“Curious,” the Countess said. “Is it so precious that you must guard it with your own life?”
I looked down at the ring, scuffed and tarnished with age. The mismatched gemstones—one blue, one green—were small, hardly enough to be considered worth much. Yet whatever its value, it was worth infinitely more to me. I thought of the dream—vision?—I had of the Goblin King, of the shadows crawling over his skin, the crown of horns growing from his head, and remembered his vow.
“One cannot place a price on a promise,” I said shortly. “And that is all I will speak of the matter.”
I felt Josef’s eyes upon me then, a questioning touch. It was the first hint of interest—of engagement—I had felt from my brother in a long time.
“Strange, what weight we place on such trinkets,” the Countess murmured. “What meaning we imbue our possessions. The ring is but a bit of silver, wrought in an unusual shape. Yet it is more than a piece of jewelry. A symbol? A key?”
I said nothing and turned my head to gaze out the window. I watched darkness fall as the sun set behind the clouds, casting long shadows across the valley and across my heart.
*
By the time we pulled up the long gravel driveway to the manor house itself, night had fallen entirely, and a thin layer of snow had settled along the roads. The dark was oppressive in these parts, the sort of dense black that had depth and weight, familiar to those of us who had grown up in the wild. Our only source of light aside from the lantern hanging on its pole before our driver were twin torches blazing in the distance, held by two silhouetted figures waiting at the door for our arrival.
“Too late for supper, I suppose,” the Count grumbled. “I wanted some of Nina’s cabbage soup before bed.”
“I’m sure the housekeeper will feed you until your waistcoat pops tomorrow, dear,” said his wife.
“But I want it now,” he said petulantly.
“We’ll see if Nina can send us some trays after we turn down for the evening,” the Countess sighed. “I know you get cranky when you’re hungry. Apologies, children,” she said, turning to Josef and me, though it was too dark to see our faces inside the coach. “We shall have a proper dinner and introduction to Snovin tomorrow.”
“And why you’ve brought us here?” I asked.
I felt the touch of her green eyes on mine. “All shall be revealed. Tomorrow.”
The two torch-wielding silhouettes in the distance resolved themselves into the shapes of a man and a woman; one short, stout, and dumpling-faced, the other tall, thin, and craggy-cheeked. They opened the carriage door as the Count introduced them as Nina and Konrad, the housekeeper and seneschal of the estate.
“Nina will show you both to your rooms,” the Count told us. “Konrad will be along with your things.”
“What things?” I said shortly. We had fled Vienna so quickly, neither Josef nor I possessed anything beyond the clothes on our backs, my brother’s violin, and my portfolio of music scores.
He had the grace to look sheepish in the flickering light. “Ah, yes. Well, could you send for the tailor to take their measurements tomorrow, my love?” The Count turned to his wife instead of his housekeeper, and she looked displeased to be asked.
“As you wish,” she said stiffly. “I shall send for my uncle in the morning.”
Uncle? The Countess had rather low relations for such a lofty position as lady of the estate if her uncle was a tailor.
“Capital,” said her husband. “Now, children”—he turned to us—“I bid you both good night. If there’s anything that makes me grouchier than an empty stomach, it’s lack of sleep. We’ve been on the road a long while and I look forward to laying my head upon an actual pillow. I shall see you in the morning. Sweet dreams.”
And with that, he and his wife swept indoors with Konrad, leaving us alone with the housekeeper.
“This way,” Nina said in thickly accented German. We followed her past the great entrance hall and toward the east wing of the house, down a flight of stairs, up another, through a set of doors, around a corner, then up and down and around and around again until I was thoroughly lost. If I thought solving the hedge maze in the Procházkas’ garden was difficult, it was nothing compared to this.
Our path through the estate was silent, for Nina’s grasp of German seemed to be limited to the two words given earlier, and Josef kept his own counsel. Although he seemed less closed off and withdrawn than before, I still had no idea of what he thought or felt of our strange adventure. Whether he was frightened. Nervous. Excited. Relieved. That face I had known and loved his entire life was opaque to me, as though he wore a mask of his own features.
We passed no one else on our way to our rooms—no footmen, no maids, no gardeners—a stark contrast to the liveried servants at Procházka House. The grounds at Snovin Hall were extensive and would have required a great deal of care, more than what a middle-aged housekeeper and seneschal could provide. The neglect showed in a myriad ways: in the warped wooden window frames, the cobweb-dusted furniture in empty rooms, the birds’ nests and rodent burrows tucked into the exposed eaves and moldering couch cushions. The world outside crept in through the crevices, vines crawling up rotted wallpaper, weeds working their way through the cracks in the floor.
I am the inside-out man.
Soon we emerged into a nicer—or at least, better kept—part of the house. As with their domicile in Vienna, the Procházkas possessed a number of exquisite curios at their country estate: tiny pewter farmers threshing wheat, a herd of bronze sheep leaping over fences, a beautifully ornate clock with golden rings that circled the hours of the heavens. Each of these trinkets were mechanical like the swan in their banquet hall, moving with fluid motions almost too smooth to be real.
We walked up another flight of stairs until we arrived at a long gallery. Nina unlocked one of the doors and we followed her into our quarters, a suite of connected rooms. A large, double-sided fireplace divided our sleeping quarters, with doors on either side that could be shut to maintain our privacy. The fires were already lit, and the rooms pleasantly warm and dry—almost toasty—compared to the drafty corridor just beyond the threshold. The rooms themselves were comfortably appointed, if a bit threadbare. There was a secondhand quality to all the furniture, although they all seemed to be heirloom pieces. A washbasin and pitcher of water stood on the bedside table in the room, but there was no mirror atop the vanity. I thought of the fifty florins the Countess had gifted me in order to lure me to Vienna and wondered why their ancestral seat was in such shabby condition. They had the funds to maintain Snovin Hall, surely.
“Is good?” Nina smiled, her dark eyes nearly lost in the crinkle of dumpling cheeks.