Painted Devils, page 33
Suddenly Ragne sits up, whiskers twitching. “Oh! The Joniza is here! I smell her!”
“I need to go check in with her,” I say, pushing off the bed. “Then I’ll … not think about the fact that you can smell us that accurately, and come back up here, and we can get ready to go.”
“Already?” Emeric asks.
I don’t bother putting on my boots properly, just shove my feet in for now and knot the laces. “We need to be out of Rammelbeck well before midnight.”
I duck out, hoping Ragne does not take it upon herself to get Emeric’s thoughts on claims, and hurtle down the stairs. If I’m lucky, I can catch Joniza before she gets too far into the inn. Fortunately she’s waiting for me by the entrance to the tavern.
I stagger to a halt in front of her. “How did it go?”
“I would like to remind you, I have no interest in owning one brothel, let alone two,” Joniza says sternly as she hands me a slip of paper. A time and location are written on it: the final meeting. “So this better work out like you say.”
“She agreed to sell them both, then?”
“The Treasury and the Green Sleeve. She wanted more time, but I told her I’m leaving town so it has to be tomorrow morning at the Three Swans.” Joniza’s stony expression cracks with a twitch at the corner of her mouth. “She was so annoyed I kept calling it ‘Madame’s Treasury.’ And she couldn’t say anything.”
“You’re a genius,” I breathe.
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” she grumbles, but that corner of her mouth is betraying her. “She’s really going to sell me a property she doesn’t own?”
“As far as she knows, you’re about to hit the road again, and that gives her time to either win over the Green Sleeve or get very, very far from Rammelbeck before you find out.”
“So what happens tomorrow morning?” Joniza asks. “Because I don’t have four hundred gilden for the down payment.”
I know firsthand how prefects work long hours, but I’m hoping that, by now, Prefect Ghendt has returned to her room at the Three Swans and had a moment for a little light reading. Specifically, the documents tying Madame and Wälftsee Holdings to the Grace Unending. “I’m going to tell Emeric exactly when and where your meeting is, and he will pass it on to some interested parties … and then you might have some surprise visitors tomorrow.”
Joniza’s fingers ruffle a staccato above her elbow as she thinks, arms crossed. Finally she asks, “Why go to all this effort? You could just turn over what you found in her office and let the Godly Courts handle her.”
“Remember how they handled Irmgard?” I say a bit bitterly. “She was in almost as deep as Adalbrecht, and he wound up an embarrassing statue, and she got a trial by Bóernische court. I know Madame buys off officials, and I know she’s just an accessory to the Grace fiasco. I’m giving the prefects everything they need to add this to her charges and get an actual conviction.”
Joniza sighs. “None of this would be necessary if the city officials actually did their jobs, like in a civilized society.”
“That’s why I’m doing the job for them,” I say grimly. “And Madame called me ugly in front of Emeric, so I’m doing it my way.”
At that, Joniza’s entire demeanor frosts over. “Did she now,” she muses. “I see. Then tomorrow morning is your last assist from me.” She heads for the door but tosses me a wink on her way out. “I’ll make sure it counts.”
* * *
“When I run my fastest,” Ragne tells me, shaking her ink-black mane, “remember, you must push yourself up in the stirrups so you do not bounce.”
“I stayed on just fine during the wedding hunt,” I remind her, my breath fogging a little in the near-midnight chill as we trot down the hard road. Gisele always loved a good hunt in the woods when we were younger, and she made sure I was competent enough a rider to keep up most of the time.
Ragne whickers her jitters. “I was not running my fastest then.”
I don’t blame her for nerves. There’s a shift in the world at midnight: Everything seems sharper, truer, like the raw young day hasn’t dulled its edges just yet. The night turns more dangerous. More potent. Sometimes those mean the same thing.
On the outskirts of Rammelbeck, as we pass one last lonely farm, midnight means the mists rising from the Trench curl a little more wickedly, the stars above glint like shattered glass, the thick crescent moon bites a razor-toothed grin in the sky. I’ve dressed for the cold and for the ride, with an extra shift and breeches under my gown and a cloak over it all. Just because we’re two weeks from May doesn’t mean April has caught up yet.
“Is the saddle all right?” I ask. I may have bribed a groomsman to let us borrow tack from the stable for the night. “Not too tight?”
“It should be very tight, so you do not fall off.”
“I’m not going to fall off!”
Ragne’s trot slows. “I hear the Hunt. Get ready.”
I look up. At the very hem of the night sky, over the rooftops of distant Rammelbeck and Welkenrode, a faint glow ripples. Then it hones to a point, like waves trailing a boat on still water. The nearer it gets, the more it coalesces to haze, and the more I can spy hooves piercing through.
“Hold on,” Ragne warns, and, with a jolt, shifts into a canter.
We take off in a spray of dirt, the moon flashing along a waterlogged ditch carved between the road and the grassy heath. After a few seconds, Ragne clears the ditch in a leap, then pounds through the scrub toward the crest of a hill. We weave around thickets as the chorus of hoof beats grows even louder, that ethereal glow casting an ever-brightening shine. I hear singing, laughter, even howls. A miasma unfurls across the ground, bright and shimmering, until we may as well be running on clouds spun from moonlight.
The Hunt is upon us.
“Hail, God Daughters!”
The call thunders through the night, ringing like a horn’s call off stone, as a rider draws even with us. I look up and find what can be only Brunne the Huntress.
She’s taller than any woman I’ve ever seen, and if her silver steed was once a giant’s horse, she’s grown to match. Ancient, slightly tattered bridal regalia billow beneath the white pelt of a frost bear clasped over her broad shoulders. Ornate leather bracers wrap around burly wrists, though they pale in comparison to biceps like hams fighting under a blanket. She wears no shoes, gripping the sides of her mount with only her equally as muscular thighs. A dusting of tiny lights gleams on her tanned face and shoulders like freckles made from stars; they nearly drown in the cascade of cinnamon-brown curls that reaches nearly to her horse’s tail. A bow is strapped to her back, a quiverful of moonlight arrows at her hip.
Behind her streams a tumult of the otherworldly: baying spectral hounds, wraithlike vila dancing hand in hand, ghostly hunters cheering the game, shrouded idisi shepherding souls of long-dead soldiers who ride like hell itself gives chase. Among them is one note of mortal dissonance: a stout, soft-faced young man of about nineteen in friar’s robes, with a shocking thatch of strawberry blond hair and gray eyes just like Udo’s. He’s clinging to the neck of a phantasmal elk for dear life, but when he sees me, his whole face lights up.
Henrik knows me. He knows me, and—he’s happy to see me.
“Hail, Brunne the Huntress!” I finally call back, the wind whipping loose hair into my eyes. I can’t help a toothy grin as I’m swept up in the rush, the feeling of riding on the bleeding edge of legend. “I have a challenge for you!”
Brunne’s laugh booms so loud, I see trees shiver below. Below.
This is when I realize the haze has carried us into the sky.
I gulp and cling to Ragne’s mane even tighter.
“You wish to challenge me?” Brunne roars. “Ha! Ha ha! What a jest! You are like a little doll to me!”
“You have—”
“You are as a little stick doll, so tiny! I must squint to see you! And, you, Eiswald’s daughter, you are but a half god! Ha!”
The rest of Brunne’s horde bursts into laughter with her. I wait until the jeering quiets, swallowing a thousand cutting retorts. Better to be underestimated when it comes to dealing with gods. Once the ruckus dies down, I point to Henrik.
“You have my brother,” I shout over the riot of the Wild Hunt, “and I will race you for him.”
Brunne looks over her shoulder, eyebrows raised, then turns again to me. “Oh, I see! Ha! What a surprise! But, teeny little doll girl, I have not lost a race once, not even against the giant Boderad himself! What chance do you have?”
“I need Henrik,” I say firmly, “so I’m willing to find out.”
Brunne throws her head back, laughing once more but with delight instead of ridicule. “Very well! I will race you to the Broken Peak. If you win, you shall have three favors of me. But if I win … I will still give you my praise poet. I do not think he is enjoying himself.”
“I,” Henrik says, looking a bit seasick on the back of his elk, “am not.”
“But you must take his place in my Hunt for a full fortnight. No less.” Brunne holds out a hand. “Is it a wager?”
I shake on it. It’s like immersing my hand in a leather-encased pillow. “We have a wager. I need to speak with Henrik before we start, though.”
“I will allow it,” Brunne says. “But make haste! I do not care for waiting!”
Ragne veers toward Henrik’s elk as I lean over her withers. “How are you holding up? Do you need a rest?”
She turns so I can see the red flaring in her eye; when her mouth stretches into a grin, I see it’s full of distinctly un-horsey fangs. “I am ready. I will show the Brunne what to make of a half god.”
“Saints and martyrs, I missed you,” I say happily.
“Vanja?”
When I look up, Henrik is gaping at me. “Hi,” I say, abruptly nervous. “Nice to meet you. Or … remeet you, I guess?”
“I got Helga’s letter,” he babbles, “I’m so excited—I was so little when Mother took you away, but you’re just like I remember, I mean, you’re not, you’re all grown up and amazing and I want to hear everything—”
“Hurry, God Daughters,” Brunne calls.
I grimace and pull my satchel over my head. “Here, I need you to take this. I don’t plan on losing, but if I do … it’ll be bad timing, let’s put it that way. Take my satchel to Emeric Conrad at the Jolly Magistrate. He’ll know what to do.”
“That’s your”—Henrik takes the satchel—“roommate?”
“That’s what Udo called him,” I laugh. It—it’s so strange, to laugh like this, to talk about my brother like this, with my other brother.
I have to win. I have to get Henrik back.
Then Henrik reaches out once again, this time for me. I take his hand, and his fingers squeeze mine. “Thank you for this,” he says fervently, “and good luck.”
I shoot him a grin. “Remind me to tell you about my godmothers after this.”
Then I let go and ride to the front of the drove. Once there, Brunne gives me a look. “It is no great victory to defeat a swaddling babe. I wish for a true challenge, little bitty God Daughters. Can you offer that without Fortune or Death? For this race is between us alone.”
I hesitate. That does skew things a bit. But Ragne is the one who answers, fiercely: “I can.”
Brunne unleashes another calamitous laugh. “Then we shall begin!” She produces a hunting horn from somewhere beneath the frost-bear pelt and blasts a signal that seems to mean halt, because the whole Hunt slows to a stop. I’m pretty sure she sneaks in a few arm flexes as she trots ahead and turns her mount to face the crowd. “These God Daughters have issued a challenge! We will race to the Broken Peak, and the first to touch the summit wins! Do not try to keep up, but ride at your own pace, and we will meet you there!” She blasts her horn again. This time, at the far, far edge of the horizon, a single star kindles over a jagged hill. That has to be Broken Peak.
I draw even with Brunne as she waves a vila over to us. The vila bares her teeth at me, then plants herself between us, holding her veil aloft. “When my veil falls,” she hisses.
“May the best of us win,” Brunne says. I nod silently, stomach in knots. I may have counted on Fortune weighing the scales.
But I trust Ragne with my life. I called on her for a reason.
In a flicker of moonlight, the veil drops—
And we’re gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
FAVORS
Ragne explodes into motion.
I lurch back and scramble to seize the saddle horn, Brunne’s laugh ringing in my ears. The seat drops out from under me, then slams up again, making my teeth bang together so suddenly that there’s a sting in my mouth and the taste of blood.
I repeat this cycle too many times within the space of a second before remembering to stand in the stirrups, lifting myself out of the thrashing saddle. Then it’s all a matter of shifting my weight again and again, matching the pulse of Ragne’s hooves on a road made of clouds. Brunne is ahead of us, her horse’s enormous strides eating up the distance as copse-studded hillsides roll by below.
Ragne snorts and lowers her head.
The tattoo of her hoofbeats picks up. I keep as tight a hold on the saddle as I can and hunch to catch as little wind as possible. The world narrows to the mane whipping my face, the air whistling in my teeth, the star still far—too far—on the horizon.
Then the gap between us and Brunne begins to close. Measure by measure, inch by inch, we pull even with her horse’s quicksilver tail. Then its flanks. Then the saddle. Then—
“Ha! Ha! Do you give up yet, little God—” Brunne twists to look behind her. Her jaw drops when she finds us keeping pace.
“We do not,” I gloat. Then I mock-salute her as Ragne starts edging ahead.
Pure joy breaks across Brunne’s face. She claps her heels against her steed’s sides with a whoop.
Then I pitch forward as the cloud road begins to tilt.
“I said we would race to Broken Peak!” Brunne laughs. “I never said it would be by sky alone!”
I lean back, clutching the rear of the seat for balance as we hurtle into a steep decline. The ground meets us all too quick with a bone-shuddering jolt. Ragne throws her head up in a whinny, careening to avoid a stand of trees that suddenly looms out of the dark. Then we’re plunged into the heart of a forest, weaving around towering evergreens and ripping through thin dead scrub, the smell of mulch and crushed pine needles and cold midnight thick in every breath.
I see the silvery specter of Brunne whisking through—literally through—the trees ahead. She has no need to swerve around the trunks. Every time we do, she widens her lead.
Then the forest wanes to a soggy grass-mottled fen. Ragne stumbles even more here, trying to pick her way through tuffets and still, dark pools. The star over the Broken Peak is closer now, much closer. The magic of the Wild Hunt has to be carrying us faster than I thought; it’s the only way we could cover a week’s ride this quickly.
But I don’t think it will be enough. Like the forest, the fen isn’t slowing Brunne at all. The only place we can match her is in—
The sky.
A wild idea, probably one of the worst I’ve had, pops off in my head like a firework. Before I can overthink it (or arguably think about it at all, even a little), I push my face closer to Ragne’s ears. “Hey,” I say, loud enough to reach her but not for Brunne to hear, “can you do wings?”
Ragne tosses her head again, but a shiver runs down her spine. “Yes.”
There’s a feral susurrus. Midnight feathers burst from Ragne’s shoulders like a wave breaking on a rock, growing and shifting and crackling as she tilts toward an open stretch of moor. For some reason I’d expected the wings to sprout from her sides, but they’re rooted just above each foreleg, and when she spreads them to their full length, I understand why she needed open ground. Each black falcon wing has to be at least twice as long as a man, perhaps more. I feel the wind catch beneath them, tugging us up. Then Ragne leaps, flapping once—twice—
And we’re airborne again, soaring over wetlands. The moon’s reflection below chases us through a thousand watery eyes as we climb, streaking straight for the star at the crest of Broken Peak. Beneath us, Brunne falls away in a blur of silver. We’ve overtaken her again, and this time, there’s no bringing us down.
I see little flares of towns. Ragne’s massive shadow swallows houses all at once. Few people are out this late, but a handful of faces turn up in wonder, and for a moment—I understand.
I can see the threads streaming from me, black and gold and red and a thousand unnamed colors. I can see the threads of Ragne and the moon and the stars, the stories we tell ourselves to explain the mysteries of this world.
I know this, the power that spins from the mortal world and weaves itself into Low Gods. I understand how a bride fleeing an unwanted wedding becomes the huntress on our heels. I understand how a girl stained in her lover’s blood could weep the flood that washed her world away. Somewhere down there, someone is telling a story to explain what they’ve seen of me tonight.
If I’m lucky, it will be the story of the girl who outran the Hunt.
But Brunne hasn’t conceded yet. Her laugh reverberates through the swell of forest under Ragne’s hooves, and I see the cloud road coalescing once more. Broken Peak is close, so close—the ribbon of the river Ilsza weaves through stone and moss, and beyond the gorge, I can see the lights of Hagendorn—Ragne’s sides are flecked with sweat, her wings beating furiously—the granite mountaintop is moments away, seconds, heartbeats—Brunne is just below, sailing up the cloud road, nearly even, but she can’t catch us in time—
I stretch out a hand for the summit—
And blood-red thorns surge over the rock, lashing for us.
Ragne banks, screaming.
And Brunne’s hand slaps against the stone.
I lost.
I cling to Ragne’s back, stunned.
I lost, and—and—I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ve failed. I’ve let everyone down.
