Whiskeyjack

by Victoria Goddard

  The Morrowlea bell rang the end of curfew and Hal and I, who’d spent the entire night on the roofs rather than climb back down and risk being caught, looked at each other and laughed at the wood-doves flocking up out of the woods to the east and the way the campanile vibrated under our feet with the bell and the light that streamed red and gold across the sky to burnish us.

  I blinked, and summer sunrise turned to autumn sunset, red and gold and cold and clear coming through the doorway open to the garden and beyond the garden the fields and the trees and the river and all the wide world.

  I breathed in air that nearly hurt with its purity.

  I stood in the centre of the inscribed circle, with Domina Enory, Hal, and the doorway at the points of the triangle around me.

  The sunset receded, the doorway closed, and both somehow became Mr. Dart, and like the dragon’s riddle life closed into secrets around me. I took a deep, clear breath, and I met Mr. Dart’s eyes. His blue eyes held brown and gold and green and sunset and all the colours of the four elements sparking like Winterturn lanterns.

  I smiled at the magic in him, warm and golden and rich and life-giving as the song of the bees of Melmúsion. The air was full of honey.

  He smiled back at me. “Welcome home, Jemis.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Literary Criticism

  Since Domina Enory and Hal not only rejected my offer to help clean up but actively ushered Mr. Dart and me out of the door, we went to the library so I could spend a few moments trying hard not to cry.

  “I’m fairly certain this is a normal reaction to disenchantment,” Mr. Dart said when I surfaced to apologize.

  “They don’t mention it in the ballads,” I said, fishing in my pockets.

  “Are you out of handkerchiefs? I don’t believe it!”

  I laughed. “Roald said the same thing. Come to think of it, I still have his.” I pulled it out, remembered I’d used it after throwing up, decided my sleeve was probably the more hygienic option, and realized gratefully that Mr. Dart was offering me his. “Thanks.”

  “When did you see the Honourable Rag?”

  “When I went outside to be sick behind the grange.”

  “What was he doing there?”

  I reflected. “I have no idea. He gave me his handkerchief and a dipper of water, told me I wasn’t eating enough, asked why I wasn’t wearing that ring, and when I asked him why I should told me I should ask Sir Hamish about what Crimson Lake was. It’s a paint colour, apparently.”

  “How odd.”

  “He is.” I contemplated Roald’s handkerchief, which was a huge cotton square in an unusually loud paisley pattern in an even more unusual shade of puce. It hid the mess I’d made fairly well, which I supposed was a good thing.

  Mr. Dart reached over and tugged on the bell-pull. “He is right on one count, anyhow; you need to eat more.”

  “I’ve been feeling so—I need to talk to—” The door opened and I shut my mouth with a snap as Ellen the parlour-maid came in. She must have been hovering outside the door.

  She bobbed a curtesy somewhere in our general vicinity.

  Mr. Dart said, “Ah, Ellen, could you fetch us a snack, do you think? And maybe some drinking chocolate. Unless you fancy coffee, Mr. Greenwing?”

  “Do you fancy anything particular, Mr. Dart, Lord Jemis?”

  “Muffins with lots of butter,” Mr. Dart said promptly.

  “Lord Jemis?” I added faintly. “Mr. Brock called me that, too. Do you know why, Ellen?”

  She turned her grin at me. “Mrs. Brock said to.”

  “And did Mrs. Brock give a reason?”

  “My mum came to visit from the Manor. She said Sir Vorel told all the staff that was what everyone should call you.”

  Possibly my mind wasn’t as clear as it had initially seemed. I frowned. “And your mother is ... ?”

  “She’s Mrs. Bellfrey, the cook at the Manor. My dad’s the chief groom there.”

  “That’s why you look familiar,” I said, glad to have that cleared up. Although talk of her family at Arguty Manor made me—what had I been doing to my father? I gathered my straying thoughts as Mr. Dart frowned at me. “Did—did my uncle say why he’d suddenly decided on this?”

  “He said that as your mother was Lady Olive, and you were her heir, you should be Lord Jemis. Mum said he was very pleased to have thought of it. You know how he gets: all full of pomp and virtue.”

  Mr. Dart tried hard to suppress his snort. I bit my lip. “Well, thank you for explaining.”

  She nodded, satisfied. “Your uncle is ever so proud of you. He keeps talking about how you saved him from that dragon, you know. It’s about all he talks about these days, Mum says. He keeps coming down with ideas for special dishes for when you come to dinner. It drives Lady Flora half to distraction. Anyhow, I’ll bring you something in half a trice, sirs, and there’s more apricot jam, Mr. Dart, don’t you worry.” She bobbed another curtsey and took her leave.

  I looked at Mr. Dart. “I find myself feeling slightly guilty for putting my uncle’s dinner invitations off so often.”

  “This could all be a ruse to cover up your murder, you know. If he knows the dishes in advance he could prepare a little something to slip inside.”

  “Where would he get poison from?”

  “If he’s in league with Dominus-not-really-Gleason, he would have access to all sorts of things. The magister’s got more than the complete works of Fitzroy Angursell in that house of his.”

  The last time I’d been in Dominus Gleason’s house had been to deliver a box of books and to ask about the stargazy pie I’d found in the town square. That time I’d sneezed so much I’d fainted from lack of air, which in retrospect probably should have given me more of a clue that something was up.

  “I need to find my father, Perry,” I said.

  “They’ll be coming here soon.” I shook my head and went towards the door, unable to express the jumble of emotions in my heart. He followed to take hold of my shoulder. “Jemis. I know you want to talk to him.”

  “I’ve not been able to talk to him. I have to tell him—what I—how I—”

  “Mr. Greenwing.”

  I stopped straining against his hand at his tone. “Mr. Dart.”

  “Mr. Greenwing, you have just had lifted a curse of seven years’ standing. Your father is in the midst of any number of people who don’t know who he is and whom he does not yet wish to tell. You are in no fit state to be going anywhere at the moment. Your skin is clammy and you are shaking with reaction. You need to eat something before you faint.”

  “I need to tell him how—how glad I am he’s here.”

  The words were so weak.

  Mr. Dart looked oddly at me. “Jemis, he knows.”

  “I’ve been so suspicious and—and I didn’t recognize him! Not even when we were playing Poacher!”

  “That, of course, is exactly when you should have.”

  “Yes,” I cried, grateful he understood, and turned in his grasp only to find the door open upon me. I jumped violently. It was Hal, dusting off his hands and smiling cheerfully as he entered the room.

  “Welladay and—Jemis, what’s wrong?”

  “He’s now feeling guilty for all the effects of the curse,” supplied Mr. Dart.

  “Oh, Jemis, you must understand that your emotions are muddled at the moment from the magic? Also you need to eat.”

  “Why is everyone so concerned with my diet?” I asked, exasperated. “How can you not see that I must go find my—my father and tell him—”

  I stopped.

  “Ah,” said Mr. Dart. “Not all the doubts were from the curse.”

  I sank down before the hearth. The fire was well along, the bed of coals throwing off a fine heat. “I need to talk to him.”

  “Jemis, I hate to say it but it has started to snow and you are nearly certain to catch ill if you rush off into it to tell your father things better said indoors and in private. They’ll be on their way back by now, a
nyhow. It’s nearly dark.”

  It felt wrong to submit, but what they said made a certain amount of sense. I did feel shaky; and even hungry, dammit.

  I added another log to the fire. From behind and above me Mr. Dart said, “Ellen will do that when she comes back.”

  “I like mending fires,” I said, watching the lines of fire etch themselves across the duller coals. There was something I was missing, something that would turn smouldering coals into bright fire ... If I left aside my anxiety to apologize to my father, that left—well, everything else. I sat back on my heels, twisted to look up at Mr. Dart. “What am I missing, Perry?”

  Relief flickered across his face. He must have thought I was about to ask him about one of his forbidden subjects, I thought wryly. That would come at some point, but not when we were with Hal, in a room where we might be interrupted at any moment. “In the room just now you said something about ebryony.”

  “Ebraöni,” I corrected. “Mountain-cloud. Wool.”

  “Having the wool pulled over your eyes,” he added, and flung himself into one of the wing chairs on either side of the fireplace.

  I seated myself more slowly in the other one. “The key to the Gainsgooding conspiracy, to Ariadne nev Lingarel’s poem, and, possibly, to our situation.”

  “You’ve had an intuition,” said Hal.

  “An intimation of something, anyway.” I frowned at the fire, at the flames licking the smaller logs I’d placed over the coals. “Let’s think about this in a scholarly fashion.”

  “Like our letters back and forth about the Gainsgooding conspirators?”

  “I hadn’t realized you’d found that so memorable a correspondence.”

  He looked at me a little incredulously, laughing. “Mr. Greenwing, we wrote at least a letter a day for two months. You must have known I was much taken with the matter. Surely you were?”

  Mr. Dart, I reflected, was never going to open his heart to me if I did not show him the reciprocal trust. “Yes, I was, but I was also riding very high on wireweed, and I have to admit that between that and this curse I am no longer very confident about my memories of what was actually going on.”

  I spoke lightly, but it was honest, and he saw that. Hal frowned at both of us, then sat back in his chair as if to pretend he was invisible. Mr. Dart was visibly torn about how to respond. I took pity on him—again thinking of how insistent Hal’s silence on obvious topics had been—and turned back to the day’s more prominent concerns. “This is a library; have you paper and a pen anywhere in it?”

  “Here,” said Hal, drawing out Mr. Dart’s.

  “I still haven’t asked Roald for my pen,” I lamented, going to the desk so I could fetch paper. Glancing out the window, I discovered it was earlier than I’d thought, though the dim heavy clouds made it dark. Certainly not the sunset whose echo and glory I’d seen reflected in Mr. Dart’s eyes. “Mr. Buchance gave it to me.”

  Mr. Dart leaned against the desk to watch as I checked the nib and arranged the paper on the blotting pad. “You always call your stepfather ‘Mr. Buchance’.”

  “So I do. I am rather muddled about it, I suppose.”

  “Your sentiments?”

  “Are we, or are we not, gentlemen?”

  He picked up a spare pen and twiddled it in his fingers. “Meaning I should not ask to plumb the depths of emotions? We ought leave that to the poets, I suppose you would say.”

  I raised my eyebrows at him. I am really not as patient as Hal, alas. “Do the histories never involve the hearts of those making them?”

  Mr. Dart stared at me. The pen was motionless in his hand; the tassels on his sling waved in some draft from the window; the fire crackled behind us. Hal closed his eyes in some baffled thought. I drew three lines lengthwise down my page. The scratch of the pen sounded very loud, as did the click of the door.

  “Your refreshments, Mr. Dart, Lord Jemis,” announced Ellen, and set them on the table to one side of the desk. “Would you like me to pour? If you need anything else, just ring. I’ve brought another cup for Mr. Lingham.”

  “Thank you,” I replied. “We can serve ourselves.”

  “Of course we would ring,” muttered Mr. Dart as she went out again; “and that’s her job.”

  “She’s still a person.” I gazed at my three lines, added a horizontal one at the top as a header, and swivelled in my seat to contemplate the tray she’d bought. “Good heavens, I’m hungry.”

  “Roald wasn’t wrong. You have lost weight.”

  “Try eating when your stomach feels as if it’s trying to strangle you,” I replied, choosing two muffins dripping with butter and adding a liberal dollop of honey. Not honey from the Woods, alas, but that would come in time and in season. “Mm, these are good. I must do some more baking. We keep forgetting to, eh, Hal?”

  “The skill of the local baker makes me less inclined.”

  “He doesn’t make muffins. Or crumpets.”

  “Too true, alas.”

  Mr. Dart shook his head and pointed at my page. “Why do you have three lines?”

  “It’s the way you begin analyzing a puzzle-poem. I thought it might help for our puzzles. On the left goes the word or the line—usually it’s three to seven ideographs a line, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  I smiled fleetingly. “I’m sure your historians have their conventions and styles.”

  “I am wondering ever more if there are ones I have missed. I was looking for the patterns in the histories, not in the historians, despite all that I learned from you about the Gainsgooding conspirators about how much the form can reveal—or hide. Anyhow, go on. On the left goes the word.”

  “For instance, ebraöni.” I wrote the ideograph with a flourish. One chevron pointing up, with slightly flared curves at the ends of its open sides; one pointing up, centred upon it, and a dot in the centre of the diamond made by their crossing.

  “Very good: mountain cloud, and wool, and the wool pulled over your eyes.”

  “The primary meaning goes in the first column.” I wrote wool in modern Shaian lettering in the appropriate space. “In the second column goes the secondary meanings.” I wrote mountain cloud and trickery there.

  “And in the third?”

  “Third is for correspondences with other poets. In this case, I’d write Lo en Tai, who is the one who introduced the word into the lexicon, the Gainsgooding conspirators, who were caught by it, and Ariadne nev Lingarel, who wrote the poem I studied most.” I wrote their names in smaller letters. Hal rolled his eyes at the mention of the fair Ariadne, whom he’d heard about at least as much as I’d heard about the habits of various shrubs in the genus Ilex.

  “What about us? We are also caught in the games of these two sticks and a stone.”

  “Yes, but we have yet to write our experiences in poetry of unexceptional superfice and astonishing depths.”

  Mr. Dart replenished my cup with chocolate from the pot. “Do you not write poetry yourself, Mr. Greenwing?”

  I shrugged, finding this an even more difficult subject than—well, than the rest of my inner life. “I’ve tried. It doesn’t seem to be correct.”

  He let it go, instead gesturing with the pot at the page. “So now that we have a sense of what ebraöni means, or can mean, what next?”

  I contemplated what I’d written. “I’m missing something.”

  “So we’ve already established. Your memory.”

  “Go to, Mr. Dart. Ah, that’s it.” In the secondary-meaning column I added white and ascending fog.

  “White for the colour ... why is it ‘ascending’ fog? I should have thought mountain clouds descended.”

  “That’s how it’s always glossed in Lo en Tai ... and I suppose it’s because fog rises, whereas clouds descend. Certainly when I was running the other morning the fog was coming up off the fields like they were burning.”

  “I think your next line should be ‘White Cross’. Followed by ‘False Colours’, ‘Faked Death’, and
‘Inheritance’.”

  I wrote the words in ideographs. Added the primary meaning, started in on the secondary meanings of the words. ‘White’ added in meanings of purity, divinity, death, winter, innocence, and hope. Cross for crossroads, for death (again; sometimes it seemed as if half the words of Old Shaian were euphemisms for a topic the ancient Shaians appeared to have been most anxious about) for the possibility of resurrection, for binding and roads and where fate met chance. Started in on ‘False Colours,’ which took me a moment to come up with the translation. Eventually wrote it out literally. Considered the result. “Would you look at that. The Antique Shaian for ‘False Colours’ is only a punctum—a dot—away from the word for ‘highwayman’.”

  Mr. Dart snorted. “We are centred on the Arguty Forest—there are always rumours of highwaymen.”

  I wrote Arguty Forest in the Correspondences column. “More than rumours. I’ve met three separate gangs in the last month. One of them took us across the Magarran Strid, if my geography wasn’t totally off. We ended up at a place called the Hanging Hill.”

  “The infamous whiskey distillers’ headquarters,” Mr. Dart agreed. “Everyone knows they’re there, but no one but them knows how to get across the Strid to get there.”

  “Except for whoever does evil rituals at the king oak on the Hanging Hill.”

  Mr. Dart looked at me. “That’s where Hagwood said he found your father.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Bull, Boar, Stag

  In the courtyard before the classic elegance of the Darts’ frontage, lightly veiled in new snow, there stood the Chancellor and the other Scholars with Chief Constable Etaris, Master Dart and Sir Hamish, Ben, my father, two men who seemed to have been brought for their digging abilities, my uncle, and a pile of silvered and blackened bones.