The Boundless

by Anna Bright

  He was a bizarre sight, loping amid the brightly clad gowns like a visitor to a menagerie. His brown eyes were fever-bright, the nostrils of his high-bridged nose flared as if scenting out a prize.

  Maximilian was a handsome man, fit and lithe for his age. But the hunger in his gaze frightened me.

  Suddenly, he paused before the gown Margarethe had been making over. It hung on a dress form, light fawn brown and fluffy as a cloud, its skirts grazing the floor, with extra tulle wreathing the shoulders. Gold embroidery around the hem and bodice winked in the light like turning autumn leaves, and though the fabric was worn from being worked over and over again, its thinness only added to its ethereal quality.

  I recognized it at once: Ursula had worn it the night before.

  The duke stood close to the dress, studying it, before putting his hands on its bodice. He skimmed his palms over the gown’s waist, tracing the embroidery.

  Nausea roiled hot and vile in my stomach at the lechery on his face.

  He shook his head. “Ni,” he said to Margarethe, waving at the full skirts and rubbing a bit of the soft brown fabric between his fingers. She clasped her thin hands tightly and nodded.

  The door closed heavily behind the duke as he left.

  Margarethe and Ursula instantly hurried to each other, pale foreheads bent close together, long brown locks shielding their expressions from us.

  I sat heavily on my chaise, feeling boneless. “Have you ever seen him here before? Did he come when I was with Fritz yesterday?” I asked Cobie.

  “No,” she said vehemently, then glanced up, distracted as the girls switched again to Deutsch.

  “What?” I glanced around. “What are they saying?”

  “Apparently the duke has rejected another wedding dress,” she said under her breath. I started to ask another question, but Cobie put a hand on my arm, listening hard for another moment.

  “That’s why they’re here,” she finally said. “They’re sewing gowns for the duke’s bride. Ostensibly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The duke is a difficult man to satisfy.” Cobie met my eyes. “They’re taking their time over the clothes, it seems, and putting them to other uses when their father rejects them.”

  Johanna and Greta began taking the beautiful dress off its form, poking pins into their aprons as they went. One of Greta’s curls fell into her eyes as she bent at the dress’s waist, but she blew it out of her face and kept working.

  It was like the story Homer had told me so many months ago, before I’d become angry with him. Penelope wove her shroud all day and pulled it apart at night as she put off her aggressive suitors, buying herself one day at a time with her sparse resources and her own ingenuity.

  I didn’t trust the freinnen. But it didn’t hurt anyone to admit, in the privacy of my own mind, that this ruse impressed me.

  Margarethe curled up onto her settee, gathered the gown that had served its purpose onto her lap, and began to unpick some of the embroidery around its hem. The smug little smile that curved her lips appeared and disappeared so quickly I might have imagined it.

  “Try to eat through your teeth, instead of over your tongue,” Fritz said, nodding at my bowl. Dinner was millet again, mixed this time with potatoes. Unsalted, unpeppered, utterly flavorless, and room temperature. It wasn’t spoiled, but that was the most that could be said for it.

  I grinned. “Is that how you do it?” He nodded, wincing as he worked down a bite. “Innovative.”

  Fritz laughed softly, but the sound filled the dining room, silent but for the scrape of spoons on porcelain. A few courtiers looked up from their plates; from the high table, Perrault gave me an encouraging nod.

  Well done! I could almost hear him say, as if this were a tennis match and I’d scored a point.

  Fritz and I had barely established a rapport, compared to my easy relationship with Torden. Perrault’s reaction would have been offensively patronizing if it hadn’t been so obviously sincere.

  Beside him, Lang’s long fingers were clenched tight around his fork, candlelight in his eyes and shadows in his lashes as he glanced back and forth quickly between Fritz and me. Margarethe sat at his side, still talking, unaware Lang was distracted.

  I am pursuing our goal, I wanted to snarl at him. I am trying to find the Waldleute, and I am keeping all of us safe, should the tsarytsya be watching this courtship. But my satisfaction ran deeper and less selfless than that, and I knew it.

  Lang’s jealousy was forbidden and indulgent, and I reveled in it, just a little.

  I needed to focus. Furrowing my brow, I faced Fritz again. “Why bother enduring meals like this when you can get things like sugar?” I whispered.

  There had been food at the party the night before—meat, cheese, fresh fruit, fresh bread. And here we sat, a whole court eating cold starch in a rotting hall.

  It was an empire away from dinners at Winchester, with children playing beneath the table—from nights in Asgard, with Ragnvald telling stories over the crackle of the fire.

  “Because I can’t,” Fritz hissed, glancing at his father. “Not usually.”

  But he could sometimes. I wondered if Fritz knew his sisters were sneaking out at night. I wondered if they shared the same sources.

  I had to press him a little further. “Where did you get it last time?” I made a face at my meal. But Fritz’s mood didn’t lighten with my attempt at levity.

  “I can’t talk about this.” His whisper grew sharper. “Do not ask me again.”

  He set down his spoon with a loud clank and sat back from the table, arms crossed, expression closed off as it had been the first night I met him.

  Unbidden, my gaze strayed back to Lang. He cocked a brow, eyeing Fritz and me. I could read his challenge from all the way across the room.

  Do they really all come around, Seneschal-elect?

  And when he smiled at Margarethe, and she smiled back, it stoked the fire under my resolve.

  Cobie and I would track the freinnen into the woods once more. Like the foxes I’d watched the court hunt in England, I would run their secrets to ground.

  18

  The night before, we’d swum up the river dressed in black. We’d crept through the trees outside the castle wall and watched the freinnen through the windows.

  Tonight, Cobie had swum out ahead and brought back a dinghy tied up on the riverbank. Tonight, we’d dressed in gowns and masks borrowed from the freinnen’s closets. Tonight, we wore shoes for dancing.

  I took Cobie’s hand as we stood beneath the arch, and her fingers tightened around mine. “Ready?” I asked, breathless.

  “No use waiting for an invitation,” she said.

  Tonight, we walked up the path and stepped inside.

  It seemed impossible that they couldn’t hear the party at Katz Castle. Where the home of the hertsoh was deadly quiet, the ruined castle rang with music and with dancing—a minuet.

  Minuets were supposed to be tiptoeing, courtly things. They were set longways, with two lines opposite one another.

  The dance we were watching was sequenced, set between two lines of dancers. Feet knew where they were meant to go; hands knew whom they were meant to touch. But there ended the resemblance to anything I’d seen before.

  This was bright, fevered, unapologetic. This was a riot.

  Cobie and I hovered just inside the doorway, just on the edge of the dance. We grinned at each other, the stars in our eyes no less bright for the masks around them.

  We let ourselves draw just a breath nearer, and in an instant, the dance swept us away.

  A tall girl with gold hair seized Cobie’s arm; a boy in a crimson mask took me by the hand. Lines of dancers surged to circle one another with fingers twisted together. Arms flung freely skyward, hips and elbows swung joyfully, and dancers called out to friends across the floor. I did my best to mimic them.

  I glanced around as I circled my partner, suddenly worried about Cobie. But I should’ve known she’d
be fine. Whatever made her brave and sharp enough to clamber through the rigging of our ship rendered her more than equal to the task before her. Quick as the knots she tied, Cobie learned the steps from her partner and threw herself into the music.

  So I did the same.

  I’d never had such fun at a party.

  We didn’t try to talk. I let the boy—a little shorter than me, brown-haired and broad as a wall—lead me through the steps until I figured them out.

  The music bore me away, blazing through my fingers and my feet and the hair that whipped around my face. When the song changed, we changed partners, and I lost him in the crowd that spun and wove around me.

  My new partner, a beautiful boy with black skin and elegant hands, smiled at me. I smiled back, even as my damp hair clung to the back of my neck and sweat clouded beneath my mask and dirt ground into the lining of my slippers. The very stones rang with the stamp of our feet.

  I danced until my shoes were near to breaking. And then I came back to myself, and remembered what I had come for. A table in the corner heaped with wine and food was the perfect excuse to step away.

  Most of the partygoers were part of the dance, but, as the night before, a fair number lined the walls. If there were any secrets to be heard or gossip to be gotten, it would be from the watchers and wallflowers. Pretending to be focused on the cup of water in my hands, I meandered among them and attempted to eavesdrop.

  But it was to no avail. Whether they were speaking in Yotne or old Deutsch or ancient Greek, it made no sense to me, and Cobie was somewhere in the crowd. I sighed, frustrated. Torn.

  I looked longingly back at the dance.

  I had not understood, at first, why the sisters were sneaking out night after night. The risk had seemed unfathomable to me.

  But I understood now. Here in the woods, I felt both hidden and free. Shielded and liberated, all at once. As if, search though it might, the gray shadow could not find me here.

  The tsarytsya could try to control everyone—could outlaw music and belief and books and hem her people in on every side. The hertsoh could lock his daughters in their room and control the company they kept.

  But like the trees that grew beneath Arbor Hall’s marble floors, pressing against stone and creeping through gaps, life could not be stamped out. It could be deterred, hindered, stalled.

  But we were young. Our life would out. Fun would out.

  It was wisest, perhaps, not to fight it.

  The first seneschal’s people had chosen to make room for life, to fill our halls with the trees that grew in, with their whispers and fresh scent. The hertsoh had chosen another way—to deny his children their youth, to press down their energy and believe it had evaporated. And the result was decay in his hall—and this mad, boundless joy, of which he would enjoy no part.

  Nights like this were magic, and everyone deserved them. Everyone deserved space and freedom and the wild, just as the Waldleute said.

  My mind warned me of the hours that passed, reminded me of the reasons I’d come. But I joined the dance again, jumping in and catching the tail of a line. The girl in front of me took my hand, silver bangles and string bracelets glimmering on her wrist. We pivoted around another pair across from us.

  Then I stopped cold.

  The music played on. My partner and the girl she’d circled kept dancing. The stones beneath my feet trembled with the steps that carried on without me.

  Lang was staring at me from the opposing line, breathing heavily from exertion, eyes wide beneath his thick lashes and a dark blue mask. He looked oddly undressed in just a shirt, without his jacket.

  I took his hand and pulled him back into the dance.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “What are you doing here?” I countered, glancing around. “Is Perrault—?”

  “Of course not.” Lang scowled and lowered his voice, following the steps. “I’m chasing down the Waldleute.”

  “Me too,” I bit out. His frown grew. “I didn’t see you making any progress, so I took matters into my own hands.”

  Lang blinked, staring at me like he’d never seen me before.

  He shook himself, turning away just long enough to circle the girl at his side, scanning the crowd but seeming distracted. My eyes tracked him as I rounded my neighbor.

  And then he came back to me. Lang’s shoulders were loose, his body easy; he shook the hair out of his eyes, watching me, seeming not even to notice that his long legs and feet were keeping up with the dance while he was preoccupied. I barely touched his hand, but as we wound around one another, his fingers curled over mine.

  He smelled like the sea.

  Lang’s touch brought back the night he had wrapped his arms around my waist and asked me not to make him tell the truth. The drawings of me scattered across his bedroom floor, smudged in ink and charcoal, utterly perfect, breathtaking in their intimacy.

  “Wait.” I paused, putting a hand to his chest. His Adam’s apple bobbed, and I drew back. “How did you know—how did you get here?”

  Lang glanced over my shoulder. I followed his gaze and caught a glimpse of long brown hair and a violet gown and a smile aimed at him from the edge of the crowd.

  Fear spiked through me. I whipped around to face Lang. “Are you here with Margarethe?” I demanded.

  He flushed beneath his mask. “She didn’t say you were coming.”

  “She doesn’t know I’m here!” I snapped, my hand flying to the back of my head to check my mask was secure, my fingers trembling. “The freinnen drugged Cobie and me that first night so they could sneak out. And then we wised up and followed them.”

  “They what?” Lang gaped, then shook his head. “No, you’ve misunderstood. Surely—”

  I stepped closer to him, still following the dance. My pulse rose. “Don’t tell me what I’ve misunderstood!”

  “Then don’t make hysterical claims!” Lang’s eyes flashed as he circled me, and he tugged his mask off, pulling it down his cheeks to hang around his neck by its ribbon. His chest rose and fell, and I could hear him breathing hard.

  We promenaded side by side, my grip iron around his fingers. “You’re here with Margarethe,” I said again, dragging her name out, as if Lang would know what I meant if I repeated it enough times.

  “You came here with Margarethe?” Cobie demanded, incredulous, appearing at my side.

  “Enough.” The word was heavy as a stone in his mouth. “Take her home,” he said to Cobie.

  “Excuse me?” Now it was my turn to gape at him.

  Seeing Margarethe had set me on edge. But I hadn’t done yet what I’d come to do.

  Still—though the music rang louder than our argument, partygoers close by were beginning to stare; Cobie and I had little chance of eavesdropping successfully tonight. And if Margarethe saw us, everything would be ruined—tomorrow night and every night after, this opportunity to find the Waldleute and help them gone.

  What was more, I didn’t trust Margarethe. She was all warmth toward Lang, and she left me more or less in peace by day; but by night, she wanted me ignorant of these parties so badly she’d been willing to drug me. I feared she’d find some way to punish me if she found me here.

  I turned to leave the lines of dancers. “I can’t believe you’re here with her,” I spat. Anger and fear roiled in me.

  Worst of all was that even those feelings bubbled a little less hot than my jealousy. I shoved them all aside, taking Cobie’s hand and turning toward the door.

  But before I could walk away, Lang leaned close, his damp curls brushing my temple, his cheek hot against mine. “You aren’t the only one who can make friends.”

  19

  I couldn’t focus the next day, either at meals or in Fritz’s workshop, where he’d invited me to visit again. Perrault looked worried when he approached me after breakfast, asking if the food or sleeping in the freinnen’s room disagreed with me.

  “Seneschal-elect, you must tell me if you require t
his visit curtailed,” he’d said carefully. His dark eyes were tentative, and the worry and kindness in them almost made me cry.

  I had reassured him that of course I didn’t need to leave, that everything was fine.

  Everything was not fine. My mind kept drifting, my memory running over snatches of songs I’d heard the night before, wondering if Margarethe had recognized me standing with Lang. And if she had—could she report us to her father, or the tsarytsya? I turned the idea over and over, wondering if she could get us in trouble without getting in trouble herself, until I was nearly crawling out of my skin.

  I almost wondered if returning to the ball would be wise.

  And over and over again, I heard Lang taunting me. You aren’t the only one who can make friends.

  I felt jealous, and the jealousy made me feel guilty. I twisted Torden’s ring on my finger, turning the stones facedown, as though they could see the emotions tangled in my expression.

  It wasn’t fair. I hadn’t left Torden of my own accord; we’d been forced apart. And I hadn’t fired the shot that had started this race between Lang and me.

  During meals, I watched him and Margarethe out of the corner of my eye. I had hoped that Lang was perhaps only humoring her attention; but that clearly wasn’t true. Margarethe was beautiful, but with Lang, she was also frank and funny. Even at a distance, I could see Lang found her intriguing.

  I hated it. I tried not to think of the marvelous time they’d probably had at the ball after I’d left. When I’d leaned across the breakfast table, laughing flirtatiously and trying to appear interested in my conversation with Fritz, he had merely looked baffled. Lang hadn’t noticed, anyway.

  He was winning.

  “—Seneschal-elect?”

  I blinked up at Fritz’s voice. He sat before the pieces of his dryer, hands on the knees of his trousers, frowning.

  “Yes?” I asked.

  “You seem rather trapped in reverie,” he said stiffly. “You were humming.”

  “Was I?” I stalled. Fritz nodded, bemused.

  I had been, I realized. One of the songs from the party. The one I’d danced to with Lang.