Chapter Sixteen #2
“Should they act before Pine leaves Stone?”
Fenir shook his head. “Too many opportunities to get caught. Better out in the open, where they can be properly disguised.” He turned to his daughter. “You must go tell them.”
Jespyr ran a hand over her brow. “No rest for the Captain, nor his sister, it seems.” She pushed out of her chair with a sigh. When she passed me, she put a hand on my shoulder. “Good work today. Rest up. You’re going to need it.”
She slipped out of the room. I watched her, a question stirring my thoughts. I took the chair she’d abandoned, pulling myself to the table. “These men whose Cards you take,” I said to Fenir, “men like Pine. Do you hurt them?”
Fenir raised his brows. “You take us for brute thugs, Miss Spindle?”
I raised my brows back at him. “Two of your children are Destriers, are they not?”
Morette cleared her throat. “That’s where you come in, Miss Spindle. With your keen eyes, we should be able to locate and retrieve the Card as hastily as possible. Violence is something we avoid.”
I shifted in my chair, Ravyn’s ivory-hilted dagger flashing across my mind.
“My steward will join us in a moment.” Fenir walked to a far shelf and pulled free an old, sooty tome. “But while we wait, there is something I’d like you to see, Miss Spindle.”
The tome’s leather cover was embroidered with two alder trees, tall and narrow, which stood next to each other in perfect unison. One tree was sewn with black fabric, the other—grayed with age—with white. It was older than my aunt’s copy, its binding more frayed.
I recognized it immediately.
Fenir placed the volume upon the table. “Have you studied The Old Book of Alders , Miss Spindle?”
I wanted to laugh. Had he asked it of me, I could have recited the text from cover to cover. “A bit.”
Fenir opened the cover and coughed, turning the aged parchment until he’d reached the last page. He read it aloud.
The twelve call for each other when the shadows grow long—
When the days are cut short and the Spirit is strong.
They call for the Deck and the Deck calls them back.
Unite us, they say, and we’ll cast out the black.
At the King’s namesake tree, with the black blood of salt,
All twelve shall, together, bring sickness to halt.
They’ll lighten the mist from mountain to sea.
New beginnings—new ends…
But nothing comes free.
“The Cards, the mist, the blood,” I said under my breath.
Morette joined us at the table. “Kings of Blunder have long tried to do what the Shepherd King instructed. But none could bring the Deck of Twelve together. None could find the Twin Alders.”
I tapped my fingers on the table. “Does King Rowan know where to find it?”
“No,” Fenir answered. “He consults with the kingdom’s best cartographers.
They gather over an old map of Blunder. Over the years, the map has been colored in with all the places the King’s men have searched.
Still, no Twin Alders. There is no record of it being traded, no history of its use.
The only two documents that even speak of it are The Old Book of Alders and the history of Brutus Rowan, the first Rowan King. ”
The Nightmare hissed through his teeth at the Rowan King’s name. It took all of me not to react. “And what does Brutus say about the Twin Alders?” I asked.
“The same thing everyone else says,” Morette replied. “That the Shepherd King took it into the mist one day and returned without it.”
I frowned. “Surely the Shepherd King has his own history—his own documents.”
Fenir’s voice was grave. “Most of what we know of the Shepherd King we take from lore. His histories were destroyed, and none of his children survived to claim the throne. Brutus Rowan, his Captain of the Guard, became the next King of Blunder.”
The Nightmare’s tail twitched, stirring the darkness in my mind.
I paused. “Suppose we manage to find the Twin Alders.” I looked up at the Yews. “Whose blood do you intend to use to unite the Deck?”
Fenir leaned forward. “You may have met him. He’s head of the King’s Physicians.”
The tall, narrow man with eerily pale eyes. “Orithe Willow?” I cried. “He’s infected?”
Fenir picked up The Old Book of Alders , gingerly placing it back onto his shelf.
“Like yourself,” he said, “Orithe caught the infection as a child. But the King kept him alive for one reason. Orithe’s magic allows him to spot the infection in others.
Surely you’ve seen the apparatus he wears around his hand? ”
I had. It was a metal claw, with long, angry spikes reaching out from each of his pale fingers. I felt the blood drain from my face. “Orithe uses that—that device—to see the infection in others?”
Fenir’s voice was grave. “He claims he can see the infection in their blood.” His brow lowered in a deep frown. “He hunts and bleeds anyone he suspects has caught the fever. That is why the King appointed him head of the Physicians.”
I placed my fingers along my temples to soothe my spinning head. “Spare Emory’s blood, spill Orithe’s,” I murmured. A man responsible for the deaths of dozens of infected children. Two birds…
One stone , said the Nightmare.
Fenir’s steward opened the door. Jon Thistle regarded me with a nod, then placed a leather pouch teeming with brilliant colors onto the table ahead of Fenir.
Light filled the room as Fenir opened the pouch. “Our collection, Miss Spindle,” he said.
I surveyed the Cards through a squint. “They’re not all here.”
“No,” Morette said. “The Destriers keep their Black Horses close. And Elm, as you know by now, is reticent to go anywhere without the Scythe. The Mirror and the Nightmare are often with Ravyn.”
I searched the colors, blinked, then searched again.
Gray, the Prophet.
Pink, the Maiden.
Turquoise, the Chalice.
Yellow, the Golden Egg.
White, the White Eagle.
“Three Cards are missing,” Fenir said. “The Well, the Iron Gate, and the Twin Alders.”
I stared at the pile, the unity of colors strange and beautiful, like a stained glass window. “Do you have a plan for finding the Well?”
“The Well will be tricky to claim,” Jon Thistle said, rubbing his beard. “Given the nature of the Card, men keen to have it are usually wary to begin with.”
The Yews were quiet, their brows knit.
I chewed my lip, clicking my fingernails against the table. The Nightmare slithered behind my eyes, waiting for me to speak. When I did not, his voice filled my mind like steam off a kettle. Go on , he said. Tell them.
My eyes fell back to the collage of color radiating off the Providence Cards. The Cards. The mist. The blood.
I raised my gaze to the Yews. “I know someone who owns a Well Card,” I said. “He lives just down the street.”