The Thief's Pyre

When he looked his father in the face, Darragh wanted to disappear. Odhran Lynch was six-foot-two, dark-haired and hazel-eyed, with the broad, muscled frame of a farmer, and though he bore a name that was not Trase, he blended remarkably well. Still, he was not. And still, he pretended.

At least his mother dressed it up some, wore the charming determination that came with her name. Aoife Trase - she had not taken her husband’s name - rested a strong hand on her son’s shoulder and shook him once, gently. At only 14, Darragh Trase stood three inches taller than his mother’s imposing frame.

“What your father is trying to say,” Aoife began. “Is that we’ve enrolled you in a boarding school a few miles outside of London. They call it Nettle Hill Academy, and they’re supposed to be very fair in their schooling.”

Even in his mother’s musical lilt, it made no sense.

“Why?” He asked, pulling away from her touch. His voice echoed in the nearly-empty chamber his parents had pulled him into. The bed was merely a frame, only a rickety wooden table and two matching chairs occupying the rest of the vast space. Nobody had lived here in a long time. Nobody would live here for a long time more. “Why me? What about Orla and Maeve? They’re old enough for a boarding school.”

He heard a scuff outside of the door; his sisters listened.

“What about Cadmus and his sister? Eoghan, Mary and Nora, Patrick? What about them?”

“You know why, Dar,” said his father, icy-cool like he’d been born in this manor, like he would ever own it. Darragh’s cheeks colored.

“Because of my row with the Stark boys? I didn’t throw the first punch, Father, and I know that you know-”

“Enough,” Odhran said, hazel eyes dark. “You’ve a week and a half before you need to be there. Spend that time wisely.”

His father turned to leave, the scuff of his boot twin to the scrambling outside of the door. Darragh stood across from his mother, words bled from him. 

Somewhere a bell tolled, miles away and unrelated to anything under the Trase manor roof, each ring a great nail through the lid of his coffin.

Darragh’s mother gave his shoulder another squeeze, and then she left, too.

-

They arrived on a Saturday, Darragh hauling a single case and his father two more per Aoife, who insisted that Darragh needed more than a few outfits to live. He would not know what else she had packed until well after they arrived at his dorm. Extra hygienics, a pillowcase, winter clothes...

One of three beds lay bare, a thin blanket and sheets folded at the foot. The pillow was uncovered and lumpy-looking, a far cry from the extravagance of the neighboring beds. Darragh could tell at a glance that his dormmates, if cut, would bleed blue. The posts around one bed bore heavy green-and-gold sheets, and an elaborate hand-woven rug lay at the base of the other.

“Don’t fight with the boys that sleep in these beds,” Odhran said, setting the additional suitcases next to a dark walnut dresser missing a knob. Darragh threw his on the bed and sat heavily on the edge, testing the quality of the mattress. Middling. It would do.

“I’m not gonna,” Darragh answered shortly. “I don’t start fights, I told you that. I only defend myself.”

“That’s not what the Starks told us.”

“That you believe the Starks over your own son is not my-”

“Enough!” Aoife said, her words punctuated by a sharp wooden creak.

The duo that entered the room were Darragh's age, one blond and one dark-haired, both with fair eyes and crooked smiles, wearing the trousers and button-ups assigned by the school while shirking the blazer and necktie. A few hairs sprouted from the dark-haired boy’s upper lip, a wispy tease of a mustache.

“Oh! Julian, look at that, it’s the new man,” said the dark-haired one, elbowing the blond in the ribs. 

Julian grinned. “Right, I can see that. This is Edgar. Your name was… Derrig? Did I say that right?”

“Darragh,” he corrected flatly. “You don’t pronounce the g-h. Irish names don’t work like that.”

Darragh’s mother patted him on the shoulder, a faint smile on her lips, and he knew that that was the closest to a hug and a kiss that he would get. She nodded her head and ducked out of the room, leaving Darragh with Julian and Edgar and the glum shape of his father.

“Never ever?”

“Never,” Darragh said, cracking his suitcase open with one hand.

“Huh. Well, I dunno why I’m surprised. There’s a lot of things in Ireland that don’t work like they do over in England,” Julian said, sprawling out on his gold-patterned bed, arms tucked behind his equally golden head. “Language, names, civilization. My father always told me that your people were pagans, that they worshipped murderers and called them gods. He said that they’re all Catholics now, but they still live like they used to, fucking and killing and drinking and wallowing in their own misfortune.”

Darragh looked back at his father, whose face burned red as his son’s but who did not make a sound. Anger welled in Darragh’s throat, hot and bitter. When he turned back, Julian had sat up.

“But if you’re well enough that you’ve made it into Nettle Hill, you can’t be so bad. We’ll be keeping an eye on you, of course,” he said, then dropped back onto his bed. “You should say goodbye to your parents, Derrig. I’m sure they’ve a long journey back home.”

A beat, then:

“Welcome to the Thief’s Pyre.”

-

Lessons started, and Darragh sank from anger to apathy, his constant companionship wearing him to the bone with their snickers and snipes. Would you try to pronounce this for me? Edgar was fond of asking, as if Darragh were some sort of idiot. Would you try it again?

Strange, expressionless statues lurked around any corner he dared attempt to hide within, twin paintings damning the few walls they did not guard. One evening a week before Halloween, Darragh found himself caught in the blank stare of a painted man, the statue he matched erected mere feet away. The man was short, with dust-colored hair and eyes so pale they were almost white. There was nothing appealing about his stunted visage. Darragh could imagine that, in life, his skin had been splotchy, stained by a love for vice; it must have been the sort easily disguised as a virtue, for the flesh in the painting was rosy, not mottled, and the bladed grin was lovingly recorded.

“That’s Howard Nettle,” Julian said, just loud enough that Darragh near leapt from his skin. Julian’s face was far more pleasant, but… there was something strange about it, something engraved in his bones. Darragh frowned.

“Ah. I’d forgotten you’d taken to mutism. I don’t blame you, you can be hard to understand,” Julian said, pushing gracefully off the wall. He was fourteen and he behaved like a king.

“I’m not mute,” Darragh mumbled. Julian ignored him, grin widening.

“You must have noticed,” Julian said, running his fingers along the photograph’s silver frame. “The similarities between Howard and I have always been… notable. This painting doesn’t do him justice. The statue doesn’t, either. He was a formidable man, Trase. He was my great-grandfather.”

Darragh thought of a word he had learned months ago. One of the Stark boys had thrown it at him, and when he’d researched it he had felt anger and embarrassment equally, the truth of the statement fused with the sting of it. Nepotism. 

“Julian Nettle,” Darragh said dryly. “So many steps shy of a prince.”

The mirth that haunted Julian’s silvery eyes vanished in an instant, stony anger replacing them before Darragh had a chance to consider what he had said. A fine upper lip curled, baring a mouthful of pretty teeth, and Julian growled like a wild creature.

“I could burn you to ash, you know,” he said. Someone passed behind them, but Darragh did not dare look over his shoulder for fear that Julian would snap at the exposed column of his throat. A line of electricity darted across Julian’s teeth, as blue and as cold as those eyes.

“I wouldn’t burn easy,” Darragh answered. “Trases aren’t kindling, and you don’t scare me.”

Julian’s lip fell back over his teeth. His shoulders loosened, and his proud grin returned.

“No,” he said. “I don’t suppose you are. I’ll see you back at the dorm, Derry. Careful that you don’t get lost.”

-

He turned fifteen on December 1st, three days before a bundle of letters and a package came through Nettle Hill’s post. Edgar peered over Darragh’s shoulder as he tore open each envelope, savoring the notes like he might one of Nettle Hill's freshly baked pastries. Even a place as gloomy as this had a pinprick of warmth in its heart.

His sisters wrote of their own schooling, of cousins and aunts and uncles, of the dogs and horses and chickens, of the work being done on the Trase mansion’s western wing. His cousins were less wordy, skimming mere goings-on; Cadmus was the only one to sign with Sincerely, every other letter bore the flowery Love. 

Darragh’s mother wrote in a script so elegant it belonged in a museum, every word bearing the weight of honey laced with quiet severity, a combination only Aoife Trase could wear so effectively. 

Odhran did not write a single sentence.

Bitterness clung to Darragh’s tongue even after he swallowed. All these years later, he did not know why he still cared. He dug into his birthday package with less fervor and more anger than he ever had, peeling strips of parchment paper from what turned out to be a large, expensive-looking velvet box. 

The lid clicked open, and Darragh was greeted by a necklace and a ring. The necklace was a stylized wolf, its fur tied into Celtic knots, its eyes tiny lapis stones. The ring was a signet, the Trase crest etched faintly into the background of a sturdy-looking T. Darragh slipped it onto his finger, and the necklace over his head.

“What’s all that?” Julian asked, peering up from a thick magical chemistry textbook and a smattering of clean white paper.

Darragh did not answer. 

Julian huffed, “Fine. Rot with it.”

-

The Thief’s Pyre stood tall, a gothic tower jutting from the prim construction of Nettle Hill like a canid’s tooth from the beak of a swan. It had been named, Julian said, for its original purpose: as a prison of sorts, a kennel for the unruly and the disturbed until they either repented or were removed from the course. 

It was officially Pine Turret, but the name stuck even as its purpose shifted, its occupants no longer the scum at the bottom of the barrel but young princes; politician’s children, the nieces and nephews of dukes, youths with futures brighter than star shards. How Darragh had ended up here eluded him, but he would not complain in the face of his dormmates or his neighbors. He tried not to speak, period, his approximation of an English accent shaky at best.

On the night of December 15th, Darragh sat on the edge of his dresser, watching the world through a Pyre window. The sky was overcast, offering glimpses of the moon only twice in the hour he sat. A fat snowflake kissed the pane, and Darragh rested his hand against cool glass, a frown etched deep into his face.

He wondered if the chill had reached home, if the cold lash of rain drummed a rhythmic beat on the mansion roof in tandem with the rich crackle of a hearth's breath. Presents would lay fat and colorful beneath the tree, trimmed in gold firelight beneath the wavering shadows of his young cousins bolting here and there, leaping over the backs of chairs until his uncle snapped at them to sit. 

Soon, Darragh thought. I’ll be able to go back soon.

It would be a brief visit, but it would be something. 

Darragh slid off the dresser and crawled into bed, eyes leaving the snow-freckled windowpane only when his lids grew too heavy to fight.

-

He woke to the acrid smell of smoke and the angry lick of heat. Darragh bolted upright so quickly that his bed rattled, and a plank of burning wood struck him in the side of the face. He shot out of bed with a yelp, hand cupped over his cheek.

“Julian! Edgar!” He called, voice hoarse with panic. Only Edgar answered.

“Darragh?” He cried, for once pronouncing the name right. “Darragh! Darragh, please, where are you?”

The firelight cast half the room in impossible blackness, a shadow so elite that he could not determine its contents without leaping through the flames. He stood just out of their reach, angry red fingers straining for the thin, flimsy fabric of his pajamas. 

“I’m stuck, Darragh, I-”

A fist struck Darragh over the ear, knocking the rest of Edgar’s pleas into a lousy symphony of bells and whistles. Darragh turned, meeting glinting white eyes set into a masked face.

The figure struck Darragh in the temple, and he collapsed in a heap.

-

Snowflakes gnawed at his aching skin, so cold that they seeped through flesh and muscle and bone, punching frozen pebbles in his very marrow. Darragh sat up slowly, cutting mud rising between his splayed fingers. It was daytime, he thought, and the fire had been a dream.

Except that the air still stank of smoke, and when he turned his head to one side he was greeted by a great black sky. Panic lanced through him as he scrambled to his feet, the crack! of exploding wood underlining this terror.

In the distance he saw the shine of a messy golden head. Julian. There was only shadow where Edgar once stood, and Darragh knew that that was all there would ever be. He took one step back, two, then bolted for the treeline, his heart hammering behind his ribs. The fire lit his way, illuminated the starved angles of the forest and cast his shadow long and monstrous. 

When his bare feet met the frosted curve of a root, Darragh paused, then turned, ring-clad hand rising to finger his over-hot necklace.

A herd of students rushed from the doors at the base of the tower, ushered by a jittery teacher in a yellow nightgown. Julian stood apart from them, back to Darragh, staring up at his great-grandfather’s crumbling masterpiece. 

The Thief’s Pyre had finally stepped into its title, burning long after Darragh Trase disappeared into the trees. Julian Nettle watched its roof cave, the rush of his emotion so powerful that he stood in complete and utter calm, a picture of elegance despite the smear of black on his cheekbone and the smokey grey stain of magic on the tips of his fingers.