by Paul Stewart
Quint made a dash for the front entrance and burst in. A portly grey shryke sat at a huge carved stone table. Her long talons drummed on its polished surface with brittle clicks. Her eyes narrowed.
‘Student?’ she demanded.
‘Yes, I…’
‘Name?’ She picked up a pen and smoothed out a yellowing scroll before her.
‘Quint, and I…’
‘Class?’
‘Wilken Wordspool, but…’
The shryke made a note on the register and looked up. ‘You are late, Quint,’ she said. ‘Professor Wordspool does not like students who are late.’
‘I know, but…’
‘You'd better save your excuses for him,’ she said, and the talons on her feathered hand resumed their rhythmic tapping.
Quint nodded glumly. He turned and made his way across the entrance hall. The vaulted ceiling echoed with the sound of gushing water. It was like being in the middle of a waterfall.
As he passed the dark varnished doors of the Lower School classrooms, Quint heard children's voices coming from inside. They were reciting cloud formations in expressionless sing-song voices – ‘cursive low, cursive flat, anvil wide, anvil rising …’
‘Pay attention, Peawilt!’ shouted Professor Lemuella Vandavancx, her strident voice ringing throughout the building.
Quint sighed wearily as he climbed the central circular staircase to the Upper School. The landing there was panelled, and decorated with paintings of ancient professors. Unlike the Portrait Gallery where, for several decades, no paintings of the Most High Academes had been completed, here the tradition had continued unbroken. The oldest, high up in the shadows, were Quint's favourites. They looked impossibly wise with their long wide beards and simple black caps; High Librarians every one.
The most recent paintings were down at eye-level. The individuals they depicted looked an unpleasant bunch: fussy and over-dressed, with sly faces that stared back at Quint mockingly. Sky-scholars! Professor Barnum Trapcott. Professor Spleenewash. And there, smug and prim, was Professor Wilken Wordspool himself. Quint stopped momentarily beside the portrait. It was a good likeness – the ferret-eyes, the pointed nose tilted up as if sensing a bad smell, the thin sarcastic mouth…
Quint looked back and forth to check that the coast was clear. There was no-one about. He took a piece of black chalk from his pocket, leaned forwards and, meeting the portrait's stare, drew a small arrow pointing into Wordspool's left ear. Then, with a flourish, he wrote OPEN SKY.
He stepped back to admire his handiwork.
Tap, tap, tap, tap …
Someone was coming! Quint rushed across to the heavy ironwood doors and knocked three times.
‘Enter!’ came a thin, reedy voice.
Quint took a deep breath and pushed the doors open.
The room he entered was as high as it was narrow. Ledges rose up on three sides, on which bored students slumped, their heads lolling, their legs dangling, while around their necks hung trays upon which scrolls, inkpots and pens sat untouched. They looked like sleeping puff-puff birds, roosting in a lullabee grove. The air in the room was stale and stifling.
At a high lectern, suspended on silver chains hanging from the tall ceiling, sat a fussy little individual in ornate robes and a tasselled cap. It was Professor Wordspool. Eyebrows raised, he peered over the top of his half-moon spectacles at the latecomer.
‘Master Quint,’ he said, with a little sniff. ‘So good of you to spare some of your precious time for our humble little gathering.’ He gave a short, high-pitched laugh.
‘Yes, Professor Word-spool,’ said Quint, feeling his cheeks redden.
The other students gazed down at him with dull, uninterested eyes. Nothing, it seemed, could rouse them from the numbing torpor of the class.
What was it this morning? Quint wondered as he made his way up the wooden ladder to the upper ledge. Mist-tracing?
Rain-grading? He sighed. Before he'd started at the school, Quint had imagined that he would be spending his days immersed in fascinating studies. Instead, every lesson was filled with the constant repetition of text that Wordspool would recite from the ancient Great Tome of Skylore.
When Quint reached the top of the ladder, several heavy-set youths in costly robes moved aside for him grumpily. A bottle of ink slipped from a tray and fell with a dull thud to the greasy floor below.
Cloudcraft! Of course, thought Quint. Today it was cloudcraft: endless lists of measurements to be memorized and repeated, and accompanied by just the right nods of the head, movements of the hand, low bows and eye-blinks. What was the point?
‘The point of cloudcraft – when you're quite ready, Master Quint!’ said Wordspool, his thin, reedy voice piercing the classroom's thick gloom, ‘is not what is said but how it is said. A wattle cloud rising at three strides by quarter sight, obscurity grade high, for instance, must always be stressed with the third finger and an oblique nod, like so.’
The professor waved a bony finger past his left ear and wagged his head sharply to one side, like a demented shryke pecking at an ironwood trunk.
Quint looked across at the girls' ledges and tried to catch Maris's eye. He still wanted to know why she hadn't woken him. Had she simply forgotten? Or was she angry with him? Did she know he had been out with her father last night? It was impossible to tell. Blud Oakcross – a fat mobgnome student – was snoring gently next to him. Quesling Winnix, he noticed, was passing notes to Lod Quernmore and grinning nastily, while Ambris Ambrix looked as though she'd been crying. Maris turned her head and stared at him. Her face was expressionless. Quint turned back to the professor.
‘… storm rain at three and a half, semi-log at branch range building to good.’
His finger jabbed at his right ear, his right eye winked meaningfully. Quint thought of the portrait outside and smiled.
‘Open sky,’ he murmured.
‘Master Quint?’ Wordspool was looking straight at him with a nasty glint in his eyes. ‘You wish to share something with us?’
‘N … no, Professor,’ said Quint, staring down at his desk tray and fidgeting with a quill.
‘No?’ said Wordspool, his voice higher and thinner than ever. ‘No? Come, come, Master Quint. An exalted sky pirate like you? Open sky, you said.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Quint miserably.
‘I am attempting to teach the finer points of cloudcraft and you interrupt me, Master Quint, with talk of open sky! Open sky, Master Quint!’
‘I … I …’ said Quint, stumbling to find the words.
‘Open sky, indeed! We are sky-scholars here, Master Quint. Sky-scholars study the sky from the glorious spires of our beautiful city. We study High Sky, Master Quint, while those of us less – how shall I put it? – less gifted, study Low Sky or Middle Sky. But open sky, Master Quint. Open sky! The audacity of it all. The presumption. Only in death do we turn to open sky.’
‘But …’ Quint began, only to be airily dismissed by a wave of the professor's hand. He turned to the others in the room.
‘We do not study open sky because it is out there, while we are here! The sky comes to us, my dear students, never forget that.’ The professor was shaking with excitement, the tassels on his cap fluttering uncontrollably. ‘I fear, Master Quint, that you are fit only for the lowest of Low Sky study. Why, you might as well find a low-sky cage right now. I obviously have nothing to teach you!’
‘But, sir,’ said Quint, ‘I didn't mean…’
‘Get out,’ squeaked Wordspool, his voice high, almost hysterical. ‘Get out!’
‘Professor Wordspool!’ All heads turned. Maris stood, eyes blazing down at Wordspool from the high ledge. ‘Professor Wordspool, you forget yourself!’ she said coldly.
There were titters and shooshes from behind her.
‘My father has let it be known that all study – high and low, sky and … earth–’ There were gasps of astonishment. ‘Sky and earth,’ Maris repeated, ‘is to be welcomed in Sanctaphrax. Your ou
tburst would sadden him, Professor, should he …’ Maris paused for effect, ‘should he ever get to hear of it.’
Wordspool was speechless. His knuckles were white as his grip tightened on the lectern. ‘Why, why, why …’ he blustered, ‘why should he get to hear of it, my dear young student?’
‘Master Quint can be trusted to be discreet, Professor.’ Maris smiled across at Quint. ‘If you can.’
Wordspool was sweating. ‘Of course, of course. I was hasty, Master Quint. Hasty. When I said “get out” I meant in fact… errm… I meant … Class dismissed!’
A cheer went up from the ledges as the students scrambled down the ladders and made for the heavy ironwood doors. Only two of the apprentice-students did not join in the riotous exodus: Quint and Maris. They turned towards each other and their eyes met. Maris raised an eyebrow and jerked her head towards the door. Quint nodded. The pair of them climbed to their feet.
Outside, there were cries of laughter as a crowd gathered round the professor's portrait. ‘Open sky!’ the chant went up. ‘Open sky! Open sky!’
‘Thanks,’ said Quint simply.
‘What for?’ said Maris, with icy calmness.
‘For coming to my aid,’ he said. ‘When Wordspool was picking on me.’
‘That's all right,’ said Maris. ‘Anyway, I didn't do it for you,’ she added hurriedly. ‘I was defending my father's honour.’
‘I know that,’ said Quint. ‘Nevertheless, you helped me out, too.’
Maris nodded. ‘I did, didn't I?’ She turned to him. ‘We must talk, Quint,’ she said.
‘Talk?’ said Quint. ‘What about?’
‘I think you know,’ said Maris pointedly. Her voice was harsh.
Quint swallowed nervously. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘But not here.’
They – along with several others – were standing under cover at the bottom of the Fountain House, waiting for the rain to ease off. The birdfish were splashing about in the moat at their feet, twittering for food. The rain was heavier than ever.
‘You want to walk back in that?’ said Maris.
‘If you want to talk about what I think you want to talk about,’ Quint replied, ‘then we'll have to.’
He glanced round at the others meaningfully. Maris looked over her shoulders too. ‘All right, then,’ she said. ‘Let's go back to the palace.’
The pair of them went down the steps and across one of the bridges which spanned the moat. Anyone watching them, huddled together against the rain, would have assumed they were close friends. Yet as he hurried after Maris, Quint was still confused. Did Maris hold him to blame for her father's condition?
As they reached the Patriot's Plinth, Maris abruptly spun round, unable to contain herself any longer. ‘I hate you!’ she shouted, hammering on his chest. ‘Hate you! Hate you! Hate you!’
Quint froze, refusing to retaliate. Maris's blows became weaker and weaker until her arms fell limply to her side and her fists unclenched. Tears welled in her eyes and mingled with the raindrops on her cheeks. She looked up. Quint stared back.
‘How could you have let it happen?’ she said, her voice low and quavering.
Quint turned away. ‘You saw your father this morning, I take it,’ he said.
Maris nodded. ‘It was the worst I've ever seen him,’ she said. ‘Pale. Grey. Trembling. He could barely speak…! And then Tweezel told me that you had been with him.’ She sniffed, and pushed the lank wet hair from her face. ‘That was why I didn't bother to have you woken when you failed to appear for breakfast. I wanted to get you in trouble…’
‘I'm sorry,’ Quint admitted. ‘It was one of those tasks…’
Maris saw the confusion in those indigo-dark eyes of his and swallowed. ‘I'm sorry, too,’ she said. ‘I love him. I want to look after him. And instead, he chooses some … some apprentice to confide in, to share his work with.’ Her eyes blazed. ‘An apprentice who brings him back to Sanctaphrax half-dead! I mean, what did happen down there in Low Sky? And don't try and pretend you didn't go down in one of the sky cages. I know where he goes at night!’
Quint shook his head. ‘I don't know what happened to him,’ he said.
‘Don't know?’ Maris thundered incredulously. Quint looked round furtively in case any passers-by were listening. With the rain still lashing down, however, the streets were deserted. ‘What do you mean you don't know?’ she went on. ‘You were both in the same low-sky cage, weren't you? How could you not know?’
‘He … he wasn't in the cage the whole time,’ said Quint quietly.
Maris's jaw dropped. ‘He wasn't?’ she said. ‘Did you go all the way down to the bottom? Did something happen in Undertown?’
Quint shook his head.
‘Then, where?’ Maris demanded.
Quint frowned. ‘He told me not to breathe a word of this to anyone,’ he said, ‘so you mustn't tell…’
‘Sky above, Quint!’ Maris shouted indignantly. ‘I was born and raised in Sanctaphrax. You've hardly been here any time at all and yet you presume to tell me about the dangers of watching what one says…’
‘I promised Linius Pallitax,’ Quint butted in irritably. ‘The Most High Academe. Your father …’
Maris looked at him. Her anger melted away and her eyes brimmed with tears. ‘Forgive me, Quint,’ she said. ‘I'm just so worried about him.’ She hesitated. ‘Please, tell me what you know. Tell me everything.’
‘Whatever happened to your father,’ said Quint, his voice lowered, ‘took place inside the great floating rock of Sanctaphrax. There was a hole in the side – the entrance to a tunnel which went deep into the stonecomb. He disappeared into it for half the night. When he returned, he was in the state you witnessed this morning.’
‘The stonecomb,’ Maris repeated quietly. ‘But why?’
‘The professor didn't say,’ said Quint. ‘Though I think it had something to do with the barkscroll I fetched him from the Great Library.’ He shrugged. ‘What about the Treasury Chamber?’ he suggested. ‘Isn't that somewhere inside the great rock? Perhaps he went there.’
But Maris was shaking her head. ‘There is only one entrance to the Treasury Chamber,’ she said, ‘and that's here in Sanctaphrax.’ She frowned. ‘What in Sky's name could possibly have been important enough to make him risk entering the terrible stonecomb?’
Quint shuddered. ‘Is it really as dangerous as they say?’
Maris shrugged. ‘I've heard many stories,’ she said.
‘Stories?’ said Quint.
‘Stories of those who, when the rock shifted, lost their way and got trapped for ever in the honeycomb of twisting tunnels. Stories of blind, translucent creatures that haunt the shadowy depths waiting to prey on those who venture inside the rock. And stories of glisters.’
‘Glisters?’ said Quint. ‘What are they?’
‘No-one is really sure. Apparently, they inhabit the deepest, darkest parts of the rock, living off whatever wind-borne morsels filter through. And they glow. Occasionally, some will come up to the surface.’
‘They will?’ said Quint.
‘Yes,’ said Maris, ‘though they're impossible to see straight on. But sometimes you kind of catch glimpses of them – sudden darting flashes of light out of the corner of your eye…’
‘Yes,’ said Quint excitedly. ‘Yes, I've seen them. In the Palace of Shadows. And the Great Library.’
Maris nodded. ‘For some reason they seem to favour the older buildings…’
‘Could these glisters have attacked your father?’
‘I don't know,’ said Maris, ‘but if the tales the treasuryguards recount are true, then it's certainly possible.’ She shuddered. ‘I would hate to go down into the stonecomb.’
Quint nodded. ‘And yet, although he must have known all the dangers himself, your father decided to go there.’
‘Yes,’ said Maris thoughtfully. ‘He must have had a very good reason.’ She turned to Quint. ‘Promise me that you will keep me informed of any future tasks
he sets you,’ she said.
‘I promise,’ he said.
‘And I'll tell you if he lets anything slip when we're talking,’ she said. ‘He‘s up to something – something dangerous – that much is clear. We must find out what it is, for his sake.’ She paused, and took hold of both of Quint's hands. ‘If he takes you down in the low-sky cage again, you must follow him into the stonecomb,’ she said. ‘And please, Quint, look after him. I'm begging you.’
Trying hard to conceal his own unease, Quint smiled. ‘I'll do my best,’ he said. He paused. ‘If it's any consolation, when your father came back to the cage, he did say that it – whatever that might mean – was over. I … What is that?’ he asked, as a roar of jubilant voices filled the air. He looked round. ‘It's coming from over there,’ he said, pointing back towards the Loftus Tower.
All at once, the puzzled expression on Maris's face melted away. ‘Of course,’ she muttered. ‘It's Treasury Day.’ She smiled bravely. ‘Come on, Quint. You'll enjoy this.’
· CHAPTER EIGHT ·
THE TREASURY
CHAMBER
Treasury Day occurred annually on the first day of the second moon when in its third quarter. It was a significant day in the Sanctaphrax calendar since it marked the time when the academics of sky-scholarship overruled those of earth-studies and first introduced stormphrax to the new Treasury Chamber deep down in the heart of the floating rock.
The earth-studies librarians had fiercely resisted the move, claiming not only that it broke the Third Law of Buoyancy but that it also wasn't even necessary. The answer to the buoyant rock's problem, they claimed, lay in the study of the rock and its properties, not in the crude solution of weighting it down with stormphrax.