Chapter Four

Chapter Four

I stare at the captain through the spider web of wet hair, come loose from all its careful braids, and try to make myself swallow his words. The Song of the Five Kings thrums through my head, the melody simple, familiar. We call the prince black—Fekete. But that’s not his real name.

I push my hair back and struggle to read the captain’s face.

Not the captain. The prince.

I can only stammer out a single word of my own. “Why?”

“You’ll have to be more specific than that.”

My throat is raw from screaming and choking on lake water as I pulled myself to the shore, and my voice comes out hoarse, nothing like the snarl I want it to be. “Why did you lie to me?”

He regards the wound on his chest, the throbbing etch of the creature’s claws. Where strips of his dolman have been torn away there are three long gashes, ruby-hued and new.

“I didn’t lie to you,” he says after a moment. “You never asked my name.”

“You never asked mine,” I snap back. “And you never asked me if I had visions. If you’re not a liar, then neither am I.”

Gáspár fixes his gaze on me, weary. “What’s your name, wolf-girl?”

I press my lips together. I consider lying, or at least staying silent, making him work for it. But I’m too exhausted to do any of that.

“Évike,” I say. “My name is Évike.”

“And you are not a seer.”

“No.” I lift my chin. “No, I’m not.”

“Do you have an ounce of magic at all?”

“No, but—”

“Then the old woman is the one who lied to me.” Gáspár shakes his head. “What greater insult than to send the king the only wolf-girl he would have no use for?”

I’m well accustomed to these sorts of slights, but the words still sting, and coming from a Woodsman no less. “How about the insult of stealing us in the first place? Besides, I’m not as powerless as you think. You wouldn’t have survived those creatures without me.”

“We wouldn’t have faced the monsters at all if you had been able to see them coming. Ferkó and Imre would still be alive.”

“I told you; that’s not how it works,” I bite out. “Seers don’t choose their visions. The visions choose them.”

Yet my gaze wanders to where their ruined bodies lie. Ferkó’s face is split open like ripe fruit, a maw of pink flesh and slivers of bone. Imre’s heart sits on top of his chest, mottled with bite marks, still weeping rosy spurts of blood. I know they’re my enemies and that I should revel in their deaths, but my stomach roils when I look. When I think of how terrible their last moments were, I feel a jolt of pain between my shoulders.

And grieving dead Woodsmen pains me even more.

Gáspár gets to his feet and dips his ax into the shallow water, washing the creature’s congealed blood from the blade. His knife is still in my hand, fingers clenched so tight that it hurts to let go. I know he’s not a warrior by the way he turns his back to me: I could have the blade to his throat before he even turns around again.

But it’s a terribly ridiculous plan, more absurd than any of my previous imaginings. The Woodsmen are faceless soldiers, bred to be prey for the forest’s monsters. Their deaths are nothing for the king to blink at, and certainly nothing to punish Keszi for. But the death of a prince—

“You can’t go back,” I start. “You won’t survive the woods alone, and Virág is too old to make the journey to Király Szek. She’s the only seer in the village.”

“I’m not going back.” Gáspár stares into the grid of trees, shadows oily and black between their trunks. “And I’m not going to Király Szek. I won’t return to my father with only a useless, impotent wolf-girl.”

The familiar anger coils in my chest. “You’re just as useless yourself, with that ax. Are all Woodsmen such poor fighters, really?”

“Woodsmen are trained to kill monsters with axes,” he replies, drawing himself up with a sharp breath. “Princes are trained to fight their human enemies with sword and tongue.”

I let out a noise of derision. If I had any doubts he was the prince, his haughty, petulant look would have quashed them. His words seem like rehearsed court drivel. But I don’t think squeamish princes with silver tongues are supposed to be Woodsmen at all. They’re supposed to sip wine behind the safety of city walls while other, lesser men die for them.

“Then why are you traipsing around Farkasvár with that massive blade at your hip?” I challenge.

I feel a quiver of satisfaction at how quickly his haughtiness drains from him. Gáspár averts his gaze, face darkening.

“I could just as soon ask why the things you call gods chose not to bestow you with magic,” he says slowly. “But I’m not interested in knowing the minds of demons.”

To any other wolf-girl, it might have been a great insult. But what do I have to thank the gods for, besides short winters and the green promise of spring? My perfunctory faith hasn’t prevented Virág’s lashings, or Katalin’s vicious taunts, or stopped the Woodsmen coming to take me. I’m better off praying to Ördög for a swift and painless death.

Or perhaps I should not be praying to the pagan gods at all. My hand goes suddenly to my right pocket, fishing for the gold coin, and relief pools in me when I close my sticky fingers around it.

I push myself to my feet. Keeping the dagger clenched in my fist, I walk toward Gáspár and stand on his right side, so he can look at me with his good eye.

“What will you do, then, Bárány Gáspár?” I ask. “Kill me where I stand?”

He meets my gaze and holds it. Too long. His black eye is burning and I hate him with a renewed ferocity. I hate him for being a slave to his father’s worst impulses, for his ax and his black Woodsman’s suba and for tying me to Peti, but most of all I hate that I was so afraid of him, that he made me feel dead before I even was.

No more. His fingers tense on the handle of his ax, but I don’t flinch. I’ve seen him fight. I’m no skilled warrior myself, but if it does come to blows, I’ll win.

In the end Gáspár doesn’t lift his weapon. He blinks at me, slow and diffident, and asks, “Do you know the myth of the turul?”

I stare at him blankly, mind racing around the question. It’s so unexpected that my grip almost slackens on the knife. It would have been a good trick, if he’d meant to kill me. When I’ve regained my composure, I reply, “Of course. It’s one of Virág’s many stories. But why does a Woodsman concern himself with pagan legends?”

Gáspár reaches beneath the collar of his subaand pulls out a pendant, hanging on a silver chain. He unwinds the chain from his neck and hands it to me. It’s a small disc of hammered metal, stamped with the seal of the Woodsmen—the same seal that adorns his horse’s breastplate armor. In the foreground, there’s the symbol of the Prinkepatrios, a three-pronged spear, but behind it, engraved so faintly that I have to strain my eyes to see it, is the outline of a hawk.

“The king is very interested in pagan legends,” Gáspár says. There’s a heaviness to his voice. “This one in particular.”

“And why is that?”

“Because he craves power more than purity, and he wants a way to win the war.” Gáspár loops the pendant back around his neck, letting it fall beneath the wool of his subaagain. “What did your Virág tell you about the turul?”

The memory of her telling is perfectly lucid, crystalline, and it shines in my mind like a bit of broken glass. The myth is not one she speaks of often, not without some prodding. It was after one of my many failed attempts to make fire, and she’d been feeling magnanimous. Instead of scolding me, she sat me on her knee and tried to teach me the origin stories: how Vilmötten had rescued Isten’s star from the sea, how he had followed the long stream to the Far North, how he had forged the sword of the gods.

“These stories are the origin of our magic,” Virág had said. “You cannot ever hope to perform any of the three skills unless you understand where they come from.”

I ticked the skills off on my fingers: fire-making, healing, and forging. Each more difficult and elusive than the last. But there was a fourth skill, one that I could never even hope to master. One prized far beyond the rest.

“What about seeing?” I had asked. “What is the origin of that?”

For once, Virág didn’t leap at the chance to tell the story. Her eyes didn’t gleam with the same blue fire they always did when she spoke of such things, buoyed by her fierce love for our people. Instead, her eyes seemed oddly hollow, like two dark empty wells, and in the soft glow of the hearth, her face looked especially old.

“Vilmötten was exhausted from his long journey,” Virág began. “He wanted to return to his home and rest, though he was uncertain what would wait for him when he arrived at his village. And that was when he saw a great bird with feathers the color of fire dart through the flat gray sky. It seemed to be beckoning him to follow. So he chased after the bird, until finally he watched it roost at the top of a very tall tree. It was the tallest tree he had ever seen, and its broad trunk knifed through the very clouds.

“Vilmötten began to climb. He climbed for what might have been days. And when he reached the top, he realized that the turul had led him to the tree of life—the tree whose branches cradle the Upper-World, the realm of Isten and the other gods. Its trunk forms the axis of the Middle-World, where he and all other humans lived. And its roots reach all the way down to the Under-World, where Ördög and his immortal bride make their home among the gnats and fleas and dead human souls.”

I made a theatrical gagging sound and wrinkled my nose, but still felt a bit sorry for the fleas. Though they were a great bother to us, especially in the summer, I didn’t think they deserved to be aligned with Ördög and his army of corpses.

“Hush now,” murmured Virág, with none of her usual fervor. “From where Vilmötten sat, he could see for miles and miles, to the very edge of the world. And then he saw even further. He saw what had been, and what soon would be.”

“What did he see?” I demanded, but Virág wouldn’t answer me. She only said that when Vilmötten returned to the ground, he felt very much alone, because he had seen things that no one else ever could. He decided not to return to his village and instead to continue wandering, both blessed and cursed by what the turul had shown him.

I liked that story, and I often begged Virág to tell it again, though she almost always refused. I liked that even with all his power and glory, Vilmötten was lonely too. Nursing a sour, half-surrendered sort of hope, I’d scaled the tallest tree I could find outside Keszi, trying to glimpse a trace of flame-bright feathers.

“The myth of the turul is the origin of our seeing magic,” I say to Gáspár, swallowing the bitterness of the memory. “The magic of Isten made manifest. Is that the power the king craves?”

“He’s convinced that it’s the only way he’ll ever defeat Merzan. With its magic”—his mouth twists around the word—“he could see their every move before they made it. Which route their soldiers will take, how to ambush them on the way. The location of their supply line and where best to cut it. My father would know their war strategy before the beyeven picked up his quill to write the missive.”

Thinking of the turul that way, as a weapon in the king’s bloody war, makes my stomach chill. Even worse when I realize what it means for Keszi. “That’s why he wanted a seer.”

Gáspár nods, and I watch his brow furrow faintly with disgust. It’s holy disgust, which their god commands them to feel whenever they speak of pagan myths or the potential utility of wolf-girls. “He believes the powers of a seer might be able to keep the Merzani army at bay until he finds the turul.”

Anger laces through my veins with such a force that it shocks me, even now. That ancient memory and any comfort it held winnows away, something black curling its edges. “The king makes a good show of hating the pagans, all while craving our heathen magic. He’s a hypocrite.”

Gáspár is looking down at his wound. Blood is trickling along the hem of his dolman, and his one eye is trained on it with a sort of helplessness that coaxes a drop of pity from me. I banish it as quickly as I can.

“Yes,” Gáspár says finally. “He prays every day that Godfather Life will forgive him for his duplicity.”

Up until now, he has spoken only of Bárány János as the king, the great feared ruler of Régország whose hands are dark with pagan blood. But now he speaks of Bárány János as his father—a man who is not beyond redemption. It shouldn’t move me. It should make me want to put the knife through his good eye. Instead, my chest tightens.

Gáspár is still looking down at his wound, and at that moment it strikes me, what he plans to do. “That’s why you’re not going to Keszi. You’re going to help me find the turul.”

This time, I can only give a mirthless laugh.

“I thought you were a clever soldier,” I say. “But it turns out you’re just a stupid prince.”

“I know where it is,” he says with such a petty, wretched stubbornness that if it were anyone else, I might have liked him for it. If he were anyone but a Woodsman. “It’s in Kaleva.”

I scoff. “And what makes you so certain?”

“Because the Woodsmen have been searching the other regions for months and haven’t found even a trace of it. It has to be in Kaleva.”

So that’s what the Woodsmen are doing when they’re not slaughtering the monsters of Ezer Szem or ripping us wolf-girls from our village—chasing after mythical creatures that they aren’t supposed to believe in. I wonder how they manage to keep their faith in spite of it, how they aren’t swallowed up by the king’s ungraceful artifice. Something deeper than material reward or mortal glory must be driving them, or else the king would have more to worry about than the Merzani army. Gáspár is staring narrow-eyed at me, a challenge in his gaze.

“That’s the stupidest logic I’ve ever heard,” I say at last.

Gáspár’s shoulders rise around his ears. “What would you know? A wolf-girl from a tiny village, who’s never set foot outside Ezer Szem—”

“More than a pampered, one-eyed prince,” I cut in. “For starters, you don’t know the turul is in Kaleva. Just because some inept Woodsmen can’t find it in those other places doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Besides that, you’ll arrive in Kaleva just as winter sets in. Your archer is dead, and if you’re as incompetent with a bow and arrow as you are with that ax, I don’t expect you’ll survive very long.”

A wind sweeps in from the lake, and my damp hair ripples across my face. Gáspár stares and stares as his suba ruffles like a raven’s black feathers, looking smaller somehow, even though he must be a head taller than me.

“Is there nothing you wouldn’t do for your own father?”

His question is a blow to the back. For a moment, out of pure, breathless spite, I reconsider my decision to kill him.

“I wouldn’t know,” I reply hotly. “I’ve never met him. My mother was a pagan, taken by Woodsmen when I was ten years old. My father was a Yehuli tax collector.”

“The kingdom doesn’t collect tax from Keszi.”

“Not anymore.” Not money, anyway, since his father landed on the strategy of stealing wolf-girls. “But there used to be Yehuli tax collectors sent along with a Woodsman convoy. That’s how he met my mother.”

Gáspár frowns at me. I shouldn’t care whether he thinks I’m lying, but with a bit of my own stubborn petulance I shift the dagger to my right hand and reach into my pocket with my left. I hold the gold coin out to him with slick, shaking fingers, thumb brushing over its engraved surface. There are Yehuli letters printed on it, but I can’t read them.

“My father minted that coin himself,” I say. “It was a gift to my mother, and she gave it to me before your father’s men dragged her to her death.”

Gáspár inspects the coin with great interest, the furrow in his brow smoothing. His lips part slightly, and for a moment I can believe he’s only a young man, not the black prince or a Woodsman killer. He looks up. “This coin was minted in Király Szek. Do you know your father’s name?”

“Zsigmond,” I reply. “Zsidó Zsigmond.” It’s one of the only things I do know about him. My mother rarely spoke of him, and when she did, it was only in a hushed, shameful whisper. The Yehuli do not worship the Prinkepatrios, but they are better loved by the king than the pagans are, and therefore almost as distasteful to those in Keszi. That the king employs them as tax collectors and financiers and merchants, the sorts of jobs that Patritians consider sinful, only deepens that loathing.

In the eyes of the pagans, the Yehuli are traitors, slaves to the Patritian tyrants, and willing ones at that. Katalin’s words ribbon through my head, years and years of bitten slurs.

Your blood is tainted, that’s why you’re barren.

Isten would never bless Yehuli scum.

You were born to lick the Woodsmen’s boots.

I feel a sudden flush of shame, and quickly tuck the coin back in my pocket. I’ve never shown it to anyone before, and I’m not sure why I’ve shown this Woodsman now.

I expect Gáspár to say something derisive about the Yehuli, too, or ask why I bothered holding on to the coin for all these years. But instead he looks at me with a queer scrutiny. “And you’re a fair hunter?”

“A great one,” I correct, smug, until I understand why he’s interested in my hunting skills at all. “But I’m not coming with you. I’d rather be eaten alive in Ezer Szem than freeze to death in the Far North.”

“If you don’t come, I’ll have no choice but to take you to Király Szek,” he says. “And you can explain to the king why your old woman tried to deceive him. I’ll warn you, he doesn’t take kindly to pagan tricks.”

“Only to our magic,” I return bitterly, but my heart is pounding. “You wouldn’t dare show up at the capital with your whole party dead and only a useless wolf-girl in tow. The king would be furious, and how will you explain that?”

“I can’t,” he admits. “In that case, then, you’ll have to hope that his anger at me outweighs his contempt for the pagans of Keszi.” Gáspár’s voice is even, and I can tell it’s more of his courtly rhetoric, every word as smooth as river stones. “He wouldn’t have to turn your village to ash to make his point. Just a few calculated kills—perhaps the old woman of yours? You said it yourself, she’s too frail to be of use to him.”

The rage I feel at his words is stitched through with confusion. For so many years I’ve cursed Virág for her lashings, loathed Katalin for her relentless cruelty, loved no one in Keszi except Boróka. But I’m not proud of my hatred. After all, if I don’t belong with the pagans, I’m not certain I belong anywhere.

My hand moves from the coin to my mother’s braid, shuddering with anger.

“Or I could just run away,” I say, defiant. I consider the knife in my grip again, and how it might feel meeting some soft, vulnerable part of him: the fleshy crook of his knee, the inside of his thigh. Somewhere painful but not fatal—a wound that would keep him from hungering after me.

“Then you’d seal the fate of your village for sure.” Gáspár lets out a breath, running a hand through his dark curls. Mussed like that, he looks less like a Woodsman, and nothing at all like a prince. “Besides, if you care even a twitch for your father’s people, you should be more eager to keep the king in power. There are others in Király Szek who pose a threat to the Yehuli.”

Peti’s livid face floats up at me, the name that he choked out between the blood and bile in his mouth. “Do you mean Nándor?”

Gáspár gives a tight, silent nod.

“Your brother,” I say.

“Half-brother,” Gáspár says, too quickly. “And if you think my father is a pious fanatic—he doesn’t have even a fraction of Nándor’s fire, or his gift for beguiling crowds. He gives his sermons in the street, gathering his followers who want to blame the pagans or the Yehuli for Régország’s misfortune. It’s not an unpopular sentiment in the capital, especially with the Merzani army at our door.”

His voice catches when he says Merzani. I wonder, with a prickle of guilt, whether the epithet “black prince” has more to do with his Woodsman garb, or with the stain of his Merzani blood. I wonder if he ever touches the contours of his own face, trying to find some memory of his mother in them, and feels equal parts relieved and distressed at the result. We kept no mirrors in Keszi, but I would spend hours kneeling at the riverside, watching my reflection crease and wrinkle like it was an embroidery on silk, puzzling over whether my nose belonged to my mother or my father, and what it would mean either way.

There was no answer that didn’t hurt to swallow. I almost tell him that, before I remember that he’s no friend of mine.

“Nándor’s not the prince,” I say. “You are.”

Gáspár’s mouth goes thin. For a moment, we’re both silent enough to hear the gentle lap of lake water, a frothing collar along the shoreline.

“It’s not nearly as simple as that,” Gáspár says with a note of finality. “The line of succession matters little when there are thousands of peasants rallying for you, and a sect of Woodsmen whispering your name, and the king’s council weighing the pros and cons of sedition—not to mention the Érsek praying every day for you to take the throne.”

His voice sharpens as he speaks; by the end, it’s as whetted as the blade of his ax. Gáspár’s fingers tighten around the handle of it, and though I knew he held the fate of my village, of my mother’s people, now I realize with a stutter of alarm that he might hold the fate of my father’s too. I think of Peti’s lip curling back, and the lambent whites of his eyes gleaming as he arched over me in the dark. I feel the sting of the wound on my throat. It stills me with terror to imagine how vicious the man he worshipped must be.

Yet an old hesitation quivers up. Perhaps I have no right to worry over the fate of the Yehuli when the only slender threads yoking me to them are a coin I can’t read and a father I can scarcely remember.

“But you’re the prince,” I say again, this time with a mortified uncertainty. “And your father, the king . . .”

“Does not wish to name a bastard to succeed him, but the pressure mounts with each moment, with each Régyar soldier slain on the front line,” Gáspár finishes. His gloved fingers are slick with blood—his own. “In less than a month Király Szek will celebrate Saint István’s Day, which Nándor has taken to claiming as his name day as well. If there’s any moment for him to make his challenge, it will be then.”

My head clouds. Suddenly all my forgotten weariness surges back, and I take a breath to steel myself against the blurring at the edges of my vision. “You think that Nándor will—what? Try to kill the king on this holiday?”

“There’s a contingent of Woodsmen who support his claim, and from what I can tell, several members of the king’s council, and of course the Érsek. He has the support. He needs the opportunity.”

I let out a breath. “And is the king sipping wine and practicing his needlework while the whole city rises up against him?”

“The king has his own fetters.” Gáspár’s voice is flat. “But he’s the best hope for Régország’s survival, and for your own people—pagan and Yehuli both. I’m sure you would prefer to hand over one wolf-girl a year than see your whole village slaughtered and burned, or the Yehuli expelled from the city.”

His words knot in me, a particular coil of bewilderment and fear. All my life I’ve hated nothing more than the Woodsmen, except the king, like one of the shadows that moved along the tree line outside Keszi, too dark and distant to see. To hear he might be my savior, to imagine that I might even play a small part in keeping him on the throne, makes my stomach lurch with a dizzying revulsion.

“The turul,” I say slowly, trying not to think of Virág as I do. “You think it will give your father the power to subdue Nándor? To end the war, even?”

Gáspár nods. His jaw is set, and he’s staring at me with a flint-eyed intensity that seems to startle us both when I finally meet his gaze.

“Fine.” My fingers clench around the coin in my pocket. “I’ll go with you. I’ll help you find the turul. But you have to do something for me too.”

“If you help me find the turul, you’re free to return to Keszi, unharmed.”

I shake my head. It’s not enough. “And no one will be punished for my deception.”

“Fine,” Gáspár echoes.

“One more thing,” I say, even as my pulse quickens. “I want to know what the king does, with the girls and women that he takes.”

Gáspár blinks at me, nose flaring with the beginnings of a protest. His lips part, then close again. It’s several moments before he moves at all, but when he does, it’s to hold out his hand.

“All right, wolf-girl,” he says. “You have a deal. No harm will come to you or to your village. And when we find the turul, I’ll tell you what happens to the pagan women who are brought to the capital.”

I have to let go of the coin to take his hand. His grip is firm, and his gloves are soft to the touch. Someone must have slaughtered a newborn calf to make gloves so soft. When I pull my hand away, there’s blood crusted into the creases of my palm.

“You’re going to follow Peti to his grave if you don’t cover your wound,” I say, my voice odd-sounding. I don’t want him to mistake my practical scrutiny for genuine concern.

Gáspár looks down at the trio of gashed lines on his side, then back up at me. “Are you a healer after all?”

“No,” I tell him, trying not to flush at another reminder of my inadequacy. “But my—Virág taught me how to dress a wound.”

He raises his shoulders with a sudden inhale, fast and sharp. “You could have helped us dress Peti’s, then. You could have saved him.”

What little camaraderie I might have felt puddles out of me. “Why would I have helped to save the life of a man who tried to kill me? And if you didn’t want him to die, you shouldn’t have cut off his arm!”

“The punishment had to be levied for treason,” Gáspár says, voice low.

“All your grave proclamations make you sound like Virág,” I snap. “Do you enjoy being as dramatic as a hundred-year-old pagan hag? You could have cut off his head, instead. At least then he wouldn’t have suffered, and I wouldn’t have had to watch it.”

A beat of silence passes between us. Gáspár takes a step forward, and I wonder for a moment if I have given him enough reason to forget our bargain and put a blade through my back anyway.

He stops himself before he reaches me, fingers curling to a fist. “You don’t understand, wolf-girl. Taking Peti’s arm was a mercy, to spare both his soul and mine. Now he must face the judgment of the Prinkepatrios for his crime, and my soul is blackened with his death.”

I stare up at him, openmouthed. “So it’s the fate of your own soul that has you so troubled? You’d rather make a man suffer than bear the guilt of killing him? You’re right—you won’t survive a day in Kaleva without me.”

“Killing is a mortal sin, especially killing a man of the Patrifaith.” Gáspár’s eye is thin as the mark of an arrowhead. “Better to wound than to kill, and better to suffer than to die before confession. Peti will never be absolved, and the Prinkepatrios will punish him in the afterlife.”

I choke down a noise of derision. “But the Prinkepatrios has no compunctions about kidnapping wolf-girls. And binding me to a dying man, making me hear every gasp of his pain—more cruelty that doesn’t require absolution.”

“That was Ferkó’s idea,” Gáspár says, gaze lowering. “Not mine.”

“Then you’re cruel and gutless.” My face is hot. “Do you always let your men guide the swing of your ax?”

“Not anymore,” Gáspár says shortly. “They’re dead now.”

Something sinks in my belly with the heaviness of a stone. Ferkó and Imre lie by the fire, their bodies cradled in a sepulcher of blood-damp grass. The mist over the water has cleared, and there are little blades of moonlight rippled across its surface, turning it silver and bright as a mirror. From where I stand, it seems inconceivable that anyone could call the lake Black.

Gáspár stamps over to the corpses, and I follow. Before he can say a word I snatch up Ferkó’s bow and quiver, swinging both onto my back. Their familiar weight is a comfort, like a song I will never forget.

“Do we have to burn them too?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says, and kneels beside the bodies. His hands clasp. “Megvilágit.”

A thread of flame knits down Ferkó’s ruined face and over his blood-drenched Woodsman’s suba. Imre’s heart purples under the firelight, like a fist-sized bruise. The air fills with something feverish and awful, and suddenly my own cloak feels too heavy, my hair too warm on the back of my neck.

The forest of Ezer Szem is behind us, but the Little Plain is ahead, a scraggly quilt of grassland between us and the frozen plateaus. In the North winter has already cracked open like a quail egg, spilling ice and snow.

“If we’re going to Kaleva, we don’t need a map,” I say. “We’ll just go north until there’s nowhere left to go.”

Gáspár gets to his feet, the wound on his chest still leaking. Beneath the blood and the frayed strips of his dolman, his skin is olive-toned and knotted with muscle. My fingers squeeze around the hilt of my knife—his knife. Of course he wouldn’t want me to bandage him. If the Prinkepatrios does keep an almanac of sin, I wonder how the touch of a wolf-girl will add to his tally.

A bargain between a Woodsman and a wolf-girl already seems a fragile and terrible thing. Whose god would approve of it?

I’m flushed for no reason at all by the time Gáspár marches past me, careful not to let our shoulders brush. It’s not until we’re both squared on our mounts that I look down at my hands again, his blood still scored across my palms.