Shadow Magic (11 page)

Why not allow herself to cry? Thorn could see that the puppy had meant a lot to her. Maybe it was one of those rules nobles had. They weren’t supposed to show they were upset and cry. It might make people think they were just like everyone else.

“What happened to him?” Thorn asked.

“Poisoned,” said K’leef.

“Who’d want to poison a puppy?”

“They were trying to poison me, not Custard.” Lady Shadow stared at the grave and sniffed loudly.

“Oh.” No wonder Tyburn had run off like that.

K’leef brushed his fingers. It’s not like he had any dirt on them; Thorn had done the digging. “Any leads, Lily?”

“It was a poison called life-bane. You’ve heard of it?”

K’leef shook his head.

“I have,” said Thorn. He might only be a peasant, but he knew things, too. “You make it out of berries that grow in Herne’s Forest. Dry ’em and grind ’em up into a powder, then sprinkle it on some old meat. We use it to kill rats. Wolves, too.”

“Who taught you that?” asked Lady Shadow.

“My dad. He didn’t want us kids scoffing the wrong sort of berries. You need to know what’s safe and what ain’t.” Thorn leaned on the shovel. “What happens next, m’lady?”

“What do you mean?”

“Seems to me, someone owes you a dog. I don’t know how you do things here, but where I come from, if someone does you wrong, you make ’em pay for it.”

“I know who did it,” said Lady Shadow.

K’leef looked up. “You do? Who?”

“Who do you think? Gabriel.” Lady Shadow frowned. “But how do I prove it?”

Thorn grinned. “Easy. The best way to find out a secret is to go where you ain’t allowed, listen to what you ain’t meant to hear, and see what you ain’t meant to see.” Thorn gazed at the walls, towers, and battlements that surrounded them. A place like this would have
thousands
of secrets.

K’leef nodded knowingly. “You’ll have to be careful, especially after insulting Gabriel tonight.”

“She insulted Gabriel, too? How?” Thorn was impressed. Maybe there was more to this girl after all.

“Lady Shadow refused to dance with him,” K’leef said proudly. “She danced with me.”

“And that’s an insult? Riiight.” He’d never understand nobles.

“Exposing Gabriel won’t be easy.”

“If life was meant to be easy, then carts would have square wheels,” said Thorn.

“What?” said Lily.

“That’s not a saying around here? My grandpa used to say it all the time. It’s about how making square wheels is easier than round ones, but—”

“I know what it
means
,” said Lady Shadow. “I can’t be sneaking in corridors and spying at keyholes.” She kicked a pebble angrily. It sounded to him that sneaking and spying were
exactly
what she wanted to be doing. “There are rules.”

“Stupid ones,” said Thorn. Nobles. They weren’t like normal people. He scraped the mud off the shovel. “I should get back. I wouldn’t want no one else falling into that dung.”

“Wait,” said Lady Shadow.

“Yeah?”

Lady Shadow faced Thorn. He could almost hear her heart racing. “If it were up to you, what would you do?”

“Them rules of yours?” said Thorn, smiling. “I’d start breaking ’em.”

F
or the squires, every day began the same way. With a predawn run.

Today it was out through Dead Man’s Gate for a lap around the hill, then back for weapons training. Last boy home went without breakfast.

Thorn ran alongside K’leef. He wasn’t sure how the pair of them had ended up together. It was probably because they were strangers in Gehenna and no one knew what to make of them, yet.

Thorn wished K’leef hadn’t come up to him at the gate. He didn’t have anything in common with him.

But he was stuck with him, and there was nothing he could do about it.

And
stuck
was right. The Sultanate boy was plowing unsteadily through the mud, gasping with each breath. He’d already fallen once, face-first. In his rich, red-colored robes and dainty embroidered shoes, he wasn’t exactly dressed for running. At least he had dumped his rings and all his other jewelry.

He probably doesn’t want to be weighed down any more than he has to be.

“You’re not helping yourself wearing that. Couldn’t you borrow some clothes from one of the squires?”

“I belong to House Djinn. I dress in red.”

“Right now you’re dressed in mud.” Thorn sighed. “Here, let me help.”

K’leef gave Thorn a weary, grateful smile and grabbed his hand. Between Thorn pulling and K’leef crawling, they managed to get him out of the quagmire of a ditch.

“I’m surprised they let you out,” said Thorn. “Ain’t Solar worried you’re going to run off?”

“Of course not. I gave my word not to attempt to escape.”

Thorn laughed. “You’re joking, right?”

K’leef stared at him so angrily, Thorn worried he was going to catch fire. “You’re
not
joking?”

“When a noble gives his word, he keeps it,” said K’leef with a huff. “It’s a matter of honor.”

Thorn shook his head in amazement. Nobles and their stupid rules. “What are you doing out here, anyway? Nobles don’t need to run; you’ve got horses. My dad told me the best horses in the New Kingdoms are the fire breeds from the Sultanate.”

“He’s right,” said K’leef. “But we also have flying carpets. Much more comfortable.”

“Flying carpets? Really?”

K’leef laughed, or maybe he was having a heart attack. Thorn wasn’t totally sure. The boy’s face was a dangerous dark red. Eventually K’leef started breathing normally. “No, Thorn. Used to, but all I’ve got back home is a cushion that floats a foot or so off the ground.”

Back home
. Thorn saw the brightness in K’leef’s eyes when he spoke about it. Maybe he and this noble weren’t so different after all.

“This run was Gabriel’s idea, not that he’d take part himself. He thought it would be funny.” K’leef spat. “There’s nothing he’d like better than to see me carried back on a stretcher. But I’m not going to give him the satisfaction.”

“Funny, I don’t see Gabriel here. Nor any of his cronies.”

“He may be an idiot, but he’s not stupid. Gabriel’s probably sitting by a warm fire tucking into his breakfast.”

“That reminds me. If we want our own breakfast, then we’d better get a move on.”

There were two hills beyond Dead Man’s Gate. Thorn hadn’t noticed them when he’d arrived last night. “Which one do we go around?”

K’leef, panting, pointed at the western one. “Lamentation Hill.”

“I’ve never seen a place so grim.” The trees were twisted like the bones of old men. “The local picnic spot, is it?”

“It’s where they execute criminals, Thorn.”

“And what’s the other one called? Let me guess: Really Sad Hill?”

“No. That’s the City of Silence. It’s the Shadow family’s graveyard.”

Now that the mist was clearing, Thorn saw that the crest was covered with tombs and the slopes were lined with countless gravestones. “It’s bigger than Castle Gloom.”

“The Shadows have been here for thousands of years,” K’leef explained. “It’s no wonder, then, that the home of the dead is greater than that of the living.”

“Nice place, Gehenna. Massive graveyard to the left, and execution ground to the right.” Thorn peered up at a row of poles. “What’s on top of those? Birds?”

“Heads.”

“Oh.” He wasn’t shocked. Heads on spikes were a pretty common sight in some places. He counted five in all. “Whose?”

“The brigands who killed Lily’s family,” K’leef replied. “What I heard was that Lord Shadow, his wife, and his son had gone to sign a treaty with the Solars. The Black Ford Truce, they call it, and it’s the first time the two houses have had peace in a hundred years or so. Lily’s brother was going to marry one of the duke’s twelve daughters.”

“But I thought the duke and Lord Shadow hated each other.”

K’leef tapped Thorn’s forehead. “Think about it. The duke’s grandchild would one day be ruler of Gehenna. We belong to ancient families, Thorn; we take the long view.”

“Then what happened?”

“The deal was done and Lord Iblis, Lady Salome, and their son, Dante, were on the way back when they were ambushed. They were robbed and killed. The brigands even burned the bodies, hoping that no one would recognize them.”

“Where was Lady Shadow during all this?”

“Back here. The official line is that she was ill that day….” K’leef winked at him. “But I heard the true story from her maid, Mary. Lily had had a fight with her father earlier that week, so he’d grounded her.”

“Why does that not surprise me?” Thorn had only met her last night, but there was a stubborn look in those gray eyes of hers. “Still, that argument saved her life, didn’t it? So how did the heads end up on them poles? I’d have thought the brigands would’ve made themselves pretty scarce after what they’d done.”

“What do you think? Tyburn found them. That man would chase you to the very gates of hell if he had to. The brigands still had Lady Salome’s jewels on them. Tyburn killed five, but one got away. The executioner’s been searching for him ever since.”

Thorn understood. His village, Stour, suffered bandits like most places, and they’d lost the occasional chicken or sheep. Men got desperate. But stealing was one thing; murder something else.

K’leef glanced back at the ragtag bunch of boys approaching. “Let’s push on. We don’t want to be last.”

They weren’t. Last was a boy named Pedder.

Old Colm, the weapons master, stomped out, dragging him along. Despite his wooden leg, Old Colm moved fast.

“I wasn’t last, sir! I wasn’t!” Pedder complained.

Old Colm shoved the boy down the steps into the courtyard. “No food and water for this one today. Maybe he’ll be quicker with an empty stomach.”

The squires lined up in the courtyard of Dead Man’s Gate. The mud was stiff with frost, and Thorn’s breath came out as a big white cloud. Thorn noticed how the others looked his way.

“What are they so interested in?” he muttered.

K’leef mimed something smacking his face. “They’ve heard what you did to Gabriel last night. Which was
very
excellent, by the way. Remind me to buy you a palace the next time you’re in the Sultanate of Fire.” K’leef raised his hand. “And before you ask, let me tell you that Gabriel isn’t the sort fellow to hold a petty, vindictive grudge and come after you in the middle of the night with a mob.”

“Really?”

“No, I’m lying. I’d sleep with my eyes open from now on if I were you.”

Thorn scowled. “And next time we go running, I’m just gonna leave you to drown in the mud.” The day was getting worse and worse.

Old Colm looked them up and down, shaking his head. “By the Six Princes, I’ve never seen anything so pathetic. You all couldn’t fight a cold. You’re not squires, you’re trolls. What are you?”

“Trolls, sir!” they all shouted.

“Say it like you mean it!”

“WE’RE TROLLS, SIR!”

It was a well-known fact that Old Colm hated trolls. Story was, a troll chieftain had ripped his leg off in a battle. Old Colm had grabbed it and used it to beat the troll to death.

The weapons master waved at the bundle of unstrung bows against the wall. “Now take one each.”

The boys looked at each other, uncertain.

“What are you waiting for? String them,” ordered Old Colm. He handed a large iron key to one of the older boys. “Tom, go get some more arrows from the armory. I reckon we’ll be losing plenty over the wall.”

The hay targets stood two hundred feet away, up against the wall of the Black Keep and below the watching gargoyles. In the center of each bale was the red bull’s-eye. From where Thorn stood, it was the size of his thumbnail.

The squires struggled. The bows wouldn’t bend. One sprang up, smacking the boy on his forehead. Another cried out as he cut himself on the thin bowstring.

Thorn hooked the bottom of the stave around his ankle and back of his leg. The stave ran up behind him, against his shoulder. He gripped the horn tip and bent down. The wood creaked and pressed hard against his back, desperate to spring back straight. With his right hand, Thorn flipped the bowstring loop over the tip, then relaxed. He plucked the taut bowstring. Ready.