Chapter Eight
She had stabbed the infamous Dragon with a fork.
In the back.
Had Briar been the sort to imagine ever meeting an Iron Crow, much less an infamous one, she might have imagined him to be less amused with her in general, as though she was entertaining. Possibly there would also have been less stabbing involved.
And fewer strawberry scones.
Ostensibly to keep her strong for questioning? Maybe torture. But none of that felt right. Why had he really fed her a strawberry scone? And why did it feel like it mattered?
The weeds poking through the dirt road bloomed under her boots, nettles and thistles stretching tall, dandelions releasing wishes.
The rain fell hard into the sea behind her and over the hills, like silver coins tossed by an angry hand, but it was soft in her hair.
Gentle. A contradiction, just like Ethan Swansea.
But thinking about the width of the shoulders of the man who had abducted her because he thought she was her sister was not helpful.
It did not make the mud less slick underfoot or the ache settling deep into her hip easier as she limped home.
She had walked too far, sat on a horse, been tied to a mast. Her hip bone had every right to be vexed.
She was vexed.
A great many other emotions struggled to take root, but she could not afford to accommodate them all at the moment. She had bigger worries.
Her sister might really be missing.
And she had thrown herself, as well as the entire island, into some sort of danger. The shields of Lyonesse did not lock without dire need.
If no one knew where her sister was, that might lend Petal some security. If they could not find her, they could not harm her. But that Briar also did not know was unacceptable. How was she supposed to protect Petal? What if she was hurt? Stranded?
There were spells, maps, pendulums. Briar would read the tea leaves. Nettle and lavender, her sister’s favorite brew. That and the blood that connected them would lend her power accuracy.
Hopefully.
Maybe.
Haven, shining bright as the moon and thrumming with music from the revels of visitors for the Midsummer Festival, glowed below her, welcoming.
For now. Had they realized that the shields had locked?
And that the portal had also closed, making travel back to London and Edinburgh and Dublin impossible?
How long before the news traveled through the shops and inns and restaurants?
How long before they came looking for her sister?
Not long enough.
Briar forced her hip to keep moving, stopping only long enough to drag a thick branch out of the scrub to use as a staff. It helped. So did the rain, turning to mist as she approached her cottage where no one waited for her with torches and pitchforks.
Finally, a little luck.
She had to prop up the broken back door to keep out the worst of the rain until she found a way to fix it in the morning. Muddy water puddled under her shoes, running in rivulets around the mounds of shattered crockery. A chair lay on its side, one leg splintered.
All in all, it was not an encouraging welcome.
Leaves touched the windowpanes as the oak tree closest to the cottage tried to offer its own kind of comfort. Snapdragon was sulking inside her chest, sparking magic like tiny firecrackers. Her hip was screaming. But she was home, at last.
Bedraggled, befuddled, and bewildered. But home.
And not alone.
The drop in her stomach told her that her body registered the presence of another person before her brain did and that her eyeballs were the very last to be informed.
A girl in a gray dress.
Standing just inside the cottage, eyes wide, still as a rabbit.
“Bramble,” Briar gasped, her skin still prickling painfully with fear.
No one could hide like a rabbit girl. Briar would be impressed, just as soon as her heart started back up again.
She thumped her chest, just in case. She was not made for this kind of night.
She was used to the slow patience of unfurling pea vines, roses, and mugwort drying from the rafters, hot water in a kettle boiling for tea.
“Come,” Bramble whispered. It wasn’t soft or patient. It was a command. She was muddy all over, just like Briar. Clearly frightened, just like Briar.
Briar’s heart began to race again. “Show me.”
Don’t be Petal. Don’t be Petal. Please, don’t be Petal.
It was Petal.
The tree branches immediately pressed closer, rosebushes and raspberry canes and blackberry hedge growing in a thick tangle no one could spy through.
Petal lay on the edge of the garden, pale as rose petals.
Her hare familiar also slept, curled in on itself on top of her chest, glowing only faintly, long, soft ears limp.
Briar did not like that.
Petal’s familiar was usually bright as a sword, all teeth and light.
But it was rainwater, not blood, soaking her sister’s red hair. Mud, not bruises. Relief was just like swan wings in her chest. “What happened?” Briar whispered.
“I found her like this,” Bramble replied. “On the other side of the garden fence.”
“Did anyone see you?”
Bramble shot her a disgusted look.
“You might have rabbit magic,” Briar muttered, “but my unconscious sister does not.”
“We were not seen.”
“Let’s get her inside before she catches her death.”
Just then, because clearly a bad day could always get so much worse, there came a single knock on the front door. Mint tingled on Briar’s tongue, along with a hint of lilac from the tree by the front step. A warning.
The Order of the Iron Nail.
Briar knew it, even from the other side of the cottage.
The pink gargoyle set on the edge of the roof spread its stone wings.
All witch houses had a gargoyle meant to gobble up errant or baneful magic.
The Order of the Iron Nail was the force tasked with policing witches all over the country.
It sent Keepers to track warlocks, break curses, find thieves.
And her sister.
They carried so many charms and stank so of magic that gargoyles might not attack them, but they certainly perked up in their presence.
Watchful. Suspicious. And gargoyles on Lyonesse were not like the ones in London.
Here, they were used to so much more magic thrumming through the air.
Haven alone had spells to make sure the gutters sparkled clean, the fish at market never sent its smells toward the village square.
Charms to clear the rain clouds over the beach of an afternoon, to keep the ants from the picnics, the jellyfish from the swimming areas.
And that was on an ordinary day, never mind Midsummer.
But even here, the Order had near-absolute authority.
If they had come for Petal, there was very little Briar could do to stop them.
Sending a solicitor to the Council would take weeks.
And that was only once the shields were lifted.
In the meantime, they would take Petal to Holdfast, where the dungeons were made of stone lined with jet to counter spellwork.
Where the Iron Witches guarded the bones of dead witches and used them to feed the shields.
The only way to save Petal was to make sure they never found her.
Bramble was already on her feet, snarling slightly as she stood over Petal’s prone body. Never mind wolf shifters and serpent clans—never cross a rabbit girl. That made Briar feel a bit better. “I’ll get rid of them,” she murmured.
How, she had no idea. One unmitigated disaster at a time.
The rain fell harder, sharp as thorns. She used it to feed the rosebushes, along with a generous push of her magic. Thicket and tangle to keep her sister safe.
Her hip protested the climb out of the greenery, the whole evening in general.
If she made it to the cottage without her leg giving out completely, it would be a start.
At least the cocoon of leaves and branches had woven tightly enough around Petal to protect her from the worst of the weather.
And from prying eyes. The Order had so many ways to see into the shadow of things.
But not here. This was her house. Her sister.
She had sworn to keep her sister safe the day Petal saved Briar from a riptide by their favorite cove. They were thirteen years old and Briar had spotted a mermaid, had heard her soft, bright singing. She was no match for the pull and push of the sea, the laugh of a mermaid.
Petal was the one to drag her back to the shore, cutting herself on the rocks.
The wound had festered, bringing on a dangerous fever.
Neither the doctor nor the healers had been able to help.
Mermaid magic locked its teeth wherever it could.
And Petal had ventured too near for someone whose beauty rivaled even that of a mermaid.
All to save Briar.
Briar had gathered comfrey and honey and spiders’ webs. She had made a crown of seaweed for Petal’s red brow and drawn sigils with salt under her bed. And then sat with her, clutching her hand for three days and three nights until the fever broke.
In the end, a traveling peddler had offered a magical cure in exchange for one kiss from the beautiful Petal.
Their mother, desperate, had agreed.
Instead, Briar had offered him a cup of tea laced with vervain, and when he slumped in the hall, snoring loudly, she had stolen the charm from his pocket.
She had replaced it with jack-in-the-pulpit flowers, with a whisper that they remember their witching name: fillet of fenny snake.
The peddler had woken with his pockets full of garden snakes and run from the cottage.
Petal, finally awake, had watched him from her bedroom window.
He never returned to Haven after that.
The thorns on all of the rosebushes sharpened as the memory made Briar’s fists clench. The smell of wet flowers hung thick as veils. The rain added another layer of sound, of distraction to the eye. The little pink cottage sat gently in a moat of blossoms, harmless as a teacake.
She could do this.
She had to do this.
She hurried through the back door, snagging a cane from an umbrella basket. Another knock sounded, loud, imperious. A summons. There was no time to dry her hair or change her muddy dress. She would use as much of the truth as possible.
And she would go on the offense before they could.
They would not expect it from her, a witch who ran a tearoom that used to specialize in love spells.
Another weapon in her arsenal, however small.
Small charms, small magics. Sometimes they were more effective than the flashier, more powerful ones, the witch bottles the Order used to steal and trap a witch’s familiar, the binding spells of jet and bone. The iron collar soaked in seawater.
Sometimes.