Page 8

REED

Shuffling along the empty lane, exhaustion consumed Reed, though the night remained young.

He’d hiked across the countryside, dug up a grave—only to find its occupant alive —then filled said grave in again, and now he had to trudge back home.

It all seemed some sort of fever dream. The heiress though.

.. She was surprisingly generous. And certainly attractive.

Reed recalled the vision of her beautiful face, her golden-brown eyes filled with unspoken emotion, and found his curiosity piqued.

Why did Dulce hide the fact that she lived, instead of announcing it?

No. Now was not the time to dream of mysterious married heiresses who gave away their jewels to graverobbers.

He must return to Philip and save his brother before it was too late.

And after that? Well, the whole world was open to them—they could go wherever they pleased, far away from the dreary Glen.

Reed didn’t have to walk for long before a wheat merchant’s cart passed him on the road, its half-sleeping driver unaware of his new passenger. The steadfast mule pulling it voiced no objection to the added weight as it plodded along in the foggy night.

Only shopkeepers sweeping and tidying their spaces and maybe the few drunkards they traveled by saw them at all, and as the cart left the sleeping town, nothing but quiet spoke.

The road back to Dogwood Glen was mostly deserted, save for the odd carriage.

Reed was relieved for the rest after so much walking and digging, and he tried not to fall asleep while he sat hidden between two sheaves of wheat, the bound stalks tickling the exposed skin of his sore hands with the night breeze.

Reed wondered how his brother was faring, dreading the thought of his condition having worsened in the hours since he’d left him.

When the cart approached the outskirts of his village, Reed alighted unnoticed, blending into the shadows of a row of beech trees, and returned the tools he’d borrowed to their owner, knowing full well what losing them could mean to a struggling farm.

It seemed in the lonely and silent darkness that the whole world slept, but Reed knew this wasn’t so.

The Pikeman never slept.

Reed turned toward the Glen in general, and its swamps in particular, taking the familiar path through its mossy branches, a path he’d known since he was a boy and could follow even in darkness. He imagined he could smell his destination already.

The only pawnbroker of his kind, Nickolas ‘The Pikeman’ Davies would exchange virtually anything for coin.

Anything at any time of the day or night.

Not far from the road, only minutes into the shelter of the swampy outskirts of the Glen, the lights of the pawnbroker’s butchery illuminated the ghostly bald cypress, their moss-covered branches waving mournfully above murky water in the fog as Reed passed their smooth columned trunks.

His boots were now covered in filth. The stench of the place was no longer just in his imagination.

The reek of rotting meat permeated the night, and he ignored the glowing eyes of roving dogs to ascend the worn and half-decayed stairs to the butcher’s porch. Three men appeared from the depths of the establishment like moving shadows, one of them stepping into the light with a crooked grin.

Ellis. A beefy man with the most unfortunate nose Reed had ever seen.

“Reed,” he growled. “What can we do for you on this fine night? Just got through with a new shipment of mutton. Or is it something … warmer you’re after?”

Reed arched a brow. The day he turned to the offerings of a fleshmonger for romantic companionship was the day he’d rather vomit blood until he wished he were dead. Not to mention catching the clouted pox.

“I seek negotiation with Mr. Davies,” Reed said with a bow, removing his cloak’s hood.

The Pikeman relished his little traditions .

And didn’t like to be called the Pikeman.

Rumor had it he’d once forced a merchant— who’d said the word after too much drink—to eat a rotting opossum that had drowned in the swamp, causing the man to nearly die of dysentery.

Ellis sighed in resignation, tilting his head for Reed to follow him, and added, “You’re no fun, you know that?”

“We must have different definitions of fun .”

“I’d be interested to know what yours is.

” Ellis wiggled his eyebrows in a decidedly revolting manner and chuckled to himself as he led Reed inside.

They moved between the rows of strung-up slaughtered hogs, their blood pooling into a rusted trough beneath them.

Past tables piled high with slabs of meat and rotting sheep heads, where cages holding scarred dogs, disheveled roosters, and even one bear cluttered the hay-strewn floor.

Outside, they crossed a bridge of rickety wood, the air only marginally fresher, to another much smaller building, a crooked hut built on stilts atop the murky waters of the swamp itself.

Sounds of violence emanated from its many open windows.

Some unfortunate scut had failed to hold up their end of a bargain.

Ellis didn’t hesitate but simply strolled forward, opening the door—a bloodied man hanging from the mossy beams was just another night in the Pikeman’s employ.

The Pikeman turned lazily to them, a crazed smile splitting his bony face at the sight of Reed. He was at least two heads shorter than Reed, his teeth mostly blackened.

“Don’t mind the décor,” the Pikeman cooed. “Or, you want a crack at him? Might be good practice for the next fight, eh? Eh?”

The Pikeman had won big on one of Reed’s fights and had taken a liking to him ever since.

“Thank you, Mr. Davies,” Reed drawled. “But maybe some other time. Tonight I’m in kind of a hurry, if it’s all the same…”

“Right!” The Pikeman slapped Reed on the back with a high laugh that woke an unconscious man slumped in a chair in one corner. “I heard about Philip. Sad, sad news. Still! Death comes for us all sooner or later, doesn’t it?”

Snatching up a bottle of a foul-looking brew, the Pikeman led Reed into yet another building, this one empty but for a small desk on which sat a large candle of green wax, and two rickety wooden chairs that Reed knew to be the most uncomfortable things ever slapped together by a drunken craftsman.

Reed set his treasure on the table, Dulce’s delicate features filling his mind once again.

To think these valuables would’ve been left to rot along with her had he not been there to dig them out in time.

He shook away the haunting thought. Focused instead on the jewels, the ring’s enormous ruby winking in the candlelight, the pearls’ decadent shine comically out of place in such humble surroundings, and stepped back, waiting.

The Pikeman rushed to sit as he hurried to settle quartz spectacles over his eyes, their sunken orbs now appearing twice their size.

He focused solely on business while turning the jewels over in his stained, skeletal hands, studying them intently, all hint of mad laughter vanished from his gaunt face.

Reed knew the Pikeman could see past any forgery through the mysterious lenses and pitied any foolish enough to attempt cheating him.

Reed waited in silence, doing his best to hide his impatience. The good thing was the Pikeman never asked questions about where anything crossing his desk came from.

“I’ll give you two hundred gold units for the lot,” he said with finality, returning the glasses to his blood-splattered pocket.

It was more than Reed could have hoped for. Ten times as much as he would need to save his brother. The ring alone would earn him more than he’d ever had in his life.

“Done,” he agreed.

The apothecary had gone to sleep but always kept a boy on the lookout for desperate customers—a service he got at two pence a night.

Reed roused him with a prod of his filthy boot as the boy lay slumped in the shop’s entry, sound asleep.

The night was more than half over by now, the fog so thick Reed could hardly see past his own outstretched hand.

“He’ll want you to wake him for this,” Reed said, and the boy hurried off into the night to wake the greedy toad.

The man stumbled in, thick purple bags beneath his eyes, and his gray hair wilder than a tree swallow’s nest. “What is it that you couldn’t wait until morning?” He glowered.

“I’m here for the plague’s cure.” Reed drew out two coins from his trouser pocket. “I can pay.”

“Ah.” The man’s lips curled up into a wolfish smile. “The price has gone up, I’m afraid.”

Of course it had.. .

“Can’t get good comfrey these days,” he muttered, twisting a key and searching through a hidden shelf. “And feverfew isn’t fresh unless you get it from the traveling nomads…”

Reed wouldn’t waste time haggling over the price of his brother’s cure, though it made his blood boil to know the apothecary had charged half the price the year before.

With Philip this close to death, there was no time to waste, and with coin he hadn’t earned himself, it seemed not worth the bruise to his pride.

He shoved four coins into the man’s anticipating palm, then waited as the owner leisurely drew three vials containing pale golden liquid from a cabinet. Reed ripped the remedies from the man’s grasp before rushing out of the apothecary to his brother.

Philip lay pale and trembling in darkness when Reed finally returned home, the candles all having burnt out long ago, the fireplace gone cold, nothing but ash.

“Philip, it’s me. Reed. I got your cure,” he announced, his chest heaving.

His brother didn’t say a word, only persisted in a non-lucid state, and Reed’s heart lodged in his throat. What if he was too late?

He hastily lit another fire, promising himself he would buy enough wood to keep the drafty hut warm all winter if Philip remained too ill to travel.

Wrapping his brother in every blanket they owned, he propped him up to force the bitter-smelling herbs down his throat, refusing to let even a single drop spill.

Reed kept his gaze fixed on the clock, and by the consumption of the third vial, Philip regained some of his usual color and warmth, though still marred with sores.

After a few ticks of their father’s old clock, his brother’s trembling at last ceased.

The cure was working .

And yet, his brother didn’t wake.

Reed drew a chair to Philip’s side and sat in silence while time passed before finally telling him of how he’d met a beautiful girl who’d helped him save his brother’s life.

He embellished the tale, making himself the hero who boldly rescued her from being trampled by a runaway carriage.

Instead of a desperate thief who’d snuck onto her property to dig up her grave.

“A girl you say?” Philip croaked, startling Reed. His eyes were open, and he even tried to smile.

Reed laughed in relief. “One that’s too good for either of us.”

“Speak for yourself, white hair,” Philip crooned, his voice almost clear. “I’m practically royalty with these good looks. And stop looking at me as if I died.”

“You nearly did…”

“But I didn’t .” His voice was stronger now, his smile bright. “I have my brother to thank for that.”

“I expect nothing less if I’m ever at death’s door.” Reed winked.

Philip grew serious, taking Reed’s hand and squeezing it. “I swear it,” he whispered. Philip observed Reed for a long moment, then sat with a wince. “Now tell me more about this girl. Does she happen to have a sister?”

“You’re clearly in no position to—”

Heavy pounding on the hut’s rotting door rattled the entire building, and Reed’s wild stare met Philip’s alarmed expression.

Before Reed could grab something to barricade the door, it swung open with a heavy bang.

A towering enforcer with a dark curling mustache appeared in the doorway.

“Reed Hawthorne,” he bellowed as two more uniformed men pushed their way through the broken door and lifted Reed to his feet, seeming to enjoy nearly pulling his arms from their sockets.

“You are under arrest for the crime of graverobbing, an offense punishable by death.”