Chapter XXVIII The Dagger Slips
XXVIII
The Dagger Slips
It was not long after Waltrude departed that Marozia emerged at last.
She wore the same deep-crimson gown as the day before, though her hair was combed and fixed into a thick braid, and her red hood with biliments of gold was now a golden hood with biliments of white, which looked ever more like a tiara.
Ninian was at her back, peering nervously over her mistress’s shoulder.
She closed the door behind Marozia firmly.
“You look a fright,” Marozia said.
Agnes stared back at her hollowly.
Marozia’s lips twitched. She turned to Ninian and said, “Leave us.”
Ninian’s face fell. She appeared deeply crestfallen to have been dismissed, but she left as she had been ordered, with only one mooning glance back at her mistress. A faint flicker of irritation went through Agnes, though it extinguished quickly. Nothing within her could remain alight.
At last Marozia’s gaze fell to her hand. “You’ve had it wrapped. By whom?”
The question could not be answered in a gesture, but when Agnes looked over at the parchment and quill on the desk, she was overtaken by exhaustion.
It was not an exhaustion she could not have surmounted had she wished it.
Though as her eyes lingered on the paper, she felt a protest harden in the root of her throat.
She would not speak it aloud, of course.
But it was there, calcifying with each second that passed, and it did not fade through her as the irritation did.
“Well?” Marozia prompted.
Agnes looked back up at her and did not answer.
A furrow formed in Marozia’s brow, and her dark eyes danced.
It was not anger—not yet. It was merely the bewildered embers of it.
Her mouth opened and then closed again, lips dragging down into a frown.
She could not find the words to contend with Agnes’s refusal because Agnes had never refused her.
Always her silence had been a weapon wielded against the world, against all but Marozia.
Or—perhaps it had been Marozia’s weapon, all along.
But now with her own dagger turned in against her chest, it was Marozia’s turn to fall silent.
She would not admit defeat so easily by getting angry. She blinked, as if to stamp out those early sparks of rage, and then said, “Let us get off your gown. It’s filthy.”
Agnes grew stiff in her seat. She drew her arms up around herself, but either Marozia did not notice this silent protest, or else she did not care, for she came behind her in the chair, lifted the sagging braids from the back of Agnes’s neck, and began to unbutton her dress.
Shakily Agnes stood. The gown fell down in increments, baring first her collarbone, then her shoulders, then her breasts.
At last, it drooped forward, exposing her stomach.
The scars shone bright in the glowing pink dawn.
No blood had leaked through the fabric, and her skin bore only these old, healed wounds of the past. Wounds that Marozia glanced at but did not truly see.
A part of her wanted to know where Marozia had spent the night. What had happened in the gloaming darkness while Agnes had dreamed her hideous dreams. Her hand twitched toward the quill, but she could not make herself grasp it.
Marozia perceived the question from her anyway. As the gown puddled to the floor, she said, “Ninian made up another room for me. I will sleep there until this bed is clean. Until the prince calls me to his chamber.”
There was no tremor of uncertainty in her voice.
Had some reconciliation occurred between her and Liuprand while Agnes slept?
Had her torture—and the king’s obviously increasing madness—encouraged him to at last fulfill his marriage vows?
More than ever the kingdom needed unity, confidence in this match.
An heir, to mingle the blood of Drepane with the blood of Seraph.
Agnes’s gorge rose. She had not once felt the urge to retch, even as the king had visited his violence upon her, even as she looked upon her ruined hand, but now she did. The very thought of Marozia in Liuprand’s bed made her taste that foul bile of envy in her throat.
And Marozia—ever clear-eyed in her perception of others’ desires—seemed to perceive this question from her, too. A smile touched her lips.
“I did not exchange words with the prince yet,” she said.
“But today I will. My tears moved him to a rage of his own. He was horrified by the crimes committed against his wife’s house—I heard he tore apart his room in a fury!
I knew he nursed a secret affection for me.
This action by the king has brought it out.
We are saved, Agnes. I will be queen, just as our grandmother wished it. ”
Agnes stared down at her wrapped hand. At the ring that glinted subtly through the bandages. Her throat burned like a bed of cinders.
Marozia combed through her hair, her ministrations rough and hurried.
She undid the old braids and began twining new ones.
She took silver pins and arranged the braids into a crown, held aloft from her neck.
The pins were tight, pressed too close to Agnes’s skull.
As Agnes sat there, naked, this ordinary act—Marozia fixing her hair—suddenly seemed grotesque.
So aberrant that a princess should perform such a base and common task. It was almost disgusting.
These were the freakish customs of their bloodline that made Drepane revile the House of Teeth.
And the other folk of the island did not even know the whole truth of it.
They did not know that the ladies of their house drank from their mothers’ breasts until they were old enough to have breasts of their own.
They did not know that they slept nude with their cousins and sisters and mothers until their bodies were too big for a single bed to hold.
They did not know that the ladies belonged to the house, in form and in spirit, such that any act upon their person was righteous and glorious with purpose, so long as it strengthened and extended their bloodline.
They did not know that Agnes had tasted the meat of an infant fresh from the womb.
The dress for Agnes was the color of a near-faded bruise. Marozia buttoned it and then jerked Agnes up by the arm, out of her seat. Two locks of hair came loose from her braided crown and fell against the sides of her face. They feathered her jawline as Agnes kept her gaze trained on the ground.
“The king has asked for our presence in the great hall,” Marozia said.
Agnes froze.
“Do not be afraid. He will not offend our house so grievously again; even he is not fool enough to scuttle such a useful alliance. If anything, I believe he means to repent for his actions. I am sure he and the prince have had words in private.”
Agnes looked down again at the ring on her hand.
In all this time Marozia had not remarked upon it; likely she had not even noticed.
And so, as Agnes had chosen her own torment before, she chose to follow Marozia out of the chamber and into the corridor, trailing the princess and the Mistress of Teeth like a tethered ghost.