PROLOGUE
I was in a miserable mood.
I wove through the street market of Brier Len, earning scowls and dirty looks as I elbowed past the townsfolk with a copper coin clenched tight in my fist. There was nothing I hated more than making this trip uphill.
Today, the market was packed with people fighting for a glimpse of the six horses pulling a crimson carriage along the dirt-lined outskirts. Ten mounted guardsmen rode alongside, parting the crowd to clear a path. And etched on the carriage door, a silver stag crowned with ivy marked it as part of Hyrall’s royal household.
Skirtsfolk crowded the roadside, and a few brave souls rushed up to the guardsmen, dropping to their knees with clasped hands.
…please Your Majesties, perhaps the crown could spare a…
…may the King and Queen take mercy on us…
…but a single copper from the King’s coffers…
Desperate pleas spilled from their mouths as they begged for charity, calling out to the curtained windows of the carriage. The air was thick with it, like something about tosnap.
The guardsmen slammed their steel boots down on the kneeling folk, shoving them aside, and shouted so all to hear:
Make way for the Crown!
Move it!
The Crown is passing!
Hands grabbed at my shoulders and back as I was shoved to the front of the crowd, and my breath caught when I saw the horse in front of me. It was massive, broad through the chest, and had a coat the color of pale stone. My head barely reached its shoulder, and I stood close enough to nearly touch the stirrups hanging beneath its belly.
Suddenly, I was shoved forward and I cursed. I stumbled straight through the guards’ formation and slammed into the side of the carriage. My arms flew up to brace myself, but not fast enough to stop my head from hitting the wood.
Before I could shout, a hand seized the back of my neck and a fistful of my hair. I reached for my scalp, eyes squeezed shut as the pain spread. Through my wince, I caught a glimpse of amber eyes watching me from inside the carriage, just before the guard shoved me back into the crowd.
I hit the ground with a hard thud but scrambled to my feet before I could be trampled. Around me, the crowd grew restless, pressing forward in hopes of some offering from the Crown.
Annoyed and flustered, I brushed off my cloak and tried to peer over the sea of heads for a way out. When I couldn’t find one, I grumbled and let myself be carried along, waiting for an opening. Once I spotted a gap, I slipped toward the stalls, surprised to find it led me exactly where I needed to be.
At least something had gone right in this mess.
“Fuck the Crowns and their pampered arses!” a tawny-haired merchant shouted nearby, throwing a crude gesture toward the horse-drawn carriage.
As if noticing me for the first time, he turned and said, “Oi, lass. What can I get you?”
“Flint, and any kindling you can spare.”
He began gathering small, dry pieces of clean, unblemished wood. “It’s a damn shame what’s happened to these woods,” he said, voice rough. “Rotten to the roots, and what’s the Crown done? Nothing. We skirtsfolk are left to rot with it.”
The merchant wasn’t wrong. In the years I’d been alive, the woods around Brier Len had turned dry and lifeless. A stale, heavy air hung over us skirtsfolk, clinging to our skin like sickness. The fields stopped giving and the crops curled and died. It was as if the earth itself had been poisoned, clear down to the very loam. Folks who burned the spoiled wood were left choking, coughing up blood in fits that never really went away.
“That’ll be a copper.”
“A full coin? For a bit of flint and kindling?” I stared at him in disbelief.
“Aye,” he said with a scowl. “That’s right.”
“I see.” I narrowed my eyes.
He leaned in suggestively, locking eyes with me. “I’ll drop it to a half-penny if you settle up a different way.”
It was getting late, and the trip upland had already worn on my nerves. I needed to leave soon if I wanted to make the long journey home before dark.
