“He can do most anything,” Maleagant said, “should he be given the proper reward.”
Offal-Eater nodded fervently and wordlessly. Pliny drew in a breath.
Maleagant could have looked, could have seen, if she chose, the leech’s true motive here. But without focusing, she caught only glimpses. Thin visions, like wisps of smoke, while the real world still ground on before her.
This second world, layered over the first, showed her such a scene: the golden prince, in a dark chamber that made him gleam among the shadows like treasure from a sunken wreck. His body was bare and strong, what little light there was gliding along the muscled planes of his chest. A woman was caught up in his embrace. Black of hair she was, and pale of face, her long, white limbs as bright as bleached bones. They tangled with the prince’s in an impregnable knot of passion; he and the woman were one gasping, panting mass there in the murk and gloom.
All Maleagant was given to know was that this woman was not the princess.
“Very well,” said Pliny the leech. “Come with me, and if you complete your task you will be rewarded with a great deal more than gutter scraps.”
Offal-Eater began to shake all over with excitement, rubbing his hands up and down his emaciated arms. Without another word, Pliny turned and jerked his head for Offal-Eater to follow. He galloped enthusiastically after the leech, teeth chattering like a distressed horse. The leech walked into a thick swarm of flies and then was lost within moments to distance.
But Offal-Eater hesitated a moment, then looked back. He met Maleagant’s eyes, her all-seeing eyes that, at the moment, were offering misty visions of his future. A protest formed in the base of her throat, like a clot of phlegm, and perhaps if she were of greater courage, she might have shouted it out. She might have said to this decrepit creature,Wait, stop, don’t,for what she saw within the haze behind her eyes was terrible. It was almost too terrible for her to believe, though her visions had never been wrong before. If Offal-Eater had any romantic notions about what was to come, hopes for an elevation instatus, for a meal that at last would fill his ever-hungry belly, these illusions would soon be shattered, like a bright glass goblet against the floor.
Offal-Eater raised his hand and gave a rather frenzied wave. “Goodbye, Madame Sosostris,” he called to her. “Goodbye, goodbye.”
Would Maleagant regret this moment? When she stood by in silence rather than trying, with what little power she had, to prevent the horror that was certain to come? It was not only Offal-Eater who would suffer; she saw that, as well. She saw untold terrors. She saw the red spurt of blood alongside the white streaking of seed. She saw the cruel flash of a blade in the dark. She saw that much and more.
Yet she did not speak. Perhaps it was fear. Perhaps it was something bitterer and deeper, a grudge that had hardened within her, grown thick and rough with time. The line of Berengar had taken from this island, had burned and pillaged and razed. Could these horrors, these unspeakable atrocities, rebalance the scales? Could the old order of the world be restored?
These questions, to Maleagant, had no clear and simple answers. She raised a hand and waved back to Offal-Eater. He gave her one final, yellow-toothed smile, and then he scampered on, disappearing into the swam of flies and sliding neatly into the groove worn by the turning wheel of fate.
V
An Encounter in the Tower
She had passed her ninety-second name day, though there was no one alive who knew that. Waltrude was the oldest creature on the island, save perhaps for a tortoise. She had only heard of such an animal; she had never seen one. They did not live on the pebbly beaches around Castle Crudele—there were just the seals that occasionally sunned themselves on sharp outcroppings of rock. But Pliny the leech had brought with him from the House of Blood an astonishing encyclopedia, a fat leather tome that showed, on each page, a different plant or creature that existed on Drepane. It was the accumulation of all his life’s work, and the work of many leeches that preceded him.
So Waltrude had learned of animals like tortoises, which lived longer than mortal men, and plants like henbane that, if consumed, would infect the eater with strange delusions and terrible dreams until they sweated the poison from their system. She traced with her thumb the ink drawings of these flora and fauna, feeling almost as giddy as a girl again, delighted, after nine decades on this earth, to find that there was still something new to her in the world.
But these vivifying discoveries could not turn back time, and they could not erase what was ancient and eternal. The halls of Castle Crudele were still gray and cold. Ghosts still lurked in corners and down empty corridors, like pale accumulations of cobwebs. Her bones still cracked and ached and her flesh still slipped about loosely, sagging further with each passing day, soft as rot on a log. Her twisted nipples still pained her, each pang reminding her of the four children she had nursed, two princes and two kings.
Never a princess and never a queen, though these ghosts did not cease to haunt her. In fact, the phantoms of Iphigene and Philomel trailed after her as she climbed the stairs to the east wing of the castle. Their golden hair floated out around them, translucent as a jellyfish, another creature of whose existence she had newly learned. Their eyes were wide with fixed horror, and while they did not vocalize, they spoke to Waltrude anyway.
Save me,Iphigene whispered.
Avenge me,Philomel said.
Waltrude could not. She could only aid the living. And so, as she raised a trembling hand to knock on the princess Marozia’s door, her old bones grew suddenly stiff and taut with determination.
There was some scuffling behind the door, and a bitten-out stream of words, mostly unintelligible. Waltrude waited. There was another thud and then a whisper. And then, moments later, the door opened to a narrow crack. The sliver of a face showed through.
It was not the princess. It was her handmaiden, Ninian, peering at Waltrude with her mismatched eyes. Suspicious eyes, almost hostile. Waltrude had grown used to their strangeness, but now they regarded her as if she were a most unwelcome intruder.
“Good day,” Waltrude said. “I am here to see the princess Marozia.”
Ninian’s gaze narrowed. “She does not wish to speak with you.”
“Well, nevertheless,” said Waltrude, “tell her that I am here.”
Ninian did not move. Her stare remained cold; she bristled with silent anger. Once Waltrude had wondered if she were simple—but oh, she had been a fool to think it. There was nothing simple about this girl, and her naïveté had been shed long ago, within months of serving at Marozia’s feet. What Waltrude had mistaken for idiocy was merely love. A handmaiden in love with her mistress was far from an uncommon thing. It was only Ninian’s feral passion that surprised her. She had brought with her some of her peasant roughness and animal-like aggression. It was instinctual and without true malice, but Waltrude was sure, at least in that moment, that she would scratch out the eyes and bite out the throat of any whom she perceived to threaten her dear princess.
But clearly she did not perceive Waltrude—diminished, stoop-backed Waltrude—as too much of a threat, for after staring at her a moment longer, she vanished from the doorway, shutting it behind her. There was more shuffling from within the room, more snarling whispers. Then, with heavy footsteps, Ninian appeared in the threshold again. She opened the door just wide enough for Waltrude to enter, and wordlessly waved her through.
Given the circumstances of the princess’s self-confinement, Waltrude had expected to see the chamber in disarray, perhaps reeking of unwashed chamber pots and musty, moth-bitten clothes. But it was impeccably neat, from the velvet coverlet to the drapes, which were matching in their deep-red color, to the dark wooden furniture, which did not show even the faintest veneer of dust. The hearth was swept and there was no ash, only bright, snapping blue flames. And the princess stood in the very center, her posture perfectly straight, her neck as long and white as a swan’s. Her black hair was bound up in a gold hairnet, and she wore rubies at her throat. There was nothing to betray a mind addled with grief.
And that made it all the more vulgar to Waltrude, all the more chilling and dreadful and dire. Here was a great lady, most noble in her pedigree, most surpassing in her beauty, clever of wit and strong of spirit. And yet still everything could be taken from her at the wave of one man’s hand.
