“I only relate what I have been told, my prince.”
Yet Agnes found she could picture it easily, those sinuous arms swinging a sword so deftly that it looked like no more than a whirl of silver in the air. Silver and crimson were his house’s colors, which appeared discordant against the House of Berengar’s navy and gold.
She could not help but compare these two men: the bridegroom who stood on the dais, the Master of Blood, and the prince who sat beside her, Liuprand the Just. That Gamelyn was an able swordsman she did not doubt. And he was an exceptionally fine example of his species, with all the features and proportions of beauty and nobility. But he was not Seraphine. If he were to stand beside Liuprand rather than beside the slumped body of the diminished king, his own deficiencies would have been made apparent. Liuprand would tower over him by ahead. His limbs were long and lean and he looked nimble in his movements, but Liuprand was certainly stronger by brute force, broader, built thickly of muscle. Agnes had seen how he could splinter wood into dust in the palm of his hand.
Even the most well-bred and well-trained native of Drepane could not match the pure power exuded by those with the blood of Seraph. Liuprand’s golden aura pulsed from around him now; Agnes could feel its warmth and instinctively sidled closer.
But she did not have long to bask in this glow before the doors to the great hall opened. Every guest in the pews rose, and so did Agnes, hefting Tisander up onto her hip.
Being within the plot closest to the dais, Agnes had to crane her neck to see over the crowd and down the aisle. The door closed and, for a moment, there was no answering sound. And then she heard, very faintly, the measured padding of slippered feet on the floor. Two sets of footsteps, each with a rhythm of their own.
It took another moment before Marozia came into view. It had been so long since Agnes had laid eyes upon her cousin that her appearance was a shock, not least for what she wore. It was a gown of black wool, stiff in its construction, unlike the sumptuous garb of silk and velvet that Agnes had known her to prefer. The neck of the dress reached her chin, covering the entire column of her throat. She had on black gloves; not a single jewel adorned her fingers, not even her wedding ring. Her earrings were but small golden studs, and her long dark curls were contained within a mesh hairnet.
Agnes had never seen her cousin wear black. In the ancient days of Drepane, before Berengar, before God had been vanquished and his prophets put to the sword, black had been the color of mourning, worn to honor the dead. It was the color that Adele-Blanche had dressed herself in every day that Agnes had known her, that spiteful and perverse shade that communicated her disdain for the Septinsular Covenant and the royal line that enforced it.
Marozia was clever enough to know this. She would not have forgotten their grandmother’s garb or her reasons for wearing it. AndAgnes could swear she saw the same glimmer of perverse pleasure in her cousin’s eyes as whispers rose from the crowd, whispers questioning this uncouth choice of attire. Only the oldest among the guests would recognize the color for the significance that it once held; yet the others still knew it was an insult, a protest against what was to come. Marozia had made herself into such a sight of disquiet that one almost did not notice the child in her arms.
The bride clung to the front of her mother’s gown with one tiny clenched fist. Her other hand was in her mouth, and her thumb-sucking was vigorous enough that it could be heard from quite a distance. Spittle shone on her chin, and so did the tracks of tears on her cheeks. The blood of Seraph had gifted her golden hair, which fell in loose, rumpled coils to her waist, and deep-blue eyes that were wide with bewilderment. Her white gown was taffeta and lace—the gown of a grown woman, only shrunken in its proportions, trying to highlight a bustline that did not exist and nip in at a waist that was not there. The absurdity of it was so poignant that the whispering quickly ceased, and a glacial silence returned to the air.
A long, diaphanous veil fluttered out from the crown of her head. It was long enough to brush the floor, and it would have, if not for the second figure trailing behind the princess and the bride. Ninian, the handmaiden with her mismatched eyes, walked stiffly after Marozia, holding up the gossamer fabric so that it stretched like a web of spider-silk. She herself wore a gown of ashen gray, her hair braided into a tight crown that made Agnes’s scalp prickle to see it. She had no jewels, no adornments, not even a heel on her slippers, and her gaze was cast coldly to the ground.
The procession was slow. Marozia must have wished it to be, to drag out these moments of discomfiture and unease. It was not the king she sought to embarrass—for he was incapable of such a sentiment—but the prince, her husband, and even the guests themselves. She wanted them to turn their heads away in shame. Agnes had been lost to her for a very long time, but still she recognized the look on her cousin’s face. For all her many talents and virtues, she had neverbeen skilled at disguising her emotions. Beautiful, capricious Marozia, with both the serpent’s hypnotizing stare and its deadly teeth.
The princess reached the end of the aisle and ascended the dais. While she had tarried in her grave walk, two new figures had taken their places on the dais as well. One was the Most Esteemed Surgeon, who was arranging himself in quite an awkward position before the king, trying to avoid tripping over the splayed-out stumps of his legs. The other was the lady Ygraine, who stood thin and shivering behind her son.
Agnes could perceive the bruises of a sleepless night beneath her eyes—just how many sleepless nights had she passed, in these six, nearly seven, years? Had her dreams been haunted by the sounds of her husband’s gurgling screams as he choked on the precious blood from Lord Fredegar’s casks? Did she walk the halls of her castle and remember how her beloved had perished of thirst and hunger behind an impenetrable wall of stone?
It was not the first time Agnes had been given to wonder these things; she had imagined, in her mind’s eye, Ygraine pressing her face to the newly built wall and whispering empty comforts to her husband on the other side. She had imagined how Ygraine’s tears would work their way into the masonry, causing the mortar to dampen and separate back into grains of sand. She had imagined all this and more, even after she had made the vow to strike guilt from her heart. Agnes shifted her gaze away in shame.
Marozia turned so that Meriope, the little bride, faced her bridegroom before the crowd. She wriggled in her mother’s arms, still sucking at her thumb, but otherwise made no sound. With her face only in profile, and partly obscured by the veil, Agnes could not discern her expression. She could not tell if Meriope understood her fate, even as it played out in front of her, like a mummer’s farce.
“This noble lord, Gamelyn, Master of Blood, and the princess Meriope, of the House of Berengar, have gathered here today to be wed.” The voice of Most Esteemed Surgeon arched out awkwardly over the crowd, as a bird uncertain in flight. “By my own endlesslyscrupulous hands, I anoint their union. If anyone in attendance has cause to protest it, let them speak now or hereafter hold their tongue.”
No voice, no whisper rose from the audience. Tisander had gone stiff in her lap. He was a child wise far beyond his years, but even he seemed consternated by the scene before him, his little brow creased and his mouth turned downward in a grimace. He saw only the aberrant nature of the moment, and not its necessity. He could not know all the labors that had been performed and all the blood that had been shed to bring it forth. He did not know how the gyre of fate had twisted and warped to construct this scene. Even Agnes, who had witnessed it all, who possessed an adult’s wisdom and reason, could not quite comprehend it. Injustice upon injustice. Betrayal upon betrayal. Abuse upon abuse. But there was no other recourse. To restore the world’s order, all debts must come due.
“Then I endlessly seal these two in lawful union. This binding is absolute, and can be broken only by the cruel artifice of death.”
Gamelyn, in a swift, practiced motion, reached into his pocket and produced a ring. It was so small that Agnes could not make out any of its features, not even which stone had been picked to adorn it. Marozia had to gently prise her daughter’s hand from her mouth and extend her fingers by force. That, finally, drew a low whimper from Meriope. It was a childish keen of confusion, and it went through the air like shears through silk. The crowd flinched.
But Gamelyn did not fumble. He only paused, to wait out the whimpering, and then slid the ring onto his bride’s spittle-slicked finger. His face was angled away from the crowd, and shadowed. Agnes perceived no emotion from it.
A few more words from the Most Esteemed Surgeon and then it was done. The wheel was set once again in its groove. The world had been put back to its proper course. And now the gyre turned on.
Liuprand rose from his seat and climbed the dais in one long, able stride. Towering over his lady wife, and indeed even over the Master of Blood, he clapped his hands once to capture the attention of the audience.
“I must thank you all heartily for your attendance and your graceful observance of this ceremony,” he said. “To further demonstrate my gratitude, I have arranged a performance for your pleasure. Please follow me into the feasting hall, and enjoy the fruits of the skillful and clever Lady Agnes’s labors.”
XII
The Fruits
Agnes was filled with a wondrous exhilaration as the guests began to file into the feasting hall. She passed Tisander into Waltrude’s arms and then slipped forward through the crowd, darting among the guests so that she could come out ahead of them, and to the back room where her actors were waiting. They were all in their costumes, all arranged precisely to her pleasure. Her blood pulsed delightedly in her veins and rose in a hot flush to her cheeks.
From the next room she heard the shuffling footsteps of the guests, the scraping of chair legs against the stone floor as seats were taken, the clinking of glasses as wine was poured.Any moment now,she told herself. One of the lion cubs coughed, covering his mouth with his paw. Her jittery excitement expressed itself in a long, tremulous exhale.
The door opened, and Liuprand appeared in the threshold. His cheeks, too, were flushed pink, eyes shining with that boyish earnestness that made Agnes fall more in love with him by the moment. “Are you ready, Lady Agnes?” he asked.
“Well, not quite,” she replied. “There is one performer who has not yet donned his mask.”
