Page 9 of A Treason of Thorns

So I step past the king and drop into his chair at the head of the table. The silly laughter of the courtiers dies down. His Majesty raises a disapproving eyebrow and snaps two fingers together.

One of the waiting servants hurries up with another chair. The king takes a seat and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, as the courtiers pick up their silverware once more, pretending their attention isn’t fixed on the head of the table, on me and His Majesty.

“Not a single kind word for your godfather?” the king chides. “Have you lost your manners out here on this bog? I didn’t expect to ask for a royal visit only to find you sulking.”

“I’m not sulking, Your Majesty,” I say. “I’m grieving. I will always be grieving. You took everything from me, and tormented my family’s House in the process.”

Covert glances fly between the courtiers. Perhaps their day won’t be as pleasant and dull, but it has become more interesting.

Something like remorse crosses the king’s shrewd face. “Violet, do you think it brought me joy to sentence your father to House arrest, or to receive the news that his confinement had finally ended? George was a friend, and the finest Caretaker I’ve known. I thought the world of him until he betrayed me. The deeds to the Houses are my family’s birthright—they’ve been so for eight hundred years, and yet he tried to steal Burleigh’s from me. One cannotsimply ignore that. Nevertheless, it pains me to have lost him, too.”

So it is as I expected. My father is dead. I look past His Majesty, out the dining room’s long bank of windows toward the fens I’ve come to know. Familiar in all their aspects, but never,nevermy home. I don’t know who I miss more in this moment—Papa, or Wyn, or Burleigh.

“How did it happen? The end of the arrest, I mean,” I ask, because there is no use arguing over the king’s version of Papa’s conviction. We will always be at odds about it. What Uncle Edgar calls treason, I call a Caretaker’s duty to put one’s House first, because Papa would never have risked trying for Burleigh’s deed unless the House had need of it.

The king reaches out and pats my hand, and I resist the urge to pull away.

“You know I’ve been in Belgium for several months,” he says. “I bound the Houses to obey the duke of Falmouth in my absence. He sent surveyors to Burleigh twice, to ensure everything was going smoothly. They found the gate had appeared in the wall again, and knew the arrest must have ended, but the House refused to let them in. Falmouth had to go down to Somersetshire himself, and even then the House tried to go against its binding to obey him. It tried to keep Falmouth out, but when he eventually got in, he found your father. Evidently George had been working House magic without the protection of the key, which is what killed him in the end. That’s how he was able to prolong the arrest the way he did—anytime the House’s magic built up and threatened to wreak havoc without a Caretaker to put it to good use, your father siphoned it off himself.”

His Majesty tuts dramatically. “What an unpleasant way to die.”

I ball my hands into fists beneath the table and press, nails digging into soft skin. I need the small pain it brings, to distract me from a larger agony blossoming inside. It’s not just unpleasant, death by House magic. It’s slow and messy and gruesome. And though I cannot think on it now, I can feel that a bright and vital part of me has been ruined by this news. Something young and yielding and fragile has fallen apart within my soul, crumbling into countless irreparable pieces.

A little House magic, a little mortar in your veins, is unpleasant but won’t do too much harm. It’ll be carried off into your blood and diluted, but never really leave you. Add a little more and perhaps it’ll shorten your life—shave five or ten years off when you’re weak with old age and start coughing up grey matter. It’s the mortar that comes back to haunt you, settling in your lungs.

Add more magic still and you may die younger, taken with fits or with madness or with heart failure, as the leftovers of the mortar you’ve absorbed find their way to your heart or your brain. Take in enough at once and it will kill you outright, suffusing your veins, flooding your body with poison.

But whether you’re exposed to a great deal or a little, whether you allow yourself time between doses or not, mortar stays with you. Every bit you add only brings your death nearer. That’s why the Caretaker’s keys were made—no one’s ever explained to me how their magic works, but they allow their bearer to channel mortar without being harmed. So long as you hold a Caretaker’s key, House magic passes through you without a drop of mortar staying behind. You can do wondrous things with a Caretaker’s key—mend your House, mend the land, work the weather, encourage the crops.

That’s why I’m here. It’s not just to hear the truth of my father’s death—I’m all Burleigh has left now and I need that key. There’s no one but me to speak for my House, and no one else who ought to be Caretaker now Papa’s gone.

But I won’t let the king see how badly I need this.

“What about Wyn?” I ask instead of mentioning the key, though I’m terrified of the answer I may hear. “What’s happened to my father’s ward?”

The king lifts an indifferent shoulder. “They said there was no sign of the boy. What that means, only Burleigh House knows. Look, now all this is over, can’t we let bygones be bygones, Vi? Chalk it up to a misunderstanding and start again?”

“Do you even hear yourself when you speak?” I ask in disbelief, voice made sharp by the grief I hide. “You sentenced my father to a living death and forced my House to carry out the punishment. The only friend I had is missing, and very probably dead because of your actions. Do any of those sound like forgivable offenses?”

I’m meant to be dancing, but here I am, intentionally treading on my partner’s toes. One of the courtiers, a golden-skinned girl with a mass of loose dark curls, coughs into her handkerchief. I favor her with a vicious smile, all fen predator on the outside when inside I’m still flighty as a marsh hen.

“Did you enjoy the soup course?” I ask her. “I killed the pike myself—stabbed it through the heart this morning.”

The girl dabs at her mouth and sets her kerchief aside. “Well, that explains the aftertaste of rancor. You’re quite a feral thing, aren’t you?”

His Majesty smiles fondly at the two of us, as if we’re a pair of children sitting down to tea with our dolls. “Violet, I don’t thinkyou’ve had the pleasure of making my daughter and heir’s acquaintance before. This is Esperanza, Princess of Wales.”

Behave, Violet, I chide myself.Behave.But my own unspent emotions have me bitter and reckless. “Oh, there’s two of you? How delightful.”

“You were absolutely right about her, Father,” Esperanza says, smiling affectionately at the king. “She’s prickly as a hedgehog. What fun the three of us could have.”

Now I know they’re connected, I can see the similarities between the two of them, though the king is far paler than his daughter. They both have a habit of tilting their head to one side when contemplating a problem—in this case, me. Their dark eyes both spark with a sharp and intent curiosity. And they both seem determined to run rings around one Violet Helena Sterling.

The king beckons to a footman to bring him a pudding. “Do you hear from your mother often?” he asks me, and I’m sure to an outsider his display of interest seems genuine. “I must say, I was surprised to hear you’d taken up residence in this swamp when I turned you out of Burleigh House. I thought you’d have gone to her. Where was it she ended up after the divorce? Austria? Germany?”

“Switzerland.” I can’t disguise the venom in my answer. “She lives in a chateau now, and has two little boys. She writes once a year, at Christmas. I’d rather die than go to her.”

The king smiles, a beatific expression that looks entirely incongruous on his clever face. “How you do hold a grudge. Fortunately Switzerland should never be necessary, as you’ve been blessed with a doting godfather, who intends to start taking an interest in you again.”