The Boundless

by Anna Bright

  I watched for guards, for one of the freinnen left to stand sentry. For any sign as to where the hallway might lead. But there was nothing.

  We hadn’t been walking long, though, when we came to another door. I slipped through it, heart beating fast.

  It was lucky for me that Cobie had quick reflexes. The dock was so narrow, I nearly fell right into the water.

  “Holy—” She broke off, still gripping the back of my shirt.

  The ceiling of the little underground canal dripped stalactites and cold water, ringing with the echo of her voice. Just ahead, the waterway opened up into the night outside.

  “Where on earth does this go?” I breathed.

  Cobie peered out across the water. “We’ll have to swim for it if we want to find out.”

  “I don’t know how, remember?” Torden had held me when we swam in Norge. My chest grew tight at the memory.

  Cobie made a face, then dropped to her stomach, staring down into the water. Then she jumped up, brushed off her pants, and nodded. “I can see the bottom. It’s shallow, and there’s barely any current. Besides, it’s time you learned to swim,” she added rationally, tugging off her boots. “We’re traveling by ship.”

  “I suppose.” But I was still backed against the door, my arms crossed over my chest.

  Cobie laughed, her arms and shoulders going loose. “Come on, Selah,” she urged. “Live a little.”

  I thought of why I’d come to Shvartsval’d—of those I’d hoped to help. I thought of Lang, sitting next to Margarethe at breakfast, and again at lunch and dinner, apparently in no hurry to share his plans with me.

  I thought of Torden, of kissing him in the water. Of what he’d said to me the night I left Asgard.

  Be free, elskede.

  “Let’s do it,” I said. Cobie’s whoop echoed off the cavern walls.

  “Stop thrashing around.” Cobie drew back from my splashes, squinting. “Steady strokes.”

  I felt like a child as she braced my torso while I kicked and paddled, but it wasn’t as if I had any pride anymore, anyway. “Maybe we can hang them over chairbacks,” I said. We were trying to decide where we’d dry our wet clothes later.

  “We’re supposed to have been asleep,” Cobie argued. “We have to put them somewhere the freinnen won’t notice.”

  I worked my arms, turning my head side to side experimentally. “Good point.”

  “If there are frames underneath our beds, we can hang them there,” she mused.

  What was under our beds? I tried to envision what I’d seen as I crouched beside my trunks.

  It was only when I was four or five feet away from Cobie that I noticed I had swum out of her arms on my own.

  “You let me go!” I blurted, turning back to her, accusatory.

  “But you’re swimming!”

  “Oh. I am!” I realized abruptly, my arms still paddling at the water. “I did it!”

  Cobie laughed and swam toward me, planting her hands on my shoulders. “You’re muscular, Selah. You’re strong.” Her hazel eyes were keen and kind, and in that moment, I was glad to have her with me. “Honestly, you didn’t need Torden holding you up all those times in Norge.”

  Torden. My eyes burned. “It wasn’t as though I minded,” I said, managing a laugh.

  “Still,” Cobie insisted. “This is just to say: You can float on your own.”

  I missed Torden like I’d miss a limb or a lung. But what she said was true.

  “Shall we?” Cobie nodded questioningly at the mouth in the castle wall—where the little canal flowed toward the outside world. I nodded and swam after her.

  The stream beyond drifted downhill and through the woods. The night air was crisp, more like fall than summer, and goose bumps skated across my skin. But the stars were bright and clear overhead, and the woods were alive with the songs of nightingales and the hoots of owls.

  I felt hidden from the tsarytsya, here in the woods. Beyond the notice of the hertsoh and anyone else who might wish to harm me.

  “We should go back before you tire out.” Cobie glanced up through the trees. “It’s getting late.”

  I still wanted to follow the girls. But I nodded, knowing these few gulps of fresh night air would sustain me through the day to come. I swam back toward Katz Castle after Cobie.

  We hid our wet things under our beds and crawled beneath our covers. And I wondered until I fell asleep what lay at the far end of the river.

  13

  The escort came to fetch us not long after lunch. I studied her matron’s uniform, her blond braids, her gait—all I could see of her as we tailed her down the hall.

  I saw fewer than twenty people a day, apart from distant courtiers at meals. Confined as I was, I didn’t know how I’d ever find the Waldleute.

  Our chaperone didn’t behave suspiciously, and Hansel, speaking on the radio of Katz Castle, had had a man’s voice; but what was I even looking for? Yellow cowslips had been the symbol of the Sidhe, the English resistance, but I’d only known that because Bear told me.

  Too soon, the escort and the queue of freinnen abandoned me outside Fritz’s workshop. I watched Cobie walk away at the line’s tail, and my palms began to sweat.

  His door was peeling white paint, its lower corners sickly pink with mildew. Hints of gilt clung to its edges, as if someone had scraped most of it off.

  “Be charming, but not too charming,” Perrault had said, taking me aside after breakfast. His voice was nearly a whisper, just a breath above the silence of the corridor we’d stood in. “I know Fritz is hardly as hospitable as either of your two previous hosts, but”—Perrault had paused, looking grim and pale—“I just want your visit to be a success. A bland, forgettable success.”

  “Understood.” I’d nodded, pushing aside sudden fear and nausea. “Thank you for arranging these meetings.”

  “I wish I could have done more.” Perrault had grimaced, looking away from me. “But you will be able to pass two weeks easily enough this way. Just—do your best.”

  I felt a sudden twinge of guilt now at how starkly I would defy his advice, given the opportunity, and a sharper stab of fear at what attention my maneuvering might attract.

  The sound of smashing glass and a string of what could only have been curses burst from behind the door, shattering the quiet and bringing me back to myself. Chewing my lip, I twisted the knob and poked my head inside.

  Fritz was sucking on his fingers, shielding his face with his free hand against a gas lamp that appeared to have exploded. The remains of a shredded canvas tube snaked across a cracked marble floor.

  “What happened?” I blurted.

  “What are— Oh, it’s you.” Fritz made a face.

  The slight stung, and I winced; but I thought of Perrault. Of how he’d stood straight and tall in Valaskjálf and faced down its king, because that was how the king had to be spoken to.

  I’d never expected to learn so much from my protocol officer.

  I pretended it didn’t hurt to be forgotten, dismissed. I smiled at Fritz like I had secrets, too. “I said I’d be here,” I said. “And I am.”

  “Well.” Fritz glanced around the room, at the ruin of his lamp, at various half-built mysteries and projects of indeterminate completeness looming under sheets.

  I stepped toward one of these lumps, eyeing the white cloth shrouding it. “Don’t touch that!” Fritz blurted. I turned to him, making myself smile again despite his blunt tone.

  “Why?” I asked, light as a breeze. “Is it a secret?”

  “No.” He spoke too quickly, and seemed to realize it. “The sheets are only to keep the dust off the machinery.” Fritz gave a rictus smile. No mysteries here! it seemed to shout.

  I took a step back and clasped my hands behind my back, as if to promise I wouldn’t touch anything as I wandered. Silvered mirrors caught the light from lamps and more sheet-draped inventions and bookcases filled with nothing but dust; and in the mirrors’ reflection, though Fritz had retrieved a broom
to sweep up the smashed glass, I caught him tracking my every step.

  I studied the ten gilded shelves looming hollow against the damask-covered walls, wondering how Fritz worked without books to help him. How did he learn about what other inventors and mechanics were doing? His fretful hovering over me made sense, in light of what must often be aimless tinkering punctuated with occasional hard-won success.

  Perrault had been right to caution me. Even here, at the edge of her Imperiya, the tsarytsya made herself known. Some rules were unbending, even for nobility.

  “You can continue working. I’m not a child,” I said, finally turning to the fürst. “You don’t have to worry over me.”

  Fritz crossed his arms. “Are you quite certain?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I may not be an inventor, but I know how not to break things. I’m not stupid.” I laughed.

  “Aren’t you, though?” Fritz asked, brow furrowed. “Can you be so unaware that you’re not wanted here? Why should I trust you not to damage my things if you can’t see that?”

  I drew back, stunned.

  If I’d been speaking to Lang, he would have immediately yanked back the words with an apology. Torden would never have spoken to me so in the first place. But Fritz’s face didn’t change.

  “You agreed to have me here,” I said. Anger and uncertainty rose in me.

  “You invited yourself,” Fritz said flatly. “And your protocol officer wouldn’t let me decline. And while we’re on this subject, you are a child,” he finished. “I’m nearly ten years your senior.”

  I was winded, hardly sure what to say. I wanted so badly to help the Waldleute, but I had so little to work with, such small windows of opportunity. I needed an ally in Fritz the inventor. Most of all, I needed this visit to proceed unremarkably to the eyes of the court.

  “You’re an interruption when I can’t afford one,” Fritz said, stepping toward the door and holding it open. “I think it’s best you just go.” Only the barest hint of guilt showed in his eyes as I stepped into the corridor.

  When the freinnen returned, their long line snaking down the hall toward me, Cobie offered me a hand up from where I sat on the scratched gray marble. We didn’t speak on the way back to our room.

  The knock came just before dinner.

  A man’s voice outside the door invaded the sleep that had come after my disastrous visit with Fritz. I sat bolt upright, staring wildly around at the freinnen beautifying themselves. “What’s going on?” I asked Cobie.

  “—the seneschal-elect. I’d like to be let in at once, please.”

  I chewed my lip. Were we being thrown out? Had Fritz tired of me so thoroughly?

  Only when I came fully awake did I recognize the voice. Cobie cracked a weary grin. “Lang to the rescue.”

  The locks began to turn, one at a time. And when Lang stepped into the freinnen’s doorway, he was no bearer of bad news. He had the breathless look of a hero come to save the damsel from her dragons.

  “Come with me, Selah—Seneschal-elect,” he said, holding out his hand. Margarethe eyed him with interest; I brushed past her, dragging Cobie with me.

  “Please convey my regrets to Fritz at dinner,” I said to Leirauh, and nearly raced into the hall.

  Lang walked rapidly ahead of us, up the stairs and around two or three corners before we followed him into a ragged salon not unlike the freinnen’s studio. He shut the door smartly, took two steps toward me, and wrapped me in his arms. I let myself relax into his embrace for one long breath of salt, of ocean—of Lang.

  The long muscles of his back shifted beneath my hands, and I shut my eyes and tried not to let myself remember the last time he had held me, or the rustle of sketchbook paper against floorboards in the quiet.

  “Thank goodness you’re all right,” he said.

  I stepped back to find Cobie’s brows arched in surprise. She looked away, studying the faded gilt and mustard wallpaper, the frayed curtains fluttering limply around the window.

  “You’ve seen me since we arrived.” I tried to keep the reproach out of my voice, feeling shy and all too conscious of Cobie’s presence. “It’s not as though you’ve lacked proof of life. Why haven’t you spoken to me at meals if you’ve been worried?”

  “I have a mission to carry out here. I’m trying not to create disturbances.” Lang pushed a hand through his hair, his long fingers tense with frustration. “I’ve had other concerns, and you seemed fine remaining with the freinnen when Maximilian ordered it.”

  “I thought you two had a mission to carry out.” Cobie smiled darkly, gesturing between Lang and me. “You are, presumably, hunting for the Waldleute, and Selah is providing cover for you to do so. I assume she’d at least like to know what’s happening while she’s stranded with the duke’s ten daughters.”

  Cobie assumed—but Lang knew I hated being kept in the dark. I’d asked him to include me, to give me what details he could; I would ask again. “Do you have any theories? Any word of where they are?”

  Lang shook his head. “I scouted out a few taverns in town, bought drinks for a few strangers. Nothing so far.”

  A strange, jealous feeling flowered in the pit of my stomach. Lang had been outside the castle; Lang had seen the town; Lang was seeking out the Waldleute alone. He was the instigator of all this, and he could move freely, the tsarytsya paying him no mind.

  “But it’s early days, and I’m hopeful yet,” Lang continued cheerfully. “Margarethe may offer helpful information. She’s been friendly.”

  Lang’s sanguine smile may have been just a smile. But it set my teeth on edge, this talk of helpful Margarethe who’d smiled and played with her hair and who’d so helpfully drugged my tea the night we first arrived. My catastrophic visit with Fritz suddenly felt that much more humiliating.

  Somehow, the embarrassment and the anger made me competitive.

  “I’ve been pursuing my own leads,” I suddenly said. “I have plans for Fritz.”

  “Really?” Lang asked, frowning abruptly. Cobie cast me a sharp glance. Clearly, this was not the sense she’d gotten when she hauled me off the corridor floor on the way back to the freinnen’s dungeon that afternoon.

  I nodded, uncertain at first, and then more decisive.

  “And those plans are . . . ?” Lang prompted.

  I swallowed, thinking of Margarethe’s beautiful smile and how freely she’d shared it with Lang.

  “He’ll trust me.” I shot Lang a grin. “They all come around eventually.”

  The words felt foolish as soon as I’d spoken them aloud, but their effect on Lang was immediate. He drew back, dark brows raised, mouth working.

  Jealous.

  I lifted my chin. Cobie turned away to hide a smirk.

  I knew I was playing a game with Lang, and it tangled my insides. I fidgeted with Torden’s engagement ring on my finger.

  But Torden was far away, perhaps lost to me forever. As Perrault had said, I was officially unpromised.

  And if Lang and I were going to play this game, feeding the tension between us while freezing one another out, then I was going to win.

  Perrault burst just then into the room. “That guard was wrong, Lang. I still don’t know where the seneschal-elect— Oh.” The protocol officer looked rapidly between Cobie and me.

  “I found them,” Lang said simply. I sensed he’d done this deliberately—thrown Perrault off our location so he could speak to us first. It irritated me.

  “How are you, Seneschal-elect? How was your visit with the fürst? How are things proceeding?” Perrault’s dark curls clung a little to his forehead, as if he’d been sweating. As if he’d been hurrying around, trying to find us. I felt another flash of gratitude to Perrault. For all his failings, he actually seemed to care about me. With less than his usual grace, he flopped onto one of the worn chaises where his and Lang’s things were scattered.

  I didn’t spare Lang another glance.

  I smiled at Perrault with all the cool and competence I could man
age.

  “Apace,” I said.

  14

  The freinnen found me a restless sleeper after I’d taken my tea that evening.

  When the wardrobe door shut behind them, I sat up, flinging myself back against the headboard and breathing sharply out of my nose.

  “Bee in your bonnet?” Cobie asked mildly.

  I leveled a stare at her. “Why do you ask that?”

  “You seem agitated.” She crossed her arms. “Lang gets under your skin. And I know things didn’t go well with Fritz today.”

  “No, he doesn’t,” I sputtered. “Lang, I mean.”

  “No, you’re right. You’re entirely unaffected,” Cobie agreed.

  I stood and began to pace, surveying the freinnen’s room. “And no, things with Fritz didn’t. But they will,” I added. Cobie made another wry assent.

  I ran my hand over the edge of Margarethe’s vanity, piled in jewels and makeup and clothes, flanked by fashion plates. It was all so beautiful, and it irritated me.

  I’d left Lang and Perrault’s quarters earlier that evening feeling frustrated. But my anger had mounted the more I dwelled on Lang wasting time with Margarethe and pursuing leads in town with no apparent urgency while I had to pretend to be stupid, pretend to sleep, pretend not to care that the freinnen were lying and Lang was using me.

  Perhaps I’d agreed to this. But I was tired of licking my wounds in the shadow of the rotting house above me, sick of being left behind while Lang kept his own counsel and made his own rules.

  Torden had talked to me. Had trusted me. He would never have excluded me like this.

  Lang thought I was only good enough to provide cover for his operation—to be a set piece in the larger drama of his tactics.

  I might not have my radio. I might not speak the language. But I was going to show him I was more than a curtain for him to pull while he executed his schemes.

  I wasn’t sure yet how to convince Fritz to lend me the help I needed. But wherever the freinnen were going, it was a secret, and secrets tended to travel in packs. I might find Hansel and Gretel if we followed the girls. We might even find the Waldleute. We could help them. We could go home and take care of my father.