She has said stasis a thousand times today, but to no avail.
“Save the bones,” she sings, reciting the words Trickster had once sung, “save the bones!”
“Lost without them,” Owl joins, “have no home! Wrapped in twine to keep them grounded. Trapped in time and moonlight crown’d them.”
“And with those words,” Iseult finishes, “the soil twitched and the hedgehog’s little nose poked up from the dirt.”
“Alive!” Owl claps, her Threads flush with pleasure. She has regressed again—as she is prone to do. Her size suggests she must be six years old, but frequently she behaves like a child half that … or like a woman five times grown.
The collar, it seems, has trapped her in the younger state.
“Alive,” Iseult agrees. “Trickster’s spell was successful, and after that, the witch and her hedgehog friend went on many grand adventures for all the rest of their days.” Those words are not how Nomatsi tales end, but Iseult likes the Cartorran turn of phrase. She likes the idea of grand adventures with Safi at her side.
Owl is still clapping when a single knock sounds at the door and Leopold fon Cartorra strides in. As usual, he looks effortlessly perfect. His black brocade enhances the width of his shoulders, sharpens the tapering of his waist. He has even added a small cap that sits jauntily on one side of his head. On anyone else, it would look ridiculous.
On Leopold the Fourth, it looks dashing.
Owl rises and runs excitedly toward Leopold. “She says you are dressed very nicely,” Iseult translates as Leopold meets her. The child strokes his black cape with green curiosity. Like most things in the palace, such finery is new to her. Even her room, which is threadbare compared to Safi’s and Iseult’s, draws comments from her daily.
“It is not a color I would choose,” Leopold admits, and he offers Iseult his hands to help her rise. Even his gloves are black. “But it is imposing, and on a wedding day, it is good to look serious…” His eyes rake up and down Iseult’s new gown. Approval shimmers in his Threads.
Approval and something else. Something lilac that Iseult wishes she could not see.
“I will be back in a few hours,” she tells Owl in Nomatsi. Then to Zander in Cartorran: “Keep her safe.”
The gentle Hell-Bard smiles, his Threads suffused with warmth. “I always do.”
“Yes,” Iseult agrees, and she attempts a smile of her own. But it is tight upon her lips. Forced, false, frightening. Ever since she has reached Praga, she has tried to be like other people, wearing emotions on her face. Making expressions that reflect what people think she ought to feel.
But more often than not, she gets it wrong. And judging by Leopold’s wince, she is currently failing. Again. So she abandons the smile and hopes the heat rising up her neck is invisible.
She wishes she could simply spend her days alone with Safi. Or better yet, with Safi and the weasel on a road to Poznin. She hasn’t studied the diary pages in so long, and Poznin calls to her like a beacon in the night.
Leopold offers his arm, but before Iseult accepts, she grabs a burgundy cloak off the worn armchair in the corner. A matching scarf too, for outside of Owl’s room and her own, she dares not show her unnaturally pale skin, her unnaturally golden eyes.
Being the Cahr Awen earns her gifts, but it does not earn her respect.
Once her arm is tucked into Leopold’s—he is always so warm to the touch—they enter the passage outside. This is a newer corner of the palace built for the servants. Everything is simple wood and narrow halls.
“You look lovely,” Leopold murmurs as they march toward a distant stairwell. Hell-Bards stomp before and behind. “Such colors suit you.” There is that lilac shade in his Threads again. Desire on anyone else. On Leopold, it is an enigma.
And Iseult is grateful for her scarf, now wound about her head, for there is no doubt that her flush is quite visible. “No need to waste your charm on me, Leopold.”
“You say ‘charm’ as if it is a bad thing.” They have reached the stairs. Hell-Bard boots clomp and clatter.
“What is charm other than lies coated in sugar?” Iseult must lift her voice to be heard. The steps creak.
“It is truth coated in sugar.” Somehow Leopold makes himself heard without shouting. And he grins his winning grin. “It tastes so delicious, you do not realize you are being fed something you did not want to hear.”
“You think I don’t want to hear that I am lovely?” The stairs end, giving way to a covered walkway.
“I think,” Leopold says, his grin turning sly and Threads turning darker, “that you do not want to find yourself lovely. It raises too many possibilities.”
Iseult scowls—a real scowl that she does not have to emulate. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“For a woman always outside peering in, possibilities are confusing.”
“You are confusing.”
He laughs, but it is fake. He knows he has hit some truth Iseult avoids. He knows his words and his Threads discomfit her. And not for the first time, she wishes she had the easy rapport he and Safi share. Ever since their arrival in Praga, Leopold has become a Trickster version of himself. He plays with words and dons too many masks for Iseult to keep track of. Safi has no trouble navigating them; Iseult wishes he would just be himself.
Then again, she finds conversation with anyone difficult here, and though she does her best to emulate Safi, she always, always fails.
She will never be like her Threadsister. She will always be trapped in shadows.
Fortunately, Leopold offers no more flattery, hollow or otherwise, that Iseult must wade through, and soon they have reached a carriage that will transport them to the opposite end of the palace—and to the next step in the girls’ careful plan.
TWENTY
Safi awoke when the carriage stopped. Or maybe it was Caden’s arms moving under her that startled her back into consciousness. Either way, there was pain.
“I’m going … to be sick,” she slurred as he scooped her up and out of the carriage.
“Please don’t,” he replied. His face swam over her. She tried to hold on to his neck, but for some reason, her arms weren’t in the mood to cooperate.
Distantly, she heard horse hooves and stamping feet. Bellowed orders and Hell-Bard chain mail. And distantly, she noticed the Keep spanning before her. Safi had seen it from afar as a child. It was not a tall fortress, with its cross-shaped alignment and wide battlements, but it didn’t need to be tall to dominate. Made from a dark granite unlike anything else in the city, it absorbed all light, all warmth.
One of her greatest fears as a child had been that she would be caught for a Truthwitch and brought here. Now, she had not only come here willingly, but she’d gotten stabbed on purpose just so she could get in.
That thought made her laugh.
Or maybe it wasn’t a laugh, but a sob. Bat tits, make it stop hurting.
“We’re almost there,” Caden said.
“Liar,” Safi mumbled against his shoulder. Even in her half-delirious state, she could see they were only just entering a shadowy hall. Archways into new halls sliced off in different directions, but Caden’s course aimed onward, ever onward down a seemingly endless stretch of exposed stone.