The Sapling Cage, page 13
The brigands were laughing again, all together, at us. I struggled to my feet, dizzy and disoriented.
One of them, a thin man whose face was carved as much by scars as it was by wrinkles, had an arm around Daidi’s throat. He hadn’t even bothered to draw his sword.
“You’re just children,” the man said, almost kindly. “There’s no shame in giving up. We won’t hurt you, not even a little.”
Ten paces behind the brigands, a small silhouette darted across the road.
“What do you want?” I asked. It was hard to talk with my jaw in so much pain. It was likely dislocated. I took a half step forward to draw attention to myself and half collapsed in a fit of coughing. The coughing wasn’t on purpose.
“I told you,” the boar skull man said. “Ransom. Witches walk these woods and these roads and don’t do a thing for the little man. Now, get up, follow me.”
“You’re the little man?” I asked, mocking him.
“Everyone else who travels the valley pays the toll,” he said, not rising to the bait. “It’s time you witches do too.”
He was being earnest, I realized. He actually believed that he was owed something. But that was no excuse for kidnapping.
Behind him, in the trees, I saw Araneigh closing in on him, axe drawn. I just had to keep them all looking at me instead of the woods.
“The witches don’t pay their way in services rendered?” I asked. “That’s what they tell us.”
“Services?” he roared. “Services? Like what? Turning me into a boar?”
He turned to his fellows for support. I didn’t want him looking anywhere but at me.
“You were already a boor.”
He slapped me across the face, on the same cheek that had been smashed with the flat of an axe. I flinched. Araneigh darted out from the trees, grabbed ahold of the man’s hood, and climbed his back. In half a second, she had her knees around his waist and her small axe at his throat.
He froze.
“We’ll be on our way,” I said. Pain flared in my mouth.
“You’ll be on your way,” the man agreed, through gritted teeth.
“Run!” Araneigh yelled. “We’ll meet you at camp!”
Hex and I ran. I looked behind us in time to see Daidi run into the woods. Then I heard a man scream, and Araneigh jumped off the brigand just as he collapsed into the road.
She’d cut him. She’d cut his throat.
I faltered.
Hex grabbed my hand and we ran into the cold mist.
TWELVE
“Why … what …” I couldn’t get out sentences. I could barely get out words. My lungs were on fire; I couldn’t find my breath. We stumbled out of the woods into the town of Set Porlock. The public house glowed, welcoming and threatening, all at once.
“She had to do it,” Hex said.
“Did she?” I genuinely didn’t know.
Hex didn’t answer me. I walked up the road certain that someone—a witch, a knight, a brigand, anyone—would stop us. No one did. It was only the two of us. Somewhere in the woods behind us were our friends, who were in danger.
About half of the dozen or so people in the bar looked up when we came in. The harp sat unplayed. No brigands, I realized. Only locals.
The barkeep stood behind the bar, sipping from a large clay decanter. Confusion flickered across her face.
“You’d think a storm would keep the brigands in town, under shelter,” I said, putting on a smile I didn’t feel. She didn’t return it.
“They went off north,” she said. “A couple companies of tax knights heading this way.” Her decanter made a startlingly loud boom when she set it down on the bar. We were both still jumpy.
“Is Espen gone?” Hex blurted out. Then she slowed down. “Sorry, I mean, Ilthura Espen, is he still here?”
“You can’t get rid of a louse once it knows there’s blood in your scalp,” she answered. “He’s here.”
“We have business with him, then,” I said, trying to sound as adult as I could.
She turned to a boy about half my age, likely her son.
“Uh huh,” the boy said, running off up the stairs before the barkeep could even tell him what to go do. In a moment, he was back and dragging a sleepy, half-dressed teenaged knight. Espen smiled when he saw me, though, like it woke him up.
He probably thought I was a girl. I didn’t mind the attention.
We sat at a table and to my shock, he asked only for rose tea.
“How do I sign up?” Hex asked as soon as he turned his attention to us.
“What?”
“The Ilthurian knights. How do I sign up?”
“Aren’t you already spoken for?”
I laughed. Hex glared at me.
“I don’t want to be a witch,” Hex said, “and I can’t go home, and to hell with being a peasant or a brigand, and you and I both know none of the other brotherhoods will take me.”
“That’s … I mean …” Espen fumbled with words until he was saved by the barkeep bringing us three mugs of tea. “Is this both of you?”
Hex looked at me to answer. Especially since we’d burned Dam Heavens, I’d given it a lot of thought, wondering what they’d do to me if they found out about me. And the Ilthurian knights had a lot to recommend them. But I’d made up my mind a long time before. Witches work magic. I’d said I was going to be a witch, so a witch I would be.
“Just her,” I answered.
Espen nodded and turned back to Hex.
“Maybe I should have wanted to be an outlaw knight since I was only as tall as this table,” Hex said. “Maybe I’m not the best candidate. But I want to be a knight, and I bet you get a lot of your recruits from people in worse situations than me. Sign me up.”
“Do you know what’s involved?” he asked.
“You gotta do good knight stuff, like protect people and all of that. And instead of Dam or Sir, you take the title Ilthura, after your founder. And you also make up your own rules—”
“Tenets,” Espen said.
“Make up your own tenets. They can be whatever you want. Also, you’re an outlaw, even more officially than witches are.”
“That, albeit crudely, about sums it up. Ilthurian knights fight against authority. The other knights … they are authority. Locking people up and all of that. That’s why our tenets are individualized. It’s to remind us that there is no one code of law or honor that can apply to everyone.”
“Why not just do it like the witches, then,” I asked, “and do away with law and formal codes of honor?”
Espen looked at me and shrugged, then took a swallow of tea. “Oww that’s hot. Oww oww oww.” He put the mug down and answered me, speaking slowly over his burnt tongue. “The Order of the Vine has its own laws and code of honor, whether they admit it or not. It’s just flexible in a different way.”
“Okay, so sign me up,” Hex said.
“You’ve seen sixteen years?”
“Yeah.”
“The other witches going to come after me over this?”
“Probably not?”
Espen laughed. “Alright,” he said. “You can join.”
I spent the next hour at that table, talking and laughing with the two of them, along with a few locals who drifted in and out of our orbit. As soon as Hex considered herself free from the Order, she was a different person. She was almost my friend.
“You going to change your name?” I asked her. “I figured your parents named you Hex because you were promised to the Order.”
“Not going to change it,” she said. “I mean, all my life I’ve hated my name because it meant I had to be a witch. But now I don’t have to be. So … it’s a reminder of who I didn’t have to be. Who I got to choose to be.”
I nodded. The inn was warm and dry, and the company was oddly comfortable. But the main reason I lingered there was fear. On the way to town, I’d pushed myself through danger because I had a purpose. Heading home by myself, through blight and brigands, was almost too much to fathom. I was still worried about Araneigh and Daidi, hoping they were okay. If Araneigh had really cut that man’s throat, then likely the rest of the brigands would be too busy to run after anyone in the dark. But there were also blighters about. And tax knights.
“My first tenet, Lorel,” Hex said, acting a bit drunk though I knew her to be sober, “is that I’m going to take your secret with me to the grave. You more than upheld your side of the bargain.”
“You can’t make tenets until we’ve inducted you,” Espen said. “And that’s a bit more specific than most.”
“Whatever. Either way, Lorel of the Vine, I will take your secret with me to the grave. On my honor as a nothing, because right now I’m a nothing.”
I put my arm around her shoulder, and she hugged me around the waist, and it was all I could do to keep myself from crying on her.
I was surprised to realize I was going to miss her.
“You have a secret?” Espen asked. I just smiled.
When I decided it was time to face my fears and head home, Espen offered to escort me. It wouldn’t do to let anyone, not even an Ilthurian, know where the covenant was camped. We talked it over and compromised—he’d take me as far as where the road hit the creek.
When Espen went off to his room in search of traveling clothes, Hex looked at me and caught my eyes. She stared at me intently, and for half a moment, I was frightened of her again.
“Dam Catkin,” she whispered.
“Who’s Dam Catkin?” I asked. I wracked my brain, but of the dozens of witches at camp, I had never heard of a Dam Catkin.
“Just a rumor I heard, when I was a little girl, about a witch who—” Hex saw Espen returning and cut herself off. “A witch who you should know about.”
“Who’s that?” Espen asked as he sat back down with us.
“No one,” Hex answered.
“So mysterious!”
“And another thing,” Hex said. She stood up and took off her cloak. The one woven from sea-wool, with the tail on the hood. She handed it to me.
“I can’t …”
“What do I need a sea hag’s cloak for?”
“Your father made you that cloak.”
“Yeah, because he sold me to witches. I’m not going to be a witch. You are. Take it.”
I took it, and gave her mine.
She hugged me aggressively, pushing her head into my chest. “Hug Araneigh and Daidi just like this,” she said. “I don’t like you very much, but I’ll still never forget you.”
After she let go, I cried for a moment until it turned into a fit of coughing.
“You ready?” Espen asked when I had caught my breath.
Espen promised Hex that he would return shortly, and we left.
As we set off into the woods, Ilthura Espen held a glass knife in one hand and a wooden club in the other. Both looked handmade. He must have caught me looking and wondering, because he explained them to me.
“My first tenet is to never hurt people with metal.”
“Why?” I walked in front with Hex’s lantern while Espen followed just behind me.
The rain had tapered off finally. An owl called from a branch nearby and, startled, I dropped the lantern. Nothing broke, and the candle didn’t go out, luckily. We kept walking.
“I grew up in a border town about two days north of here. Not a lot there, but it’s got this mountain fort that’s worth a lot, strategically. Duchess Helte and Baron Keikan both say it’s theirs, they have basically forever. At least once every couple years, their knights come marching through town with their steel to kill each other over that pile of rocks. They save their swords for the enemy, sure, but gauntlets broke plenty of commoners’ noses, my own included. So I decided not to hurt people with metal. It’s sort of symbolic.”
“Doesn’t that make fighting hard?”
“Yeah, definitely. But I gotta be honest, I fight a lot harder when I figure I’m outmatched.”
“What are your other tenets?” I asked. We weren’t yet at the patch of blight, but already there was mist. It was likely almost dawn.
“Just one other one so far,” he said. “No romance or sex. No girlfriends, no boyfriends, no nothing.”
Two emotions fought in my brain. First was disappointment. The second, though, was relief.
Only then did I realize how dangerous it had been to let this man escort me home by myself. I wasn’t used to being treated as a girl by men, not really, so I wasn’t yet used to the ways in which men—even men you know, or who seem nice—can be dangerous.
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“Sometimes I try to come up with big words about it and make it seem like it’s some moral thing,” he said, “but honestly it’s just because I’m not really attracted to people. People used to tease me about it all the time, so I just made it a tenet, and now everyone leaves me alone.”
“I’m half that way, I think,” I told him. “I do like people. I’m attracted to people. But not nearly so much or so often as it seems like everyone else around me is. Especially compared to the other boys back home.”
“To the other boys back home?”
I was so tired I’d slipped up. “I mean, I wasn’t attracted to many of the boys back home.” I didn’t look at him, trying to be casual, hoping he’d forget it.
After a moment’s pause, he just said, “Yeah.” He either believed me or was just willing to let me be evasive. “It’s annoying how fixated everyone is on it. Sex and romance, like those are the only ways to connect with people.”
As we went deeper into the woods, we stopped talking to avoid drawing unwanted attention to ourselves, and Espen fell back about ten paces behind me. Hopefully, any would-be assailant would see me walking alone with a light and try to sneak behind me, where Espen was.
I spent the entire walk overthinking what would happen if we were attacked and worrying about Araneigh and Daidi. When we reached the blight, I got twice as nervous. Then I saw blood on the paving stones—probably from our fight.
Fear swept over me in a rush. I wanted to run. I knew it would be less safe than walking, but I still felt like running. I wanted to be home—not at camp, but with my mom—and I wanted to be safe. I never wanted to put myself in harm’s way again. If only I’d been a stablehand!
I kept walking. The fear didn’t go away, not really, but I managed to stuff it down so far into my gut that I could think straight.
Finally, we reached the bridge over the creek.
“Wait,” Espen said, catching up with me.
I froze.
“There’s someone in that tree. Don’t point the light. Just look.”
I looked. Dam Lament was still keeping watch, so many hours later.
I cooed a birdcall and she responded.
“It’s okay, you can leave me here,” I said.
He didn’t argue, he just said, “Till next we meet, Lorel of the Vine,” and left. That made me even more fond of the man.
Once his footfalls receded, Dam Lament dropped back down from the tree and faced me.
“Did Araneigh and Daidi—” I started to ask.
“They’re okay. They came by a few hours ago, upset but unharmed.”
I breathed out like I’d been holding my breath for hours.
“Hex is staying with the Ilthurians?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Can I ask you something?” I asked.
“Not about the whelps,” she answered.
“Why not? You’re always watching over us, but you never interfere.”
“When I was a whelp,” she said, “there were six of us in my coven. Three of us girls came alone, and then there was a set of triplets, all named after trees. Oak, Alder, Birch. They were mean. They bullied us, like Hex was doing to you. The other three of us teamed up to stop them, and it was like we had our own little war.”
“That sounds awful,” I said.
“It was, but we were handling it. One night, the six of us met at the top of a waterfall for what was basically a peace talk. It was hard, and we talked for hours, but we finally started to make sense of our differences. A storm came, and on the hike back down, one of my friends fell and broke her neck. She died.
“The older witches blamed Oak, the biggest bully. Oak was sent home, cursed to never work magic. Alder blamed us for having told the witches, even though we hadn’t. She and Birch found my other friend alone and strangled her. In response, the witches turned Alder and Birch into their namesakes.”
I didn’t know what to say. She looked pensive, a bit sad, in the dim flicker of the lantern light.
“What I learned, that day, was … if you’ve got two people with the same amount of power as one another, and they’re arguing, there’s no reason to expect that interference from someone with more authority is going to make anything better. My job is to keep you lot safe from the world, not from each other.”
I never would have been able to talk to Hex the same way if Dam Lament had been siding with me. Our little war would have escalated and we never would have found common ground.
“You should get back, try to sleep,” Dam Lament said. “We’re leaving first thing in the morning.”
“Oh!” I’d almost forgot. “The brigands are leaving, because tax knights are flooding the valley.”
“I know,” Dam Lament said. “But thank you.”
Lament turned her back to reach for the tree once more, but I stopped her.
“Dam Lament,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Who was Dam Catkin?”
“Who told you about Dam Catkin?” she asked, suspicion in her voice. She didn’t turn back to look at me.
“I’m not going to say,” I told her.
She turned back toward me, looking me over more intently than ever before.
“Why do you ask?”
“It’s nothing,” I said. She wasn’t going to tell me anything that night, that much I knew. “I’ll just go to bed.”
My head full of questions, I hurried back through the dark as the rain began again.
THIRTEEN
The first light of the day found its way into the forest as I crept under the ivy pavilion. Everyone else was still asleep, and I walked straight to my bedroll and dropped face-first onto it.
