Quill and ink and parchment were still set out neatly on the table, like a lord’s uneaten meal, because Adele-Blanche had died as she lived, armoring herself in words. Agnes had been scribbling so furiously that at first she had not noticed that her grandmother had stopped dictating, and indeed, when she finally looked up, she saw that her grandmother’s head was tipped back, her mouth open just slightly, her blank eyes reflecting the torchlight.
At first, she thought her grandmother had merely fallen asleep.
And then Adele-Blanche slumped forward onto the table, cracking her skull against the wood. Red liquid dribbled out from around her hair, which meant that the House of Blood had been robbed of some meager portion of its inheritance.
Agnes sat. She stared down at the parchment, at her grandmother’s arrested final words, committed to the page in Agnes’s elegant script. These words were nothing remarkable. In fact, Agnes had copied them down half a dozen times before, because Adele-Blanche’s memory had grown frayed with age and her stories had begun to repeat themselveslike thread around a spindle. Yet Agnes did not dare crumple the parchment up.
Instead she set the sullied parchment aside and took a clean sheaf. She opened the jar of ink and dipped her quill, but doing so seemed to chase every thought from her mind. She sat vacant and stupid.The letter. You must write the letter.If only Adele-Blanche had lingered long enough in Agnes’s dreams to offer further guidance.
Her grandmother had given her little practice in writing anything of her own invention. The manuscripts that occupied the shelves were fat with page after page of baroque script, accompanied by painted illustrations in brazen reds and greens and blues, bound steadfastly between covers of leather and held together with clasps of bronze. Each one was a beautiful object, the covers engraved and set in jewels, the edges stenciled or lacquered in gold. And yet none contained a single word that Adele-Blanche had not dictated herself.
They were the stories of their family, of their house. Of Agnes’s great-grandfather, killed by the cruel sword of Berengar. Of Castle Peake’s tremendous old library, turned to ash in accordance with the laws of the Covenant. In each story, the House of Teeth was noble and grand, wise and capable, so far exceeding the crass manner of other humans that they were almost another species entirely.
Technically, this was not treason. There was no specific law of the Covenant that prohibited the relation of old tales, though Agnes knew the king would not be pleased to know of Adele-Blanche’s actions and might have tried to punish them in some indirect manner—if he held any real power at all over the machinations of Adele-Blanche within the obscure rooms of her castle.
When she was young, before Adele-Blanche had halted such indulgent frivolity, Agnes had scribbled away at some small stories of her own. In them, the mutilated gargoyles came to life and fluttered around the courtyard on their scabrous stone wings. A man and a woman fell in love, but at night he was cursed to turn into a green serpent. During the day they slept, ate, and made merry as husband and wife would, but at night, she kept him locked in a cage and fed him mice throughthe bars. Another man and another woman fell in love, but they drank from poisoned fountains that filled their hearts with hate, and in the end they murdered each other. Only then, in the throes of death, did the fountain’s magic loosen its grip. They came to weeping on a bloody bed of grass, curled together like mollusks, a lover’s dagger in each belly.
Of the gargoyles, Marozia said, “They would sooner fall apart than learn to fly.”
Of the green serpent: “I would not labor so much over such an ugly creature as a snake.”
Of the lovers’ sad end: “There is no such thing as magic fountains.”
Agnes showed the stories to her grandmother, who read them all very intently. Once, then twice. Her brow crumpled over her tiny black eyes.
“What is the meaning of this first one?” Adele-Blanche asked, lifting her head. “That you can imagine a statue stirring to life? Anything in the world can be imagined, yet not all things are worth putting to paper, unless there is a meaning to them. I can perhaps see the motive of the other two stories. In the first, romance overcomes tragedy; in the second, tragedy overcomes romance.” She smiled her close-lipped smile. “They are not so poorly written. But do you see how simply I cut straight to the heart of it? For such silly tales, it is better if they are confined to your mind. You may play with them like a horse-on-a-string. Like your cousin dresses her dolls. If you wish to use ink and paper, I must ask that you craft a tale of steeper heights and greater depths. Do you understand?”
Agnes nodded.
“But they are charming little tales. I shall keep them.” Adele-Blanche folded the parchment and tucked it into the sleeve of her gown. Agnes never saw it again.
Agnes could not decide on the opening of the letter.My dear Liuprandwas overfamiliar, yetYour Highnesswas too formal. And of course it had to appear as if Marozia had written it herself. There must be some supplication, but Adele-Blanche’s legacy resisted the act oftotal surrender. And although Agnes did not know the prince beyond their single brisk meeting, she thought of his gracious eyes and could not be convinced he was the breed of man who was infatuated with his own power, who fell in love with the grand performance of kneeling.
And so he must fall in love. On this, her grandmother had been unwavering, even as her eyes clouded over and her gaze lost its bright edge; she had impressed it upon Agnes the very hour before she had slumped over in her chair. Had Adele-Blanche not perished, she would have penned this letter herself. But she was gone, and so by any means, and against all odds, Agnes was to arrange this.
And while Marozia yawned and stretched beside Liuprand in their marriage bed, Agnes would crawl on her belly through the winding halls of Castle Crudele, overturning every brick, leafing through every book, until she found what Berengar had stolen from them, the ritual that would reassemble the body of Adele-Blanche, who would then take her vengeance upon the royal line and upon Seraph, and would bring the island of Drepane under the rule of death again.
V
A Good Set of Teeth
The metalworker carved and hammered away by candlelight, and when the sun rose, so did he, climbing the rank stairs from his basement forge to the great hall, and then to the apartments of the castle’s mistress. He had the necklace strung between his fingers like a cat’s cradle, pulling gently to make sure the chain would hold, that the hammered rings of gold would not snap and clatter to the floor. Sixty-four teeth, carved into flat disks, shining like inlays of pearl. The teeth of the first master to live by the rules of the Covenant: Adele-Blanche’s grandfather, whose throat was opened under Berengar’s blade. Now the teeth of Adele-Blanche. It was precarious work. In the mistress’s old age, her teeth had begun to wither and furrow like her skin. One impatient stroke of his hand and the teeth would shatter, and the new mistress would be bereft.
The metalworker was not above having contingency plans, however. He often considered how quick and easy the theft would be: The dungeons were a tomb for all the dead’s teeth. Each set was arranged into a mold, and then added to a sumptuous marble frieze. The sculptor was forever chipping away at this frieze, adding new faces for every set of teeth that made its way into his hands. This scene stretched for nearly a mile along the north wall of the dungeon, and the older teeth were indeed forming fissures, sometimes falling from their molds and into the foul puddles below. And of course, the marble was always under siege by the water that dripped from the upper floors, green rot defiling all these carefully sculpted figures. But the newer teeth, the teeth of the freshly dead, were more intact than the teeth of theancient woman, and thus more fitted to his delicate task. Would her granddaughters know if he made this surreptitious replacement? He did not dare. They were both the blood of Adele-Blanche and would not forgive any such transgression.
The scene of the dungeon’s frieze was selected by Adele-Blanche and portrayed the history of their house. A parade of lords, each more eminent than the last, braver in battle and more pious in prayer, and of fairer face, as though the sculptor was each time improving upon his craft. He carved supplicating peasants, always with their mouths gaped open—wide enough to accommodate twice as many teeth. The wise man works only half as hard as the fool, and Adele-Blanche would never employ a dullard.
Then there came the gash in the frieze, representing the violent intrusion of Berengar, which broke the old customs apart to the new. Where the House of Teeth had once had masters, there were now only mistresses, for Berengar, in his deceitful cruelty, had left alive no male heir. While he had allowed the other great houses to elevate their sons or nephews or grandsons, on the condition that they swear him endless fealty, knowing their paramount role in the raising of the dead, Berengar had punished the House of Teeth unduly, perhaps hoping that it would crumble to extinction in the absence of men.
But Adele-Blanche, even pregnant and not long after her first blood, was no cringing creature. She rebuilt the House of Teeth in her own shape, ruled by daughters rather than sons.
The metalworker sometimes shuddered to imagine what became of the boy children born to Adele-Blanche’s line. He did not believe the freakish stories, that Adele-Blanche slathered their nude bodies in honey and left them to be feasted upon by flies. But the truth was beyond the metalworker’s purview.
Her daughters, the ladies Manon and Celeste, had been pregnant each three times. When their bellies first swelled, they were shut up in their apartments, all food laid outside the door. If they even screamed in labor, the metalworker did not know it; in those months, the halls were silent enough that eggs could be heard cracking in the kitchens.Then the ladies would emerge, twice empty-handed, and once, at last, with girl children squirming in their arms. Never did the metalworker see any men visit their rooms. By what strange means the ladies had been bred, he did not dare to guess.
The lady Agnes was the elder, but Marozia was firstborn of Adele-Blanche’s firstborn, and thus was her grandmother’s heiress. Two more different ladies there could not have been. Sometimes it beggared belief that they were born from the same blood. But Adele-Blanche, with the perception of a sentry and the mind of a horse trader, saw these discrepancies and played her granddaughters like draughts tiles, ordering them into their most fitting positions, as she did all things within Castle Peake.
Now the great old woman was dead, and the metalworker held her death in his hands. By the laws of any other kingdom, he would not be an important man. But here, he was as essential as a good set of teeth.
