Heart of Thorns

by Bree Barton

  Something skittered out of the cloth.

  It was small and stout, teetering precariously on the edge of the yawning chasm. She scrambled forward and scooped the something off the rock.

  It was her mother’s journal, the little ruby wren fitted into the lock.

  Who had put it there? Her father? Angelyne? She hadn’t felt anyone slip the book into her train. But then, the train was practically its own sentient being, and she’d been reasonably preoccupied with other things, including but not limited to: botched marriage, attempted assassination, dark magic, et cetera.

  Perhaps the real question was not who, but why. The journal was a useless brick of blank pages and nostalgia. She pinched the wren’s wings, twisting the lock. A breeze fluttered the pages, and a glimmer of black ink caught her eye.

  Mia’s heart unfolded.

  Most of the pages were still blank, but the first one no longer was. Her mouth went chalk dry as her fingers traced the inscription in her mother’s elegant script:

  Should this book become lost, the writer humbly requests that she who finds it make all reasonable efforts to return it to its rightful home.

  Should the finder of this book become lost, the writer humbly suggests that she consider a journey in the same direction.

  The path to safe haven will reveal itself to she who seeks it.

  All you seek will be revealed.

  W. M.

  Under the words, in a smudged cluster of curves and coils, was a map.

  Mia didn’t have time to question it. Shouts clamored through the tunnels. The guards were plowing toward them, all fealty and righteous fury. Were the Hunters with them? If so, Mia’s breaths were numbered.

  She tucked the book back into the balled-up train for an added layer of protection and stuffed the bundle beside the prince. Then she hoisted herself into the carriage.

  Quin’s face was flushed. “Might I suggest this is a momentously bad idea?”

  “Do you have a better one?” She ran her hands over the inside of the carriage, looking for a sharp blade. With no one at the crankshaft, she’d have to cut the rope that held the carriage to the cable, launching them into free fall down the copper wire. Bridalaghdú: fall of the bride.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “I need a knife.”

  He blanched. “A knife?”

  “I’m not going to stab you, Quin. I just saved your life, remember?”

  He stared at her for a long moment. Too long. The tunnels were preparing to belch out a lethal mix of guards and assassins; she could feel it in her blood.

  Quin extracted a leather scabbard from his boot and unsheathed a thin silver blade. He held it out to her. Now it was Mia’s turn to blanch.

  “Do I want to know why you brought a sheath knife to our wedding?”

  His smile was rueful. “Always wise to carry a weapon in times of unimaginable duress.”

  Perhaps the prince was not what he seemed. Perhaps he did have secrets.

  Mia took the knife and held it high, silver moonlight glinting off the blade. She stared at herself in the reflection. A demon in oyster silk stared back.

  And yet, in spite of everything—even as she stood amidst the charred cinders of her life—she felt freer than she had in ages. Powerful.

  Run, little rose. Run fast and free.

  “Where are we going, Mia? Where is there to hide?”

  She didn’t answer. In one swift motion, she hacked the cord cleaving them to the black rock. The rope snapped and the carriage heaved, free from its bindings after so many years.

  Together, they flew.

  Part Two

  Bone

  Chapter 13

  How to Escape Successfully in Eight Simple Steps

  Survive five-hundred-foot drop* in a potentially fatal machine.

  After renegotiating relationship with solid ground, ransack laghdú hut for provisions. Find nothing but moth-eaten smocks and trousers.

  Don moth-eaten smocks and trousers and tailor them with available materials. “Available materials” being: a ball of moldy twine.

  Forge makeshift satchel out of bloody wedding gown.

  Pack sheath knife in satchel.

  Do not waste time wondering why your betrothed had a sheath knife in his boot.

  Steal through Killian Village without attracting attention.

  Consult mysteriously appearing map and make for the fork in the river.

  Chapter 14

  A Brief and Bloody End

  MIA AND QUIN’S DEATH-DEFYING plummet had bought them limited time. Other than free fall by laghdú, there was only one way in or out of the Kaer: the steep road hewn from the east-facing mountainside. Mia’s feet were still struggling to find purchase when she spotted the throng of guards darkening the eastern road.

  “They’ll be in the village within the hour,” Quin said. “My father’s men are fast.”

  “Then we’ll be faster.”

  She was still in a state of shock, but at least her flavor of shock was mobilizing. They slipped quickly through the back alleys of Killian Village, darting between huts and lean-tos. The houses were mostly still, cocooned in the night quiet, but the taverns and brothels were simmering with debauchery. As they hurried by one such structure, a man stumbled down the front steps and vomited a stream of bile onto the ground, narrowly missing the prince’s boots.

  “Lovely,” Quin muttered.

  Having not spent much time in the village, Mia was surprised how ramshackle it was. She had expected crisp, clean cottages like the ones in Ilwysion; instead she saw shabby huts and thatched hovels, muck shoveled into brown heaps on the streets and attended by swarms of flies. The people were thinner than she remembered, their clothes ragged and their faces smudged with soot and dirt. She counted at least five rats scurrying across the cobblestones.

  “Glas Ddir has not prospered under my father’s reign,” Quin said as they leaned against a blacksmith’s forge to catch their breath. “Bronwynis encouraged free trade and commerce to flourish. But after my aunt was murdered and my father seized the throne, our fine kingdom has watched its imports vanish and its exports turn to ash.”

  Mia arched an eyebrow. “I thought you didn’t care for politicking.”

  “I don’t care to sit around smoking cigars with bloated braggadocios. Politicking is one thing. Politics is another.”

  He was right about the river kingdom. For as long as Mia could remember, Glasddirans had subsisted on their own meager wares: linen and wool, timber, salty meats, soft cheeses, and seemingly unlimited barrels of blackthorn wine, which she had always found rather watery. Glas Ddir had sunk into rawboned poverty, and nowhere was that more evident than in Killian Village.

  “We should keep moving,” she said as they ducked out of the alley and hastened down another filthy avenue of cobblestones. They weren’t moving as fast as Mia would have liked. “You have to keep up.”

  “I’m trying,” Quin huffed. “Turns out nearly dying is pretty exhausting.”

  “So is saving your life. Turns out.”

  A girl with a torn linen dress and large, hungry eyes staggered past. Was she coming from the brothels? She was much too young. Mia’s stomach tightened like a fist. She wished she had a pouch of silver coins to give the girl, or food, or gemstones from the castle—anything to deliver a dose of hope.

  Quin shook his head. “I don’t go into the village often, but when I do, I am always reminded of the true cost of my father’s policies. I do what I can to help.”

  Mia was surprised by the prince’s candor. In the library she’d called him coddled, when in fact he’d been out making mercy visits to impoverished Glasddirans. Her mother had done this, too; for years Wynna traveled to various alpine villages and river towns on the banks of the Natha River, even all the way to Killian Village, to administer medicine to people who were sick. What had Mia spent the last few years doing? Reading anatomy books in the rarified air of Ilwysion.

  Mia cringed.
She was the coddled one.

  “Excuse me, miss?”

  She whirled around to see a boy about Quin’s age, though his back had the stoop of an old man. He didn’t look Glasddiran; his dark freckles spilled like specks of ink across his cool bronze skin, and beneath his tangle of black hair, there was something fragile about him, a dull glaze in his thin silvery eyes. Though he addressed her as “miss,” his voice had the strains of nobility.

  He nodded toward her and the prince. Mia felt Quin bristle beside her.

  “Do you seek a place to stay?”

  She wanted nothing more than to sleep in a warm bed. Her limbs were thick with fatigue. But if they stayed in the village, they would be discovered by the guards, or worse: the Hunters.

  The boy read her hesitance correctly. “Nourishment, then. For your journey. I don’t have much to offer you, but I have this.” He held out a small loaf of bread and a pouch of snow plums. Mia noticed his right hand was missing two fingers.

  “At what cost?” she said. For all she knew, the boy was one of the king’s spies, men stationed at village brothels to report suspicious activity. There were spies everywhere, hungry men desperate for the reward money Ronan offered for turning over any girl suspected of practicing magic.

  “No cost, miss.” He paused. “You remind me of my sister, is all.”

  Quin stared at the boy intently. “Where is your sister?”

  “She’s gone. Taken.”

  “By Gwyrach?”

  “No, sir. By the king’s men.”

  Mia’s stomach twisted yet again. She had heard talk of girls no older than twelve or thirteen being rounded up by Ronan’s guards and brought straight to Kaer Killian, bypassing the Circle of the Hunt. Some girls were deemed innocent and returned to their families. Some were never seen again.

  She wanted to dismiss the rumors, but once, during her stay in the castle, she had seen a girl she’d known in Ilwysion, willowy and strong, with radiant olive skin and black hair so silky it fell like a sheet down her back. As a child, this girl had raced three boys up the mountain and won. But she was no longer a graceful, fleet-footed athlete. She was a living doll, heavily made up with skin greases, jewels, and feathers dipped in gold. She had been paraded through King Ronan’s court with other favorites from the village brothel, and when Mia saw her, she’d felt sick.

  Yet another way in which Mia was privileged: as the daughter of Griffin Rose, she had been spared a similar fate.

  “We have to go,” she said to Quin. They were already risking detection. If the boy recognized the prince, he would be all the more inclined to point the guards in the right direction.

  “Please.” The boy took a step forward, and Mia noticed a hitch in his gait. He held out the provisions. “A gift.”

  He was staring relentlessly at her arms. She wasn’t wearing gloves—she’d left them behind in the tunnels, she realized. The boy would report them for sure. Mia felt a wave of nausea: he should report her. She was a Gwyrach.

  “We must go now,” she whispered fiercely in Quin’s ear.

  As she turned to go, she saw the prince reach out to accept the food, his fingers lingering for an extra moment on the boy’s palm. If Quin were a woman, that touch would have cost him his hand.

  “Be well, Your Grace,” the boy said softly as they slunk back into the shadows. So he had recognized Quin from the beginning.

  Mia wondered how much they had just sacrificed for a bag of bread and plums.

  Her mother’s journal had magic. That much was clear. Normal ink in normal books did not suddenly appear on the page. As she squinted at the elegant handwriting, she felt a squirm of discomfort. She’d spent the last three years singularly focused on expunging magic in all forms. Now, without warning, she had become a magical creature holding a magical book.

  Did that mean her mother was magical, too?

  “It’s hopeless.” Quin was panting, his cheeks ruddy from exertion. They’d made it to the outskirts of the village and were nearing the river. “The guards have horses. And dogs. My dogs, who know my scent. We have four legs between us, and shaky legs at that. Unless you can magic your way out of this”—he wiggled his fingers in the air—“we don’t stand a chance.”

  The thing about the color flooding back into his cheeks was that all his usual surliness was flooding back, too.

  “Magic,” she said, “is not a verb.”

  Or maybe it was. She clearly had a patchy understanding of what magic was and wasn’t. It hit her all over again: she was a Gwyrach. Demon. Murderer.

  Mia brushed the thought aside. She refocused her attention on the map.

  Her mother had sketched the castle and Killian Village, but the landmasses to the west and south were conspicuously absent, blank space on a flaxen page. To the east she’d drawn the serpentine Natha River, with a mysterious crescent squiggle at the fork, and then the westernmost borders of the tall trees of Ilwysion. But the forest vanished long before it reached the Twisted Forest or the eastern coastline, where the Salted Sea connected the river kingdom to the islands of the fire kingdom. Almost as if Wynna had run out of ink.

  So, Mia reasoned. If the ink had filled in to the east, they were right to be moving in that direction. She’d never been ruled by instinct—she wasn’t the impetuous sort—but this time, her instincts had proven correct.

  She scoffed at her own flawed logic. She was staring at a fanciful map rendered in fanciful ink, attempting to read meaning into an inscription that, for all she knew, was nothing more than one of her mother’s riddles. The path will reveal itself to she who seeks it. All you seek will be revealed. Wynna had always had a poet’s love for syllogism and a jester’s sense of play.

  Mia, on the other hand, had a habit of taking things too literally, something Domeniq du Zol liked to chide her for during their Hunter training sessions. “You take the world too seriously,” he often said.

  “I take the world at its purported value,” Mia would correct him. “As anyone with common sense would do.”

  She didn’t even have her beloved compass to help chart her path. This was not the Mia Rose she knew.

  She swallowed hard. The real Mia Rose was a Gwyrach. Which meant she had never really known herself at all.

  “I hope whatever you’re looking at in that book,” Quin said, “is a blueprint for a river craft. Because unless you can summon a boat once we reach the Natha, this little expedition of ours will soon come to a brief and bloody end.”

  “Ye of trifling faith.”

  “Faith gets people killed. I’d rather worship at the altar of logic. A cold altar, but a rational one.”

  Funny, Mia thought. She’d always felt the same.

  But now her logic was contorting into a wild hypothesis about the mysterious squiggle on her mother’s map. It was nothing more than a scrap of a hangnail at the fork of the river, a half-moon bobbing on the Natha’s inky surface, and yet she felt certain she knew what it was.

  A boat.

  Before Domeniq du Zol’s father was killed by Gwyrach, he had captained a coracle: a small, oval-shaped boat. He collected silver coins at the fork of the Natha River and ferried passengers along its watery ventricles. The du Zols called the boat the Sunbeam, a tribute to their Fojuen heritage: du Zol meant “of the sun.”

  Maybe the boat was still there.

  Never mind Dom’s father had died three years ago. Or that the du Zols—with the exception of Dom, who had stayed in the river kingdom to train with the Hunters—had fled Glas Ddir and returned to Fojo Karação shortly after his death. Or that boats tended not to stay in the same place for years on end. Boats moved. That was the point.

  “We’re close,” she said, with more confidence than she felt.

  “Close to what?”

  She was almost certainly chasing the ghost of a boat. And still she moved doggedly toward the river as the earth grew soft and spongy underfoot. She could smell the wet scent of the Natha, the blackthorn brambles on the banks wicking sweet
moisture from the mud. Centuries of erosion had pulverized the rocks, sugared them into glittering black sand.

  Mia and Quin stepped into a small clearing. The Natha surged oily black past their feet. In the moonlight it looked like a forked tongue, one prong flowing west, the other east. She shuddered. The black tongue of a demon.

  She heard dogs barking, followed by the harsh shouts of men.

  Panic rose in her chest. But the map had not misled her: a small, dilapidated dock jutted out into the water. She recognized the smell of rotting wood. This was indeed where Dom’s father had picked up his passengers in the Sunbeam.

  Quin blinked. “Is there supposed to be a boat?”

  “Shh.” The hairs bristled on Mia’s neck. “Someone’s coming.”

  Chapter 15

  Silver Blade

  MIA HADN’T HEARD THEM; she’d felt them. Her ears were not as fine-tuned as her father’s, but she’d felt an ominous prickling heat as blood pooled in her toes and fingers. Did her magic allow her to sense when someone was near?

  “Tree,” she said, shoving Quin toward the closest one. “Can you climb?”

  “I’m not a kitten. I know how to climb a tree.”

  “So do kittens.”

  She scaled the tree, scrabbling up the trunk and wedging her hips between boughs. Quin swung himself up far more gracefully on his long limbs. He’d grown up in a castle, she in a forest, but he was right: he wasn’t shabby at climbing trees.

  I don’t hear anyone, he mouthed.

  She daggered a finger to his lips. Stop talking.

  I’m not talking!

  She clapped a hand over his mouth. His breath was warm against her fingers.

  Twenty feet below them, Tuk and Lyman, two of her father’s best Hunters, skulked into the glade.

  The most seasoned Hunters knew how to tread lightly, their footsteps dew upon the earth. Despite the fact that Tuk was the size of an ox and Lyman never stopped running his mouth, they’d both mastered the art of the silent approach. If Mia hadn’t felt them, she never would have heard them coming.