“Luckily for you,” the king went on, coolly now, “I have come to a solution that will assuage all wounds.”
Liuprand was quiet for several moments more, reluctant to indulge his father, before finally asking in a half-strangled voice, “And what is that?”
Nicephorus smiled. It was a resplendent smile, almost beautiful, yet perverse as it crossed his hideous face. And even before he spoke, an icy, infinite horror was clambering up Agnes’s spine, like vines made of pure winter cold. For as much as she had scarcely permitted herself to dream of Liuprand’s fetters broken, his love for her surmounting all, she had not allowed herself to imagine that there might be a worse fate for him still.
“You have yourself said many times that marriage is the most potent method of forming alliances. So I have proposed exactly that. You will make your union with the princess Marozia fruitful at once. She will bear a daughter, and that daughter will be betrothed upon birth to Lord Gamelyn, the boy who is now master. When she is of age, they will marry. The House of Blood has agreed to these terms, and even Lord Thrasamund’s anger has been abated. Are you not pleased, sweet son, at such civil diplomacy? It is your seed, sown within the princess, that will preserve Drepane.”
Book
II
I
What Cannot Be Reversed
Of all the commendable traits possessed by Pliny the leech, the one that brought him the most secret pride was, perhaps, the most unshowy of all. Punctuality was a virtue overlooked by most others, but he cherished it in himself, polishing it like an amulet, and he valued it greatly in others, as well.
Which was why, to a great degree, the lady Agnes had quickly endeared herself to him. She was never a second late to their meetings.
He had expected her, like all the noble ladies he had known, to be frivolous with time—the other women of Castle Crudele slid languidly through moments, as sluggish blood through a too-narrow tube, lingering over their lunches, plucking indifferently at their harps. But of all the traits possessed by the lady Agnes, frivolity was not one. A serious creature, she was. Not as solemn as she had once been, when she was silent, no longer the castle’s dour statue-girl (Waltrude’s epithet, not his), yet still she was sensible in her manner.
This, too, appealed to Pliny tremendously. Perhaps more so because, in their meetings, he managed to see the occasional slipping of this sober mask, each of her subtle smiles like a secret shared with him and him alone.
And so she came, as she always did, with the noontide tolling of the bell. The library door cracked and then shuddered closed behind her. Her slippered footsteps were measured and almost musical upon the floor.
“Good afternoon, Your Scrupulousness,” the lady Agnes said.
Like his old, beloved master, she persisted in this formal mode ofaddress, despite the duration and intimacy of the time they had spent together over the past months. In moments like these, he grieved Lord Fredegar more acutely, imagining what a fair and sympathetic match he and the lady would have made.
“How is the pain today, lady?” he asked.
Frowning, Lady Agnes flexed her wrist. There was still a distinctive tremble to her fingers, though the visible wounds were long healed and showed only white scars. The inner wounds, however, the damage done to her veins and nerves, the spreading, rootlike nexus of sensation—
“There is more numbness than pain,” she said. “And I am all the worse for it, I think. I have not been able, since our last meeting, to hold a quill.”
That had been her stated goal since the beginning of their sessions: The lady Agnes wished to write again. Pliny disguised his consternation; he did not wish to sadden her, though neither did he wish to fill her with false hope. Nine months later and still her fingers could not be persuaded to do so much as form a fist to crumple paper. No progress had been made in relearning the delicate, minute tasks of maneuvering a quill. It was difficult for Pliny not to feel as though he had failed her.
At least she was no longer in such a great deal of pain. Sighing to himself, he said, “I have thought of a new activity for you.”
Agnes arched a curious brow. She allowed herself to be led over to the table, where Pliny had placed a large pot of uncooked rice. Beside it, there was a tray of glass beads, most of them polished amber, yet a few among them that were blue. He had plied the beads from the castle’s metalworker, which had been a more vexing task than receiving the rice from the chef, a very sweaty yet still gregarious man named Gower.
The metalworker had glared at him with knifepoint eyes. “You queer leeches,” he said, tapping ash from his poker while Pliny stood in the hostile light and heat of the forge. “What use are you when there are no corpses to desecrate? Why should the king let you roam the castle of the living?”
“It could be said that today’s living are tomorrow’s corpses,” Pliny replied.
With a phlegmy noise of disgust, the metalworker thrust the beads into his hands. Pliny left, his legs sticky with sweat under his sepia robes. Now, having recovered from the ignominy of the encounter, he was optimistic about showing Lady Agnes his new clever device.
Eschewing a preamble, Pliny lifted the tray of beads and poured them into the vat. With his own hand (dexterous, unmarred), he stirred them about until the beads and the rice were a novel concoction.
“These are the prettiest, shiniest weevils I have ever seen,” Lady Agnes said.
Pliny smiled. “No, my lady, it is not that the rice has been polluted, nor the beads diminished—they are an elixir all their own. A healing tonic, though not one to be consumed. Sifting through and retrieving the beads, these inanimate little weevils, will help to recover the delicate finesses of your hand, the agile graces of your fingers.”
Agnes had the decency not to appear skeptical. She gave a rather steely nod and said, “I will try.”
She sank her hand into the vat, her pale, slender wrist vanishing into his unorthodox draught. Pliny could no longer see the motion of her fingers; he merely heard the scrabbling of them among the rice on the edges of the vat. Her brow creased with concentration. With her right hand, she reached over and rolled up the sleeve of her wine-colored gown.
Increasingly, since their return to Castle Crudele, Pliny had observed the lady Agnes wearing richer and richer colors. Plums and violets, dark orchids and indigos. She could even be persuaded into amethyst or iris. Slowly, too, these gowns began to reveal more of her skin, her narrow shoulders jutting out, bare, from the low neckline. Somewhere along the way, her hair had come down, falling in a glossy sheet to the small of her back. Occasionally she still wore it half up, in the accustomed crown of braids, but more often it was simply loose, kept back from her face with only a pair of modest silver clips.
