Vicious Bigbeard Daggersharp turned and waved cheerfully at his wife. Bessemund Baker took the opportunity to wallop him over the head with her rolling pin. His grin glazed over, and he slumped the grass. Of all the mummers, Bessemund was the most fearsome of them all, whacking various pirates with her improvised club and using a collection of nasty-looking hat pins as parrying weapons.
“Great,” moaned Black Nell, staring at her unconscious husband. “Just what I need. Trust him to be no help whatsoever.”
Almost tripping over her sequins, Tione caught up with Sparrow, just as Black Nell gasped with another contraction. “I do not suppose you can deliver babies?” asked Sparrow, not really expecting a positive answer.
Tione nodded breathlessly. “It’s amazing what they teach you in the secret police,” she said. “Well, actually it was at concubine school.”
“Great,” said Sparrow without too many traces of sarcasm in her voice. “So what do we do now?”
“Whatever it is, I suggest you start doing it soon,” gasped Black Nell, grabbing on to Sparrow’s arm for support.
“Oi!” screamed out Tione to those involved in the battle. “Stop being idiots and start boiling water!” Her shrill voice carried surprisingly well for a five-foot-nothing slip of a concubine.
“Such projection,” marvelled Bessemund Baker, her rolling pin hovering in mid-air.
“Well?” demanded Tione. “Get on with it!”
The battle broke up as pirates and mummers alike tried to figure out how to boil water in the middle of nowhere. Tione the concubine turned her attention to Black Nell, fussing over her in a business-like way.
Daggar Profit-scoundrel had scrambled down to Sparrow’s side, and was urgently tugging at her sleeve, eyes wide. “Sparrow, I know these people!” He stared around incredulously. “See him? That’s my Uncle Bigbeard, Kassa’s dad. He died last year. And that’s my Aunty Nell. She died about ten years ago. This is my flipping family tree.” He shook his head worriedly. “I don’t think I can take this.”
“Try,” said Sparrow with little sympathy.
“That’s Bessemund Baker,” he hissed. “She became the most fearsome pirate to sail the seas. So this is how it happened!”
Tione was moving around like a miniature spangled whirlwind, ordering pirates and strolling players alike to fetch blankets, boiling water and other apparently vital substances.
One leather-clad pirate, lither and faster than the rest, stripped the cart of its blanket supply in record time and presented them to the frantic concubine-midwife with a flourish. “Cutlass Cooper at your service,” he said with a diabolical grin, and their eyes met. Something held their gaze together for an earth-shattering minute, and then Tione wrenched herself away and went to tend the pirate queen who was still yelling obscenities at her unconscious husband.
“Did you see that?” said Daggar hoarsely. “Oh gods, I thought I recognised her!”
“Shut up,” snapped Sparrow. “Go for a walk until all this is over.”
“I think we’ve just witnessed a serious breach in the space-time continuum,” said Daggar in a choked voice. “Either we caused it, or we just mended it.”
“I do not care,” Sparrow said angrily. “This is much too dangerous. Go and find that sheep of yours. I will get Tione and we will leave, immediately, before you say something you should not. Go!”
Muttering to himself, Daggar trudged back up the hill, looking for Singespitter the sheep. It was a shock, seeing people he remembered from his childhood. Halfway down the other side of the hill, he froze, having only just realised the implications of the bulge under Black Nell’s dress. “Bloody hell. That’s Kassa in there!”
He was so distracted by that thought that he didn’t notice he was being ambushed until he had been thrown to the ground, bound tightly with gilded rope and tossed over someone else’s shoulder.
Using the bright silken draperies from the cart, Tione had organised a makeshift pavilion—she gave the orders and various pirates, dancing girls and the occasional jester put the tent together.
Black Nell was inside, screaming blue murder and balancing awkwardly against a pile of ramshackle pillows, cushions and theatrical props.
Sparrow was still trying to convince Tione that they should leave.
“I don’t care who he thinks he recognises, we must help this woman!” snapped Tione. “If you want to leave as soon as possible, help me.”
“Why me?” said Sparrow in thinly-disguised horror. “I know nothing about babies.”
“You’re a warrior!” Tione insisted. “You must have some healing knowledge.”
“External injuries, yes,” snapped Sparrow. “If she stabs her husband or gouges her own eyes out, I can handle it. But do not ask me to get involved with childbirth.”
Tione turned her wide eyes upwards, pleadingly. “Sparrow, I need your help. Please?”
Vicious Bigbeard Daggersharp regained consciousness slowly. Familiar screams echoed through the still afternoon. The large pirate opened one eye. It was the one behind the eyepatch, so it didn’t do him much good. He opened his other eye and hauled himself to his feet. “What’s going on, then?”
Cutlass Cooper sat perched on the end of the cart of the strolling players, swinging his long legs, twirling his moustache and watching the water-boiling attempts of the other pirates. So far, Bruised Cordwainer had burned his fingers, Turbot-face Gralhoun had come dangerously close to finding a kettle and Three-eyed Nadger had fallen into a nearby bear pit. All most entertaining.
“Come on matey, don’t take all day about it,” said Bigbeard impatiently. “Fill me in.”
“Well,” drawled Cutlass in his usual charming fashion. “So far, Nell has threatened to cut off just about every prominent part of your body except your ears.”
A screeching voice emanated from the silken tent. “I’m going to pull off his ears and feed them to the bloody ship’s cat!”
“I stand corrected,” said Cutlass with every appearance of enjoyment.
Bigbeard sauntered over to the tent and stuck his head in. “Hullo, love. How’s it going?”
A sharpened marionette came sailing out of the tent and missed him by inches. Black Nell was red-faced, panting and deliriously angry. “Damn it, Bigbeard, this is the last time I trust you to get things done!” she screeched. “I could have been in the Skullcap nursing home by now if we’d started moving when I told you to, with clean sheets and potions enough to knock me unconscious for a week!”
Sparrow, resenting the role of midwife’s assistant, mopped the expectant mother’s brow a little more roughly than was traditional and took a deep swallow of troll-brandy.
“I swear, Bigbeard,” yelled Black Nell, “After this I’m getting my own ship. I won’t be an unpaid deckhand any more!”
“Whatever you say, dear,” said Bigbeard amiably. “Fancy a cup of tea?” He ducked back out of the tent before a fish-shaped cushion could hit him squarely between the eyes.
“All be over soon,” said Tione comfortingly.
Nell refused to be comforted. “Don’t you have any painkilling potions?” she begged.
The heat and the noise were getting to Sparrow. She wiped her own brow with her sleeve and then stood up. “I need some fresh air.”
“It’s all right for you,” muttered the expectant mother.
Tione gave Sparrow a sharp look. “You are coming back, aren’t you?”
“Of course,” said Sparrow. She handed her flask of troll-brandy to Black Nell. “Try this.”
The pirate woman took a swallow of the potent brew and her eyes flew open. “I can’t feel anything,” she choked. “Is my tongue still attached?”
Sparrow took this opportunity to make a break for it. Outside, she took a few big gulps of fresh cool air. She looked around for Daggar, and couldn’t see him. One of the pirates offered her a flask of something as she walked past. She drained it unconsciously, strapping the empty flask to her own belt, which hung loosely around
her hips now that she wasn’t wearing armour.
She could see Singespitter up on the hill, his wings flapping madly. Something was wrong. Sparrow charged up the hill in a few long strides. “Where is he?” she demanded. “Where’s Daggar?”
Obviously, the sheep could not speak. Sparrow scanned the hillside, and saw the crushed grass. Signs of a struggle. She examined the area minutely, and came up with a tiny golden button. She had seen these buttons before, on the livery of the Zibrian palace guards. “This is ridiculous! We will not do anything to warrant palace guards chasing us for another twenty-three years. Why would they take Daggar?”
Again, Singespitter said nothing, but capered around anxiously.
Sparrow nodded grimly. “Daggar has the liquid gold ship in his pocket, does he not? If we want to return to our own time, we must rescue him.”
Singespitter nodded as eagerly as it was possible for a sheep to nod and rubbed himself up against her ankles.
Sparrow marched once more to the crest of the hill and looked around. There was the city, less than an hour’s walk away. It glittered, more golden than she had ever seen it. And there, moving rapidly along the canal path, she could see several men in Zibrian livery, carrying something brown and sacklike. “They have him!”
Sparrow broke into a run, grabbing Singespitter’s leash as she did so. “Come, there is no time to lose!”
12: Matchmaking as a Last Resort
Kassa Daggersharp stormed into the Dark One’s throne room, utterly livid. “Why didn’t you tell me I could leave the Underworld if I went on a quest?” she yelled.
“You didn’t ask,” said the Dark One. “Am I going to have to hide behind my throne again? My knees aren’t really up to the strain these days.” He brushed a fine layer of yellow dust from his black throne.
Kassa glared at him, and then over his head, her eyes following the complex patterns of the disturbing mosaic as she turned her various frustrated thoughts over in her mind. “I saw my parents,” she said finally.
“Ah,” said the Dark One. “That explains your tempestuous mood. I met your parents once, and I was out of sorts for days. Not that time has any meaning here,” he added hastily.
Kassa scowled. “I don’t understand. Why are they still here? Is this all they want out of the afterlife? A cave, some booze and each other?”
The Dark One lifted his long-nosed face to gaze directly at her. “And why not? There are alternatives, for everyone. They could drink from the river Oblivion and forget their past life in order to be born again in the mortal sphere. That is always an option for every soul in the Underworld—except me, of course.”
“So why don’t they?” she demanded. “Why not start anew?”
“Perhaps they still have ties to the mortal world, to these lives,” the Dark One suggested. “They may wish to stay together for a while longer. There are no guarantees with reincarnation.”
“No,” said Kassa definitely. “It wasn’t like that. They weren’t that wrapped up in each other. They had separate lives.” She stared angrily at the long-nosed god. “They have no motive to want to spend their afterlives together!”
“Do they not?” inquired the Dark One gently. He tilted his head. “I bow to superior expertise.”
Kassa shot him a killer look, but refrained from taking further action because of Vervain, who popped up out of nowhere to change the subject.
“Hey, Kassa!” he announced, blithely unaware of the frictions in the room. “Here I am, your ever loyal guardian sprite reporting for duty, come rain or shine!” He smiled edgily at her. “Are you in a better mood now?”
“Relax,” Kassa sighed. “You’re far too tense. I thought sprites were supposed to be thick-skinned.”
“Not me,” Vervain assured her, preening in his new black velvet robe. He was planning to put sequins on it. “I’m the sensitive type. Did someone say something about a quest?”
Kassa caught the Dark One’s eye, and he smiled slightly. “It is not usual, but there is a loophole within the rules of the Underworld,” he informed them.
She was instantly suspicious. “What kind of loophole?”
“When Dame Veekie wants something, nobody has the strength to argue,” the Dark One said with a wry grin. “Least of all me.”
Suddenly a thunderous sound resounded throughout the Underworld. Kassa, flung hard against one of the walls, felt it buckle and warp. “What is it?” she screamed.
Just as suddenly, the sound and shaking stopped. The Dark One mopped himself with his duster. “Just a few fluctuations in the cosmos. They affect us from time to time—that’s the trouble with being slightly outside reality. Now, shouldn’t you be going back to Dame Veekie?”
Only after Kassa had given him a hard look and left the chamber with Vervain at her heels did the Dark One allow himself to look worried. The ‘fluctuations’ had been happening a little too often lately.
The first stage of witch training involved concentrated study, and Kassa was not in the mood for it. “I feel sorry for the Dark One,” she said aloud, ignoring the sheaves of parchments stretched out before her on the desk which detailed the important properties of various herbs, rocks and minor insect life as far as witchlore was concerned. She had always been interested in this sort of thing, but now she actually had an opportunity to study them the glamour had worn off. “He seems so lonely.”
“He is a god,” said Dame Veekie. “Don’t impose your mortal-minded emotional baggage on him. He wouldn’t know what to do with them.”
“Even so,” Kassa continued. “I wonder why he doesn’t have a companion of some sort. You’d think there would be plenty to choose from with all these souls wandering around.”
“Not allowed,” replied the Dame sternly. “Gods can dally with mortals all they like. But not dead mortals.”
“But live mortals can’t visit the Underworld,” Kassa protested. A horrible thought crossed her mind. “I am dead, aren’t I? Everyone keeps saying I’m not…”
“Well, you weren’t brought here to be the Dark One’s concubine,” said Dame Veekie humourlessly. “Trust me. Are you at all interested in these properties of herbs?”
Kassa wasn’t listening. “What do you think, Vervain?”
“I think these scrolls are awfully dusty,” said the orange sprite, polishing them with his sleeve. “You’ve already given him a new image.”
“Every king needs a consort,” Kassa shrugged, blowing a cloud of yellow dust from the nearest scroll. “What is this stuff? It gets everywhere.” She laughed suddenly. “That would be a quest, wouldn’t it? To find a consort for the Harbinger of Horribleness.”
“Perhaps,” said Dame Veekie, unsmiling. “Now pay attention.”
Kassa bowed her head to study, but bunked off at the earliest opportunity and went looking for an alternative accomplice, as Vervain had wandered off somewhere.
Ebony the goth girl listened to Kassa’s half-baked plan with something like amusement. “Aren’t you supposed to be doing your homework?”
“Never mind that now,” said Kassa dismissively, shifting the huge stack of parchments awkwardly against her hip. “Is it possible?”
“I don’t know. Don’t gods usually make these decisions for themselves?”
Kassa waved her hand dismissively. “He can barely dress himself. Anyway, I’m good at this sort of thing. I’m a champion matchmaker.”
Ebony looked unconvinced. “You’re bored, aren’t you?”
“Well, maybe,” Kassa admitted. “I usually have a whole crewful of people to manipulate. Anyway, I need a quest as soon as humanly possible, so I can get back to the mortal realm.”
“What if there isn’t anything left there for you?” the goth girl challenged.
“There is,” insisted Kassa. “If my head would stop being so fuzzy, I might remember what it was. Will you help me?”
Another titanic fluctuation hit the Underworld, and the corridor shuddered. A layer of fine golden dust drifted down from the
ceiling. “It’s getting worse,” Ebony murmured.
Kassa ignored the disturbance. “Will you help me?”
“What do you want me to do?”
“If gods can’t dally with mortals,” mused Kassa, “what’s the alternative? How about sprites?”
Ebony frowned. “Could be a grey area. After all, goths and imps are technically sprites, I think.” Her darkly painted eyelids widened as she saw someone approaching over Kassa’s shoulder. “Excuse me, I need to be somewhere else.”
With an amazing turn of speed for one so slinky, Ebony the goth girl glided away.
Kassa spun around and the sudden movement dislodged the pile of herbal parchments from her arms. They slid to the floor in a resounding heap.
“Ah,” said Dame Veekie icily, her grey starched-high hair standing more than usual. “Hard at work. I see.”
Kassa briefly considered scrabbling around on the floor to gather all the parchments together, but dismissed the idea. She may not have much left, but she was holding on to her dignity. She gave the spilled pages a swishing kick with a long black leather boot, which scattered them even further. “That’s what I think of your lists and regulations! I’m going on my quest.” She stalked away down the rocky corridor.
Dame Veekie Crosselet smiled.
This time when Kassa Daggersharp stormed into the throne room, there was no one to intimidate. Frowning, she looked around the empty chamber. The black velvet curtains had been miraculously mended, concealing the dizzying mosaics from sight.
There was an embarrassed cough from the doorway. “Ahem.”
Kassa turned around as the Dark One stepped into the room. He was wearing a rather swish pastel-peach suit with a spangly shirt underneath. Bobbing eagerly behind him was Vervain, carrying a full-length mirror. His orange skin clashed horribly with the Dark One’s new attire; not that the suit wasn’t doing a pretty good job of clashing with itself.
“Well?” inquired the Dark One, twirling around and sticking out his sleeves for inspection. “What do you think?”
Mocklore Box Set (Mocklore Chronicles) Page 39