Page 93 of The Wolf and the Woodsman

“And what if Isten punished you for it?”

She snorts. “You are starting to sound like a Patritian.”

Face flushing, I begin to formulate a reply, but Katalin pushes through the doors to the Great Hall before I can say another word. Mute and cowed, I follow her.

The feast is nothing like I expect. There’s no gouged pig, no plucked swans, no red-currant soup with clouds of sweet cream. No carafes of coveted Ionik wine. There is only one silver dish and a single goblet, and they are both set out in front of the king. His guests are strewn like precious stones around the empty tables, jeweled silks gleaming. Their eyes dart up to the dais, then back to their neighbors, sharp and bright as blade points. I catch whispers of their conversation as I walk.

“. . . don’t approve of it, not one bit . . .”

“. . . cavorting with pagans, for saints’ sake . . .”

“. . . rather the Érsek, if anything . . .”

A pang of worry makes my footsteps falter, but only for a moment. King János was certain he could silence his detractors once he had the turul’s power. But until he makes a demonstration of its magic, their whispers will go on unstemmed.

The king’s dais has been set with a long table, and Nándor is seated beside him. Gáspár sits to his father’s left, and when he sees me starts to rise, but I give my head a quick shake and he sinks down again. I don’t want more gazes drawn my way. The king’s younger sons, Matyi among them, line the table to its end. A group of Woodsmen press along the far wall, and beside them, the Érsek, as squint-eyed and blank-faced as ever. A thrill of loathing goes through me, something old and perfunctory, scarcely less rote than the instinct to breathe. Nothing will ever stop these Patritians from bristling at me, from wrapping their red belts tight to keep me away.

The wooden doors push open. A small, pale-haired serving girl carries a silver tray, her arms trembling under the weight of it. She lays it in front of the king and removes the lid. Inside, garnished with sprigs of elderflower and fleshy red slices of pomegranate is the turul.

It’s been perfumed with herbs to mask the faintly rotting smell, and its feathers seem to have a renewed, if artificial, glow. A fine layer of gold leaf is plastered to its wings and breast, not quite the right shade for its amber plumage. It lies flat on its back, wings stretched to their downy tips, as if it’s just been shot out of the sky.

Seeing the turul like this makes my stomach turn as hard and tight as a stone. Virág would weep, I think. She would throw herself in front of the king and beg to be taken instead. For all that I railed against her, she loved us all more than she loved any one of us, and much more than she loved herself.

I do none of it, but I move closer to Katalin, the fur of our wolf cloaks brushing.

The king raises his knife and fork. I see the gleam of the silverware, the gleam of his hungry gaze, and I realize what he means to do. Bringing a hand to my mouth, I lean over, gagging.

“Quiet,” Katalin whispers, but in a way that’s more comforting than chiding, and nothing I would have ever expected from her. I stand up again, my vision starry at its edges.

King János doesn’t slice into the bird like a piece of roast pork. Instead, he takes the delicate tines of his fork and plucks out the turul’s eyes, one by one, rolling them onto his plate. The eyes are iridescent in the candlelight, like two shelled insects. He spears one and holts it aloft, throat bobbing under his gray beard.

And somehow this is worse than watching the shorn wolf howl out its death, worse than watching the deer go limp under a Woodsman’s knife. I have delivered the king this feast. I feel as if I have offered my own arm to King János and told him to begin cutting wherever he liked.

The room is silent, like a long-held breath. Suddenly, Katalin reaches out and grabs my hand, fingernails carving tiny sickles into my skin. I tamp down my surprise and cling back. We hold on to each other as the king puts one of the turul’s eyes into his mouth, chokes, and then swallows. I don’t see whether he chews.

“Are you all right, my lord?” the Érsek asks in his reedy voice as the king’s face turns violet.

“I can feel it,” he rasps. “The power of it, running through me.”

He spears the second eye with his fork and puts it in his mouth. This time, he swallows it whole.

The king’s own eyes are moon-wide and just as bright. He pushes up from the table with such force that he flips it over and sends it tumbling down the dais, the tray and turul clattering to the ground with it. Guests flutter and start. King János stumbles forward, his head twisting madly, his gaze following the path of a ghost that no one else can see.

My legs are trembling with such ferocity that I think they might give way beneath me. Katalin sucks in a sharp breath, her grip on my hand tightening. The king is thrashing about the Great Hall, spittle foaming on his lips.

“I can see it,” he whispers, eyes flashing. “I can see it all. What will be. What might have been—”

He stops, a cough shuddering out of him, and a stream of rosy blood dribbles down his chin.

“Father,” Nándor says. He is standing now, too, behind the mess that King János made of the table. “What do you see?”

“Too much,” the king says. And then he screams so loudly and terribly that it cuts the air like a blade gashing through silk, and it’s all I can do not to press my hands to my ears to blot out the sound, because the least I can offer the dead turul is to hear it. He drops to the ground on his knees, screams ebbing to whimpers.

How long have I wanted to see King János kneel? Now it feels like a trickster god’s perverse joke, that I can’t watch it without wanting to retch. Gáspár moves to his father’s side, but even he can’t disguise the look of revulsion on his face. Tears have dried in salt streaks on the king’s face, and there is spittle crusted in his beard. He wails and weeps, and I can only wonder whether this happened to Vilmötten, too, when the turul gave him the gift of sight. This was never in any of Virág’s stories.

Suddenly, the clamor of the king’s sobs is knifed through with a laugh. A high-pitched, pealing laugh that I would know anywhere, for how often it rang in my ears while I snarled and thrashed. Katalin’s whole body is shaking with that laughter, and her mouth is wide open enough to show the pearls of her perfect teeth.

“How dare you—” one of the Woodsmen begins, but Katalin pays him no mind. She lets go of my hand and picks her way across the room, a streak of pure white among all the wood and silk and stone. There’s a smile gracing her scarred and lovely face. When she reaches the king, she lowers herself beside his crumpled form.