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many of the doors.
    “What are those for?” he asked.
    Jonquil stared at him. “Those are houses that have been struck with the plague.”
    Silas felt a lump in his throat. It was decades since the Great Plague had struck New Amsterdam and other cities and brought them to their knees, but no one had forgotten. One in every three people was afflicted; most of those died, raving of madness and burning with thirst.
    “I thought it had been wiped out?” Lily said.
    “Many things that shouldn’t be exist the closer we come to our ancestral home. This is spoiled land,” their uncle said.
    “You won’t leave me here?” Silas said. Panic overtook him as he remembered that Jonquil had said this town would be his final stop.
    “I’m not that cruel, lad.” Jonquil tapped twice on the carriage ceiling. The horses picked up pace and soon the town was behind them. “We’ll leave you at Mad Finnegan’s near Nightfall Gardens. He’ll have a bed to spare until your parents come looking.”
    Evening fell early in the valley. Shadows stretched across the mountain floor as they made their way deeper into the woods. White-capped mountains loomed in front of them as they bumped down the rocky trail. Jonquil pulled a blunderbuss from under his cloak and watched more closely out the windows.
    “What do you see?” Silas asked. He and Lily leaned forward to look at the road going past.
    “Maybe nothing, maybe something. Either way, I’d pull my head back, if you don’t want it taken off,” he said.
    The carriage began to slow. Arfast called back. “A tree’s fallen across the road!”
    Jonquil’s lips twitched in a thin smile. The wolf eyes glowed in the dusk. “Take these,” he said, handing over a pair of blades that looked sharp enough to cut air. They were heavy in Silas’s hand. He handed one to his sister.
    “I don’t know how to use this,” Lily said. She switched the knife from hand to hand as though it were distasteful.
    “You’ll learn soon enough if a marauder breaks in here,” Jonquil said. He opened the door. “You’re Blackwoods. Act like it.”
    Silas leaned out and watched Arfast and Skuld trying to move the tree that was blocking them from passing.
    “What is this then?” Jonquil said as he approached his men.
    “Someone chopped it down on purpose,” Skuld said. “I don’t like it one bit.”
    “You don’t like much, do you old man?” Arfast joked as the two lifted the tree and dragged it out of the way.
    “What’s happening?” Lily asked.
    Silas was about to answer when he saw a flash of red in the trees and marauders sprang from the woods and attacked the carriage. There were a dozen of them, dressed in rags and wielding rusty swords and antique pistols.
    One of the men charged Jonquil. In the fading light of day Silas swore he could see twisting ram’s horns on the man’s forehead. His uncle pulled the trigger on the blunderbuss and the bandit’s head disintegrated in a cloud of smoke.
    Lily screamed at the sound of the weapon firing and dropped the knife to the floor. The door of the carriage ripped open and a bandit with a goat face peered at them and smiled. He was covered in course hair and his eyes were golden. Pointed nubs of horns rode above his devilish eyebrows. A red bandana was tied around his neck.
    “Well, well, what do we have here?” he sniffed the air with his pointed snout. “Blackwoods, I reckon.”
    He reached in and grabbed Silas, who was frozen with fear. “I’ll be back to play a sweet song for you on my flute,” the goat man said bowing to Lily. “As soon as I finish with this stripling.”
    Silas was thrown from the carriage, and the air was knocked from him when he struck the ground. The battle raged all around. He saw Arfast fighting three goat men, swinging a sword and driving them toward the woods. Jonquil traded blows with a creature that stood seven foot tall and was encased in brown fur with horns the size of truncheons. There were humans as