The Blackthorn Key

He pointed behind us, but Tom had had enough. He pulled me protectively into the shelter of the crowd, which had begun to jeer at the madman on the ground.

“Thanks,” I said. I rubbed my arms. They still hurt where the man had gripped me.

Tom glanced over his shoulder to see if the man was coming back. “Are you all right?”

In honesty, I was rattled. “What was that about?”

“What do you mean? The man was mad.”

“Didn’t you hear what he said?”

The Cult of the Archangel. Though the day had turned warm, I shivered. I thought of my master’s burnt shoulder, and of Stubb’s visit to our shop last night.

Change is coming. The apothecary had said exactly the same thing.

Tom scoffed. “So what? I’m surprised he didn’t warn us the Moon was made of cheese.”

A buzz passed through the crowd around us. At first, I thought it was because of the madman, but it seemed like it came from the opposite direction. Tom craned his neck, peering over everyone’s heads. Suddenly, he grabbed my elbow. “Look!”

I stepped onto a nearby crate and spied what Tom was seeing. It was a pair of soldiers. They were armored in padded leather, broadswords on one side, flintlock pistols on the other. Their beige tabards were emblazoned in the center of their chests with the king’s coat of arms. Though the press of the crowd was heavy, they pushed through roughly, opening a space for the man who followed them.

His clothes were finely made, obviously the work of a master tailor. Yet the tightly fitting satin seemed out of place on him, as if someone had tried to dress up a panther. Like the King’s Men before him, he carried his own pair of weapons, a heavy, battle-worn sword and a pearl-handled pistol. But it was the dark black wells of his eyes that made the crowd fall silent as he passed. His left cheek was a mess of scars, a gnarled trail of flesh from nose to neck.

“That’s him!” Tom whispered. “That’s Lord Ashcombe.” He pulled my arm. “Come on.”

We followed in his wake, Tom’s bulk pushing our own path through the crowd. The soldiers guided Lord Ashcombe to an alley that wound behind a row of enormous houses and opened into a long, airy space. Most of the clearing was blocked by a tall, ornate wrought-iron fence. Behind it was a private garden, well tended.

Five men waited on the stone path beside a dug-up flower bed, under the drooping branches of a willow tree, in front of a large statue of an angel. One of the men held a shovel. Another paced. A third gripped the leash of a hunting dog, its paws and muzzle covered with mud. The dog barked madly at the ground. It looked like it had discovered something.

When Lord Ashcombe reached the gate, a man wearing the sash of the parish constable straightened himself in salute.

“Open it,” Lord Ashcombe said. His voice grated, like a demon’s whisper.

The constable turned the key in the padlock that held the gate closed. Lord Ashcombe went inside. The constable locked the gate behind him as the trailing throng pressed against the fence. I squeezed through to the front and grabbed a railing. Tom managed to make it behind me, his hands gripping my shoulders, holding himself in place against the jostling crowd.

Lord Ashcombe moved to where the others waited. The flower bed had turned to mud in the morning’s rain. The man with the shovel had finished what the dog had started, digging a long hole in the dirt. The stone angel behind it looked down, wings folded, an expression of sorrow on his face. The King’s Warden stared with him, then crouched down and reached inside.

He came up with what looked like a muddy club. It wasn’t.

Lord Ashcombe brushed off the dirt. The men beside him backed away. The crowd gasped. Lord Ashcombe’s expression stayed as still as the angel’s.

It was an arm. A man’s arm, torn from his body, mangled, blackened, and burnt.





CHAPTER


7


TOM AND I BURST INTO the shop, tumbling over ourselves.