“Got it,” Blathen panted, slithering away from his assailants.
He held up the heavy pistol, triumphant despite his scratched and bruised face. Rose helped Poppy to her feet, and to Petunia’s increased horror, Poppy was sobbing.
“Never touch me again,” she choked out.
Blathen just leered at her.
The others circled around her, Daisy taking Poppy in her arms and rocking her. But Petunia couldn’t keep her eyes off of Rionin, and Rionin was staring right back at her.
“Pet … isn’t that what they call you?”
“They do, but not you,” Petunia said, but her bravado was ruined by her shaking voice.
“Dear little Pet,” said the King Under Stone, smiling even wider. “I think you would be the perfect choice to go and fetch some twigs from the wood. And your betrothed can accompany you.”
“I want Telinros or Derivos to come as well,” Kestilan said, looking uneasy.
“Take them both, if you are feeling cowardly. Although I fail to see how one little girl can do much harm,” the king retorted. Then he swept out of the room, and the sisters weren’t the only ones who sighed with relief when he left.
Woodsman
So this is Maude’s forest,” Bishop Schelker said wonderingly.
“An inadvertent gift to her daughters,” Galen said.
They moved through the silent woods, the tree branches swaying over their heads in a breeze that could not be felt. Oliver had never seen anything like it. The trunks of the trees were softly gleaming, and the leaves were shaped like hearts, each one the length of his thumb. It looked like the work of a silversmith, but he could see where their roots were digging deep into the black soil.
Walter led them into the woods a little way so that they were hidden from the path that wound through it. He took a saw-edged knife from his belt and reached up, cupping a hand gently over a low-hanging branch. With a deep breath, he began to cut.
Oliver watched with a faintly sick feeling as Walter’s knife rasped through the silver tree. Then he chose a thicker tree branch. He’d taken Karl’s ax before sending his men, with Prince Frederick, to the grand duchess’s estate. Oliver hesitated, aiming the ax at it several times, before a nod from Galen gave him the encouragement he needed. He swung and took the branch off with one blow.
The crone gave an appreciative whistle.
“I’ve been taking out my frustrations on firewood since I was twelve,” Oliver told her. He braced his foot on the fallen branch and cut it in half with another blow.
“I don’t know how inadvertent this was,” Bishop Schelker said, fingering some of the silver leaves.
“What do you mean?”
Oliver picked up the smaller part of the branch he had just severed and studied the end. The wood, if wood it was, was silver clear through and didn’t have rings, so there was no way of telling how old it was. A few strange, soft fibers poked out of the cut, and the branch felt like neither metal nor wood, but a mixture of both.
“I didn’t know what she was doing at night, of course,” the bishop said, “nor why she was becoming more sorrowful even as her beautiful daughters were bringing such joy to Gregor.
“She told me that she was troubled by dreams. I knew she was holding back, but only now do I realize how much.” Schelker kicked at the sparkling black soil at their feet.
“In one of her dreams,” the bishop continued, “she said that she planted the silver cross I had given her. The cross sprouted into a shining forest that brought hope and protection to her children. She was expecting at the time … Lilac, as I recall … and I assumed that it was the fancy of a woman in her delicate condition.” He grimaced and snapped off a twig to add to the crown prince’s growing pile. “I assured her that her children were in no danger. I remember how sadly she looked at me, as if I had disappointed her. A few days later she stopped wearing the brooch. I thought she had put it away because I had upset her.”
“Lily always said that her mother had dropped the brooch returning from the Midnight Ball,” Heinrich said. “But perhaps she decided that her dream was more than just a dream and planted it on purpose.”
“I rather suspect that she did,” Bishop Schelker said.
“Of course she did,” Walter grunted. He was stripping leaves from the branches and putting them in his bag. “Maude believed in dreams, and magic, or we wouldn’t be here.”
“Should we be watching for … guards or anything?”
Oliver had been about to take a swing at another branch, but wondered if the noise they were making would attract unwanted attention. Everything was so still and silent without birds or insects or even a real wind that the sound of Walter picking leaves was making him twitch.
“There are no guards,” the crown prince said. “There’s the king, the princes, and the court, but they never venture across the lake.”
“Hurry and get a few more branches if you would, Oliver,” Walter Vogel said. “Then we’ll find a place to make our preparations.”
“How large is this wood?” Oliver asked.
He took a few steps farther into the thick of the trees. They had been taking leaves and cutting branches right beside a narrow path, and he worried that Grigori or someone else who used the same gate would notice. A few steps in he selected another branch and lopped it off near the trunk of the shining tree.
“I don’t know that anyone’s ever explored it,” Walter said. “Galen and the girls were too busy running to really take it all in the last time.” He gave a dry chuckle.
“Running and shooting,” the crown prince said.
“Aren’t we glad that I taught Lily to shoot?” Heinrich was gathering up handfuls of black dirt to fill small leather bags.
“Not a day goes by that I don’t give thanks for that,” his cousin said fervently.
“And then you taught the other princesses to shoot afterward?” Oliver dragged the branch he had cut back to the path.
“Yes, after what happened the king was quite adamant that they all learn,” Galen said. “That’s why I’m surprised that you, er, abducted Petunia. Wasn’t she armed?”
“Yes, she was,” Oliver said, smiling to himself. “The first time I saw her, she had a pistol aimed directly at my face. But I jumped down out of a tree later and caught her off guard,” he explained.
The others laughed at that, which reassured Oliver. If they could laugh, if Walter Vogel could hum as he gathered up the twigs, then Oliver felt that this might all turn out all right.
When they had gathered the wood, leaves, and soil that they needed, they continued down the path until they came to a lake of black water. Rising from an island at the center was a palace, ragged and menacing against the dull-gray nothingness that formed the sky. Oliver felt prickles of ice go down his spine.
“Stay in the trees,” Walter Vogel cautioned. “They can see us from the palace. We’ll need to move just around here a ways, to find a place to work.”
Reluctantly, Oliver pulled back into the trees with his armload of silver wood. He tripped several times trying to crane his neck and keep the palace in sight. It didn’t seem to have any windows, only a single large door, but still he wished for a glimpse of Petunia. Was she all right? Had they hurt her?
“They are well,” Heinrich said quietly, walking along beside Oliver. “It’s thin consolation, but the princes do want their brides unharmed.”
Oliver cringed. Their brides. And Petunia had been six when they’d first stolen her away to make her a bride. Now she was barely sixteen, and he still could not fathom it. She might show a bold face to the world, but she was still so very vulnerable.