Spinning Thorns

by Anna Sheehan

  ‘This isn’t really the enchanted forest,’ I said. ‘This is just the … borderlands.’

  ‘You’re still the closest thing to an expert on it in the kingdom,’ she said. ‘Next to Cait.’

  ‘You know, just because the forest hasn’t killed me while I’m hovering on the borders doesn’t mean it’s going to welcome me with open arms if I go traipsing through it looking for Faerie Caital … who, by the way, grew that forest to keep the furious people of the kingdom away from her during the interregnum. Hiedelen’s armies would have gleefully killed her, and she knew it, not to mention the occasional angry mob. The forest is a protective labyrinth. I can’t just go walking through it.’

  She tossed her head in frustration. ‘But if you could find a way. There has to be a way to contact her!’

  ‘If she’s even alive,’ I pointed out.

  ‘She’s alive,’ Will said. ‘The Winnowinn clan have told us that much. She visits their fastness every year for some faerie harvest or other.’

  ‘The Ceremony of the Light,’ I said. I’d never been to a Light Ceremony, not since I was old enough to remember. My mother still went through the motions every spring, but she says it isn’t the same in the shadows. ‘And it’s a renewal, not a harvest.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Willow said. ‘But apparently it’s not for months, and at the rate this Sleep is spreading, that’ll be too late.’

  I shrugged. ‘So sorry, Princess. Not my concern.’

  ‘My name is Will!’ she snapped.

  She really loved rubbing that in, didn’t she? ‘I don’t care,’ I snapped back.

  ‘Would you care for another book?’

  She had my weakness, didn’t she? ‘On what?’

  She pulled a well bound book out of her cloak. ‘The Zarmeroth Cycle.’

  Oh, she didn’t! ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘It was buried in a courtier’s private library,’ she said. ‘Misfiled, so it escaped the purge.’ She held it out for me. ‘If you help me find Mistress Cait, it’s yours.’

  My eyes narrowed. ‘What makes you think I’ll help you? I might just take the book and run.’

  She turned to show me the spine. ‘Vol. 1,’ it read. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yes. It comes in three volumes. I’ll give the other two to you after I talk with Cait.’ She pushed the book into my hands.

  I looked down at it. It was another well worn, often read tome. I wanted it, but I was beginning to wonder about her. ‘Why are you doing this?’ I asked. ‘This book has been loved.’

  She nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘By you?’

  She nodded again, this time looking down at the snow. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.

  ‘So why give it to me? From what I understand, these books are your most precious possession. More valuable to you than your crown, your kingdom, your fine jewels. Why do you give me this gem of your collection?’

  ‘Obviously I’m no better at protecting them than anyone else,’ she said. ‘Besides. If your sister were under a curse, wouldn’t you be willing to sacrifice every thing you own to get her back?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But my sister and I love each other. Yours burns your books and insults you to your face.’

  ‘And has every virtue I’ve ever wanted, and isn’t about to be sold off in marriage to someone she hasn’t a prayer of loving!’ Will snapped. ‘Yes, I hate her!’ She glared at me. ‘And that’s why I have to do this. I hate her, and it’s all my fault she’s like this. And if it means I have to sacrifice the gem of my library, or suffer through a thousand hardships or cut out half my heart and feed it to Ferdinand’s hawk, I’ll do it. I’ll even crawl on my hands and knees to a complete stranger, begging for his help.’ She fell to one knee in the snow, her head bowed toward me. ‘Please,’ she said, with surprising dignity. ‘Please.’

  This was it. This is what I’d wanted, a princess of Lyndaria in the dirt, bowing to me in respect. Why did it make me feel lower than ever? ‘Get up,’ I said. ‘I’ll come and tell you when I know how to find her.’

  She looked at me. ‘You mean you’ll find her for me?’

  What did I just say? My throat didn’t hurt, so I’d obviously meant it. ‘I guess,’ I said, trying to figure out what I was saying. It was really hell not knowing who I was; I kept saying things I hadn’t meant to. I clutched the book to my chest, making it very obvious that I did intend to keep it. ‘Now get out of my forest, and don’t come here again.’

  She stood up and then sank into a respectful curtsey, as if I was a nobleman, or a clan master. ‘I thank you,’ she whispered. She turned to leave, back towards the road and the palace. She paused when she reached the edge of the clearing. ‘Let your sister keep the scarf,’ she said. ‘It looks very nice on her. I’d have brought an extra cloak, if I’d known she was in rags.’

  I said nothing, only stared at her out of the shadows. She turned her back on me and trudged on through the snow.

  I stood for a long time watching her go, clutching my precious first volume of The Zarmeroth Cycle. The kit’s voice cut through my reverie after a moment. ‘Your spell didn’t work.’

  I looked back at her. The scarf was wrapped elegantly around her head, effectively covering her ears and still fashionable enough that it wouldn’t draw undue attention. It looked a bit out of place amidst her rags, but a little dirt would quickly hide that. And it was warm. ‘My spell worked fine,’ I said.

  ‘Your spell was supposed to be temporary,’ the kit reminded me.

  ‘You heard?’

  She nodded. ‘I like her,’ the kit said. ‘She seems honest.’

  ‘She probably is,’ I said. ‘If I remember, Honesty was supposed to be one of the virtues her mother received from the faeries. Such gifts tend to inherit down.’ I looked down at the book. I’d forgotten about the faerie virtues until Will had mentioned the Winnowinn clan and their gift of Mercy. I had a fleeting thought; I wondered what virtue I would have given the princess, if I hadn’t been a child, and I had been invited to the christening of Princess Amaranth. At the moment, the virtue I had granted to all of them had been Suffering. That wasn’t much of a step down from my aunt’s gift of Death.

  ‘How are you supposed to find Faerie Caital’s tower?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe I won’t.’

  ‘You promised!’ the kit said.

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ I said. ‘I said I’d come and get her when I knew how to find Faerie Cait. Not that I’d actually work at finding her.’

  The kit glared at me. ‘They may call us demons, but we’re not. If you start telling lies, you may actually become one.’

  ‘I’m not going to become a demon,’ I growled.

  ‘You’re already acting like one,’ the kit said.

  ‘What do you know?’ I said. ‘You’re just some Nameless child.’

  ‘I know that you made her believe you’d help her, and you took that book in payment,’ she said. ‘You tell too many faerie lies, it’s not too much of a step before you start being able to tell real lies. And then what’ll you be?’

  ‘A Nameless rake,’ I muttered. But she was right. I was already telling lies. They hurt my mouth, but I told them. What did that make me? ‘I still never promised her.’

  ‘Then promise me!’ the kit said. ‘You promise me right now that you’ll do everything in your power to find Faerie Cait soon! And that you’ll keep your tacit promise to Princess Willow once you do it.’

  ‘If there’s anyone in the world who can’t order me about—’ I began.

  ‘Promise!’ the kit snapped.

  She may have looked about eleven, but the kit was fifty years old, and not about to be sidetracked again. I sighed, trying not to laugh. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll probably get eaten by a dragon or sucked into a quagmire, but I’ll try to find Mistress Cait. Soon.’

  ‘And you’ll tell Willow how to find her.’

  ‘I swear,’ I said.

  ‘On our lost names.’

&
nbsp; ‘Oh, Faerie Light!’

  ‘Swear!’

  ‘I swear on our lost names. Satisfied?’

  She tilted her head and looked at me. ‘And you wouldn’t lie to me, right?’

  I kissed her pale forehead, which looked regal under the royal blue scarf. ‘Never, my kitling,’ I said. ‘You’re all I have left.’

  Chapter 10

  Will

  ‘They’ve grown more than a foot this time,’ the captain of the guard said.

  Will looked down at the chart of measurements she was keeping. ‘That’s impossible.’ She looked at his knotted cord. He was right. His fingers were held well past the fourth knot. ‘That’s more than twelve feet in two weeks.’

  ‘And that’s just here by the main gate,’ the captain said. ‘We can’t even measure the areas near the East Wing any longer.’

  Will sighed. The thorn hedge’s growth rate had increased exponentially since Lavender’s affliction. Will had pored over every record of the start of the Interregnum, her grandmother’s diaries, the guard’s reports, even the servants’ records and the ordering of supplies for the kitchens and stables. She could only think that the thorns were preparing for another interregnum.

  When Amaranth had been struck by the spindle, the Sleep had come upon the rest of the castle within a day. There had barely been time to lay Princess Amaranth on a fine couch and prepare a formal court to announce the fulfilment of the curse. The Sleep had then overtaken the palace so swiftly that the old king and queen had suffered their slumber upon their very thrones. The noblemen who had come to hear that particular court had been very put out to discover, upon their awakening, that their titles and lands had disappeared in the ensuing century. Not to mention the hundreds of sundered marriages, the discovery of grandchildren now older than themselves, the tragic loss of family fortunes which the sleeping had had no way to circumvent.

  Once the Sleep had firmly established itself, the first layer of the thorn hedge had grown up in a night. According to the one record of the period (from a nobleman who had arrived late to court and thanked his stars every day for his carriage’s cracked axle), there was at least a foot of writhing, bloodsucking briar roses by the time he had arrived the next morning. No one else thought to take detailed records of the growth of the thorns since this nobleman, but there were some peasants’ records reporting when the palace road had to be abandoned and when the palace mill had to be closed. The road, which ran about fifteen feet from the palace wall, was finally declared unsafe about twenty years after the start of the Interregnum, and the palace mill, which had been situated on River Friene about a hundred feet from the Eastern Wall, was ultimately abandoned during the interregnum at about year sixty. Which meant that, apart from that first night of sudden growth after Princess Amaranth’s curse, the hedge had been growing at slightly less than a foot a year.

  Since Lavender’s sudden Sleep, the hedge had been growing at several inches a night, despite its being the dead of winter. At first even Will hadn’t noticed. By the time five days had passed, no one could miss it. Since Amaranth had woken, due to many interventions, the royal family been clearing and battling the thorns with some success, and it had been down to a hedge a mere ten feet thick around most of the palace. Now it was approaching a forest again, twenty feet thick if it was an inch.

  It worried King Ragi. Ragi was the only man who had ever penetrated the thorns when they were more than ten feet thick, all the virtuous woodcutter’s sons having entered the palace when the hedge was comparatively thin. He was often caught staring out the window at the rapidly growing hedge. At night one could almost hear it, rustling, stretching, spreading its roots and growing, growing, growing in the darkness.

  There wasn’t anything Will could do about it, but she kept records. It made her feel a little less useless. ‘Thank you, Captain,’ she told him.

  He nodded stiffly and turned his back. Will sighed. Had the rumours finally gotten to him, too?

  Will had first noticed the rumours the very evening of her return from her meeting with Reynard in the forest. At first they’d only appeared to be whispers. ‘I’ll wager she’s happy about it!’ Hints. Innuendo. No accusations, only a general feeling of unease about her.

  Recently the rumours had been growing stronger. Will had even seen not-so-veiled hints in one of the local broadsheets. Her impassioned cry of, ‘I’ll kill you!’ that she had shouted just as Lavender had burned her book was being reprinted again and again. There was even some repetition of the argument Lavender and Will had had in the hedge, when she’d questioned Will’s magic. Will wondered who’d repeated that? Narvi, or one of the courtier’s children who had been snowballing in the fields? She refused to suspect Ferdinand.

  The last few days she had been getting threats. At first it was just accusations pushed under her door. ‘I know it was you.’ ‘You can’t hide from the truth.’ ‘Magic is only practised by the evil.’ Then it was actual threats. ‘The same will come back to you.’ ‘Treason is a hanging offence.’ ‘The hedge will take its own.’ She had asked for guards to be posted at the door of her room, but there were not any guards to spare.

  As Will entered the great hall she nearly fell over someone’s leg. She thought someone had tried to trip her, as people had been doing ever since Lavender’s sleep, but when she looked behind her it was clear this was not the case. ‘Oh, seven hells!’ The guard at the right of the door had fallen asleep. He had slid down the wall and his head was lolling. His battle axe lay forgotten on the floor. He snored gently. ‘You! Why didn’t you report this?’ Will asked of his partner, who stood at the opposite side of the door.

  He looked up from where he was nodding on his halberd. ‘Sorry?’ He blinked at his partner. ‘Oh, hells!’ He started and took a step toward her only to have his eyes droop again.

  ‘Oh, no.’ Will jumped up and caught him as he fell. There had been quite a lot of broken bones and cracked skulls from people who had been alone and standing when the Sleep finally took them. It wasn’t an instant process, as Ragi had pointed out. It wasn’t a swoon. It was a true, pervasive drowsiness which finally overcame you. It was so subtle you barely noticed it.

  Will propped the guard next to his partner and went to find someone to take them to the West Wing. The West Wing was where they put all the victims of the Sleep, including those who had been brought in from the surrounding countryside. It didn’t seem to be contagious in the same way an ordinary plague was. People who had never visited the palace were often struck. They hadn’t had many victims from outside Lyndaron, though they’d had some stalwart farmers who hadn’t set foot in the city since last harvest. It appeared to be completely random where the Sleep would strike next.

  Before Will left the entry hall her eyes were caught by the immense portrait of her sister which now graced the receiving wall. It was fourteen feet tall. Inside it her sister stood, twelve feet from hem to head, dressed in her lavender silk, her yappy little fluff of a dog curled in her arm, in a way he would never have permitted had he been his rampant, squirmy, awake self. The portrait painter had been commissioned less than a week after the sleep, and he had worked day and night, with the help of all of his apprentices, to have it completed quickly. It had been hung two days before, the paint still sticky. Amaranth had wanted it completed by Midwinters – Will’s wedding day. Five days away.

  If there was to be another interregnum, Amaranth wanted any potential rescuer to have no question as to what the princess looked like.

  Will heard someone coming down one of the two elegantly curving stairs which framed the receiving hall. ‘Excuse me, we need some help here!’ she called up, not even looking to see who it was. Anyone would help.

  ‘You are asking help … from me?’ came an unctuous voice from the stairs.

  Ah. Anyone would help except him.

  King Lesli leaned over the balustrade and peered at her. ‘And what would appear to be the trouble, Your Highness?’

  ‘The same as ever
, Your Majesty,’ Will said with a respectful curtsey. ‘More victims of the Sleep.’

  He cocked his head at the sleeping guards. ‘Guards who fell asleep at their post in my country would be whipped, and possibly executed,’ he said, then he laughed. ‘It is a shame this isn’t Heidelen land.’

  Will was not going to be baited by him again. ‘Sir.’

  His eyes shifted to her without any movement of his head. ‘Princess Willow. Have you gained some courtesy in the past weeks?’

  ‘As you say, sir,’ she said, with a respectful curtsey.

  He frowned. ‘I think I almost liked you better before this fiasco,’ he said. ‘You had spirit then. I like horses who have spirit. After they are broken they are a highly superior ride.’

  ‘I’m certain you are a fine rider, Your Majesty,’ Will said dully.

  ‘Are you now. I don’t think you are certain of me at all.’ He smiled at her in a way she was sure she didn’t like. ‘And perhaps you shouldn’t be.’ He looked down at his hand, examining a jewel on his finger. ‘This is not my function, but I believe I passed the messenger, who was supposed to fetch you, asleep in the upstairs hall.’ He looked back at her. ‘Your mother wished to speak with you.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘About an hour past. She’s in her chambers.’

  Will frowned at him. ‘What were you doing in my mother’s chambers?’

  Lesli smiled at her. ‘Merely working out some of the details of the union of our households. Some very important issues had to be risen and laid.’ His eyes narrowed and flickered up and down her body. ‘I suggest you speak with her.’

  ‘Indeed, Your Majesty.’ Will curtseyed again, her mouth tasting of bile. She hated that man. She hated him more with every passing day. His unctuous, slippery incivility was enough to try the patience of the Goddess of Forgiveness herself. Amaranth was the only one who could stand to spend any time with him, thanks to the faeries for the gifts of Patience, Nobility and Wisdom. Bravery probably wasn’t hurting Amaranth any either.