“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t,” Kurkas said. “But we’re soldiers, and she’s the enemy. Raven’s Eyes, but she’s the enemy, walked straight out of bloody legend to make our lives a bloody misery. That means whatever she wants, she can’t have. You understand me?”

Brask nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Sir. That was a start. Some of what he’d said had sunk in. Kurkas was glad of that, because at that moment all he wanted to do was curl up in a ball and drag the world over his head.

“Double the guard on the gate. No one comes in, and sure as Queen’s . . . sure as sin no one goes out, you understand me?”

“Yes, sir. And then what?”

“Then I want to talk to Anastacia Psanneque.”

Fifty-Two

Fifty-Two

Anastacia stood in a web of silver at the head of the great hall, the white and gold of her porcelain skin gleaming in the sunlight. Or what Kurkas had been told was Anastacia. The tatter-clothed doll bore little resemblance to the woman who’d greeted him to Branghall what seemed a lifetime ago. Another sign that the world he thought he’d known was but a shell for another lurking beneath.

A silver collar sat snug about the doll’s neck, the bar-taut chains at its compass-points anchored by eyebolts in the walls. So too were her wrists bound, with the attendant chains let into the flagstones. Taken alongside the heavy shawl and ripped black velvet dress, she looked every bit the lumendoll trussed and readied for the Midsommer fires.

[[Visitors. How nice.]] At last, Kurkas found familiarity. Whatever constraints the shackles placed on Anastacia’s body, they did nothing to still her tongue. Despite the hollow sing-song of the voice, there was no mistaking the barbs beneath. [[But where’s the archimandrite? Do I bore him already?]]

“Set her free,” Kurkas said.

Brask blanched. “Sir, the archimandrite gave strict . . .”

“Do I seem in the mood for defiance? I said set her free!”

Brask recoiled and glanced at the overweight proctor lurking in the doorway. “Solas?”

Solas gave every sign of being unhappy, but he slunk towards the web, a key clasped in his pudgy hand. Eyes never meeting Anastacia’s smoky stare, he unlatched the collar, then set about the shackles on her hands.

[[You remember when you set me here, proctor? You remember what I said I’d do when the chains were gone?]]

The key slipped from Solas’ hands and chimed on stone. Anastacia’s laughter echoed about the hall as he fell to his knees to reclaim it.

Kurkas cleared his throat. “Please don’t damage him. Might yet be that we need him.”

Anastacia regarded the proctor as a serpent might regard something small and furry. [[I find my needs and desires an increasingly poor fit to those of ephemerals.]]