‘Come with us,’ said Ivy to Marigold, as Molly led the newly saddled horses into the yard. ‘Please.’
But Marigold only gave a sad smile. ‘I’m afraid not,’ she said. ‘Tell Mica and Cicely that I love them, and that if they can find it in their hearts to forgive me, my door will always be open. But I can never return to the Delve.’
‘Why not?’ asked Ivy. ‘Surely it’s not going to kill you to come back for a few minutes? Betony’s trapped in the Claybane – she’s not going to make any problems for you.’
‘You don’t understand. I—’ She broke off and put a hand to her throat. ‘I can’t.’
Bitterness welled up in Ivy, and she couldn’t look at her mother any more. She turned her face against Dodger’s warm, quivering neck and said, ‘All right.’
‘But don’t forget what I told you about the poison,’ Marigold pleaded, as Ivy climbed stiffly onto the horse’s back. ‘Don’t throw your life away. Please, get away from that place as soon as you can, and come to me.’
Her brown eyes were filled with anxiety, her hands clasped against her heart – the very picture of a concerned mother. Yet she wouldn’t come back to the Delve even to see her own daughter and son…and she hadn’t offered to heal Ivy’s injuries, either. Was healing like shape-changing – something that only male faeries could usually do? Or was it a hint to Ivy, that she couldn’t expect any favours unless she did what Marigold wanted?
If so, Ivy was having none of it – she was sick of faery half-truths and manipulations. She’d managed without her mother before; there was no reason she couldn’t do it again.
‘The Delve is my home,’ Ivy said, straightening up in the saddle. ‘And Cicely and Mica need someone to look after them. Maybe you couldn’t convince Aunt Betony to listen to you, but I’m not going to give up until I do. Goodbye.’
Then she touched her heels to Dodger’s sides and they trotted after Molly and Duchess, leaving Marigold behind.
It had been more than a hundred years since a human set foot in the Delve, and not even the most curious miner had ever walked the tunnels the piskeys had dug for themselves. But Ivy had used her magic to turn Molly piskey size before they left the surface, and now she followed Ivy through the passages in reverent awe, once or twice lifting a hand to touch the mosaics and semi-precious stones that adorned the walls.
They reached the lower levels of the Delve unnoticed. But when the two of them walked into the Market and the piskeys caught sight of the strange girl in human clothing, shocked murmurs rose from every side. As Ivy set Gem and Feldspar down and hurried to Betony’s statue, she could feel Mica’s glare boring into her from the other side of the cavern. But before he could march up and demand an explanation, she held out her hand to the prick of Molly’s pocket-knife, and they both stooped to wipe their blood across the trapped Joan’s brow and feet.
There was a tense moment when it seemed like nothing was happening, and Ivy feared her kinship with the Joan might not be close enough after all. But finally the clay began to crack, then to crumble, and at last in a shower of dust Betony burst free, transforming at once to her proper piskey size.
‘The Joan!’ shouted Hew, leaping up and waving his cap in the air. ‘Our Joan’s come alive again!’
And with that the whole cavern erupted into chaos, as they all came running to see the miracle. Ivy nearly shouted herself hoarse before she could quiet the crowd and explain. But once the piskeys realised who Molly was and what she had come here to do, they started hushing each other and chivvying themselves into order. Soon each family had lined up beside the statues of their loved ones, while Yarrow bent over Molly’s arm with a lancet.
‘Molly, is it?’ said Nettle, when the healer had finished the blood-letting and carried the bowl away. ‘Bless your brave soul, lass. I can’t tell you what Gillyflower would have said, but as your aunt, I’m that proud of you.’ Then she patted Molly’s cheek and limped off, leaving the human girl blinking in astonishment.
‘How can she be my aunt?’ she asked Ivy. ‘She’s a piskey. And she’s old.’
Too old, thought Ivy sadly. She must be unusually tough to have survived even this long underground, and she probably wouldn’t live many years longer. But that was more than Molly needed to know at the moment. So Ivy kept her eyes on the bandage she was tying around Molly’s arm and said only, ‘She was your mother’s older sister. Faeries live a long time.’
By now Yarrow was hurrying about the cavern with bowl and rag in hand, touching each of the statues’ feet. Gossan was the next to break free of the Claybane, and in seconds he and Betony were embracing. One by one the trapped piskeys emerged from their shells, and the great cavern echoed with shouts of joy.
‘We did it,’ Molly said. But her smile was wan, and so was Ivy’s. They’d saved the Delve together, but at a bitter cost, and it would be a long time before either one of them felt happy again.
‘Come on,’ Ivy told her, holding out her hand to the girl. ‘I’ll take you home.’
As soon as they’d returned to the cottage, Molly rang her father and the local police to tell them that Gillian had disappeared while exploring the site of an old mine. Ivy stayed with her as long as she could – after all the noisy jubilation of the Market Cavern, the Menadues’ house seemed almost unbearably quiet, and it would have been cruel to leave Molly there alone. But as soon as the first vehicle began turning up the lane, Ivy hugged the girl goodbye and flew back to the Delve.
As Ivy walked the tunnels, one piskey after another rushed up to embrace her or pump her hand in gratitude. Many wanted to know where she’d been for so long, and what she meant to do now – especially Mattock, who gazed down at her with an admiration that bordered on worship, and went on holding her hand long after he’d stopped shaking it. But though Ivy was glad to see all of them, she didn’t like being the focus of so much attention. She ended up excusing herself, telling them she was too tired to talk about it at the moment, and hurrying on.
Ivy had never meant to be a hero, and it bothered her to find herself treated as one. Especially since she wondered whether the Delve would ever have been in danger at all, if not for her. Yes, Gillian could still have found the right mine by process of elimination – that was what the map in the Menadues’ study had been about, after all. But she couldn’t have set her traps half so effectively without Cicely’s help. And she would never have got her hands on Cicely if not for Ivy.
Fortunately, Cicely seemed to have forgiven Ivy for her mistakes, or at least she hadn’t thrown them in her face yet. But Ivy wasn’t so sure about Mica. He had taken Flint’s death harder than any of them, and judging by the stony look he’d given Ivy when she and Molly left the Market Cavern, he wasn’t nearly as impressed with her accomplishments as Mattock…
Lost in thought, Ivy turned the corner into Long Way – and froze. The door to her family cavern was open, the day-lamps spilling light into the corridor. And standing outside the doorway, her arms folded and her broad mouth set with disapproval, was Betony.
Ivy’s muscles locked up, and every instinct screamed at her to fly. But she was done with running and hiding. Mica and Cicely needed to hear the truth about Marigold’s disappearance and the poison in the mine, and so did Betony, whether she chose to do anything about it or not.
Squaring her shoulders, she stepped forward. ‘My Joan,’ she said. ‘How can I serve you?’
It was intimidating – and humiliating – to have to stand before her aunt like a criminal and give account of herself, with Cicely and Mica looking on. Especially once it became clear that Betony had already questioned Cicely at length, and learned that Ivy had been sneaking out of the Delve on a regular basis. She’d also searched the cavern and found the rope Ivy had used to climb up and down the shaft to Richard’s cell.
After that, it was no use hoping that her aunt wouldn’t make the connection between Ivy’s night-time absences and the ‘spriggan’ who had so mysteriously escaped from her dungeon. And when Betony
demanded to know whether Ivy was the one who had set the prisoner free, she had no choice but to admit it.
‘But it was all a mistake,’ Ivy insisted. ‘He had nothing to do with Keeve disappearing – that was Gillian’s fault. And if you’d left him in there to starve—’
‘It would have been no more than he deserved,’ said Betony coldly. ‘Do you think I didn’t recognise what he was the moment I saw him? Spriggan or not, he was a servant of the Empress, come to spy out our defences. If I had let him go, he would have returned with more of his kind, and turned us all into slaves.’
Ivy was startled. ‘You know about the Empress?’
‘The old Joan warned me against her, when she passed on her power to me. The Empress has been a threat to our people for decades, and part of the oath I swore when I became the Joan was that I would do my utmost to keep even one piskey from falling into her hands.’ Her chin lifted proudly. ‘So I made sure that Gossan taught every hunter and forager to avoid faeries at all cost, and never to travel more than a few miles from the Delve. And I encouraged the old legends about spriggans and faeries to be retold at every Lighting, so that my people would never forget how dangerous the outside world could be.’
And naturally, the women and children who’d heard those legends had assumed the spriggans to be the real danger. Even the men who knew better wouldn’t be likely to correct them, since they wanted to keep their families safe just as much as the Joan did. Not a direct lie, just an omission…and done with the best of intentions, however unfortunate the result.
Still, it was high time the truth came out. ‘The Empress is dead,’ Ivy told her. ‘We don’t have to hide any longer.’
‘Dead!’ Betony’s brows shot up, but then her eyes narrowed again. ‘Is that what he told you? What makes you so sure he wasn’t deceiving you, so as to betray you to his mistress?’
Ivy wasn’t sure of anything, where Richard was concerned. He’d provoked her and bargained with her, puzzled and frustrated her, and nearly everything about his past was still a mystery, including his proper name. And when she asked Molly where his statue had gone, the human girl had seemed just as baffled and upset to find him missing as Ivy had been.
But wherever he’d come from, whoever he’d been, she owed him too much to deny him now. ‘He wasn’t working for the Empress, he was working for my mother,’ she said, watching Betony for her reaction. ‘But it doesn’t matter. Gillian turned him into a statue, and we couldn’t turn him back.’
If Betony was shocked to hear that Marigold was alive, she didn’t show it. ‘I see,’ said the Joan, and the lines around her mouth relaxed. ‘Then we have one less threat to worry about. So you set the prisoner free, believing he would lead you to your mother?’
‘Yes,’ said Ivy. ‘And he did. I saw her a few days later, alive and well. That’s when I found out she was a faery, and she told me about—’
Betony cut her off. ‘I am not interested in what Marigold had to say. She was strange and unnatural from the first, and I should have known she wasn’t a true piskey. She has no business meddling in the affairs of the Delve.’
‘No business?’ Ivy could barely speak for outrage. ‘She has a husband and three children here!’ But then she glimpsed the flicker of apprehension in Betony’s eyes, and all at once she understood. ‘You knew why my mother left, didn’t you? You knew, because you made her leave. Banishing her was the only way you could stop her talking about the poison in the Delve.’
‘Poison?’ exclaimed Cicely, sitting upright. ‘You mean the spell that Dad—’
‘Not that poison,’ said Ivy. ‘I mean the one that’s been killing our people for years.’ She turned to her sister. ‘Haven’t you ever wondered why our people age and die so quickly, when other magical folk live far longer? Why I was born without wings, and Mum started coughing up blood, and Dad got sicker every day he worked in the diggings?’ In fact that might well have been the reason Flint had started working so hard once Marigold was gone – because he’d realised that the only way to prove the mine was dangerous was to poison himself. ‘We can’t keep living like this. We have to change our ways, or—’
‘How dare you talk as though you know what’s best for our people!’ snapped Betony. ‘You’re as treacherous as your mother – and if you don’t hold your tongue, I’ll stop it for you.’
Ivy opened her mouth to retort – and then another realisation hit her. The reason for Marigold’s abrupt silences and vague explanations, her refusal to return to the Delve. The way she’d choked and touched her throat whenever she said too much …
‘You made her swear not to tell anyone what you did to her,’ she said to Betony, rasping with disbelief. ‘You made her promise never to go near the Delve again.’
Colour rose to Betony’s cheeks, but her haughty expression didn’t alter. ‘She agreed to those terms in exchange for her life. And it was a fairer bargain than she deserved.’
And once again, Ivy had misjudged her mother because of someone else’s deceit. Rage welled inside her, and her fingers stiffened into claws – but no, she couldn’t fly at Betony now, it would ruin everything. She had to think of Cicely and Mica, too.
‘Well, you can threaten me all you like,’ she said defiantly, ‘but I’m not my mother, and you can’t frighten me into making the bargain she did. I know this mine is poisoned – I’m living proof – and I’m going to stay here until you do something about it.’
The Joan stalked up to Ivy, robes billowing. ‘You know nothing,’ she spat. ‘You were born wingless because your mother’s blood was weak, and for no other reason. You crave sunlight because she did – but that has nothing to do with the rest of us. The only danger in the Delve was the enemy you brought here by your carelessness, and the only poison that has ever threatened us was the spell your father gave his life to destroy.’
‘That’s not true!’ Ivy shouted at her. ‘How can you be so blind? The piskeys of the Delve are your responsibility, and most of them have faery as well as piskey blood, just like I do. They need you to give them their freedom, not sit there and watch them die so you can stay in power!’
Betony slapped her across the face.
Cicely shrank back, and Mica started halfway to his feet as Ivy and her aunt stared at each other, both of them breathing hard. Then with deadly softness the Joan spoke: ‘For generations we piskeys have poured our lives into this mine. We have made it a place of beauty and strength, our people’s greatest pride. It protected us from the spriggans while they lived, and since then it has hidden us from the Empress and her servants. It is safe, it is secure – and most of all, it is secret. That is how our people have survived so long.
‘But when this faery, this stranger, appeared in our midst, you forgot all of that. You disobeyed my order to stay away from the prisoner, and allowed him to seduce you into setting him free. What did he offer you, to make you believe you could trust him? Did he tell you he would shower you with treasure, and make you his queen?’
A spasm of nausea gripped Ivy’s throat. ‘No. What makes you think I would want – no.’
‘Then what?’
She couldn’t lie, much as she wanted to. ‘He said he would teach me to fly.’
Betony regarded her for a few seconds in astonishment, then threw back her head and laughed. ‘And you believed him?’
But horror was dawning on Mica’s face, and Ivy knew he’d finally put the pieces together: their conversation about shape-changing, the swift he’d marked out as an impostor and felled with one deadly stone, the way Ivy had vanished when he and Flint needed her most.
Don’t say it, Ivy begged him silently. If you ever loved me at all, don’t tell her that I can change shape.
For one last moment Mica held her gaze. Then abruptly he got up and walked to the far side of the cavern. He braced his hands against the wall and bent his head between them, and he did not look back.
‘Your brother is ashamed of you,’ said Betony. ‘As he should be.’ She raised
her voice, pronouncing each word distinctly as she went on, ‘You have admitted to consorting with a servant of the Empress, and releasing him against my orders. You left the Delve on several occasions without permission, and enticed an innocent child to follow your example. You revealed your piskey nature to a human girl – whom you then brought into the Delve. Any one of those crimes would be worthy of severe punishment, but all together, there can be no question that you deserve to die.’
Cicely whimpered. Mica turned, but he didn’t speak. Ivy stood unmoving, staring straight ahead as the Joan continued:
‘But you are my brother’s daughter, and you and Mica and Cicely are the last of our family line. For the sake of Flint’s memory, and because of what you did to destroy the faery Gillian and undo her spells, I will not have you executed. But it is clear you have little respect for my authority, and that if I allow you to remain you will spread sedition among my subjects. So…’ She drew herself up. ‘I banish you from the Delve, now and forever. Go where you wish and call yourself what you will, but you are no longer a piskey.’
‘No!’ cried Cicely, leaping off the sofa and throwing her arms around Ivy. ‘You can’t! She didn’t mean me to follow her out of the Delve, she was trying to find our mother. And she saved your life – all our lives!’
‘Cicely, get away from her,’ said Mica, striding over. ‘Don’t be a little fool.’
‘No!’ Cicely shouted at him. ‘You can stay here and poison yourself to death if you want, but I won’t!’ She turned pleading eyes up to Ivy. ‘Take me away with you. Please. I want to see Mum again.’
Ivy looked at the Joan, whose face might have been chiselled out of granite. ‘Let me take Cicely,’ Ivy said, ‘and I won’t fight you. We’ll leave the Delve together, and you can tell everyone we went to live with Marigold.’
‘Very well,’ said Betony. ‘But you’ll go at once, without speaking to anyone. And you’ll take nothing with you.’ She turned to Mica. ‘If you wish to prove your loyalty, son of Flint, you’ll see to that.’ Then she stalked out the door and slammed it behind her, the day-lamps flickering in her wake.