He trailed off, thoughtfulness clouding his stare.
“Two messengers, lost in as much time?” Liuprand accused. “I do not believe it.”
“I swear to you, there is no artifice at work within the House of Blood, my prince. This is some unfortunate accident of fate.”
“If you never received the missives, why did your house send a wedding gift?” Liuprand’s voice was ever sharper. “A single bottle of wine, left as a taunt. It came with a note in your hand.”
At this, Fredegar drew a breath of reproach. “I have no knowledge of this—please, Your Highness, believe me. To speak baldly, I no longer oversee my own envoys. I have left the managing of my household largely to my son.”
Liuprand’s brow lifted. “Your son?”
“Yes.” Fredegar raised a hand and beckoned one of his men. A leech, in spotless sepia robes. “Pliny, go fetch Unruoching. Now.”
With a silent nod, the leech went. It did not take him very long to return with Fredegar’s son.
He was a tall man, of a height to his father, but without his father’s broadness or powerfully rolled shoulders. He was slender in a way that Agnes had rarely seen in men out of boyhood, as though flesh was yet to fill the spaces between his bones. His shoulders were narrow and sharp. His face was long, his chin pointed at the end, giving him a foxlike appearance. He was not an overall unappealing man, but he seemed out of place beside his father; Agnes would not have been surprised to learn he was a legitimized bastard, another lord’s offspring. Even in matching doublets of dusty crimson, they were more different than alike, as if Fredegar were a man and Unruoching merely the shadow behind.
Unruoching dipped his head. “Father. Prince Liuprand.” He did not acknowledge Agnes’s presence at all. “What brings you to the House of Blood?”
“A grave misunderstanding,” Liuprand replied coldly.
“The king has sent our house two missives, which I somehow did not receive,” Fredegar said. “Nothing from Castle Crudele passed beneath my gaze. And yet—a wedding gift was sent, with a note written in my name. Surely you have some explanation.”
Unruoching’s eyes shifted. Their color was unclear to Agnes. As his gaze moved from his father to Liuprand, they looked by turns green, then blue, then gray. They could not settle. They were like pebbles turned continuously by the tide.
“I fear there is some mistake here, Father,” he said after a moment. “I received no letter. Nor did I send any gift.”
“That is impossible,” said Fredegar.
Unruoching raised his narrow shoulders. “I am sorry, Father. But I cannot tell you what I do not know.”
A beat of silence. Liuprand curled his lip. “There is something rotten at work here, Lord Fredegar.”
Before Fredegar could reply, Unruoching rushed in to say, “Are you certain, Father, that the memory of these missives did not merely slip from your mind? Your wisdom is not as firm as it once was. Lately you have often acted…out of character. You are a great man still, of course, but your age shows in some matters. Is that not why you have left the managing of the household to me?”
The insult, couched within the safety of euphemism, made Agnes’s breath catch. In the presence of a prince, what son could so openly question his father’s fitness? The shiftiness of Unruoching’s eyes took on a truly sinister quality. Agnes felt her skin prickle as she watched him.
But Fredegar did not respond with the defiant anger she expected. Instead he placed a contemplative hand under his chin.
“Well, I suppose,” he mused, “all men must acknowledge the diminishment of age…and it is true, I am not the fit mind I once was.” He raised his chin. “Your Highness, I accept responsibility for this terrible slight.”
Liuprand’s face showed the consternation Agnes felt, but it was the expression of the leech, Pliny, that caught her eye. His mouth was twisted into a scowl, his small, dark eyes narrowed to points. His displeasure was so blatant, it was almost as if he hoped for someone to notice. It was not becoming of a leech to show such base humanity—yet luckily for Pliny, Agnes was the only one to see it.
“That is well enough,” Liuprand said at last, slowly, “but I do not think my father will so readily accept this resolution. He has been moved to great anger by your perceived treason.”
Fredegar gave a grim nod. “Certainly. I understand. I pray then, tell me what I can do to heal the wounds I have wrought?”
It was Liuprand’s mouth that twisted now. Bitter storm clouds gathered on his brow. As silence reigned in the great hall, Agnes thought—hoped—that he would defy his father. That he would acceptFredegar’s apology on the king’s behalf and turn around, take her into the carriage, march the Dolorous Guard back through the wood, and return them all to Castle Crudele. The hope burned within her only briefly, but it was very warm and very bright. Her throat squeezed.
Yet it was a glance down at her hand that sealed Agnes’s fate. Liuprand’s gaze was fixed on the bandaged extremity, and his eyes darkened with desolation. He would not underestimate his father’s rage again. There was still worse he could do, if his orders were disobeyed.
Finally, Liuprand spoke.
“My father proposed a match,” he said. His tone was bleak, his voice coarse and low. “He wishes for you to wed the Mistress of Teeth, and thus seal your house’s allegiance to the Crown.”
The silence that came over the hall now was like a heavy quilt, and it smothered the flames of Agnes’s hope. Smothered them quickly and without contrition. There was no protest from Fredegar; how could there be? The king had given him an order and it must be followed. It was only a matter of shaping his mind to accept the new architecture of his life, the walls that were now flowering up around him. Around Agnes. New, cruel structures, upon the apathetic foundation of the House of Blood.
She looked over at the leech again. He had schooled his expression into a blanker slate, more befitting his position—yet still his eyes burned.
