“If I may, lady,” he said, and it took a moment for Agnes to understand that this was a question.
She nodded permission, and very gently, the leech took her damaged hand in his. With the most delicate of ministrations, he turned it over. He peeled back the bandages to examine the wounds beneath. He tapped softly against the tips of her fingers, as if trying to urge a response. To even Agnes’s surprise, her fingers twitched, some reflexive action disconnected from her mind.
“I believe I could help restore some of its function,” Pliny said. “And at least soothe some of the unpleasantness of the injury. You must be in a great deal of pain.”
Agnes met the leech’s eyes, which were warm and densely brown, like some furred animal in a coil of hibernation. Slowly, she nodded.
In their returning, Castle Crudele occurred to Agnes as a marvelous thing, not for its size, which she had long since comprehended and come to peace with, but rather for its majestic, appalling coldness. The House of Blood had been warm—as blood freshly spilled—but Castle Crudele had been built on long-ago horrors, a foundation of naked bone, the flesh eaten by maggots, the organs and entrails liquefied through the unerring compression of time, the white feet of death crushing the bodies of Drepane’s old nobles like grapes for wine.
These ancient horrors were what floated up around the castle now. Agnes had at first attributed them to the mists of the crashing waves, but those were briny, deep with the scent of sea life. These vapors were boreal, remote, and bitter as the castle they enveloped.
The disembodied helmets that lined the path to the barbican clanked and juddered in the wind. Their emptiness did nothing to assuage Agnes’s mounting terror. She wished again to reach for Liuprand, but she could control at least one of her hands, and kept it fisted obediently in her lap. She did glance over at him, and saw the same glassy fear in his eyes.
The carriage, of course, rattled on. It stopped only when it had reached the courtyard, white sand stirred by its wheels. The Dolorous Guard dismounted their horses and came around to open the door. Liuprand stepped out first, then Agnes after him. Here, at least, there was good cause to touch his hand. He helped her down from the carriage, the warmth of his skin sending the green shoots of spring through her veins.
Three more guards waited at the entrance to the castle. They stood as still as draughts tiles, faces hidden entirely behind the grates of their helmets, and only when Liuprand approached did they speak, without even turning their heads to look at him.
“The king is waiting in the great hall,” one said, in a toneless voice.
Liuprand gave one stiff nod and nothing more. He swept his arm forward chivalrously, allowing Agnes to pass first into the castle. But hewas not far behind, and Waltrude and Pliny were not far behind him. And when the corridor began to open into the great hall, Liuprand put himself in front of her again, powerful muscles tensing beneath his blue doublet. One hand was held in a tight fist; the other rested on the pommel of his sword. Agnes wondered if she would ever see him unarmed again. Even with his own retinue of guards at his side, would he ever risk it? And who would the Dolorous Guard fight for if there came a final schism between Liuprand and the king? They were sworn to the royal house of Seraph. But what if the house was divided?
And against all odds, she nourished the most fragile of hopes within herself: that the king might allow for the marriage, still unconsummated, to be annulled. That Liuprand might be permitted to marry another lady of the House of Teeth instead.
Agnes had no more time to ponder these questions, nor entertain these hopes, for they were now before Nicephorus. He sat upon his throne, on the dais, wearing a white tunic and holding a bright goblet of wine. His largeness occurred to her with no small amount of alarm. He was Liuprand’s father after all, the blood of pure Seraph. The goblet looked like a child’s toy in his hand.
And Marozia. Agnes’s breath caught within her throat. Her cousin stood before the dais, hands clasped at her waist. It was a more docile pose than Agnes could ever remember seeing from her. But there was no obeisance in her eyes. They burned like the vivifying oil within dark lanterns. After so many days absent from her—more days than Agnes had ever passed without Marozia in her entire life—her cousin’s beauty was as astonishing as a sudden spilling of blood. Red, she wore, deep and dark, with a matching hood that held back her long hair, caught now within a single thick plait. She had replaced the necklace of teeth with a great golden choker, one that nearly obscured the whole column of her throat. Agnes need not have wondered who had procured the necklace and who had braided her hair. The girl Ninian was at her side, regarding her mistress with slavish love.
Marozia’s eyes lifted to regard Agnes, and Agnes knew what she saw. First she must have seen the flowers she wore in her hair, whiteflowers, to honor Lord Fredegar. She must have seen the way her hair was not held up in its customary crown but rather flowed over her shoulders and down her back, like a pour of water. And she must have seen, of course, the new necklace, the elegant bauble that reflected the graces of modernity rather than the garish horrors of the past.
Agnes met her cousin’s gaze without blinking. A white foam of guilt crested within her, but it was not guilt alone. Beneath it, the water of her defiance was dark. These two forces were not opposed; they were twined inextricably, a single wave that crashed and rose and then crashed again. She looked down at the ring on Marozia’s finger, and this vexing tide grew in power and ferocity.
The king’s voice jolted Agnes from the inner workings of her mind.
“The House of Blood’s messengers preceded you,” Nicephorus said. “I know all that occurred within its walls.”
Liuprand regarded his father but did not speak. It was not fear that drove his silence, but rather the same waters that churned within him, words lost in their tumultuous foam.
“For all your high-and-mighty talk of diplomacy, of peace…” Nicephorus’s throat rattled with mucus as his pitch rose. “You have destroyed any rapport between the royal line and the House of Blood. It is expired, extinct, forever gone.”
Liuprand tilted his chin, undaunted. “The House of Blood destroyed itself. A son, slaughtering his own father on his wedding night—you would have me leave this crime unpunished? You would let a kinslayer wear the title Master of Blood? I would not have imagined you to take patricide so lightly.”
“So now you are aghast at the thought of a son betraying his father!” Nicephorus’s voice boomed through the mostly empty hall, and a cruel, humorless laugh followed. “Always you have thought yourself too clever. But now you have shown your true face. There could have been a swift death for the betrayer, but you insisted upon the utmost depravity. Had justice been served with a mundane, expeditious hand, perhaps the Crown would not now find itself bereft of the confidence oftwoHouses.”
“Two?” Liuprand echoed. “Why two?”
The king let out a breath of contempt. “Because, foolish boy, the House of Blood and the House of Eyes have long been bound by marriage. Lady Ygraine’s father is Master of Eyes.”
That vulpine color of her hair. Now Agnes knew where she had recognized it. A woozy feeling of dread rose within her.
“Now Thrasamund is roiling with fury at the gross crime inflicted upon his daughter. He has forsaken all amity between his house and the Crown.”
Liuprand’s face had paled very slightly, but he did not quiver as he spoke. “Justice had to be done. Not only for Lord Fredegar, but for the lady Agnes.”
Nicephorus’s watery eyes flickered to her. Agnes flinched, and a sudden, revived pain shivered from her hand through her arm. Yet the king’s gaze did not linger; he turned swiftly back to his son.
“Liuprand the Just,” he said, tone full of dripping mockery. “Is that the epithet you seek? You have plunged Drepane into greater turmoil than ever with this act of barbarousjustice.”
He allowed the hall to grow quiet for a moment, eyes still trained on his son. He expected a rejoinder, but Agnes knew that Liuprand would not grant him such satisfaction. He regarded his father in stony silence, his lips pressed into a thin line and his jaw taut with trembling pressure.
