The Castle Behind Thorns (8 page)

15

Thorns

I
N THE MORNING
, S
AND FOUND
P
ERROTTE IN THE
kitchen, sitting on a hearthstone and stirring porridge. She scooted aside, making room for him on the stones beside her.

He lowered himself to the warm hearthstone, making care to keep a proper distance between them. He propped his elbows on his knees and folded his hands between them.

He wasn't really sure what to say to her. He wanted to apologize for being so silent and skittish the day before, but he wasn't sure he was done being silent and skittish.

If only she wouldn't talk about him doing
magic
.

Perrotte gave the porridge a final stir, and then tapped the spoon against the side of the pot to get the porridge off. “I think it's ready.”

He stood and served himself a bowl. It was lumpy, and not in an interesting way. He swore he would make all the porridge from now on.

“Sand,” she said after a moment. “What's wrong?”

He was silent. How could he say that he was afraid he was a witch? Because admitting that meant admitting her awakening was unnatural and wrong. It was all to the good that they were trapped in a castle surrounded by impenetrable thorns—it saved them both from interrogation, accusation, trial, and possibly even burning.

“Something is wrong,” she persisted.

“How do
you
know?” The words burst out of him with heat, and it felt good to speak so forcefully. “You've only known me for three days.”

Instead of whipping back a comment just as rude, she was silent and frowning, arms clutched over her chest. It occurred to him then: That had been the most unfair thing he could say. He barely knew her, either, and yet he had been rude on purpose, hoping to provoke a fight. Fighting would feel good. He could say mean things, harsh things, things he'd never gotten to say to his father—and he would feel that she would deserve every one of them.

But she didn't.

He didn't want knowing that to stop him, though. He wanted an argument.

“Don't,” Perrotte said quietly, and threw him all off guard.

“Don't what?” He said it less aggressively, but he still hoped there might be a good fight.

“Whatever you're doing. Don't . . . don't pretend that just because we're trapped together that we—” She broke off, biting her lip. “Look, I was mean and rude to you at first, and now you're being mean and rude to me, and I was horrible, and now you're horrible . . .”

Shame welled up within him, though he wanted to tamp down. He already knew that if he picked a fight with her, if he said all the mean things he shouldn't say, he would regret it afterward. As he already regretted what he had said—or maybe not
what
he'd said, but
how
he'd said it, with such contempt.

“We're all we have,” Perrotte said.

“Well!” He gusted an explosive sigh on that word, only then realizing he had been holding his breath. “When did you come to this conclusion?”

“When I dragged your mattress down the hall,” she said. “And I'm sorry. For how I was. For acting like the Queen of Earth condescending to her servant.”

He said stiffly, “You are a lady, and the daughter of a count. I am a peasant.”

“God's body,” she swore, opening her arms wide. “Do you think there were counts and peasants when the world was populated by Adam and Eve?”

He felt his cheeks heat at that comment, and kept his eyes on his porridge lumps. “I'm sorry too.”

“I accept your apology. Do you accept mine?”

It was so needlessly formal, as if she were reminding him—in spite of her words—that they were in fact lady and peasant, and not equals. “Yes, I accept your apology,” he said. He bit back a sarcastic “my lady” at the end. That wouldn't do.

“So, then.” She waited, arms folded, staring at him. “What's wrong?”

“I don't know how to feed the falcon,” he blurted. Which was true; feeding Merlin was indeed something that bothered him, that worried him.

Perrotte's hands flexed where they held on to her upper arms, a slight flutter of fingers. “We'll take Merlin outside to hunt. Problem solved.”

“Have you ever hunted a falcon?” he asked.

“Of course.” She said it so offhandedly, and Sand cursed inwardly as he felt his cheeks heat again. Perotte studied the bird. “Merlin's a lady's falcon, anyway, one that small.”

“Of course,” Sand echoed. “What if you hunt him and he doesn't come back?”

“Then we really don't have to worry anymore.”

Sand wanted Merlin to come back, needed him to. With only three living things in the castle, it was too much to lose any one of them.

“I made a tisane,” she said, and gave him a cup. He sipped: It was weak, not at all like the tisanes that Agnote brewed, but Agnote was diligent with her herbs, and kept nothing past its first year unless it was very dear or hard to get. These herbs were probably almost as old as Agnote herself. But the tisane was tastier than plain water.

Several times during their meal, Perrotte opened her mouth as if to speak, and then subsided. After the fifth time, Sand looked at her crankily. “What? What do you want to say to me?”

She opened her mouth again. For a long, awkward moment, nothing came out, and then she said in a rush, “I'm going to make a run at the thorns! With or without your help.”

He nodded, setting aside his bowl of porridge. “I know.” He stood up, shook out his legs, and went to the smithy without even looking to see if she followed.

She did follow, and Sand pulled out the things he had mended the day before. “Hedge shears,” he said, pulling them from the ashes and placing them on his anvil. “I just need to temper the blades so they can be sharpened.”

Her eyes were alight with eagerness for battle. He remembered the first time he'd watched Grandpère make a sword, how excited he'd felt; when Grandpère had stepped away, he'd snatched up the hiltless blade by its tang and swiped the air with it. Grandpère had returned—and it was the first and only time Sand had seen his placid grandfather angry.

“Put it down!” Grandpère had cried, and Sand had obeyed immediately.

“I'm sorry! Did I ruin the blade? Did I cost you the commission?”

Grandpère had sighed and sat down, rubbing his leg, and told Sand then the story of his uncle Taran, who had gone so eagerly to fight for Bertaèyn's independence from France the best way he could—as a blacksmith. His uncle had never seen battle, had never been
meant
to see it, being quite busy repairing armor and weapons, but he had worked closer to the battle lines than was safe. A poorly aimed cannon killed him and two other smiths working field forges.

“Battles seem grand to children,” Grandpère had said. “And wars can seem righteous and just, even to the oldest among us. But before you ever march off to fight, should the opportunity come to you, or even before you run off to
help
a fight—think of the old folks like me and your grandmère with no children living, who know the secrets to great arts and have no blood to pass them to.”

While this had troubled Sand—was blood so very important? Did it not matter at all that Sand's father had been passed the secrets of the craft?—he understood Grandpère's sorrow. Sand wanted to learn smithing because he loved it; he loved it for many reasons, but one of the reasons was that the craft sang in his veins, and his heart beat in time to his hammer's blows.

Remembering that moment when he'd angered his grandfather so, Sand went with great reluctance to pull out the other items he'd mended for Perrotte: a pair of armored gauntlets and a breastplate.

She clapped her hands with pleasure. Sand just sighed.

“Please, leave the thorns alone, Perrotte,” he begged.

She shook her head. “You'll thank me, when we're free,” she said.

He grunted, and set to work hardening her shears, while she tried on her armor.

When the shears were cooled, filed, and sharpened, he followed her down to the gates, while he alternately clutched and scratched at his wrist. The way his scar changed from itching to pain and back to itching—it was like nothing he'd ever experienced.

“Raise the portcullis for me? Please, Sand?”

“Don't do this, Perrotte.”

“Sand,” she said, pleading. “We can't live here for the rest of our lives. We can't just let Jan—we can't let the thorns win. Or the curse on this castle.
Whatever
it is that's keeping us here. We have to get out.”

“I want to get out too! But—” The pain was unbearable. He ground out a curse, a proper one, one that he should confess to a priest if there were a priest to confess to. He clawed at his wrist, even as the pain drove him to his knees.

“We can't let it win!” Perrotte said, and dashed inside the gatehouse to raise the portcullis.

He fought the pain, slowly staggering to his feet. “No, Perro—”

But the iron bars were up, and she was back, running straight at the thorns, swinging open her hedge shears to cut into the bramble.

He thought it might work, for a brief, mad moment. But these were no simple thorns, and while a few small branches fell away in the first heat of Perrotte's attack, the bramble regrouped, twitching only slightly to reach for her. And though thorns could not penetrate her breastplate or her gauntlets, bramble runners snaked their way around her ankles, wound around her upper arms, and wormed into her hair. Perrotte didn't scream, but she did struggle, grunting, against the thorns. She lost the hedge shears, her fingers spasming open as her skin was pierced. The bramble engulfed the hedge shears and pulled them deep inside the brake.

It was worse than Sand had imagined.

His own pain had not subsided; the ghost of the thorn in his wrist still stabbed to the center of his being, but he forced himself from his knees. He had to reach Perrotte. He had to pull her away before the thorns swallowed her too. He grabbed her arms, and sucker branches of the bramble reached for his fingers in turn. Perrotte may not have screamed, but
he
was not so shy. He yelled as he pulled her away from the thorns. Her clothing ripped. Her skin tore. His skin tore. And she left huge chunks of her hair behind.

But they were free.

They fell together in a heap. Her metal-covered fist drove accidentally into his upper thigh, just missing a more tender area by inches. The curved edge of her breastplate smashed into his cheekbone.

And the thorns—the thorns were
following
them, slinking into the passageway after them.

The brambles were still plants, though, and while they could twitch inches in midair with lightning speed, they couldn't travel along the ground terribly fast. Sand shoved Perrotte off him, rolling her away from the thorns, and scrambled to his feet. The thorns that had embedded themselves in his fingers screamed pain; the scar on his wrist echoed it. He reached the night portal and slammed it shut.

Three bramble runners remained, trapped under the door. Sand stomped them into the earth with his boot heel, and swore to come back and take care of them. With hot metal.

Perrotte struggled to her feet. Sand rushed to grab her elbow and help her upright. She leaned into him and let him propel her back inside.

“Bed or kitchen?” he asked. He couldn't imagine how much pain Perrotte was in. Everywhere the brambles had touched, her skin was puffing—a ring around her neck, a lash across her cheek.

“Kitchen,” she croaked, and clutched at her swelling neck.

One thorn. One thorn had given him such grief, and she had been assaulted by dozens. Scores. Hundreds?

He dropped her to the kitchen hearth and ran off to draw water to heat, to grub bedding for bandages, and to find the lancets he had used on his own thorn. Wait. He'd left the lancets somewhere in the smithy, intending to repair them eventually, but he couldn't remember where. He'd look for them once he made Perrotte comfortable.

He hurried back to the kitchen with the water and bandages. Perrotte opened bleary eyes. “Gilles,” she said. “Did I forget my gloves?”

“What?” Sand asked, startled.

She shook her head, closing her eyes again.

“I'm not Gilles,” he said, pouring water into a pot and stoking up the fire beneath it. “I'm Alexandre. Sand.” His stomach, already clenched in knots of worry, took on a new and additional discomfort, a rolling tightness that . . . was it jealousy? For his own father?

He dismissed the thought, and turned to evaluate Perrotte. She wasn't bleeding. This worried him. He hadn't bled from his thorn wound either, not until the thorn came out. Did that mean all the thorns that had attacked her were still inside her, under her skin?

Poultices, first; then he would lance the wounds and pry the thorns out. But poultices of what? The cabbage leaves he'd used on himself were long gone, and what few medicinal plants could be found in the castle were well past the point of possessing curative powers.

But just heat and damp would help, wouldn't they?

It would be better if she were lying down. But he didn't know if he could get her up the stairs to her bed by himself. He was strong, but she was an inch or two taller than him, and now felt just as heavy, heavier than the day she'd stumbled up from the crypt.

“Then bring the bed to her,” Sand muttered, and ran upstairs again, this time grabbing pillows and blankets to make a pallet for Perrotte on the hearth. She opened her eyes as he slid her into the comfortable nest. “What happened to my gloves, Gilles?”

“You're going to be all right, Perr,” he said, placing a pillow under her head. “We'll get you better. You're going to be all right.”

He knew she didn't understand him. He was glad. Even if she understood, she wouldn't believe that she would be all right. He didn't even believe himself.