Crimson Bound

  But she wasn’t like any of the heroines in those stories. And though she searched the city until she had found every door and gate and fountain and mosaic that had the sun or moon upon it, though she had spent hours scrutinizing all of them for the least trace of power, she had never found anything. And nobody that she talked to had ever heard Aunt Léonie’s version of the story.

  Eventually, she had accepted that she would never defeat the Devourer. She would never redeem herself. So she had sworn that the next time she saw her forestborn, at least she would avenge Aunt Léonie.

  But when she had finally seen him again this night, she hadn’t been able to do anything. She was still just that helpless, frightened little girl.

  No. She had turned to fight in the end. If he hadn’t disappeared, she would have fought him.

  When the Devourer returned, her forestborn would certainly come find her again. And when all the world was covered in the Great Forest, there would be no disappearing into it. Rachelle would have her chance to fight then, and she would kill him. No matter the price.

  She fell asleep still promising.

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  Her dreams were a tangled mess of blood and shuddering trees. Rachelle struggled awake with a gasp, her heart pounding in her ears. It was still before sunrise; her room was dark and silent—a simple, human darkness that would melt away with the dawn.

  Soon she would lose that darkness, as well as the light. Rachelle wondered how long, exactly, she had left. Her forestborn had said, Before the summer sun makes its last valiant gasp. Did that mean before winter? Before autumn? Or before the summer solstice, after which the days would only grow shorter?

  The power of the Great Forest was always stronger on the solstices, when the rise and ebb of the sun’s light shifted. And this year’s summer solstice was only three weeks away.

  The thought made Rachelle feel cold and hollow and free all at once. If the world was ending in three weeks, then she didn’t have to care about Erec or the King or the unrest in the city anymore. She just had to ready herself to face her forestborn.

  Maybe she could make a final effort to find Joyeuse. She’d given up over a year ago, because she couldn’t see any hope and the worry was driving her mad. But now . . . well, she could bear to go mad with searching for a few more weeks or months. She could bear it, and then she could die fighting, and she didn’t have to care about anything else.

  In the distance, the palace bells started tolling. Rachelle started counting the peals, the same way she did every morning.

  Five . . . six . . . seven.

  The bells stopped. And then she remembered the levée.

  She didn’t have to care about anything, including the King’s orders, but if she wanted to make another attempt at finding Joyeuse—and she did want to, she had to—then it would be a good idea to avoid mortally offending him. Becoming a wanted fugitive could wait a week or two.

  Rachelle sprang out of bed. The King’s levée started at eight, and he was famously intolerant of people who were late for any court ceremony. An hour was more than enough time to get to the royal apartments, but if she wanted breakfast before facing an hour or more of tedious ceremony, she’d have to get to the guard’s mess room, all the way on the opposite side of the palace.

  Luckily, she was still in her uniform from the night before. She buckled on her belt, not even bothering to grab her sword, and ran out the door, re-braiding her hair as she clattered down the dark, pre-dawn hallway. She started running down the stairs, then simply vaulted over the railing to the landing below. The impact sent a jolt up her bones, jarring her enough that she stumbled to the side—

  Into the young man who had been running up the stairs.

  In a heartbeat, she had him slammed against the wall with her knife at his throat. Their faces were barely a hand’s span apart; she could feel his chest heaving for breath under her arm. Then her mind caught up with her body and she realized he was unarmed.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  “Well, I was running from assassins,” he said. “Now I’m being threatened with a knife.”

  “What?” said Rachelle, and then she heard the men clattering up the stairs after him. She turned, and saw the glint of drawn blades.

  There were three of them, all with rapiers, and she had only a dagger. It would have been a wretchedly uneven fight, if she were human.

  It was still a wretchedly uneven fight; it was just uneven in her favor. Rachelle took down the first with a simple kick to the head, then whirled and caught the second’s blade in the hilt of her dagger. Twist, wrench, and the rapier flew out of his hand—she forgot how weak humans were, she thought as she slammed her dagger’s hilt into his forehead.

  The third one came at her with a rapier and a dagger, and from the way he twirled them, she could tell he was really very good. His technique was probably better than hers. But now her heart was thundering with the joy of the fight, her blood was singing in her ears, and he seemed ridiculously slow, as if he were moving through honey. Stepping inside his guard, seizing his sword arm, and wrenching it out of the socket was almost too easy. A few good kicks, and he was down.

  She looked back at the man they had been pursuing. Wiry, with a square, sharp face softened by a snub nose, and tousled, pale brown hair, he couldn’t be much older than her. There was nothing remarkable in his features—not like Erec’s sculpted beauty—yet they felt vaguely familiar. He had sat down on the stairs to watch her fight, elbows on his knees, gloved hands resting loose, and he was watching her with an intense, guarded calm.

  “Shouldn’t you have kept running?” she asked.

  “Were you planning to lose?” He sounded politely curious.

  “No.” She stepped to the nearest would-be assassin, pulled his belt loose, and started tying him up. “Does anyone?”

  “You’re bloodbound. They couldn’t hurt me unless you let them.” He shrugged. “And if you wanted to hurt me, I couldn’t hope to escape.”

  Rachelle moved to tie up the second man. “You think I want to hurt you?”

  “I don’t know. Do you?” His voice was light and soft, but she could see the tension in his jaw, in the lines of his arms. She could feel the swift beat of his pulse beneath his calm facade.

  Rachelle knew she wasn’t being fair—anyone should be suspicious of her, after the things she’d done—but even so, for a moment she could hardly breathe through the helpless fury choking her.

  She pulled out one of her knives and flung it to land quivering in the wall two finger widths from his head.

  He barely twitched.

  “Keep the knife,” she said. “Maybe it will make you feel safer.”

  His eyes widened a little and his mouth started to open.

  “Don’t thank me,” she added, finishing the knots on the third man. “Go find a guard to take care of the prisoners. I’m going to get breakfast.”

  She whirled and left. She made it across the rest of the palace without incident, even managing to snag a few rolls from the guard’s mess room just before the clock tolled half-past. Plenty of time, she thought.

  Then she got lost. She’d hardly ever been to the royal wing, and one huge room encrusted with gold-leaf tendrils and curlicues looked much like another. By the time she got to the anteroom of the royal bedchamber, it was well past eight and the sun had finally risen.

  Rachelle could remember when summer had meant that the sun would be up by seven. People said that once upon a time, the summer sun would rise even earlier, but that was hard to imagine.

  The anteroom, of course, was completely stuffed with people waiting to get in, a seething mass of brocade and lace, powdered wigs and the stench of pomade. Rachelle threaded through the crowd as fast as she could, trying not to think of how the King might punish her.

  Then she saw the youn
g man she’d rescued earlier, standing near the door with a guard on each side.

  “Is he in trouble?” she asked one of the guards.

  “No,” he said.

  “Waiting to get in,” said the young man, with the same wry calm as earlier.

  “You’re coming in now,” she said, seizing his shoulder. “With me.” He could at least serve as her excuse.

  “Mademoiselle—” one of the guards started.

  “Trust me,” said the young man, “you don’t want to fight her.”

  Rachelle dragged him inside with her. The King was putting on his stockings, and the room was already crowded—with the King’s valets, of course, but also the supremely lucky nobles who were privileged this morning to hand him his prayer book, his shirt, and his razor. Then there was a great crowd of other nobles, ministers, and secretaries, all of whom had wrangled permission to come in during one of the coveted first five entrances. Soon the King’s illegitimate children would be admitted, and then the room would get really crowded. (By tradition, the sixth entrance was for the King’s heirs, but he had only bothered to father one child on his actual wife, and that prince had died three years ago.)

  This crowd was even thicker than the one in the anteroom. Rachelle shoved her way through—people muttered only until they saw her coat; then they looked away nervously. Let them. She just wanted to get past them, see the King, and please or annoy him enough that he never invited her to the levée again.

  She broke through the crowd as the King stood, the ribbons on his shoes finally tied. Erec sat at his feet—the special privilege of the bloodbound—with his mouth quirked up smugly.

  Rachelle went down on one knee, dragging the young man with her. “Your Majesty,” she said.

  The most high, most puissant, and most excellent prince, Auguste-Philippe II, by the Grace of God, King of Gévaudan and Protector of the Vasconic territories, looked down his famous nose at her.

  “A tardy servant is of little use to me,” he said after a short, brittle silence.

  The back of Rachelle’s neck prickled; she knew that everyone in the room was staring, waiting to see what the King would do to her.

  Well, but what could he do? As a bloodbound, she was already under sentence of death.

  “I’m sorry, sire,” she said, “but I was saving this man from three assassins. I think you need to have a talk with the guard.”

  “Good morning, Father,” said the young man beside her. “Well. It hasn’t been very good so far, but I’ve hopes for the rest of it.”

  Wait. She had just rescued one of the King’s bastards? Rachelle darted a look at the young man, and yes, that was why his face looked so familiar: though liberally smudged and softened by his mother’s heritage, that was still the line of the King’s jaw that he had inherited.

  “Did she really save you?” asked King August-Philippe.

  “Yes,” said the young man. “Defeated three armed men, tied them up in their own belts, and gave me a knife. It was most impressive.”

  “I see,” said the King, and looked at Rachelle. “Then perhaps you are not so tardy after all.”

  “Sire?” Rachelle said cautiously. Erec looked like he was about to burst into laughter; whatever was going on, it couldn’t be good.

  The King dropped a hand onto the young man’s head and fixed his gaze on the crowd. “This is Armand Vareilles, my esteemed son,” he said, in a quiet voice that nevertheless carried throughout the room.

  It can’t be, she thought in horror, staring at Armand’s gloved hands—but of course, that would explain Erec’s near laughter.

  Rachelle didn’t keep up with the court, and yet even she knew who Armand Vareilles was. He had been nothing six months ago, but now everyone in Gévaudan knew about him: how he was the King’s illegitimate son, raised in the countryside after his mother’s political disgrace. How last winter, a forestborn had marked him. How he had refused to kill, and the mark remained black on his skin, yet he was alive to this day.

  How, in a fury, the forestborn had cut off his hands.

  It was a lie, of course. The forestborn did not forget to claim people; if they marked somebody, they would have him or see him dead. Armand Vareilles was nothing but a clever liar who had lost his hands in some accident, then tattooed himself with a false mark and made his fortune by having people pity him.

  But most of the common people were convinced. They called him a saint, a living martyr. They painted white fleurs-de-lis on their houses in memory of his purity; they called for the destruction of the King’s bloodbound in his name. For if he could resist the forestborn and live, what excuse did the rest of the bloodbound have?

  And not just the common people loved him. Some of the nobility were besotted with him as well. So even though Armand Vareilles had become a symbol of those who muttered against him, the King had to keep him in luxurious style. He’d even commissioned false hands made of silver for him. That was why she had never seen his gloved hands move.

  “In three days,” the King went on, “he will accompany me back to Château de Lune with the rest of the court. In recognition of his rank, and the heroism he has so lately shown, and on account of the malicious unrest in the kingdom, I grant him one of my own bloodbound, Rachelle Brinon, to be his bodyguard.”

  “What?” said Rachelle, so surprised that she didn’t care if everyone heard the outrage in her voice.

  She had to find Joyeuse. Failing that, she had to protect as many people as she could until her forestborn returned and she had a chance to kill him. She didn’t want to spend her last days guarding a fake saint while smothered in the elegance of Château de Lune, where ancient spells ensured that no woodspawn ever came.

  But if she deserted now, there was no way to keep from instantly becoming a fugitive.

  Armand’s mouth was flat as his gaze flickered from her to Erec and back again; then abruptly his mouth crooked up and he leaned toward her. “Not too late to use that knife,” he murmured.

  Rachelle glowered at him, but before she could respond, there was another muffled commotion. She looked up to see someone striding through the crowd, and her whole body tensed in revulsion.

  It was Bishop Guillaume.

  He was a tall, colorless man with a wispy pale beard, a mouth shriveled into a permanent frown, and beady black eyes. On his chest glinted a huge silver pendant in the shape of the Dayspring’s right hand, rubies inlaid to represent the bloody stump. On anyone else it would have been a symbol of faith, but Rachelle had always thought that on him it looked like a trophy from battle.

  “Good morning,” said the King. “Come with your usual request? I regret to say there are still no new bloodbound whom I could assign to you.”

  As soon as Bishop Guillaume had arrived in Rocamadour, he had started proclaiming that since the King had no power to forgive sins, the bloodbound should not be in his care. Instead, all repentant deadly warriors should be put under the Bishop’s personal command for the good of their souls.

  “No,” said the Bishop in his deep, silky voice. He would have been laughed out of the city as a fanatic long ago if he didn’t make words sound so lovely. “I have come with a different request. Release Mademoiselle Brinon into my care.”

  For a moment Rachelle couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. The Bishop had never paid her any notice beyond sneering at her as he did at all the other bloodbound.

  People whispered as they stared at her and the Bishop. Probably they were marveling at how he had graciously condescended to be concerned with her soul.

  Rachelle knew better. He must have decided he could make her into his personal weapon.

  She stood. “I have a request,” she said loudly. “Arrest the Bishop for hiding fugitive bloodbound. D’Anjou and I found one last night, surrounded by rebels who tried to kill us.”

  “And you think I aided them?” said the Bishop, infuriatingly calm.

  “They were all madly devoted to you,” she said, but of course that wasn?
??t evidence.

  She was suddenly, acutely aware of the silence as everyone in the room stared at her. None of them would believe her. People wanted the bloodbound to serve them or protect them, but they never, ever wanted to listen to them.

  The Bishop gave her a pitying look. “I am sorry that they hurt you, my daughter. I would never want you harmed.” His voice was full of the gentle sorrow that made ladies weep into their handkerchiefs and then drop extra money into the collection plate. “That is why I want you to come with me: so you can be reconciled with God and find peace.”

  “I’d rather confess to the devil,” said Rachelle.

  “Enough,” said the King, sounding bored. “My dear bishop, I cannot give you Mademoiselle Brinon, because she is busy guarding my dearest son.” He looked at Rachelle. “Do you understand your orders?”

  She understood them. She had no intention of following them. It would be difficult to hunt for Joyeuse while the King’s men were hunting her down for desertion. But she couldn’t afford to care about that now.

  She would obey the King today. She would vanish tonight.

  “As Your Majesty commands,” she said, bowing her head.

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  Rachelle’s heart was pounding in her ears. She was vaguely aware that a crowd had gathered, muttering and laughing, but right now it didn’t matter any more than the smear of pain on her cheekbone where a punch had just landed.

  Two paces away, Justine Leblanc showed her teeth. “Well?”

  Now, thought Rachelle, and lunged forward into a kick exactly the same way she had the last three times. Justine dodged and blocked—as Rachelle changed direction, grabbed her shoulder, and took them both down.