There was no use trying to search the crevice. Its back wall was a solid slab of stone, impossible to move, and the rest of the ruined fogou was so thickly overgrown with scrub that they would have had to dig to uncover it. They did find the other end of the tunnel after brushing away some of the overhanging ferns and foliage, but it was blocked. The knockers had done their work too well.

“The carn, then?” asked Martin, gesturing at the top of the ridge. In unison they changed shape—Martin to the tiny black and white bird from which he took his name, Ivy to a darting swift—and flew up the hillside to land by the rocky pile. Martin turned back to human size, his personal preference; Ivy felt more comfortable at piskey-height, but she followed his example. Together they crouched beside the tower, studying the rough and weather-beaten stones that formed its base.

“It was a small one,” she murmured, running her fingers over the rocks. “More square than the others, and flatter… here.”

She laid her palm against the stone, expecting the carn to open for her as it had for the spriggan boy. But no matter how she pushed or pressed, the tower remained as solid as before. Ivy tried all the other foundation stones in turn, then slapped the carn in frustration and sat back.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “I was so sure it was real.”

“It still might be,” said Martin, straightening up and brushing dirt and bracken from his knees. “But likely the opening spell’s worn off over the years. Especially if the carn’s been abandoned as long as you seem to think.” He gave the rock pile a shove, but it refused to move. “Pity. I could think of a few good uses for that treasure. A hot bath and some clean clothes, to start with.”

He didn’t look at her as he spoke, but Ivy’s cheeks heated all the same. She’d been washing as often as she could, but after a week of tramping around the wilder parts of north Cornwall her jeans had grown stiff and the cuffs of her sweater were filthy. Martin’s slim trousers and jacket, on the other hand, looked as fresh as when they’d set out a week ago. She was tempted to ask how he did it, but with her luck it would turn out to be some particularly male—or spriggan—kind of spell that a piskey-girl like her couldn’t do…

“Oh,” she burst out, resisting the urge to smack herself. “Of course! How could I have been so stupid?” And she seized Martin’s wrist, pulled his arm down, and flattened his fingers against the lowest stone.

With a sepulchral rasp the carn opened, revealing a low doorway and a staircase leading down into darkness. Martin snatched his hand back and swore, his grey eyes wide.

“Well,” said Ivy, satisfied, “that proves you really are a spriggan. It wouldn’t open for anyone who wasn’t.” She motioned to the doorway. “Shall we?”

The space inside the carn was barely large enough for the two of them, even once they’d shrunk to half-size. And though the stones appeared rough on the outside, they were so closely fitted together that not a hint of sunlight filtered through. Without her keen night-vision, Ivy would have been blind—but when it came to dark places, she had more than a few piskey tricks to rely on. She willed her skin to glow, sending out a pink-tinged radiance that lit up the interior of the carn.

“Incredible,” Martin murmured, so close that his breath warmed Ivy’s ear. A shiver raced down her spine, and she hurriedly stepped onto the staircase to put some distance between them. Not that he’d frightened her, exactly… but right now she didn’t need any distractions.

As she picked her way down into the blackness, Ivy counted six, seven, eight stairs—all of them a little too high for the average piskey, and too low for most humans. One more and she reached the bottom, stooping under a rough lintel to enter the musty-smelling chamber beyond.

And there it stood—a great earthen jar, filled to overflowing with tarnished metal and age-dulled gemstones. Armor and weapons lay jumbled around its base, shields and breastplates grimed to blankness, a few swords still intact within their rotting scabbards. It was exactly as she’d seen in her dream.

Wondering, Ivy edged closer, drawn to a sheathed blade that must have belonged to a child or a small woman. It looked the right size for her, but did she dare to touch it? What if there was some kind of protective spell on the trove? She turned, looking for Martin…

And there he stood with hands braced on either side of the doorway, eyes shut and teeth set as though in pain. Ivy cursed herself for forgetting how much he hated being underground. “Are you all right?” she asked. “Do you want to go back outside?”

“No,” said Martin curtly, pushing away from the door and striding past her. “I am all agog to see this treasure.”

Before Ivy could warn him, he walked to the crock and plunged his hands inside it. But it seemed the hoard wasn’t enchanted after all, because nothing happened. Daring, she stooped and picked up the sword, pulling it free of its scabbard.

The blade was rust-spotted but unbroken, its edge only slightly notched. She hefted it and made a couple of experimental passes, testing its balance. She had no skill with weapons, but she liked the weight of the sword in her hand: it made her feel strong and purposeful, even heroic. And she hadn’t felt that way since she’d fought Gillian Menadue, the vengeful faery who’d captured Ivy’s little sister and planned to destroy the Delve…

Yet there’d been nothing noble about their last, desperate struggle at the edge of the Great Shaft. Ivy would never forget the sight of Gillian slumped unconscious over the railing, or the shriek as it broke free and sent her tumbling to her death. And though Ivy had saved her people that day, there’d been little joy in a victory that had torn her family apart and forced her into exile. She let the sword drop and turned away.

“If I had to put a number on it,” said Martin, rubbing his thumb over a grime-crusted coin to reveal the glinting metal beneath, “I’d say this trove’s been here at least four hundred years, and most of the treasure would have been old even then. See this?” He handed the coin to Ivy. “That’s Roman.”

They were sitting together on the ridge outside the carn, with the pieces Martin had taken from the hoard—several handfuls’ worth of necklaces, bracelets, rings and brooches, plus a small leather purse full of mixed coinage—spread across the rocks between them. Martin seemed to think it would be worth quite a bit of human money, though from the way he kept caressing the treasure Ivy wondered if he could bring himself to sell it.

“If you say so,” she replied, passing the coin back. “But that only makes my dreaming about it even more strange. Why would I see a vision of something that happened centuries before you and I were born?”

“Cornwall’s a strange land,” said Martin. “Didn’t your mother say something once about old powers in the earth of Kernow, and how the spells the piskeys and other magical folk used to fight each other still linger in the ground?”

It was true. That was how Gillian Menadue had discovered the dark magic known as the Claybane, and turned it against the piskeys of the Delve. Ivy herself had only endured a few minutes of that living death before Gillian’s daughter Molly rescued her, but she would never forget the horror of being trapped in a clay shell, unable to move or speak.

“So,” continued Martin, “maybe this valley remembers what happened here, because the boy felt it so strongly. Maybe that’s what you sensed last night.”

“But why me and not you?” asked Ivy. “You’re the spriggan.”

“True,” said Martin, “but as I told you before, I don’t dream.” He paused, his fingers tracing the shape of a pendant he’d picked up from the heap. “Maybe that’s why you had to dream it for me.”

Ivy was instantly wary. “What do you mean?”

“I think our minds are linked somehow. Ever since I healed you, we’ve been…” He made a vague gesture. “Attuned to one another. Remember when I was trapped in the Claybane, and you were the only one who could hear me? And when I finally managed to send you a message…”

Ivy’s lips parted. “It was in a dream.”

But he hadn’t just spoken to her in words that night. She’d also glimpsed Martin’s memories—not only the recent ones he’d been trying to show her, but visions of his youth and childhood as well. Nothing coherent, just flashes of cityscapes and grimy streets and the faces of people he’d once known. But she’d felt, at that moment, that she was seeing the world through his eyes. Just like she had with the spriggan boy.

“Maybe dream-sharing is something spriggans do,” she said. “Maybe the boy left that memory here for other spriggans to find, to tell them what had happened.” And then, as Martin suggested, Ivy had picked it up from his mind somehow while she slept. But it was an uncomfortable thought, being the keeper of a spriggan’s dreams. Especially in this strange, wild country full of ruins and old battlefields, where there was no telling what dark memories she might uncover next.

“Hm,” said Martin. “I’m not sure the boy would have wanted other spriggans knowing about his family hoard. But you might be onto something.” He held a ring up to his eye and turned it to catch the light, then dropped it back into his pocket. “Anyway, it’ll take time to get the full value out of this. But I can sell a few pieces right away, and make enough money to spare us eating insects all day, or sleeping in any more caves. As long as you don’t mind going back to your mother’s—”

“You’re going to leave me behind?” Ivy was startled, then annoyed. “Why? I can fly just as fast as you can.” A good deal faster, in fact. “Anyway, there’s no way I’m going back to Truro now. It was hard enough getting away from my mother and sister in the first place.”

Not that Marigold had forbidden Ivy to go, not exactly. It wasn’t in her nature to give orders, and she knew too well how capable Ivy had become in her absence. But she’d looked troubled and a little hurt when Ivy told her that the flat was simply too small for three, and that Cicely needed her mother far more than Ivy did. And when she explained that she was going to look for a way to clear her name and prove that Betony had been wrong, her little sister Cicely had burst into tears and begged to come with her. Ivy had been forced to sneak away when Cicely was sleeping, and she still felt guilty about it.

“Yes, I suppose it would be awkward,” said Martin. “Especially since you haven’t told them you’re traveling with me.” He raised his brows quizzically. “Have you?”

“No,” admitted Ivy, with some reluctance. “But that’s beside the point. Why can’t we stay together? Surely there must be someone in Cornwall willing to buy your treasure.”

“Our treasure,” corrected Martin. “You deserve at least a half-share, especially since I’d never have known it existed without you. And maybe you’re right about the dealer, but I don’t know this part of the country well. I can find buyers a lot more easily in London.”

“London! But you can’t go back there. You’re still wanted for killing the Empress, and the other faeries…”

“Are looking for me, yes,” Martin said. “But I can’t imagine they’re making more than a show of it these days. Nobody mourns the Empress: a few sanctimonious bores aside, most faeries would probably agree I did them a favor.”

He spoke airily, but Ivy wasn’t convinced. If he thought he could be safe in England he wouldn’t have fled to Cornwall, much less stayed here so long.

“Even if that’s true, you’re still safer not traveling alone,” she said. “And I’m sure I can fly as far as London, even if I’ve never been there before.”

“Oh, I won’t be flying.” He scooped up a handful of treasure from the rocks and poured it into his pocket. “There’s no way I can carry all this in bird-shape. I’ll travel by magic instead.”

Of course. She’d forgotten that faeries—or half-faeries, in Martin’s case—could will themselves from one place to another with merely a thought. Once piskeys had been able to do the same, if their droll-teller’s tales were anything to go by. But that magic had been lost since her people went underground, and Ivy had yet to learn it.

“You could teach me,” she began, but Martin shook his head.

“You can’t leap to a place unless you’ve set foot there once already. And for a journey like this, I’ll need to stop a few times along the way. Trust me, I can do this a lot more easily on my own.”

“I see,” said Ivy stiffly. “Well, then, I suppose you’d better do that. I wouldn’t want to slow you down.”

“You’re upset.” A line formed between his brows. “What’s the matter?”

Ivy looked past the carn to the neighboring hillside, and the ruined mine building upon it. There was an old engine house just like that one back at the Delve, where the piskeys used to feast and dance on Lighting nights. She bit her lip, homesickness welling inside her. She’d taken the company of her fellow piskeys for granted, but now she wondered if she’d ever be part of a community like that again.

“Ivy.” Martin slipped his fingers under her chin, turning her face toward him. “I won’t be gone long. I’ll be back tonight if all goes well, or at the latest tomorrow morning.”

“If all goes well.” Ivy shook off the touch. “But what if it doesn’t? I could be waiting for days, never knowing what’s happened to you. Like the last time.”

It wasn’t really fair of her to say so: it hadn’t been Martin’s fault they’d quarreled before he flew off that night, or that he’d fallen into one of Gillian’s Claybane traps and couldn’t get back to her. Ivy knew better now than to think he would leave her without saying goodbye. But after losing her mother to the human world and her father to the mine, Ivy was all too used to being abandoned.

“Never mind,” she said, before Martin could speak. “I can do some exploring on my own, and eat and sleep in swift-shape. I’ll be fine.”

“Why not go to Molly’s?”

“It’s too soon for that.” Gillian’s daughter was still grieving for her mother’s death, and her father would be at the house with her. It would be awkward.

“Well,” said Martin, “it’s your decision. But it’s getting late in the year for swifts, so be careful. And take this.” He picked something up from the rock beside him, spelled it clean with a touch, and held it out to her.

It was a diamond-cut gemstone on a golden chain, big and green as one of Ivy’s eyes. “What—” she choked, then cleared her throat and tried again. “What do you want me to do with it?”

“Wear it, of course,” said Martin. “As a token of my good faith.” The corner of his mouth quirked up. “After all, if there’s one thing I’ve learned about spriggans, it’s that they don’t give treasure away lightly.”

If Ivy’s cheeks had been hot before, they were sizzling now. She could only hope that her sun-browned skin would hide it. “But don’t you think it’s a bit—I mean, I’m not old enough—and we haven’t known each other long—”

Martin broke into the first genuine smile she’d ever seen from him: not the usual slow curl of the lips or wicked flash of teeth, but a boy’s grin of pure, unbridled delight. “I’m sorry, did I just propose to you by accident? Is that what piskey-boys do when they want to marry, give their sweetheart a necklace?”

Ivy wished the hillside would open like the mouth of a hungry giant, and devour her whole. “You mean… faeries don’t?”

“Not at all,” said Martin, and Ivy wanted to slap him for looking so amused. Couldn’t he at least have the decency to share her embarrassment? “I only meant to put your mind at ease. All right, what about this?” He dropped the necklace and picked up a copper bracelet.

“You don’t need to give me anything,” Ivy protested, but Martin had already clasped it around her wrist.

“Fits perfectly,” he said. “And now…” He laid his fingertips on the bracelet, and the copper grew warm. “Just like the old game. If it’s hot, I’m close; if it’s cool, I’m far away.”

“And if it’s cold?”

“Then I’m dead—or else I’ve flown to Iceland. But I doubt you’ll have to worry about that.”

Ivy touched the slim twist of metal in wonder. It might not be a pledge of love, but coming from Martin, the gift was far from meaningless. As a fugitive he could ill afford to promise anything, let alone make it easy for anyone to track him down. Yet he’d done this just to reassure her.

“So,” Martin continued, dropping the last few bits of treasure into his pocket and climbing to his feet, “When the bracelet turns warm again, I’ll meet you here at the carn. All right?”

Ivy managed a smile. “All right.”