“If I cannot prevent,I’ll cure. If I cannot cure, I’ll mend. If I cannot mend, I’ll stay with you, until the bitter end.”
“Once more,” I instructed, and Lidy repeated the prayer. The heat of the magyk—a thread being pulled from under my skin too quickly—burned its waydown my arm and into hers. When she finished speaking, I lifted my hand, then the rag. The scars were angry and red, hardly subtle, but they were scars, at least. She would suffer no infection this time. I stood and leaned against the table for a moment, rushing in my ears and heat prickling my scalp. The price of my gift, which the Devil had warned me about. The gift that was not a gift at all, but a tether. A manacle I would soon remove from around my ankle.
“Thank you,” Quince muttered. “I know how dangerous it is…for you. I can never—”
“Youmustbring her to the Abbey next time, Quince,” I said sharply. “Anywhispers floating down the canals might put all of you at risk. You understand?”
“Of course.”
“I need to find Will now. Please.”
“He said that, if I saw you, I was to tell you to meet him at ‘the old tree’.”
“Thank you, my friend.”
“I’m sorry, May,” Quince called after me as I made for the door.
“We all do what we must,” I assured him, then slipped as quickly as I could down the stairs without twisting my ankles. Back out on the footpath beside Bishop’s Canal, I forced myself to leave behind the smell of the saffron-butter chicken, and the memory of Lidy’s pale eyes.
Chapter five
Oak & Arrows
Threading through the festivalcrowds was a challenge. They swelled the closer I got to the edge of the city, where Nottingham Keep and the tournament grounds sat. But I managed to keep my wits about me, continuing to avoid any man wearing red, even if they were not part of the Iron Fist. As if to remind me just how many threats I now faced, nearly every wall bore a Reward poster with ‘The Devil of Arden’ or ‘Robin Hood’ emblazoned across the center, and a quiver of red-fletched arrows caught my attention, bobbing through the crowd to my left. I stopped dead and reflexively reached into my pocket to check the coin. Not blank. Not yet, anyway. I could only pray that, by the time the Devil called in my debt, Will and I would be halfway across the world, unreachable.
The red-feathered arrows vanished into the melee and I craned my neck, trying to see where they’d gone, but it was as if my mind was playing tricks. Until I saw them again immediately on my right. This time, I ducked between bodies in the crowd, slamming into people, desperate to keep the arrows in my sights. But then a second bundle of red appeared in front of me.
Another quiver.
More arrows.
And another. There were at least four of them in the crowd, and I realized that people had dressed themselves in long, green cloaks, pulled hoods over their faces, worn snake masks or painted fake blood on their skin, and dyed the fletching on their arrows. They were only costumes. My greatest fear, the terror that haunted me at night, the shame I hid at all costs, had been turned into a fucking party costume. Anger flooded all the way to my fingertips. At the entrance to thetournament grounds, however, it dissipated somewhat when I saw that the Iron Fist were well occupied, pulling anyone who appeared to be dressed as the Devil aside, forcing them to remove masks and hoods, then washing the dye off their arrows.
At the point where the crowd began to bottleneck onto the tournament grounds, I skirted to the right and hurried along the wall of the outer bailey. It wound away, following the track of an old moat, which had long since been filled in with a mixture of dirt and iron slag—one of Prince Johar’s many bulwarks against faerie magyk. It was whispered that he feared the return of the fay even more than he feared the return of his elder brother, the Absent Prince. After he had captured Nottingham from Rykard, and both their armies had been torn to shreds in the Arden, Johar had set about fortifying it against the Fair Folk. A new wall, layered with bricks of iron ore, had been built between the city and the Channel, which itself had been infused with iron through the establishment of smelting operations at either end. All spikes, nails, doorknobs, window frames, fences, and railings were required to be iron too. Every street in the city reeked of it—an ever-present, metallic tang of paranoia which had infected much of the population too.
Checking over my shoulder to ensure I wasn’t followed, I rushed along the bailey wall until I found the spot that had long ago been overgrown by an unruly hedgerow. It had been our secret place since we were children—mine and Will’s—a small, hidden courtyard at the base of a disused drum tower. Pushing aside the last of the branches, I spotted Will standing beside a crumbling fountain with his bow drawn, poised to send an arrow flying into the ancient oak tree that grew at least two stories up the inner wall. When we first discovered the place, Will had climbed up and carved our names on one of the limbs, as a testament to how we had met. The rest of it, he used for target practice.
I stopped, my heart slowing and the fretful jumble of emotions melting away when I saw him.Before he could notice me standing there, I announced my presence by calling out the first line of his favorite poem—the one he always recited like a mantra in moments of overwhelm or apprehension.
“When the gyrfalcon calls, it is my time to go…”
Will turned to look at me, smiling, and continued, “So strip down my arrows, and unstring my bow.”
“I haven’t a penny or home to my name…”
“But nor have I sorrow, heartache, or shame…” He set his bow against the fountain and approached me, arms out, so I could fall into them and murmur the next line against his chest.
“I’ve done naught with my life, the gods know it’s true…”
“But naught is not nothing, when I have loved you.”
Will buried his face in my hair and held me tight against his body, while I tried to lose myself in the feeling of being loved and safe, even if it was only for this moment.
“Your father came to Locksley last night,” I said quickly as I pulled away, “with Archbishop Piers.”
Will’s eyes widened. “He said nothing to me of it. Why was he there?”
“He wants to bring the Iron Fist to the Abbey, and he wants us to spy on people for him.”
