Page 4 of A Treason of Thorns

But they are not the West Country, which encompasses the five most southwesterly of England’s counties, and which Burleigh House nurtures and governs. This land is wide and flat and straightforward in its wildness. It’s unlike the Blackdown Hills I grew up among, which look tame at first, checkered with enclosed pastures and apple orchards, but which hide old shrines in their valleys and bone-wrought charms in their hedgerows. And nothing could compare to Burleigh’s strange, enchanted grounds. The truth is, though I take up the oars and begin sculling back to shore, it doesn’t feel like heading for home. It never does.

By the time I make it back to our little cottage on a raised hump of land in the middle of absolutely nowhere, the light’s growing long and golden away inland. Mira has the shutters thrown open, and Jed sits on the front stoop whittling. He wasn’t a whittler before our exile, but I suppose I wasn’t much of a fisherwoman, either.

“Find your luck, then?” Jed asks as I tie the boat to our bit of dock. In answer, I sling the pike up, and it takes two hands for me to lift it.

Jed lets out a low whistle. He’s a thickset, bearded man with a florid white complexion and close-cropped hair that long ago went grey, and though he’s stood by me through good times and bad, I love him best for how he was with my father. There never was a more devoted steward, whether Papa was present or absent. When the king sentenced my father to House arrest, it took six men to hold Jed back. He shouted and struggled as they sealed GeorgeSterling away behind Burleigh’s walls, and he never stopped fighting, not till the front gate vanished, replaced by unbreachable stone.

“Mira’s waiting inside,” Jed says. “She’s—we—have something you need to hear.”

I can feel the smile fade from my face at his words. “What—”

But before I’m able to ask, Mira’s voice calls from within the cottage, cutting me off. “Bring that fish in here at once and wash the stink of it off your hands.”

As I step into the close confines of the cottage, she tuts at me. “I expected you home hours ago.”

Mira does rule us with a bit of an iron fist, but Jed and I would be lost without her. We’re a family—an odd one, to be sure, but time and tide have bound us together and it would break my heart to lose them.

I cross the cottage’s tiny downstairs room—just the one space for cooking and eating and living, with a curtain drawn across the nook that holds Jed and Mira’s bed. A ladder leads up to a loft for me, and that’s all there is to it.

With a weighty thud, I let my pike fall onto the kitchen table, and Mira turns. Horror writes itself across her face.

“Violet Sterling, you’re a sight, and today of all days I wanted you home early.”

Leaning against the table that holds my rather splendid fish, I hunch my shoulders, as if doing so can protect me from what’s surely coming. If Wyn were here, he’d appear and just stand at my side, a silent ally in all things. And if we were home, the House would already have a carpet of reassuring flowers around my feet.

Will I never feel whole without them?

“Why? What’s happened?” I finally summon the courage to ask.

Jed ducks into the cottage, and the whole space feels suddenly smaller. “Mira had a visitor come looking for you today. A messenger from the king.”

All the air goes out of me. I drop onto my chair, ignoring the fish now lying forgotten on the table.

“His Majesty’s back from Belgium and stopping at the Knight’s Arms in Thiswick tonight,” Mira says. “Apparently he’d be much obliged if his only goddaughter would pay him a visit tomorrow at noon, before he journeys on. The messenger said—he said there’s news from Burleigh House.”

“News.” My voice breaks on the word. There’s been no news from Burleigh House for seven years. And every sun that sets without it is a relief to me, because it means that across the country, my father and Burleigh and Wyn have survived another day of House arrest.

Jed steps up behind me and puts his enormous hands on my shoulders. “He didn’t give any particulars, but I don’t think we have to tell you what to expect.”

I choke back questions I know Jed and Mira have no answers to, and mechanically lay the table for supper. But when we’ve eaten and the dishes have been cleared, I duck out of the cottage the instant Mira’s back is turned. Jed watches, saying nothing as I shove our dory into the water and scramble aboard. I ship the oars and haul back on them and the boat reluctantly begins to move.

“Violet!” Mira calls through the open cottage doorway. “Just where do you think you’re going so close to nightfall?”

“Away!” I answer back, sculling for all I’m worth. The dory pullssteadily forward, building momentum until I’m skimming across the water, dragging the welter of my emotions behind me like a length of tangled net. Movement is the best thing for me, I know—to still the aching of my heart, the clenching of my stomach, the furious grinding of my teeth. I scull until my arms and back ache—till sweat drips between my shoulders again and the last of the day’s sun adds freckles to my freckles.

And when I’ve rowed for so long that each oar seems weighted with lead, I drop anchor in the middle of a tidal floodplain. Water stretches ahead of me to the very edge of the eastern sky, which has gone dark. I turn away from it, and from the vast, uneasy North Sea, looking westward instead, toward the setting sun. Beyond that blaze of splendor lies my past. Beyond it lies my future. Beyond it lies my House.

Blood and mortar, I miss it with everything in me. Every bone and every breath. I thought the end of Papa’s House arrest might taint things between Burleigh and me, but even knowing what’s surely happened—that my father must be dead, finally killed by the House itself—all I feel when I think of Burleigh is an agonizing desire to be with it.

So I know in the morning I’ll visit His Majesty. I’ll sit in front of him while he feigns pity and tells me Papa’s protracted death sentence has ended, and a new Caretaker must assume his place. I’ll do what must be done, choking down my hatred and fear of the king, all for the sake of Burleigh House. Because in the wake of Papa’s arrest, Burleigh will need a gentle hand.

It is a wicked punishment, House arrest, designed to torment both a Caretaker and the Great House they tend. If found guilty oftreason, a Caretaker is stripped of the key that allows him to channel his House’s magic safely, and restricted to the grounds. The House is bound to let no one in or out until its powerless Caretaker lies dead.

But a Great House cannot keep the countryside healthy for long without a key-holding Caretaker to direct its power. Sooner or later, a good House must put itself and the land first, no matter how badly it hurts to do so.

There have been five House arrests over the years, before my father’s. Two Caretakers killed themselves before their Houses had to. Three were killed by their Houses, though outside the confines of an arrest, the binding the Great Houses have been placed under expressly forbids them to take a life.

My heart aches for Burleigh, required to do what is neither in its nature or its bond. But it breaks at the thought of Wyn. Seven years after the arrest began and I still don’t understand why my father was allowed to inflict a portion of his punishment on a child and keep Wyn trapped within the manor walls. I’ve never been able to think of it without resentment gnawing at my insides. Everything else I can fathom—Papa risking arrest and a charge of treason in his attempt to steal Burleigh’s deed from the king and free our House. Indeed, all across England, there are people who support the unbinding cause in spite of its risks.