The straw men were much faster than anything made of dried grass and burlap should be, and in the night the trees became bone-bruising obstacles. Parsnip twice ran into low-hanging branches and fell. The third time she fell she resisted Liam’s helping hand back up.
“I can’t see where I’m going,” she said, looking back the way they’d come. The light of the barracks through the trees seemed distant even though Liam knew the copse of old growth was only a wilder part of the Royal Gardens, barely larger than a small park.
“I can,” Liam said. He sheathed his knife then squatted. “I’ll carry you. Climb on, now, quick!”
The girl nodded. She clambered onto his back, gripping with arms and legs. She was heavier than she looked, but Liam wouldn’t be deterred. His already-abused body throbbed in protest when he straightened. Parsnip’s fingers were cold on his collarbone. He realized she must have dropped her ax.
“I can’t hear them,” she said into his shoulder.
“I can,” he said, wishing he didn’t. The undergrowth betrayed pursuit; bracken snapped and leaf mold crunched as the straw men drew close. From the sounds of it they’d been already outpaced and the mannequins were now widening the chase, spreading out and doubling back in a loose ring.
“They’re bloody nimble for bastards without feet,” Liam complained. His heart beat a terrified rhythm at the base of his throat. He wondered if it was part of the spell to make the dummies seem so intimidating, or if it was only the natural order of things.
A man didn’t expect to wake in the night and learn old Pumpkinhead’s relatives were on walkabout. It wasn’t right.
“Which way, which way?” The brush rustled all around. They were almost out of time.
“Toward the palace,” Parsnip said, quivering against his spine. “The streets are busier there, at night. Someone’s bound to hear us, if we scream.”
A straw man broke through the trees, reaching. Its gloved fingers tangled in Parsnip’s short hair. She shrieked, slammed her head back, and caught the monster solidly in the chest. It staggered sideways. Liam ran.
“It’s in my hair,” Parsnip sobbed, fingers of both hands now locked tight around Liam’s throat. She shook her head violently. Liam heard the unmistakable rustle of straw. “It’s still in my hair!”
He didn’t dare pause. Dodging root and tree, narrowly avoiding a fallen log and fording a small crick, he charged on. He couldn’t hear past the pounding in his ears to know if the straw men still followed. Parsnip’s fingers were cutting off his air, but when he plucked at her hands she only squeezed more tightly and wailed.
He couldn’t see sign of city streets, or even the edge of the tree line. It wasn’t his way to get turned around, not even in the dark. He liked to pretend it was a knack learned from growing up on the Downs, but there were few trees near Stonehill, and he’d known since the sidhe had carved their hatred upon his flesh that it wasn’t a learned skill but part of his barrowman heritage.
He’d begun to fear he’d got turned around and was running in circles when he heard calling from up ahead: a man’s voice.
“We’re here!” Parsnip shouted, voice gone rough with screaming. “Help us, we’re here!”
Sheer relief gave Liam one last burst of strength. He could see, now, a single torch burning between the trees. He bowed his head and barreled forward, intent on placing his feet between snags.
So it was he saw the trap as he ran into it, the man with the torch in hand, the brindled hound at his side, the circle of mannequins waiting between the trees. He tried to swerve retreat, but Parsnip was a stone on his back. The thicket caught at his ankles, making him stumble. The straw men shuffled closer, a net closing.
Holder lifted his torch high. He’d traded his brimmed hat for a leather helm. The hound snuffled in Liam’s direction, wagging her tail.
“Take ’em down, lads,” he said.
Liam reached around Parsnip for his knife, but too late. The straw men pulled him down, a smothering of burlap and dread. Parsnip was plucked weeping from his back. Facedown, he scrabbled in the brush to rise and fight, but horror pressed air from his lungs and he couldn’t rally.
He wasn’t unconscious, nor was he quite awake. Whatever sorcery turned men of burlap and straw into Liam’s worst nightmare prevented him from struggling when he was tossed over a bristling shoulder with as much care as a sack of turnips. The dummy beneath him was as solid as any person. It bobbed up and down as it walked, mincing through the Royal Gardens on malformed knees. In the light of Holder’s torch Liam saw it had only one gloved hand. The monster’s other sleeve ended in a torn cuff and dangling thread. Straw sifted gently from the wound.
Panic made Liam dizzy. He closed his eyes and tried not to embarrass himself by pissing in terror. Behind him Parsnip’s weeping had diminished to muffled snuffling. He knew he ought to be glad they were both relatively unhurt, but he was laid so low by the fog of magic he thought if he could reach his knife he would slice his own wrists rather than spend another moment within sight of the straw men.
“Laid on a bit thick, isn’t it?” Holder said conversationally. He walked at the front of the pack, torch now snuffed. The Royal Gardens surrounded them, colorful spring blooms turned to shades of gray in the night. Not far away a fountain burbled merrily. A nearby peahen shrieked as they crept past her den.
“It’s the sidhe bones, you understand,” Holder continued. “They’re a far better catalyst than we expected. Much more potent; we didn’t realize what we were working with.” He huffed bitter amusement. “You don’t get used to it, the fright, but you learn to bear it. They’re just straw and gourd, in the end.”
Liam, chin bouncing on burlap, couldn’t piece together a coherent response.
Holder’s wagon waited in a secluded plot behind a wall of boxwood topiaries. The black cow in the harness regarded her master calmly as she swished her tail against night insects. She paid the straw men no attention at all.
“In the back,” said Holder. “Tie ’em up tight, take their weapons, and pull the cover. Few about this time of night and our luck’s held but let’s not test fate.”
The straw man tossed Liam into the wagon. The wooden slats stank of manure, rotten fruit, and wet soil. Parsnip tumbled after, landing on his legs where she lay without moving.
They’re just straw and gourd. He tried to goad his body into moving but his muscles seemed trapped midflight, cramping so hard his teeth chattered. A straw man loomed over the side of the wagon, rope dangling from plump fingers. It trussed him hands and feet, stuffed fingers uncannily deft, and took his knife from his belt. Then it rolled Parsnip off his legs and did the same to her.
Canvas flapped over the wagon, blotting out stars in the clear sky. The wheel springs squeaked as Holder climbed aboard.
“Good lads,” he rumbled. “Back you go now, and sleep. I’ll wake you again when you’re needed.” His long whip cracked. The wagon lurched forward. Liam gazed dully at the stitched hide floating just above his nose as he tried to make sense of what had just happened.
He’d been kidnapped by pirates in the spring. It seemed deeply unfair that he was being abducted again in the summer, and by a farmer.
“No use shouting,” Holder called cheerfully. “The streets we’re taking out of the city are the sort where no one dares ask questions for fear of being murdered as a daft, nosy fool.” His whip snapped again. “Farrow stitched my cover and paid a theist for a fine strong blessing read over the hide, mind, so there’s no use trying to force your way out, either. It won’t give until I tell it to, and the last that tried it had claws longer than my own fingers.”
Liam yelled until his throat went raw and his voice dwindled to an angry squeak. The wagon rumbled on over cobblestone. He kicked at the cover again and again with his tethered feet, then rocked up and butted it with both his head and the knuckles of his bound hands. He bloodied his nose and mouth with his effort, and bruised his joints. The leather flexed but didn’t give. Holder whistled one of the Skald’s oldest tithing tunes as he turned the wagon off one street and onto another.
“I don’t think he’s lying when he says it’s charmed,” Parsnip whispered. Liam turned his head. It was black as ink in the wagon bed, but he could just make out the whites of her eyes. “Seems a silly thing to fib about, and him singing like he’s not got a care in the world.” Her breath hitched. “I lost my ax.”
“They would have had it anyway. They took my knife.”
“Aye, I suppose.” Her shudder rattled the floorboards. “What does he want with us, do you think? What do they want?”
“I can’t fathom.” Liam kicked out again, to no avail. “I never knew such creatures as them exist.”
“Were they like that, do you think, when you paid a dozen pennies for five?”
“I don’t know.” Liam closed his eyes. Blood from his nose and mouth coated his tongue. “I don’t think so.”
“Armswoman Lane will be mad as a wet hen, when she finds out what we bought and brought her.” Fabric rustled as the lass squirmed. “I pissed myself when it grabbed at my hair, I was so frightened. I couldn’t help it. The fingers kept moving, tugging and pulling, even when the rest of it fell away.” She wiggled again. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Liam said to the backs of his eyelids. “I nearly did the same just from being too near the ugly bastards.”
“The Kingsmen at the gate,” Parsnip said. “They’ll stop him, surely, and let us out.”
But when the wagon finally pulled up at the wall—the Maiden Gate by the smell of muck and water—and Liam and Parsnip set about kicking and swearing loud enough to wake the dead, Holder rained down blows atop the cover with the butt of his whip until they were forced to pause and draw breath. Then he greeted the guards with a quiet whistle and the clink of coins.
“Loud buggers this time around,” a guard complained. “Use a gag next time. I can’t help if you’re too stupid to cover your arse.”
“Take the silver and shut your own mouth,” Holder returned mildly. “Tonight’s special circumstances.”
“Treachery!” Liam screamed as Parsnip kicked her heels against the wagon. “Abduction! His Majesty will have your head on his gate for this!”
The whip came down hard across Liam’s face. Even through the cover it stung.
“That don’t sound like a harlot.” It was a second voice, low and uneasy. “Most of them don’t know big words like that. You promised you’d keep to the whoring district, Holder, them as won’t be missed.”
“You’ve enough coin there to seal your mouth whether I’ve got a harlot or a healer in back of my cart,” replied Holder over Parsnip’s indignant racket. “You’ve never had cause to complain before; don’t start now. Now move aside. Let me through before they wake the neighborhood.”
The wagon jerked into motion. Liam heard the groan of the winches as the portcullis lifted. Then they were through the gate and onto the King’s Highway. The wagon picked up speed.
“Gone quiet now, have you?” Holder chuckled. “See, it’s like this: even the best-tended orchards are riddled with rotten fruit. Emrys and his crew are wormy through and through, and useful for their greed. Lucky for me. I intended to smuggle a quieter sort of cargo out of the city tonight, but you had to go and stick your noses into it.”
“Where are you taking us?” Liam demanded.
“Not far,” the farmer replied. “Not far at all.”
They lay quiet after that. Liam chafed his wrists against his bindings, trying to loosen the rope, while he strained his senses for any clue as to Holder’s intent. He knew when they passed through squatters’ row by the stink of it. There would be no help for them from there; the miserable wretches living against the wall were as like to kill them for the clothes on their back as set them free.
He heard the murmur of crop bending beneath a breeze. It seemed Holder meant to cart them straight back to his farm.
He lifted his hands to his mouth and began to gnaw at the rope encircling his wrists. It was as thick around as his thumb and hurt his teeth, but he wasn’t deterred.
Liam knew from the sound and smell of water when they crossed the bridge over Flossy Creek. He expected the wagon to continue east but it turned abruptly north. Crop rustled against the side of the wagon; Holder was driving the wagon through a field.
“What’s he doing?” Parsnip wondered, hushed. “There’s nothing out here but rye.”
Liam had a sudden recollection of a stone obelisk set just off the lane, and a clutch of fading violet blossoms. He kept his suspicion to himself for fear of scaring the lass further. Fibers frayed on his tongue, forcing him to swivel and spit, but he was nowhere close to through the rope.
“You’ve got nothing sharp on you at all, lass?”
“Nay,” Parsnip replied. “I told you I lost my ax and that thing took my paring knife right off my belt.”
“Well, then.” It was difficult to sound bright in a hoarse whisper, but Liam tried his best. “Once he’s stopped and pulled back the cover and come close enough use your elbows and your knees on him like the armswoman taught us, remember? Hit him in the mouth, if you can, or kick him in the balls, just like Arthur says. You’re a strong, scrappy lass. Together we’ll knock him down.”
“What if he’s got more of old Pumpkinhead hanging about, wherever he’s taking us?”
“Then you crawl away, fast as you can, and hide yourself in the crop,” he told her. “You curl up small as a mouse and don’t make a noise nor run no matter how you want to. You have to be brave.”
“I am brave,” Parsnip whispered back. “But I’m only a page, not even yet a squire, and Holder’s using magic.”
“Tonight we’re soldiers,” proclaimed Liam with all the courage he could muster. “Soldiers always serve the king as best as they can, magic or no. Can you do it, Parsnip?”
The girl lay so long without speaking he thought she’d gone into retreat. Then she sighed.
“Aye,” she promised steadily. “I can.”
By the time the wagon pulled to a stop Liam had chewed through more than half of the rope around his wrists. He struggled fiercely to pull his hands apart, but still the bindings held. Holder’s footsteps crunched around the side of the wagon. Liam rolled onto his side, hiding his hands between his thighs, just as the farmer yanked away leather. Fresh, tepid air billowed into the wagon. Stars glittered in the sky; dawn was still far off.
“Right, then, be still.” Holder leaned over the wagon, a darker blot in the night. He grabbed Parsnip. She struggled, bucking up against the side of the wagon, then gasped.
“That’s right,” the farmer continued, grimly amused. “That’s my scythe kissing your spine, girl, and you’ll do exactly as I say—quietly and without a fuss—or I’ll open you up from the back and let your kidneys fertilize my rye.”
“Do as he says,” Liam said quickly.
“Good. And you, barrowman. Sit there while I help her out of my wagon. One wrong move out of you and I’ll carve her. Up on the bench, lass, and over. Careful, it’s a step down. I’d hate to bleed you by accident.” He chuckled.
The wagon shifted when Parsnip rolled onto her knees. “Will you free my wrists?” she implored. “It’s so dark and I can’t see nor use my hands to keep my balance. I’ll fall.”
“I’ll catch you,” retorted Holder. “I’m not so stupid as to free you in the middle of nowhere with only me and my hound and my scythe to keep you in line.”
Only me and my hound and my scythe. Hope fluttered behind Liam’s breastbone. He made himself sit still and wait while Parsnip clambered out of the wagon. She did indeed slip and tumble. Liam twitched in sympathy, but from the sounds of it Holder seized her before she hit the ground.
“You next,” Holder ordered Liam. “Over the side. Careful, now, the little lass’s life is in your hands.”
Liam twisted onto his hands and knees then used the side of the wagon to stand. Upright, he could see the expanse of field as a lighter gray against the sky, and at his back the faint glow that was Wilhaiim. Holder had halted his wagon on a patch of trampled rye, in front of a cottage-sized growth of land that must be the old goatherd’s shelter.
“Over the side,” Holder repeated. As Liam’s eyes adjusted he could pick out the farmer from the shadows, and Parsnip, pressed against Holder’s front, the curve of the farmer’s scythe hugging her middle.
Liam put his hands on the wagon wall and hopped over the side. He staggered in place when his bound feet hit the ground, pitching against the wagon, but he didn’t fall. Holder’s brindled hound snuffed at Liam’s knee, making him start. Liam had forgotten her entirely.
“Good, that’s good.” Holder walked forward, pressing Parsnip before him. “We’re going ’round the back, now. Front entrance was sealed tight once the bones were interred. George and I, we had to find another way in.”
“George,” Liam echoed. He looked Holder’s way. “You and Farrow both.”
Holder snorted. “He did the easy work, the digging and trapping. It’s me who had to do the building. ’Round that way, now. You first.”
Liam had to hop his way forward. He hated the indignity of it. He hated Holder, for being an ass, and obviously mad, and likely very dangerous for it. Briefly, he hated Parsnip for getting him involved in whatever odd game the farmer was playing at. Then he hated himself for being unfair.
The cave was a hump of smooth earth above level ground. As Liam rounded the front he saw that the original entrance was closed top to bottom with squares of gray stone. Candle stubs, drying posies, wooden toys, and rag dolls littered the ground near the entrance; offerings to the dead.
Past the front, vegetation grew up against the cave. Liam stumbled often and finally had to lean against the cave for balance. Holder walked close behind, rye crunching under his boots. Parsnip was quiet but for the catch and exhale of her panicked breathing.
Not quite all the way around to the back of the cave there was a spot where the rye had been cleared away. Someone had dug down into the earth; Liam nearly pitched headfirst into the shallow impression but saved himself just in time.
“Jump down,” said Holder. “It’s not deep. There’s a gate. Opens inward, it does, and smoothly, if I do say so myself. I want you all the way in before we come through. Understand?”
“Aye,” Liam muttered. He did as he was told. When he stood at the bottom of the hole, the ground above was at thigh level. Holder’s gate was recessed down and into the side of the cave. When he hopped close he saw it was plain grid work, solidly built but lacking the decoration he’d come to expect on sidhe doors. From the feel of it when he put his hands out and pushed, it was iron, not bronze: man’s work.
He shoved. The gate opened inward as promised. He crossed the threshold in tiny, cautious hops. It was dark, pitch-dark, too dark even for his keen eyes. Dust-dry air caught in his lungs, the smell of bone and ash in his nose. He sneezed.
“Keep moving,” Holder said from the other side of the gate. “Back.” Parsnip yelped.
Liam hopped, and tripped, and went down. He inched forward on his hands and knees, over soft, shifting sand and a litter of rolling bones. He heard the thud and rattle of another body joining him on the ground and knew it was Parsnip from her muffled weeping. He reversed direction and crawled toward the sound, and in doing so saw the shadow that was Holder close the gate.
“When Master Paul blessed this place he marked it up with sigils to keep any ghosts from roaming,” the farmer said over the clink of chain and lock. “Happens the sigils also keep sound in, which is one of the reasons we settled on the cave. Paul’s clever, cleverer even than me.”
Liam felt Parsnip’s fine hair under his searching fingers. He knelt at her side, stroking as best he could, soothing as he glared through the grid at Holder’s shadow.
“I’ve gotten bloody tired of hearing the both of you shout,” Holder continued, “but if you’ve still got energy left, by all means, give it a go. Scream until sunup. No one will hear; no one will care.”
“You can’t keep us here. They’ll notice we’ve gone missing—Arthur, Morgan, Armswoman Lane. Even the king, eventually.”
“Aye, eventually.” Dirt spattered as the farmer climbed out of the hole. “By that time it will be too late. Bear, stay! There’s a fine girl: guard!”
Liam sat without speaking until he heard the snap of Holder’s long whip and then the rustle of wagon wheels in the crop. He sighed.
“Are you hurt, Parsnip? Did he cut you?”
“Nay.” The lass hiccoughed. “Only a little. I don’t think he meant to. But his scythe was sharp and we both kept tripping in the dark.”
“Let me see.” He patted at her head and shoulders, seeking.
She wriggled out of his reach. “It’s nothing. Besides, it’s no good trying to see anything until dawn. It’s like having my eyes closed when they’re not.” Sand whispered when she shifted. A bone cracked. “Do you suppose he’s right and there are ghosts in here?”
“It seems likely,” Liam confessed. “But you needn’t be afraid. They’ve no desire to hurt us, poor things.”
“I’m not afraid of ghosts.” Parsnip scooted close again. She put something smooth and jagged in his hand. “I only wondered if my mum’s cousin Alf is here, watching us. He was a good friend, and always knew a rotten tomato from good. I wouldn’t mind if he were here; I’d feel less lonely.”
“What’s this?” Liam ran his thumb along the thing in his hand. He smiled.
“Bone shard,” the lass said, confirming his guess. “Snapped it with my boot. It’s not strong, but it’s sharper than even your pointy teeth, so be careful and go slow. Here, do my rope first, then I’ll do yours.”
They crawled back to the gate and knelt in the faint starlight. On the other side of the bars Holder’s hound sat patient guard. She growled and thumped her tail at the same time while she watched them wiggle and saw.
“Pretty thing,” Liam soothed as he worked the shard of bone slowly against rope, leery of cutting Parsnip’s flesh. “Good dog, Bear. Aren’t you lovely?”
Bear wagged her tail until her entire body swayed. Her growl receded to a gentle purr. Liam couldn’t help but laugh.
“Boys and dogs,” Parsnips said, watching the hound warily. She was pressed close enough to Liam as to be almost in his lap, her hands extended palms up, wrists flexed against rope. “Great, big, hairy animals, always getting in the way.”
“Lads or dogs?”
“Both,” replied Parsnip with emphasis. She frowned at her bound wrists as Liam sawed diligently. “You’re hardly more than a boy, aren’t you, for all your height?”
“Aye.”
He could feel her curiosity. He ignored it for the slide of bone against cord, but she wouldn’t be put off.
“What’s it like, then, being sidhe?”
“Oh, are we playing a game of quiz?”
“Passes the time,” Parsnip said, unperturbed by his sarcasm. “Unless you don’t like to talk about it. Don’t you?”
Liam mulled her question over as he paused to examine their progress. Parsnip was right; the piece of bone worked much better than his teeth. A good half of the rope was split away. A few more solid strokes and he thought she might be able to pull the rest apart.
“I don’t mind,” he said, because she was still staring at him. “Most people whisper behind their hands or gape openly, but you’re the first that’s asked.” It astonished him to realize it mattered. “But I’m not sidhe, not really, nor human. I’m both, or neither, depending how you look at it.”
“How does that work, exactly?”
“Aye, well.” The rope frayed further, making them both jerk. Liam set aside his shard of bone and instead tried to part the remaining pieces by brute strength. “I was sidhe, and then I died. I don’t remember it. The barrowmen brought me back, only they made a mistake and I came back wrong, so they sent me from the mounds. I don’t remember that part, either. The Widow found me and raised me as her own, so then I was human. For a long time I thought that’s what I was, the Widow’s human boy.”
The final cords parted at last beneath Liam’s assault. Parsnip huffed in relief and snatched up the bone. “Now you. We’ll do feet last.” Liam bared his wrists and she began to saw. “You think of yourself as human.”
Liam considered. “Not anymore,” he confessed slowly. “The sidhe think of me as other, and the humans think of me as other. I’m neither here nor there; I don’t belong.” It hurt him to say it. He coughed to ease an unexpected lump in his throat.
“You’re one of a kind,” Parsnip said. “Me, too. Didn’t used to be. Used to be there were hundreds like me, and Morgan, and Arthur. Sort of shakes you up, when suddenly you’re special. But you’ll get used to it.”
Liam grunted. Outside the steel grille Bear thumped her tail. Parsnip sawed back and forth, as deft with a bit of bone as she must have been with a paring knife. She made better speed than he had, and with greater accuracy, for all that she must be near blind in the dark.
“It was a good idea you had, this,” he said. “A soldier’s instinct, to make a weapon of what’s at hand.”
She took his praise as her due. “But what happens,” she asked, “once we’re free?”
“That’s easy,” Liam said, resigned. “We wait.”