Agnes’s ears pricked. It was not often that she wished to lift her veil of silence, and after so many years, the instinct had nearly drained from her utterly. Her tongue lay heavily in her mouth like a dead thing, disused, sometimes despised. She could recall only dimly the sound of her own voice.
Yet in this moment, the beginnings of words curled in her throat. If she were to uncover the secrets of Castle Crudele, she would need to learn its premises, committing the curve of every corridor to memory.
She dug her fingernail into the cuticle of her thumb, pressing until the white band of flesh broke apart and blood spurted free. It gathered in a red ring around her nail bed but did not drip.
“Oh, yes,” Marozia said. “A tour would be lovely. If first we could leave our things—”
Liuprand lifted a hand to indicate the Dolorous Guard, who had already opened the carriage and begun removing the trunks. They thudded down heavily onto the white sand. “They will be brought to your chambers. And—my apologies that you cannot first rest after your journey—but my father wishes to see you at once.”
IX
The Sluggard
His noises preceded him. Before the doors to the throne room had even been cracked open, Agnes could hear the snuffling, tearing, gulping sounds. Sounds like pigs in a stockyard, jostling for room at the trough.
The Dolorous Guard parted the doors and Liuprand led them through, his footsteps nearly soundless on the long ruby carpet. Liuprand was so tall that Agnes could not see over his head even if she craned her neck, and so her first glimpse of the king was not until they reached the foot of the dais and Liuprand stepped aside, holding out one arm to present Agnes and Marozia to his father.
Yet the king himself had not quite reached the throne. He was flanked by two members of the Dolorous Guard, each gripping one of his arms, and he leaned upon them heavily. Despite there being a low ramp up to the dais, the king’s every step was painfully trodden, eliciting groans and pants. His brow beaded with sweat. The guards did not fare much better: By the time the king was finally slumped on the chair, they were breathing hard as well.
There was no denying Nicephorus was in some manner a great man—not quite of a height to Liuprand, though perhaps only shrunken by his age and his great weight. He shared his son’s broad shoulders. But he had not been titledthe Sluggardwithout cause. The once-vibrant young man he had been was decades gone to greed and sloth.
Agnes lifted her head very slowly to take in the full figure before her, starting with his feet. He wore sandals, not boots, and his flesh bulged from between the straps, his toes swollen and purple likegrapes. Her gaze traveled up his calves, which were bare to the knee, as he wore a loose linen tunic with seemingly no trousers underneath. Yet he need not worry about exposing what was between his legs—his thighs were massed with fat, more lumpy and loose than taut, as though small pustules were pressing up from beneath his skin.
The tunic was strained over the paunch of his stomach, like cheesecloth wrapped around a gross wedge of cheese. His neck was not so much a neck as a slack mountain of chins, upon which there was a very light, stubbly beard, the shade of dry scrub grass. His lips were very pink and looked to Agnes like worms. He used his scummy tongue to wet them over and over again, perhaps in preparation for speaking.
Only this far in her gaze’s journey did she begin to see any shades of Liuprand in his father. There was the nose, proud and aquiline, though the king’s veered sharply to the side, as though it had been broken and not properly set. This would not have surprised Agnes; in the king’s youth, he had been known for relishing every form of fight, from bare-knuckled brawling to the controlled violence of the joust. His sweaty brow sloped down heavily over his eyes—weak, watery eyes, the whites shot through with red. Once, she imagined, his hair had been golden, but now it was the color of mucky hay, with bald patches that showed his sweat-shiny skull.
The crown gripped him like a dead insect, its limbs bent and seized in rigor mortis. Agnes felt her own scalp prickle with sympathetic pain.
The king’s gaze ghosted across them, eyes welling with effort. When he spoke, it was in a moist, gargling voice, as though he could not manage to contain all the spittle in his mouth.
“Which one is the old cunt’s heiress?” he asked.
At her side, Agnes felt Marozia stiffen.
Liuprand gestured toward Marozia. “Allow me to present Marozia, Mistress of Teeth. And the other is her cousin, the lady Agnes.”
“Two? Two of Adele-Blanche’s striga spawn? Why have you brought me two?”
This time, it was Agnes who flinched. He could banish her back to Castle Peake with a flick of his finger, and then she would neverexhume the palace’s secrets; worst of all, Marozia would be alone. That last thought must have crossed Marozia’s mind as well, because she opened her mouth to speak, but Liuprand’s tongue was quicker.
“Surely you would not ask the Mistress of Teeth to leave behind her closest confidante,” Liuprand said. “They grieve their grandmother still and would not wish to be parted in such fraught circumstances.”
Marozia smiled tremulously and said, “We are each other’s only family now.”
King Nicephorus gave a wordless grunt and rolled his tiny wet eyes, but at least he did not order Agnes gone.
“We do not ask your hospitality in exchange for nothing,” Marozia went on. She took a step closer to the dais. “Among our trunks is an offering of our house’s wealth. I hope it is to Your Highness’s liking.”
This pricked the king’s interest. He sat up slightly in his seat, as much as he could manage on his own. “Well, let us see, then,” he grumbled.
Two members of the gray-armored Dolorous Guard stepped forward, hoisting the largest of their chests between them. Their knees quivered as they carried the chest to the foot of the dais, and although their faces could not be read from beneath their shuttered helmets, Agnes heard little puffs of exertion from their mouths as they passed. At last, they knelt and laid the trunk before the king.
“Open it,you dumb oxen.”
Swiftly, they undid the latches and lifted the lid. As soon as the chest was opened, the throne room’s meager sunlight piled upon its contents and then was reflected back, as golden as the sun itself, painting the walls and the face of the king in chiaroscuro. King Nicephorus strained even farther forward, chins quivering as his neck jutted out, and the mottling of light and shadow could not obscure the look of pleasure in his eyes.
The king made some huffing noises of approval and then said, “Your grandmother could have fed her cattle and pigs on gold and still not gone wanting for a single ducat, hm?”
