Pál did not look at me, but slid the knife in a practiced gesture across his own wrist. His blood dripped onto the baby, crimson rivulets running down its cheeks. The baby began crying again. Behind the bar of the Holding, the mother screamed at my uncle.
The spell is begun. I scrabbled for the anger that had let me break Pál’s spell when he entered my room. The air seemed to catch, as though I had snagged the edge of the spell. The ring on my finger blazed white-hot, and I gasped, my concentration shattering. The ring must have been charmed to prevent my breaking not only the Binding but any spell.
Pál stood. The tall Luminate women rushed forward with a strip of white cloth to bind his cut. When she finished, Pál extended his hands and began intoning in Latin, a sharp phrase that bit the air. Beside him, the Luminate woman chanted a counterpoint to his: high when his voice was low, low when he was high, their two spells mingling to become something stronger, more powerful.
At once the square was silent. The screaming mother, the crying women and children, the angry fathers—all still. I looked at them in surprise. Their faces were blank with horror, as if the blood on the child were the child’s own blood and not Pál’s.
Of all the Romanies in the square, only the baby continued to wail.
The tall woman scooped up the baby and returned it to its mother, who wept and kissed its head and opened her mouth to speak but no sound emerged. The Romani nearest her edged away. Others dropped to their knees.
I found my voice. “What have you done?”
“A minor Blocking spell,” Herr Steinberg said. “The practice of magic requires that one both sense magic, to pull it into one’s soul, and speak the words of ritual. The spell put a buffer around their souls, blocking any possible ability to sense magic, and silenced their vocal cords.”
“They cannot speak,” I echoed, sure I had misunderstood. “Not to each other. Not to anyone. How could you do this?” I wanted to weep.
“My blood sacrifice brought me strength; profaning something the Gypsies hold sacred made them weak,” Pál said, mistaking my question. He wavered, his knees buckling. Herr Steinberg slid a supporting arm around him, and Pál cast a look at him, resentment just masked with gratitude.
Pál’s words twisted in my head. He knew about Romani birthing practices, knew that what he was doing was a profanation. Did he know that their magic did not require words? Blocking their connection to magic was one thing; stealing their ability to speak was gratuitous cruelty. My own knees trembled.
Herr Steinberg must have read my contempt in my face because he hastened to add, “It’s quite humane, really. None of them will be imprisoned. None will be forced to leave their home or their family.”
“But they cannot use magic,” I said. “And they cannot speak.”
“Well. Yes. That was rather the point.” He smiled, and I saw for the first time the malicious edge to it. “I understand we have you to thank for pointing us toward them. Count yourself lucky your family is deemed too important for your punishment to be the same.”
Those damned letters.
Already the crowd dispersed around us, their lust for blood blunted by the disquieting spell. The Holding spell lifted: the Romanies left the square in driblets, leaning on one another.
I could not stay. I had been told the Binding protected us from monsters. But monsters existed outside the Binding as well.
I swung away from Herr Steinberg and my uncle, my body braced for a spell that never came. The Circle made no attempt to stop me.
They had already done what they came to do.
A Romani family brushed past me, a father and mother herding two small children between them. My eyes stung. I suspected that some, perhaps most, had never practiced magic as the Circle charged. I wondered what they would do now.
I paused to search the square behind me. The Circle had vanished. There was no sign of Izidóra. But a half dozen paces away, I spotted a Romani bracelet, trampled and half buried in mud. I dug it out and slipped it into my pocket, with some half-formed idea of cleaning it and returning it to Gábor’s family. It was not atonement, but it was a start.
I stripped off my now-filthy gloves as I walked. Turning a corner into a shadowed roadway, I strode directly into someone. I had a confused impression of a man, taller than I, wearing a green wool dolman of considerably nicer cut than most of the people in the square. Likely Luminate.
I recoiled. “I beg your pardon!”
The owner swung around. “Anna?”
Gábor’s hands were trembling, but not at my nearness. His eyes were wide, drowning in a film of tears. I had never seen him look so gutted. Without thinking—not of how it might look, not of my own horror—I threw my arms around him, feeling the soft wool of his collar against my ear. His heart thumped an uneven rhythm.
“Anna,” he said again, his cheek coming to rest against the top of my head, his hands tangling in my hair. A spasm seized him, and his tall frame seemed to collapse on me, folding in on itself, sliding through my arms until he was kneeling before me in the dirt, his head resting against my abdomen.
He sobbed, a great heaving gasp that shook both of us, and I cradled him in my arms and kissed his hair and wished I could leach some of the horror from him through my touch. A fierce protectiveness welled in me, something I had not felt since James.
I could not tell him it was all right. It was not.
But I could hold him tight. I could grieve with him.
We clung to each other for a long moment, the only still points in a turning, tottering world.
“Oh, Anna. This is my fault.” His voice was muffled against the damp front of my dress.
I swallowed against my constricting throat. “How is this your fault? The Circle bears blame for it.” My arms tightened around his shoulders. My fault. I should never have written those letters. I should have broken Pál’s spell as he cast it. I should have done something more than I had.
“I should have stopped it. But I did nothing. I watched—and I did nothing.”
“What could you do?” I asked. “If you had acted, they would have spelled you as well. You survived. You did what you must to fight again another day.”
“I was not being heroic. I was frightened. You were not. I saw you.” He lifted his head. His eyes were bloodshot and his nose red and dripping, and still my heart contracted.
“I was terrified,” I admitted. His words twisted in me. He did not know the extent of my guilt—and I could never tell him. He would hate me. “I could not stop them either. Only the fact I am Luminate prevented them from punishing me with your family.” I hesitated. “But we will act. And soon. When I break the Binding, we will—”
“Don’t,” Gábor said, laying his fingers against my lips. “Don’t say it. Don’t do it. It won’t save my family. It might not save any of us.”