Hazel's Promise (The Fey Quartet Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

it?”
    “York?” Tam shrugged. “It’s much like any other city.”
    “You didn’t like it?”
    “I prefer Dapple Vale. Cities are so full of bustle that you can’t hear yourself think. They’re filthy. They stink. The buildings are all crammed together. There’s no space . The vale is . . . it’s green and peaceful.” Tam thought for a moment, and added: “And safe. When you enter York, at the city gates there are heads stuck on poles, and crows sit on them eating out the eyes. And there are arms and legs hung on ropes.”
    Hazel shivered. Her mother had lived in a city with heads at the gates? “Why the heads? Why the arms and legs?”
    “Criminals,” Tam said.
    Hazel pondered this answer. Glade Forest kept the vale safe from outside dangers—outlaws and famine and plagues—but not from human pettiness. The vale had its share of drunkards and brawlers. Occasionally men were brought before the Lord Warder accused of thieving, sometimes even manslaughter or worse. But Dappleward didn’t cut such men’s heads off and put them on poles for the crows to pluck out the eyes; he expelled them from the vale.
    “I’m glad we live in Dapple Vale,” Hazel said somberly. She looked around. They’d come out of the king’s forest. Fields lay on either side of the dusty road. Many were planted with grain crops; some lay fallow, grazed by sheep and cattle. To her eyes, the crops looked sparse and the livestock scrawny.
    “Not far to Mottlethorpe now,” Tam said. “Once we get to the top of that rise, we’ll see it.”
    Hazel’s pulse doubled its pace. “I have a smock and kirtle with me,” she said, suddenly nervous. “I’d like to change before . . .”
    Before meeting Drewet again. Drewet. After ten years, Drewet .
    “Change behind that oak tree,” Tam said. “Marigold and I’ll wait here.”
     
----
     
    MOTTLETHORPE WAS NO city such as Tam had described, but even so, it stank. The smell assaulted Hazel’s nose long before they reached the first houses. A wooden bridge crossed a shallow creek that was clearly the town cesspit. Excrement lay in stinking piles, tumbled together with animal bones and offal. Flies swarmed and maggots crawled and filthy pigs rooted among the waste.
    A hundred yards past the creek was Mottlethorpe, houses crammed together as closely as dirty teeth in a mouth. The skyline was a bewildering jumble of gables and rooftops and crooked chimneypots. Several derelict cottages lay between the stinking creek and the town. Their timbers had been removed and the cob walls were collapsing in on themselves. Hazel eyed the ruins as they passed. Had the owners died of plague? Starvation? Murder?
    “There’s someone living in that one,” she said, horrified.
    Tam followed her gaze, and grimaced. “Makes you appreciate the vale, doesn’t it?”
    Hazel nodded soberly. No one slept in roofless hovels in Dapple Vale, not even the very poorest folk—among whom her family numbered. And no one ever starved to death. Compared to these people, we are wealthy beyond measure.
    They entered the town proper. Ramshackle buildings lined narrow, squalid streets. Hazel stepped closer to Tam, glad he was with her. Mottlethorpe didn’t feel dangerous, but neither did it feel safe.
    “You know where Drewet lives?” Tam asked.
    Hazel nodded. Her Faerie gift told her exactly where Drewet’s house was. “It’s on the other side of the market square,” she said, and then hastily added: “So I was told.”
    Tam accepted this with a nod, and Hazel felt a twinge of guilt for lying to him.
    They set off down a street that was almost as filthy as the reeking creek had been. Hazel stepped carefully, holding up her hem. Her throat was tight with nervous excitement. Drewet. After ten years, Drewet .
    “Market day,” Tam said, when they reached the end of the street.
    Mottlethorpe’s square was a swarming, seething mass of people. Hundreds of people. People past counting. Hazel almost recoiled.