Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen

Zsigmond’s house is nothing like I expect. In fact, half of me is still thinking of him as a Yehuli man, and wondering what sort of house a Yehuli man would live in, while the other half of me thinks of him as my father, and my mind paints its own misty imaginings of what sort of house my father would live in. I wonder if I will ever think of him as my father, a Yehuli man. A Yehuli man who is my father.

There is only one room, with a bed and a hearth and a table with chairs. It is not entirely unlike Virág’s hut, but Zsigmond’s things are finer, merchant-crafted rather than homespun. Wrought-iron candle stands with carved ivy clambering up the length. A woven tablecloth embroidered with flowers and leaves that has no moth-eaten edges. The familiarity of it chills me rather than comforts me. I realize for the first time that I want Zsigmond to be different from anything I have known before. A new father for my new life.

“Thank you,” I stammer out, clenching and unclenching my fingers as Zsigmond stokes the fire. “I’m sorry it’s so late. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

The fire crackles pleasantly, tongues of flame licking at the blackened stone. Zsigmond stands, brushing ash from his knees, and says, “You did. But I asked you to come, and I never told you when, so I should have known to expect you at any hour of the day.”

I blink at him, shoulders still raised around my ears. It only now occurs to me how much I am braced for scoldings and lashings, flinching at the slightest change in pitch or the sudden tense of a fist. But Zsigmond looks at me steadily, his thick brows pulled together with concern rather than consternation.

“I need your help,” I say, encouraged by his gentle face. “Someone left a note for me, in the palace. I can’t read it.”

A breath goes out of Zsigmond. I think I hear relief in it. I realize that he, too, has been bracing for something worse.

“Let me see,” he says. And then, almost as a second thought, “Évike.”

Hearing him say my name melts some of the ice in my belly. I reach into the folds of my skirt and retrieve the scrap of parchment, now bunched small and tight, no bigger than an acorn. I try to smooth it flat again before I hand it to him, but even I can see that the ink has run into a bizarre cartography, a pattern that is no pattern at all. Zsigmond squints at it anyway, holding the note up to the candlelight, ink darkening the pads of his thumbs.

“I’m sorry,” he says after a moment. “I can make out a few letters, but the rest is too smudged.”

I nod, a burn rising in my throat. “Thank you for trying.”

Zsigmond nods back at me. He puts the parchment down on the table, and like a lunatic I almost laugh at the absurdity of it: my note on his table. Me, standing in my father’s house, shorn of my wolf cloak, looking into his eyes. As a child it would have seemed a more impossible dream than seeing my mother again, or than gleefully watching Katalin pecked to death by a thousand crows. I hoarded those unfathomable dreams as I did my braid and my coin, polishing them in my mind like a mirror, seething, waiting.

“Do you remember her?” The words tumble out of my mouth almost without me willing it. “My mother.”

Zsigmond’s face creases. The corners of his mouth pull down, and I can hear him swallowing. For a moment I think, with no small amount of alarm, that he might cry.

“Of course I do,” he says. “You must think I’m a monster, or at least an especially cold and callous man. You must have wondered why I never came back for you, or why I never tried to stop them from taking Magda.”

Hearing him say it conjures an old pain, the oldest pain I know, and it makes me as mean as a limping dog.

“Yes,” I say, venom lacing my voice. “I did wonder why my own father seemed not to care for me at all.”

Zsigmond is silent, gaze faltering. I am glad, just for a moment, that I have cowed him. I have spent so many years coaxed out of my own pain, half convinced that I had no right to feel it. Afraid that even that would be taken from me, and the memories that came with it.

“I named you, you know,” Zsigmond says finally. His voice is tight, small, as if someone has wrapped a tender hand around his throat. “Évike. It means ‘life,’ in the Yehuli tongue. I went to Keszi every year for six years in a row, and spent seven days with Magda every time. It doesn’t amount to very much, and none of my family or friends here in Király Szek could understand why I was so taken with a woman that I seemed to scarcely know at all, and whose life was so different from mine. But in truth, it only took one day for me to know that I loved her. And I did love her.”

“Then why did you leave her?” There’s a dull ache in my chest, like the tick of blood behind a bruise.

“She didn’t want to come with me. What sort of life is there, for a pagan woman in Király Szek?” I narrow my eyes at his words, and Zsigmond’s face goes pale with chagrin. “Never mind the Patritians—it’s not looked upon well for a Yehuli man to wed a woman outside the community. And then the king removed me from my post, and I couldn’t return to Keszi on my own. It was too dangerous to traverse the forest without the escort of the Woodsmen. I had been warned by that woman, Virág, that Magda’s child—that our child—would be an outcast in Keszi too. But Magda wanted to keep you. There was nothing I could do.”

His voice tips up at the end, edging with desperation. His eyes are starry and wet, bleary with the reflection of candlelight. I try to memorize the canvas of his face, every fold in his brow, the particular set of his jaw, so I can hold it with me and know this: for so long I thought that I was carrying the weight of my mother’s death alone, but in the moment that the king swung his blade, he cleaved that pain in two. My father has carried his piece of it all these years, like a stone split down its middle, the jagged edges of his half fitting perfectly with mine.

“Tell me something about her,” I say, biting my lip. “Something I don’t know.”

“She wanted to learn to read,” Zsigmond says. He gives several measured blinks, drying his eyes. “I always brought a book with me when I traveled, so I could show her the letters. By the time she died, I had taught her the alphabet. She could spell her name.”

It would have been too much, to hold this grief on my own. But Zsigmond is still looking at me, gaze clear now and starless, and the hearth floods the room with such a wonderful smoky warmth that I never want to leave it. Words float up.

“Will you teach me too?”

I am not a particularly fast learner. The night unspools over us like Zsigmond’s endless rolls of parchment. The quill feels awkward in my hand, too small and thin. It doesn’t make sense that two etched lines meeting in a downward point mean the sound vee, which, Zsigmond tells me, is the second letter of my name, but he says it doesn’t matter. A long time ago someone sat down and decided that these etched lines meant something, and then everyone else agreed to it and made it true. My quill moves painstakingly across the parchment, tracing letter after letter, until I can recognize them all even upside down.

It takes hours, but once I have them committed to my mind, it all seems so simple that it makes my blood boil. Like with my magic, I feel as if I’ve just learned a secret that the world has been cruelly conspiring to keep from me. I write my name over and over again, five letters and three syllables that hold me like a cupped hand. É-V-I-K-E.

Zsigmond is not a particularly patient tutor. After I have exhausted three hours of his time, he returns to his own books with a sigh. I like this streak of peevishness in him, and that he trusts me enough to let it show. The books that he pores over are Yehuli holy texts, and he spends as many hours studying them as I do learning the Régyar letters for the first time.

It seems like a strange thing to me, that you should have to study from a book in order to properly worship the Yehuli god. No one in Keszi can read, and the Patritians make it sound like their god is something you ought to know, or else not ask too many questions about. Zsigmond scrawls questions into the very margins of his scrolls, underlining passages that he agrees with and marking up ones that he doesn’t. All of it baffles me. Can you believe in something while still running your hand over its every contour, feeling for bumps and bruises, like a farmer trying to pick the best, roundest peach?

“That is the only way to truly believe in something,” Zsigmond says. “When you’ve weighed and measured it yourself.”

I wonder—stupidly, shamefully—what Gáspár would say about that. I think he would say that God is too big for one mortal hand to hold. You would need a thousand pairs of limbs to carry it, and a thousand eyes to see it. Or something like that, in his pompous prince’s voice.

A thin band of orange light lips over the horizon, and muffled words leaf through Zsigmond’s window, like a plant stretching its long green vines. Eventually, there’s a knock on the door. I watch from behind the table as he opens it to reveal the same stout woman who chided me from her threshold only two days ago. She pauses when she sees me, her wide mouth falling open as if it is a hatch.

“Zsigmond, who—” she starts.

“It’s my daughter,” Zsigmond says easily, as if they are words he has been practicing his whole life. A warm pleasure puddles in me hearing them. “Évike.”

The woman rubs her eyes; the way she is staring at me I might as well be a smudge on a windowpane, something she wants to see past. I remember what Zsigmond said: that it isn’t looked kindly upon for a Yehuli man to father a child with someone who is not of their blood.

“And you didn’t think to—oh, never mind.” The woman brushes by Zsigmond and sets down something on the table. It’s a loaf of braided bread, shining honey-gold. She holds out her hand to me, still not quite meeting my eyes. “I’m Batya. I’ve been keeping your father fed for the last twenty years.”

Zsigmond’s lips part as if to protest, but a hawk-eyed glare from Batya silences him. I take her hand and she squeezes mine tightly, three times, like she’s trying to judge its heft. Already she reminds me of Virág. Her gaze sweeps over the parchment in front of me, streaked over and over again with the five letters of my name.

“Évike,” I say. My fingers are half-numb by the time she lets go.

“And will you be joining us for our celebration next week?” Batya asks, a hand on her hip. When I only stare at her blankly, she turns back to Zsigmond. “Well, you might as well invite her. You’re already teaching her to read, I see. She might as well hear some of our stories, and try a bit of our food.” Her eyes go up and down me again, and then she says something to Zsigmond in the Yehuli tongue, something I don’t understand, and I only catch the word zaftig.

Whatever it is, it makes Zsigmond scowl. When Batya leaves again, my father sits down across from me and offers me the bread, so brusquely it seems almost like he expects me to refuse it. I pick off a piece and taste it. Each bite dissolves sweetly on my tongue. Zsigmond seems relieved.

“What did she say about me?” I press. “Batya.”

“The Yehuli tongue is like a long hallway with locked doors on all sides,” he says.

It is the first time he has been so evasive, and it mortifies me. I don’t take another bite of the bread, and pick up my quill again. As dawn ladders up over Király Szek, it occurs to me that I haven’t slept, and a sudden tiredness clouds my mind.

“Then teach me to open them,” I say finally, more a petulant challenge than genuine entreaty. If Yehuli is an oak tree branching between us, I only want to clamber over it, or else hack it down to nothing. I wonder if he worries what Batya and the others will think, if they see his half-blooded daughter speaking their tongue and writing their words.

“Perhaps,” says Zsigmond. I just stare at him, unblinking, and eventually he relents to only a few words, even though they vex me terribly. I don’t know which is worse—the speaking or the writing. The sounds tear up the back of my throat, and the words are missing half the letters that I learned in Régyar. The word ohr makes me feel as if I’m choking on food, but when my father traces its letters into the base of his candle stand, the wick goes up in perfect light.

My vision trains on the teardrop of flame. “Could you put it out too?”

“Certainly,” Zsigmond says. “Creation and destruction are two sides of the same coin.”

Like Isten in the Upper-World and Ördög down below. “And can all Yehuli do magic like that?”

“All who have the patience to learn it. Our children learn to read and write Yehuli at the same time they learn Régyar, so they can study the holy text.”

It seems less troublesome than lopping off a pinky, or listening to Virág’s interminable stories, struggling to commit every detail of Vilmötten’s exploits to immaculate memory. My heart skitters like an animal in the underbrush. I’m afraid that if I needle Zsigmond too much he will shrink away from me, or begin to feel that having a daughter is more burden than blessing. But I try one more question anyway.

“And the celebration,” I say, “the one that Batya mentioned . . .”

Zsigmond gives a slow nod. “It’s a holiday. Not a big one, but we will go to the temple and hear the rabbi tell the story. If you would like to come, you must let me ask Batya to borrow a dress from one of her daughters.”

His easy acquiescence shocks and thrills me, but I sense a current of uncertainty beneath it. Perhaps my very presence will jeopardize his position among the Yehuli—it was the reason that my mother never took me to Király Szek to begin with. Going to the temple with my father will require as much delicate maneuvering as attending a banquet with the king. I am still not quite one of them, and I don’t know if I ever will be. I brace myself against these worries, curling my ink-stained fingers into my palm, and remind myself why I came to Zsigmond last night. If I’m not careful, I will end up with a knife in my back before I can decide whether to be Yehuli or not.

Still, I don’t want to leave Yehuli Street. When Zsigmond opens the door for me, I reach out and take his hand impetuously, swallowing hard and waiting to see if he will squeeze mine back. His thumb brushes across the nub where my pinky once was, and then his other hand closes over our twined fingers, a perfect weight.

The king has gathered all his counts for a council meeting, and of course I am compelled to be in the chamber beside him. We all sit around an oaken table, the king at its head with his crown of fingernails, parchment scrolls unfurling before him like shed snakeskin. Now I can recognize the letters on them, but my vision goes fuzzy when I try to noose them into words. I fear how long it will take before I’m able to read Régyar, to decipher the silent threats coiled on the table in front of me.

Although I saw them at the king’s feast, the counts are scarcely recognizable. They wear their silk dolmans now, each as neat and bright as a lizard sunning itself on a rock. I can only tell them apart by the small ornaments they wear on their chest, symbols of their region: a shard of antler for the count of Szarvasvár, a white feather for the count of Akosvár, a tuft of wolf fur for the count of Farkasvár, and a bear’s long claw pinned to the breast of the Kalevan count. Count Furedi, who administers Farkasvár from a great walled fortress on the western side of Ezer Szem, gives me the chilliest of stares. We wolf-girls are his region’s greatest embarrassment.

I stare back, eyes narrowing. I wonder if he was the one who left the note at my door, but his face betrays nothing. If there is anyone in this city, aside from Nándor, who would want me dead, it is Count Furedi. Nándor and Gáspár are both barred from the king’s council meetings, but their names run quietly beneath every thread of conversation, like the simmer of distant thunder. It quickly becomes clear enough what side each count has chosen.

“We intercepted a missive from the Merzani bey to his soldiers,” says Count Furedi, tearing his gaze from mine. “Once they manage to cross the border into Akosvár, they were instructed to burn the crops, to starve us into submission. They know very well that winter is near.”

“Of course.” Count Reményi, who administers Akosvár, curls his large fingers into a larger fist. “Forgive me, my lord, but I have warned you of precisely such a thing. Already the inhabitants of Akosvár have begun to abandon their villages and flee north, seeking refuge behind the walls of my own keep. We cannot accommodate any more of these refugees, and we certainly won’t be able to feed them once winter is upon us.”

I remember Gáspár’s words—that with each Régyar soldier dead at the hands of the Merzani army, Nándor’s appeal grows. I think further of the peasants I saw at the festival, with their dirty hands and missing teeth. They seemed hardly less desperate than the people of Kajetán’s village, and easy prey for a very pretty man who makes empty promises.

“We are expecting a hard winter in Kaleva,” says Count Korhonen, in his lilting Northern accent. “But we trust that the guidance and the goodwill of Godfather Life will carry us through these difficult months.”

“Indeed we do,” comes the voice of Count Németh of Szarvasvár, who is preoccupied stroking his antler ornament. “We must thank Godfather Life for his blessings, and perhaps appease Godfather Death with a greater sacrifice. What say you, my lord?”

Although it is his council meeting, and I am his personal guard, it’s easy to forget that the king is even seated beside me. He blinks, dazed, as if someone has just prodded him from slumber.

“Well, we must fight, of course,” he says. “We have an influx of soldiers from the Volkstadt to furnish our armies for the time being, and—”

“Forgive me, my lord, but no soldiers will help us if God Himself is not on our side,” Count Reményi cuts in. “The Prinkepatrios will leave our country to Thanatos and the Merzani heathens if we continue to foster pagans—in our very own palace, no less. And I cannot pretend I haven’t seen this.”

He tosses a scroll of parchment onto the table. Count Furedi snatches it up quickly, too quickly for me to decipher any of the letters, much less knit them into words.

“It’s posted on nearly every stall in the marketplace,” says Count Reményi. “It is a message from some of the Patrifaith’s Sons and Daughters in the capital, and many of the peasants and merchants have signed it too. They are unhappy that you’ve continued to allow the pagans to thrive in Keszi, and even invited one to sit at our council table.”

Hearing him say it while wearing the feather of the White Falcon Tribe on his chest, while claiming his fortress and his land through the lineage of a blood chieftain, makes my veins run hot.

“We’re hardly thriving,” I snap. “We endure the same winters as you, only worse because the forest grows too thick and too close for us to plant many crops, not to mention worrying about monsters and Woodsmen. And in case you think that your nation is otherwise pure, I must tell you that the old magic is still alive in every forest of Farkasvár, every hill and valley in Szarvasvár, and every field of Akosvár too. We met nameless wraiths and witches on our journey here, and your own party of Woodsmen were eaten by monsters not two steps onto the Little Plain.”

“And why should we believe a word of your pagan fairy tales?” Count Reményi challenges.

To my surprise, Count Németh’s tepid voice rises from the other end of the table. “The wolf-girl isn’t wrong, Reményi. In Szarvasvár I have peasants run out of their winter villages by women made of stone and swamp grass, and hunters and woodcutters found with their hearts carved out of their chests. What else could be the cause, if not monsters and old magic?”

“If anything, it is only more proof that God is punishing Régország for continuing to harbor heathens.”

“The monsters are killing us too,” I point out in a tremulous voice, scarcely able to keep from shouting. “And perhaps if the Woodsmen did a proper job of hunting them, rather than skulking around the city so they can lick your bastard-prince’s boots, there would be fewer hunters with missing hearts.”

Count Reményi’s hand curls around the edge of the table; I hear the sound of his chair scraping across the stone floor, as though he is readying himself to stand. “It is a disgrace to God that you were allowed living into this city, much less into our council chamber. Unrepentant pagans like you will be the downfall of Régország.”

I see him pushing up from his seat, but before he can get very far, a band of metal stretches over both of his wrists, locking him to the table. The king has risen, one hand on his crown of fingernails. All the color has gone out of his cheeks, and his very mustache looks limp.

“Sit,” he rasps, and Count Reményi does.

Despite his gruesome coronet, the forging has taken something from him. In another moment, the metal flakes and rusts, withering into nothing. I tense my muscles, ready to spring between the king and Count Reményi, my four fingers closed into a fist. Even the animal instinct shames me. Have I become little more than a dog on a leash?

“I have made up my mind about the pagans and the wolf-girl,” the king says, returning to his seat. “She sits beside me docilely, wearing proper Patritian dress; you would hardly know she is a wolf-girl at all. And you have seen what kind of power she has—what kind of power this crown grants me. The Érsek will punish the Sons and Daughters who wrote this message in defiance of their king.”

Count Reményi’s gaze cuts to me as he lifts a hand to rub at his wrist. For such a large man he has small, beady eyes that remind me of the weasels I would hunt for sport, not enough meat on their bones to justify the work of skinning and eating them.

“There is still the matter of the Yehuli,” the chastened count says. “They overrun this city like vermin. They are equally an affront to the Prinkepatrios, with their black rituals and their false god.”

I know right away that these are not his words—they are the words that Nándor has snuck into his mouth, just to rile me. I keep still, my belly churning, careful not to reveal myself. The truth of my blood will only be another strike against me, and it will only damn Zsigmond and the Yehuli further.

“The Yehuli provide important services, do they not?” Count Korhonen tilts his head. “They can handle coin so we don’t have to sully our hands with it, and they can work on the Lord’s Day, saving the Patritians from breaking our vows to God.”

“The Yehuli god may be a false one, but at least they do worship one,” Count Németh says begrudgingly.

I draw a breath and try to keep my voice level. “The pagans and the Yehuli are both living peacefully. They’re no threat to you.”

Count Reményi barks a laugh. “I trust that you haven’t received much tutelage in Volken, wolf-girl, but our banquet guests were quite clear in their demands. Régország is a shield between them and the Merzani. If they conquer us, it won’t be long before the whole continent is overrun by Merzan, and the Patrifaith is crushed beneath their soldiers’ feet. We are not much good as a shield if we cannot even keep our own country united and pure—that is the threat of the Yehuli. And what is it that keeps the Yehuli here? Only their desire to leverage our own misfortune against us, as the business of moneylending is most profitable in times of greatest desperation. Rodinya has set aside a large swath of its territory where the Yehuli can live in peace, away from Patritians. They can have villages and towns all their own. Already the Volkstadt and the other countries to the west have begun sending their Yehuli to this region. Why should we not do the same with ours?”

The other counts fall silent, heads bobbing, blinking their consideration. As if buoyed by their silence, Count Reményi presses on.

“Régország is a country for Régyar,” he says. “For Patritians. If we are to stand against the Merzani, we cannot risk a divided nation. Our neighbors already think poorly of Régország, and are eager to cast us as eastern barbarians. If we follow their example in banishing our Yehuli, it will improve our country’s standing in their eyes.”

I know these are Nándor’s words too. There is a sleekness to his argument that even pulls at some part of me, making my mind splutter at the possibility. Would Zsigmond be happy to live somewhere else, in a city or town of only Yehuli? Would he give up his house, his street, even his Régyar name? The notion sits in the base of my stomach like a stone. If I were truly one of the Yehuli, I would already know the answer.

“I will think on it,” the king says. His eyes are half-lidded. “Until then, I will need you all to send more soldiers to the border.”

A shared murmuring passes among the counts, like wind whispering through the reeds. Count Reményi draws a breath.

“You concern yourself greatly with the threat beyond our borders, but there are as many threats inside,” he says, voice steady despite the low set of his brow. “The continued existence of the Yehuli and the pagans threatens to plunge all of Régország into a heretic darkness. And yet you ask us all, your trusted councilors, to stand by and watch? The Yehuli celebrate a holiday next week, and they will fill the streets with their unholy worshipping. What will our Volken guests think when they see it?”

Fear grips me, cold and tight. Count Reményi’s words are nearly treasonous, but the king only sits up a bit straighter in his seat, balancing the crown of fingernails on his head. When he speaks, there is not much fire in it.

“It was Saint István who gave you your fortress and all the green lands surrounding it, and you are speaking now to his heir. You will give me the men I need now.”

Finally, Reményi goes quiet, his hand tensing around the edge of the table. The white feather on his chest seems to bristle, even though the air in the chamber is stiff, still. I know he is thinking of another one of Saint István’s heirs, one that he would like to see wear the crown instead.

“Come with me,” the king says brusquely. “I must consult the Prinkepatrios.”

After my sleepless night with Zsigmond the council meeting has left me particularly weary, and I don’t have the strength to refuse, even if my oath would allow it. My mind is reeling with everything I have learned, and all that I still don’t know. It is like the blank spaces where the Yehuli vowels ought to be, something you must be taught by someone older and wiser, if you ever want to understand how to fill the absence.

The chapel surprises me by being carved right into the cliffside. Its oaken door is wedged between two knuckles of rock, scarcely wide enough for the king and I to walk through at once. Torches are mounted on blackened stones, and candles are set in the cave’s many small orifices, casting bubbles of filmy light. Green moss spangles the ceiling, a damp, breathing topography. The Sons and Daughters of the Patrifaith scuttle through the pews, looking like little brown mice. Their shaven heads are as glossy as pearls in the recessed candlelight. I wonder which among them drew up the missive calling for my death.

Gáspár and Nándor have both joined us here, looking properly contrite. After hearing Count Reményi’s ramblings I am even more loath to meet Nándor’s stare, though he watches me with hawkish scrutiny, his eyes holding the pale candlelight. Gáspár keeps his face turned away from me, too, but I see his gaze flicker toward me once, so briefly I might only have imagined it.

“Some say the three-pronged spear is really a trident.” Gáspár’s voice, hushed as it is, still echoes through the near-vacant church. Syllables scrape the craggy ceiling. “They say that the Patrifaith began as the cult of a sea god in Ionika, but it morphed and changed as it moved further north.”

“Detractors and infidels say that,” Nándor replies flatly. “And princes who spend too much time reading the mad scribblings of heretics in the palace archives.”

“These things should not be spoken of in a holy place,” the king says, sounding almost queasy.

A narrow aisle breaches the pews, clambering over the rock and up to a large stone altar. Melting candles are heaped upon it like dirty snow. They have cooled and hardened into a single mound, needles of ossified wax dripping off the edge of the dais. Mounted above it is the three-pronged spear, or trident, of the Prinkepatrios, set in gold, and below it a marble statue, dyed pale green by a hundred years of moist air. It’s of a man, entirely nude, his muscled arms coiled around the throat of a huge bull. Moss grows over his bare toes. Ivy wreathes the bull’s long horns.

The statue is so curious that I can’t help the question falling from my lips. “Who is that?”

“Mithros,” Gáspár surprises me by answering. “He was a mortal man granted the favor of the Prinkepatrios. He proved himself to be a great hero, so the Prinkepatrios made him immortal. He stepped into the sea and vanished, joining God in heaven.”

I don’t like how very much Mithros sounds like Vilmötten. As we approach the altar, I can see the bulging sinew of Mithros’s bare thighs, and the appendage hanging between them. It makes me wonder how Gáspár ended up so fretfully prudish when he’s spent his life worshipping at the feet of some lusty naked man’s statue.

The king and his sons kneel before the altar, hands clasped. From behind, I can see only their bent backs and their hunched shoulders, their hair. The king’s, gray with age; Gáspár’s, his dark curls twining down his neck; Nándor’s like whorls of liquid gold. They are still and quiet for several moments until the Érsek emerges from behind the altar, swathed in a cocoon of brown muslin. He totters unsteadily up the dais and blinks his wet little eyes. I remember him now—he was the man fixed beside Nándor in the courtyard, soberly watching my father stand in pig’s blood.

“My lords, why have you come here today?” the Érsek asks. He has a low, nasal voice, and I am reminded of the wicked minister from Zsigmond’s story, the one who ordered the deaths of all the Yehuli. In truth I can hardly imagine the Érsek doing such a thing, if only because I think Nándor would leap up to do it first.

“Today, I pray for wisdom,” the king replies. “So I may learn how to set right the mistakes of the past.”

“Then wisdom you shall have,” the Érsek says, and he brushes his thumb against the king’s forehead. He turns to Nándor. “What do you pray for today, my son?”

“Today, I pray for strength,” Nándor replies. “So I may do what weaker men cannot.”

“Then strength you shall have,” says the Érsek, his thumb brushing Nándor’s forehead. It lingers there for longer than it should, and Nándor closes his eyes and lets out a shuddering breath. I remember Szabín’s story—how he has lived his whole life with the priest whispering in his ear—and something knifes through my loathing, an unexpected and hard-won pity. How much can you blame a hunting dog for biting when it’s only ever been trained to use its teeth?

My pity shrivels when the Érsek turns to Gáspár. “What do you pray for today, my son?”

“I would like to confess a sin,” he says.

The air in the cave seems to thicken, and my muscles tense. The Érsek gives a nod, and says, “Speak, my son.”

“I took a man’s life. Two men. They were both guilty of terrible crimes themselves, but they were good Patritian men, pious and prayerful. I would like to cleanse my soul of sin.”

He has not confessed to kissing me, to touching my breasts or stroking me between my thighs. I cannot see Gáspár’s face, only the heave of his shoulders as he takes his labored breaths. The Érsek brushes his thumb quickly over Gáspár’s forehead, barely grazing his bronze skin.

“Godfather Life grants you mercy,” he says. “You have made your full confession, and you are now absolved of your sin.”

As the king and his sons rise in perfect synchrony, I gape at the Érsek. For all of Gáspár’s prattling about souls and justice, it takes only the touch of a priest’s finger to absolve him? I wonder how the men he killed would feel about that. Before I can even give voice to my bewilderment, they each produce a small leather pouch, bunched shut with a drawstring. From the pouches, they pour out a small pile of gold coins, the carved profile of Saint István glinting on every one. They hold the coins out in their cupped hands, and the Érsek takes them, sliding each piece into a satchel of his own. He tugs the drawstring to close it, the coins rattling as he slips it into his robes. The bag forms a bulge in his side beneath the brown muslin, an answer to my unspoken question.

“The Prinkepatrios accepts what you have given,” the Érsek says, bowing his head. “Where there is sacrifice, great things are sure to come.”

The Érsek ambles toward the shadowed doorway, his gait now lopsided with the load of the coins, and Nándor bounds up the dais to follow him. Their faces are close as they speak in whispers. Perhaps it was even the Érsek who left the note at my door, another one of Nándor’s slavering followers. The king stalks aimlessly through the pews, murmuring to himself. And then I am standing alone with Gáspár.

It’s the first time we’ve had a chance to speak since he came to see me in my cell, and the memory of it bruises me. Despite it, I have some small instinct to tell him everything that has happened: about the council meeting, about Zsigmond. As if he can help fill some of the empty spaces. But I have quashed the instinct by the time he opens his mouth.

“You did survive,” he says quietly.

“No thanks to you,” I bite back. I think of the way he sat silently at the banquet table while the king held his sword over my head, and I feel as wretched as ever.

Gáspár holds my gaze, throat bobbing. “I tried.”

“If you mean your pitiful protests at the feast—”

“No,” he says, with a thread of stubborn petulance that I’ve found myself oddly missing. “Before the feast. I begged my father for your life, even though I thought you might be the death of me.”

I remember how Nándor touched me so easily, putting his finger to my lips as if he weren’t afraid that I might threaten his holiness. I wonder what Gáspár would do, if he weren’t afraid. But he hasn’t confessed me like a sin. He hasn’t tried to absolve himself of what he’s done, of what we did, together.

“Did you kneel for him?” I ask perversely.

It is not a question meant to be answered, and I half expect Gáspár to scowl at me and turn away. For a suspended moment, there’s no sound in the church except the harmony of our breathing; even the trickle of water and the king’s footsteps have gone silent. Gáspár stares at me without blinking, for so long that my own eyes are hot and damp by the end of it, by the time he finally says, “Yes.”