Then the king’s guard was moving fast, their blades drawn, but the swords fell through a patch of strange daylight and the blades turned to branches bursting with fruit. The guards flung them away, gasping, and dared not advance.
Moreau walked forward, his pallid face shiny with a different daylight. Marguerite wore a look of stark terror.
Moreau said, “Well, here I am after knifings and betrayal. Such foolishness when God created woman for man.” He shook his head. His face was pained. “But I will have my due.”
One step, and Moreau was in the middle of the hall. The next, he was behind the high table, catching Anne round the throat. Next moment, Isabeau had thrown herself across Moreau’s back, yelling and pounding with her fists; she bit him like a dog, grabbing at the wounded place in his side.
Moreau swore, stumbled back. Isabeau fell with him.
“Isabeau!” Anne was still in her place, crying out as Moreau stepped again from nothing into the center of the hall, except now he had the child by the hair.
Isabeau was struggling hard. “Where is Henri—where is mybrother?” she screamed at him.
Anne cried, “Let her go. I will go with you if that is what you wish. I will repudiate the duchy and go with you.”
“No, you will not!” said Charles.
Moreau said, “Come, then, if you are so eager.”
Anne moved toward him, but Charles caught her.
Moreau was smiling a pained smile at them all. “I will take this one, for a hostage and a bride, unless the duchess comes.”
“No, you won’t!” shouted Anne, but still Charles held her.
They couldn’t get to him with a blade; they couldn’t shoot arrows in a room so crowded. What, then?
“Give her back,” said Anne, her voice level. “Let her go. I’ll do what you wish. I will.” She was fighting Charles’s grip. But there were more hands holding her back now: La Trémoille had joined Charles of France. She twisted, but they would not let her go.
Moreau shook his head. “So be it,” he said.
Anne fought, but she could not break free. “No,” she shouted to him. “No!”
“Anne!” cried Isabeau.
At that moment, a small, scuttling-quick figure darted across the open floor, and in the breath before the sorcerer and Isabeau stepped away into nothing, seized Isabeau by the hand. The shadows swallowed her too.
And in their wake, a beast appeared in the room. It was some creature that Louis had never seen. Horns longer than a man, and great cloven hooves, its coat shaggy and stinking, its head lowered, snorting. As though it had been rent from some mad, unseen fabric of a lost world. A parting gift. A stray from the Lost Lands.
Instant pandemonium. The guards came to surround the king. Anne’s eyes met Louis’s, both full of panic. The king was holding on to her; the guards were approaching the monster with pikes and drawn swords.
Louis saw the desperate plea in Anne’s face and did the most insane thing he’d ever attempted in his life. He plunged forward, though he was unarmed, and knocked down the king with all his weight in the point of his shoulder. He broke La Trémoille’s wrist and wrenched Anne round the table, clear of all the restraining hands. The blade of a pike missed his head by a feather.
They fell, rolling, in the center of the hall. His hand held hers, wrist to wrist, and guards were converging. They were going to behead him for this. Unless—
“Anne?” he whispered, and knew she heard. He pulled them both to their feet. Saw the light of another day caught brilliantly in her open eyes. For a breath, he was afraid. But he did not let her go. “Come on,” she whispered.
When she stepped into the quivering air, she yanked him with her.
Then it was suddenly as dark as the birth of the world and they were somewhere else.
Part
IV
Chapter
31
