Whiskeyjack

by Victoria Goddard

  I rolled my eyes in the darkness and felt marginally cheered.

  “He won’t remember a thing,” Lady Flora said in encouraging tones that made the statement seem remarkably sinister. “No sense talking to him, my dear. He’s dumb and deaf as the barrel.”

  “I’m not sure about this, Flora.”

  Her sigh of exasperation came through loud and clear.

  There followed more creaks and quivers running through the barrel into my bones: Lady Flora, climbing up to sit next to her husband, which put them at a very convenient location for me to eavesdrop.

  “Dear husband, surely you’re not getting cold feet now? Now, when we’re so close? A few more hours, a few more ceremonies, and all that we have worked for will be in our grasp at last.”

  Had that flurry of insights been totally wrong? Was he complicit in the whole thing, from the cult to the imputation of treason?

  “If it were only the whiskey, Flora, it wouldn’t seem so bad.”

  Her voice was warm and sympathetic. I had never heard her sound so warm, in fact: she actually sounded fond. “Vorel, my dear, I know you have reservations about the tippermongeramy, but that’s where the real money is.”

  “I know, I know.” He sighed heavily.

  “You wouldn’t be able to play with all your friends if we weren’t doing it. Not to mention those splendid fish ponds of yours—they’re worth all of it, aren’t they?”

  “I can’t like to have dealings with those ... people.”

  “My dear, they’re the ones who have the skills to make it. They need us to sell it in the wider world.”

  “But they use magic, Flora. Strange magic. Old magic.”

  Did he not realize what she was involved with? Or whom?

  She laughed. “It’s because it’s old magic that they can use it. They were using it long before the Empire came, and they’re still using it now the Empire is gone.”

  Her voice was entirely positive, even approving; even triumphant.

  “I know they think you’re a descendant of the Blood Queen, Flora—”

  “I am her descendant!

  “By the Emperor, Flora! You’re a daughter of the Empire. You must see it’s wrong. It’s one thing to smuggle whiskey—even that bloody tipperma-watsit—but what they’re asking for today is—

  “Are your fish ponds not worth it?” she interrupted sweetly. “Those two carp you had shipped all the way from East Oriole? The hothouse so you can have warm-water fish the year round? All those magnificent water-pipes and pumps and reservoirs?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But nothing. You’re short of sleep and you haven’t had breakfast yet. That always makes you grumpy, husband. You’ll feel better after we’ve eaten.”

  “But Flora, last night at the Darts I discovered—”

  Her voice acquired the familiar edge. “Husband, what have I told you about them?”

  “Flora, they were friends with—”

  “We are not going over that old business again!” she exclaimed. “Your sentiments of guilt come rather late in the game, husband! You have lost over four hundred thousand gold emperors at table over the past five years.”

  Four hundred thousand? The number was mind-boggling. Mr. Buchance’s entire fortune might be twice that, and he had died a very wealthy merchant.

  “You have not paid a penny out of pocket, my dear husband. Have I asked you to stop your waterworks? Not to order your precious fish? Give over these misgivings. They come too late. You know the only reason you’re still anybody is because of me and my friends in the Forest.”

  “Flora ...”

  There were creaks and movements of the cart: Lady Flora getting up, I surmised. Her voice was a bit more distant when she spoke next. “Come, husband, it’s time for breakfast. We must prepare ourselves for the rendezvous—and for what comes after.”

  It didn’t seem as if my uncle had immediately followed her, for I could hear him breathing heavily. Then I heard a scratching sound on the outside of the barrel, and then, in a soft whisper:

  “Jemis, I didn’t know the truth about my brother. I’m sorry about what’s happening. I can’t—”

  “Vorel.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Complications

  Having nothing else to do, I thought.

  It was not the same as the day before, those dizzying flights of intuition and insight.

  Those were only good for finding signs of the truth. Outcroppings, as it were. They had seen me running headlong into a trap, reacting exactly as my uncle—or my aunt—thought I would.

  I should have known better.

  I should have been warier of that sort of high-flying exuberance. It was obviously an effect of undoing the curse. And possibly from having a proper amount of oxygen reaching my brain for once.

  No, it was time to be methodical.

  If I could not contrive to free myself before the others came, I wanted at least to be able to present them with all the requisite answers to our mysteries.

  I spent a few minutes gathering my mental tools together. I had no pen or paper to write a chart or jot ideas, no books for references, no friends to question or harangue.

  My tutor, Dominus Nidry, had frequently harangued us (his students in the year: Violet and myself) to, above all, be logical.

  Ascertain the facts, he had said.

  Begin with the letter of the text.

  Never let your flights of fancy stray so far from the text you can no longer anchor your argument in certainty.

  I squirmed. I had not been following that dictum very well of late. I had been jumping from speculation to speculation as if—well, as if I were high on wireweed, or a rhetorician using every trick in the book to convince without argument.

  Dominus Nidry had also frequently said to me—for Violet had the opposite tendency—Do not be so hasty to complicate things.

  I squirmed some more. And then, since there remained nothing else to do, I thought about it.

  Perhaps it was not the blind malignancy of fate that was making my life so complicated. Perhaps it was me.

  I closed my eyes, as if that would help. The strips and spots of light from the knots and loose joints that were also providing me with air were not at all conducive to sight, and aggravated the hangover.

  Ignore that.

  I had been protesting all along that it was not my fault that all these were going on, because it seemed utterly inconceivable that it was all about me—but what if I were wrong? What if I, or something to do with me, was at the centre of things not by coincidence but by—fate?

  I thought back over the past few months. No one could have expected that I would have that altercation with Lark and as a result effectively disappear for two months—

  No. Back up a step. Lark had picked me out of all in our year, why?

  It wasn’t for any great winsomeness of my personality or appearance, surely. There were more attractive men at Morrowlea. Marcan came to mind, and Beau Benneret.

  It wasn’t because I was of influence or wealth. Even with Morrowlea’s commitment to egalitarianism, there were always indications. Excluding Marcan, whom no one could have imagined was the second son of the King of Lind (I personally had thought him a prosperous yeoman farmer’s son; Hal had confessed to me he’d thought him an archbishop’s by-blow), the obvious choice for such a quarry, if that had been Lark’s purpose, was Hal, whose colouring, accent, and bearing all proclaimed him of high family.

  It probably wasn’t even the capacity to be overwhelmed. Lark had only to smile (and blow a smoke ring full of wireweed) at me to catch me: but she had been able to make most of the rest of the university adore her almost as easily. While I certainly had my weaknesses, general pusillanimity of character was not really one of them. Running headlong into danger without thinking, yes. Collapsing like a wet cravat on the slightest hint of opposition ... not so much. There were students with much weaker wills than me at Morrowlea. Beau Benneret, again, came to mind.

&
nbsp; But none of them were the son of Mad Jack Greening.

  I frowned into the darkness. I would have sworn Lark’s astonishment at my confession of identity and family was genuine.

  Don’t overcomplicate things, Jemis.

  If that was just the bonus, the added fillip, the means to final humiliation and revenge?

  If it was not my qualities as a person, nor my attributes as a member of my family, that left ... the magic.

  Magic inherited from the Woods.

  Magic inherited from a distant fairy ancestor.

  Magic wild enough to summon a dragon (embodiment of chaotic magic) out of the wide dreaming.

  And what had happened this spring? I had broken from the wizard who had been using wireweed to steal said magic. Over the course of the several months following, strange things had begun happening in and around Ragnor Bella—in and around, that is, the Woods.

  Upon my eventual return in September, the frequency and magnitude of these odd events increased considerably, from secret society to cultic sacrifice, from gossip to riddling dragons, from ... from Jemis Greenwing being most notable for being his father’s son, to becoming someone the only two open wizards in the barony—Dominus Gleason and the Marchioness—almost immediately started talking about in terms of magic and the need to be trained.

  For whatever reason, I decided reluctantly, my gift at magic was significant. I only wished I knew what it signified.

  Outside the barrel the jays were still intermittently calling. It reassured me that we were in the Forest and people were on the move. At this point I realized that we were again on the move, the cart rumbling along another bumpy road.

  If point one was the still-unclear significance of my magic, what was point two?

  Don’t overcomplicate things ...

  Why was I here, right now, in a barrel in a cart in the middle of the Arguty Forest?

  It did not seem an undue complication to acknowledge that with respect to my uncle and my aunt (who were neither of them wizards), I was more than simply a source of magic.

  What else had we discovered?

  It seemed that Lady Flora was behind my father’s disgrace.

  —No. (“What is certain, Jemis?”) She was connected to the person or people behind the false letter.

  In the decoded message she had been told to be always ready for further communication, as if she were a spy in deep cover—

  I blinked and dazzled myself with the light-spots. Of course. It was that simple. All that talk about smuggling and so on was camouflage.

  Oh, no doubt she made use of the money, too. From the conversation I’d just overheard, she was clearly the one in charge of the operation. And what better cover for a spy’s activities than a smuggler’s load?

  —Well, I personally thought the Gainsgooding poets had a much better idea for how to hide their messages. They’d conducted their conspiracy in plain sight ... but no matter that. Lady Flora seemed to be working with, or for, people who thought it charming to use the letter that compromised one party to give secret messages to the one who benefited from it.

  Plenty of people looked the other way in order to get the good whiskey. Probably whoever was into the cosmetic made by the Tufa did the same.

  If they actually made cosmetic with the tippermongeramy. It sounded as if the Tufa were somehow connected to the old cults—

  —I was getting ahead of myself again. I’d missed a connection. Giving secret messages through letters that compromised people ...

  What would I discover if I tried to decipher the blackmailing letters my uncle had received? Was he—could he possibly be—being blackmailed by the person or people his wife was serving?

  I thought of my uncle’s face on hearing Hal’s story about the true events at Loe, on my translating the letter to reveal its perfidy. I did not believe him a good enough actor to feign those reactions.

  And he had whispered that last confession to what he believed was his insensate nephew in a barrel ...

  My uncle, alas, was weak-willed and habitually under his wife’s control. Even if he had cold feet about whatever they were planning, I couldn’t see him doing more than make his futile protests about it.

  This all suggested my insight that they were not working together was at least partially true. They were evidently in the smuggling game together—but not, perhaps, at one with the deeper betrayals.

  The coded letter had implied that Lady Flora had married Vorel in order to—what? To establish herself in Ragnor Bella? To be close to Jack Greenwing? To be close to me?

  Back up.

  Various phrases from the letter suggested its writer (writers? ‘We who speak from the shadows’) was connected with the old cult to the Dark Kings.

  General Ben had expressed surprise at discovering that the Dark Kings were worshipped here, in Ragnor Bella, when he knew them from far away at the edge of the Empire in Loe.

  In Loe, where there had been a betrayal, and where my father had been sent across the Border and reportedly lost in a valiant last stand against the Stone Speakers, who worshipped the Dark Kings.

  In Ragnor Bella, where Jack Greenwing was from, where the Bloody Queen had fought an extraordinary battle against the knights of the Lady’s church, where people had made unsavoury sacrifices at the king oak on the Hanging Hill during the days of the Empire, and where, after the Fall of the Empire, there was still a cult to the Dark Kings, and people still did unsavoury things in the name of the old gods.

  What did I know about the Dark Kings? A few snippets from History of Magic. Rumours and gossip. What Mr. Dart and I had observed of their cultic practices at the Ellery Stone.

  I went over that ceremony in my mind. It had started off so silly, so risible—and by the end of it we’d fled in serious fear for our lives and our souls. I had nearly been caught by some sort of silver-mist-borne fascination. I had been rescued by Mr. Dart, at the sacrifice of his right arm to petrification.

  Back up. The ceremony.

  They had focused their rituals around a stone they called the Heart of the Moon. But the stone they had been using was just a chunk of obsidian, not the true legendary object. (So said Mrs. Etaris, who had received this information from Magistra Bellamy, Ragnor Bella’s resident witch, who had precipitously left town to visit relatives after the events that had followed that weekend, and had yet to return home.)

  I frowned some more. I had been studying the Legendarium all this past fortnight. That compendium of lore, superstitions, and fairy tales did not mention the Heart of the Moon.

  Mrs. Etaris had talked about it as if it were a well-known story.

  The only reference I could think of was the one in Kissing the Moon. Fitzroy Angursell claimed that the Moon had fallen in love with him. (Now there was someone who had no problem believing that the events of the Nine Worlds turned about him!) He said offhandedly that this was because he had stolen her heart.

  I liked and greatly admired Fitzroy Angursell’s poetry, but that sounded pure literary conceit.

  If not that, then what? South Fiellan was considered the least adversely-affected region after the Fall. What other unusual or unique magical things did South Fiellan contain?

  The Arguty Forest. The Magarran Strid. Tippermongeramy. Really good whiskey.

  The Woods Noirell. The old border crossing to Astandalas. A border with the Kingdom Between Worlds.

  The bees of Melmúsion. The Wild Saint. The Hunter in Green.

  Me?

  I sighed. Back a step. What else did I know about the old cult to the Dark Kings?

  They had sacrificed a cow at the Ellery Stone near the autumn equinox. Mrs. Etaris had said that once they started the sacrifices, they would not long rest content with cows.

  Tomorrow—today—was the Fallowday of the Autumn, once a significant date in the calendar.

  The Black Priest was still on the loose and unrecognized. I had no proof, after all, that it was Dominus-not-really-Gleason.

  Seven years ago
the body of my father had been found dangling from the king oak on the Hanging Hill, which might or might not be the burial mound of the Red Queen, who might or might not be Lady Flora’s ancestor.

  Whether or not it was actually true, Lady Flora clearly believed it was and acted accordingly. No doubt that was why she was drawn to the cult of the Dark Kings. The Bloody Queen had not earned her epithet by being a peaceful adherent of the Lady of the Green and White.

  I was really very thirsty.

  It was odd I had suffered no physical ill effects from the last confinement—well, apart from the memory loss—and what had they been doing that they’d need me out of the way for?

  —Or was it that they had needed me to hand?

  If I were at the centre of the cult’s activities, then perhaps the reason I’d been captured wasn’t because I’d inadvertently seen something I shouldn’t have, nor that I was in the way for whatever they were doing—moving contraband whiskey, I’d thought—then—

  Well, I wasn’t sure what then, except that I was increasingly disturbed that I couldn’t remember what they’d done.

  Outside the barrel noises indicated we were crossing hollow wooden planks—a bridge. As if the crossing gave permission, my uncle began to speak.

  “Now, Flora, are you sure we—”

  “Don’t start all that again, dear husband. Think of the rewards that are coming.”

  He sounded unconvinced. “It seems so extreme.”

  She laughed gaily. I could imagine her patting his plump cheek. She’d done that once or twice to me as a boy, back before she’d engineered my father’s disgrace and was still trying to pretend she liked me.

  “Dear Vorel. You don’t need to do anything but witness. I promised you that. And when have I ever not accomplished what I said I’d do?”

  “It’s not you that I have misgivings about. He’s going to be missed, you know.”

  “My dear, I’ve told you time and time again, in these matters my master and I are one. As for your nephew, very shortly he will cease to be your problem. After the ceremony is complete ... ”

  “Yes, yes, you’ve explained, but what about his friends? They might every well come for him. They’d be stupid not to know we’re involved. What if—”