He was playing them as expertly as a court musician played a violin. And Rachelle was helping. She was also keeping him under control so he couldn’t turn his false heroism into a crown, but she was still helping him.
She hoped that when Endless Night fell, the forestborn hunted him first.
The audience lasted nearly two hours. By the end, Rachelle was starting to feel dizzy from the heat. Armand didn’t look much better. So as soon as the guards started to push the crowd away, she hauled Armand to his feet by his collar, dragged him into the nearest tavern, and demanded a private room and a pitcher of beer at once.
There were times when being one of the King’s bloodbound had its advantages. A few moments later, they were in an upstairs room that was quiet and out of the sunlight.
As soon as the door had shut behind them, Armand let out a sigh. Then in two quick, expert movements he had hooked his metal thumbs under his cuffs and pulled them up, revealing leather straps that ran up his forearms to loop around his elbows. Large metal buckles held them together in the center; in a few moments he had unlatched them with his teeth, and the hands clattered to the ground. Underneath, his stumps were covered in two little knitted socks; he pulled them off with his teeth.
Clearly he didn’t intend to be the one who picked up his hands. Wearily, Rachelle reached for the nearest one. But when her fingers touched the metal, she flinched. The silver hand was shockingly hot.
“Imagine my surprise on the first sunny day that I wore them,” said Armand.
She remembered the blinding glitter of sunlight on his silver hands. At the time, she’d only thought of it as one more gaudy extravagance that showed his hypocrisy.
“If they hurt that much,” she said, “don’t wear them.”
Armand was by the pitcher; the loop of its handle was just wide enough that he’d managed to slide his stump inside. Rachelle watched in fascination as he tilted the pitcher to pour himself a cup of beer, then lifted the cup by wedging it between his wrists.
She’d seen people missing limbs before, but it still felt like stuttering when her eyes ran down the length of his arm to . . . nothing.
Her stomach twisted. She didn’t believe his story. She didn’t. But in all the times that she’d dismissed him as a liar, she’d never thought about how—whatever the truth—he had suffered something.
He set down the cup. “If I don’t wear the hands, then they want to kiss the stumps. I’d rather burn.”
“You could just not display yourself for worship,” Rachelle snapped.
His mouth twisted. “Do you think the King would allow me to stop? If I weren’t sitting next to his banner every week, people might start to imagine that His Majesty wasn’t entirely holy.”
“Maybe you should have thought of that before you became a saint.”
He showed his teeth. “The way you thought things through before you became a bloodbound?”
For a moment she was back in Aunt Léonie’s house, the blood hot and sticky on her hands, and she felt sick and dirty and furious.
“Do not,” said Rachelle, “presume to tell me what it means to be a bloodbound. You haven’t even met a forestborn.”
He tilted his head. “You really think that?” He didn’t look like someone whose secret was threatened. He looked wary but curious.
“You really think I’m fool enough to believe you?”
His mouth curved up. “You were fool enough to say yes to a forestborn.”
The next thing she knew, she had slammed him against the wall. “Don’t try me.”
“What are you going to do?” he asked. “You can’t kill me, and I’m running out of limbs to cut off.”
“I don’t have to kill you to make you sorry,” Rachelle snapped, and then her throat closed up as she realized what she’d said.
Her forestborn hadn’t had to kill Aunt Léonie either.
She let go of him and stumbled back a step. She knew there wasn’t any blood pooled across the floor, but she could still smell it. The scar on her right hand ached.
Armand was still watching her. He had to see how off balance she was, but he didn’t mock her. Instead, he went on, musingly, “If you can wait until Château de Lune, you could always have a try at losing me above the sun, below the moon. Though the King and d’Anjou might have something to say about that.”
Her whole body sparked with cold white fire. “What did you say?”
“Well, it’s still—”
“‘Above the sun, below the moon.’ Why did you say that?”
He looked at her as if she were babbling nonsense. “Because it would be a way to get rid of me. Only nobody really believes that story, so I wouldn’t actually advise you to mention it after you hide my body.”
“What story?”
“The story of Prince Hugo and the missing door,” he said. “You don’t know it?”
“Of course I know that story,” said Rachelle. “He found a way into the Forest from the Château and it ate him, and that’s when they put so many protections on the spot.”
Supposedly, those protections hadn’t extended far enough into the gardens of the Château to keep Armand from meeting a forestborn. Actually, he was a liar, so it was probably stupid of her to listen to anything he said.
He raised his eyebrows. “Is that how they tell it where you come from?”
“Yes, Monsieur Most Educated, that’s how they tell it. Now tell me your version.”
“Well,” he said, drawing out the word as he gave her a dubious look, “long ago, the king of Gévaudan had a son named Hugo, who could never be content unless he was adventuring. He spent so much time wandering the forest that his father began to fear he would become a bloodbound. Finally the king forbade him to leave Château de Lune for a month. At first Prince Hugo was much upset, but then he seemed to grow content. And then he started to vanish for days at a time. The king thought he had broken the ban, but when he questioned his son, Prince Hugo laughed and said that he had found his own forest within the Château’s walls. He said it lay beyond a door above the sun and below the moon that would open only to his hands, and it would make him the greatest hunter the world had ever known. After that night, no one ever saw him again.”
“Did they find where he had gone?” asked Rachelle.
“No,” said Armand. “But the next year, in my mother’s province out west—this is why I know the story—they found a skeleton with his signet ring upon its finger. If it was him, and how he came to be there, nobody knows.”