Whiskeyjack

by Victoria Goddard

  Try as I might, I could not bridge the time between reaching the White Cross and entering the cell.

  Since Jack and Ben made no move to leave, I let myself focus on trying to remember.

  It was the custom in South Fiellan that at some point during the last of the spur weeks, once in the week before the Furlough of the Spring, and again in the fortnight before the Winterturn Assizes began, you went to visit the graves of your family and leave a gift-offering. The spring offering (which usually coincided with my birthday on the come-and-go 29th of February) was of the first flowers, hope for a new life; the November offering was the last fruits of the year, hope of a legacy well remembered.

  I had gone with my stepfather’s second wife and my half-sisters and step-sisters to lay our offerings on the four-month-old grave of my stepfather. I had taken my two half-sisters to our mother’s grave, though even Lauren, the older, was really too young to remember her. Both of those graves were in the village cemetery on the high ground north and west of the Rag.

  I had delayed going to my father’s grave, not sure what the rules were for someone who had been buried ignominiously as a suicide and a traitor and a potential wakeful revenant under a cross-roads at midnight. I was quite sure one was not supposed to leave offerings to the criminal dead.

  But my father had not been a traitor, and I was increasingly uncertain whether he had been a suicide or a victim of murder—and he was my father, whom I loved.

  I had taken my gifts of wheat and starflowers and apples with me on that run. I’d gone very early, one very misty morning when sounds echoed and ebbed strangely.

  In the pre-dawn twilight, the last week before winter began, a few days off the anniversary of his death, I had run down the highway to reach the waystone at the White Cross, and—

  “Cheer up, lad,” said Ben. “You’re not in such dire straits as all that.”

  I started, recalled where I was, smiled lopsidedly at how much I had forgotten my current predicament. “No? I must admit this is a new situation for me. Do you by chance have any advice?”

  “Assuming we do have the experience?”

  I smiled more genuinely at the old man. It was hard to imagine anyone looking more like a rogue than him, unless it was his piratical companion. “Forgive me the presumption. It could, of course, equally have been your first time.”

  “With the Yellem constabulary, yes, but we’ve seen our share of cells before, eh Jack?”

  Jack grunted. “Time to move out. You coming with?”

  There wasn’t much point in hesitating. Besides, I’d never find out the truth if I didn’t go with them.

  ESCAPING FROM A MID-sized town’s worth of alarmed citizenry and annoyed constabulary required my attention. I put aside all questions of how along with those with why (for both were equally baffling: why would someone kidnap me from the White Cross? And why would I not remember them doing so?), and followed Ben and Jack where they led.

  I could not help wondering, as we passed through gardens and yards and someone’s unattended haberdashery shop, just what my father would have thought to see me.

  “No, lad, head down,” rumbled Jack. Don’t you know anything about poaching?”

  “Just the card game,” I muttered, obeying. The snide question reminded me of Mr. Dart’s recurrent invitations to go ‘picking mushrooms’, which I equally recurrently declined. An unwary acceptance my first weekend home had started what I considered the melodrama of the past month and Mr. Dart insisted on calling adventures.

  “Now on your belly, under there.”

  I followed Ben under a fence, over an outdoor privy still odorously in use, through someone’s raspberry patch, and wished Mr. Dart were here, since he would certainly be having a great deal more fun.

  I scratched a finger on something I didn’t enquire too closely into and nursed it, taking comfort from the cool comfort of the magic ring I had won in my last game of Poacher.

  There were far too many oddities in my life of late. It was a melodrama. Some days I felt like writing to Jack Lindsary, celebrated author of that hit play of the summer, Three Years Gone: The Tragicomedy of the Traitor of Loe, and offering him the opportunity to write a sequel about what happened when said so-called traitor’s son came home from university.

  Past the raspberries the escape was a blur of occasional torches, a seeping damp cold, the lingering aroma of dog shit, dark gardens, and light edging around heavy winter curtains in warm snug well-fed homes. After a while it started to snow.

  Ben and Jack exchanged another glance. Perhaps they were communicating mind-to-mind, as Voonran wizard-mystics of Astandalan days had been reputed to do?

  Jack said, “Thin first, thick later. Blizzard if the wind picks up.”

  This showed an impressive knowledge of South Fiellanese weather patterns. Perhaps he was a local? I squinted, but could make out nothing except for a pale blur between eyepatch and beard. Not that there was any reason to suppose I would be more likely to recognize him than I had in the cell.

  South Fiellan had never been populous—Yellton, with somewhere between seven and ten thousand inhabitants, was the largest town of the three southernmost baronies—but after the Fall, the hard times of the Interim had cut the population considerably. Ragnor Bella and the barony around it had not been as horribly affected by the out-of-control magic as some, but we’d had our share of pestilence, famine, and maddened animals—and men—before order began to be restored.

  There was a large stretch of farmland between Ragnor Bella and Woods Noirell that lay abandoned. Not all those people had perished. Some had given up fled to what they hoped were better lives. Many of those had ended up in the larger cities, Yrchester, Kingsford, even Orio City—and many had ended up in the wastelands and no-man’s-lands and the Arguty Forest.

  Jack peered out of our current hiding spot, a lean-to woodshed, and came back to nod decisively at us. “Wind’s picking up. In five minutes no one will be able to see us or our trace.”

  “How will we keep our way?” I asked, which seemed a logical question to me but which caused both men to appear startled.

  “Rope is traditional,” Ben said.

  “Have you any? I don’t wish to be obstructive, but I’d rather not be sacrificed for your escape, either.”

  Jack snorted. “We’re not so far gone as you imagine, lad. We’ll not abandon you until you prove an enemy to us.”

  I supposed I had to accept that. If I had no idea how much I could, or should, trust them, they had no idea about my character, either. There were certainly young men of (nearly) one-and-twenty who were hardened criminals.

  Women, too, of course. My ex-lover Lark was a fine example of the type. She had drugged, beguiled, bespelled, and finally betrayed me, and quite conceivably was behind today’s activities.

  I felt proud of myself for being able to refer to her in my thoughts as an ex-lover. I used to write embarrassingly bad poetry to her apostrophizing her as ‘my goddess’.

  I did rather better at deciphering poetry than I did creating it. Violet had always laughed at my efforts. We had ended up writing coded messages to each other in Old Shaian to practice our ideographs.

  Violet was Lark’s best friend, confidante, and very likely second-in-command. I had found out too late, alas, that Lark was actually one of the Indrillines, those criminal kings of Orio City, and Violet one of their agents.

  Once the drug and the enchantment wore off I could be angry at Lark. Every rational impulse of my soul suggested that Violet was not a good person to fall in love with.

  The rational impulses of my soul do not, alas, always have much weight.

  I tugged my thoughts back to the present. I didn’t reckon much on my chances alone, all told, what with the blizzard and the darkness and the unknown country and the angry populace, so I said: “Very well then. I have some fishing line, if that will suit?”

  For although I might prefer the card game to the dead-of-night crime, I was coming to learn
that fishing was always a good excuse.

  LINKED TOGETHER BY fine cord invisible in a night become white as a nightmare, I travelled between Ben and Jack in a peculiar state. All my senses were alert and straining, but there was only ever the snow and the wind and the faint tug of the line on my wrist to sense. My feet, in their light half-boots, were long since numb, and the snow was the heavy wet type that stuck to my face and slid off in lumps.

  It was not truly cold, but I was sincerely concerned about hypothermia. Once we stopped moving we would be in grave danger.

  I fretted over that for a while but thoughts of bright fires and hot wine and delicious food and warm, dry, warm clothing intruded. I fell into a reverie of the Winterturn feasts at Arguty Manor with my elder uncle Sir Rinald, when my father was alive.

  I had loved Arguty Manor, dark as some found it with all the oak panelling everywhere. It was a house full of strange details; I had spent many happy hours searching the wainscoting for the seven carved mice my uncle swore were there and for the entrance to the secret passages Mr. Dart was sure had to exist. We never found them, but the hunt for treasure and mystery and adventure had never palled.

  A tug on my wrist recalled me to the present. I turned along the motion, drawn as a fish to the fisherman to the still dark shape in the swirling darkness. Jack, waiting for us to gather round, astonishingly certain of his whereabouts and route.

  “In here,” he said, and pushed my shoulders down.

  DOWN was a jarring drop of a few feet into what felt like a face-full of roots. I started sneezing, a matter complicated by the fishing lines, the darkness, Ben’s precipitous arrival behind me, and whatever-it-was that had set me off.

  Jack disentangled himself from the line. Ben pushed past me with a muttered observation I thought it best not to hear, and I indulged myself in a good long sneeze.

  Feeling slightly dizzy, I recovered myself to find that I was in a dark tunnel. It was not quite so dark as it might have been, for both light and blessed warmth flowed from the direction my unlikely companions had gone.

  I collected myself as much as possible, knowing that dignity was far too much to ask for, and proceeded along the tunnel into a hurtful brightness.

  After a few minutes this resolved itself into a cave with a fire in the middle. Ben was doing something with a pot; Jack glanced at me. “There’s another blanket in the corner there and some dry clothes.”

  “Thank you,” I replied gravely, too grateful for the change of garments to worry about where they might have come from. An unwary peasant fallen on hard times, I suspected. They were dry and warm and its was far better than hypothermia—and if I had fallen in with highwaymen, at least they were gentlemanlike ones.

  Sadly, none of us were dressed well enough for the part of nobleman-in-disguise from a ballad or a play.

  Ben passed me a tin cup full of something warm that turned out to be broth. I supped it even more gratefully, reflected that I was technically a nobleman in disguise, reflected briefly on what Jack Lindsary might do with that tidbit in a new melodrama, and presently began to be decidedly puzzled.

  I looked around the cave. It was definitely a cave: thready roots hung down from its ceiling, and thick roots, the size of my arm, snaked down one side wall. There was the tunnel by which we’d entered, another dark opening from which blew a steady but gentle draught, and a sandy floor.

  Besides the three of us and the fire it held a collection of useful-looking items: bed rolls, blankets, two bags like larger versions of the rucksacks Hal and Marcan and I had borne on our walking tour in the summer; a few dishes, some comestibles, and in two piles, one near to Jack, the other to Ben, their weapons.

  These were old and well-used, the familiar pair of Astandalan-army regulation shortsword and daggers. Even as I watched Ben turned to pick one of his daggers up. Despite his knobbly arthritic joints his motions were sure and skillful.

  “Well?” said Jack, who had been narrowly watching me. “Your assessment?”

  “Ex-army,” I replied promptly. “Probably one of the calvary regiments. Also, you must be a local.”

  “Not I?”asked Ben, chuckling. He cut a slab of cheese with his knife, another of bread, and handed the result to Jack before cutting another for me.

  “No, sir,” I said seriously. “None of the local families are anywhere of your colouring.”

  It was a simple statement of fact, for the three baronies of South Fiellan had only one imperial title among them (mine ... or rather my grandmother’s), and otherwise it had never been much of a magnet for Shaian settlers. There were a few people of Shaian ethnicity scattered around, mostly in the village of St-Noire south of Ragnor Bella, once the last village of Alinor before the Border crossing on the way to Astandalas the Golden. Most of the diversity of Fiellan was to the north and east—and south and west on the other side of the mountains, to be honest, for Ragnor, Yellem, and Temby baronies were all always somewhat backwards. We had the Imperial Highway going through, but the old joke went that no one ever left it before they got to Yrchester. Ben’s skin tone was numerous shades darker than any of the locals, almost as dark as Hal’s—and Hal was an imperial duke.

  “Mmph,” said Ben, which was a splendid noise perhaps aided by his own mouthful of bread and cheese. “Well, yes, then, we’re old soldiers. Jack and I mustered up in the Seventh Army, long ago now.”

  “Didn’t stay calvary long,” Jack muttered.

  I ignored this tempting diversion. “Which division?”

  “Sixth, why?”

  I was caught by my own eagerness. I wanted very much to explain, to crow my exultation at the vindication of my father’s name—but at the same time I knew that the mistaken connection with treason was still all too current.

  I temporized. “I’m from Ragnor Bella. Everyone knows about Mad Jack Greenwing of the Sixth.”

  Which was, alas, only true.

  Jack swallowed half his bread in one bite. “Load of stuff and nonsense, I expect.”

  “Oh, yes, sir,” I agreed—for that was also only too true, and it cost me nothing to be polite. I didn’t feel up to an extended game of dissembling, so took advantage of a sneezing fit to change the subject. I couldn’t think of a delicate way of asking the most pressing question, so just came right out and said: “May I ask what you were in for?”

  “Loitering,” Ben replied immediately. Jack made a rumbling noise I realized after a moment was his laugh. “We’re honest vagabonds. Don’t laugh like that, Jack, you’ll affright the lad. We were taking a rest along the wayside when some officious constables came by and scooped us up. We didn’t wish to be press-ganged in the morning, so when you made notice of the door—welladay and here we are. And yourself?”

  “Oh, murder,” I said inattentively, focusing on the new item in what Ben had said. “What do you mean, press-ganged?”

  “What do you mean, murder?”

  His voice was so hard I was for the first time truly concerned for my own safety.

  I smiled deprecatingly. “I haven’t murdered anyone. I was thrown into Yellton Gaol on the charge of murdering Fitzroy Angursell in the form of a dragon.”

  Chapter Three: The Troglodyte Kingdom

  “Aren’t you worried about the snow?” I asked as Ben and Jack collected their various belongings together into remarkably compact bundles.

  Jack spoke through a mouthful of the strap he was tightening. “Aren’t you from round here? Early wet snow like that doesn’t last past mid-morning.”

  “We don’t usually get any snow in Ragnor barony until the start of the Winterturn Assizes, and they’re not for another week.”

  I trailed off on that thought. The Winterturn Assizes were in a week, or just about. I had to sort out whatever was going on with the Yellem constabulary before then, because I was fairly certain that even if it were lawful for someone going through an active trial on count of murder to attend probate hearings, it surely wasn’t a good idea for someone on the lam for said charges (
allegations? I wasn’t totally clear where things had ended up) to attend.

  My non-attendance at the Assizes, as it happened, was altogether unacceptable.

  The law in Fiellan was that before a will could finish its journey through probate, all parties named in it had to be assembled together before the chief magistrate of the deceased’s home barony during either the Midsomer or Winterturn Assizes to hear it being read. Due to the fact that I had been wandering around Ghilousette in a slough of despond (as I believe is the technical phrase) in the summer, I had not been able to be informed of my stepfather’s death in time to make even the tail end of the Midsomer Assizes. Although I was not anticipating more than a very small competence, I was nonetheless a named party and therefore required to be there. As a result of my absence the settling of his estate—including all of his Rondelan business dealings—had to wait.

  I could not miss the Winterturn Assizes.

  Though everything in me revolted at the thought, I might have to let myself begin a murder trial for a crime I did not commit. How sensational a trial it would be! The son of Mad Jack Greenwing—hero, reputed traitor, subject of the staggeringly successful new play Three Years Gone: The Tragicomedy of the Traitor of Loe—tried for the murder of Fitzroy Angursell (of all people!) in the form of a dragon (of all things!). Whoever had set this up, I mused gloomy, had certainly wanted it to be disseminated far and wide.

  Jack and Ben gave me a blanket and some strapping with which to tie together my still-damp clothes from yesterday. I formed a bundle less elegant than theirs but portable. Ben dowsed the fire and Jack inspected the cave for what traces we had left.

  “Good enough,” he said eventually, his raspy voice again surprising me. I don’t know why I was so surprised by his voice, which certainly wasn’t at odds with his appearance—quite the contrary, given eyepatch, bristling beard, rough queue of grey-streaked dark hair.