Kester Grant - The Court of Miracles

I look in fear to his hands. He stills as I reach out and push back the long sleeves of his cloak to find a tangle of misshapen fingers, little more than gnarled claws, bruised, twisted, and broken.

“I am Aves, the Elanion, Messenger to the nine Guilds of the Miracle Court,” Femi says in a trembling voice. “But seeking to steal from a Guild Lord could not go unpunished. It is the Law. And only because I am trusted, only because I am Tomasis’s blood-born brother and he pleaded for me—for this alone I was spared.”

Horror seeps into every pore of my being. Horror, and fear and sickness at the sight of what they have done to him.

“I swore to protect you,” Femi says, his voice still quiet. “I promised her. What will I have left if I fail her in this as well?”

I turn from him, light-headed. I close my eyes and try clear my thoughts. “I cannot just forget her, Femi.”

“And you cannot rescue her. It cannot be done, not this way.”

I turn his words over in my mind, until I finally see the meaning behind them. My eyes snap open. “You believe there is another way?”

Femi straightens, tucking his ruined hands back under his cloak. I wonder how he managed to climb with his fingers so broken.

“She cannot be stolen, but perhaps she can be bought,” he says. His words are careful, deliberate.

Hope swells in my breast. “For how much? More than twelve coins of gold?” I can raise an impossible sum if needed. Stealing precious things is what I am good at.

Femi shakes his head. “The Tiger is rich beyond measure,” he says. “Gold means little to him. But he is a man who is never thwarted in any of his wishes. What you must find is something that he wants but cannot have. Make him desperate for it until he is ready to pay any price to attain it. If you are lucky, you might have power to dictate a price: the freedom of your sister.”

His words are genius. But I frown as a new thought blossoms.

“What is it that the Tiger wants?” I look up and find Femi staring at me, his face a grimace.

“What does he always want?” he asks.

The question hangs between us, unanswered. But even now I am aware; I have seen my sister, and the truth of what she has become is so terrible I dare not speak it aloud.

Sometimes we must pay a terrible price to protect the things we love.

Is there any price I will not pay to save my sister?

No. There is not.

When a leader of the Pack has missed his kill, he is called the Dead Wolf as long as he lives, which is not long.

—The Jungle Book

Il était une fois … Rennart the Fox came to the house of Ysengrim the Boar, stealing into his lair in the darkness. The Fox’s blade was sharp, and his teeth hungered for the taste of blood. He stood before the crib where the daughter of Ysengrim lay sleeping, and he gazed upon her beautiful face.

It was for revenge that the Fox had come. Ysengrim and Rennart had once been like brothers. And yet Ysengrim had given to Rennart the gift of the seven hells. First he had betrayed his friendship. Then he had taken the Fox’s house and his name. He had killed the Fox’s loyal men. He had murdered his wife and his daughter. Lastly, he had cast the Fox into the darkest dungeon, les Oubliettes du Châtelet, the place of forgetting. And in the last of these seven hells, Rennart sat in the darkness and waited.

With time and patience, the Fox escaped. And under the cloak of darkness he came to stand before the crib of Ysengrim’s daughter.

“Slay her, I must slay her,” Rennart cried to himself. “Does the blood of my men, my wife, my child not cry out for vengeance? All has been taken from me. I have earned the right to do this midnight deed.”

And though Ysengrim had wounded him beyond healing, despite all that he had lost and suffered, Rennart knew that if he slew the child he would be no better than his enemy. He knew that he could not kill her.

And so instead the Fox took her. He stole her from her crib, and carried her away to his den, and in doing so inflicted a thousand hurts on Ysengrim, worse than burying a wife and child, worse than seeing men fall, worse than losing all that you have built. The Fox gave Ysengrim the Boar a terrible gift: the gift of never knowing what had become of his daughter, the guilt of wondering endlessly whether she had lived or died.