Yet only a crazed fool would attempt to storm the carriage. Liuprand had insisted on taking the largest retinue that Castle Crudele could spare. There were twenty-four members of the Dolorous Guard with them, twelve before the carriage and twelve behind, each with his sword unsheathed and held aloft as they parted the mist of the woods.
“I have heard no stories about the especial cruelty of the Master of Blood,” Liuprand said.
The suddenness of his speech made Agnes’s head snap up. She regarded him with uncertainty.
“I have not seen him myself since I was a child,” he admitted. “When his wife still lived. He seemed a docile enough man. Reasonable. I do not know what has provoked his spat with my father, but his quarrel is with the king. I do not think…”
Liuprand trailed off, a quiet agony entering his tone. Agnes felt her heart stutter. He cleared his throat and went on, “He has no animus for the House of Teeth. Unless your grandmother gravely offended him before her death.”
Adele-Blanche did not have enough contact with the other houses to offend them. Her coldness held her fellow nobles at a distance, which truthfully was better for all. Agnes shook her head.
Liuprand’s eyes shone faintly with relief, though his mouth still slanted in dismay.
“My father sought to frighten you,” he murmured. “I do not know how much of what he said is true. But I will not…” He paused, drawing in a breath. “I will not allow you to be harmed, Lady Agnes. Do you believe me?”
Desperation cracked his voice. Agnes met his gaze, and then slowly, she nodded.
He exhaled. “I will remain with you at the House of Blood until the wedding. The Dolorous Guard will protect you with their own lives. Waltrude will keep to your side, always. And if ever you are afraid, send your moth to me, and I will come. Do you believe that as well?”
Agnes nodded again. Liuprand’s jaw clenched and he looked away from her, out the window, at the black trees fingering through the mist. He did not know what war was being fought behind Agnes’s eyes. He did not know that she was thinking of seeds and of smoke and the vapors of her dreams. He did not know that she feared the dead more than she feared the living.
She had not even had time to harvest the henbane and mandrake before she was shuttled into the carriage. She had been forced to leave behind her mortar and pestle. And now, with each passing moment, she was carried farther away from the secrets she was meant to uncover, from the library where the forbidden spell-words lurked, from the castle where her destiny lay. She wore her grandmother’s necklace of teeth, but it lay across her throat in cold shame. She was failing Adele-Blanche. And even if she beat against the walls of the carriage and tore at her hair, she could not stop it.
Agnes was too afraid of her grandmother’s posthumous existence to even let sleep draw down her eyelids. The scars on her stomach burned as if they were new. She had come to Castle Crudele and squandered all her chances. What was the worth of her life now? And whenthe Master of Blood pinned her down to the sheets and broke apart the seal between her legs, it would not matter if she managed to find her way back to Castle Crudele, if she uncovered the words of the spell, because she could never cast it—she would be spoiled, too disgraced for her purpose.
She leaned back against the seat and closed her tired eyes, but only for a moment, not long enough for her vision to be smudged with black. If she let herself sink too deeply into darkness, her grandmother would swiftly come.
The moth on her shoulder shifted, its wing brushing her cheek. Liuprand was watching her again, and now she returned his gaze, but this summoned an even sharper pain. She could scarcely see him without imagining Marozia in his bed. Her cousin’s hands tangling in his golden hair, fingers spreading across his broad, bare chest. The bruise on his cheek was nearly gone now. It was only the look of desolation on his face that made him seem less than princely. Liuprand the Sorrowful, she thought bemusedly. But why? He should not grieve her. She should be nothing to him.
Agnes looked down at her left hand. It was still swaddled in bandages, and her fingers could not move the way she willed them. But the ring glinted up from between the white fabric and the pink, swollen flesh. It gleamed more subtly than a flame, but more steadily, too. It would not burn down or be snuffed out. In fact, it would pass beneath all others’ attentions. All but hers and Liuprand’s.
And one more? When she lifted her gaze again, Agnes saw Waltrude was staring down at her hand, too. Her sharp green eyes reflected the soft glow of the pearls. The corner of her mouth quivered as if she wanted desperately to speak. There was knowledge in her stare, but it was a wretched knowledge, which she seemed to resent having learned. And Agnes could not quite puzzle it out. The wet nurse knew something she did not.
XXXI
The House of Blood
The mist-cloaked woods broke open at last. The black trees shuddered away. The mist itself remained, but only in thin, diaphanous vapors, which draped over the fat gray towers of stone like tattered banners. The castle was a distended thing, wider than it was tall, gorged with outbuildings and crumbly ramparts. From the vast lime-green moat, moths rose in white clusters, like souls fleeing the underworld.
All seven noble houses of Drepane were alike in one respect: However they had endured, they had endured through some manner of apathy. The House of Teeth had the advantage of its remote location, guarded by those jealous peaks. Those houses that were not fortunate enough to be remote in location had to be remote in spirit. This castle was not foreboding so much as it was, simply, indifferent. Fat and self-concerned. It did not even have guards posted upon its battlements or parapets. It knew, with an air of disdain, that even those who could brave these twisted woods would fall vainly against its stone walls or drown in its stagnant moat.
Upon looking at it, Agnes was not filled with fear. The castle seemed to impart upon her its own impassiveness. She felt more like a ghost than a body, watching with lidded eyes as the carriage clattered to a halt before the closed drawbridge.
Yet there had to be some surreptitious observer, for the moment the carriage stopped, the drawbridge began to lower. It creaked and groaned and then thudded to the earth, kicking up the hard-packed dirt and splashing the green water of the moat all about. A bullfrogleapt to safety, and more moths fluttered upward, blown like the petals of a flowering pear.
Liuprand opened the door to the carriage. Already the Dolorous Guard had arranged itself, forming an aisle from the carriage door to the open drawbridge. Liuprand offered his hand to help Agnes down, and then Waltrude, the golden cage in her arms. Each guard’s hand rested meaningfully on the pommel of his sword.
“Stay behind me,” Liuprand murmured. He dropped her hand.
At the loss of his touch, Agnes felt immediately bereft. She nodded.
He walked slowly down the path formed by the guards, not with hesitation, but with the leisurely deliberation of a prince; the Master of Blood would wait on him, not the other way around. Agnes followed, unable to see very much with his large body in front of her. She peered around Liuprand’s elbow. He, too, palmed the hilt of his sword.
Liuprand reached the end of the aisle and stopped. A heavy, languorous breeze picked up, thick with the vapors rising from the fetid water. Agnes’s skin prickled.
Then a voice rumbled out: “Your Highness.”
Still Agnes could not see to whom the voice belonged. It was a throaty voice, suggesting that it was conceived by aged lungs, but through it there was a subtle rippling of vitality.
