Katalin first looks up because of his voice, and keeps looking because of his eyes: dark with a curious steepness to them, viperous and hard. At once she knows him, because she’s seen those eyes on his sister, his brother. This must be Juhasz Imre, the eldest sibling and the true lord of that high, lonely castle. And as she crouches in the dusky earth, basket forgotten, he speaks to her with a familiarity that she doesn’t know how to return.
“You’re the Szarvas girl,” he says plainly, his voice very clear, almost sweet. To this Katalin says nothing, because there are four Szarvas girls, and she isn’t even the prettiest among them. Besides, what would Juhasz Imre want to do with her? She thinks of his sister Mariska, the brocaded amulet she wears in the hollow of her throat, and something inside of Katalin flutters like the wings of a moth even as she does her very best to pin them.
“One of them, my lord.” She’s never spoken to Mariska or her twin brother Tamar, and wonders if they sound the same: as if they expect the world to part before them, as if they’re swans in water. She can imagine it of Mariska, but not of Tamar.
“Not the youngest or the eldest,” he says. “One of the two in between.”
She says nothing.
“My sister has noticed you,” he continues, and now Katalin looks back up and sees him almost smiling. “How old are you, truly?”
“Almost twenty now, my lord.”
“Unmarried.” It is not a question.
“Yes,” she says. She could say the same for him and his siblings, but they are lofty in a way she never will be. “I care for my mother.”
“Is she ill?”
“Melancholy.”
“So not ill, then,” says Imre. “We are all melancholy.”
My mother wasn’t, Katalin thinks, not before me.
“Would you like to meet her?” Imre asks, and he sounds as if he truly wishes to know. “My sister Mariska?”
Katalin is so surprised that she speaks honestly. “I am not certain, my lord.”
“Do you mean the rumors?” He looks uninterested now, with a sort of carelessness only the nobility can afford. “Do you believe that she runs in the forests until her feet bleed, and hunts with her bare hands, and lies in the silver stripes of moonlight? Do you think that she ensnares all the wanton village girls to her and consumes them like a wolf?” He is watching Katalin carefully again, gauging her reaction as a mountain poacher would, and she doesn’t like it. “You should know better. My sister is gentle, and good.”
Katalin says nothing again, and waits for him to leave her. He doesn’t.
“It isn’t your choice, not truly, little macska,” Imre says finally. “It’s Mariska’s.” There is no demand in his voice, no expectation, and that’s what frightens her.
“If she wishes to meet me,” says Katalin, suddenly conscious of her dirty wrists, the sweat shining like a badge on the back of her neck, “Then I will do as she says.”
“Good,” says Imre, and in the speckled forest light it’s as if he sees her properly for the first time. “When you do, wear your hair without the net, down across your shoulders. She likes dark hair very much, my sister.”
Are you her errand boy? Katalin wishes to ask in astonishment, because Imre is older than his sister by six years, and by rights even Tamar should have more authority. But she’s seen the two of them in the village, Tamar looking to his twin in what could be described as a careful deference, and sees it now replicated in Imre. A bizarre respect, she thinks — a devoted sense of consideration. But there’s something in Imre’s gaze that has never been in his brother’s, and she doesn’t like that, either.
“She just wants to see you up close,” says Imre, and his voice is gauze-soft now, compassionate. “See you for what you truly are.”
“And you, my lord?” She can’t help it, not really; the impulse to resist jerks within her like a hare’s leg caught in a snare. “Do you wish to see me for what I truly am?”
“You mustn’t worry about that,” Imre says, and he’s almost smiling again. “I think I already have.” He pauses, and dips his head, and in the dim light she can see that his hair is almost as dark as her own: not the gorgeous russet of his siblings. “I like your spirit, but Mariska is different. Be careful, little macska. Sweet things can swiftly turn bitter, and my sister has always been one of them.”