Chapter XII A Stone Turned
XII
A Stone Turned
Agnes stood outside in the corridor, her mind as empty of thoughts as her mouth was of words.
She leaned back against the wall, her head thudding softly on the stone.
Sensation returned to her in slow increments, first humming at the tips of her fingers and toes, then crawling up her limbs until she felt—finally, again—the aching brag of her heart.
It ached because she lived. Each beat, like the pulse of blood behind a bruise, reminded her of that fact, reminded her that she was not some statue, not some cold, stiff corpse.
And because she was alive, because she was a lady, mortal, warm, soft, vulnerable, and free, she could speak.
Agnes felt her lips part, and she gulped down air as if she were drawing the first breath after drowning.
But instead of speaking, she laughed.
It was such an inappropriate, unexpected sound that Agnes clapped her hand over her mouth, stifling it. She froze, listening for any movement on the other side of the door, any indication that Marozia had heard. But there was nothing.
Agnes pushed off the wall and paced down the corridor, farther and farther from her cousin’s chamber with each step.
She pressed her other hand over her mouth, too, even biting down on a knuckle to be certain she would not make such a sound again.
But she could not help it. She rounded a corner and another laugh slipped out between her latticed fingers, like a newt wriggling free from its arrangement of river stones.
Suddenly she cared no more for what might be thought of her illicit, deranged glee.
She let her hands drop, arms falling to her sides, and she laughed once more, openly and unashamedly.
The sound darted about the corridor with the frenzied dexterity of a rabbit, spasming off one wall and then the other.
“Lady?”
The voice was Pliny’s, and it jolted Agnes out of her crazed reverie at once. With a flush warming her cheeks, she turned to see the leech standing there in the corridor. His hands were clasped and held at his middle.
Agnes blinked, wishing he had not heard her manic laughter, that she could take it all back. When she recovered herself, she said, “Yes, Your Scrupulousness?”
Pliny was, even at the most joyous of times, a sober man and a paragon of his order, a leech who embodied every virtue of stoicism and patience. It was something that Agnes found a great comfort, under ordinary circumstances.
Yet now—and this unnerved her greatly—Agnes witnessed in him an especial seriousness, almost grief. He had not even looked so grave following the murder of Lord Fredegar. He had been less solemn when wading through the ocean of his old master’s lifeblood. Agnes’s marrow chilled to see it.
“If it please,” he said, in a low tone, “I would have a word with you in private.”
Stunned into silence by such seriousness, Agnes merely nodded.
There were a number of unoccupied chambers down this corridor, those that had once belonged to queens and their ladies-in-wait, back when Castle Crudele had been stuffed full of settlers from Seraph.
That tap had been turned off, and the flow from the mainland had stopped; no more golden-haired beauties would grace Drepane’s shores unless they were born from the bloodline of the prince.
Pliny led her into one and shut the door with firmness behind them.
“What is your concern, Your Scrupulousness?” Agnes asked once they were alone. Worry had begun to shiver through her; for the first time in months, she was moved to pick at the beds of her nails.
The leech drew a breath. It was a tremulous one, pregnant with unspoken meaning. And then, rather than say a word, Pliny reached into the pocket of his leech’s robes. He retrieved something from within and held it in a closed fist. He hesitated for several more moments before opening his hand.
There, lying flat on his palm, was Agnes’s silver clip.
Her body understood before her mind could comprehend—her body, itself, flaring like a torch in the dark, crackling with warning.
Danger, it said, danger, and her belly grew slippery with nausea and her throat tightened in a vise and finally, the memory unfolded in the theater of her mind: the coldness of the altar against her bare thighs; Liuprand’s hand fisted in her hair, dislodging the clip, which she had then forgotten there on the dark chapel floor.
Agnes was drawn within the frigid mantle of her silence.
“I did not intend to see what I have seen,” Pliny said. His voice was a whisper. “Yet I cannot continue on as if I have not.”
Moments trickled past her, like water from a chipped bowl.
Reason, wisdom, humaneness—all these virtues occurred to her, and then were spurned.
Perhaps, were she still that gray lady, she would have remained silent and done all her pleading with her eyes.
But Castle Crudele had touched her; she had been poisoned by its barbarity.
And so when she did speak, it was with a vicious edge that she did not truly feel—a vicious edge that was fragile armor for her fear.
“You will not be believed,” she said hoarsely. “You speak treason; the prince could have your head…”
Yet this cruelty did not suit her. And Pliny, enlightened and sagacious leech he was, knew it to be so. He looked at her with a steady gaze.
Words spilled out of her in a desperate flood. Confession—she might as well have dropped to her knees.
“I mean no disregard to your old master,” Agnes said. Even now, the memory of his blood soaking her gown was torrid and fresh. Could Pliny not see the haunting in her eyes? “I honor him, still. I will, always. I…”
How could she explain that what had begun with Liuprand—what could not be reversed—had been set into motion long before she had even known Lord Fredegar’s name?
How could she explain the yearning that was in her marrow, in her veins, in every tough strand of sinew and throbbing muscle that constructed her personhood?
Would a man such as him understand? Were his leech’s vows too tight a binding for his mind or his heart to break?
“You misconstrue me, lady,” Pliny said at last. “It was your secret, and now it is mine.”
Agnes merely stared, for so long without blinking that her eyes began to water. The physical sensation of shock, of ebbing horror, was beyond what her intellect could put to words. When tears dampened her lashes, Pliny saw this and closed his fingers over the clip again. It was obscured from view.
“I did not wish for this,” she managed. “To be so undermined by my own soul, which seems to forget all reason…”
Pliny gave a single, stiff nod.
“It is not my place to advise you on how to discipline the cravings of your soul. Nor, I think, need I remind you of the dangers that accompany such unshackled desires.” Around the clip, his fingers tensed.
“It is not my wish, lady, to see you writhe and suffer more within the prison of vows and laws.”
Vows and laws that she had broken so recklessly.
A fool, she thought; she was a terrible fool.
Yet the true prison was of her own construction: the desires that kept her on this brazen and perilous course—invisible walls, invisible floors, such that could not be broken down because they could not be seen.
“Your Scrupulousness,” she choked out, “I must tell you the very worst thing, which is that I love him.”
This did not unmoor Pliny at all.
“I can see that,” he said. “Or else you would not risk such that you have. If you allow me a moment of bluntness—the betrayal of a marriage vow, on its own, is not so unforgivable a crime; a thousand princes and kings before have shucked these hastily made promises, and done so openly. But should the prince father a child beyond the bounds of his marriage bed, death is the price. Neither child nor mother would be suffered to live.”
Agnes swallowed.
“Your fear is for naught,” she said. “In this matter, at least. Nothing in my womb can take root.” To speak the word barren would have been pure agony, a blister upon her tongue. She found reprieve within the cushion of euphemism.
Once more, Pliny nodded. A strange look came over his face, clouding his dark eyes. She imagined it might be grief. Grief for her? She did not know.
“If you would allow me,” he said slowly, “to offer my counsel.”
Agnes realized she had picked the white band of flesh around her nail to a bloody strip. “Yes, Your Scrupulousness.”
“I am not so green and so pitiless as to tell you to give this up—though perhaps I ought, at least, to try.” Pliny the leech never smiled, and so it chilled her blood now to see the corner of his mouth quiver with cold and humorless humor.
“So I will say only this: There is, in Seraph, a bond that surpasses all earth-made vows. It is the bond between a soul and its matched half, and every rote human law withers to nothing in its face. At least, such is the custom on the mainland. It is not within the limits of my art to declare when such a bond is found—but I have come to know the prince well in these months, and I do not believe he would risk all for anything less.”
A bond that transcended all earth-made vows. Agnes recalled the words from Liuprand’s wedding ceremony—the vows he had sworn, falsely, because Marozia was not his soul’s equal.
I would have you as my equal, my matched half.
“I have heard tale of such a bond before,” was all Agnes said. “It is the inheritance of any who carries the blood of Seraph.”
“Yes, lady.”
The leech really was such a clever man. Not for the first time, Agnes felt grateful that he was loyal to her and no other. Grateful that she had his confidence, his wisdom, and his discretion. He was as faithful as the strange-eyed girl who stood at Marozia’s side.
So faithful that Agnes shucked her own trepidation, her own inhibitions. The urge to laugh was gone, but it had been replaced by another equally brazen sentiment. Love, which was more dangerous than the sharpest blade, and sweeter than the last fig on a branch.
Let me taste it, she thought. Let me cut myself on it. I do not care.
She lifted her gaze to Pliny’s again. Lowly, she asked, “Then will you perform the task?”