by Sarah Remy
“Why is she called Parsnip?”
“Don’t recall,” Lane replied. “Comes of working in the kitchen, I suppose. So. You’ve seen Morgan and the lass dance. Arthur’ll box your ears if you ask him to, but take my word and avoid the drubbing. They’ve all got some talent and plenty of courage, and they’re three of such a small handful left in our city.”
“You’ve not given me a choice,” Liam said bitterly.
“Nay,” the armswoman agreed. “I haven’t. Not if you want my assistance.”
“You’ll train me up into a soldier and I’ll teach them to, what? Squire?”
“Survive, more like.” She thumped him again. “What those three really want is someone to look up to. They had that, in the older squires, until the Worm struck. Then they didn’t. Give them structure, teach them how to grow up, and sooner or later we’ll send them on to Captain Fallow in the barracks.” Lane put her hands on her hips. “By that time I’m betting you’ll be more than ready to return to milord.”
Liam disagreed, but he kept his mouth prudently shut.
As soon as the armswoman left to go about her own business, Arthur, Morgan, and Parsnip together rushed Liam, raucous in their excitement. Liam, who had not long past been near stupefied with awe whenever Mal or Everin or even Peter Shean looked his way, suffered a wave of disbelief. He felt not at all ready to be the object of any person’s admiration. He certainly couldn’t remember growing suddenly from lad to man, but here were three pages gawking at him as if he was a champion.
“Fight me!” Arthur declared, near dancing on his toes. “You’ve seen the others! It’s my turn! I wager I can blacken your eye, sir!”
“You don’t fight fair!” Morgan retorted. “Of course you can blacken his eye, if you kick him between the legs first. You cheat!”
“No such thing as cheating on the battlefield,” said Liam, reluctantly amused. “But fists and feet ain’t—aren’t—going to win you the day, not against sword or pike or halberd.”
“Told you,” Parsnip muttered. She was a pale little thing with freckles all over her arms and legs, and a layer of crusted dirt all over her sandals. Her blonde hair was fine, cut very short, and she looked as unlike her two dark-haired companions as the lads did each other. “I told you, Arthur. You need to stop cowering whenever the armswoman tries you on a sword.”
“I don’t like swords,” Arthur spat right back. “They don’t feel right in my hand, and I get clumsy and forget how to move.”
Liam cleared his throat. “But you’ve tabbed a soldier’s life?”
“Didn’t have I choice, did I, not once mum was gone.” The lad shrugged, delicate features twisting. He had eyes the color of the boiling summer sky and a dent in his chin. “It was this or the temple and I’m not the praying sort.” He ignored Morgan’s derisive snort. “Besides, before there were plenty for the army. I was going to serve the king as houseman or guard, not on the battlefield.”
“Armswoman Lane says that’s changed, now,” Parsnip ventured. “Now that we’ve not got enough lads and lasses left to fill the ranks until more babes are born and grown up.”
“Aye,” Liam agreed. The Red Worm had changed everything. He’d seen the funeral pyres still burning as they’d ridden into Wilhaiim, but he hadn’t given much thought to the dead. He’d had his own heartache to work through. “I suppose you’re right. Well, then.” He squinted at the sun on the horizon, realized he’d sweated through the collar of his jerkin, and made a decision. “If I remember rightly, it’s much cooler in the armory. Arthur, let’s go see what might please your hand and save your life on the field, both.”
The three pages trailed after Liam—young pups sniffing at his boot heels—and for the most part kept their excitement contained. He couldn’t help but wonder how long their obedience would last. He’d spent a good deal of time amongst Lane’s students before joining Mal’s household of one. He knew that pranks and fights were part of life in the squires’ barracks. He’d enjoyed his own share of scuffles while trying to find his place in the boys’ hierarchy. Lane had encouraged the wrangles so long as bloodshed was minimal.
Parsnip, Morgan, and Arthur were top of the pile now, Liam realized. If the funeral pyres were any indication, it might be years before the pages’ barracks filled again to noisy bursting.
Wilhaiim’s armory was kept in a large white tower surrounded by barracks like spokes off the hub of a wagon wheel. The tower itself was divided into neat sections; the heaviest equipment—unclaimed chain mail, pieces of siege engines, a single petard, and a collection of firepots awaiting resin—was stored on ground level while lighter weaponry ranged the upper chambers. A wide circular stairway ran up the inside of the tower wall, broad enough for two men to climb shoulder-to-shoulder. Broken columns of sunlight cut the dusty air through arrow slits; thick stone walls kept the accompanying summer heat at bay.
The walls also carried sound from the barracks beyond. Liam could hear distant voices and the thud of boots and, nearby, a muffled cough and angry shout. Sometimes, Liam knew, the stone played tricks on a man. Sometimes a word whispered in a soldier’s far quarters might ring out clear as day in the armory. The trick had something to do with the way the stone was cut, or with old cants still wreathing the tower. Either way, a soldier quartered near the armory was never guaranteed his secrets.
“Small swords are third chamber,” Morgan offered. “Next to the other blades.”
Liam turned about in a circle, pretending to survey mail and bolt-throwers, dawdling while he considered. Parsnip scuffed her sandal on the packed earth floor. Arthur scowled up into the beams of sunlight, blinking.
“How do the barrowman fight?” Morgan asked in an eager whisper. Parsnip squeaked protest. “Nay, Parsnip, I want to know! How does a barrowman kill his foe?”
“Like anyone else,” Liam bit out. “With determination.” But the question had started an idea germinating. Inspired, he gestured. “Up the stair. Not the swords. Fourth level.”
“Fourth level?” Parsnip raced after the lads. “What’s fourth level?”
Liam had spent time on the armory’s fourth floor only once before, and that briefly. Everin had wanted a good bow and a supply of arrows to take back with him to Stonehill, and King Renault had granted his request. Liam remembered the gleam of the bows in their racks, the feel of polished yew and purpleheart beneath his hand. The king’s arrows were fletched with the black-and-red barred feathers taken off hens kept by the royal bowyers for that purpose alone.
“Don’t touch those,” he warned when Parsnip bent over a squat barrel filled to bristling with bundles of red-fletched shafts. “The grease off’n your fingers will throw off the balance.”
“Those aren’t for the likes of us,” Arthur agreed, nudging Parsnip away from the barrels. “Everyone knows the constable selects her bowmen from amongst her cavalry.”
“Not the bows,” Liam agreed. “Nor the flails.” Walking through streamers of dust, he crossed planked flooring that still smelled faintly of old mills. “Here.” He stopped in front of the furthest rack, pushing aside someone’s mouse-eaten leather gloves. “These.”
“Oooh, lovely,” Morgan cooed, pushing close. “Look, Arthur. Why bother with a sword when you can beat ’em with a stick?”
“Mace,” Parsnip corrected unnecessarily. Then, grudgingly, she added, “It’s a clever idea, Arthur. You’re big enough and strong enough and you don’t need grace for these.”
Arthur ignored the veiled insult. “Which one?” he asked. “Sir, which can I take?”
“This one, first.” Liam selected a short iron baton from the rack. Narrow enough for Arthur’s smaller fist at the stem, the head was studded with a thicket of curved, clawlike flanges. “This one flatters your reach. We’ll try it, aye? If it doesn’t take we’ll try another.”
“Canny, aren’t you?” Morgan told Liam, watching as Arthur took the mace, weighing it in his hand. “My mum says it’s mostly glaives and pikes and bolt-throwers
favored most recent years, but I think a good melee weapon’s always got a place, don’t you agree?”
Liam, recalling the thud of flesh on flesh and the crack of broken bone beneath his boot as he stomped one of Roue’s yellow-eyed enemies into swamp mud, could only nod. He collected the damaged gloves from their hook on the rack, clenching leather in one fist. He thought they were large enough to fit his long hands; if Avani and her tanning needle could fix the holes he’d keep them.
“Your mum, then, Morgan?” Liam managed absently, noting through the near arrow loop that afternoon was turning to evening. He was relieved to see Wilhaiim’s modest white stone beyond the armory. For all that the Rani’s golden palace had been a thing out of the best kind of adventure, Liam never wanted to set eye on Būṛhē Adamī again. “She a soldier? Runs in the family, does it?”
Morgan’s expression froze somewhere between delight and consternation. “I . . . yes. Yes, sir, she is. Mum’s the constable that Arthur mentioned. The king’s constable, Countess Wythe.”
Arthur snorted. “Didn’t Armswoman Lane say so when she made you our wet nurse? Our Morgan here, he’s an earl.”
Arthur beat six straw men to death before Liam called a halt to the lad’s enthusiastic practice. Morgan and Parsnip chased after scattered fodder, stuffing handfuls of straw back into the wounded dummy.
“Enough!” Morgan cried, laughing. “You’ve cracked Old Pumpkinhead’s gourd. If you smash it beyond repair we’ll never find a replacement this time of year.”
Pride made Arthur stand tall. He whooped at the straw man, swinging his new mace in mock ferocity. The dummy, leaking straw entrails and listing dangerously to one side, stared back by way of two slits cut into his desiccated pumpkin skull.
“That’ll do, Arthur.” Liam hid a smile behind his fist. “We’ve found your weapon. I’ll tell Mistress Lane. The lot of you, go and—” he paused to call to mind his eventide routine as a page “—wash and dress before dinner, aye? I’ll see you on the morrow.”
“We have military history in the morning,” Parsnip said. “With Captain Abney. And after that the quintain. Then lunch before the practice yard.”
Liam winced in sympathy. As a vocent’s squire he’d had no need to learn the joust. But now, as new made soldier-in-training, he knew eventually he’d have to face the bone-bruising quintain himself.
“Tomorrow after lunch, then,” Liam decided. “Here, in the yard. Bring a dirk, each of you.”
Knife-work came to Liam as naturally as breathing. That, at least, he thought he could teach.
Liam left the barracks and took himself through blistering cobblestone streets toward Wilhaiim’s temple. Even as the sun dropped behind the city wall heat bathed his brow and throat with sweat. He stopped at a trough to dunk his head in water meant for passing horses. The water was clean but not cold. He scraped wet hair from his eyes and shook like a hound. Droplets spattered the ground and a passing tinker. The man was bowed beneath the weight of the pots he carried in a wide basket across his shoulders. He turned his head to snarl in Liam’s direction but saw a young man where so many had recently been lost and bit back his complaint. Instead he sketched a quick cross against his chest in benediction, nodded, and continued on his way.
Doors and shutters stood open against the weather. Figures moved inside homes and shops as Liam hurried past. He could smell supper cooking and hear the quiet, somber talk of families coming together over bread and meat, words made obscure by thick stone walls. Once he caught the roll of deep laughter ringing from the belly of a crowded tavern. The lighthearted sound was so foreign it stopped Liam briefly on the street. In a city so decimated by spring plague, it seemed mirth had become taboo.
Liam’s stomach growled, alerting him to the time. He increased his pace, stretching his long legs. He left the main thoroughfare, cutting through back alleys, hopping private fences made of rail. A tomcat hissed at him from atop a dank refuse heap. Liam, insulted, hissed back. The cat arched its striped spine, swiped at the air, and then leapt high onto the near roof. Liam hurried on.
There were Kingsmen guarding Wilhaiim’s temple, four on either side of the narrow door. They wore the royal red and silver and were armed with pike and sword. They stood at attention, watching foot traffic on the street, scrutinizing the pilgrims who passed across the consecrated threshold. Liam ducked his head, casting his gaze at his feet as he joined the stream of visitors entering the temple, hoping to avoid notice, not of the soldiers, but of the theists’ one god.
The inside of the temple still stank of the incense the priests had burned to keep back plague. Louvers in the peaked ceiling were propped wide open to allow for airflow; Liam could see barefoot theists moving about on the roof above, opening more of the hinged slats, welcoming sunset and the cooler hours after, framing dusk in squares. Flames on the tapers in the great candelabra suspended from the rafters below flickered wildly in the new draft but refused to go out. Those pilgrims who endured overnight vigil would see night settle and the stars come out and the sky turn slowly warm again through the ceiling before the louvers were closed against the new day.
Near the red-draped altar Liam split from theists and pilgrims. He made his way instead to the stairs at the back of the temple. Several archways divided the heart of worship from the more utilitarian parts of the temple. Liam chose the rightmost opening. When he crossed through the narrow tunnel, several of the glyphs carved into the oval lintel burst briefly blue, woken to magic. Hewed stone steps in the steep staircase glowed gently, providing just enough light that a man might keep himself from falling and cracking his head on the simple wooden door below. Tapestries hung at intervals along the tunnel wall helped to muffle the sound of Liam’s boots against stone.
The walls were cold against Liam’s steadying hand. Goose bumps rose along the flesh of his arms as he descended into the ground. The glow off the steps was false light: sunny without honest heat.
When he reached the bottom of the staircase Liam knocked with force on the door. Deval, he knew, preferred to keep it locked from the inside against wandering pilgrims, but often meandered so far into the bookcases that he forgot to listen for visitors. The Masterhealer had a key, as did the king, but neither man was likely to lend one to Liam. So he rapped hard on wood until his knuckles throbbed and Deval took notice.
“Liam!” The old man’s weathered face creased in welcome. His dark eyes twinkled. “You’ve come early!”
“No, sir.” Liam said. “The sun’s near setting; the theists are opening the roof.”
Deval sighed. He brushed a hand across the front of his salwar, transferring a smear of black ink. Several similar marks stained the green silk.
“Time slips away,” the island man said with regret. Then he stepped back from the door. “Come, come. I have what you need. Just this way.”
He waved Liam into through the door, shutting and locking it again. Then he took Liam by the sleeve, strong brown fingers tugging. Deval, although not a short man, seemed to shrink as Liam grew. The crown of his head was level with the tip of Liam’s nose when in the early spring they had been eye to eye. Deval kept his hair shorn close against his skull in mourning for his dead wife. Liam, looking down on the man’s crown, saw he had more white bristles amongst the gray.
The temple library was kept in a massive cavern, a space far wider than the building above. Hollowed out of the earth by the steady drip of water against stone, and later by the deliberate application of hand and tool, the vast space was made cozy by the sheer number of glass-fronted bookcases, scroll racks, tapestries, and cushioned chairs. A number of high tables were scattered about in the event that a scholar might need to stop midstep and immediately record an important thought or discovery. More bolsters and small, brightly patterned carpets made the stone floor between cases comfortable for sitting.
It had been a barrowman’s cavern once, Liam knew, before Wilhaiim grew from town to village to a proper city. The spells that made the walls and ceilin
g shine bright enough for reading without torches had existed long before the theists had added their own magics—glyphs etched into the floor along the circumference of the cavern kept the air cold and dry, kept parchment safe from rot.
“This way,” Deval repeated, when Liam paused to examine an enormous beehive set atop one of the cases. The hive, thick around as a melon and tall as Liam’s forearm was long, was abandoned but for a few dead bees entombed in yellow honey. Bits of twig still stuck to the hive’s outer walls.
“That’s a new thing,” Liam said, impressed. “What happened to all the bees?”
“Smoked out,” Deval explained without glancing around. “And moved on. That hive grew too long in the branches of a sycamore near the Rose Maze. His Majesty required its removal.”
“So you climbed the tree to smoke them out? I wish I’d seen that.”
“It was something to see,” the old man agreed. “I had help. The poor bees were very insulted; I did not escape without stings. Goddess willing the colony will find a new, better home before winter.”
They turned a corner into Deval’s workspace. A straight pier of wood made from many joined, mismatched tables and strewed with books and papers dominated the stretch of floor between two parallel rows of regimented cases. A scroll, weighed down with chunks of jagged rock, was open at one end of the table while a pot of cold and foul-smelling tea waited, obviously forgotten, at the other. Books were stacked in piles of varying height. One dangerously crooked column stretched tall enough to almost brush the dangling leg bones of a crowned stag.
For bones there were, a multitude of them, hanging from the high ceiling in carefully grouped families. Complete skeletons of every size and species hung on silver wire from the library’s domed apex, some hanging so low Liam could stretch up on tiptoe and almost brush a bore’s ivory tusk with the end of his finger.