Rose & Thorn Read online

  “No,” Griff protested. The guards, Luth and Taira, would be eager to get the girl into their prison cells. And what they would do to her . . . he couldn’t bear to think about it.

  The Lord Protector paused and gave a disapproving shake of his head. “What did you say?”

  He thought quickly. “She . . . the girl . . . if she was free, the Breakers would try to contact her, and we could catch them.”

  The Lord Protector stared at him for a long, unnerving minute. “Hmm.” With bony fingers he tapped his lips, considering Griff’s words. “Yes,” he said slowly. “There are no spindles in the City to activate her curses, so it would be safe enough. You and your cohort leader”—Quirk, he meant—“have a new assignment. You are to guard the girl. She will live here, at the citadel, but she will be allowed out into the City. Given her nature, she will attract these dangerous elements, these Breakers. You will observe them, and report. The Watchers will then act, and we will wipe them out. This may be an opportunity to quash Story’s malign influence forever.”

  Griff really did not want to spend any more time with the girl, Rose. But better that than knowing she was in the citadel’s forbidding underground prison with Luth. He stood quietly, waiting to be dismissed, while his father paced, his head lowered, frowning down at the floor.

  A knock at the door interrupted them. Quirk. He cast a quick, concerned glance at Griff, then gave the Lord Protector a competent nod. “You asked me to report, sir?”

  “Yes.” The Lord Protector seated himself behind his desk. “The two of you will guard the girl. She is not a prisoner.” He paused, and the word yet hovered in the air. “But you will not let her out of your sight. Once she has served her purpose, I will let my guards deal with her. Understand?”

  Don’t think, Griff told himself. Obey. He nodded.

  “Yes,” Quirk said.

  The Lord Protector picked up a pen and started writing. “Dismissed,” he said, without looking up.

  They went out of the office, closing the door behind them. Quirk seemed distracted as he stumped along the narrow stone hallway.

  In the silence, Griff went over the conversation he’d had with his father. “He said—” he started.

  “What?” Quirk said, with a glance up at Griff.

  “The Lord Protector said the girl’s mark—her Story-mark—was excised.”

  “Oh.” Quirk nodded. “Yes.”

  “What does he mean by that?” Griff asked.

  “Ask her,” Quirk said.

  Yes, he wanted to say, but that would mean I’d have to talk to her. Something he was going to avoid, if he could. He didn’t think she was a spy, as his father did, but she was definitely dangerous. Still, he hoped excised didn’t mean what he thought it did.

  Quirk led him around a corner into the busier hallway where some of the City’s public offices were located. They passed a dour-looking couple entering the Office of Marriage, a clerk carrying a stack of account books into one of the Tax Offices, and many gray-faced petitioners lined up along the wall outside the Rations Office. They’d probably been waiting there all day, and they would wait all of the next day, too.

  Quirk remained uncharacteristically silent as they continued up some stairs that led to a part of the citadel that held unused offices. At the third door he stopped, took a key from his pocket, and put it in the lock. Then he knocked. When there was no answer, he opened the door and went in. Griff followed.

  All of the chairs and desks that had filled the office had been moved out long ago; it was empty now, except for dust. Along one wall there were three narrow windows that admitted the pink and gray light of sunset. An hour later and the room would be completely dark. A hearth set into one wall had been swept clean; the air was chill and dank.

  The girl had been sitting in the corner farthest from the door; as they entered, she got to her feet and came toward them.

  “You,” she said, glaring at Griff.

  He stared back at her.

  Her blond hair was tangled, and her eyes were luminous with tears. With the palm of her hand she scrubbed more tears from her face, leaving a streak of dust across her cheek.

  None of it made her any less beautiful.

  But the beauty didn’t seem to matter as much as it had before. When he’d attempted to lift the braided curse from her they had shared a connection, and it had offered him a glimpse of her true self, apart from the beauty. Just for that brief moment he had seen deep within her, not darkness, not the intricate coils of Story that his father suspected she was hiding, but something else. He wasn’t sure what, but it was clear and light.

  She had switched the glare to Quirk. “What sort of place is this?” she asked. “I haven’t done anything wrong, at least not that anyone has told me, except for my curse, which is hardly my fault. And I’ve been locked up here like a prisoner. And . . .” She paused and held up her hand. Her wrist had been bandaged, Griff could see. “And . . .” Tears rolled down her cheeks. “My rose . . .”

  “Now then,” Quirk said awkwardly. He took a step toward her.

  “I didn’t even have any choice about whether to come here,” she went on, her voice shaking. “The Forest gave me a path, and I had to follow it.”

  “Yes, well,” Quirk said to her. He glanced up at Griff as if seeking help.

  Beautiful crying girls were something Griff had no experience with. All he could do was shake his head.

  The girl scrubbed at her tears again.

  The short silence that followed was broken when Griff’s stomach growled. Loudly.

  The girl blinked and stared at him.

  Quirk’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. “When did you last eat, junior?”

  Griff thought back. He’d failed to break her curses the night before and had slept most of the day away, recovering. He had to clear his throat before he could speak. “Yesterday.”

  “You’re made of clockwork, I think,” Quirk said, shaking his head. “You need to eat. Go down to the barracks kitchen and tell them to give you some bread and cheese and something hot.”

  “But—” Griff started to protest.

  “Go,” Quirk insisted. “If they give you any trouble, tell them I authorize that they take it from the cohort’s ration.”

  Griff was not, in fact, made of clockwork, and he suddenly felt light-headed with hunger. He went.

  CHAPTER

  8

  AS GRIFF LEFT MY PRISON ROOM, QUIRK STEPPED CLOSER and spoke in a low voice. “We don’t have much time, Rose. The kitchen won’t give him anything outside scheduled mealtimes, so he’ll be back soon.”

  “Time for what?” I asked.

  “Time for me to help you, lass,” Quirk said. His lopsided face seemed kind and concerned.

  Be wary, I told myself. But I liked Quirk, even though he was working for the Lord Protector.

  Who I most definitely did not like.

  After Griff had failed to break my curse, the Lord Protector had ordered the other Watchers to take me to an empty room. There, while the Watchers watched avidly, a thin, sharp-eyed woman had made me strip off my dress and underthings, and my boots and socks, and she had inspected me.

  “Are you looking for this?” I asked, showing her the rose on my wrist.

  She grunted, and went on to study every bit of me, while goose bumps crept over my skin and my face burned with embarrassment. Then she let me get dressed again, and the guards took me to a dark, smoky cell deep in the lower levels of the citadel. A stoked fire heated the room, and the walls were hung with odd metal tools. The cell’s keeper was an old man whose beard was streaked with soot, and who had enormous, gnarled hands.

  “This is going to be good,” one of the guards, the woman, had said.

  “Hold her tightly,” the other guard ordered. His hands gripped my arms.

  As I realized what they were planning to do to me, I tried to fight, but the Watchers held me, and the sharp woman yanked up the sleeve of my dress, and the cell keeper put some so
rt of tool into the coals of his fire.

  I tried to kick him as he came closer with the red-hot tool and seized my wrist. The woman hissed an order, and the male Watcher snaked an arm around my neck until spots swam before my eyes. I could hear the sizzle of the hot iron as the old man brought it close, and then felt the white-hot pain of the burn destroying my rose. I screamed.

  He took the iron away, but the pain continued, pulsing as if my whole arm was on fire. I sobbed and kept my eyes squeezed closed while someone wrapped a bandage around the burn. Then the Watchers dragged me up to the prison room. They shoved me inside and stood blocking the doorway.

  “We could have some fun with her, don’t you think, Luth?” the woman said, leering at me.

  “We could indeed,” the male Watcher, Luth, answered. He looked me up and down slowly, in a way that reminded me of Tom from the village. Hungry. Possessive.

  The woman licked her lips. “Why not start now?”

  I felt a sudden jolt of fright. These two were dangerous—far worse than Tom and Marty from the village.

  “Taira, you’re so intemperate,” Luth said, with a kind of oily smoothness that made me shiver. “We can wait. She’ll be sent to play with us soon enough. In the meantime, she can enjoy the anticipation of the pleasures that await her.”

  I shuddered and backed away from them.

  With a last, lingering leer, they locked me in for a long time. I’d sat in a dusty corner, cradled my burned wrist, and cried. I wished I was still living in the valley, and felt desolate with missing Shoe, until Quirk and Griff had come.

  But now I was done crying. “Quirk, what does he want with me? The Lord Protector said that I’m a danger to the City.”

  “Well, yes,” he confirmed. “Story is always hovering in the air around those who are cursed, or marked, as you are. You’re a kind of catalyst. Now that you are here in Story’s City, Rose, one of its stories will coalesce around you. Once that happens, the entire City will turn into a kind of giant machine, and the people who live here will become only cogs and gears, performing the roles that Story dictates. You won’t have any choice about your ending, and neither will they. So you see, you are dangerous.”

  “No, I’m really not,” I insisted.

  “Well, the Lord Protector thinks you are, lass, and he will ensure that after they’ve used you to try to expose the Breakers, you will . . .” He shrugged. “Well, you’ll disappear.”

  I stared at him. Disappear? As in they wanted me dead? Or, I thought with a shiver, I’d serve as a plaything for those two horrible Watchers, and then I would die. “I have to get away from here.”

  “Yes,” Quirk agreed. “But now that the Forest has brought you here, it won’t let you leave.” He frowned. “Or maybe Story drew you here, through the Forest. It’s hard to be sure. Either way, it will be very hard to get you out before Story makes its move.”

  My knees went weak with despair. “What am I going to do?”

  “I can help,” Quirk said. “The Breakers—they are fighting Story. In a different way from the Lord Protector.” He glanced over his shoulder at the door, which was still closed.

  “Will they help me escape from this prison?” I asked.

  Quirk shrugged. “The whole City is a prison, lass.” Then he nodded. “But yes, I think I can persuade them to help.”

  I realized what he was saying. “You’re one of them, aren’t you, Quirk? One of the Breakers?”

  “No,” he said firmly. “Or not exactly. It’s complicated. At any rate, the leaders of the Breakers will want to meet with you first. Now listen—”

  There was a sound of footsteps out in the hallway.

  Quirk continued, speaking quickly. “It’s going to be difficult. I’ll try to set it up, but Griff is—” He shook his head. “He’s very observant, very alert, and he’s been strictly trained to stay loyal to the Lord Protector. You’ll have to be ready.”

  “I will be,” I whispered.

  Quickly Quirk stepped away and looked up at the ceiling, as if bored.

  The door to my prison room opened. Griff. I hadn’t noticed it before, but Quirk was right—he scanned the room as he entered. His bleak gaze washed over me, then flinched away.

  “No luck?” Quirk asked, going to meet him.

  Griff shook his head.

  “Right, well, we’d better get Rose settled.”

  BY SETTLED QUIRK meant that he and Griff didn’t take their eyes off of me. First they took me to their barracks in the other part of the citadel and requisitioned a cot for me, and blankets. Then it was time for dinner, so they brought me with them to their dining hall, where they had me sit next to them at a long wooden table with the rest of their cohort, who eyed me uneasily; two of them stared openly for the entire meal. The bland soup they were eating was made of fish, which I’d never had before and didn’t like the smell of. The burn on my wrist throbbed with pain, and I was worried about the Lord Protector’s plan to make me disappear into the cells below the citadel. I sat across from Griff, who ate all of his own dinner, and then what was left of mine.

  “How do you eat so much?” I asked him.

  He glanced down at his nearly empty bowl. “Well, one bite at a time.”

  “So literal,” I grumbled.

  Quirk, sitting next to him, winked at me and then dumped the rest of his own soup into Griff’s bowl.

  I watched him eat, feeling very tired. His fingers were still bandaged; when we stood up from the table, I noticed that he moved stiffly, as if he’d been injured. Quirk said he’d been ill before, and I knew that he’d been hurt when he’d tried to break my curse. Yet he seemed keenly aware of what was going on around us.

  Quirk was right. Griff was going to be a problem.

  THE COT QUIRK had ordered for me had been set up in my prison. The long, slitted windows were dark, but Quirk brought a lantern, which lit one corner of the room; the rest was swallowed up by darkness. Griff stood in the shadows beside the door.

  “Right.” Quirk stood with hands on hips, surveying the room. “This will do you, Rose, won’t it?”

  The room was dank and chill, and I didn’t like the idea of spending a night locked up in it. “Could I have some wood for a fire?” I asked.

  “Ah, sorry, lass,” Quirk said. “No fires allowed in the citadel until after the first snowfall.” He beckoned to Griff, who stepped closer. “Now, junior, I’m going to leave you on guard here while I go see to our cohort.” He pointed at him with a stubby finger. “And don’t just stand in the corner like a post, either. Talk. Keep her company.”

  As Quirk turned to leave, he gave me a meaningful nod. He was going to contact the Breakers, I guessed, while Griff was out of the way, guarding me. He went out, closing the door behind him, and I heard the key turn in the lock.

  The last time I’d been alone with a man, it was Tom from the village. But here with Griff, I felt safe. I was curious about him. He was a Watcher, yet somehow I didn’t think he was a danger to me, not like the Lord Protector or those other Watchers, Luth and Taira.

  Leaving my cloak on, I sat on my narrow cot and wrapped a blanket around myself.

  Griff stood leaning a shoulder against the wall at the very edge of the circle of golden light cast by the lantern. He looked remote, his face in shadow.

  “Why are you junior?” I asked him.

  As an answer, he shrugged one shoulder without looking up.

  “Quirk said you had to keep me company,” I reminded him. I could see why Quirk had given that order; Griff didn’t talk very much, I realized.

  After a long moment, Griff answered, his voice rough. “The youngest in a cohort is always junior.”

  “How old are you?” I asked.

  “Eighteen.”

  Hm. I’d come to Shoe’s cottage over sixteen years ago, so I was at least sixteen, maybe older. “How long have you been a Watcher?”

  “Just over five years.”

  “Quirk said you grew up here, in the citadel,” I reme
mbered. “Why here and not in the City? Is there a school for Watchers here?”

  “Something like that,” he answered. “Why are you asking so many questions?”

  “I’m curious, mainly. I haven’t met very many people before this. And I want to know your story.”

  “I don’t have a story,” he said.

  “Everybody has a story,” I countered. “Even you.”

  He said nothing.

  “To prove it, I’m going to tell you my story.” For just a moment I felt a pang of missing Shoe. This was nothing at all like our snug cottage, Shoe in his rocking chair, a fire in the hearth. Yet telling a story made me feel warm and comforted. This was what the Breakers did—they told stories, even inside the cold, grim City. “Once upon a time,” I began, and because I was beginning my story, I felt sure it couldn’t be bad, or wrong, or something that Story could twist into power for itself.

  “I can’t listen to this,” Griff interrupted.

  “I know,” I said. “But I’m going to tell you anyway, unless you leap on me and put your hand over my mouth, and you’re not going to do that, are you?”

  Instead of answering, he looked away, his lips pressed into a thin line.

  “No?” I settled myself more comfortably. “Then you might as well listen.”

  Griff slid down the wall and sat on the stone floor with his knees drawn up. I could see his face better now, the planes of his cheekbones, the smudges of weariness under his eyes. He was so distant, so closed off from me. Yet we had shared a connection when he’d tried to break my curse. I really did want to know his story. But first, mine.

  “Once upon a time,” I started again, “there was a shoemaker who lived in a cottage deep in a forest. Not the Forest forest,” I amended, “just ordinary pine trees and oaks in a valley not far from a village. He had been there for a long time, but he had not always been alone, for he had a true love, and he had once lived out in the world having his share of adventures. He even visited this City once, when it was still beautiful here.”

  I glanced at Griff. For once he was looking at me. “I thought this was supposed to be your story,” he said.