7

The hall smelled of damp, of crumbling things.

Crowds lined the walls dressed in worn, fusty-looking clothes, their colors muted with age but not gray; apparently, customs had been relaxed this far out in the empire, as Perrault had predicted they might be. They stood three and four bodies deep in front of peeling gilt and cream wallpaper. Across the scratched mosaic floor, a dais was raised a foot off the ground. And there he was. The hertsoh, the incarnation of the tsarytsya herself here in Terytoriya Shvartsval’d.

Ten girls and a boy stood behind him.

The hertsoh was thin but handsome, probably in his midfifties. His golden-brown hair was streaked with gray, his forehead lined, his nose aristocratically arched. Clad in a wrinkled suit, he sprawled across a faded brocade chair.

Everything in this room must once have been beautiful, from the chipped mosaic underfoot to the water-damaged ceiling overhead. I imagined it as it must have been before: a cloud of color, of soft-eyed shepherdesses and sweet-faced cherubs, green trees and blue skies, their edges bright and gilded. As it was now, black mold crept across the faces of the girls and the angels alike, dimming the paint and the gold, and a third of the mosaic tiles were missing. Mildewed mortar filled the spaces where they had lain.

The whole room smelled of decay.

It was nothing like Arbor Hall, with its gentle scents of earth and life and growing things. I was so far from home.

I hoped Daddy wouldn’t blame me for the time I spent away from his side. I hoped he would understand I hadn’t wished to spend it in places like this.

I waited for someone to greet us, but no one had noticed our arrival. When a break came in the chatter between the duke and the courtiers, Perrault steadied himself, and stepped forward. “Hertsoh Maximilian,” he began.

I didn’t understand the rest of Perrault’s address to him or their conference in Yotne, but the duke’s blank look of irritation filled me with dread.

When Perrault finally turned back to us, his words were low-pitched and stilted. “He has no idea who we are.”

For a long moment, I struggled to speak. Were we early? Late? Who had failed to inform him of our coming? Lang and Cobie exchanged a frowning glance, and the court shifted around us, murmuring, restive. Maximilian was still speaking—barking at Perrault in Yotne, seeming to bombard him with questions.

Perrault had not quailed in Norge before the stern looks of its Konge Alfödr, but he dropped his gaze now, fiddling with a frill on his jacket. The sight of my protocol officer looking small and withdrawn as the duke berated him made me angry.

In my dread of today, I’d imagined a hundred wicked welcomes; but this, I’d not foreseen.

I stepped forward, moving around Perrault, lifting my chin even as my hands shook. “Do you speak English?” I asked.

“Of course I speak English. Why does a trespasser in the Imperiya come not speaking Yotne?” He shifted in his seat, sitting forward.

“Batyuskha,” one of the girls broke in gently.

Perrault had taught me the Yotne word for father—bat’ka.

So these were Maximilian’s children.

But the hertsoh only smirked at the girl, reaching up to pat her on the hand she’d set on the back of his throne. She stiffened and drew back slightly, pressing closer to the sister at her side.

“I didn’t have much time to study your language,” I said, flushing. “I wish I had. But Hertsoh Maximilian, we’re not trespassers. I believe I’m here at your invitation—I’m Seneschal- Elect Selah of Potomac. I’m here to court Fürst Fritz.”

The hall was silent but for the drip of water somewhere in a corner.

Annoyance flashed again across the duke’s face. He nodded to two or three men on the edge of the dais, questioning them in Yotne.

“No,” Perrault groaned under his breath.

“What is it?” Cobie asked, shouldering between Perrault and me.

“Nasha tsarytsya,” one of the men exclaimed, a dark look on his face.

It required no translation. Alarm bells shrilled through my brain.

“You are not here at my invitation,” the duke finally said, righting himself in his chair. He scowled. “You are here at hers.”

No.

The duke shrugged. “It’s merely a shame the tsarytsya is not here to greet you herself.”

No.

Goose bumps rose over my skin, and my limbs shook.

Lang’s hand met my lower back, obscured by Cobie and Perrault at my side. I felt its warmth through my wet clothes. And still I trembled.

Perrault and I had warred over traveling to Shvartsval’d, whether my arrival or my avoidance would send my name rising more quickly through the ranks of her administration and into her notice.

We had not known that my invitation had not come from some adviser of the duke’s. I was here at the tsarytsya’s behest.

I thought of every fairy tale that warned against giving a witch or a spirit or the fae one’s true name, and tried not to dwell on how easily Alessandra had offered mine up to Baba Yaga herself.

“Her soldiers may avoid our woods, but Grandmother Wolf never ceases her attempts to meddle,” the hertsoh said, expression ugly. “As it happens, I’m busy with my own marriage preparations, and not interested in playing host. What say you, Fritz?”

I lifted my gaze beyond the duke and took my first proper look at the hertsoh’s son and daughters standing behind him.

Fritz was unremarkably good-looking; attractive, but a face I would have forgotten the minute I passed it by. His features were symmetrical, his face pale, his trim figure clad in neutral colors. Tidy, light brown hair was cropped an inch or so short; the eyes beneath his thick brows were nearly the same cool shade.

Fürst Fritz took in my sopping shoes, my bedraggled hair, and shrugged. He rolled his eyes with an annoyance uncomfortably like his father’s.

My stomach clenched and dipped again. If Fürst Fritz dismissed me, we would have no excuse to remain, and Lang would never be able to pass the zŏngtŏng’s weapons on to the Waldleute.

I pressed my lips together and kept my eyes on Fritz, hoping to move him to sympathy without knowing anything about him.

“She can stay, I suppose,” Fritz finally said. “She doesn’t look like a spy from Stupka-Zamok. Though, if she is not, I don’t know what the tsarytsya could have been thinking to choose her. What a mess she is.” My crew members stiffened beside me—though whether at the cruelty of the comment or how close Fritz hit to the mark, I couldn’t say.

Fritz’s face was forgettable. But I knew then, as my face burned before the whole of the Shvartsval’d court, that I would never forget the way he’d made me feel in this moment.

I wanted Cobie to step forward for me again, as she had in Winchester. I wanted to hide behind Lang, to let his warmth burn off some of the cold I felt in this ruined hall.

Instead, I said, “Thank you,” as if any of this pleased me.

The duke rubbed his forehead. “We have already supped, and no arrangements have been made for your stay. Your men can bunk where they will—just find a room. You and your lady’s maid will stay with the freinnen, my daughters.” He gestured at the girls standing behind him.

Cobie cleared her throat but had the restraint not to react to the duke’s assumption that she was a maid.

“Thank you,” I said again.

The words tasted sour. I smiled politely anyway.

“Seneschal-elect,” Perrault began, uncertain; but he didn’t finish his sentence.

Perrault was my protocol officer. My New York–polished, experience-sharpened etiquette expert and perception manipulator. He had played the chameleon at Asgard and rescued Skop from its king’s wrath.

My dismay grew chillier at the fear in his eyes.

I shook myself, straightening and nodding at Perrault. “We’ll bunk with the freinnen and talk tomorrow.” Then I turned to Lang. His canvas jacket was heavy with rain, his dark hair streaming, like mine, into his eyes. “We’ll do whatever needs to be done to make this visit a success.”