Page 5 of A Treason of Thorns

Of course I sympathize with that. Of course I want Burleigh out from under the king’s thumb. The royal family has maintained control of the Great Houses since William the Deedwinner first bound them. Caretakers may manage the Houses’ magic, but it’s the deedwinner they must obey. I suppose it wore on Papa,watching the king make decisions for Burleigh that were not in its best interests.

Yet the price Papa paid for his attempt and subsequent failure—the choice he made to sacrifice not just his own freedom, but Wyn’s—has never sat well with me. And I don’t know why it had to be that way.

A good Caretaker puts her House first, I remind myself, to calm the anger that still rises in me when I think of Wyn.Before her family. Before her friends. Surely, that must have been what Papa was doing, whether I understand his actions or not.

The light on the horizon burns down to crimson embers. Swallows skim across the water, and far above them, bats flit here and there. Around me, the air cools and sweat dries on my skin as the sky darkens. I shiver, a salt girl alone on a salt marsh.

When the stars wake in the sky, winking to life one by one, I count them. It’s an old trick Wyn and I learned together, long ago, when we’d sit out on the roof of the House. We were both of us children plagued by worries, and on the nights they kept us from sleeping, we’d count stars together until the fears faded. It used to work. It used to keep my fear at bay.

Now, though, I always lose count before the tide of my worry turns, and this night is no different from any other since my father and my friend were sealed away within Burleigh’s walls. When I’ve lost myself among the stars, I turn inward, the way I learned to do after both heart and home were taken from me. In the labyrinth of my own mind, I count fears instead of stars.

I am afraid of memory, and the visions it brings of my father’s careworn face—his stern eyes, his harried smile. Did he do right?Will I be a worthy successor to him? Will I someday meet the same fate?

I’m afraid of never seeing home or Wyn again, of living my life in limbo here on the fens, and never wishing for better. Of never feeling whole.

I’m afraid of losing Jed and Mira as I’ve lost everything else. I’m afraid of hunger, which stalks us each winter as the saltfish barrels run low. I’m afraid of the sea, that gives life and then buffets the coast with storms.

Each fear surfaces and as they rise, I take them one by one, box them up and put them away on a dusty shelf in the back of my soul. I don’t know what else to do with these thoughts that threaten to choke me, so I keep them locked inside, like last winter’s moldering apples or a dragon’s tarnished hoard.

The last fear I tuck away is this: I’m afraid of the king, desperately afraid. But for me, the good of Burleigh House will always come before that fear. It must.

“I want to go home,” I whisper to myself and the night sky and the stars.

Home. The word tastes like honey and ashes, like hope and regret, and this I know: I would face the devil himself for a chance at getting back to the House I grew up in, and at finding out what fate has befallen the one friend I had as a child. The king is only a little worse than the devil, after all, and I would beg or bargain, whichever he prefers, to get back to where I belong. To be what I was born to become—the Caretaker of my beloved House.

The tide has turned, running out to sea. It pulls at my boat, tugging me eastward and away from home. For the first time in yearsI ship oars and truly set myself against it.

As I scull toward the west, I hum an old, old song.

Blood for a beginning

Mortar for an end

Speak out your binding

Be you foe or friend

Fifth House holds quicksilver

The Sixth ruins all

But for blood in its mortar

But for breath in its walls

2

HIS MAJESTY IS A LATE RISER, AND I AM NOT. IN FACT,I’ve already been up for several hours by sunrise, on the water with a dark lamp and my fishing spear, and even delivered a catch in Thiswick. I learned long ago that there’s nothing like activity to keep sorrow at bay.

But now, as the meeting time draws closer, I sit cross-legged on the pallet in the loft that serves me for a bed. Dried onions and bunches of rosemary hang only inches above my nose. Outside, the world is awash with pale light and gulls cry mournfully as they wing their way seaward. I look toward the shore, and somewhere inside me, there’s a grief that can’t be borne. I didn’t expect it, and I’m not entirely sure who it’s for—my father or Wyn or my House or myself. I can’t afford to fall apart, though. Not with His Majesty waiting. Not with Burleigh’s fate hanging in the balance. So I shut my eyes and tamp down the sorrow so far that all I can feel is a whisper of it. This, too, is one of my manifold fears—that someday I’ll shut up my heart so securely there’s no unbinding it, and I’ll be left numb till the day I die.

“Come down for a bite of breakfast,” Mira says from below. “Whatever’s happened, I don’t like to think of you facing it on an empty stomach.”

I couldn’t eat, though. Not for love or money. Instead, I shuffle on my knees to where a battered chest sits under the round window. A briny breeze dances in and blows cool against the back of my neck as I fumble with the chest’s lock. It sticks a little, stiff with lack of use. When at last the lock gives way, I push the lid up and let out a long sigh.

We left Burleigh House in a hurry. His Majesty sentenced Papa on the front drive before a traveling court and ordered me out by day’s end. I was only able to snatch a few of my things, which I’ve since kept tucked away, needing no reminders of home when my blood forever calls westward and anxiety churns constantly through my veins.

This morning seems a time for reminders if ever there was one, though. I push past a one-eyed china doll, a drawing of Wyn’s, and a long-outgrown frock until I find a sprig of dried ivy leaves. I take it out and hold it gingerly, as if it might crumble beneath my touch.