Chapter 40 Songs & Surprises
Chapter forty
Songs & Surprises
The waiting was almost unbearable.
While Aliena stretched out in the back of our ‘damaged’ wagon, casually plucking her lute, and Briony collected fallen acorns in the pockets of her apron, I sat on a log, one leg bouncing out of control.
Finally, I could no longer stand the silence. “How do you know they’ll be here? This isn’t even a road.” I waved at the deer track we’d stationed ourselves next to, which ran from north to south through the forest and apparently let out somewhere near Achaia.
“There are no roads through the Arden,” Aliena said patiently. “This is the closest thing, and it’s used by all the humans brave or stupid enough to come this way.”
“Yes, but—”
“Arguing won’t make them come any sooner, May.”
“I just want it to be over with,” I muttered, rolling an obsidian shadow-dart between my fingers.
Jon had spent the last few days fashioning me a pair of black, leather bracers with small loops sewn onto them.
I could make and store a dozen darts on each forearm, then shoot them out.
It was faster to have them at the ready, rather than having to call them up a few at a time, but wearing them did make me feel like I was heading into battle.
“And when it is over?” Aliena asked. “This gold won’t solve every problem in Nottingham.”
“Then…then I’ll find a way to deal with Johar and Scarlett directly…myself.”
“You’ll start a war,” she replied, dropping her head back. “If they’re already suspicious of the Fair Folk, attacking them with magyk will only make it worse.”
“Oh, and this won’t make it worse?” I laughed derisively, waving at the broken cart.
“We don’t use visible magyk on these jobs,” Briony reminded me. She looked odd without her red, tufted squirrel ears and bottle-brush tail, which Devil had glamoured away when he and Jon had left us here an hour earlier.
“I know,” I grumbled, “but surely, we aren’t doing the Arden Court any favors right now.”
“By the time the caravan is marked as late in Achaia, and a message gets back to Nottingham by boat, we’ll have been able to start rumors and plant evidence pointing toward human bandits,” Briony explained.
“No one wants to blame the Fair Folk for things like this, because it doesn’t make any sense for us to steal human gold, so they just end up looking like a lunatic.
The Prince will be more likely to suspect his absent brother than us. ”
I fell silent, pressing the dart’s point hard into my thumb.
Just as I was on the verge of breaking skin, I heard the unmistakable sound of horses and men.
I sat up straighter and pulled on a long, duster jacket to hide the bracers.
Briony wandered over and leaned on the back of our cart, flipping her mess of red curls over her shoulder and jutting out her hip.
Aliena didn’t move an inch, just continued plucking her lute, but switched from a slow ballad to a slightly merrier tune—a signal to our comrades hiding in the trees.
As the caravan came into view between the brambles and trunks, and the lead rider spotted us, they slowed.
I stood up, forced my shoulders to relax, and swept my eyes over the men, horses, and carts, trying to see if Will’s information had been accurate.
There were two massive wagons covered with black tarps, each pulled by four big draft horses.
Each wagon was escorted by at least a dozen guards in scarlet tunics and black cuirasses.
The Iron Fist. At the head of the column rode an officer on a black palfrey, who held a compass in one hand and a map in the other.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen!” Briony called out to him. Just as we’d predicted, he slowed his mount and smiled at her. Behind him, both wagons came to a halt.
“Trouble on the road, ladies?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing we can’t handle,” Briony chirped, walking over to stand beside his horse and give him a direct view down her low-cut bodice.
A few other men gathered nearby and I did my best impression of a flirtatious young girl, smiling and batting my eyelashes at the nearest one, even as my stomach flipped at the sight of their red uniforms. While Briony chatted with the officer, telling him how our wheel had broken and our uncle had taken the mule on ahead to get help, I held my hand parallel to the ground and sent a creeping shadow out.
Keeping it hidden by breaking it up into the same pattern that the leaves created naturally, I sent it zig-zagging across the ground directly in front of the two lead draft horses.
One just snorted and flinched, but the one I’d marked as being the jumpiest actually reared, causing the entire wagon to lurch violently backwards.
At the same moment, I sent another shadow flying out to tangle around the spokes of one rear wheel.
The men were so preoccupied trying to calm their horses that they didn’t even notice it until the snap of breaking wood and the screech of bending metal echoed off the trees.
“Damn the Son!” cried the officer when he saw what had happened.
“Markum, bring up the spare. We’ll have to switch them out.
” A young guard with a splotchy, red face was visibly overcome with terror and stammered something about having forgotten the spare wheel.
He earned a cuff on the back of his head from the officer, who had dismounted his palfrey.
He calmed himself, pushed his hair back, then approached Briony with a smooth smile.
“Miss, it seems we might be able to help one another,” he said, nodding toward our cart. “If we might replace our broken wheel with one of your whole ones, we could bring you along with us to Achaia, so you are not waiting so long for your uncle to return.”
“Oh, how generous!” Briony sang, clapping her hands together. “Aliena, come out of the cart now. These fine men are going to rescue us.” Several of the guards leaned their pikes against the wagons or trees and moved toward our cart, rolling their sleeves up.
I stepped aside with a kind smile, then asked the man standing in front of me, “Do you think the work would go easier with some music?” He and several others called out song requests, but Aliena sat on the log and grinned as she plucked a few notes.
“Well, since we’ve all found ourselves in the Arden Wood this fine, sunny day, perhaps a song about its most infamous resident?”
“The Faerie Queen?” one man laughed. “She ain’t real! Just a story Johar uses to explain how he lost half a damn army in here.” The joke earned him a glare from several of his fellows.
“Oh, she’s real…” Aliena said with grin, then she began to sing before anyone else could protest.
“In the soft, hidden heart of the weeping wildwood,
lived a girl with a soul made of flame.
She danced with the bees, and she slept in the trees,
and she knew all the Fair Folk by name.
But more often than not, this girl could be found
bringing light to those in the dark.
Held the sun in her hands, and wove beams into bands,
she gave them the gift of a spark.
So when the time came for the wildwood to crown
a queen who was clever and kind,
the Arden chose she, to evermore be
with the heart of the forest, entwined.”
There was a smattering of applause from a few guards, but most of them were giving Aliena a strange look, and I leaned in to whisper urgently in her ear.
“Time to work your magyk, song spinner.”
Aliena winked at me and then spoke out loud to the men, who were now working to fix our cart wheel onto their wagon. “Perhaps something different…
Be still, child, listen well,
I have a tale that I must tell.
A faerie story, this is not,
So heed my warning, as you ought.
The Devil lives in Arden Wood,
A painted demon in a hood.
This monster, lurking deep within,
the seed of evil, born of sin.
If you step beneath the trees,
You’ll find no mercy for your pleas.
He shows no pity, shows no fear,
For human sorrow, sheds no tears.
Poisoned arrows on his bow,
A gruesome face he will not show.
If your coins he does not steal,
The wounds he leaves may never heal.
Hear me, child, when I say:
Make no bargains with the fay,
And stay away from Arden Wood,
Far from the demon, Robin Hood.”
I held my breath as she finished the song, looking around at the men’s slack faces.
With the magyk gift she’d bargained from Titania, Aliena had enchanted them.
Every single one either leaned up against a wagon, or sat in the dirt, staring at her with wide, blank eyes.
Quiet and unassuming as always, Aliena strummed her fingers over the strings one more time, playing a strange, resonant chord which went out like a wave, causing each man to drop where he was—fast asleep in the dirt.
The horses whickered anxiously, and Briony went to try and soothe the officer’s palfrey as it pranced.
There was a tense silence, then Devil’s little band appeared from between the trees—Larch at the front, carrying a pair of hatchets, followed by Jon in his bear form.
They were accompanied by a faun couple, a pair of twin fay men with blue dragonfly wings, a young woman with pale, green skin and thorn-like protrusions on her shoulders, and a small, hunched man with spines like a hedgehog, among several others.
Devil emerged last, wings at his back and a red-fletched arrow set on his bow.
As Jon and Larch directed the others to begin uncovering the wagons, he walked between some of the sleeping guards, crouching down to rob them of daggers, wedding bands, coin purses, and other trinkets.
One man twitched, groaning loudly, and Devil landed a vicious kick to his face before walking away.
“Unnecessary,” I told him when he came to stand beside me.
“Is it?” He produced a small steel knife in a beautifully embroidered leather sheath, which I’d just watched him pilfer off a sleeping man, then tucked it into my belt. “For you, my darling.”
“How romantic,” I snorted, even though I couldn’t help smiling.
Aliena crossed her arms. “I play his very favorite song and see how he thanks me. Ungrateful beast.”
“Well done, Al,” said Devil, leaning forward to drop a stolen signet ring into her pocket.
She batted him away and we all watched as the wagons were revealed.
Each one looked like an enormous safe box made of dark wood, with iron fittings.
They were taller than the horses themselves, with rounded tops, but a wave of unease overtook me when I saw that thin, haphazard slits had been cut into the top of one box.
Just as Jon raised his massive paw to slash the lock off the wagon’s door, I gripped Devil’s arm.
“Something isn’t right…” I moved over to stand behind Larch and murmured, “I don’t think there’s gold in this one.”
The faun gave me an alarmed look and called, “Jon, hold! Not yet!”
The bear turned to us, snorting in confusion, but before anyone could say another word, the wagon rocked and a strangled, female voice cried out from inside.
“Larch? Larch! Open this fucking door now!”
Larch went completely still, his eyes wide and horrified, then he roared, “Open it!”
Jon whirled and swiped his massive paw at the padlock, then wrenched the door wide open. A blur of brown and white shot out of the box, knocking Larch clean off his hooves.
“Gods, Cee, is that really you?” he cried. They fell into the dirt together, laughing and kissing each other’s faces. With a harsh cry, Larch wrapped his arms around Celia’s back, burying his face in her matted hair and holding her like he might never let go.
As much as I wanted to be happy for them, I exchanged a look with Devil, who raised his bow and came to stand beside me.
The box’s interior was dark and dank, with filthy straw spilling out, and the rest of the people inside were not nearly as happy to see us.
Several of them screamed when he produced an orb of light and let it float in above their heads. But then, I heard my own name.
“Miss May?” A tall man unfolded himself from where he was crouched, and lumbered between the other prisoners to step outside.
“Quince!” I cried, hands flying to my mouth. “Mercy, what are you doing here?”
He collapsed beside the wagon, dropping his head into his hands, and I fell to my knees in front of him. “They killed her,” he sobbed. “They fucking killed her, May!”
My heart sank, because I knew there was only one person he could be talking about, and I whispered her name. “Lidy…”
“Yes,” he groaned, his broad shoulders shaking. “It was my fault! My fault…”
“Oh, Quince, I’m sure it wasn’t,” I murmured, putting a hand on his back while tears filled my eyes.
“What is this…” Devil said under his breath, turning back to the wagon.
Larch had ordered Jon to move away and was calling the other prisoners to step out.
They were terrified, filthy, starving, and appeared to have almost nothing in common between them—a mix of men and women, all ages, even two small children, all colors, and all walks of life too.
Several wore the ragged remains of fine clothing, and it was one of these women who pointed back into the wagon as she stepped down.
“I can’t get the poor thing to move,” she squeaked. “Blind drunk…and she tried to bite me…”
I stood up and went to peer inside as Devil’s orb floated to the back of the prison wagon. Lying completely still on the straw, wearing a taffeta gown that might have once been vibrant pink, was Lady Helena.