Uprooted(48)
Author: Naomi Novik

“Well?” the prince said, sharply.

The Falcon said nothing for a moment. “I can find no signs of corruption,” he said finally, grudging. “I won’t swear there is none present—”

The prince wasn’t listening. He’d stood up and picked up a heavy key from the table. He crossed the room to Kasia. The shining light was fading from her body, but it had not yet gone; his boots smeared the ring of salt open as he crossed it and unlocked the heavy collar and the manacles. He lifted them off her and to the ground, and then held out his hand, as courtly as if she were a noblewoman, his eyes devouring her. Kasia hesitated—I knew she was worried she would break his hand by accident; myself, I hoped she would—and carefully put her hand in his.

He gripped it tight and turning led her forward, to the foot of the Dragon’s dais. “And now, Dragon,” he said softly, “you will tell us how this was done,” with a shake of Kasia’s arm, raised up in his own. “And then we will go into the Wood: the Falcon and I, if you’re too much a coward to come with us, and we will bring my mother out.”

Chapter 13

I’m not going to give you a sword to fall on,” the Dragon said. “If that’s what you insist on doing, you can do so with considerably less damage to anyone else by using the one you already have.”

Prince Marek’s shoulders clenched, the muscles around his neck knotting visibly; he let go of Kasia’s hand and took a step onto the dais. The Dragon’s face stayed cold and unyielding. I think the prince would have struck him, gladly, but the Falcon pushed himself up from his chair. “I beg your pardon, Your Highness, there’s no need for this. If you recall the enchantment I used in Kyeva, when we captured General Nichkov’s camp—that will serve just as well here. It will show me how the spell was done.” He smiled at the Dragon without teeth, lips drawn tight. “I think Sarkan will admit that even he can’t hide things from my sight.”

The Dragon didn’t deny it, but bit out, “I’ll admit that you’re a far more extravagant fool than I gave you credit for being, if you intend to lend yourself to this lunacy.”

“I would hardly call it extravagant to make every reasonable attempt to rescue the queen,” the Falcon said. “We’ve all bowed our heads to your wisdom before now, Sarkan: there was certainly no sense in taking risks to bring out the queen only to have to put her to death. Yet now here we are,” he gestured to Kasia, “with evidence of another possibility plain before us. Why have you been concealing it so long?”

Just like that, when the Falcon had so plainly come here in the first place expressly to insist that there was no other possibility, and to condemn the Dragon for letting Kasia live at all! I nearly gawked at him, but he showed not the least consciousness of having altered his position. “If there is any hope for the queen, I would call it treason not to make the attempt,” the Falcon added. “What was done, can be done again.”

The Dragon snorted. “By you?”

Well, even I could tell that was hardly the way to induce the Falcon to hesitate. His eyes narrowed, and he turned coldly and said to the prince, “I will retire now, Your Highness; I must recover my strength before I cast the enchantment in the morning.”

Prince Marek dismissed him with a wave of his hand: I saw to my alarm that while I’d been busy watching the sparring, he had been speaking to Kasia, gripping her hand in both of his. Her face still had that unnatural stillness, but I had learned to read it well enough by now to see that she was troubled.

I was about to go to her rescue when he let her hand go and left the hall himself, a quick wide stride, the heels of his boots ringing on the steps as he went upstairs. Kasia came to me, and I caught her hand in mine. The Dragon was scowling at the stairs, his fingers drumming on the arm of his chair in irritation.

“Can he do it?” I asked him. “Can he see how the spell was done?”

Drum, drum, drum, went his fingers. “Not unless he finds the tomb,” the Dragon said finally. After a moment he added grudgingly, “Which he may be able to do: he has an affinity for sight magic. But then he’ll have to find a way into it. I imagine it will take him a few weeks, at least; long enough for me to get a message to the king, and I hope forestall this nonsense.”

He waved me away, and I was glad to go, pulling Kasia all the way up the stairs behind me with a wary eye on the turning up ahead. At the second landing I put my head out and made sure neither the prince nor the Falcon was in the hallway any longer before I drew Kasia across it, and when we came to my room I told her to wait outside until I had flung the door open and looked in: empty. I let her in and shut and barred the door behind us, and pushed a chair beneath the doorknob. I would have liked to seal it with magic, if the Dragon hadn’t warned me against using spells, but as little as I wanted another visit from Prince Marek, I wanted him to remember what had really happened in the last one even less. I didn’t know if the Falcon could notice it if I cast a tiny spell of closing up here in my room, but I had felt his magic from the kitchens, so I didn’t mean to take chances.

I turned to Kasia: she was sitting on the bed heavily. Her back was straight—it was always straight now—but her hands were pressed flat together in her lap, and her head was bowed forward. “What did he say to you?” I demanded, a shudder of anger building in my belly, but Kasia shook her head.

“He asked me to help him,” she said. “He said he would speak to me again tomorrow.” She lifted her head and looked at me. “Nieshka, you saved me—could you save Queen Hanna?”

For a moment I was in the Wood again, deep beneath the branches, the weight of its hatred pressing on me and shadows creeping into me with every breath. Fear closed my throat. But I thought also of fulmia, rolling like thunder deep in my belly; of Kasia’s face and another tree grown tall, a face under the bark softened and blurred by twenty years of growth, vanishing like a statue under running water.

The Dragon was in his library, writing and irritated, and not less so when I came down and asked him the same question. “Try not to borrow more folly than you already possess,” he said. “Are you still incapable of recognizing a trap? This is the Wood’s doing.”

“You think the Wood has—Prince Marek?” I asked, wondering if that would explain it; if that was why he’d—

“Not yet it doesn’t,” the Dragon said. “But he’ll hand himself over and a wizard to boot: a magnificent trade for a peasant girl, and how much the better if you threw yourself in as well! The Wood will plant heart-trees in you and Solya, and swallow the valley in a week. That’s why it let her go.”