Page 76 of The Wolf and the Woodsman

As if by instinct, I reach into my pocket for my mother’s braid, but I remember that I am wearing Jozefa’s dress, and not my wolf cloak.

“I was only one girl,” I whisper. “And so was my mother.”

Gáspár opens his mouth to reply, then closes it again. Guilt flits across his face, though I hadn’t really meant for my words to wound him. I know that he is remembering the first time he saw me across the clearing, a bound and quaking sacrifice. Before the memory can make me falter, I turn on my heel and shove into the king’s chamber.

King János is kneeling at his bed, hands clasped. When he sees me, he leaps to his feet, reaching up to steady the fingernail crown on his head. He blinks at me mutely; there is something crusted into the corners of his lips.

“I’m not here to kill you,” I say, “but it would be only fair if I did, since you broke our bargain.”

The king lifts his chin, indignant. “I’ve broken nothing. Your village is unharmed, if not for the loss of one girl.”

“That’s all our village is!” I burst out. “Girls and women, boys and men. People. Would you say I left you unharmed if I cut off your arm or your leg?”

King János takes a step away from me, one hand still on his crown. “You wouldn’t dare, wolf-girl. My blood would spill under the door and reveal you. You would never leave the palace alive.”

But that has always been true. The moment that I entered Király Szek with a wolf cloak on my back I knew I was more likely to die than to ever step beyond its gates again. I think of how Esther spoke to the king so shrewdly, how she handled him so gingerly, the way you might eat around the spot of black in your apple. I can only try and do the same now.

“You’ll kill her, then.” My voice is soft, careful. Gáspár would commend me for speaking with such little venom. “Just like you did all the others. Add her fingernails to your crown.”

“She is not like the others,” says the king. “She’s a seer.”

“And what sort of power do you think her death will grant you?” My mind conjures images of Virág, writhing in the dirt. “A seer’s magic isn’t what you think. Their visions come at random, and what they see is never what you really want. You think her power will put you inside the mind of the bey, will anticipate his moves before he makes them, but it won’t. It wouldn’t be like—”

I almost mention the turul. My jaw snaps shut.

King János’s eyes film over. He wanders toward the long window, his face turning gray-washed in the gridded squares of rheumy light. I can’t help but think of his father’s statue in the courtyard, hunched by the legacy of his failures.

“If I can end the war,” he says, “then I can end what ails us here too. When food is scarce and sons are dying, the people always look for someone to blame. Nándor has pointed toward the Yehuli, the pagans. Now I am blamed for protecting them.” His gaze shifts to me, a turbid look in it, like the pond water made murky by the thrashing of some fish. “Truly, wolf-girl, what would you have me do? Tell me—your counsel can be no less useful than that of my insipid advisers, who have only their own hoards behind their eyes.”

His words stun me, not to mention the beseeching tenor of his voice. He is not nearly as much a buffoon as I have thought, sipping his wine, oblivious to the knives being drawn at his back. I remember Count Reményi’s face in the crowd, and all those Woodsmen, black as shadows. Perhaps the king is as fettered as I am, as fettered as Gáspár, surviving in whatever shameful way he can. The truth of what the king is brings me no comfort. I almost wish I could still imagine him a monster, some seven-headed beast with lashing tongues, swallowing up wolf-girls for his supper. Now I see only a skinny dog gnawing on an old bone, already stripped of all its lustiest bits.

“Why protect them, then?” I ask, when I can manage to speak again. “Why not finish what Saint István started?”

“You already know,” the king says.

And it strikes me then that I do. I have known ever since I first saw his gruesome crown, since I saw the counts in their pagan garb, trussed with feathers and draped in bear cloaks. They cannot kill the old ways entirely, or else they will lose their power. They will only take and take the parts that they like, the fingernails and the titles that their pagan blood right grants them, one girl every few years, not the whole village. Nándor told me that the Patrifaith was what made Régország, but that’s not true. It is made of a thousand different threads twining together like tree roots, shooting up tall and thick, aching toward some impossible whole. Mithros and Vilmötten are like a two-headed statue, or a coin with a different face on either side.

I cut off my finger so that I could survive. Gáspár let his father take his eye so he would not cut his throat. And now Katalin must die, so that the rest of Keszi can live.

“So it is, then,” I say, my voice thick with pain. “Another girl dead to keep the wolves from the door.”

The king lifts one shoulder, gaze steady. For a moment, I can see a bit of Gáspár in him, like a trick of the light.

“I know you must hate me, wolf-girl,” he says. “But I am certain you hate my son more.”

There is nowhere else for me to go, so I return to my chamber. My mind and body feel heavy, weighed down with a thousand unmade decisions. By now the sky is black, depthless and starless. It has been mere hours since my father held me in Batya’s house, but the memory seems irretrievably distant, and even though I try to summon it, I can recapture none of its warmth. All I can see is Katalin vanishing down the hall, like a white stone tossed into a well. All I can see is Nándor’s face, livid gold in the torchlight.

The collar of Jozefa’s dress feels stifling now, the starched wool painting a rash of red across my throat. As if moved by some invisible hand, I go toward the trunk at the foot of my bed and retrieve my wolf cloak. Katalin’s wolf cloak. The wolf’s teeth look yellower than I remembered. When I touch one, a tiny shard of bone comes away in my fingers. I search the pockets and find my mother’s braid, coiled around itself like a cold snake. I squeeze it tight in my fist.

I remember how much I railed against Virág’s decision to send me to the Woodsmen, how much her betrayal tormented me. It felt every day like a different wound, my mind forever conjuring some new way for it to ache. Watching Virág paint my hair silver in her hut, Katalin had finally gone quiet. Even she had been cowed by Virág’s unimaginable coldness, a hurt worse than any she could ever cause.

If I let Katalin die now, I might as well admit that Virág was right to cast me away. That the life of one wolf-girl is no more than a brittle shield to throw up at the slightest threat or provocation. That we all have been reared only for the Woodsmen’s axes.

A soft knock on the door makes me jump. But it’s only the shivering servant girl, Riika, holding out a bolt of deep plum silk. When she unfurls it, I see that it’s a dress, with long pooling sleeves and gold stitched up the bodice.

“The king had this sewn for you,” she says. “So that you could attend feasts without attracting so much attention as a—”

The word wolf-girl dies in her throat. Anger steals over me, and I snatch the dress out of her hands. I toss it in the vague direction of the hearth, even though it’s not lit. It flutters emptily to the floor instead, bodiless as a ghost.