Will (Book 2)

by S. F. Burgess

  “I am Jonas, and this is Harper,” he said. “We have been sent to talk to Miraway Gee.”

  “Letter of introduction,” the guard snapped. Jonas undid two of the buttons on his uniform and withdrew a sealed letter, handing it over to the guard. Harper noticed the Lord’s own seal ring was no longer on his finger.

  “Boy!” the guard bellowed in Jonas’s face, causing him to take a step back as the letter was snatched from his hand. A small, dirty boy came running from the gatehouse. The guard thrust the letter at him. “Miraway Gee,” he snapped. The boy nodded and ran, at some considerable speed, disappearing up the track into the Oval. He returned far quicker than Harper had expected, running back at the same speed he had left.

  “I am to escort them to the house immediately,” the boy said, no trace of his strenuous exercise in his voice. The guard nodded, waving them forward. Jonas and Harper followed the boy, who walked this time, into the Oval.

  The house he led them to was on the far side of the lush garden. He took them up the imposing front steps and knocked on the pale blue front door for them. From what Harper had seen, all the houses on the Oval had different-coloured front doors. Harper wondered if it signified something or was just decoration.

  As the child stepped back to leave, Jonas slipped a small silver coin into his hand. The boy glanced at it and gave him a wide smile before trotting off back to the gatehouse.

  When the door opened, a young, blond-haired, wary-eyed man, dressed in a blue tabard that matched the front door, looked them up and down.

  “My master is not home,” he said. “However, the mistress will see you.”

  “We are grateful,” Jonas said solemnly. They followed the servant into the cavernous, dark reception hall, where he turned left and led them down wide, silent, marble-floored corridors, up some narrow servants’ stairs and down another corridor. This one had a clever three-dimensional geometric pattern effect produced by the different colour woods of the parquet floor. Everywhere Harper looked were gilded mouldings, paintings, murals, statues and beautiful ornaments, and an abundance of expertly carved, deep-red mahogany furniture. And I thought the Central Tower was impressive. I wonder what the White Tower looks like inside… Their guide stopped in front of a door, the flowers and plants carved into its panels so striking they looked real, and knocked. The artist within Will gloried in the stunning beauty around him, and Harper shoved the feeling deep down with reluctance.

  “Enter.”

  The voice through the door was so soft, so delicately feminine that the word had sounded more like a suggestion than a command. The servant, however, took it as an order, motioning Harper and Jonas to follow him into the room.

  “Protectors Jonas and Harper, my Lady,” the servant announced.

  A woman dressed in stylish but sombre black lace and taffeta, thick chestnut hair hiding her face, sat on a green, velvet-clad armchair. It had been set before one of the large windows on the far wall, which afforded a pleasant view of the Oval gardens below. Tea and tiny cakes were laid out on a table before her, but they appeared to be untouched. Behind her stood a tall woman in a stiff, plain dress in the same blue as the other servant’s tabard. Her expression was blank, but her eyes were filled with worry, and when the mistress of the house turned from the window to look at them, Harper understood why. Rodin’s mother was grieving for her child. Her red-rimmed, blood-shot brown eyes were dull and haunted in her pale, strained face.

  “Lord Pandral has sent you, at Lord Tarplan’s request,” the woman asked, her voice still soft.

  “Yes, Lady Rebeca,” Jonas said with deference, bowing slightly.

  “My father has done me the great favour I asked of him,” she murmured. “I hoped so when I took the risk of opening the letter your Lord sent to my husband.”

  “Lord Tarplan loves his grandson,” Jonas replied.

  Lady Rebeca nodded absently. “Why does Lord Pandral believe you two can discover the fate of my son, where so many others have failed?”

  “We have some unique skills, my Lady,” Jonas replied. “I hope that our humble services may be of benefit to you in this case.”

  “I very much hope so too,” Lady Rebeca said. “What questions do you need to ask?”

  “If you are not opposed, we would prefer to visit your son’s bedroom first,” Jonas said.

  Lady Rebeca nodded, turning back to look out of the window as she waved them away. “Tomlin will show you.”

  Tomlin turned out to be the servant who had led them in from the front door. Nodding, he took them out of his mistress’s presence and farther into the house. Rodin’s bedroom was situated on the third floor. As they walked down the corridor, Harper felt someone watching him and, glancing over his shoulder, spotted a small foot and the bottom of a skirt as it disappeared around a corner out of sight.

  Tomlin stopped and took a heavy bunch of keys from his belt to unlock the door before them. “No one has been in here since the morning after Master Rodin was taken,” Tomlin said, pushing the door open and waiting in the corridor. “The mistress will not allow it.”

  Harper stepped into the room and Jonas followed. The air was dry, musty and lifeless, and for some reason the black inky terror that now inhabited Harper’s soul surged up, finding something kindred in the space in which he stood. Shuddering, pushing the sudden irrational fear back down, Harper concentrated on bringing all his observational skills into play, looking for what had been missed.

  The oblong, sumptuously appointed room was obviously that of a child. A teddy bear, lonely and abandoned, lay face down on the unmade bed, the blankets left where they had been flung, revealing the deceitful pillows stuffed into the vague shape of a child underneath. A wooden toy tower complete with portcullis and wooden soldiers dominated one corner of the room, and across a small table that was being used as a desk were scattered drawings. It was this that drew Harper’s attention, and he leafed through them. The pictures were very good for a young boy. They were mostly of buildings around Hemtark, but they were detailed enough that Harper recognised many of them. One picture in particular caught his eye, as it was quite obviously the dilapidated warehouse, complete with garden, where Davlin had taken him to meet with Mittal. What was Rodin doing in that den of iniquity?

  “The boy has talent,” Jonas said from behind him. “You know this place?”

  “Yes, and it is not somewhere Rodin should have been.”

  “Tomlin,” Jonas called. “We need to ask questions of Master Rodin’s nurse. Please can you fetch her?”

  “The nurse is dead,” Tomlin replied without expression. “Master Miraway punished her for Master Rodin’s abduction. She did not live through it.”

  Harper took a firm grip on his feelings, wanting to present the blank emotionless look at which Conlan excelled. He dared a glance at Jonas and was shocked at the sorrow he saw in his eyes. Jonas noticed the scrutiny and turned from him, looking through Rodin’s chest of drawers. Harper wondered what Jonas had intended to ask the nurse. Whatever it was, it’s lost now, along with an innocent life. We need to find a way of proving or disproving my theory.

  Returning the pictures to the desk, Harper moved to the window. The view looked out over the back of the property and a vegetable and herb garden, where Harper could see a servant tending the produce, surrounded by chickens. A little farther on were the stables and out-buildings. Beyond this was the Oval’s boundary wall.

  Harper opened the window; he was very high up. Would a child have climbed out here? Why would he want to? Did someone else climb in? Leaning as far out of the window as he could, Harper looked at the exterior wall of the house, expecting to find flat stone, but instead finding a thin stone ledge that jutted out a foot from the house, an architectural feature with not a lot of room—but enough, perhaps. Looking down, Harper could see, far below, the fragile slate roof of the water cistern that serviced the house. Anyone putting a ladder on that would be going right thought it. Harper also doubted that any man or men ca
rrying the length of ladder that would be needed to reach the boy’s room would have made it through Hemtark to the property without arousing suspicion. No—if the child was kidnapped, he was not taken through the window. Looks like I’m going to have to see if it’s possible, Harper thought, giving the ground another glance. Pulling himself up through the window, he was outside, the balls of his feet resting on the stone ledge, before Jonas spotted him.

  “Harper! What are you doing?”

  Harper gave him a shrug. “Testing a theory, Jonas.”

  Jonas stared at him, the shadows of his thoughts moving behind his gaze once again. He nodded, surprising Harper with his response.

  “Be careful.”

  Harper gave him a tight smile and carefully turned until his back was against the wall and his toes were sticking out over a stomach-turning drop. Sweaty palms to the rough white wall on either side of him to provide balance, he began inching to his right along the ledge. He had chosen to go right because this was the shortest distance to the corner of the house, and there was no obvious way to the ground anywhere along the wall he stood against. If his theory was correct, this ledge must take him to somewhere where it was possible to get down. And no matter how reckless the child, Harper found it hard to believe that Rodin would have gone left, past six more windows, to reach the far corner of the building, when there was a shorter distance, going past only one window, to reach the nearer corner on the right.

  Harper’s back complained as he tensed his muscles and dragged it along the wall with his slow, attentive sidesteps, but he kept going. He felt a familiarity with the boy. Rodin was an artist and, if the night escapes from his home were anything to go by, a brave adventurer. Harper liked the boy’s spirit; he wanted to help him if he could.

  At the edge of the house, Harper leaned his head around the corner and found what he was looking for. On the gable end of the building was the chimney, a bulk of bricks rising from the ground to the roof, built externally to the house. The architect had made a feature of it, layering bricks to make a pattern, with certain bricks being placed perpendicular to the chimney breast. As a result, it provided lots of good places to step. Harper followed the ledge around the corner and to the chimney, where it thickened to a wider platform. Once there, he swung his leg out and found a foothold, them moved the rest of this body out and began descending to the ground.

  The climb took him longer than he had anticipated. His limbs were trembling, sweat running in salty, stinging rivers down the torn skin of his back, before he approached the bottom. Checking to see how much farther he had to go, Harper spotted the thick, flat-topped wall that separated Rodin’s house from the property next door. This wall ran all the way down to the boundary wall at the far end of the property. Harper felt certain this was the direction Rodin would have gone to escape into Hemtark, as it would have offered fewer chances of being spotted and there were no gate guards. But to reach the two-foot-wide top of the wall, Harper was going to have to jump, from his precarious position clinging to the chimney breast, across a gap of about five feet. And if he missed, he would drop at least ten feet to the ground. To land in gooseberry bushes, by the look of it. Rodin is an eight-year-old daredevil with a death wish, Harper thought grimly as he launched himself at the wall.

  He landed neatly, dropping into a crouch, his back twinging. There was blood running again, mingling with the sweat, he could feel it. Looking back, he wondered how Rodin was able to get back onto the chimney breast. Maybe he had a way down into the veg garden, and he climbed the chimney from the bottom. Wincing at the pain as he stood, Harper began jogging towards the boundary wall. He startled the servant picking berries from a small vine-like plant, but the chickens seemed oblivious to his passing.

  The outer boundary wall was several feet taller than the neighbourhood partitions that separated the houses in the Oval, but, putting on a burst of speed, Harper vaulted up to this new level. From his vantage point he could see the alley that ran alongside the boundary wall, and the perimeter walls of the large houses that nestled up against the Oval, making it narrow. How does a child get down from a fifteen-foot-high wall without breaking something? Or get back up a fifteen-foot wall for that matter? Confused, Harper walked a short distance along the top of the wall and back again. There was no rubbish, no convenient ladder, nothing, nor was there likely to be; the private security at the gate must know about this alley and check it regularly. Sitting down, his legs dangling over the wall on the alley side, Harper wracked his brains, trying to figure out how Rodin had done it. Outsmarted by an eight-year-old.

  An image of Arabel, smug pride on her innocent face as she beat him again at cards, filled his mind, and Harper sighed. Guess it won’t be the only time this happens, but it’s a rather embarrassing first day on the job. Hot, tired and in pain, he stood back up, intending to check farther down the wall.

  But as he moved, his foot hit something hard and unyielding. Dropping to his stomach, he reached a hand down. A metal peg had been forced into the mortar, in between the bricks. Eyes roaming, Harper found another peg below the first one. Clever boy! He hammered a nearly invisible ladder into the wall. Harper paused. Could an eight-year-old do that? Did he have help? Was he lured out of his house? This could still be an abduction, but by the sort of people who might not want to return a young boy. Harper felt his heart squeeze for Rodin, fearing what the little daredevil might have jumped into. Using the metal pegs and jumping the last few feet, Harper landed in the alley.

  He scoured the area closely and found the loose bricks at the bottom of the wall opposite, partially covered with weeds. Pulling them out, he found a tattered leather bag shoved into the space behind them. Inside was a small, silk bed shirt that could only belong to Rodin. Unsure if the family were ready to deal with the very real likelihood that their child had run away, Harper returned the leather bag and its contents to its hiding place. He would tell Jonas about its existence later.

  The guard was rather surprised to see Harper again when he arrived at the gate, but waved him though after their message boy had run back to check. Jonas met him in the entrance hall as Tomlin opened the front door.

  “Did you find anything to indicate who might have taken Master Rodin?” Tomlin asked.

  “No, there is nothing that shows how the boy was abducted,” Harper said. Tomlin nodded, disappointment in his eyes.

  “I think we have everything we need for now,” Jonas said.

  “Not quite, Jonas,” Harper said. Jonas’s eyes snapped to his face, searching it for what he was about to say. “I think a picture of Master Rodin would be useful,” Harper continued. “It might help us to know what he looked like.”

  “There are no pictures of Master Rodin,” Tomlin said. “There was an official family portrait a year back, but… there was… an accident. It was destroyed.”

  “Tomlin, what happened to the portrait?” Harper asked.

  “It was destroyed,” Tomlin repeated, a blank expression matching his empty tone.

  “What you are choosing not to say could stop us finding Master Rodin,” Harper said. Tomlin flashed him a bitter, desperate look. The man is trapped between loyalty to his family, fear that he might end up like the nurse and his desire to help Rodin. “Please Tomlin, if you know something, tell us,” Harper urged.

  “I… he… It was destroyed…” Tomlin stuttered, dropping his head.

  “Rodin and father argued,” a young girl’s voice interrupted. A child stepped out of the entrance hall shadows in which she had been hiding. She also wore black, her long strawberry-blond hair tied back in a severe ponytail. She moved to Tomlin’s side, taking his hand—a gesture that seemed to be more for his benefit than her own. “My father slapped Rodin,” she continued with a frown that wrinkled her forehead and the top of her freckled, upturned nose. “He made Rodin cry. Later Rodin cut up the painting with a kitchen knife. Father beat my brother with his ‘bad boy belt’ for that, but Rodin would not cry. He said he did not care, he did
not want to be father’s son anymore.”

  “You are Rodin’s sister?” Jonas asked.

  The little girl nodded. “I am Braylee.”

  “What did your brother and father fight about?” Jonas asked.

  “Everything,” Braylee said with solemn honesty.

  “What were they fighting about the night Rodin destroyed the painting?” Harper tried, hoping for more clarification.

  Braylee shrugged. Harper moved a little closer to the girl, bending down on one knee so he did not loom over her. She held his gaze, expressive brown eyes steady and patient. Harper gave her a smile, which she slowly returned.

  “You have been a great help so far, Miss Braylee,” Harper said in gentle, friendly tones. “I have one more favour to ask of you. It would assist us if we knew what your brother looked like. If I was to get some pencils and paper, do you think you could describe him for me so I could draw him?”

  Having immediately agreed to his request, the young girl had sat with Harper for over an hour at the rough kitchen table in the servant’s quarters, where she seemed very at home. Tomlin sat next to her, offering the occasional comment, as Braylee described, in quite impressive detail, the older brother she clearly adored. As she spoke, Harper drew, seeing the boy come to life in his mind. When they had finished, Harper showed them the picture. Braylee gave a squeal of delight, clapping her hands together, and Tomlin nodded his approval, his eyes tearing up.

  Armed with this picture, the new information they had, and a more solid working theory, Harper followed Pandral back to the Central Tower. Harper wanted to discuss what they had found, but Pandral had stopped his only attempt at conversation with a sharp look. So instead, Harper used the time to consider the evidence he had and what they might do next. Yet all the while doubts plagued him. What happens if we find Rodin and he doesn’t want to return to his abusive father? What is his father going to do to him when he finds out the boy chose to leave?