Page 61 of Die With Your Lord
This was not the throne room as it had been in my brother’s day nor even as it had been in the old king’s day when first I had broken the Law of Greeting and won for myself a husband. This was entirely different.
Just inside the door, a statue had been erected in bronze and I grimaced at what I depicted. Someone had cast a very recognizable depiction of me — my one hand skeletal and the scars on my back through my open dress were dead giveaways — but they had cast me on all fours, crawling on a slab of rough-hewn rock that I thought was meant to be mud. A leash in a ribbon of silver ran to my captor’s hand and one of his feet was positioned between my shoulder blades. The Wittenbrand depicted in this role looked a lot like Bluffroll — but larger, broader, and more handsome. The sculptor had spent time lovingly adding detail upon detail to his bare muscled torso and there were even small details brought to life like the exact angle of his lower incisors sticking out of his lips and the precise curl of his long hair.
I shuddered at my first sight of it, and my husband stiffened enough that I felt it through our clasped hands. I was so shaken by the casting that it took me a moment before my eyes moved onto the rest and when they did I was horrified.
The only mortals in the room were mounted on the walls — not dead as one might expect, but fully alive, just hung up and nailed to the walls through the spot where the chest met the shoulders. They were dressed in blue — forbidden in Pensmoore — and I wished that was the worst shock of what had been done to them. They stared at me through a glaze of pain and hopelessness. And to my horror, each of them was missing their left hand, severed at the wrist.
Well then. This must be why my husband had bid me show my skeletal hand.
On either side of the throne were a man and woman I assumed were king and queen. Her, I did not recognize, though she had the look of Rouranmoore about her. He, however, was my nephew Rolgrin, and on his head was his crown, melted in such a way that it looked as if it had been jammed onto his skull while still hot.
I swallowed down bile and managed to voice my question aloud.
“Why are they dressed in blue?”
The Wittenbrand assembled in the court took this to mean they could laugh, which I rather thought was a foolish response, for if my husband had stiffened at the sight of the degrading statue of me, then he flinched at the sound of their laughter and it was not a flinch of pain or fear or even embarrassment.
Fury radiated off of him like heat and he tilted his head slightly to the side as he looked past the rows of opulently dressed Wittenbrand dressed in the garb of mortals — perhaps dresses made of living squirrels or flowing waterfalls were too hard to maintain in the mortal world — to the throne where Bluffroll lounged with a shining golden crown on his head and a wide smile on his lips.
“Is this how the Bramble King is to be greeted?” Bluebeard asked quietly. “With laughter? His wife degraded, his people maimed, his court reduced to rubbish?”
“Wear all the brambles you want, it doesn’t make you Bramble King,” Bluffroll’s voice boomed out from across the room, but he straightened on the throne as if he were suddenly less comfortable in the seat. “This place was gifted to me by the true Bramble King who was once Lord Coppertomb, he whose Coronation Ball looms close. It is mine to do as I please. And did I not please well?” He gestured now, coyly, at the statue. “There was a bronze casting of the Mad Princess, Savior of Pensmoore, when I arrived here. She held a sword aloft and was missing a hand. Apparently, she guided their king to victory and prosperity and united this land with Rouranmoore, and on and on. I showed these people who they ought to worship. There will be no savior for them from Bluffroll. And I have put an everlasting reminder in their flesh and in their throne room to keep that ever in their minds.”
The green banners in the throne room that once depicted the white horse of Pensmoore had all been replaced by blue, as well. I was too horrified to ask all the other questions I wanted to ask. Instead, I tried a variation of my first question.
“Why blue?”
“Bluffroll takes liberties with my wife’s people,” Bluebeard said quietly.
And that was when Bluffroll laughed, his booming roar filling the throne room and echoing in the voices of his enthralled court.
“The mortals believe blue is bad luck. They wouldn’t wear it. And I agree. It’s terrible luck to wear blue. Look what happened to them when I dressed them in it and made them cook their own hands for my dinner.”
I swayed, so filled with horror that I could not focus. I had brought this upon my people by coming here and guiding them for the battle. I had brought it on them by being Bluebeard’s true wife and defying Coppertomb and all of his folk.
My eyes sought Bluebeard’s but his were riveted on the casting.
“Marvelous, don’t you think, Arrow?” Bluffroll taunted him. “Surely a man who has clawed his way back from the grave can appreciate a good reversal.”
The court laughed with appreciation.
“Your filthy fantasies about my wife …” Bluebeard said, letting his words hang in the air until the court quieted. “…annoy me.”
And perhaps they did not know him as I did, because they laughed at that, even as I tried to draw in a shuddering breath, for fear had gripped me hard and held my heart. Not fear of these monsters, but fear of what devastation my husband might unleash now that I would witness.
“And what will you do, Arrow? You cannot kill a competitor,” Bluffroll said smugly. He reached for a chalice of wine and drank it down, leaning forward as if he were anticipating some pleasure. “You can only run away with your tail between your legs while I take new delight in stripping your pride away with every torment I inflict upon the people who saw you as their patron saint.”
“I compete for nothing now,” Bluebeard said, and his voice was so quiet that I saw the court straining to hear it. “But you will, Bluffroll. You will compete and so will your court. Let us see who will be first to be eaten by worms and forgotten by history.”
And then, without any warning at all, he released my hand and spread his hands wide and there was a clinking rush as sparks of every color flew from the Wittenbrand assembled there into his hands, and then they fell like scarecrows when the stick is removed. He marched across their limp bodies as they stared at him, powerless to move as his boots crushed hands and legs and faces. I could hear the crunch of their bones from where I stood. I watched him move with a mix of horror, awe, and a sense that perhaps — finally — there might be someone to right wrongs and turn tables and bring all the violence inflicted upon my people to a sharp end.
Even now, as Bluebeard walked through the throne room, puffs of pollen swirled out from him, settling on his foes and coating the ground.
I picked my way more carefully through the mass, remembering all too well what the land within the barrow had been like.
“There’s no need for such dramatics, Arrow,” Bluffroll said, looking nervous at the approach of my husband. “The game was won by Coppertomb.”
“Speak to my riddle, Bluffroll,” Bluebeard said, taking his time as he strolled over the breaking bodies of his enemies.
