Whiskeyjack

by Victoria Goddard

  “Those are not human bones,” said Dominus Vitor.

  Sir Vorel said, “Oh, Jack.”

  Ellen had described him bustling down to the kitchen, full of pomp and virtue, to tell her mother all the dishes he’d thought of for when I came at last to dine. Vor, my father’s little brother, who had treated my mother and me very wrongly, and who professed with melodramatic delivery how remorseful he was and how he wished he had not acted as he had—

  And what if he wasn’t lying?

  I grabbed Mr. Dart’s arm to anchor myself. As he stood to my left, it was his stone arm. The hard coldness of it disconcerted me almost as much as my thoughts.

  We’d come out in response to Ellen’s garbled message that the magistrate was there about my father. They were standing beside a pile of bones.

  If my uncle wasn’t lying—if he was, in fact, telling the truth—if he hadn’t arranged for my father’s death (by murder or apparent suicide)—if he truly was glad to restore his name, if he truly was glad he could acknowledge me—

  Would he be willing to give up the baronetcy?

  What if he were?

  What if it was Lady Flora who wasn’t?

  The snow fell onto the bones and melted away. My uncle stared at me in dismay.

  “I’ve been—the duke has proof,” he said intently, almost pleadingly. “The first thing was to exhume his bones.”

  My knowledge of the law was admittedly minimal, but I somehow didn’t think that the restoration of an accused and convicted traitor and suicide began with the exhumation of his corpse. Not on the say-so of the man who inherited from his disgrace, under the direction of his crony, one day off the seven-year anniversary. And where was Inspector Quent? Or even Mr. Morres and Mr. Tey, the two Kingsford lawyers? The Scholars—especially the Chancellor—were excellent witnesses, but surely there should have been more—more—more ceremony.

  Sir Vorel said, “My dear nephew, I can only imagine the thoughts in your head at this moment.”

  I very nearly started to laugh.

  My living father stood five feet away. The bones of what was popularly supposed to be his corpse lay at my feet. My uncle’s face was white as the snowy stone behind him, his hand at his throat, the cravat twisting about his fingers.

  I looked down at the bones. There were three animal skulls, the eye hollows black as if with fire, the outer bones silver-gilt.

  Two months ago, my first weekend back in town, Mr. Dart and I had witnessed a cultic rite at the Ellery Stone. A cow had been sacrificed to the Dark Kings, using some magical stone the priests called the Heart of the Moon, calling down twisted power to the dozen or so people caught up into its ecstasy. The next day people had said it was a good thing I’d been with Mr. Dart all night, because they had found silvered bones, and people knew what that meant.

  And did I know what this meant?

  Dominus Vitor said, “Those are the skulls of a bull, a boar, and a stag. I expect the rest of the bones will come from those animals as well.”

  He glanced around, apparently aimlessly, but then walked briskly to a stick on the ground some distance away. He brought it back and used it to poke at the pile, which, I now saw, was spread out on what looked like someone’s many-caped driving coat. It was drab cloth; my uncle’s. The deer skull fell over and revealed a red pigmentation staining the underside of the jaw.

  “Black, silver, red, and white,” he said, the disgust evident in his voice. “Someone’s been mucking around with the Dark Kings.”

  The Chief Constable found his voice. It was not an attractive one. “Sir Hamish, we found this under the waystone, where Jakory Greenwing was buried.”

  “You mean, where the semblance of Jakory Greenwing was buried.” Domina Enory took the stick from Dominus Vitor and prodded some long rib-bones. “I suspect a more thorough dig would reveal frog bones, the feathers of various species of fowl, and runic inscriptions on the bones.”

  We all looked at her. The Squire found his voice first. “Are you familiar with this—this abomination, Domina?”

  She almost smiled. “I am a Scholar of curses, Master Dart. I am familiar with certain branches of magic that are not at all respectable: I fight them. Yes, I am familiar with the spell that worked this. It is the most elaborate and the most permanent of the seemings: those spells designed to give one object the appearance of another. This one did more; it was intended to give the animal bones the very weight and magical signature of the human it replaced.”

  “You are certain?” the Chief Constable said. His voice was usually self-satisfied, patronizing, utterly self-confident. He bobbed along in my uncle’s wake like a line trawled behind a punt. My uncle being in total shock, his lackey seemed unsure of himself.

  “Certain?” Domina Enory said, and sounded every inch a Scholar of the Circle School most famously known for magical theory. “My dear sir, I do not have the library of Oakhill with me, but failing that, yes, I am sure. There was a period in Alinorel history when every wizard on the Lady’s side needed to know the spells to test the dead for this semblancing. It utterly fools the ordinary eye and most magical tests. Those who saw this when it was intact would have had no reason to believe it any body but what it seemed.”

  That at least answered one question—to wit, whether Mr. Hagwood had been lying or not. Unfortunately it did nothing for the central one of who and how and why my father had been saved for the pirate galleys.

  Before realizing what it might sound like to those who did not know my father stood five feet away staring at the bones that we had all thought for so long were his, I said, “But then what happened?”

  “’Tis a good question,” said Ben. “Any ideas?”

  Sir Vorel exclaimed, “Oh, my brother!” and started to cry.

  WE ALL WENT INSIDE for a drink.

  Well: most of us did. Mr. Etaris and his brawny underlings stayed outside to watch over and discuss the further removal of the bones, and Domina Enory stayed with them to provide any necessary advice or warnings. I surmised she also was delighted to have another odd bit of magic to investigate; there was something about her expression that suggested she felt she’d been given a present. Dominus Vitor stayed to identify the bones. Once he stopped looking disgusted he seemed thoroughly engrossed.

  I dallied slightly behind the others, trying to figure out what else about that scene over the pile of bones was significant, and was therefore just in time to witness my uncle striding into the library and seeing his papers spread out over the table.

  He was roused from his earlier shock at the sight. “What—those are my papers! How did you come by them?”

  Everyone swung around to look at me, which I didn’t think was quite fair. I bought a moment of time by assiduously helping him to a chair. “Sir Vorel, I—”

  “Uncle Vorel, my dear boy, how can you call me anything else after seeing that—that—” His face crumpled. I hastily offered him one of my newly replaced clean handkerchiefs.

  A month ago he would have assumed I had stolen the papers.

  I took a deep breath. “Uncle Vorel, I must offer you an apology.”

  This time I expected the glances aimed at me. I chose my words carefully. I had finally realized where we were in the game of Poacher that was life. We were waiting for the turn of the Emperor card, which might, if we were lucky (or possibly, if we were cursed), turn out to be the Holy Grail.

  And if that were the case, the only tall tale that might work was the truth.

  “Uncle Vorel, I have been unjust to you.”

  “My dear nephew!”

  Jemis. My name is Jemis.

  “Some weeks ago, when it became clear to me from his grace’s testimony that the accusations of treason against my father were provably as false as I had always believed them, my thoughts turned to who might have stood most to gain from those accusations.”

  “A natural thought, my dear boy, I assure you I quite under—”

  I went on relentlessly. “That is, sir,
you.”

  His mouth opened and shut like one of his golden carp.

  I was unutterably glad for my father’s sake to see there was not even the smidgen of guilt in his face. Astonishment, embarrassment, anger, even a small amount of rue (if I could believe it), but not guilt.

  Everyone else regarded us in total amazement.

  “Mr. Dart, the Duke, and I went to see Mr. Hagwood,” I went on, “who was the one who told my mother and me of my father’s apparent suicide. Along the way we encountered a former classmate of Hal’s and mine, who, it turned out, had returned to take up her family profession as a highwaywoman.”

  Dominus Lukel blurted, “Not Violet!”

  I smiled. “No, Red Myrta.”

  “I can see that,” he said after a moment. “She’s a very fine archer.”

  I wanted to look at the Chancellor, who had been Red Myrta’s primary tutor, but I kept my eyes on my uncle. He might not have murdered my father, but I did not for one moment believe he was innocent of all the shenanigans going on in the Forest.

  “She and her companion had been inside the manor,” I continued.

  “The scoundrels!” cried Sir Vorel. “Penetrating into my sanctum like that ... Did they give you all the papers?”

  And thus we neatly elided what had actually happened by connecting outposts of the truth to make a sense that was not the true significance at all.

  How easy it was for things to seem what they were not.

  “I don’t know what you had in your, er, sanctum, sir—Uncle Vorel. But this is where I must apologize again. I confess I have been suspicious of your abrupt change of behaviour towards me.”

  He turned shocked eyes at me. “My dear nephew, I was wrong! I hope I am man enough to admit it.”

  I dared not meet anyone else’s eyes, especially not Mr. Dart’s or my father’s. “Yes, but you must see, Uncle, that I stand between you and the continuation of your status as baronet.”

  “Oh, pish.” He shook his head sadly. “My dear wife cares about the title, yes, but it’s only a baronetcy.”

  Was Lady Flora’s motivation as simple as all that? Did she really do all of what I was suspecting just to be a baronet’s wife rather than a mere mister’s? It seemed incredible ... and I could not believe it. There wasn’t enough money or status involved, surely.

  And all of a sudden I recalled Sir Hamish saying to Sir Vorel, in this very room, You cannot rewrite all the barony records to suit your fancy. Which records? Which fancy?

  My uncle met my eyes and nodded firmly, full now of Ellen’s ‘pomp and virtue’. “And right is, I hope, right.”

  I stared at him, remembering Sir Rinald’s funeral, Lady Flora telling my mother and me we should not expect to come to the front door any longer. In the Interim, when we could cross the grounds to the manor house, he had made us beg at the back door for scraps of flour or yeast. After the Interim, he stared coldly away from me on every encounter. At my mother’s funeral, which he had refused to attend, and at which consequently I had no one at all from any of my blood family to comfort me. Two months ago, he had wished aloud that I had not come back from university. In this very room, barely a month past, he had called me the degenerate offspring of a traitor. And he dared say to me that right was right?

  “Yes, it is,” I replied, and left it at that. I turned to Hal. “What did you find in the papers, your grace?”

  He gave me an admiring smile, then turned to the table every inch an imperial duke. “My great-uncle can speak to the letters from Eil better than I, but for the rest, the only truly significant item seems to be that to do with the itemized list of the contents of the Arguty cellars.”

  I watched my uncle visibly relax. Too soon, of course, for Hal went blithely on: “Then there’s this lovely sequence of letters blackmailing you for a certain request you made of the whiskeyjack gang oh, just about seven years ago now, it looks like. Would you care to tell us more about that?”

  WITH EACH SENTENCE my uncle uttered the kaleidoscope shifted. Except that wasn’t quite the right metaphor. In a kaleidoscope the patterns shift endlessly, pretty, fascinating, and ultimately meaningless. I had gotten bored with the kaleidoscopes in Ghilousette quite quickly.

  No, this was the arrangement of ideographs down the left of the page and their connotations unfolding in parallel lines down the right until the configurations revealed the key to unlock the significances held mutely between sign and sense.

  “It didn’t have anything to do with Jack.”

  “Seven years ago is when he returned from the dead,” Hal said sternly.

  My uncle was a large man, but the bluster had gone out of him. He waved my handkerchief around in small distressed circles.

  “Coincidence,” he protested.

  Hal picked up one of the letters from the table. “‘My dear sir: your request has been granted, but it has proven more expensive than anticipated, and so with the utmost reluctance I must inform you that without further reassurance I cannot promise to continue to guard your secrets.’”

  “It’s my wife.”

  “Lady Greenwing?”

  Sir Vorel winced. “She has ideas above her station. She was always jealous of Lady Olive ... I started calling her Lady Flora as a, a kind of endearment, and she liked it so much others followed suit.”

  “It seems unlikely your wife’s pretensions to a higher title than she possesses warrants seven years of blackmail.”

  “But it does—by the Emperor, that’s what it’s all about!”

  To our considerable amazement he explained that Lady Flora had what amounted to a mania for the respect and honours due an Imperial title, and this had come to centre, as she got older, on that absurdly expensive cosmetic derived from the magic-imbued algal sludge to be found deep in the limestone caves of the Magarran valley.

  I watched my uncle carefully as he spoke. I had never played Poacher against him, nor any card game, but on one of those uninvited visits the Honourable Rag had regaled us all evening with an account of all the tells of the high-playing gentry of the barony. Sir Vorel’s was tapping his elbow with his other hand.

  As he started into the account of the cosmetic he lifted his (or rather my) handkerchief to his temple and held it there. His right hand crept over to his left elbow and set up a steady beat.

  He was bluffing. Where was the lie?

  Half the story was true—or perhaps all of it was, but not the whole truth. He was giving us at best the signs of the truth; not their true sense, let alone significance.

  He seemed to take our silence for agreement or even belief, for he grew more animated, less despondent, as he went on. I wondered if in Imperial days people really would have paid seven years of blackmail for the Tufa-made cosmetic, whatever exactly it was. It wasn’t as if it kept Lady Flora looking unnaturally young or preternaturally beautiful.

  At the end of his speech I nodded without explaining the gesture and turned to Ben. “What did you find out about the letters from Eil, sir?”

  Sir Vorel looked much taken aback that I did not respond directly to him. “What—my dear nephew—surely you understand—”

  Ben spoke straight over him, in a tone that must have worked wonders when he was a commander of armies. “The second letter is genuine: I dictated it to a secretary after my rescue. I had promised to write Jack’s family. My hands were broken, so I couldn’t write it myself.”

  “And the first letter?”

  He stared at it grimly. “Everything about it seems genuine.”

  “Except?”

  “Except for the small matter it is under the seal of an officer who was killed by the Stone Speakers in their fortress after we were captured, and that it contains a line of poetry I’ve never heard of.”

  He passed the letter to Mr. Dart, who scanned it, made to hand it over, frowned, read it again more thoroughly, and finally said, “Isn’t that a line from one of the Gainsgooding poems?”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Crimson Lake

&
nbsp; I had never examined the two letters from the army in any detail. This time I was able to look at even the fateful first one with an almost detached attention. I had certainly never compared them before to see any differences.

  There were not many.

  The inks were the same, blue-black, still dark and crisp. The scripts were very similar, close enough that I would not have been surprised to discover they were written by the same person (except that surely any scribe would notice that there were two letters directed to the same person about the same soldier with totally different reports?). Ben murmured something about there being trained scribes in the command headquarters at Eil for just such an occasion. The dates were a month apart; the salutations the same; the words so completely different.

  Dear Lady Olive:

  It is with extreme regret that I must announce to you the death of your husband, Major Jakory Greenwing. I assure you he died heroically on a scouting mission across the border.

  With the deepest sympathies for your loss,

  General Benneret Halioren

  Commander of the Sixth Division of the Seventh Army of Astandalas

  “I’m sorry it was so short,” said Ben. “I was very badly injured at the time and was not able to dictate a fuller letter. I was sent home immediately after that letter, and did not truly recover until after the Interim. I’m sorry I did not even suggest he might have lived. I left him holding the Gate of Morning with an army of Stone Speakers climbing up to the pass, and we had the army close the Bloodwater pass behind us. I had no anticipation whatsoever he could have survived. But I can’t believe I didn’t even mention he saved my life—again.”

  I nodded. I would have felt numb under the circumstances, perhaps, except that my father was not, after all, dead, and I—I thought suddenly—I could ask him about what had happened.

  I dared not look at him. My face would surely give everything away, and the game was not over, not yet. The Emperor Card had not yet been turned; we still had not figured out who had saved him and why. Dominus Gleason had no apparent reason for doing so, but he was the only one with the magical skills to create the simulacrum.