Crimson Bound (13 page)

Or it was the perfect moment to be free of him. All she had to do was stand still for another minute, and the assassins would cut Armand’s throat. Despite his bluster, he had no way to stop them. Rachelle would not have to help him deceive anyone else. She would not have to fear him stirring up a mob to kill her.

She suddenly remembered the morning they had met.
If you wanted to hurt me, I couldn’t hope to escape.
She remembered his eyes, gray and calm and waiting for her to hurt him. Ever since they met, he had been waiting.

However she hated him, she didn’t want to give him that satisfaction. She was going to rescue him.

Then she realized she couldn’t move. The air was cold and sweet in her lungs and her limbs would not respond, no matter how she tried. She couldn’t see even the shadow of a leaf, but she still felt the power of the Great Forest all around her.

At least one of the men in the library wasn’t impressed. He laughed, and said, “Pretty words won’t—”

And suddenly, overwhelmingly, there was silence.

Then she was loosed and staggering into the door just as she heard the thuds of falling bodies from inside.

Her hands were still slightly numb; for a moment she scrabbled at the door handle, and then she flung it open.

There had been three men in the room, and they were all collapsed to the floor. Armand sat slumped in a chair between them, and dread sliced through her body, but then he lifted his head and she saw that while he was tied to the chair, he was alive.

“You’re late,” he said. “You missed all the fun.” He was smiling but he looked a little dazed.

Rachelle poked one of the fallen men with her boot. His chest still rose and fell with breathing, but otherwise he didn’t stir.

“What happened?” she asked.

“They wanted to question me on my secret plans,” he said. “They told me they were going to kill me, and then that they would kill me if I didn’t tell them everything. They weren’t very thoughtful people.”

“What happened to
them
?”

He shrugged. “Maybe God heard my prayers.”

“Tell me the truth or you stay in the chair. What happened?”

His lips thinned as he met her eyes; then he said quietly, “You felt it just now, didn’t you? The Great Forest? I made them see it. I can do that to people, whenever I please, and if they’re not strong enough to bear the sight . . .” He shrugged. “They’ll recover in time.”

She stared at his face—his bland, boring face—and it was more alien than the moon.

“So?” he said. “Are you going to tell d’Anjou I’m not as helpless as he thinks?”

“How can you do that?” Rachelle asked.

He stared at her for a long, suspicious moment; then he said, “Because I can see the Forest. Everywhere, all the time.”

“How?”

“That’s none of your business.”

She grabbed his shoulders. “How can you do that?”

He stared back at her, gray eyes calm. “You are not enough to frighten me, mademoiselle.”

He hadn’t been marked by a bloodbound. He
could not
have been marked. But then how could he sense the Forest?

Armand let out a little sigh that was almost a laugh and looked away. “It’s not a bad chair,” he said. “If you’ll read aloud to me, I don’t think I’ll mind staying here.”

“I’m not going to leave you here,” she said.

“Taking me to d’Anjou after all?”

“No.” She drew her knife. He didn’t move—his eyes didn’t even flicker back at her—but his sudden, wary stillness sliced through her. She was sick of being the reason that people were wary.

“You said Prince Hugo found a door above the sun and below the moon. Do you think you could find it too?”

Then he did look at her. “Why? What do you want with it?”

“That is not your concern, monsieur. But if you refuse, I’ll tell Erec what you can do and that you need even closer watching. Good luck recruiting worshippers after that.”

But the threat seemed to make him relax. His shoulders loosened and he smiled at her as he tilted his head back and said, “Go ahead.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

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O
f course she didn’t tell Erec. She couldn’t, because if Erec knew that Armand had—whatever connection to the Forest it was that he had—then he would want to find a way to use it, either for the King or for himself. And then Rachelle would never get a chance to quietly drag away Armand and make him open the door for her.

She wasn’t getting a chance anyway.

“I’m going to kill you,” she told Armand that evening. “If you don’t help me, I will kill you.”

He waited a moment. And then smiled. “That’s not a good enough threat, you know.”

It wasn’t a threat at all. Rachelle had killed once in cold blood; she couldn’t do it again. Staring at Armand, she felt sure that he knew she couldn’t do it again.

Rachelle was the second-strongest bloodbound in service to the King and she had nothing to threaten with, nothing to bargain with. She could fight a whole pack of woodspawn by herself and win, but she couldn’t force one irritating courtier to do her will. All she could do was spend the night searching by herself, then trail after Armand, pretending to care if he lived or died.

Bloodbound didn’t need as much sleep as normal humans, but it had been days since she’d slept more than four hours. Her head wouldn’t stop aching. It didn’t help that there were no gaps in Armand’s schedule that day. He dragged her from one court function to another, where people tittered at rumors of failing crops and laughed at the suggestion of Endless Night.

By the time they ended up at the after-dinner party, where the nobles were all wagering at cards, Rachelle was starting to think that Endless Night might not be so bad. At least there would be no giggling. Screams and blood and dying, yes, but no polite little giggles.

The blood would flow across the parquet flooring and soak into the seams of the little wooden panels. The same way the blood had soaked into the floor of Aunt Léonie’s cottage.

Rachelle had been hoping that the forestborn would hurt the people around her the same way her own forestborn had once hurt Aunt Léonie. She’d imagined it happening and she had
liked
it. She felt sick.

They were standing near the table where the King played—very badly—with la Fontaine and a gaggle of other nobles. At last, after a round of particularly hideous losses, he flung down his cards with a rattling cough that everyone ignored.

“I’ve had my fill for the night,” he said. “A good game, cards. Trains the mind.” He rose and patted Armand on the shoulder; Rachelle suspected she was the only one who saw Armand’s wince, and for a moment she felt sorry for him.

“A battlefield of wits,” drawled a tall, muscular young man with long dark curls.

Rachelle recognized him: Vincent Angevin, one of the King’s nephews and very likely the person sending assassins after Armand. He was also likely the next heir to the throne, if his royal uncle ever got done pretending to be immortal.

“Such a pity you haven’t the wherewithal to join us,” Vincent went on, looking at Armand’s hands, and then ruffled his hair. “But it would hardly be proper for a saint to gamble, would it?”

Two of the ladies at the table giggled. La Fontaine snapped her fan open. Vincent chuckled and slapped Armand’s back. “Preach me a sermon when I’m done winning, cousin.” He grinned at the room: the lazy, mischievous grin of somebody who knew he could get away with being cruel.

Rachelle had known a boy who smiled like that, back in her village. For years he had charmed all the adults while beating the younger children bloody. Without meaning to, she edged closer to Armand. She was sure she was the only one who saw the very slight way that his chin raised and his shoulders set.

“I haven’t heard that card games are a sin,” he said. “I’ll play a round if Mademoiselle Brinon will hold my cards for me.”

“I don’t—” Rachelle started.

“Just do what I say.” Armand sat himself down at the table. “Well? Will you deal me a hand?”

Vincent smiled expansively. “I can’t deny you any consolation, dear cousin. Play with us, if it comforts you.”

La Fontaine dealt out the cards. Rachelle picked them up. She could read the numerals well enough, but they were decorated with various other symbols and figures that meant nothing to her.

“Let me see,” said Armand, leaning over her shoulder.

“Pity Raoul isn’t here,” said Vincent. “I seem to remember him always helping you when you got in trouble.”

“Where
is
Monsieur Courtavel?” asked one of the ladies. “We all miss him.”

Raoul Courtavel was another of the King’s illegitimate sons. He was widely considered a contender for the throne, despite his famously not getting along with his father, because he was enormously popular with the people for fighting pirates in the Mare Nostrum. Rachelle did not much care about the pirates—safe trade routes meant nothing when the daylight was
dying
—but at least Raoul Courtavel had never called for
the bloodbound to be exterminated. He’d also never tried to recruit any of them as his personal retainers, which Vincent apparently had.

“I believe Raoul is still resting at his country estate,” said Armand, “ever since Father told him that he was overworking himself.” He looked at the cards, then at the faces of the other players. “Put that one down,” he said, pointing at the leftmost card in her hands.

Rachelle never worked out exactly what the rules of the game were, except that some of the cards could be laid down, some could be demanded from another player’s hand, and some must be held on to at all costs. But what she realized very quickly was that players were allowed to lie about their hands—except when they weren’t—and that successful bluffing was the only way to win.

Armand smiled politely, lied through his teeth, and in ten minutes he had won all the money that everyone else had put down on the table.

“A marvelous conquest,” said la Fontaine. “Clearly fortune favors the holy.”

“Or the—” Vincent Angevin cut off whatever he’d been about to say. He shoved back his chair instead and bowed stiffly. “Good evening.” Then he was gone.

“I do believe that’s a miracle itself,” said la Fontaine. “Vincent Angevin, leaving the gambling table before dawn.” She rapped Armand’s silver hand with her fan. “You still have not come to my salon. You will be there tomorrow morning, I command it.”

“If the King permits it,” said Armand, not looking at Rachelle.

“You too, Mademoiselle Brinon,” said la Fontaine. “You must be there.”

“I’m his bodyguard,” said Rachelle. “Of course I have to follow him.”

She stared grimly at the cards scattered across the table and tried not to remember la Fontaine finding her in the King’s outer chambers.

“I mean as a guest,” said la Fontaine. “I’ll insist to my lord, if you need a royal order.”

It was probably some bizarre scheme to humiliate her. But she couldn’t afford to get in any trouble with the King.

“You can call me a guest if you like,” she said.

The next morning, Amélie looked her in the eye and said, “You’re going to wear a dress this time. You’re going to wear a dress and let me paint your face, and no, you don’t get a choice about it.”

“I’m not there as a guest,” Rachelle muttered.

“Yes, you are,” said Amélie. “A page delivered a note last night. She officially invited you, and that means a dress and cosmetics.”

“She wants to humiliate me,” said Rachelle. “That means it doesn’t matter what I wear.”

Amélie clapped her hands. “Then you’ll just have to be more beautiful than her.”

What does it matter?
Rachelle thought.
The world is ending and I’m trapped attending parties.

But then Amélie met her eyes and said quietly, “We had a bargain.”

If the world was ending, she owed it to Amélie to keep her promise and let her do what she loved.

And that was how Rachelle ended up sitting in a chair by the table full of little pots and brushes. Amélie, standing beside her, picked up a brush and set it down again. She put two fingers on each of Rachelle’s temples and slowly tilted her head from side to side, scrutinizing her face. Then she let go and bit her lip.

“Something wrong?” asked Rachelle.

“The question is,” said Amélie, sounding like she had just come to the end of a long speech, “are you brave enough?”

“What?”

“I can’t make you beautiful,” said Amélie. “I’m going to give you the most beautiful makeup you’ve ever seen, but if you just sit under it and—and wilt, you’ll look pathetic. It’s like a sword. If you don’t wield it, then it isn’t any use to you. And it’s all right if you want to look pathetic most of the time, but this is my one chance to show anyone what I can do, so you are
not
going to ruin it. Understood?”

“Do I usually look pathetic?”

“No,” said Amélie, “but you do get a look of terror when I talk to you about dresses.”

“I’m not . . . I don’t know how to be a lady,” said Rachelle. “If you wanted that, you should have gotten someone else.”