A Treason of Thorns

by Laura E. Weymouth

  “Would you?” I ask. “If it makes you uncomfortable, you needn’t. This stone is the most dangerous object in England right now. If the king knew I had it—but I have to get home—there’s something the matter with Wyn—oh, how do I explain everything when I haven’t got the time?”

  She reaches out and cups my chin with one hand. “You don’t, child. Give it to me. I won’t speak a word about that stone until you ask for it again.”

  “Thank you,” I tell her. “Esperanza and Alfred have been so good to me, truly they have, but Frey, I trust you.”

  “Go on, then.” Frey rolls her eyes. “No need for a scene. Get home, and do what needs doing, then pick up your trinket and save that House.”

  I set the cloth-wrapped heartstone on her lap but she stops me when I’ve already got one foot out the door.

  “Violet Sterling. Whatever goes on this next little while, try not to die. I’ll never forgive you if you do—you’re the best tavern girl I’ve had when you’re actually here, and you’d be the devil to replace.”

  “I’ll try,” I say with a wry smile. “But I can’t make any promises.”

  On the inside, my stomach is twisting into nervous knots. I half run back down the hall and burst out into the inn yard again, where it’s begun to snow, though it’s only the end of July.

  “Violet, what—?” Esperanza begins from where she and Alfred are waiting for me next to the carriage.

  “Going home, I’ll be back,” I call over one shoulder, already hurrying down the lane.

  “She’s got to stop tearing off like that,” I hear Espie say to Alfred, and then I gather up my skirts and run.

  It snows harder the closer I get to Burleigh House. Drifts blur the edges of the lane and I can’t see more than a dozen feet ahead. I’m sure I’d be freezing if not for the fact that I haven’t stopped moving. My breath smokes on the air, and finally the bramble gate appears amid the driving white, the thorns and vines already snaking back, opening the way for me.

  Only once I’m through the gate do I slow to a walk.

  “I missed you, too,” I tell the House. “But where’s Wyn? You’ve looked after him for me, haven’t you? You haven’t done anything awful?”

  The ground beneath me rumbles ominously. Burleigh doesn’t like that at all, hearing me speak reproachfully to it. But fear has eaten away my softer and more sympathetic parts. It grows wicked and wild within me as I get far enough down the drive to make out Burleigh’s shape through the swirling snow.

  The jacaranda tree has lost all its leaves and blossoms. They lie in heaps on the ground around its trunk, filling the cold air with a sour scent of rotting vegetation. And my House. Oh, my House.

  When I left, Burleigh was in ill repair. The guest wing was in ruins, and the rest of the roof needed patching, only growing worse day by day. Vines threatened to take over, and here and there, a windowpane wanted replacing. But my House, that looked poorly tended only a handful of days ago, is now a ruin.

  Every window has blown out, and shattered glass mingles with gravel and snow on the drive, crunching underfoot as I draw closer. The roof has fallen in entirely, not just over the guest wing, and in places bits of the upper walls are already beginning to crumble. Ivy has been overtaken by wicked brambles. Burleigh would look almost frightening, were it not for the fact that I know it so well.

  “Wyn?” I call, climbing the steps and pushing open the door. The corners of the front hall are choked with rubble. The four-lamp kerosene pendant has fallen from the ceiling and lies smashed in the middle of the floor. It’s left a gaping hole in the ceiling above, through which I can see a patch of distant sky. Snow falls softly through the gap, mingling with twisted bits of metal and shards of lamp glass.

  “Wyn?” I’m shouting now, picking my way through fallen masonry and leaving a trail of slush in my wake. “Wyn, answer me. Where are you?”

  There’s no sign of him, but when I push into the kitchen, Jed and Mira are there, nursing cups of tea and brooding under a great canvas tarpaulin that’s been lashed down where the roof once was. They start out of their chairs at the sight of me, and in an instant, I’ve been engulfed by Jed’s arms. It’s even more like hugging a bear than usual, for in spite of the fire burning on the kitchen hearth, the room’s still frigid, and he’s wearing a greatcoat. Mira gets up and embraces me, too, and I stand for the briefest instant, safe and warm and loved.

  I remember how this family was won for me, though. I ought not to have this by rights. It should be Wyn’s, and I should’ve been the one who stayed behind, bound to the House as insurance against the coming end to its long dying.

  “Where’s Wyn?” I ask, pulling away from Jed and Mira.

  A glance rife with hidden meaning passes between them.

  “We’re that glad to see you, Violet,” Mira says. “We thought something might have happened to you as well.”

  “What do you mean, as well?” I ask, unable to keep panic from creeping into my voice. “Where is Wyn?”

  “He’s out in the family plot by the wood’s edge, visiting with your father,” Jed says heavily. “Here, take my coat, and just bear in mind he doesn’t quite look himself.”

  It’s snowing even harder now, but I know this land. I don’t even have to think about the direction to head in or the path to take—my feet know the way.

  I let myself in through the low fence that surrounds the cemetery, up against the looming woods. The nearby trees are still choked with brambles, their bare branches limned with streaks of dried mortar. And I see Wyn at once.

  He’s sitting in the snow with his back to Papa’s plain grave marker. He’s got on several bulky layers of tatty knit jerseys to ward off the cold, but the snow is thick on his untidy hair and his shoulders. As I draw closer, he looks different indeed—there’s something gone wrong with his skin. It’s an inhuman shade and texture, more like Burleigh’s walls than anything else. And while there was never much softness to Wyn’s appearance in the first place, what little there was is gone. He’s all unrelenting angles and fierce symmetry, with eyes like the sparks cast off by flint and iron. I wonder if there’s any warmth left to him at all, or if I would find him cold and unyielding as granite. None of that matters to me, though. Where there’s life, there’s hope, and I am unspeakably glad to find him alive.

  “Wyn, what happened? I was only gone for a few days,” I say. “What have you done with yourself?”

  “It’s . . . difficult,” he answers, and the words somehow seem muffled, like the House showing me a memory. “I can’t always tell now, where Burleigh ends and I begin.”

  I sit down at his side, wrapping Jed’s greatcoat around me. “What did you do?”

  “Vi, I know I promised I wouldn’t, but—”

  “You were going to finish the binding, weren’t you?”

  Wyn turns his face toward me for the first time, and somehow his flintlike eyes still retain their old, patient look. “I was. But Burleigh stopped me before the end.”

  He rests his head against Papa’s gravestone. “Three nights ago, I finally got up the nerve to finish what your father and I started. To offer myself, everything there is of me, to Burleigh. So that it could carry on somewhere new, without you ever having to try your hand at unbinding it. I’ll spare you the details, but it was dreadful, and it took hours, and then around midnight, Burleigh just . . . stopped. It was like one minute the House’s whole attention was fixed on me, that crushing weight—you know what it’s like—and then it just turned aside. I still don’t know why, but it left me like this, and left Burleigh as you see it.”

  “That’s right about when I found the heartstone,” I say. “The House must have been able to feel it. Burleigh must want the stone back more than it wants a new start.”

  “Heartstone?”

  Wyn straightens up and when I glance over at him, fear slams through me with a hideous jolt. Because where his expression and his eyes were his own before, now something indefinable in them has c
hanged, and I know, just as I did after he worked House magic, that Wyn has gone from his body. This time, though, he hasn’t left it empty. There’s something in his place.

  “Bring us the stone,” a gravelly voice says, and I shudder, hearing it come from Wyn’s mouth. It’s like rock scraping against rock, and sets my teeth on edge. “Lay it on our doorstep and never come back, and because we have loved you, we will let you leave with your life.”

  “. . . Burleigh?” I ask, forcing my fear down, as I’ve grown so used to doing. “Is that you?”

  The thing that is no longer Wyn says nothing, just stares at me with opaque grey eyes.

  “Burleigh, you know me,” I tell the creature. “I can’t just leave the stone, because if I do, you won’t really be free. The binding has to be undone with blood and mortar, at your heart, just as it was made.”

  “We will never let another person set their blood into our mortar again,” the creature says fiercely. “Not after being bound against our will so many times. Neither will we show you our hidden heart. We will take back what is ours for one shining moment, and break our binding, and die in power as we once lived.”

  “Think of the West Country,” I beg. “You will ruin it if you stay this course. But I can make you whole, Burleigh, truly whole, and undo the wrong you’ve suffered. I would do that and more for you. Surely you know I would, my love.”

  The old endearment comes out forced and unnatural, though, because with Burleigh speaking through Wyn’s body, all I feel is fear, and underneath it, something terribly akin to loathing. I have loved my House long and well, and I loved my father in spite of his stern ways. But to find that both of them have used Wyn as a pawn in this dangerous game is almost more than I can bear, because as much as I loved them, I love him, too.

  “Would you, little girl?” Burleigh grates, and Wyn’s cold hand rises to brush a finger against my jaw. I shiver, and try not to pull away. “Would you really? Don’t you think after all these years, all these lives, we can look through those who dwell within our walls and see the truth in their hearts? You are no Caretaker. Your heart is divided. Would you truly unbind us, or use the power in our broken piece to unbind him instead? To force us to restore him?”

  I take absolute care to ensure my face stays immobile, my hands motionless on my lap. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might use blood and mortar and the heartstone to unbind Wyn, rather than the House.

  But Burleigh leans closer to me and lets out a sigh like the rattling of small stones. “We see the war within you. The very blood in your veins is singing to us, and do you know what it says? Treacherous. Treacherous. False.”

  I look at the creature before me, at Burleigh House wearing Wyn’s body like an ill-fitting cloak, and all the distaste I feel fades to sorrow.

  “Burleigh,” I say. “You are vaster and older and more powerful than I will ever be, but I am still more than the sum of my parts. I contain multitudes, and I can fight for both you and Wyn. Remember that, when I unbind you—that I’ve been faithful, when you thought the worst. And I hope and pray that if Wyn’s fate is tied to yours, freeing you will free him as well.”

  “He’s ours,” Burleigh rasps. “His blood willingly given, his bones willingly bound.”

  “He’s not yours,” I tell Burleigh. “He doesn’t belong to anyone but his own self. And so long as there’s one bit of him left, I will call him back and he will answer.”

  Swallowing the revulsion I feel with Burleigh’s eyes locked on mine, I turn toward what should be Wyn, and take his face in both my hands. Pressing my forehead to his, I shut my eyes.

  “Haelwyn of Taunton,” I whisper. “Wherever you’ve gone, come back. I need you.”

  For a long time, nothing happens. The smell of cold stone is so strong, I think I might choke, and the ground rumbles beneath me, unsettled by my touch. The creature that is speaking for bitter, broken Burleigh makes an eerie noise, halfway between a hum and an avalanche.

  But I don’t let go, and I don’t open my eyes until finally . . .

  “Violet?” Wyn’s voice says.

  A small sound of anguish and relief escapes me, and I throw my arms around Wyn.

  “I’m sorry, Vi,” he says, and his arms are around me, too. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to go away, or to frighten you. It’s just harder to hold on to myself now.”

  “No,” I tell him. “You have no reason to apologize.”

  Brushing his untidy hair aside, I press a kiss to his forehead, and where my lips touch Wyn’s skin, it warms, ever so slightly. He raises his head to look at me and our eyes meet, and he’s there, the boy I know, fully present, with something in his gaze I’ve never seen before. But it must be in my eyes as well, that desperate longing I see in him, because all at once his mouth is on mine, or mine is on his—I don’t know who began it. His lips part and mine eagerly follow, and it is intoxicating, feeling warmth spread through him again beneath my touch. I would give him all my heat, all my fire and determination and will, if it would only banish the mortar from his blood and the magic from his bones.

  “I hate this,” I tell Wyn when we stop. “I hate all of it. Why couldn’t we have been born anywhere else? Why couldn’t we have just been ordinary?”

  For a moment, I’m afraid Burleigh will take hold of him again, to chastise me for unfaithfulness to my calling.

  “This is what we’re for, Violet,” Wyn says, and there’s a note of resignation in his voice that cuts me to the quick. “You’re for the House, and I’m for you. I’ve known it since the first day I came here, though I didn’t know that it would end like this. And maybe I wanted things to be different once, but now Burleigh won’t let me finish the task I’m meant for and that’s what I hate.”

  “What if we don’t have to be who we were told to become?” I ask. “What if I don’t want to put the House first always? What if . . . what if I want to put you first instead?”

  I think of what Burleigh told me: that my heart is divided. That I will play my House false. And I’m honestly not sure what I’ll do if I’m finally forced to choose between Burleigh and Wyn. All I do know that is that no one has ever unbound a Great House before, but I think it is my only chance to keep both my home and my heart intact.

  “I still want what I was brought here for,” Wyn says. “To save you, no matter the cost. To see you get out of this alive and well.”

  “Wyn, can’t we save each other?” I ask.

  He gets to his feet and helps me up. “I don’t know, Violet. I suppose we can try, but I’m never going to stop wishing you’d just walk away.”

  I scowl at him. “I’d die first, and you know it.”

  “I do,” he says. “And that’s exactly what I’m afraid of.”

  29

  LATE IN THE AFTERNOON, ESPIE AND ALFRED JOIN US. Wyn and I are in the study, which overlooks the front drive, and go out to meet them when they come through the bramble gate, on foot and unaccompanied. It’s as if we’ve all decided not to comment on the state of the House, or of Wyn, though Alfred’s eyes widen and I hear a sharp intake of breath from Esperanza. But I stand before them, holding Wyn’s hand tightly, and Espie is the one who speaks first. She sets a valise down on the gravel next to her and smiles, though the expression’s a little too bright.

  “Do you have somewhere to put us up?” she asks offhandedly, as if she’s just arrived at an ordinary country manor—the sort with a roof and windows and no destructive magic coursing beneath the ground. “Of course you’ll probably be otherwise engaged tomorrow evening, Vi, and we’ll go back to our rooms at the Red Shilling, but it’d be nice to get away from the crowds in the public room tonight. And perhaps you and Wyn wouldn’t mind the company. Although if you’d rather be on your own, just say so.”

  “No, we’d be glad of the company,” I say, glaring at a bramble that’s creeping toward Alfred’s ankles. It rustles and pulls away.

  On our way indoors, I hang back behind the others and stop in the ruined foyer. />
  “Please don’t be dreadful about this,” I beg my House. “Please just let us all have one last pleasant night. I know you and I are at odds, but if you ever loved me, let me have this. I still love you, you know, whether you believe it or not.”

  A few sad white flowers blossom from a crack in the wall, drooping almost before they’ve opened. I reach out and pick the blooms, tucking them into the strands of my braid. That seems to pacify Burleigh, because the flowers flush with life, and outside, the sun comes out for the first time today. I run a reassuring hand along the wall all the way to the kitchen, where everyone has gathered. I feel loss and longing, pain and regret, through the tips of my fingers.

  “I swear to you,” I whisper, “everything will be alright. I’m not going to turn on you, Burleigh, just because you aren’t the only thing I care for anymore.”

  The House is silent, as if thinking over what I’ve said.

  And so, all of us within Burleigh’s walls pretend that nothing untoward has happened, and that tomorrow I won’t return with the heartstone, holding both Burleigh’s and Wyn’s fates in my hand. Mira sets about salvaging things to eat from the cupboard and pantry, with Alfred as her willing assistant. Jed and Espie sit at the table amicably chatting about crop rotations and land management, which leaves Wyn and me to wander the House, searching out the least damaged guest bedrooms.

  “Should we each take one side of the hall?” I ask, after we’ve made our slow way up the stairs, having to choose every step among the brambles with care.

  “No.” He shakes his head decidedly. “Let’s go together.”

  I’m glad of that. I want to be near him for as long as I can.

  “I’m going to send everyone away tomorrow, of course,” I tell Wyn as we search room after room that’s been overrun by brambles. “I wish you could leave with the others—could get off the grounds and stay safe. Perhaps if you were gone, Burleigh wouldn’t be able to finish what it started with you.”

  Burleigh is still entirely silent, giving me no sign of what it thinks about these goings-on. It’s unnerving—more so than discontented rumbling or ill-tempered brambles would be.