Page 12 of A Treason of Thorns

Mira nudges my foot with her own as the coach finally stops in front of the Red Shilling, the Halt’s inn and tavern.

“Stop that, Vi,” she clucks at me, and I snatch a hand from my mouth, chastened, with the nail half-bitten.

Jed shoulders our small trunks, and Mira and I take the satchels. Fortunately we haven’t much and the walk to the House isn’t long. We trudge down a country lane together, out of the small villageand into the glory of a Somersetshire springtime. Daffodils are everywhere, the trees have begun putting out leaves, the hedgerows are full of birdsong, and lambs and calves gambol across pastureland. The abundance of pretty, domestic life is startling after the wildness of the fens—it’s as if I’ve wandered into a painting, done all in summer-hued oils.

As I look more closely, though, I begin to see that something has gone wrong with the countryside. There’s blight on the new apple leaves. The bloated corpse of a sheep lies in a field beside the lane. A man trudges past us with a hangdog look about him, pushing a handcart that I suspect is holding everything he owns.

Things were never this way in my father’s time. I could begin to fill the empty space he left and make things right in the countryside if I had Burleigh’s key. I could heal what ails the land bit by bit, day by day, as the House’s magic wells up and renews itself again. They’re like springs, the Great Houses, their power constantly flowing. Once, that magic ran unchecked across the West Country. Now it’s been bound and harnessed, and can only be used productively when a Caretaker channels and directs it. Without a Caretaker, it builds and builds, festering and growing more destructive the longer it’s pent up.

When we round a bend in the road and the first curve of my House’s high stone wall comes into view, I have to stop. I set down the satchels I carry and press one hand to my mouth, the other arm to my belly.

Apple blooms show white above the wall from the orchard, and bees buzz lazily among them. The sounds are so familiar that I can hardly draw breath. I swear to myself in this moment that I willnever let anything drive me away from Burleigh House again.

But as we come to the place where the front drive normally turns in through the great gate, I find Burleigh’s wall is marred by a vast wound. There’s no sign of the hinges or the gate itself, just a gaping hole where someone has violently blown them away. A good deal of the stone wall’s been damaged, besides. Rubble still clutters the lane. Enormous brambles tangle together in the gap, completely patching the hole where the gate once stood, and mortar weeps from the thick vines.

“What did they do to you?” I whisper, stepping forward and pressing a palm to the wall. Fury courses through me at the thought of the House being treated so shamefully. I can feel something from Burleigh, too, emanating out from that thorny scar—suspicion and betrayal and hurt and fathomless exhaustion all rolled up into one bitter sensation.

“Can we have a moment?” I ask, turning to Jed and Mira. There’s quiet shock on their faces at the sight of the wound where the gate once was. They nod and disappear around the bend in the lane.

Shifting closer to the wall, I rest my forehead against it, letting all my grief and concern and care for the House rise up and run beneath my skin like a rip current.

“Burleigh,” I murmur. “It’s Violet. I’ve come back, and how I’ve missed you, my darling.”

All I feel from the House in return is mistrust, and the cold, ordinary touch of stone. My hands begin to tremble, and my eyes blur. When I speak again, the words come out thick with tears.

“Oh, Burleigh, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s happened here,but I’m back and I want to help. I’m on your side—not the king’s, not the country’s, not anyone else’s but yours. Won’t you let me in?”

The minutes stretch on and on and nothing changes. No way in opens before me. No sign is offered by my damaged House.

At last I can’t contain myself any longer and stand weeping against the wall, great ugly sobs tearing my throat like thorns. I haven’t cried like this since I left Burleigh, the day of my father’s arrest. I didn’t expect to do so again on the House’s very doorstep. But it is too cruel, everything that’s happened to Burleigh and me, to both of us together, and I don’t know who I ache for more.

Jed and Mira reappear, but after a glance I can’t look at them. Inside I’m crumbling, ruined by the death of this last hope. If I had the key, I could coax and bargain—begin at once to heal Burleigh’s hurts by channeling its own vital magic. But I am not a Caretaker, and I have nothing to offer but words and a willing heart. Taking a step back, I wrap my arms around myself, not sure how to start my life over yet again.

Worse still is the king’s threat, ringing in my ears as if he’d only just spoken it.Either you find a way to restore Burleigh, or I will burn it to the ground.

Make me a way, Burleigh. Make me a way.

A small sound cuts through the fog of my sorrow, and I look over at Jed.

“What did you say?”

He shrugs his broad shoulders. “Nothing.”

Pivoting on one heel, I turn back to the House only to hear the low grumbling of stone, and see the trees beyond the walls sway violently as if struck by a sudden gale. Storm clouds darken the skyover the manor grounds and the temperature drops a few degrees.

Bitter and wild though it may have become, I’ve never been able to shake the impulse to help when Burleigh keens.

“Violet, don’t!” Mira gasps as I move toward the brambles that are reaching for me with sharp-edged fingers.

5

THE CLOUDS OVERHEAD VANISH. THE WALL MELTS AWAY.Dimly, I feel thorns bite into my flesh, but I can’t see them.

Instead, my father’s room swims into focus around me, with its enormous four-poster bed and long bank of windows that look down onto Burleigh’s front drive. But that is all I recognize, because the room is terribly changed. Piles of rubble sit in the corners, fallen from the ceiling overhead. Cracks seam the walls and ivy has crept in at the windows. Briars twine up the bedposts. A smell of damp and decay and rot hangs heavy on the air.

Worst is the wall the bed sits up against. A jagged, yard-long word has been slashed into the plaster with something sharp—a knife, or a letter opener, perhaps. After a glance, I can’t bear to look, because the George Sterling I knew would never hurt his House so. Not even to spell out my name,VI, in tall capital letters.

Something stirs under the mildewed bedcovers, and I realize with a sickening jolt that I’m not alone as I’d first thought. Drawing close to the bed, I look down at my sleeping father. Papa is skeletal and unshaven, his closed eyes set in shadowed hollows. Ivytwines around his wrists and ankles, and the skin is rubbed raw where he’s struggled against his living bonds. Seeing him brings the sort of pain that cuts so deep you feel it only for a moment, before your mind decides it cannot be borne and refuses to feel at all.