But when I look again, the creature is moving from behind the halsa, wide eyes searching, watching my every move. With sickening fascination, I can’t help but stare back. She’s still all wired joints and carved limbs, same as when she was taken away in the cold stateroom at Wolfspire Hall. But the strings connecting her to the crossbar controls have been cut. Walking freely, the saboteur comes closer, splayed hands swinging loose at her sides, knees bent so she might bolt at any moment, like a deer. Instinctively, I take a few steps back. She’s alive.
Yet … she is not like me. The blue moon hasn’t risen yet. She’s not human. She can’t be. What is she?
“How?” I breathe aloud.
The saboteur glances around quickly, as if afraid of what my voice might summon.
She hears me. Can she speak?
Quickly putting a claw-like, gloved finger to her lips, she motions for me to be quiet. Oh, saints and stars. Anyone with eyes can see her sharp finger drips with blood. Dread fills my lungs instead of air. My legs are locked in place, unable to move.
The saboteur’s painted eyes examine me, trying to understand my response. She seems as curious about me as I am of her, if that’s even possible.
“What—” I croak again, but the saboteur cuts me off with a shake of her head, beckoning me forward with long, slender fingers.
Unsatisfied with my stupefied inability to comply with her orders, she tugs at my arm, dragging me through the fog, into a dense stand of pines. Her bloody fingers curl solidly around me, her grasp like iron. She points, indicating I should tuck myself into a small space between two tall overhanging branches. Shaking and wobbly, I don’t fight her. She wedges herself in front of me, standing silent sentry between me and the thinly veiled opening in the pines.
Touching her shoulder, I pick up the sound of her voice, a silky remoteness repeating over and over words I don’t understand.
“Leben consurgé! Danger among us. Consurgé! Danger among us!”
It’s dark between the trees; the pine boughs gouge at my neck and face. I fidget worriedly, unsheathing my axe to have it at the ready, wondering what on earth is happening and how I will explain to all of Tavia that a marionette of mine walks the woods before dawn.
The saboteur’s body tenses, a string down her spine tightening. Then I hear the reason: through the trees comes the distinct sound of marching, of men moving in metered unison. I wait, holding my breath, peeking over the saboteur’s black-clad shoulder, the leather tunic Bran hand cut providing the frame to my view. At first, we can only hear them; a small army on the move. Surely this is the duke’s doing, sending men in the direction of Brylov under the cover of near darkness and fog. And then, to my dismay, I see them.
They are not men at all.
My father’s wooden soldiers, fully animated, destroy the forest floor beneath dirtied boots as they sweep across in lines five deep. It’s like my nightmare from the gate of Wolfspire Hall come to pass. They stomp onwards, their gait brittle, their advance unyielding. The soldiers pass us by, never noticing us sequestered among the pines. I recognize each blocky face, a set of eyebrows here, a bulbous nose there.
Like the saboteur, they do not blink; their eyes stare ahead undaunted, summoned by an invisible beacon. Their boots gather muck from the forest floor, but even in the graying light, their uniforms are as crisp as they were when my father and I delivered them. I take this as a sign that this is their first time out of Wolfspire Hall.
The saboteur doesn’t allow me to move a muscle until they are long gone from sight, their footfalls a distant echo. Only then does she break from the pines, indicating I should follow. I realize she’s been protecting me, keeping me from the path of the soldiers who would have been on me in minutes had she not found me first.
Has she been sent on the same mission as the soldiers or was she sent ahead to spy or stir up trouble? Whose blood is on her hands? The possibilities set my stomach churning.
I have so many questions, yet I know from her eyes and stiff-jointed mouth she can’t give me real answers. If I were seen with her now, what would people say? Old Josipa’s wrinkled face rises up to haunt my mind. The saboteur lives by some form of the same old magic, that banned and dangerous kind.
Unconcerned about the soldiers now, she crouches down beside me, intently scooping up a little of the black soil. She sifts it through her gloved fingers, and dirt clings to the bloody, sticky patches. Perhaps she hears the forest speaking through the earth, for she plunges five fingers down farther and dips her head, listening.
Part of me wonders if I should turn and follow the soldiers, to see where they might be going, but I’m so mesmerized by the saboteur it’s impossible to leave her. I squat down beside her, sitting back on my haunches, just as she does.
Logically, I know she is without a beating heart and a brain and all the other encumbrances that make a creature human and whole. But here she is. Functioning on magic I can’t begin to understand.
“What did he do to you?” I ask softly, so as not to startle her. My voice sounds fragile, like it might shatter when it touches the air. “What did he make you do?” I assess the blood-stained gloves.
Her head inclines toward me, curious. Her expression remains unchanged: intense, sharp, and self-assured. At the time I was carving it, the wood gave me no other choice. Hers is not a beautiful face, but it is one you cannot look away from.
Lost in my own spell of wonderment, I lift my hand in greeting, splaying my five fingers wide. She regards this
