Chapter Twenty-Three The Burning Grove
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE BURNING GROVE
The sun rose over the Chiming Wood, and the trees reached their branches toward the sky. They looked like fingers, stretching from darkness toward the day’s first light, yearning to touch salvation.
I was in the washroom again, sitting on a stool, and Rory leaned low, painting dark strokes of wet charcoal over my cheeks.
A tradition in the Chiming Wood—to paint the likeness of a skeleton upon one’s face to deter birke.
And while I did not need it, it felt good not to wear my veil.
To feel the tip of the brush run over my face.
“Hold still,” Rory said, sucking his bottom lip into his mouth as he focused.
“I am.”
“You’re frowning.” He ran the brush down the ridge of my nose. “Putting lines in my masterful work.”
The corners of my mouth twitched. Rory dipped the brush back into the wet charcoal. I shut my eyes, and he painted, my browbone, my eyelids, and the hollows beneath. When he was done, I looked up.
“Pretty,” Rory whispered, his eyelashes fanning his cheeks as he looked down at me.
“I want to paint your face, too.”
He let me, and I spent a full five minutes on each of his eyelids, painting them, then smudging the charcoal with my finger, wearing it in. “Where are the rings for your ear?” I murmured.
He grinned. Fetched them. One by one I put them back where they belonged.
“There,” I murmured, looking at him. Charcoal around his eyes, morning light catching along the rings in his ear…
The pretense had vanished, the knave gone without so much as a farewell.
This—rough and roguish, warm gravel in his voice and a flush in his cheeks—was all Rory. “We’re not strangers anymore.”
He took the brush from my hand. “Should I paint your mouth, too?”
Our gazes caught, the impact so sharp we both drew in a breath. “Yes.”
He inhaled through his nose, and ran the tip of the brush over my mouth, wetting my lips and painting them black. Then he did it again—dipped the brush and spread it over my mouth with arduous slowness.
The gargoyle limped into the room. “I think Bartholomew is painted well enough,” he said pleasantly. “Unless you are trying to do something else to her mouth.”
Rory withdrew, a crimson stain on his cheeks, perused his work, and said in a rough voice, “You’re perfect.”
“Not yet.” There was a clang, a bang, and then Maude was pushing into the washroom, carrying something bulky.
My breastplate.
I jumped from my stool. “I thought Tory had it.”
Maude nodded. “Yes, well. Took some barking and a few promising threats, but I got the entire panoply—your clothes, too, should you wish them. Diviner robe, more gossamer—”
“I just want the armor.” How strange that looking upon something as hard as steel could soften something in me. “Help me put it on.”
All three of them tended me together, taking the breastplate and applying it to my body with the precision of sculptors molding clay. I stood a little taller, fortified a little better. When they did the straps, I shifted my weight. “I’d forgotten how heavy it was.”
The gargoyle tapped it directly over my heart. “Is it too much to bear?”
I met each of their gazes, Maude’s stoic and green, Rory’s and the gargoyle’s stone, and realized none of them had ever once peered into my eyes hoping to find themselves. They had always, always searched for me. “Not right now.”
When I stepped out of Petula Hall onto the drive, the light of dawn kissed over the shoulders of my armor.
Along the road, folk from the Wood came to watch, drawn by purple banners and the promise of the hunt.
They lent their reverence, bowing their heads or staring awestruck at me and Rory and the gargoyle, wrapped in his pink robe and several blankets besides.
Diviner, they whispered. Champion, knave, gargoyle, Aisling.
But to Maude—oh, how they smiled. The Bauer name, like the Chiming Wood itself, was a kind of home to the foresters.
Men, women, and children flocked to it, lifting their axes, their hands, as she passed by, their ardor as visible as the charcoal around their eyes.
The king might have outgrown us, but devotion, loyalty, is as mighty a currency as gold—Benedict Castor the Third had always taken note of any abundance of wealth.
When we joined Edora Eichel near the cusp of the trees behind her house, nobles and foresters and knights alike made room for us—even the gargoyle—and Benji did not confront us.
He even tried to smile, that he might siphon some of our goodwill onto himself.
We gathered near the other foresters who’d come for the hunt.
All wore weapons, leathers, breastplates, and charcoal upon their faces.
Benji kept a sword and small pouch on his belt for the Artful Brigand’s coin, wore a shortbow and a quiver over his shoulders, and kept a net, like the ones they’d used in the Peaks for the feats of strength, on his belt.
Still, no paint could hide the bruises Rory had dealt Benji last night.
His eyes and ears were swollen, his lips split. Rory waved at him. Winked.
The king glowered, then placed his helmet over his head.
“Bitch,” the gargoyle muttered, smiling to himself.
“Hunters,” Edora called in greeting, her yellow robe catching the breeze.
“Champions, King Castor, Diviner—foresters. Welcome. We begin at the rising of the sun, for the birke are weakest in the light, as are all wicked and terrible things. Your weapon is yours to choose, the rules of the hunt plain—the first to return to my house carrying the limb of a dead birke shall win the hunt.”
Samuel Eichel nodded. He, like the rest of the participants, wore a weapon on his belt—a sword. But then he reached for a leather pouch, extracting an entirely different weapon.
The Faithful Forester’s chime.
“It is my grandson’s honor to carry the chime that my family once found in our Wood,” Edora said. “With it, we learn the portents on the wind. We learn to feel what we cannot see—”
“The chime did not belong to your family,” Benji said, interrupting her. “It was gifted to me by the abbess of Aisling Cathedral. Your grandson carries it now as a token of honor that I have bestowed upon him.”
He stepped up to the aged woman. “Your daughter Helena Eichel put me on my knees when last I came to your hamlet, just before she was consumed by sprites.” He unfurled his fist, displaying the Artful Brigand’s coin.
“It is my pleasure to find a birke of the Wood in her name and butcher it—and my campaign shall not end there. It will carry on, Aisling Cathedral avenged and the hamlets cleansed of their infestation and blight. Every day shall be a hunt against sprites.”
The knights cheered, and the king’s voice hardened. “It is also my pleasure to accept your fealty to me, Edora Eichel, as I once pledged mine in the sacred grove.”
Wincing, Edora lowered herself to her knees in front of the king.
When Benji spoke, his voice came out tinny, distorted in his helmet.
“You have done fine work in your hamlet, hunting sprites. But the task is not done. Never forget, it is not you who brings greatness to the hamlets, but me, the Omens, and my Diviner who speaks for them.”
Edora tried to get up but couldn’t, her wrinkled face lined with pain.
The nobles gathered around her, but Maude got there first. She lent her hand, her strength, and when Edora rose, her eyes were not on the king or me or even the stone chime—but to the person who’d bestowed kindness upon her. “Thank you,” she said.
Maude nodded, then turned to the crowd. “A tournament is a spectacle, and the hunt is a sport. But that does not mean you are entitled to view it. The birke are dangerous, especially in numbers. Wait along the road where it is safe.”
All eyes were on her as she told of the safeties, and dangers, of the hunt. Rory came up behind me as she spoke. “Benji is up to something,” he murmured. “Be on your guard.”
“It’s not about the hunt.” My eyes were on Samuel and the stone object in his hand. “It’s about that chime.”
Rory’s hand slid down my arm, something heavy slipping from his hand to mine. I didn’t have to look to know it was the stonemason’s hammer. “You’ve got wool in case he rings it?”
I drew in a breath. Nodded.
Rory’s voice rumbled against my ear. “If you’re not out of there in two hours, I’m coming in after you.”
“No matter what happens”—I turned to the gargoyle—“you stay put. I don’t want there to be a single more crack in your body when I return.”
He looked up at me like he had no idea what I was saying, only that he was certain it was wrong.
“Diviner.”
I turned. Tory Bassett was there, hand on my elbow. “A word.”
She took me to the edge of the trees, peering narrowly over my shoulder at Rory and the gargoyle, who made no attempt to hide their intention to eavesdrop.
I looked down my nose at Tory, noting the weapons on her belt. Spear, and dagger. “You’ll be joining the hunt, I presume.”
She nodded, her gaze skirting over my eyes, then landing on my breastplate and staying there. “You seem improved. Is your injury… Are you…?”
“What do you want, Tory?”
It took her a moment to speak. “The wedding. I knew what Benedict had in mind—we all did. We’d stayed up that night, stripping the trees near Castle Luricht of beech leaves and antagonizing the sprites.
The king wanted to make a show of how rotten sprites were after what they’d done to the cathedral—it seemed the right thing to do. A little excessive, but…”
Her gaze fell to her belt. “I hadn’t realized how many would attack, or the condition of their hunger. They came in a fury. I was trying to ward them off when you threw the king’s coin. My aim slipped.”
For all our time together, the only certain thing I knew about Tory Bassett was that her loyalty could be bought with the loom stone. Pith, I didn’t even like the woman. I put a hand to my abdomen, surprised by the feeling of utter betrayal. “You threw the spear.”