by Paul Stewart
Maris could bear it no longer. Spoiling her afternoon was one thing, but so obviously enjoying himself was quite another! There he was, all bluster and rough edges. He'd come in, ruined her mosaic, spellbound Welma, bewitched Digit … She groaned angrily.
Quint spun round. ‘Are you all right, Maris?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I …’ she began, embarrassed by the concern in his voice. ‘Just clearing my throat,’ she said, and did it again. ‘The echo makes it sound worse than it is.’
Quint nodded. ‘It's the best echo I've ever … HEARD!’
HEARD … HEARD … heard … heard …
The pair of them burst out laughing, and the sound of their laughter mingled with all the other noises as Quint crossed the hall to the table where Maris was still working on the mosaic. He put his hands up defensively.
‘I won't touch,’ he said. ‘Promise!’
‘I should hope not,’ said Maris with mock severity. Quint frowned. ‘Can you actually see any thing?’ he asked.
‘It is a bit dark,’ Maris conceded. ‘The thing is, I promised my father I would complete it for him as soon as possible.’ She looked up at Quint. ‘You couldn't light my lamp for me, could you?’ she asked. ‘Only I'm not allowed to.’
‘Me?’ Quint gulped and, for a split second, Maris saw fear – raw and blind – flash across the young sky pirate's face. The next moment, he was in control once more. ‘Light your lamp?’ he said jauntily. ‘Yes, I can do that.’
Maris looked at him closely. Even in the shadows, his skin was glistening with sweat. ‘If it's too much trouble, then don't bother,’ she said meanly. ‘Welma will be back in a moment.’
‘It's fine,’ said Quint. ‘How does she do it? Fire-sticks? Flint-flames?’
‘She usually takes a piece of flaming wood from the stove,’ said Maris. ‘The tongs are on the hook.’
Quint nodded, grabbed the lamp and turned away. Face set grimly, he crossed the floor to the little stove standing in the middle of the huge fireplace. His heart was thumping. His legs felt like lead. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw something glinting scuttle across the floor – though when he looked, there was nothing there.
The lufwood was burning well; deep purple and very hot, it bounced around buoyantly inside the stove. Trembling uneasily, Quint placed the lamp down on the floor. Then he unhooked the tongs, crouched down and flipped the front catch of the stove up. The iron and glass door swung open and Quint was struck in the face by a blast of scorching air.
‘It's all right,’ he whispered to himself. ‘The f … f… fire's in the stove. Don't panic. J … J …. Just reach in with the tongs, take out a single piece of burning wood and light the lamp. You'll be f … fine, Quint. Absolutely fine…’
On the other side of the room, Maris's brow furrowed with consternation. The curious echoes and acoustics of the vast room being what they were, she had heard every faltering word. For whatever reason, Quint was clearly petrified of fire. Perhaps she'd gone too far.
Suddenly, she found herself running towards him. ‘It doesn't matter,’ she shouted out. ‘Quint, leave it!’
But by then, Quint was already pulling a length of burning wood from the stove. His sweaty hands were shaking so badly he could barely maintain his grip on the tongs. And when Maris cried out, her booming voice gave him such a jump that he let go of them completely.
The tongs clattered to the hearth. The burning lufwood log, however, neither fell nor flew away. Half burning, half smouldering, it hovered in mid-air inches away from Quint's eyes.
Mesmerized, he stared at it in horror, unable to move, unable to cry out. Fire. Fire! He could see the white-hot flames coming closer. He could feel them getting hotter. He could smell that terrible stench once again. He could taste it. Burning hair, burning flesh. And he could hear it all. The hiss and crackle. The screaming, screaming, screaming…
‘No! It mustn't happen again!’ he cried out, and before Maris knew what he was doing, he had reached forwards and seized the burning log in his left hand.
‘Quint!’ she shrieked. ‘What are you doing? Don't be a …’ Quint thrust the log back into the stove and slammed the door shut. Maris swallowed. ‘… a fool,’ she finished weakly.
At the same moment, the door behind them opened. Both Maris and Quint spun round guiltily. Welma was standing in the doorway, a laden tray in her hands. Digit jumped down from her shoulder and bounded towards them.
‘I thought you could have toasted oakbread with hyleberry jam,’ she said, as she pushed the door shut with her foot. ‘With some hammelhorn curds and syrup for …’ Her brows lowered. ‘What have you two been up to?’ she said suspiciously.
‘N … nothing,’ said Maris.
Welma sniffed the air. Her rubbery button nose twitched. ‘Lufwood and … who's burned themselves?’ she said sharply. ‘Come on, show me.’
Quint held out his upturned hand. There were angry red sores and frayed blisters on his fingers and his palm. The soft pad of his thumb looked particularly raw.
Maris gasped and bit into her lower lip. Welma put the tray down, seized the pot of hyleberry jam and dolloped a huge spoonful into Quint's hand. Quint looked at Maris, his eyes asking her whether the old woodtroll had gone completely mad.
‘Jam, Nanny?’ said Maris.
‘Hyle berry jam,’ said Welma, as she smoothed the sticky yellow substance over the burns. ‘Hyleberry salve would be better, of course – but I dare say a little bark-sugar won't do any harm. There,’ she said at last. ‘Now if we wrap this napkin around it … So.’ She looked up. ‘It'll be as right as rain by the morning.’
‘I give you my heartfelt thanks,’ said Quint politely.
But Welma was no longer in any mood for his fancy words. ‘And I'll give you a heartfelt kick up the backside if I catch you playing with that stove again!’ she said sternly.
‘He was only trying to light my lamp for me,’ said Maris.
‘Ay, well, leave things to those who can,’ said Welma. She stood up. ‘I'd better fetch another pot of jam, then I'll – I'll – see to the lamp. Is that understood?’
‘Yes, Nanny, Welma,’ Maris and Quint chorused.
Only when she was out of the room did Maris turn to Quint. ‘What happened?’ she said. ‘What did you see?’
‘See?’ he muttered.
‘When you were staring at the burning wood.’ Quint shook his head, unable to speak. He took a deep breath, and swallowed away the lump in his throat. ‘I was once in a fire,’ he began. ‘A terrible fire.’
‘I didn't know,’ said Maris in a quiet voice.
‘The Great Western Quays fire,’ said Quint. ‘It was no accident. It began in my house. My father's quartermaster, Smeal, decided it was time to become captain of the Galerider. He set the house ablaze. My father was away, but …’ His voice broke. ‘My mother, brothers … our nanny…’
‘I'm so sorry, Quint,’ said Maris.
‘I escaped across the rooftops,’ Quint continued. ‘I always had a head for heights. But I couldn't save them … I … couldn't …’ Quint put his head in his hands, his voice sob-cracked and small. ‘The fire … the smoke … the heat…’
Maris stared at him. She was beginning to understand just how brave he'd been to agree to light the lamp, to put his hand inside the stove, to grasp the burning log … A rather alarming thought suddenly struck her. All the things he'd done, he'd done them for her.
Maris tingled uneasily inside. With her father acting so oddly of late, she already had enough on her plate to contend with. She glanced up at Quint, still shaking from his ordeal, and sighed. The sooner Wind Jackal came and took him away, the better.
The lamps and torches had all been lit by the time Wind Jackal and Linius Pallitax finally re-entered the balcony-chamber. Night had fallen and a chill, spiralling breeze was giving the crew of the Galerider a hard time keeping her stationary above the balcony of the Palace of Shadows.
‘There's a storm brewing,’ said Wind
Jackal.
‘A sleet storm,’ said Welma Thornwood, pulling a face. ‘I can feel it in my joints.’
‘Then we must conclude our business as soon as possible, so that Wind Jackal can depart,’ said Linius, plucking at his fingers nervously. ‘Sit down, everyone, please. I have something to announce.’
Maris and Quint sat down on adjacent chairs, with Quint taking care to keep his makeshift bandage hidden – there would be time for explanations later. Welma sat back in her hanging-sofa, the lemkin on her knee. The sky pirate captain stood behind Linius, who cleared his throat.
‘Wind Jackal and I have made a decision,’ he said. ‘Quint is to be enrolled in the Fountain House. He will study skylore and cloudcraft; he will learn the rudiments of mistsifting, windgrading, raintasting, fogprobing… His schooling is to commence tomorrow morning…’
‘But, but …’ Quint objected. He leapt to his feet, red-faced and flustered.
‘Don't interrupt,’ said Wind Jackal sharply.
‘Maris will be responsible for showing him the ropes,’ Linius continued, and shot his daughter a warning glance that she was not to interrupt either.
‘But, Father,’ Quint shouted, ‘an academic life is not for me…’
‘You need an education, lad,’ said Wind Jackal gruffly. ‘You'll thank me for this one day.’ His eyes darkened. ‘By Sky, if I'd had the chances I'm giving you…’
‘But I don't want…’
‘And then, as my apprentice, there are the little tasks that I will be asking you to do,’ Linius butted in. ‘Perform them well, and there could be a place for you in the Knights' Academy.’
‘No, no, no,’ said Quint firmly. ‘That's not what I want. Father,’ he said, turning to Wind Jackal, ‘I'm a sky pirate. Like you. Like Grandfather. And … And…’ Maris watched his lower lip trembling. All at once he was racing across the floor to his father, arms open wide. ‘I don't want to be separated from you,’ he wailed.
‘It won't be permanent,’ said Wind Jackal, his own mouth tugging at the corners with emotion.
‘But we've been good together, haven't we?’ Quint persisted. ‘Haven't we? Sailing the skies together. You and me …’ He swallowed. ‘You're the only one I've got left!’ he sobbed.
‘Quint!’ said Wind Jackal. ‘You're to stop this.’ He placed his hands on his son's shoulders and looked him in the eye. ‘You're shaming us both,’ he said quietly.
Quint sniffed and wiped his nose. ‘I'm sorry, but…’
‘It's not going to be easy for me either,’ Wind Jackal continued. ‘I've come to depend on your cool head, your bargaining skills …’ He paused. ‘Besides,’ he went on, his voice now little more than a whisper, ‘you are the only one I've got left.‘
Linius, who hadn't managed not to hear what was being said, stepped forwards and stopped before them, resting against his stave. ‘Quint, Wind Jackal,’ he said, looking from one to the other. ‘While Quint is here, he will be like my own son.’ He smiled. ‘What more can I say?’
‘There is nothing more to say,’ said Wind Jackal. He hugged his son, Quint, one last time, before letting go and marching stiffly back across the room to the balcony-doors. His elbow caught on one of the lacy curtains as he strode through the doorway. He did not look back.
Maris shivered unhappily. Things were not working out at all the way she'd hoped. By now, Quint should be gone. Instead, he had been left behind in Sanctaphrax to take up a place at the Fountain House school – and as if that wasn't bad enough, she had been put in charge of his well-being. She snorted with irritation. It just wasn't fair.
· CHAPTER THREE ·
THE GREAT LIBRARY
Quint put his pen down and listened. Yes, there it was again. A howling and shrieking, discordant, distant – but coming closer, and closer, till the air was throbbing with the terrible noise.
‘What is that?’ he muttered. He glanced over at the tiny window. There was only one way to find out.
Scraping his chair back on the wooden floorboards, Quint jumped up, knocking the barkscrolls he'd been reading to the floor, and hurried across the room. As he flung the window open, what had been a raucous noise abruptly became a deafening cacophony. What was causing it?
Quint thrust his head through the small window as far as it would go and craned his neck backwards. A blizzard? he thought, surprised by the sight of the snowy banks of whiteness swirling round in the air. In such warm weather? And making so much noise? Then, catching sight of the gleaming eyes and glinting talons, he realized that it was a blizzard not of snow, but of feathers.
‘White ravens!’ he gasped. ‘Hundreds of them.’
Of course, when in Undertown, he had seen the white ravens flocking before. Their eerie flights alerted the academics of Sanctaphrax that the flight-rocks in the Stone Gardens were ready to be harvested. Everyone knew that. But he'd never been so close before, nor heard them so loud. Even now, as they came spiralling down, down out of the sky, they were still maintaining their ear-splitting screech. Easing his feet off the ground, Quint squeezed himself a little further out of the window and twisted round until he was lying out across the sill.
He watched in awe as, in a great feathery drift, the flock of ravens came in to land on the roof of the Observatory.
‘Incredible!’ he murmured. ‘Quite … Ouch!’
Something hard and bony had taken hold of his ankle, and was wrenching at it painfully.
‘Ow!’ he cried – though nowhere near loud enough to be heard above the din of the ravens. He kicked out with his feet. ‘Get off me.’ He wriggled awkwardly backwards. The bony pincer-like objects suddenly grasped both his ankles.
‘Maris, if that's you, I'll … whooaah,’ he groaned, as he found himself being pulled back into the room. The next moment, the back of his head knocked sharply against the edge of the sill on its way down to the floor, which it struck with a loud crack!
‘Unkhh!’ he groaned.
His ankles were released and his legs crashed down. His eyelids fluttered, opened. The room gradually stopped leaping about. ‘You!’ shouted Quint. ‘Why in Sky's name did you do that?’
‘A thousand apologies,’ said Tweezel, bowing stiffly. ‘I did not mean … That is, I thought you were in danger.’ He trilled with agitation.
Quint rubbed his head and winced theatrically. ‘I'll be fine,’ he said.
‘That is just as well,’ said Tweezel, ‘for I have been requested to convey the following summons of attendance by my master, who is also your professor and who, as such…’
‘What?’ said Quint sharply.
The spindlebug solemnly closed the window to muffle the shrieking din of the white ravens. ‘The Most High Academe wants to see you.’
‘Now?’ said Quint, climbing unsteadily to his feet.
‘No,’ said Tweezel. ‘Fifteen minutes ago. Urgent, he said it was. Extremely urgent.’
Quint hurried towards the door. Over the last week he had heard, if not seen, just how angry the Most High Academe could be when kept waiting. He was just about to leave his room when Tweezel laid a pincer on his shoulder.
‘Just one thing, young apprentice,’ it said.
‘Yes?’ said Quint.
‘The Most High Academe hates to be kept waiting.’ With his poky little garret a narrow staircase up from the vast balcony-chamber, and the Most High Academe's study two storeys below that, Quint hurtled down the stairs in twos and threes. He didn't want to be even later than he already was.
‘Ah, there you are, lad,’ said Linius, looking over his shoulder as, hot and breathless, Quint knocked and poked his head round the open door of the professor's study. ‘Come in. Come in.’
Quint entered the room. He was relieved to find that the Most High Academe, who was seated on a tall battered stool at a cluttered desk overflowing with charts and scrolls, seemed in a better mood than he'd anticipated – although he looked strained and tired. Quint hadn't yet discovered that Tweezel would always lie about the time, so that
those he was called to summon were always on time.
‘And close the door,’ Linius added. His voice dropped to an urgent whisper. ‘I don't want a single word of what I'm about to say to go beyond these four walls. Is that understood?’
Quint nodded calmly as he pushed the door shut, but inside his heart was racing. What was the professor about to say?
The professor swivelled round completely. ‘So, Quint,’ he said, ‘how are you finding Sanctaphrax?’
‘It … it …’ he said, at a loss to know where to start. Everything was so bewilderingly different from what he was used to on board the Galerider – from the unspoken, yet rigidly upheld, pecking-order of the steamy refectory to the intrigue, whispers and lies that took place on the Viaduct Steps. And then there was the Fountain House school: the archaic rules he inadvertently kept breaking in Wilken Wordspool's classroom – and the lessons themselves, so long, so repetitive, so tedious…
Just then, the white ravens outside, who had been silent for a while, started up once again. His words were lost to their raucous clamour.
‘What was that?’ the professor shouted back, his hand cupped to his ear.
‘Noisy!’ Quint shouted back. ‘I find Sanctaphrax very noisy.’
‘I agree,’ Linius nodded earnestly. He stood up and, limping slightly, crossed to the windows and closed them all. ‘Shamefully noisy for a so-called place of learning, I would say.’ He turned and smiled. ‘How would you like to go to the quietest corner in all of Sanctaphrax?’
‘I think I should like that very much,’ said Quint.
‘Very good,’ said Linius. He plucked at his fingers, making some of the joints crack. ‘It concerns one of those little tasks I mentioned the day your father dropped you off here. Do you remember?’
‘Yes,’ said Quint warily, remembering that the professor had also spoken about the Knights' Academy. He certainly hoped the task had nothing to do with that place. Then again, he thought, he had passed the academy several times and, what with all the para-jousting, pummelball, and one-to-one combat that was going on inside, it was probably the noisiest place in all Sanctaphrax.