SEVEN

ALL EVENING WE sat presiding over the wedding feast. Cold roast meats, salted ham, smoked trout, cheeses old and new and, to wash it all down, copious quantities of the Turholm’s best mead. It all crossed my palate, though I barely tasted it.

I had won my position and my reprieve, but the prospect of consummating our binding was already turning my stomach into a tight knot of acid. Only after would it truly be over. I could rest then.

When dusk had washed to full dark, Dieter stood and pulled me to my feet. ‘Time to retire, I think.’

As he ushered me out to a chorus of stamps and whistles from Gerlach’s men, Amalia’s expression sent a chill through my marrow.

I walked beside Dieter in dazed silence, and he seemed content to let me be. At least, he didn’t taunt me.

Our ever-present guards peeled away at the doors to Grandmother’s rooms, leaving us alone. Inside, the sitting room was lit only by the cherry glow of the fire in the hearth and a single lantern, set to burn so low a greasy smoke clouded its panes.

I stopped in the middle of the room, unable to continue.

Dieter smiled at my trembling, a snake’s smile. ‘I’d heard the Svanaten women were fearsome to behold. Certainly Helena had that reputation, as did your grandmother, in her day. Perhaps you were adopted?’

‘Mockery is the method of the craven,’ I retorted.

My dignity, however it was cobbled together, neither disguised my fear nor dented his humour.

‘Kneel,’ he ordered, pointing to the hearth, where the bear-hide rug lapped up the fire’s glow. Then he turned away and disappeared into the bedchamber.

I stood, unmoving, blanking my mind of what was to come by staring at the fire. It was a vain attempt to avoid conjuring visions of his return. His reappearance – still clothed, and carrying a fine tray of worked pine and bone inlay – was not what I’d imagined.

He took one look at me and clicked his tongue in exasperation. ‘Stubborn.’

Carefully setting the tray on the couch, he walked over to me, gripped my shoulders and led me towards the hearth. My defiance didn’t extend to struggling; I’d just look a fool, and a weak one, and gain naught for it. So I allowed him to lead me until he pushed me to my knees on the bear-hide rug.

‘This will go much better for you if you hold silent and don’t move,’ he said, then, kneeling before me, he fetched the tray closer.

It was a work of art in its own right, slivers of bone and crescents of silvery shells picking out strange patterns. Its surface bore a small ceramic bowl containing a dark ink or paste, a short-handled brush, and a scattering of bloodstones. Dieter plucked up the stones, their jade surface cracked through with splashes of old red. One he folded into my right hand, another into my left, then, with a flick of his fingers, he gestured for me to open my mouth.

‘Hold silent,’ he reminded me, then slipped a third stone – small and flat and cold – under my tongue.

Reluctant and frightened, I closed my lips and tried to breathe calmly. With his gaze resting on me, he weighed a final stone in the palm of his hand before casting it deftly into the embers of the fire. He began to chant something, perhaps a polysyllabic word, perhaps a phrase. I didn’t recognise the language. Melodic and hypnotic, it spilled from his lips, and I fancied the stones sparked in my grip. A spreading tang like the taste of copper suffused my mouth.

I became bewitched by the movement of his hands, which seemed to glow from within. I wanted to ask if he’d painted them but he pressed a silencing finger to my lips. With his other hand he picked up the brush and dipped it into the bowl of ink. The blackened tip drank in the uncertain light, releasing back no gleam or shine. I had time only to wonder if it would hurt before the wet tip caressed my brow. It was warm, but not so warm as to make me flinch.

Right to left the brush moved, inscribing Dieter’s will. I couldn’t interpret the message he wrote me, wrote others about me. For some reason it didn’t matter. The whispering touch of the brush banished anger and fear. The paste was slick when it first touched my skin, but dried tight and gritty. The now-warm stones in my hands and under my tongue flickered and twitched with heat, sending a gentle lethargy creeping through my limbs and making my eyelids droop.

When he stopped I didn’t react. A strange fog shrouded my mind. It must be the stones, I thought, though even that was a struggle.

I had been right to think of the raven on my first sight of Dieter. The man had worked some hex on me, summoned a shadow to hold me. I tried in vain to uncurl my fingers, to part my lips and spit out the stone beneath my tongue.

The tick as he replaced the brush on the tray freed me. I looked up, expecting him to be smiling in triumph, but instead he was sombre and quiet.

Taking my right hand in his, he smoothed open my fingers. My palm was whole, unmarked – and empty. The stone had vanished. As if he’d granted permission, I could open my left hand and my lips now, too. The stones were also gone from them.

‘They’ve melted,’ Dieter said. ‘Into your blood.’

‘Stones can’t melt,’ I replied. The fog was lifting, but it left fear in its wake, stronger now than before.

‘Not in an ordinary fire,’ he said as, with one hand on my elbow, he helped me to my feet. ‘In one of my making, they can.’

I didn’t want to believe him, but the stones were nowhere to be seen – and now I fancied their smooth green flavour threaded through my veins with every heartbeat.

Dieter slid a small looking-glass from the tray. I had never seen one so exquisite, without flaw or bubble or distortion, clear and sharp as summer sunlight. When he held it up, however, I ignored the glass in favour of what it displayed.

He had worked three strange characters onto my forehead with the black paste.

‘Emet,’ he said, tracing them out. ‘It means truth.’ He didn’t say what language he had used, but it was none I recognised. From the direction of Dieter’s fingers, as he traced the word, the written form was clearly scribed right to left, which made the language foreign indeed.

I met his gaze in the sliver of mirror, surprised. ‘That’s your spell? Truth?’

This brought back his snake’s smile and, with two fingers, he covered the rightmost character. ‘Meit,’ he said. ‘Death.’

His words stole any response I might have made.

‘I own you, Matilde,’ he said. ‘I’ve bound you as one binds a golem. Whenever I want, I can turn you into lifeless clay, simply by erasing this one little mark from your pretty brow.’

The trap was sprung now, with me inside it – and no guarantee I’d survive. In fact, there was almost every chance I wouldn’t.

With a light clasp of my hands he raised me to my feet. The slight, slippery burn of his brand, still fresh on my brow, was cause enough for fear. The knowing look in his eyes as he measured my reactions gave me cause for more alarm. When his hand dropped mine, I shivered, wondering where I would next feel his touch.

He turned to tidying his tray. ‘You should get some sleep,’ he said. ‘If you can. Tomorrow will likely be another long day.’

I tried to twine my shaking hands together, but their clumsiness made me slow.

Dieter, straightening up with the tray, didn’t comment. He’d noticed, though – the man missed nothing.

A single hard tap at the door preceded Gerlach’s entrance. I whipped my head to the side and down, hoping the inadequate light would hide the shameful branding, but Gerlach only glanced at me in passing. His focus was on Dieter. ‘All is ready,’ he said. ‘We depart at your word.’

Remembering their earlier conversation of horses and provisions and distances, he must be talking of the Aestival progression. Grandmother and I had planned to depart today; now Dieter was Duethin, and the duty of visiting vassals fell to him.

A duty he did not intend me to share, I realised as soon as he turned my way.

‘Go,’ said Dieter. ‘I’ll send Mali in to keep you company.’

‘No,’ I said, too quickly. Then, summoning a calmer voice, I added, ‘I’d rather be alone.’

He glanced at Gerlach, who nodded to confirm I would be well guarded – unable to escape.

‘If that’s what you prefer,’ he said, handing me the tray. ‘Put this away for me, would you? Oh, and just before Gerlach walked in …?’ He winked. ‘Hold that thought.’

My stomach flipped, causing the implements to rattle on the tray. Chuckling, Dieter left, his and Gerlach’s footsteps gradually fading into the distance until only my ragged breath and the faint pop of the embers in the grate disturbed the silence.

For the first time since Aestival prayers, I was alone, and free of the prospect of imminent death.

With aching care I knelt and edged the tray onto the bear-hide rug. I couldn’t uncurl my fingers from the rim, though the rattle my trembling caused threatened to upend the bowl. A creeping sensation travelled downwards from my scalp, as if my flesh were trying to pull free of my bones.

Prying my fingers from the tray, silencing it, I curled forward around the pain in my middle until my forehead touched the soft hide. My lungs were knotted tight as a petrified trunk, and the pressure in my head increased with every pound of my pulse.

Slowly, like dissolving, the tears came and I cried for my dead, for my kin and my court. I cried for Grandmother, and for myself: bereft, trapped, and as nigh to helpless as made no difference.

I had bargained with a man more powerful than I – and lost.