Uprooted(74)

Marek took a torch himself: he stood by the wood pile with his brand lifted into the air and named every man we had lost, one after another, and Janos at the last. He beckoned to Tomasz and Oleg, and together the three of them stepped forward and thrust their torches into the heaped wood. The smoke came smarting into my eyes and barely-healed throat, and the heat was dreadful. The Dragon watched the fire catch with a hard face and then turned away: I know he didn’t think much of the prince honoring the men he’d led to their deaths. But it loosened something in me to hear all their names.

The bonfire kept burning a long time. The villagers brought out food and beer, whatever they had, and pressed it on us. I crept away into a corner with Kasia and drank too many cups of beer, washing misery and smoke and the taste of the purging-elixir out of my mouth, until finally we leaned against each other and wept softly; I had to hold on to her, because she didn’t dare grip me tight.

The drink made me lighter and more dull at the same time, my head aching, and I snuffled into my sleeves. Across the square, Prince Marek was speaking to the village headman and a wide-eyed young carter. They were standing beside a handsome green wagon, fresh-painted, with a team of four horses, their manes and tails clumsily braided in green ribbons also. The queen was already sitting in the wagon bed, cushioned on straw, with a wool cloak draped over her shoulders. The golden chains of the enchanted yoke caught the sunlight and glittered against her shift.

I blinked a few times at the sun-dazzle, and by the time I began to make sense of what I was looking at, the Dragon was already striding across the square, demanding, “What are you doing?” I climbed to my feet and went to them.

Prince Marek turned even as I came. “Arranging for passage to take the queen home,” he said, pleasantly.

“Don’t be absurd. She needs healing—”

“Which she can get in the capital as easily as here,” Prince Marek said. “I don’t choose to let you lock my mother up in your tower until it pleases you to let her out again, Dragon. Don’t imagine that I’ve forgotten how unwillingly you came with us.”

“You seem ready to forget a great many other things,” the Dragon bit out. “Such as your vows to raze the Wood all the way to Rosya, if we succeeded.”

“I’ve forgotten nothing,” Marek said. “I haven’t the men to help you now. What better way to get you the men you need than by going back to the court to ask my father for them?”

“The only thing you can do at court is parade around that hollow puppet and call yourself a hero,” the Dragon said. “Send for the men! We can’t simply go now. Do you think the Wood won’t make answer for what we’ve done, if we ride away and leave the valley defenseless?”

Marek kept his fixed smile, but it trembled on his face, and his hand worked open and shut upon his sword-hilt. The Falcon smoothly inserted himself between them, laying a hand on Marek’s arm, and said, “Your Highness, while Sarkan’s tone is objectionable, he isn’t mistaken.”

For a moment I thought perhaps he understood, now; perhaps the Falcon had felt enough of the malice of the Wood for himself to realize the threat it made. I looked at the Dragon with surprised hope, but his face was hardening, even before the Falcon turned to him with a graceful inclination of his head. “I think Sarkan will agree that despite his gifts, the Willow exceeds him in the healing arts, and she will be able to aid the queen if anyone can. And it is his sworn duty to hold back the Wood. He cannot leave the valley.”

“Very well,” Prince Marek said at once, even though he was talking through his clenched teeth: a rehearsed answer. They had worked it out between them, I realized in dawning outrage.

Then the Falcon added, “And you in turn must realize, Sarkan, that Prince Marek cannot possibly let you just keep Queen Hanna and your peasant girl here.” He gestured to Kasia, standing beside me. “Of course they must both go to the capital, at once, and face their trial for corruption.”

“A clever piece of maneuvering,” the Dragon said to me afterwards, “and an effective one. He’s right: I don’t have the right to abandon the valley without the king’s leave, and by the law, strictly speaking, they must both stand trial.”

“But it doesn’t have to be this instant!” I said. I darted a look at the queen, sitting listless and silent in the wagon while the villagers piled too many supplies and blankets in around her, more than we would have needed if we’d been going to the capital and back again three times without a stop. “What if we just took her back to the tower, now—her and Kasia? Surely the king would understand—”

The Dragon snorted. “The king’s a reasonable man. He wouldn’t have minded in the least if I’d discreetly whisked away the queen for a convalescence out of anyone’s sight, before anyone had seen her or even knew for certain that she was rescued. But now?” He waved an arm at the villagers. Everyone had gathered in a loose ring near the wagon, at a safe distance, to stare at the queen and whisper bits of the story to each other. “No. He would object greatly to my openly defying the law of the realm before witnesses.”

Then he looked at me and said, “And I can’t go, either. The king might allow it, but not the Wood.”

I stared back at him, hollow. “I can’t let them just take Kasia,” I said, half a plea. I knew this was where I belonged, where I was needed, but to let them drag Kasia off to the capital for this trial, where the law said they might put her to death—and I didn’t trust Prince Marek at all, except to do whatever suited him best.