever that later killed his son’s Merzani bride, Gáspár’s mother. Virág told us the stories of Régország’s kings with great reluctance, each word a bitter warning.

“Géza was a weak king,” Nándor says quietly. “He forgot the divine mission of his father and grandfather. He let the country make peace with its heathen enemies, and even arranged the marriage of his son to a Merzani apostate. It is a blessing that he died before doing more damage than he did.”

Géza’s statue is a murky gray, precisely the same color of the clouds when they bunch and gather before a storm. The void of his sainthood seems obvious, somehow, like the pall of a sunless day. “If Géza was such a terrible ruler, why mount his statue here, beside your precious heroes?”

“Because it serves as a reminder,” says Nándor, “of what we must not let our nation become. You were there at Saint István’s feast, wolf-girl. Surely you can see that the people of Király Szek want to live in a Patritian kingdom, just like our neighbors east and west.”

“If only the whole kingdom were comprised of just your admirers,” I say.

Nándor’s smile returns, with a sharper edge this time. “There was no kingdom of Régország before the Patrifaith, wolf-girl. You understand that, don’t you? There was only a loose handful of tribes hacking each other to death on the Little Plain, scarcely able to even understand the accents of their enemies. If you and your pagan brothers and sisters even dare to call yourselves Régyar, you must acquiesce to that point, or else you ought to scrub our language out of your mouths and go back to garbling the old tongues of your blood chieftains.”

His argument is laced through with conceits that I hardly understand, words that almost make me feel like a stranger to this language after all. It reminds me that he’s spent years learning at the knee of royal tutors, and I am a wolf-girl from a flyspeck of a village who can’t even spell her own name. A coil of shame rises in my throat. I fight back with the only weapon I have.

“Your mother is a Northerner,” I say, remembering Szabín’s story. “Régyar words must curdle in her Kalevan accent. If I’m a foreigner in this land, then you are half a foreigner as well.”

I expect him to balk, to give me another baleful stare, but Nándor hardly blinks. His smile deepens. It is the smile of an assured victory.

“You think that this is a problem of blood, wolf-girl?” He lifts a brow. “Saint István was born a pagan, as you well know. Some of my compatriots wish to forget that fact, but I see no reason to efface the truth. It was his choice to relinquish the false gods that matters, in the end. And you pagans, the Juvvi, the Yehuli—they all have been given so many chances to do the same.”

I bite my lip on a derisive laugh. “I saw what you did to Zsigmond. You wouldn’t welcome a Yehuli with open arms even if he swore his undying devotion to the Prinkepatrios.”

It is the same logic I have been made to swallow my whole life, the same way Boróka tried to wheedle me into keeping my head down and my eyes trained on the ground, into evading Katalin’s stare and mumbling my soft-bellied deference. But I had tried kindness. I had tried sheathing my claws. It only made it easier for her to strike me down again.

“Certainly I would,” says Nándor, “if his soul was truly repentant. I would even welcome you with open arms, wolf-girl—you look almost like a true Patritian already. If you stay in this city long enough, perhaps I can get you on your knees.”

His casual remark blinkers me for a moment, like a trick of light. Nándor is beautiful enough that I think even Katalin would go dry-mouthed at the veiled proposal. I, too, might have been tempted by his entreaty if I hadn’t just watched him drench my father in pig’s blood, if all the words bracketing his guileful suggestion weren’t so ugly. I wonder how many girls in Király Szek have fallen to their knees in front of him, babbling in reverence, pleasuring him with their promises. I will not allow myself to think of it further, and banish all the lurid fantasies from my mind. Nándor’s smile is all too innocent, both of us keenly aware of the flush painting my cheeks.

Now desperate to change the subject, I turn to the final statue. It is hewn roughly in the shape of a man, but his face is featureless, his robes carved only in the vaguest lines. “Is this meant to be King János?”

“Yes,” Nándor says, sounding supremely pleased with himself, and certainly noting the tremor in my voice. “His legacy is yet to be written. The statue will only be completed after he dies, when we can judge properly what sort of kingdom he has left behind. Surely you can see as well that the people of Régország want a king who will move their country further toward its Patritian ideal, rather than mingling with pagans and Yehuli, and suffusing himself with pagan magic.”