Chapter XXXVII Sequelae
XXXVII
Sequelae
The mist and the twisted trees slipped by them, as if the world were moving rather than the carriage.
The stillness had long since gone from the House of Blood and its environs.
Now the white vapors swirled, the black branches swayed tremulously in the wind, and a number of birds darted from perch to perch, small flecks of color against the forest’s monochrome canvas.
Agnes’s eyes followed them. A red bird. A brown-bodied sparrow. A cone-headed jay. A nightjar.
“What works within your mind?”
Liuprand’s voice was nervous. Yet it was a shallow and trembly sort of nervousness, as a boy might speak for the first time to a girl he had long been besotted with. It gave the scene a luster of absurdity, for surely he should be feeling a grown man’s fear.
Agnes turned back toward him and smiled faintly. “Nothing especially interesting.”
It was impossible, in these circumstances, for either of them to speak freely. They were not alone in the carriage. While Agnes shared a bench with Waltrude, Liuprand shared the bench on the opposite side with Pliny.
When she had asked the leech to come with them back to Castle Crudele, it had been a genuine entreaty.
She worried he would no longer be safe within the House of Blood, having shown such obvious and enduring loyalty to Fredegar even after his death.
Unruoching would soon follow his father’s fate, but Agnes was not innocent enough to believe that he had been the only one to harbor treasonous sentiments toward the old Master of Blood.
The rest of Fredegar’s house might seek vengeance against his remaining loyalists.
And Pliny was shrewd enough himself to know this.
And Agnes did not want to return to Castle Crudele as alone as she had been when she departed.
Bereft of any friends, save Waltrude; she had even lost Marozia’s confidence and was not sure how she could earn it back.
She was not sure if she even wanted it. The leeches at the castle were all sworn to the king and to the Most Esteemed Surgeon.
Truss and Mordaunt had been the only accessories to her torment, but any leech would have leapt at the chance had the king asked.
So to have her own loyal leech only seemed wise.
Yet now she felt pricked with a small needling of regret, for she would have to choose her words carefully in Pliny’s presence.
He did not know—he could not know, or else he would forsake her.
Such a steadfastly faithful man might believe she had dishonored her husband by taking another man to bed mere hours after his murder.
But Waltrude.
The wet nurse knew. Even if she had not seen Liuprand come to her chamber that night, still she would have guessed; she was as canny as a weasel and as perceptive as a carrion bird.
Yet more than that, she loved Liuprand. Their souls were twined in some strange sense that Agnes could not fully comprehend, and that meant she could feel the love he felt for another, like a tugging on some invisible thread within her.
Perhaps the same thread was now wrapped around Agnes’s wrist. The weaving had become so intricate, so complex, that Agnes’s mind struggled to work over all its tangles and knots.
“Your thoughts are always of interest to me,” Liuprand replied.
This reply made her heart leap—first with fondness, then with fear.
Every friendly word that passed between them might now be prodded and racked, wrung out for evidence of perfidy.
Could she bear it? She had spent so many years in silence that it was accustomed to her, and she to it, but it was not the easy slide of a knife into its sheath; it was the thrust of a blade into giving flesh.
“I was wondering if you remembered the nightjar,” Agnes said. “The message it bore to you those many months ago.”
Liuprand smiled. “A clever little bird. Yes, I remember.”
Months before they had finished all their business and departed Castle Peake. Months before he had slipped a ring on Marozia’s finger.
She wanted to touch his hand. A simple touch, one that might have been within the bounds of propriety once, but not anymore.
Even though she now knew what he felt like inside her, the small space between them was as unbreachable as ever.
The ache of longing in Agnes’s chest was so great that she almost imagined it could be seen.
A dark gash, exposing her blood-fed, anguished heart.
In the eye of her mind, she saw that same wound within Liuprand. Black, depthless, dripping lifeblood. He reached out, hand open, but before he could close that space, he retracted his arm. He clenched his fingers, folding them into his palm.
Agnes looked down at her own hands. One was fisted in her lap; the other was limp at her side, for still she could not make its fingers move of her own accord. The days-old bandages were yellow now, stained with Fredegar’s blood as well as her own.
When she glanced up, she saw that Pliny had been watching her steadily, perhaps for quite a long time.
“If I may, lady,” he said, and it took a moment for Agnes to understand that this was a question.
She nodded permission, and very gently, the leech took her damaged hand in his.
With the most delicate of ministrations, he turned it over.
He peeled back the bandages to examine the wounds beneath.
He tapped softly against the tips of her fingers, as if trying to urge a response.
To even Agnes’s surprise, her fingers twitched, some reflexive action disconnected from her mind.
“I believe I could help restore some of its function,” Pliny said. “And at least soothe some of the unpleasantness of the injury. You must be in a great deal of pain.”
Agnes met the leech’s eyes, which were warm and densely brown, like some furred animal in a coil of hibernation. Slowly, she nodded.
In their returning, Castle Crudele occurred to Agnes as a marvelous thing, not for its size, which she had long since comprehended and come to peace with, but rather for its majestic, appalling coldness.
The House of Blood had been warm—as blood freshly spilled—but Castle Crudele had been built on long-ago horrors, a foundation of naked bone, the flesh eaten by maggots, the organs and entrails liquefied through the unerring compression of time, the white feet of death crushing the bodies of Drepane’s old nobles like grapes for wine.
These ancient horrors were what floated up around the castle now. Agnes had at first attributed them to the mists of the crashing waves, but those were briny, deep with the scent of sea life. These vapors were boreal, remote, and bitter as the castle they enveloped.
The disembodied helmets that lined the path to the barbican clanked and juddered in the wind.
Their emptiness did nothing to assuage Agnes’s mounting terror.
She wished again to reach for Liuprand, but she could control at least one of her hands, and kept it fisted obediently in her lap.
She did glance over at him, and saw the same glassy fear in his eyes.
The carriage, of course, rattled on. It stopped only when it had reached the courtyard, white sand stirred by its wheels.
The Dolorous Guard dismounted their horses and came around to open the door.
Liuprand stepped out first, then Agnes after him.
Here, at least, there was good cause to touch his hand.
He helped her down from the carriage, the warmth of his skin sending the green shoots of spring through her veins.
Three more guards waited at the entrance to the castle. They stood as still as draughts tiles, faces hidden entirely behind the grates of their helmets, and only when Liuprand approached did they speak, without even turning their heads to look at him.
“The king is waiting in the great hall,” one said, in a toneless voice.
Liuprand gave one stiff nod and nothing more.
He swept his arm forward chivalrously, allowing Agnes to pass first into the castle.
But he was not far behind, and Waltrude and Pliny were not far behind him.
And when the corridor began to open into the great hall, Liuprand put himself in front of her again, powerful muscles tensing beneath his blue doublet.
One hand was held in a tight fist; the other rested on the pommel of his sword.
Agnes wondered if she would ever see him unarmed again.
Even with his own retinue of guards at his side, would he ever risk it?
And who would the Dolorous Guard fight for if there came a final schism between Liuprand and the king?
They were sworn to the royal house of Seraph. But what if the house was divided?
And against all odds, she nourished the most fragile of hopes within herself: that the king might allow for the marriage, still unconsummated, to be annulled. That Liuprand might be permitted to marry another lady of the House of Teeth instead.
Agnes had no more time to ponder these questions, nor entertain these hopes, for they were now before Nicephorus.
He sat upon his throne, on the dais, wearing a white tunic and holding a bright goblet of wine.
His largeness occurred to her with no small amount of alarm.
He was Liuprand’s father after all, the blood of pure Seraph.
The goblet looked like a child’s toy in his hand.