"Well, is it fatal?" Violante demanded, worry making her brusque.
Roxane poured water carefully over the wound, gently pushing Violante aside. The Black Prince twitched and groaned, half-conscious. His eyelids fluttered with pain. The wound was deep and hideous, oozing blood. She could see the gleam of his innards. Violante felt sick.
Roxane began to clean the injury, her brow furrowed. "I can't say," she said finally. "All I can do is heal the external wound, and provide the herbs to stave off the infection. But if it's gone deeper – if he has sustained internal bleeding – there's very little that I or the moss women can do."
Violante knotted her hands anxiously. In most cases, gold would buy anything. Love, loyalty, security, death. But even if she showered Roxane with all the money in Lombrica she would not be heal the Black Prince any faster than Death itself allowed.
"But I can tell you this," Roxane was saying, in her soft, musical voice, "the Black Prince has seen worse injuries, and he's been at Death's door many a time. Truly the White Women must love him. I've not seen a man defy death so many times, apart from one..." Roxane was talking about her husband now of course. But Violante had no patience to hear about the Fire Dancer at this moment in time.
The Black Prince had been housed in a Brownie cave, where he lay, tossing and turning on a makeshift stretcher of heather. It was evening, and outside the war songs of celebration and weary laughter drifted across the campfires of the citizens of Lombrica, still jubilant from their victory a few hours before. The Motley Folk, in contrast, had descended into a sort of quasi-mourning.
The cave was full to the seams. Roxane and a moss woman busied themselves over the Black Prince, his bear sitting at the Prince's head, growling anxiously. A group of the Prince's most trusted men hovered anxiously, talking in lowered voices. A gaggle of young Motley women kept up a constant stream of nervous sobbing (women flocked to the Black Prince, Violante noted, with a flicker of annoyance), and the Strong Man, whom Violante had never seen stray too far from his beloved master's side, sat twisting his hands, tears of worry trickling silently down his cheeks.
The White Women were drawn to him like pale moths to a dwindling flame. Their pale hands caressed the Prince, and they laid their cold fingers on his fingers on his heart. Their voices sounded like the rustle of turning pages, and Violante longed for the comfort of her books back in Ombra. She longed to envelope herself in another in another world, to lose herself in the whirl of words and ink, and stroke Balbulas's delicate illuminations. They were even more beautiful now illustrated with his left hand than they had been with his right. She had almost begged Balbulas to let her take just a few books with her, but of course he forbade it. The mud and blood and filth of the battlefield were no place for books, he had said.
"What are the White Women saying?" Violante asked Roxane, her inquisitiveness overcoming her. Their voices were barely raised above whispers, and if they knew the Black Prince's real name – for what mother calls her child Black Prince at birth? – they weren't willing to divulge it.
"Only his bear knows his real name," said Roxane with a tired smile at Violante, "And Dustfinger of course." Violante had heard endless tales about the Fire Dancer and the Black Prince, and if rumour was to be believed, they had friends since their orphan boyhood together, two little street urchins.
Hadn't she once called him a peasant or urchin once, as a sharp-tongued insult? Violante pushed back the Black Prince's long hair from his feverish forehead. She wouldn't do that now.
The White Women had increased in number now. Their whispers grew more insistent, and the Black Prince had begun to twitch and shudder feverishly. The Cold Man's angels had come to steal their prey away. "It's getting worse," Roxane murmured anxiously. "His fever is making no sign of breaking." She didn't meet Violante's eyes.
The White Women bent and whispered in his ears, and he turned his head weakly towards them. "His heart is slowing!" Fear bled into Roxane's voice like a leech. His face seemed thin and fragile in the flickering firelight, beaded with sweat and lined with pain, his eyes half-closed. But underneath the suffering, Violante thought she could detect longing, longing for Death's willowy agents to spirit him away. Violante felt a sudden spark of anger and frustration surge within her. How dare he give up! How dare he abandon everything!
"His heart!" whispered Roxane.
With a growl of unladylike exasperation and fury, Violante eschewed decorum and brought her clenched fist hard on his chest, with such force that his body twitched off the ground, and he gave a grunt of pain. She felt his heart resume beating lethargically underneath her heart. "Fine, give up! Concede!" Violante heard herself snarl, "I would expect nothing less of you! A fool, and a common peasant boy! The Gods only know what I was thinking when I appointed you Commander! To think, you waste away here, a sorry coward, turning your back on the people who need you most because of a mere scratch! You would let the White Women whisk you away? What man of steel shrinks from pain? Death is more of a battleground than where you were standing today, sword in hand, and I'll be damned if I see you accept defeat! You are a weakling after all, aren't you, Black Prince? You disgust me!"
The cave had fallen silent. The weeping women stared at her in open consternation, no doubt appalled by her show of anger. Sympathy was never Violante's strong point. The Strong Man had stopped crying, his mouth hanging open in shock. Roxane stared at her, sponge poised in hand. The Fire Dancer merely looked faintly amused, one eyebrow raised. Violante had not noticed him come in, embroiled in her railing at the Black Prince.
"I forbid you to die!" Violante declared in haughty tones. "You may think yourself above the law, Black Prince, but not even Death can defy the Queen of Lombrica, and certainly not you!" It was as if her father spoke through her, her arrogant father who had lied to himself just as she spun lies to herself now, and to the man dying in front of her. He had believed he could cheat death. What a fool he had been.
But it felt so good to lie. They spun off her tongue as naturally as truths, and for all the world she almost believed them, that she could pluck him from the arms of the White Women. How much easier it had been to lie to herself, to lie about it all. To pretend, all those years in the Castle of the Lake, that it was her windowless haven; to lie to herself about Cosimo, that he was a good man; to lie herself that the men and women and children who had died in front of her in the war she had waged, didn't suffer in pain and ignominy. No one can cheat Death, Violante, her mother had told her before she had lain her life on the executioner's block. In the end he comes for us all. Butmaybe that, too, had been a lie.
The White Women had stopped whispering. They gazed at her with those cold, cold eyes, and Violante stared Death in the face defiantly.
But inside she trembled.
"The White Women," Roxane whispered, breaking the silence. "They're leaving."
She was right. The White Women began to peal their hands off the Black Prince, dispersing slowly into the air.
The gathering fell into tense smile of relief. Some people embraced. Violante felt her breath hitch. "We should all leave now. There's no need to crowd him," Roxane was saying, in a tone that brokered no argument. For the more stubborn of the well-wishers, the hostile glares of the Moss Woman behind her were enough to persuade them.
"Come, Lazaro, Doria needs you," Roxane said in a gentle voice to the Strong Man, who was insisting on staying, his face striped with tear tracks.
"Of course, Doria," the Strong Man's brow creased fretfully, "I can't believe I didn't think about him at a time like this!" He was shaking his head, berating himself.
Only the Bear and the Fire Dancer remained. Roxane seemed to take it for granted that Violante had resolved to move from the Black Prince's side. "You must keep the fire stoked throughout the night. Sleep lightly, if he stirs, give him water and some of this tincture. If his bandages unravel, you must tighten them. If he gets worse, or his bandages need changing, you must wake me or one of the Moss Women at once." Violante nodded.
Dustfinger laid his hand gently on Roxane's arm as she motioned for them to go. "I want to stay with him a while." He said quietly.
"You will come to bed later?" Roxane whispered back.
"Of course."
They didn't kiss, but Dustfinger looked at Roxane as if her name had been written on his heart in flames. They looked at each other the way the Bluejay and his wife did, the way Cosimo and Brianna had, as if no mortal or magic in Lombrica could keep them apart. It was said that since the Fire Dancer had come back from the dead he had not spent a night away from Roxane's side. Violante felt her heart stir with envy. She could not find that love for her in any of her beloved books. She could not find it hidden amongst their pages, or inscribed in the ornate curls of the words. Power, what Violante cherished and yearned for most of all, would not bring her what she saw in the gaze of lovers.
Violante realised she had been staring. She turned her back, resuming her vigil between the Black Prince and the fireside, and she laid her blankets on the ground next to him. How her father would have sneered! For what Queen beds down next to a common man? You're just like your mother after all, she could almost hear him deride her, with your weak woman's heart! Your pathetic soft spot for minstrels and vagabonds. I always thought my daughter had my heart, a man's heart, the cold, steel heart of the Adder. How wrong I have been.
When she sat up to put more wood on the fire, she saw the Fire Dancer watching her. He sat in the corner of the cave, half of his face veiled in shadow. "Allow me, My Lady." He snapped his fingers, and the flames danced into life.
Violante flinched back, barely perceptibly.
He was regarding her with that strange, antagonising half-smile on his scarred face. It was not an expression that she liked, or trusted. It was not a look that spoke of respect. It was as if he regarded everything with an air of faint amusement, as if nothing was not worthy of his contempt. He leant back against the rough wall, and a fiery wreath of flames lovingly licked his slender fingers.
"The songs they sing about the Bluejay are fine, aren't they?"
Violante stiffened.
"But not nearly as lovely as the ones they sang about your late husband. Cosimo the Fair. Cosimo the Avenging Angel. Cosimo the Beautiful." He looked at with that expression in his eyes. "And then of course there is the Black Prince. The noble robber, with skin as dark as dusk and a heart as pure and white as snow. Never without his shadow, his bear, his faithful companion, always by his side." The Fire Dancer was beginning to etch something into the cave wall. "Tell me, for I would really like to know," this time there was no doubt about the hard challenging, scornful edge to his voice, "Do you give your heart to a man simply because he has been sung about in the Inkweaver's glorious songs? I have seen how you looked at Cosimo when he didn't want you, and then the Bluejay. And now the Black Prince. He may play the gallant robber, but I can assure you his heart is as brittle as a glass man's. He is my friend, and I would sooner see every last child, man, woman, and fairy, languish under Argenta's rule, than see you hurt him. It seems to me that you give your love as carelessly and frequently as your soldiers toss stale bread to Ombra's beggars."
Violante rose, and without a word, slapped him across the face. Her nails left crimson streaks down his cheek.
How she loathed him for his impertinence! How she wished him to burn to death, writhing in his own flames! He could not have insulted her more if he had denounced her as a common whore.
"Leave!" She spat, as if the word was laden with adder's venom.
"Very well." The Fire Dancer stood up, and bowed, a deep, mocking bow. Those blue eyes seemed to be taunting her. Violante's stomach curdled with rage. "My Lady."
His retreating back revealed what he inscribed on the wall.
A heart, drawn in soot.
Furiously, Violante rushed over and scrubbed it out, not caring that the ornate braiding on her sleeve was blackening as she did so.
Simmering with anger, she wrapped herself in her blankets. She glanced over at the Black Prince. His bandages were unsoiled, and his breathing was easy. His eyelashes were dark and delicate against his skin.
Painstakingly slowly, she uncurled her arm from her side, and stretched it towards his face. He was turned towards her. His long black hair brushed against his cheekbones. For a fleeting moment, she longed to cup his face in her hands. Her fingertips almost brushed his skin.
"Do you give your heart to a man simply because he has been sung about in the Inkweaver's glorious songs?"
Violante's hand snapped back. Pulling her blanket tightly over her, she rolled over and turned her back on him.
She was Violante, Queen of Lombrica, daughter of the Adderhead.
She was not weak. She did not need love, the fool's fantasy.
She closed her eyes.
Violante's eyes snapped open. There was nothing out of ordinary, and yet something had woken her. The fire was burning low, the cave walls blushing a rosy red. Outside the sky was still dark. Frowning sleepily, she sat up slowly, piling more wood onto the wood. The Prince was still asleep, and the bear's paws twitched in his dreams.
Suddenly, something snuffled from the shadows.
Violante's heart raced in fear, and she fumbled for her dagger. She dropped it with a clatter when she saw the creature that lumbered out of the dark.
It hissed and narrowed its yellow eyes at the sound. Violante almost laughed out loud in relief. It was no Night Mare or Boggart or wolf or midnight assassin.
The Brownie was completely unlike its sleek cousin Tullio, its mossy brown fur matted, and its eyes feral. She remembered that they were lodged in a Brownie cave, and it was unlikely to be happy about its home's new inhabitants.
She stared it, entranced. She had often seen them embroidered on the tapestries in the Castle of the Lake, their strands of fur picked out with gold, lurking behind the beautiful embossed letters of Balbulus' illuminations. Brownies can be hostile creatures, her mother had told her, as a young Violante had run her fingers over one such illustration. Brownie bites can make you seriously ill if they aren't treated properly. But they have a weakness for mushrooms, and they do say that if you ever happen to sight a Brownie whilst in a Brownie cave, it brings you good luck. (Although not if they bite you of course!)
Violante edged towards the nearest wall, and prised a fistful of fungi from the wall, her nose wrinkling slightly in disgust. She very much prayed they weren't poisonous. She threw them towards the Brownie in what she hoped was a placatory gesture.
It regarded her suspiciously, and then seemed to change its mind, bounding forward, snaffling them up and running from the cave.
Had it brought her good luck, like her mother said, all those years ago?
She thought of her mother's fascination for all creatures, whether they were magical or not. She remembered once catching her mother bandaging the injured leg of a small white foal. Its eyes had been large and dark, and underneath its silvery mane there was a small stub growing. Her mother had held her finger to her lips. Don't tell your father. How long before that beautiful, ethereal creature would become quarry to her father and his fire-raising lords and their baying hounds, the scene of its death adorning the Castle's tapestries, its forlorn head nailed to the wall, and its green blood inking the pages of the books that festered tragically in the library, rotting from the damp? Unicorn blood made exquisite ink.
Was it foolish to hope that the Brownie was a message from her mother, who still thought of her daughter in the White Women's castle of bones, so far away?
Yes. Very foolish.
"My Lady? I heard a noise. Is the Prince alright?"
It was the Bluejay.
Her heart lurched, and then she registered his words. He had come to check on the Black Prince, his friend. Not her. Of course.
"Oh, yes, yes!" Violante clasped her hands to her chest, as if trying to still the fluttering of her heart. "I dropped my dagger. Just an altercation with a Brownie. The Prince is fine."
"Did it bite you?" He looked concerned.
"Oh! No, no..."
"Then then you have good luck then, if the stories are true." He smiled, and Violante couldn't help but smile helplessly back. "And the Prince too. Don't worry, My Lady, he will recover. He's seen worse than this."
"So everyone keeps saying."
"Fenoglio leaves out that part in all his fine war elegies, doesn't he?" The Bluejay passed a hand tiredly over his face. "All the dying, and the suffering. They sing about the Black Prince as if he's invincible. He would make an excellent hero in a fairytale, don't you think?" Here the Bluejay permitted himself a little smile. "You know, when I was younger, when my favourite characters died in a book, I used to cry. I used to hurl the book against a wall."
Violante couldn't imagine doing that. Sad endings, those were the ones she liked. With tears, and tragedy, and suffering. She didn't believe in happy endings.
"And you think the Prince still has a long story ahead of him?" She was inquisitive, but instead her words came out as those of a little girl seeking reassurance.
"Yes. Yes I do. If you'll forgive me, My Lady, my wife and children will be wondering where I am..."
Stay with me, she wanted to plead, don't go back to your family. Stay with me. But instead she said, "Of course."
She thought about the way his eyes had lit up when he had talked about books. How he must miss them. A robber must have few chances to lay his hands on them.
Books. Of course. The way to a bookbinder's heart.
"Wait," she said quickly, "Just before you go, I want you to know you are welcome at Ombra Castle to tend to our books any time you wish. Or at the Castle of Night, when I claim it. There is always need for a bookbinder."
"Thank you, My Lady." The Bluejay bowed his head, "I intend to take you up on that offer." She thought he would too.
She lay back down next to the Black Prince, fatigue eating at her. She thought of the Bluejay's light brown eyes, and the Black Prince's darker ones. The Bluejay believed in happy endings. But Violante didn't.
The Black Prince's coughing woke her in the morning. She gave a cry, and Roxane came running, tailed by the Fire Dancer, and several other Motley Players, rubbing sleep from their eyes.
"Water," he croaked, and Violante raised the waterskin to his lips. The bear pushed his long snout into the Prince's ear, grunting happily, and the Prince pushed him away feebly, laughing weakly.
Roxane bent over his bandages, and the Fire Dancer clasped his friend's hand. "We thought we'd lost you from the land of the living."
"Oh I doubt that. Her Ladyship would never have let you go," Roxane gave a mischievous smile reminiscent of her daughter's, "Not by the sound of her shouting and ranting last night."
"I know. I heard. It was hard not to." The Black Prince gave a good humoured wince. Violante had the grace to look abashed.
Violante touched the Prince's fresh bandages. Not really aware of what she was doing, her finger traced up the line of the wound of his stomach onto his chest. "It will leave a scar." She said quietly.
"I daresay."
His eyes met hers, and he held her gaze. He took her hand, and wove his fingers through hers, pressing them lightly to his chest.
Roxane and the Fire Dancer tactfully got up and left.
"The White Women must miss you."
"What good fortune it is they didn't take with them then and there. It must be that Brownie. It brought me good luck." He flashed her his roguish smile.
"So you heard everything?"
"Everything." He let go of her hand, and leaning on the bear, pulled himself up. "You still love him, don't you?" He looked at as if he very much hoped he was wrong.
"If you weren't an invalid, I would have had you whipped for that." Violante tried to sound teasing, but her words came out all flat and wrong.
No. The Black Prince was wrong. Yes, she felt something for the Bluejay. Cared for him, maybe. But he was the bookbinder now, not the robber, and it was the robber she had given her heart to. No, she didn't love the Bluejay.
The Black Prince reached out, and briefly cupped her cheek in his hand, brushing his thumb over her birthmark. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you." He dropped his hand, and struggled to stand up, putting his arm around the bear's broad shoulders for balance, wincing in pain.
"I'll need some practice before I go into battle again. But I warrant I'll be fit to do soon within a couple of days. It will take more than a scratch to hold me back."
"What are you talking about?" Violante stared at him aghast, "You can't go into battle! You can barely stand! I absolutely forbid you to fight until you are properly healed, and that will take a month at least!"
The Prince opened his mouth to protest but she spoke over him, "No. There will be no more fighting. No more bloodshed."
"You mean Lombrica will retreat? You'll give up your kingdom to Argenta?"
"Of course not! Don't be such a fool! There are other ways to win a battle. If I am to take Lombrica, I must use another strategy. This war is between two Queens, and not our people."
Violante was resolved. There would be no more battles. There would be no assassin in the night. She would go herself, with no soldiers, and no protectors, with only her sword and her wits, to the Castle of Night.
She would kill the Queen of Argenta and her baby son herself.
Wow, that was a long chapter! Sorry, that was quite a quiet chapter, but I promise big action for Chapter 8! There might be a long gap between this chapter and the next though, as I have A-Levels to prepare for. Once again, thank you so much to all you guys who are R&Ring! :)
