The Castle Behind Thorns (15 page)

26

Star-taker

I
T HAD NOT BEEN HER INTENTION TO LIE TO
S
AND, BUT
Perrotte could not tell him that his father killed her. Though she had no doubt that Jannet had ordered the deed done, Gilles had made and delivered the poisoned slippers or gloves—she wasn't sure which, and perhaps it was both.
You lied, my lady. This wasn't gentle
.

Perhaps she should have told him—not just about Gilles, but also about Bleyz and the rebellion. But his rage was too much for her to bear. The small glimpse she'd seen had frozen her in place with fear—this wasn't
Sand
, was it?—but also, she'd been . . . just a bit . . . annoyed. This was
her
problem, not his. She was the one who'd been displaced and murdered.

She waited, standing stiffly in the middle of the treasury, until she could no longer hear Sand's footsteps. Rubbing the tense muscles in her jaw, she cast about, looking for the leather sack she'd brought in with her. When she found it, she scooped coins into the sack haphazardly and tucked it into her bodice.

She climbed her favorite guard tower with a tight throat. She felt on the verge of tears, yet no tears fell. She signaled with her lantern, covering and uncovering the light three times. Then she waited, still rubbing her jaw, until Sir Bleyz's torch approached. He called softly to her; she waved, and didn't speak, just threw the pouch of coins out over the hedge as hard as she could. It landed well beyond the thorns.

Sir Bleyz dismounted and picked up the sack. He looked inside, then stared back up at her. “This will do very well, my lady!” he said. He tilted his head to one side. “Six times this amount would hire a company of Swiss pikemen.”

Perrotte swallowed hard against the pain in her throat. “Come back tomorrow night, I'll have it ready for you.”

Sir Bleyz saluted her as though he were a knight about to take the field for the joust. Words of praise and gratitude tumbled from his lips, but she didn't care. She turned away and left the tower.

She was tired, but she did not feel that she could return to her father's room. She crept down to the kitchen, blew out her lantern candle, and curled up on the warm spot on the hearthstones. The only noise was the whisper of the fire, and the occasional tap of Merlin's talons on the rafter.

Perrotte fell asleep.

 

S
HE WOKE WHEN SHE
sensed Sand nearby. She hadn't heard him enter the kitchen, but the swish of his clothing and the soft padding noise of his stocking feet so close to her face, back and forth, back and forth as he found food, must have disturbed her slumber.

She kept her eyes shut.

He left before long, and she breathed a sigh of relief and sat up. Not much later, she heard the telltale noises of his work in the smithy.

Her throat still hurt, like there were words stuck in it.

She should tell Sand. If not about his father, then at least about Bleyz and her barons and her Swiss pikemen.

She heated water to wash up, but untying her hair, brushing it, and retying it felt like too much work, so she just left it alone, and went down to the smithy.

Sand was working the bellows when she arrived. Perrotte just stood and watched.

He pulled one of the pieces of metal out of the fire, quickly hammered it against the anvil at a sharp angle, straightened the angle, hammered some more, and replaced the item in the fire. He began the same process with the other piece of metal. He moved with a strange, urgent energy. She had never seen him like this.

Perrotte didn't think Sand had seen her in the doorway, he was so focused on his work. But he turned his head and barked, “Come here. Hold this piece.”

She didn't like his tone, but as long as he was using it, she didn't feel bad about not confessing to him. She took the tongs from him, holding the metal exactly as he instructed.

“When I tell you to put it in the fire, lay it in right where the coals are brightest and hottest. Go in sideways—this is a welding fire, and there's only a small opening to reach the coals,” he said. “Up to about halfway—here.” He pointed at the spot on the iron bar. “Pull it out as soon as I tell you, then hold it just like this. I'll do the rest. But don't move it yet.”

He pulled over a small box of white powder, and sprinkled some of the powder over the flattened, notched end of the metal he'd just worked. He did the same with the other piece. “This powder is called flux. Now, put your piece back in the fire.”

They put both their pieces into the heart of the fire, then Sand pumped the bellows with strong, steady strokes. Perrotte peered in at the white-hot burning coals, mesmerized by the fierce light that seemed to bore straight through her eyes and into her brain.

“Does the metal match the coal yet?” Sand asked.

“No . . . not really.”

He worked the bellows some more, steady and strong.

“Close,” she told him, and now he pumped the bellows with vigor.

He craned his neck, staring into the fire. “Now.”

She pulled out the metal piece and held it on the anvil as he'd instructed. Quick as a hare, he brought out his piece, fitting it over hers so that the notches aligned. Then he brought his hammer down in one powerful stroke. A bright spark shot out between them, almost crossing the smithy. The tongs jarred Perrotte's hands as Sand struck twice more.

“Open your tongs.” He pulled the metal away from her to put it in the fire again. The two bars were one complete piece now.

How could he
ever
argue that his mending wasn't magic?

“It's not magic,” he growled, as though he'd heard her thought—or maybe she'd spoken aloud. “It's just welding. Almost any smith can do it.”

She cocked her head, trying to figure out what he was making.

He heated the metal again, brought it out and began to expertly bend it into a circular shape. He worked the piece for some time, alternately flattening it and making the ends meet. He notched both ends, as he had done before when the piece of metal had been two bars; then he added more flux, and welded the ends together. He'd made a complete circle.

Perrotte's heart sank a little when she realized he hadn't asked her for her help with this weld, but then Sand pulled from his ash pile two more complete circles. She leaned forward to examine the circles—then her breath caught.

“Sand,” she said, becoming still. Her fingers reached out to touch, but he swatted them away.

“Dark heat!” he reminded her. “It's quite hot still.”

“Is it—is it an armilla?”

Sand looked confused. “No. It's an astrolabe!”

She wanted to laugh, but knew how rude that would be—even though she would be laughing from delight, not out of ridicule.

“An astrolabe is flatter than this,” she said. “You're planning to put this all together, so all the metal circles link up to look sort of like a sphere, and it sort of spins, right? That means it's an armilla—an armillary sphere.”

“No, it's an astrolabe. Like you had, once, until—” He bit down on the words, and reached inside his tunic to pull out a folded sheet of parchment. He handed it to her. It was a diagram of an armilla for certain, but it was labeled “spherical astrolabe.” Perrotte could see where Sand's confusion came from.

“Oh, I see,” Perrotte said. She had possessed a flat astrolabe, not an armilla—but her stomach stirred with excitement. What did it matter, the name Sand called it? She'd always wanted an armilla. “Yes, I guess that's a different term for it. Sand! Can you really make this?”

He nodded. “The details might take some time to get right, but I can get the basics together pretty quickly, I think.”

“And . . .” She hesitated, not wanting to sound greedy.

“It's for you,” he said.

She thought her face might fall off from grinning so broadly. If they hadn't been surrounded by hot metal and fire, she wasn't sure she wouldn't have tackled him with a hug. She settled for laughing with joy and clapping her hands.

Sand was frowning. “It's not an astrolabe then, like the one you had?”

“It's better,” Perrotte assured him.

They spent the day working on the armilla—which Perrotte decided to always refer to as her spherical astrolabe, as a sort of thank-you for Sand's astonishing gift. It was a tool much harder to come by than her old astrolabe; her father had never agreed to let her have one.

“Astrolabe means ‘star-taker,'” Perrotte told Sand.

“Mm-hm,” Sand said placidly, neither excited to know it nor uncomfortable to learn this. He was in his element, peaceful and productive, making something new with skills he understood. She might have been jealous if she hadn't been so excited.

“And I know the perfect motto to put on the side,” she announced.

“Oh?”

“‘
Mens videt astra.'
‘The soul sees the stars.'”

“I like it,” Sand said. “That is so much more
your
motto than either the phoenix or the swan mottoes.”

Perrotte laughed at the truth of this, and spent the next hour babbling happily about astronomy. Sand just nodded and kept working, occasionally directing her to help with this bit or that of the forging.

They ate and hunted Merlin and went back to work, ate again, then went to sleep. The heaviness in Perrotte's chest was gone because they were still friends. But the pain in her throat returned, because though they were friends, she still could not bring herself to tell him her last secrets.

 

P
ERROTTE WOKE AFTER A
few short hours of sleep. She slept longer each night, she realized, and she had some hope that, by the time she was twenty or so, she might sleep through the night and only experience the regular sort of insomnia that she'd had before she died.

She went to the treasury by lantern light and gathered money for the Swiss pikemen, then took it up to the guard tower. She parceled the coins into several twists of cloth that she could throw easily, then waited for Sir Bleyz.

She and Sand would have to pause in their armilla—no, their
spherical astrolabe
—project and get back to the mending. They needed to bring down the thorns and get free of this place. She couldn't let Bleyz go off and fight her battle for her. She needed to be there, to assert her place as Countess, to bring Jannet to justice, and perhaps above all, to prove that she was not dead.

She signaled with her lantern. Sir Bleyz came. They spoke briefly, and she threw him the money. He departed. She was watching his torch retreat into the dark fields below, when a footstep scraped behind her.

She whirled, aiming the lantern's light at the noise.

Sand's voice was ragged. “War, Perrotte?”

“War,” Perrotte answered fiercely. “I told you I would beat plowshares into swords.”

“That was to cut your way out of the hedge!”

“I believe I said that I would then run my enemies through,” she said, and she stepped around him, intending to go downstairs. She was never going to let herself be trapped in a tower again.

He stood aside and let her pass but followed her. “War, Perrotte! People will die. People with families, people with—”

She whirled on him, her lantern unsteady between them. “People who can't pay their taxes? People who can't afford the Countess's mills or her ovens or her winepresses?”

Sand crossed his arms. “They'll pay with their lives—people armed with pitchforks and poorly forged swords!”

“Yes!” Perrotte said. “That is the price of rebellion! People risk their lives. And when the thorns come down, I'm going to go out and risk the same. If I lose the war, do you think I'll live even a
day
past laying down arms?”

He was deadly quiet for a moment. “It doesn't matter. The hedge isn't coming down,” he said with eerie calm. “I'll not mend another thing in this castle.
No one
dies. Nobody's brother or father or son falls in this war, and
you
don't get executed, either, Perrotte. We will just stay here. Live here. Forever.”

“So we die here together of starvation or old age? No, thank you! I'll keep mending things. You've taught me enough. I may not have the magic, but I can mend it all!”

“You'll never get the chance,” he said, snatching the lantern from her hands and dashing it to the stones.

27

Army

I
T COULD NOT COME TO WAR.

It could not come to Perrotte's second death, either.

The thorns must never come down.

He strode to the smithy and grabbed the sledgehammer. He knocked aside the bricks of his forge with a few heavy swings. Embers tumbled out onto the loose sand floor and burned ineffectively alone. Bricks crumbled and fell.

All he could think about was Perrotte's head on a chopping block, and his grandfather's smithy, empty of the son lost to war. Sand turned and swung a weighty blow at the smithy door.

Perrotte was shouting: “Stop, Sand, stop!”

He turned to her, panting. “You started it! You can stop it. Will you stop it?”

“Yes! Yes! Don't do this, Sand. Don't undo all our mending!”

“Isn't war just as bad as this? Worse?” He gestured at a broken anvil in the corner, lying on its side. “Just as destructive, but to more than just
things
.”

She was standing between him and the astrolabe, he noticed. He wondered if
that
was the real reason she wanted him to stop. But since it was breaking his heart to destroy the smithy, he lowered the sledge.

“You'll stop this knight from raising an army?” he demanded. “You won't go out there as soon as the hedge is down and get yourself killed?”

“Yes, Sand,” Perrotte said. She wasn't crying, though her voice broke. He admired her strength of will.

He dropped the big hammer to the floor and stared at her. He hoped—how he hoped—

A distant
boom
interrupted his thought. Perrotte's head whipped around.

“Is that—” Sand began.

“Cannon fire?”

He had no idea.

They ran out the door, racing to the nearest guard tower.

Beyond the thorns, beyond the asparagus fields, stood a small army.

Sand squinted. He could make out a line of cannons aimed at the castle. Above them hung a puff of smoke, not yet dispersed in the still air of morning.

“Phoenixes!” Perrotte snarled. “Everywhere phoenixes, not a swan in sight.”

Sand frowned, looking at the phoenix-spangled banners of the Boisblancs in the distance. He was so used to seeing all the phoenixes around the castle entwined with silver swans, that it only then occurred to him that the swans were unusual in some way. He'd never seen the swans before he'd awakened in the castle. The Countess must have removed the Cygne swans from everything in the countship over the last twenty-five years.

“What are they doing?” Sand asked, bewildered. He craned his neck this way and that, trying to figure out where the cannonball had hit.

In the distance, he sighted another puff of smoke. An instant later the
boom
arrived, a cannonball fast on its heels.

The cannonball flew into the hedge, and the thorns absorbed the projectile almost silently.

Sand would have laughed with relief if he hadn't seen another smoke puff in the distance.

This time, the cannonball struck the wall in the thin bare space where the thorns had receded. The wall crumbled, and the thorns moved yearningly toward the broken spot.

“If they destroy the castle walls with the cannons, will the thorns just come and . . . kill us?” Perrotte asked. “Is that her plan?”

Sand shuddered. “That's diabolical.”

“Well, what else can
she
do? She can't cut her way through the thorns and take back the castle. The standard tactics for breaking a siege are useless to her. Starving us out won't work—we can't surrender, anyway, because of the thorns. She can't wait for our guards to grow careless—we haven't any. She can't bribe any doorkeepers—we haven't those, either. Destroying the walls is her only way of destroying us.”

They braced themselves for the next hit, but no further smoke puffs rose up from the line of cannons.

In the distance, a mounted knight rode slowly out, bearing a white flag on the end of his lance.

“They won't shoot more. They want to parley,” Perrotte said. Then she brightened. “Wait here!”

She ran off, and Sand waited, watching the knight approach. Perrotte returned shortly, clutching a book that had been reordered but not yet mended.

Perrotte hunkered down with the book, flipping over a few pages, scanning them quickly. “Here. ‘A garrison of two hundred men armed with forty-eight hand crossbows, two great crossbows, and about forty thousand arrow and bolts, can hold off an attacking force of several thousand.' Oh, and . . .” She scanned the next few lines. “We'd need a few trebuchets and cannons, too.”

It had never occurred to Sand to mend any of the defensive weapons of the castle. They were never his priority. And they still weren't.

“How does
that
help us?” Sand asked. “We don't have two hundred soldiers. We have . . . us.”

“You could repair the great crossbows
,
” she said. “That would be a start. It might be enough to keep them wary of us.”

“Don't we have the thorns for wariness?”

“Better to have the crossbows
and
the thorns.”

He nodded. In the distance, he heard unintelligible words. The knight was shouting something. Sand gestured at Perrotte. “Stay down. Don't let them see you, not just yet.”

“Parley!” Sand could make out the words as the knight drew closer. “I want to talk with whoever is in the castle!”

Sand leaned over the edge of the guard tower's wall, showing his face. “Well?” he called.

“What is your name?”

“Alexandre, son of Gilles Smith.”

“And what are you doing in that castle?”

Sand glanced back at Perrotte, feeling a funny half-smile creep over his lips. What was the best answer? She gave him an answering smile, and a shrug. Then she motioned:
Go on, then.

“I'm mending it,” he called down.

This, of course, was not an expected answer, and the knight was silent. The knight was too far away for Sand to read his face.

“And to whom do
I
speak?” Sand asked.

“Sir Jos, son of Lord Helori.”

Behind him, Perrotte swore. Sand glanced back. “He was a
baby
,” Perrotte whispered.

“So you don't know anything about him.”

Perrotte shrugged. “He had the worst colic!”

“Not helpful!”

Perrotte shrugged again.

Sir Jos called. “How did you get into the castle, Alexandre, son of Gilles Smith?”

Sand shrugged. “A saint kidnapped me from his shrine and put me into a fireplace here. So I guess the answer is, a miracle of Saint Melor. Or so I think. He has not told me.”

“If you are trying to antagonize him, you are doing a good job,” Perrotte whispered.

Sand scuffed his shoe at her. “I'm just telling the truth!”

“You're very good at telling it in the most maddening way possible.”

“Thank you?” Sand looked back at the knight, who was getting too close to the thorns. “Keep your distance from that hedge, Sir Jos!”

But Sir Jos did not watch his distance, and quick as anything, the thorns reached out and snagged the horse's forelegs. The horse did not like this, and tried to rear back. The thorns were too strong, of course, and the horse thrashed and screamed. Sir Jos tumbled to the ground. He jumped to his feet and cut the branches, freeing the horse, who bolted for the horizon.

But while Sir Jos had worked to free the horse, he had not protected himself. The thorns reached for him and pulled him into their center.