As Boyar Calazan got closer, it was a shock to realise he was handsome. His face was fine and his hair dark beneath his fur hat, his beard neatly shaped about his jaw. There was a crest at his breast: a dragon curled about a heart.
The serving girls blushed and giggled, cheering girlishly as he looked down at them, but it was Kizzy he stared at. And she, my beautiful, foolhardy sister, stared back. Boyar Calazan leaned into Boyar Valcar and murmured something.
I held my breath, feeling as though I were on a precipice. Was she about to be struck down for impudence? But then they were moving on towards the castle, and the servants were folding in after them, and beside me Kizzy looked calm, as though nothing had happened.
‘Come on,’ she said, tugging at her sash. ‘I need to get out of this.’
I later realised the serving girls must have known or guessed what was coming, must have heard from one of the castle guards, because they were edgy all afternoon. Like a flock of birds, they moved through their tasks in formation, a practised murmuration of dancing, redoing their hair, making pessaries of herbs that would ensure they would keep no baby, tittering and shooting flighty glances our way. There was a deeper malice in their eyes that I felt knot beneath my collarbone. They were waiting for something to happen, and it felt as though it would happen to us.
The girls only fell silent as the dark began to settle. Dinner was nearing, and Malovski swept in.
‘You two. Come.’
Her expression was almost solemn, her grip rigid as her back as she led us through the massive doors, along the corridor, and finally to the kitchen. The kitchen girls fell silent when we were shoved inside. Shoulders straightened, glances flicked between us, and Malovski’s face.
I searched for Mira, found her in her usual corner. She frowned at me, grey eyes questioning. A shrug was all I felt I could risk. Cook didn’t look at us, even when Malovski addressed her directly.
‘Boyar Calazan has requested bite wine,’ said Malovski, dropping our arms at last. I rubbed my hand over the sore skin. There was a collective shiver, and Mira’s questioning eyes turned afraid. ‘Two flagons.’
The set of Cook’s jaw was tight and tense as she nodded to two kitchen workers and handed one of them a key. They left instantly, without looking at us, for the wine store that was a little further along the passage in the cool dark of a cellar.
Cook looked miserable, her face deeply lined, its rich brown overlaid by a grey tinge. I noticed a fresh bruise laid across her cheek like a dusting of ash. Despite my anger at her betrayal, I felt sorry for her. She was afraid, and her fear had made her weak.
I didn’t know what bite wine was, but the reaction of the room had made me afraid. Not as afraid as I was of singing, certainly – I wasn’t sure I could physically do it: open my mouth to sing for them. It was like opening my heart.
Two flagons of wine were set on the table, and the key returned to Cook.
Malovski unlocked a small door set low in the kitchen wall with a key from her belt, and the atmosphere in the room changed completely, everyone watching. The narrow door opened, and Kizzy made to follow Malovski inside, but the woman shoved her roughly in the stomach.
‘Stay.’
Obedient, we did. Kizzy kept her eyes fixed on the middle distance, well aware of the whispers that rose like the buzzing of flies from a carcass and were fixed upon us. My eyes found Mira again, and she was chewing her lip. She tried to mouth something at me, but I couldn’t make it out.
Malovski emerged with two clay pots cradled in the crooks of her elbows. I could hear something inside them, rustling. Hissing.
The room shrank back.
‘Wine,’ she said to Kizzy and me, and Dot and Szilvie helped us lift the flagons into our arms. I wrapped my arms tightly around it, rested it on the sharp jut of my hipbones, feeling the liquid sloshing about inside like blood.
‘Follow,’ said Malovski, and it was only then, at the last possible moment, that Cook looked up. Her eye was wet with tears, her expression tortured.
‘You should be honoured,’ said Malovski. ‘Bite wine is a speciality of these parts, not normally entrusted to the new girls. There’s a performance to it but as it’s your first time I’d just get it over with.’
Kizzy and I exchanged confused looks.
‘There is time for me to demonstrate.’
She veered right, into a small antechamber opposite the stone steps that had taken us down, down into the locked dark of the dungeon. My skin crawled at the proximity. Through a high hatch I could hear the sounds of the dining hall. It was connected like the kitchen was to our old sleeping room.
Malovski set the hissing clay pots down and pulled out a thick pair of gloves from her pocket.
‘A couple of weeks ago you would not have needed these.’ She smiled unkindly at Kizzy’s hands.
‘Mistress?’ Kizzy’s voice was curious rather than afraid.
‘Stand back.’ She flipped one of the pots upside down. The hissing intensified.
‘Mistress, is that—’
‘Silence while I work. Watch carefully.’
Malovski pulled the cork from the wine bottle, and a look of intense concentration came over her fearsome face. It made her look older, deepened the powdered lines etched at her forehead. But my attention was wrenched from her a moment later, when she slid the lid from the pot, and lifted it.
Glistening coils unravelled, tongue tasting the stale air. Thick as a child’s arm, and thrice as long. My fear of it was uncontrollable, primal, instinctive. I knew this kind of snake, had caught it slithering away as we’d tramped through the forests. A meadow viper, diamonds printed along its length. It would usually leave, as scared of us as we were of it. But here, it knew there was no way out. Except to attack.
It sprung forward, but Malovski’s hands were about it faster than I could blink. I stumbled back, but Kizzy didn’t even flinch. She seemed not to care if she was bitten.
The snake’s tail whipped about, lashing onto Malovski’s arm, but by the tensing of her jaw I knew her grip was tightening as she brought the cork up to the snake’s mouth. She loosened her grasp a moment and the snake bit down, releasing its poison, enough, I knew, to kill a dog, or maim a man, turn the bitten limb black and rotten.
The snake tried to let loose the cork, but Malovski’s other hand was upon its jaws, clamping them shut. It struggled, and I felt a useless stab of pity for the beast, caught threshing in the paws of something larger and more powerful than itself. I felt I knew a little of its pain, its bewilderment.
Malovski began to slide the snake’s length into the glass neck of the wine bottle. At this, Kizzy finally broke her silence.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Showing you what you must do tonight.’
The snake was struggling more than ever, its black eyes dulling, a film coming across them like rolling fog. There was a crinkling sound, like smashing glass, as Malovski’s grip on its jaws began to break them. Nausea rose, hot and bitter in my throat.
‘You’re hurting it.’ Kizzy didn’t bother to disguise the anger in her voice.
‘So?’
The snake’s tail was now fully submerged in the inky wine. I could see its paleness flicking at the smooth glass, like a nightmare rearing through the dark. My hands twitched.
Again, it was Kizzy who spoke, but again, I felt her words bitter on my own tongue.