“And I betrayed you in forty minutes.”
He shook his head and came a step closer. “I should have told Anton about us when I cured his wound.”
“Told him you wanted me as your share of the spoils?”
He smiled wanly. “Would you have minded if I’d called you that?”
“No. I would happily be your loot. Pillage me now and take me far, far away. I will never complain.”
He shook his head. “There’s no escape. That would make you a fugitive, a felon, an adulteress, and God knows what else. Even an accomplice to Satanism. We would be outside the law and condemned by the Church. Our children would be bastards, nobodies.”
She knew all that. She thought about it in bed a lot. “I don’t want you to reproach yourself. It was my fault for being so weak.”
“Mine!” he insisted.
“Your only mistake was healing Mother. If she’d not been there I could have stood up to them. But she threatened to lock me up in the Poor Claires’ convent until the king could decide what to do with me. Anton would never have done that. But she would! And the bishop…”
They had been moving closer. Now they were close enough to touch, but neither made the move. In the gloom his eyes were not golden, they were silver, like moonlight reflected in water.
“Forget all that,” he said. “It’s done, and you could never have found happiness with me. I am a Satanist. I’ve killed a priest and helped kill another. The Church will hunt me down and order me burned at the stake. I will love you forever, but you must forget me and love Anton. And pray that none of his children are Speakers, because Speaking is the curse of our line.”
Knuckles tapped softly on the door.
“My love,” he said, “always.” Then he vanished.
“If you keep doing things like that, I think I’ll burn you at the stake myself,” Vlad said.
Wulf resumed his place on the hob and filled his goblet. No one had moved in his absence: Marek was seated in the center facing him, Vlad to his right, Otto to his left.
Getting no answer, Vlad said, “Even if Anton dies, of the plague or anything else, a man cannot marry his brother’s widow.”
Wulf drank and picked up the flagon for a refill.
Vlad tried again. “Well at least you were quick. Did she enjoy it, too?”
Wulf stared at him coldly. “One more joke like that,” he said softly, “and I will burn your balls off, so help me God.” He put the goblet to his lips and drained it.
Silence.
“You are a dangerous combination, Brother,” Otto said. “The family chronicle begins almost two hundred years ago, in the time of the fourth baron. It names six Speaker daughters and hints at another, but only two Speaker sons before Marek. Meaning no disrespect to him, he has always been more of a scholar than a warrior. He would rather settle a dispute with law and reason than with sword or fist.” He glanced at Marek, who smiled to show he was not offended. “But you, Brother Wolfgang, wield your powers audaciously. You have a hair-trigger temper and you fear nothing, true to the Magnus motto.”
Wulf did not reply. He wished he had not threatened Vlad, but he would not withdraw his words.
“You are probably the most dangerous man in Jorgary,” Otto persisted.
“What I think,” Marek announced solemnly, “is that I’m going to get catastrophically drunk for the first time in my life.” He took a long draft, straight from a flagon. “Foul stuff! I’ll say this for Koupel-it does have grand wine… Brothers, one thing still puzzles me. Tonight, when I asked my Voices to restore the old countess, St. Uriel told me that it was important for me to know why she had been affected. I have asked him since to explain, but he will not. My saints have never volunteered advice before. Any helpful suggestions?”
He was looking at Wulf, who made an effort to think about it. “Vilhelmas had cursed her before, so perhaps she was more susceptible and he could do it from farther away.”
“Puppies make her sick?” Vlad suggested.
“I suppose… Mother of God!” Marek fell back in his chair, gaping up at the chimney above Wulf’s head. The room filled with a swirl of wood smoke and the sounds of voices and a crackling fire.
Otto and Vlad both spoke at once, demanding to know what was wrong.
“You killed my friend!” cried a shrill voice.
Marek made croaking noises. His brothers stared at one another in bewilderment. Just as Wulf realized that there must be an open gate in front of Marek that was only visible from that side, Leonas Vranov stepped from nowhere into the space between them. He was clutching a puppy. His always-pale face was white with fury, his fair hair stuck up in spikes, and he was slobbering.
Vlad roared an oath and started out of his chair. He drew his sword.
Otto shouted, “Wait! Careful!”
Leonas shook his free fist in Marek’s face. “You killed my friend and I HATE you!”
“That’ll do, Leonas,” his father’s voice said.
“I want you to die too!”
Wulf leaped past him and turned to view the gap, the same timber barracks, faces watching, Havel Vranov with a sword in his hand…
“Come back here, Leonas!”
The youth spat, turned around, and disappeared back into nowhere. The gate through limbo vanished.
Otto muttered a prayer and made the sign of the cross. “Gone! So now we know how it was done. But who opened the gate for him, if you killed Vilhelmas? The Wends have more Speakers?”
“Or Leonas himself is one!” Wulf said. “He was close to Countess Edita tonight. Could that be why your Voice told you… Marek? Marek! ”
Marek was leaning back in his chair, eyes glazed over. Otto and Wulf lunged across simultaneously and knelt on either side of him.
“No! Marek!” Wulf grabbed his brother’s hand. “St. Victorinus! Holy St. Helena! No! No! No!”
He could find no fire, only ash. Like Azuolas, Marek had gone.
“No pulse. He’s dead.” Otto reached out and closed their brother’s eyes.
The three stared at one another in dismay, struggling to believe it.
One by one they bent their heads in prayer.
Marek, oh, Marek! You never wanted to hurt anyone until tonight. Five years locked up in Koupel, two days’ liberty, and now this! Why didn’t you let me kill Vilhelmas?
Eventually Wulf spoke. “He warned me. He told me when Anton and I went to the monastery, ‘Anything the Voices do for you will turn to evil eventually!’”
Otto and Vlad just nodded.
Leonas! Who could have imagined that an imbecile could be a Speaker? They should have noticed that the knights didn’t stop him when he went to Madlenka in the hall. Why hadn’t they? Probably because they suddenly didn’t want to. Leonas had not deliberately done anything to them or to the countess. Like a small child, he just wanted things and expected them to happen. And in his case, they did. He had no nimbus, because that came with understanding, and he would never understand.
Otto had his hands clasped as if he were still praying. “No wonder his father keeps close watch on him. He threw a tantrum at Count Stepan and his son and they died-when? A few days later, a couple of weeks later? Is that possible?”
“You know as much as I do,” Wulf said. He felt as if he were standing inside a block of ice. Marek! Oh, Marek! “Seems anything’s possible.”
Vilhelmas had certainly been a Speaker with a nimbus, but he might not have killed Stepan and Petr Bukovany. He was a distant cousin, so Satanism ran in the Vranov family also.
Wulf put it in words. “Maybe Leonas’s curses took time to act. Or one day his father said, ‘Remember those two bad men who shouted at you at Cardice? You don’t like them, do you?’ Madlenka was kind to him, so she wasn’t affected. Leonas doesn’t like the old countess and he was close to her tonight. He doesn’t even know what he’s doing-but his father knows! Vranov uses him as a weapon, a puppet Speaker.”
Otto shook his head in despair. “You mean that just now Vranov said, ‘Do you remember that funny little man with the shaved head who ran around in the banquet hall, shouting at us? He was the one who killed Father
