Sweetness Bled and Brindled Read online

  He skipped dinner. Didn’t so much as drink a glass of water. It was a bad idea, but he knew Henry. Better his stomach was empty. Better the pain blaze bright and burn away the worst of what’d come.

  The tower looked just as Jewel had left it. More or less. Henry was waiting for him at the door. The smirk on his face terrified Jewel. “I’m delighted to see you’ve come to celebrate the old bitch’s passing.” Henry moved smoothly from the doorway to let Jewel pass. The room was lit with torches and candles. The cobwebs were gone, but the dust remained. The ornate plates with cups of wine and delicate sweetmeats provided a stark contrast.

  “Where are the others?” Jewel asked, wary. They were alone. He’d braced for Henry’s companions, hadn’t expected Haven.

  Henry walked over to the wine and took a cup. He offered it to Jewel then shrugged and took a sip himself when Jewel shook his head quickly. “Having a snack. I do wish we could join them, but with grandmother dead… Well. It would hardly be proper.”

  Jewel was trying to work out whether this was a time to back into a wall or make sure he could dodge in any direction. He opted to stay near the door, even if it made Henry frown.

  “Besides,” Henry continued, taking one of the sugary drops and eating it, “I have something else for you to help with. Later.”

  Henry took the few steps needed to close the distance between them, effectively blocking the doorway. Not that Henry would hurt him. On purpose. Jewel backed away until he hit a dresser. Henry tutted. “Look at you, sweet frightened little mouse. And here I am, just offering you a platter of cheese to fill your belly to your heart’s content.” He slung an arm around Jewel’s shoulders, pinching one just a little too tightly. “My baby brother should be fearless and brave. After all —” He leaned his head against Jewel’s and whatever fire Jewel had managed to hold onto dissipated and left him frozen. “—his actions reflect on the whole family. Now.” Henry had started walking to the ladder and trap door up to the wizard’s bed chamber, herding Jewel as he did. With his free hand, he gestured up at the closed hatch. “I know you’re much too fragile to punish the useless wench that murdered your squirrel, so I’ll take care of that.”

  “Don’t,” Jewel croaked. “Please don’t.”

  He didn’t expect Henry to listen. Henry never did. “You’ll keep me company, won’t you?” His brother’s hand clung to his upper arm more tightly as Henry climbed up a few rungs and rapped on the wooden hatch. Before Jewel could even try to wrench free, Henry was on the ground again and had thrust Jewel against the ladder. Henry was half a head shorter, but that hardly mattered when he’d already bruised Jewel’s arm and he was right there against him, leaving him barely space to breathe. Henry wouldn’t hurt him, Jewel told himself, letting his brother chase him up the ladder. Up wasn’t where he wanted to go. Up was sobbing and pain and blood and screaming and suffering.

  But it was the only direction he could go where Henry wasn’t and so Jewel went.

  “What in the blazes did you do?”

  Jewel backed away from Haven when his brother moved towards him. For a moment, he’d forgotten that Henry was right behind him. His eldest brother’s hands were the ones that gripped and steadier him ever so gently. Jewel threw bile up onto Haven’s dark shirt.

  “He’s dead on his feet, Henry. You swore you wouldn’t hurt him.”

  Jewel tried to look up at Haven, but found he didn’t have the strength. Haven caught him before he could fall too far, legs suddenly too weak to hold him, and walked him to a chair. Pushed him down into it gently and pressed his face down to his knees. It helped and Jewel didn’t know whether to be grateful or resentful. The coolth of the underground hallway was a reprieve, at least, after the wizard’s tower, even if he knew it wouldn’t last. It was darker here. Jewel could pretend that all he smelled was damp and cold.

  “I didn’t.” Henry’s voice. A conversation Jewel had almost forgotten. “He needs to get over himself. Grandmother was always too soft on him, and now she’s gone Darofa’s going to be breathing down our necks if he doesn’t step up. They’re itching to steal our gold mines. The ones you’re supposed to safeguard.”

  Jewel kept his eyes firmly on the uneven ground and tried to fade into the wall. He thought of Briar, and how she wouldn’t let Henry hurt a soul if she knew. Briar was everything Jewel wasn’t. If he just thought of her, he could shut out what was happening around him, dream of a cottage far away from his home for just the two of them. Maybe, if he could get to River before Henry, he would ask Briar to take him away next time.

  He startled when someone pressed a cup of cold water against his lips. They managed to tip in enough to make him cough. It didn’t make him feel better. Henry’d made him eat while — The cottage was on an alpine meadow. Far away. They’d have sheep.

  Someone slapped the side of his head. Henry was squatting down in front of him, looking up with those baby blue eyes of his, and Haven was nowhere to be seen. Jewel turned his head away and his brother shot up, gripping his chin so hard Jewel couldn’t hold back the whimper, and shifted until Jewel could only look away with his eyes. He looked down, tried to hunch in on himself.

  “You’re a pathetic excuse for a mage,” his brother said. Jewel knew he was. He’d heard it all his life. “But you’ve given my boys so much more sport tonight.” Henry’d made him. “So I’m willing to let you be the nice one this time. Haven caught a spy out in the woods and we need him to talk. I don’t have your gift —” And his brother spat the word, shifting his body to follow Jewel’s gaze until Jewel gave up and met his eyes directly. “— so you’re going to learn to stop wasting it on nobodies and livestock. Do you understand?”

  Oh, did he. Jewel shrank against the wall as much as he could, not daring to look away from his brother again. Henry’d let go of his chin and was smiling at him. “Yes,” Jewel whispered because Henry liked affirmation and he wouldn’t stay smiling forever. Haven was still nowhere to be found and Jewel couldn’t blame him. He followed Henry down the corridor and into the torture room. He wasn’t there. He was in a valley, surrounded by snowcapped mountains. Anywhere but there. He was smelling clear spring water and daises, lavender. Maybe some roses.

  “Wake him up.” Henry’s voice wrenched Jewel back into the room. He gagged, not that the bile did anything but burn his throat. Henry grabbed him by the arm and thrust him towards the figure on the rack. “Now, you useless shit. And get him to talk to you.”

  Jewel stumbled and, before he could recover and gather himself, Henry had stepped into the shadows. Jewel knew he was there. Could hear the heartbeat, feel his brother’s eyes on him. It was just like last time. It was worse than last time. This time, his grandmother wouldn’t come for him. No one would.

  He approached the body. The man was still breathing. He was barely older than Jewel, really, and he looked a mess of cuts and broken bones. Jewel could ease his pain, end his suffering. It’d be easy. He could tell Henry that there was nothing else he could have done.

  Henry would take a knife, gently press it into Jewel’s hand, and cut. Guide Jewel’s hand, breath hot against his neck as he had to stand on tiptoes. Whisper into his ears, even though he wouldn’t hear Henry over the cries and the screams.

  “If you’re too spineless and pathetic to act,” he’d say, grip on Jewel’s hand hard enough to bruise, “then you watch.”

  Jewel couldn’t. Not again. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t there. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, carefully tracing the man’s injuries, pouring warmth and good all over them. “Please just tell him. Please. Please. Please.”

  He took the pain, and staggered. But he deserved it. He was spineless and useless.

  “Aren’t you going to ask him questions?” Henry loomed, suddenly beside him.

  “Please just tell him what he wants to know,” Jewel squeaked. Henry snorted and moved forward.

  “It would make my life so much easier, and your death so much quicker,” Henry said in that impossibly gentle voice t
hat Jewel knew to be the worst of his brother’s lies. “I’ll even let my snivelling worm brother do it so you won’t feel a thing.” Henry sat down on the edge of the rack and pulled a hand through the spy’s hair tenderly. “Everybody gets what they want, isn’t that nice?” When the man’s only response was to try and spit in Henry’s face, Jewel watched the friendly façade fall away. He closed his eyes because if he moved anything else, Henry would remember he was there. Jewel tried not to think, not even to breathe. Tried to block out whimpering and sobbing, the smell of piss and shit and blood. He was a rock. He was ice. He was untouchable.

  He screamed when Henry grabbed his wrist and yanked him back over to the spy. “Now take that pain and make it unending agony until he begs for mercy, sparkle.”

  Jewel couldn’t help it. He sobbed.

  “Awww.” The vice-like grip around his wrist vanished and Henry brushed Jewel’s cheeks with the back of his hands. “Am I pushing you too hard, baby brother? I’m sorry.” If Jewel hadn’t known Henry as long as he had, he might even have believed it. Part of him wanted to anyway. Henry took him by the arm, so light Jewel almost didn’t notice, and led him away out into the hallway, to the chair that was still waiting there. Henry gently eased Jewel into it.

  “You’ll develop the stomach for it,” he said, kneeling beside the chair and resting his hands on Jewel’s knees. He might’ve told Jewel he’d learn how to play chess for all the encouragement in it. Jewel let him fuss, didn’t even try to look away. “If you just keep him hale. Take the injury not the pain while I work, I’ll let you take your pick of River’s litter. Can you do that for me? Be a good little brother. Prove Haven right.”

  “I don’t—”

  “I thought I might pick the brown pup,” Henry cut in, musingly, one hand tracing circles on Jewel’s knee. “White gets so boring.”

  Jewel pressed his eyes closed, let Henry take one of his hands into his own. “I can do it.”

  “What do we do with this one?”

  At the sound of Cedar’s voice, Briar dropped the apple she was holding and strode over. Holly bounced after her, sack in hands like she was expecting more food to get stuffed into it. It wouldn’t. “Go help Brother with the horses,” she said to the girl, eyes fixed on the kneeling man whose throat Cedar had gently rested his sword against. It was entirely unnecessary since the man’s hands were tied behind his back and she could smell the way he’d wet his breeches from where she stood.

  Briar wrinkled her nose in disgust. The man’s clothes were dirty and torn but fine. He’d clearly put up a decent fight against her people, either before or after shitting himself. “You got a name?” she asked, studying her glove. One of the stitches had come a little loose. She’d have to mend it. They were such useful theatre.

  When the man stayed silent, she looked up at him briefly, then went back to her emergency stitch repair. “You can tell me who you are and live, or you can die because a man who tells me nothing is useless. Your choice.”

  “I-I-I’m just a nobody,” the bald man stammered. Briar took the final few steps and nodded at Cedar, who shifted a little so the blade pressed against his throat just enough to draw blood. Briar knelt at the prisoner’s side and looked at the hands behind his back. They were manicured and soft; combined with his clothes that meant he was at least reasonably wealthy.

  She hopped back a step to return to the man’s line of sight. “Nobody,” she said. “Truly.” She took the gloves off slowly and tucked them safely into her belt. “Cedar, his shoes.”

  The bandit sheathed his sword and pushed the prisoner onto the ground before pulling off the fine boots and tossing them aside to the nearest member of Briar’s band.

  “Well, nobody would need any toes,” Briar said, flexing her fingers just so. It was all for show. She could manipulate heat anywhere, and she used the trick to tickle his toes as though she really was holding a torch against them. She smirked when the man screamed. The flickers were harmless, for now. “Are you sure you’re nobody?” she asked sweetly.

  “I-I-I’m Thaddeus. Thaddeus Bittleby.”

  “Oh, good,” Briar muttered to Cedar. “I do hate it when they make me do unnecessary work.” Cedar grinned in response and Briar raised her voice. “Well, Thaddeus Bittleby, what do I do with you?” There were Bittlebys in the next town over. They were poor weavers, and even if they’d had children, Thaddeus was a little old to be theirs. By at least twenty years.

  “Let me go?” the man whimpered. Briar rolled her eyes. “You said you’d let me live.”

  She snorted. “I did. If you tell me who you are.”

  “Thaddeus Bittleby, I swear on my mother’s grave! I’m just a clerk. Please. I have nothing of value.”

  Briar looked up at the sky dramatically. He had his clothes. Even dirty they’d be worth enough to the right buyer to make it worth taking them. But he was largely right. If he’d had anything they could use before they’d attacked the coach, he’d have lost it already. Her people were thorough. Briar pulled her gloves back on languidly, sitting back on her haunches, amused at the immediate relief on Thaddeus’s face. “And were you travelling to town, Thaddeus Bittleby?”

  “Y-yes. With the taxes. To provide fair counting.” He was shaking now. Briar really wondered how he’d managed to put up any fight, but she supposed panic and fear could do surprising things to a person. “The mayor thought they were paying too much,” the man prattled on.

  Briar held up her hand and he fell silent almost immediately. “Well, isn’t that lucky?” She smiled. “We’ve always though the same thing, and here we are. You can go back to your mayor and tell him that he’s definitely been overpaying.” She looked at Cedar. “Get him on a horse and send him on his way.”

  As Cedar set to, she wandered through the mess of the attack. They’d done well. None of their own dead and the coach easily taken. No fine nobles to take anything from, though. Brother had the coach horses well in hand a ways off, where the blood and death didn’t spook them. Holly stood beside him, sack abandoned by a tree, stroking the nose of one of the horses. The others were all busy clearing the road. It didn’t do to leave corpses and debris lying around in the open, after all.

  When all was as tidy as they could make it and Thaddeus Bittleby had been sent on his way — Holly’d returned an apple ‘for his troubles’ — the band slunk away between the trees. Briar was only one of many, using her own paths and ways to wind her way to the encampment, careful to cover her tracks and ensure no one was following her.

  It didn’t take her long to get back, not as she defined it. Brother would still complain, though he did have the longest route with the horses. Briar had left Fourscore-and-twenty behind this time. The mare deserved a good rest after the rough ride back the night before, and their hideout wasn’t so far from the road that it wasn’t easier and safer to just walk.

  She enjoyed the hike anyway. Surrounding herself with greenery cleared her head, allowed her to think of something other than where they were going to get their next meal, or who the best person to send into town was this time. Logistics made her restless. It’d been fine, at first. A nice change of pace from wandering the roads alone, a different kind of challenge to try out. But it had started to become a routine and, being predictable, had begun to chafe.

  The woods around her, the carefree song of birds and the noise of rabbits and mice scattering when she got too close soothed her. Plus, the gentle rustle of the leaves reminded her of Jewel.

  She hadn’t expected to like the youngest prince. He’d been just a mark, one she’d started to cultivate even before joining Spindle’s band. Sweet, gullible, rich, desperate for any kind of affection. He was perfect. Now, annoyingly, she found herself thinking of him more and more. He crept into her thoughts, unbidden, and she had to admit it was nice to find someone who didn’t expect her to enjoy being held.

  It’d be the next full moon before she saw him again. Stop it. You’re hardly a love-sick puppy, she scolded herself. It was
a good thing she’d set their meetings up to be so infrequent. She didn’t do wool-gathering and it made her grumpy and distracted her from handling the majority of the band’s finances and logistics because Spindle would give it all away in a heartbeat, the idealistic fool. He was lucky she felt she owed him a debt, and that she had no interest in leading a band of outlaws.

  When she got to the edge of the camp, she waved the password at the lookout and sauntered in, pushing her hood down. The smell of cooking wafted enticingly past her nostrils, though the accompanying addition of sweaty, dirty people soured her on it. Of course she’d wandered in from the middle of the training grounds. That was just her luck. She supposed at least the sparring men and women, stripped to as little as they could, were nice to look at as she made her way to their treasury.

  Spindle had set it up in a small cave amidst the rock face. The entrance was half-hidden and a person could just about squeeze through with a sack if they were careful. Inside, it was dark with smoke and Briar squinted, both at the sting and the shift in light quality. She doused the torches with a flick of her wrists and replaced the lights with her own flames, hoping the smoke would clear soon. Spindle and their treasurer, Moss, shouted obscenities at her for a moment, but it was their own fault. If they’d just let her install a few lanterns infused with magic she wouldn’t have to do this every time she entered. When the two were out of curses, they went back to counting like Briar wasn’t even there.

  “That went shockingly well,” she announced with perhaps a little too much sarcasm. “We should lay low for a while.”

  Spindle looked up at her, dark brows furrowed. “How is your plan to break into the royal vaults going?”

  She hadn’t expected him to just ignore her and switch the topic, but she didn’t miss a beat when she answered. “Slowly.” She could talk Jewel into letting Spindle’s people in easily enough, she was sure. All she needed was some sob story. After all, she’d set up the rescue of a sack of drowning kittens just to get his attention. If they acted convincingly enough, he’d eat up anything Briar told him. He’d invited her inside a few times already. Not the vaults, of course, but his home. She could’ve said ‘yes’ any time to all he’d offered. She’d been toying with him so long, she could’ve scouted out the entire estate several times, if she’d cared to.