Page 86 of The Wolf and the Woodsman

“No,” she says. “Only the path to the pine forest where the trees grow as wide around as huts, and tall enough to brush the highest clouds.”

“What is the power that’s worth risking your gods’ vengeance?” Gáspár’s voice is level, but I see the flicker in his eye.

“The power to see,” says Katalin. “To see everything. What has happened before and what is happening now in the most far-off places you can imagine and what will happen in a day or a year or even a moment. You could even read the thoughts in men’s minds. That’s the sort of power your father was going to kill me for, even though I don’t have it. No seer does. Only the turul.”

Gáspár leans back against the rock that we’ve sheltered ourselves beneath. I have the urge to bury myself in his chest, but I feel oddly afraid to reveal my affections in front of Katalin. Though she has nothing to gain from hurting me now, I can tell by the cut of her gaze she thinks me a traitor, a slave to the Woodsmen and the Crown. I swallow hard instead.

“It would be like burning your chapel to the ground,” I say. “Or looting Saint István’s corpse. Killing the turul is like defiling something sacred, something we all spin toward like a compass point.”

Katalin makes a derisive sound in the back of her throat; I know she is taking offense at me comparing the turul to any of the Patrifaith’s holy symbols.

Overhead, the sky is turning to a riot of color, ribbons of green and purple light wavering across it. The Juvvi believe that when whales in the Half-Sea breach the surface of the dark water, they’re so elated at the sight of the stars above them that they let out streams of rainbow light through their blowholes, winking radiance into the night. The Juvvi think this a good omen, portending a bountiful fishing season, a glut of silver-backed fish squirming in their twined nets. I don’t know what sort of future this portends for me.

“We can’t rest for very long,” Gáspár says. “Nándor’s men will be close behind.”

I nod, my eyes watering with the sting of the wind. I am about to lie back and rest my head on my arms when I hear Katalin gasp softly. She tips backward into the snow, little more than a heap of wolf fur and thrashing limbs, her pupils gone empty and white.

It is mere instinct that moves me, primed after so many years of watching Virág succumb to her visions. I kneel beside Katalin and roll her head into my lap, even as she flails, her mouth gaping open and then closing again silently, as if she’s gasping for air.

Gáspár draws a short, sharp breath. “Is this what it’s like every time?”

“Yes,” I say, as Katalin’s phantom hand nicks a chunk of flesh from my cheek, the bloody skin wedged beneath her fingernail. I think about how I held Virág the same way, and then how I held the secret of her writhing weakness close to me, too, so that no one else had to know the truth of what happened behind the walls of her hut in the dark. My fingers close around Katalin’s wrists, pinning her arms to the ground. Gáspár grabs hold of her ankles until the shaking stops and her eyes slide shut.

When she opens them again, her eyes are blue, only wider and colder than before, as if the chill air snuck into her as the vision flooded out.

“Katalin,” I manage. “What did you see?”

She flings herself up and rolls away from me, panting. “A tree, its trunk soaked in blood. And you—Évike, you were the one to kill it. The turul.”

The realization is like a rush of freezing lake water. I want to fight it, to armor myself against its truth, but a seer’s visions have never been wrong before. Gáspár lays a hand on the small of my back.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

Katalin’s eyes thin. Her white hair is pasted to her forehead with cold sweat. “What are you apologizing for?”

“Well—” I begin, but then I stop, because I’m not exactly sure either.

“I never apologized to you,” she says.

Stiffening, I say, “I don’t suppose you’ll do it now, though.”

“No,” she concedes. She draws herself into a sitting position, knees against her chest, still managing, somehow, to look down her nose at me. “But I won’t taunt you for making besotted eyes at a Woodsman, or even for lying with one, if that’s as true as I suspect. As it is in the Upper-World, so it is in the Under-World.”

Gáspár’s brow furrows. “What?”

“It’s just a saying,” I explain wearily. “One of Virág’s adages. It means that there is a balance between two things, sort of like a bargain.”

Virág’s name burns a hole in my tongue. On her best days, she held me in her lap and whispered her stories in my ear, and I didn’t hate them so much when they were only for me, only for the two of us, and not a whetted blade that Katalin and the rest could use to wound me. If there are any threads still left to tie me back to her and to Keszi, I can feel them wearing with every passing moment, with every step that I move closer to the pine forest and the turul. Katalin’s vision feels like the swing of a sword.

Gáspár must notice my anguish, because he says, “Sleep now. I’ll take the first watch.”

Numbly, I nod. I sink down, resting my head in his lap and letting my eyes slide shut. Dreams loose through my mind: hunting dogs with snapping jaws, the turul in a golden cage. Nándor’s chest sewing up again, his wound vanishing bloodlessly. The ice ossifying around his pupils. My father embracing me and whispering the true name of God in my ear. The name was him asking me to save them, to be as shrewd as Queen Esther or as strong as the clay-man, and I am neither, just a girl shivering in the dark.

When I wake, the sky is still fuzzy and black and Gáspár’s hand is cupping my cheek. I rouse quickly, shaking off slumber. Katalin has already woken and is guiding her horse toward a small patch of bristly grass, sweeping the frost off it with the toe of her boot. Gáspár stands and saddles his own horse, exhaustion etched in violet circles under his eye. My stomach clenches.

“I’m sorry you’ve had to stay awake so long on my account,” I say, meaning it. “I hope you enjoyed at least one of your sleepless nights.”

I only want to see him flush, and he does, his cheeks and ear tips pinking faintly.