“What do you mean?” I asked, holding the next olive between my finger and thumb. My heart was beating so hard it felt like it would burst.
“We play this game to win, but we don’t play it for the sake of the mortals. If one of us loses and the nation they were playing is still intact, then the country is left alone. We have no need to send our armies there. It’s essentially out of play. If, for instance, your husband was delayed and missed his turn, that would be the end for him. And there would be no war in Pensmoore at all. No young soldiers dying on the field, wailing for their mothers. No children starving or women weeping. Just peace while the rest of the world battles it out.”
I couldn’t help myself. I saw the faces of my parents and brothers as he spoke. My heart galloped like a runaway horse.
“And wouldn’t that be nice for you,” I said acidly. “You could win.”
“So, could you,” he said slyly, as if letting me in on a joke. “I could send you home to be with them in such a way that he could never come after you again. It would be better for him. He could go attend to his folk. I’ve heard they have been much neglected as he’s been amusing himself with wives. You could return to yours and comfort their hearts. Your nation would remain at peace. And all he would sacrifice is a little pride and one wife.”
“Except that he’s about to hazard me in this game and if he loses, my life is forfeit,” I said.
“Let’s watch and see,” Coppertomb said, taking my shoulders gently in his hands and turning me so I could see the list of bets.
It read:
Tanglecott – left hand
Coppertomb – left pinkie, a month in a woven cage
Antlerdale – one antler and his northern estates
Bluffroll – a brace of stallions, his three consorts, a toe from the left foot
Marshyellow – a public flogging, a month of poisonings but not unto death
Towerrock – the child of his sister, his left eye
Riverbarrow –
I felt like I was holding my breath. I was going to burst. I was going to break apart.
And then the announcement.
“Lord Riverbarrow has bid –” There was a long pause as if the announcer had not expected what he saw here. “His immortality.”
A gasp filled the air, and the shock was so intense that Grosbeak stopped his humming. Even I did not know what to say.
“See now?” Coppertomb whispered. “I can read a man’s heart through his face, and I knew this year it would be different – that he would need your magic so much that he didn’t dare bet you.”
Was that the true reason? Because it felt as if he had taken a death sentence for me, and I did not know how to feel about that. My eyes sought his across the crowd. To my shock, his gaze met mine and something shot through me that felt exactly like lightning and fear all rolled into one.
“If I take your offer, he will lose his immortality,” I said, and I was surprised to find my voice trembling.
Coppertomb’s laugh sounded almost derisive. “What do you care if he loses something you never had? He will become like you. Is that such a terrible fate?”
It was not. I’d known many people who had lived and died natural lives. There was no shame in it.
“Think on it,” Coppertomb said. “It is a solution to all of our problems, and if I use his magic to achieve it, it can be done with haste and perfect attention so that no one gets anything less than what they deserve.”
“His magic?” I echoed. I felt stunned.
Coppertomb’s hand drifted to my stricken back. I flinched from his touch. He must not have realized he was hurting me.
“Your days are represented somehow in his lair,” Coppertomb whispered as Bluebeard began to stride toward us through the crowd. His brow was furrowed. “Bring me but one of them tomorrow at the Opening Spectacle and I will accomplish everything I have promised you.”
I swallowed as he drifted away, and in my mind, I saw myself taking one of those garnets and giving it to Coppertomb.
“I don’t trust him, and neither should you,” Grosbeak opined.
But would it really be so terrible for all of us if I took this third way? The only one who would lose would be Bluebeard, and like Coppertomb said, he would only lose something I’d never had. It hardly even seemed like a loss when you put it like that.
“I can see you lying to yourself even though your back is turned,” Grosbeak said. “It’s fun, isn’t it? Swallowing your own deceit? I always thought so, and then I ended up dead.”
“I am not you,” I said calmly.
“No, you’re even more naïve.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Husbands, it turned out, could be jealous even if their wife is nothing more than an ally in purpose.
We spent as little time at the event as we could. Bluebeard looked troubled, his eyes constantly flicking over to Coppertomb.
“Tell me what he said to her, Grosbeak,” he whispered when the hazards were all made. “Tell me why she looks so pale.”
“Or what?” Grosbeak asked. “Will you kill me?”
“There are worse things than being dead,” my husband said through gritted teeth.
We were standing off to one side while he drank a small, foaming drink. He didn’t offer one to me, and I didn’t take one. My stomach had been rolling with nerves since Coppertomb spoke to me. To have a choice – a real, actual choice that could change everything – was both intoxicating and terrifying. Because whatever I chose tonight, it would seal the other path forever. Either way, I would be risking my family. Either way, I would be risking myself. And on top of that, I had given my word to Bluebeard that I would work with him. How could I betray him when he had not been faithless to me?
“Name one,” Grosbeak countered.
“I shall name three. I could put you in a den of fire ants and let them leave you in stinging agony. With no hands to claw them away and no way to run, you would endure them long past your breaking point. I could make a death mask of your face with molten lead. Very slowly. One layer at a time. I could set you in a cupboard under my stairs, wrap your head in a towel so you could neither see nor hear and forget I put you there so that you may spend all of eternity with only your own thoughts for company.”
Grosbeak did not answer, but he looked very green. I understood that feeling. I was swaying on my feet.
Eventually, Bluebeard sighed. “Enough. I will take you both home. Neither of you is much of a benefit to merrymaking.”
He led us through the party, past screams, and chases, and bouts of swordplay. Past people laughing and drinking and feasting upon strange fruits. Past others passionately kissing in each other’s embrace. Someone threw a crown of white flowers on his head and he left it there, slightly askew, as if he had already had too much of the wine.
And for the first time, I wasn’t terrified. I felt as though I had a door I could open and step out at any time and that feeling gave me a coating of armor.
We had almost left the party behind us when we reached one last couple lurking in the shadows behind a rock. One of them looked up and as the candlelight caught her face, I realized it was Lady Wittentree.
“Leaving so soon, Riverbarrow?” she asked. Her teeth looked red and for a moment I worried she had not been kissing the man beside her, but harming him. But then he stepped out into the light and he was such a great ogre of a fellow, marked all over with green patterns, that I did not fear for him.
“The revelry grows tedious,” Bluebeard said lightly.
“If you think to take an ally, consider me,” she said, to my surprise. “Send that pretty one to deliver it. What is his name? Vireo?”
“I’ll think on it,” Bluebeard said, and then we were hurrying into the night and he was pulling me along as fast as our feet could carry us.
In the darkness, the laughter and screams seemed to echo everywhere.
“Sometimes I feel it, too,” he whispered to me as we hurried into the velve
t night. “The feeling that it’s swallowing me up and I’ll never be free of it.”
I shivered. And then something landed in front of us. I sagged in relief when I realized it was the Grouse House.
Bluebeard swept me off my feet and mounted the steps two at a time, slamming the door behind us. I expected him to put me down then, but he murmured, “Leave Grosbeak to his napping here.”
I set the head on the nearby bookshelf and Bluebeard carried me up the spiraling staircase, speaking barely above a whisper as the darkness caressed us.
“Your bravery touched me. My heart is not entirely ice. That someone – anyone – would choose to stand with me without bargain or coercion ... You should know what it means to me. Though I do not have means to express it, I will have you know it all the same.”
Guilt made my mouth dry. I didn’t deserve his praise when I was seriously tempted by the thought of betraying him.
We reached the top of the stairs again and found ourselves in his cluttered bedroom with the tall black-bloomed bed and the strange mirror, only now the open wall was showing a frozen lake with dancing bright lights across the crystal sky slung over it. The room was not cold despite the howling wind outside the open wall, because the other wall contained the hearth and the familiar fire. But this fire was twice as large as the last time we’d been in the room, and seemed to be dancing in tune to the howl of the wind.
“My fire,” Bluebeard said tiredly.
“My master,” the fire replied.
“Your greeting warms my heart as your flames warm my skin.” Bluebeard turned to the bed and sighed. “There’s still only one bed,” he said tiredly. “I would have thought the house would realize there were two of us now. Ask the mirror and it will give you clothing for bed.”
I went to the mirror and cleared my throat but before I could speak, it spat out a filmy white shift.
“Perhaps something with more fabric,” I suggested shyly, my eyes glancing at that one bed. Bluebeard was beside it shrugging off his sword and more daggers than I realized he was carrying.
The mirror made a motion that looked like a shrug and spat out a long, trailing black nightgown made of a fabric so sheer it was nearly invisible. I sighed. It was so much worse than the shift.
Shaking my head, I went behind the screen, took off my dress and sword, and pulled the shift over my head. It was backless, too. Everything I wore these days was.
When I emerged, Bluebeard was sitting on the edge of the bed with a small clay pot in his hand. He motioned for me to join him.
I swallowed as I crossed his cluttered floor. Did he mean for us both to sleep in that bed? Had our strange way of sleeping the night before emboldened him? Would he want ... I stumbled over the thought. To make matters worse, he was sitting there in only a thin pair of woolen trousers that hugged his legs like a second skin.
He saw me noticing and shrugged. “The mirror has odd tastes sometimes.”
My face felt so hot that I wondered if I would need the fire.
“Lie down here,” he said, patting the bed beside him.
I froze.
He looked at me, puzzled, and then his brow cleared in understanding and he sighed. “I want to tend your wounds. They do not look well to me.”
I relaxed and nodded, making my way to the bed and lying down where he asked me to.
“With your back to me so I can rub in the ointment,” he murmured, gently twisting me to where he liked. Then, he draped quilts over my legs and up to where I could hug them to my chest. “I can never understand why the house thinks a view is important when I sleep, but it never fails to provide one.”
From where I lay on the bed, all I could see were the black blossoms hanging from the bed and the strange bright lights dancing over the pale snows beyond. I watched them weave and shudder, mesmerized by them.
After a moment, cold ointment touched my back and I flinched.
“Easy. Easy there,” he whispered to me as if calming a horse. “I must snip these stitches yet.”
And yet, I did feel easier at his touch. It was light and while it certainly hurt my wounds, it was more sore than painful. They would heal. After a moment, his hands warmed and I leaned into the touch as he tended me, cutting the stitches and tugging them free and then soothing the skin with his salve. After long minutes, his hands left my wounds and began to gently knead the skin around them and up into the muscles of my shoulders and neck. I didn’t know if this was part of his healing, but if it was, then it certainly was working. My whole body seemed to lose its tension, melting into his ministrations until I was certain I would let him do this forever if he wanted.
“I want to thank you, wife of mine, for coming to my aid. Speak to my riddle – what do you do with a sudden ally? An asset you didn’t know you possessed?”
And I was imagining things, too. For a moment, I could have sworn I felt his hot breath on my neck and the faintest press of lips to my hair. But that was just dreams beginning before sleep had come. After a moment, I was pulled under into an exhausted rest where I dreamed of stolen kisses with a husband who had never had any other wives and had chosen me for love alone. And though he acted nothing at all like the man I married, he looked just like him and it made my heart hurt in a curious way I had not thought possible.
I woke in the pale light of pre-dawn to find him sleeping beside me, sprawled on his belly, the quilts wrapped around his waist. The fire drowsed in the hearth, snoring slightly with a burst of sparks whenever it did, and the rippling lights beyond had danced themselves away and left heavy snow drifting through the sky like fat feathers.
I blinked myself awake and found the chamber pot and a wash area in one of the doors leading out of the room. I cleaned myself up and leaned over the basin, thinking.
I didn’t really want to think, if I was being honest. I didn’t want to make a choice about what Coppertomb had offered. Partly because I was worried that Grosbeak was right, and I shouldn’t trust Coppertomb. And partly because I was worried that even if he was right, I might still be tempted to snatch at the chance for everyone to be mostly happy.
It was the sensible solution. Falling in love with my captor was not.
I looked in the long mirror over the basin and took a deep breath. I was a mess. There were still knots in my long hair that Bluebeard had tied. My small shift was rumpled from sleep and the blood on my cheek had smeared in the night. I washed my face and took a long breath.
I didn’t like to admit it to myself, but I was beginning to be almost attached to Bluebeard. It was likely only because he was fascinating. Everything he did was dramatic and vibrant – even among a people so dramatic that you could find death or glory around every turn. They made my head spin and my mouth feel dry – and he was worse than the rest. Taking that from him seemed like a crime.
But when I drew the golden key from its place between my breasts, I imagined all the other girls who had done the same thing. Murdering them had also been a crime. He would soon murder me, too. Would it just involve the stealing of all my days so that I collapsed on the floor lifeless because I had lost all my time, or would it have to turn ... grisly? There had been no marks on the girls in the room. But what if he’d magically erased those? What if I was destined to die at his hand? Would it be ghastly and terrible? I swallowed down a knot of fear.
And if I chose to stick with his plan, then when he was done with me, he would take another bride and do the same to her.
Maybe I didn’t have to choose yet, but maybe I could be prepared. What would it hurt to have one of the garnets ... just in case?
But even making that decision felt like making the decision. I took a long breath and turned to go back to bed and then stopped. Why not just go into the room and take a look at it again? Maybe I would see something that would make sense of all this. It couldn’t hurt. And avoiding the place didn’t make all those other girls just go away.
I drew the key out, turned it in the air, and stepped lightly into the room t
hat opened before me.
I was struck again by the incongruence of it – and the horror. It was a room outside of time and space and my husband used it to store the bodies of the women whose lives he’d stolen. How many of them had slept in his bed like I had last night? How many of them had he gently tended like he’d tended my wounds? My stomach twisted at the thought. It was bad enough when men were faithless, but worse when they killed the very women they were meant to be faithful to. Just looking at them nearly decided me.
I strode across the magical room to the eerie hourglass and worked my way around it. How would I steal a garnet from it? They were mine – my days and nights stored away within. And yet, they felt utterly inaccessible. I reached forward and set my hand against the glass bulb at the top. To my shock, my hand pressed right through the glass to the gems on the other side. My head spun and I felt ill – it was like seeing my own flesh cut up in front of me. Frantically, I snatched one of the garnets and drew it out, keeping it pressed tightly in my palm as I slumped to the ground and pressed my forehead to my knees. My breath wouldn’t slow. I was getting lightheaded.
With a thrust of my will, I forced myself to concentrate. I mustn’t let it get the better of me. It was my day to spend as I liked. If I gave it to Coppertomb ... well, it was mine to give. And if I kept it for myself, wel,l it was still mine.
And yet, somehow, I didn’t think that Bluebeard would feel the same way.
I stumbled back to my feet, my head still reeling. Apparently, stealing your own days was no easy task. I felt like I was intoxicated as I stumbled along the line of women. I kept glancing up at their clear, flawless faces, wondering if their spirits were watching and judging me. What would they have done in my place? None of them had betrayed Bluebeard, or they wouldn’t be here. Was that because they didn’t have the choice, or had they chosen to be faithful where I was thinking about faithlessness? Had they – possibly – loved him?
Fly with the Arrow: A Bluebeard Inspired Fantasy (Bluebeard's Secret Book 1) Page 19
