The Bitterbynde Trilogy (10 page)

After a time, dust settled. The great animal breathed evenly and folded the powerful wings.

“Sods and little fishes!” Keat Featherstone strode forward to take the halter easily. Without turning to the new polish-boy, sweat-stained and streaked with dirt, he said quietly:

“That was well done, lad. Well done indeed.”

As the second groom began to lead the stallion away, three riders burst the bubbling crowd apart. Casually they reined in.

“What's the fuss here?” a nasal voice demanded. Master Mortier's crimson taltry, brocade-edged, rested heavily on his head. Although the drawstring was tied under the chin, strands of long, lank hair showed, pulled back from a face that might have been handsome had the chin not been so weak and the pouting lips so soft and shapeless. A slight paunch betrayed his propensity for sampling new and different flavors. Gloved hands held the reins lightly. At one side he was flanked by Galliard, Master at Aerial Navigation, and on the other by his valet.

The blacksmith, rotund and rubicund, panted down the ramp from his forge.

“Sir Masters,” he announced imperatively, “I never seen no 'puchin loose in these grounds that I can remember of, lately, at any rate!” Then he added as an afterthought, “And I never seen nothing like that there, neither.”

He pointed at the uncomely youth who followed Keat Featherstone. Here was a likely scapegoat.

“That there distempered wretch is what caused all this mischief, I'll be certain—upsetting Storm Prince's nerves like that, getting him all of a pother so's he can't be shod.”

The Master at Swords gazed down upon the accused from the height of his horse's back. The youth stopped in his tracks, flushed. The crowd of stablehands loitered uncertainly.

“How now! 'Tis himself,” cried the fencing-tutor, adjusting his riding-gloves, “a known troublemaker. Have our lessons taught you nothing, young paragon? Alas, we shall have to teach them again.”

The valet giggled—short, sharp, high-pitched. Mortier pointed his riding crop at the youth.

“He shall accompany me now.”

A stocky figure pushed through the crowd.

“Good sir,” Dain Pennyrigg rasped grimly, “the lad is not at fault.”

“Hold your tongue, lackey, this is not your business.”

Keat Featherstone paused in his stride, turning on his heel impatiently.

“Nor is it yours, sir. These are stable-yards, not fencing-halls. The lad saved the gray from certain injury. The 'puchin which frightened the horse belongs not to the lad, nor did it accompany him. I know not how it came here, but it is being removed by my lads, as you can see.”

The lads in question, having been unable to entice the little ape out of the tree, had taken to hurling stones at it. Hissing and insulted, it bared its yellow teeth, leaped from a branch, and fled away across the rooftops.

His expression subtly transformed, Mortier turned his gaze back to the object of his previous discourse. His beady eyes raked the youth from head to foot. Then his lip curled.

Without deigning to reply, the Master at Swords and his companions jabbed their spurs into their landhorses' ribs and galloped away, scattering the crowd.

“A bad enemy,” said Keat Featherstone later in the harness room. “I cannot guess how you've crossed his path and come to his attention, but it is the worse for you.” Abstractedly he picked up a currycomb that had been left on a shelf and turned it around and around in his hands. “If you're as good with horses as it seems, I would have you work here, from time to time. Keep out of his way, lad. I don't want to see you end up in the same straits as poor clubfooted Pod, the little half-fey lad Mortier keeps as a page. The Master … er,”—Featherstone scratched his nose, and his gaze slipped sideways for an instant—“studies the Nine Arts. He prefers def—I mean, weak sort of folks to perform errands for him. 'Tis said he has dealings with unseelie wights. The Lord Stormriders are unaware or seem to be unaware of all such matters as do not interfere with their own doings. Mortier is a master swordsman, there's no doubt, and an excellent teacher for the young riders, who ought rightly to be skilled in such ways. His services are valued.” He sighed. “You'll be safe, just as long as you stay out of his way.”

Having replaced the currycomb, he headed for the door. “Come, lad—it be nigh on dusk. You'd better be getting on up the Tower.”

There were things he would have liked to say; questions he would have liked to ask. They hammered at his skull from the inside, demanding to be freed, but they were locked in, as he was locked within this Tower and its demesnes. There was no password, no key, not even a hairline crack to suggest the door might be ajar.

‘And the raging trees, the raging trees did roar,

And the stormy winds did blow,

While we jolly sailor lads were skipping up aloft

And the landlubbers lying down below, below, below,

And the landlubbers lying down below.'

Tren Spatchwort sang out of tune, in the servants' kitchen on Floor Five.

“Hold your noise, Spatchwort,” said Dain Pennyrigg. He yawned. “I'd rather hear a capuchin squalling.”

“That's an old sea-shanty, is it not?” said the Keeper of the Keys. “But you've changed the words to suit Windships. Got a mind to sail on Windships, have you?”

“Aye. One day I'll crew my way out of this place,” Tren Spatchwort answered.

“Why? It's not so bad. Besides, what would you do to earn a crust? Not sing for your supper?” Pennyrigg took a draft from a cracked mazer of hot medlure and propped his boots on a table. Wooden paddles leaned against the still-warm bread-ovens. Lamplight danced off belt buckles wrought like various animals' heads, reflected in eyes, and softened the faces of the gathering. Lounging on benches and stools around the tables, they gambled at cards and dice, drank, conversed, whittled. Children played Mouse and Stringtangle.

“I would assay for the Dainnan, just as you would, Pennyrigg, just as any of us would. Unlike you blunderheads, I would pass the trials and become a member of the Brotherhood. I would travel, then, and see the world, and fight, and be part of great ventures, and the Royal Bard would make songs about me. How can anyone do anything in this place? 'Tis like an island, here. We're trapped, surrounded by a sea of forest filled with evil wights, gray malkins, and bruigas and—” Tren Spatchwort bit off his words. “Other things. And ships sail on it. If the forest has become the sea, shall the sea become the forest?”

Pennyrigg punched his friend lightly on the arm. “You've been drinking too much spike-leaf. You're in danger of becoming a philosopher.”

“And my friend Sheepshorn is in danger of becoming worm's meat.”

“In trouble again?”

“Aye, and locked in the cellars for punishment.”

“The cellar-keeper had better beware. Grod will drink the barrels dry by tomorrow morn!”

Spatchwort's proclamation of discontent touched a chord within the nameless one. He yearned to leave this place of no answers, to journey until he found answers, and if there were none, to travel on. He knew that strange dangers and untame things lurked in the forest—such things were often spoken of among the Household. To him, as strength developed, the prospect of the forest's eldritch perils seemed no worse than spending the rest of his life cringing in humiliation and servitude.

Curled in the lap of the Keeper of the Keys was a capuchin clothed in a perished velvet jerkin. It whimpered.

“Inch grieves for Punch,” the woman said softly. “He got into the stables today, and they chased him off into the forest.”

“Indeed, and 'puchins are supposed to be trained not to go to the stables, so who's at fault?” commented a scullion offhandedly.

“I heard it had something to do with Poxface over there,” said a footman. He indicated a figure crouched in a corner that drew even farther into itself, toward the spark of anger within.

To most of the other household servants, the only thing that made amends for the presence of the spindle-shanked lad was that they were now the second-lowest-ranked group. This warmed their spirits somewhat, although not toward him. In fact, most of them were torn between bullying him to prove their rank and ignoring him out of laziness or because it pained their sense of the aesthetic to look at him. This conundrum proved too much for their intellects to resolve, and to avoid further mental suffering they ended up alternating between the two approaches.

“Why is it always creeping around here with real people?” interjected a drudge. “Why doesn't it stay in the furnace room with batty Grethet?”

“Grethet's sheep, it is,” gibed another. “Grows its yellow wool for her. Says she'll sell it off for a pretty penny, and why should she get the benefit? Why not us?”

“Things like that oughtn't to be allowed in places where people eat,” muttered another.

A bowl thrown by one of the older children found its mark on the youth's shoulder.

“Leave off—he's harmless enough,” snapped the Keeper of the Keys.

Attention drifted from the youth. The servant Grech began to hold forth about the hideous monster known as Nuckelavee, which came out of the sea spreading evil wherever he went, blighting crops, destroying livestock, and killing every mortal he encountered.

“His head is ten times the size of a man's,” Grech grinned, accidentally spitting as he spoke, “and his mouth juts forth like a pig's snout, yet 'tis wide enough to drive a wheelbarrow in. His home is the sea. He blights crops with mildew and sea-gales, he throws livestock over the rocky cliffs along the coast, he brings plague amongst all mortalkind. Poisonous is the foul blast from his nostrils, withering plants and causing animals to sicken. Never does he visit the land when rain is falling, and 'tis known he brings long droughts.”

“Droughts?” someone questioned. “Has he then some earnest disapprobation of fresh water?”

“That he does, and no mistake,” replied Grech wisely.

“You'll be giving us nightmares! It's naught but a sournatured and pestilent fat-guts you are, Grech!” the other servants exclaimed. “You polled bachelor!”

“Pray tell us a kinder story, Brand,” implored Rennet Thighbone. The old man obliged, and the evening passed quickly with the telling of tales.

As the nameless youth pursued his task of polishing the door fittings, a man came to him.

“You have been summoned, Lickspittle. The Master of Swords summons you to his presence
now!
”

Mortier's chamber was dark. Velvet curtains muffled the slits of windows. No fire shed its cheery glow; the only light emanated from a quincunx of blue flames on a long table of polished oak. A broken orrery stood before a tall and tarnished mirror; also a tellurion, slightly damaged. Dirty retorts and vials disarrayed a wooden trestle. A similar edifice opposite supported rusted iron cogs, toothed wheels, springs, an astrolabe, a headless automaton, and several other half-gutted clockwork apparati of whose purpose the visitor had no idea. Over the whole chamber hung a heaviness, a shroud of lethargy. Things dismantled had never been reassembled; nothing stood complete—all projects abandoned, half-done.

The Master at Swords had melded with a high-backed chair.

“Come here.”

Accustomed to obedience, the lad obeyed, fighting for breath. Rising terror threatened to suffocate him. Even twilight could not hide the unsavoriness of the master's helminthic features. For bleak moments the cold, watery eyes scanned the lad from head to foot, as if measuring him, while the youth trembled, wondering when the blow would fall. Mortier was not one to prolong suspense. Abruptly, wordlessly, he leaned forward and struck, suddenly and hard. The lad reeled and on finding his balance retreated a step or two.

“That is for your impertinence at the smithy yesterday.”

With surprising swiftness, the man rose out of his chair, lunging forward. A second blow landed like thunder on the side of the lad's head. He felt blood trickle.

“And that for daring to turn folk against me to save your own hide. And that”—the third blow felled his victim—“for paining my sight with your ugliness.” The lad scrambled to evade the booted foot now, but it was useless. When the Master at Swords had kicked him to the other side of the room he rolled under a table, finding shelter behind its thick, carved legs. There he knelt, his ears ringing, his thin ribs rising and falling.

“Come forth. You shall kneel before my chair and beg pardon for your offenses. Come forth at once, I say, or you shall be further punished for your wanton disobedience, vile and ugly boy!”

Across the room a door opened. Distracted, Mortier turned. A servant's head peered through the doorway.

“Master Mortier, sir—oh!”

The unfortunate intruder jumped back. Something fled past him, out the door, and down the dark corridor, away.

The lift-keeper slid the double sets of doors shut and locked them with a sonorous clang. Inside the lift-cage the boy without a name stared at the walls and ceiling.

The sildron-powered horse-lift was roomy. At that moment it carried an eotaur and five servants: the foundling, Keat Featherstone, Dain Pennyrigg, Teron Hoad the old ostler, and the lift-keeper, all dressed monotonously in tawny doublets, breeches, and boots, taltries pulled up to cover their heads. Lord Isterium's bay mare, West Wind, was returning to work after a field-spell, to embark on a run that very evening.

Featherstone had called upon the young servant to accompany the mare. Famous for her hatred of lift-cages, she had in the past damaged her handlers and the cage in her display of contempt for such confines. After the last performance, there had been doubt as to whether she could continue her role as a Skyhorse.

Now she stood docile, nibbling at the youth's hand, nuzzling his tunic as the lift rose. Featherstone and Pennyrigg looked on, bemused. They had not queried the bruised eye, the swollen lip.