by Paul Stewart
Pity!
The insolence! The nerve! How dare he?
Tears of fury sprang to Vilnix's eyes. He hadn't come this far to fall for the oldest trick in the book. Friendship was for failures and weaklings. Where there was friendship, there was betrayal …
Slowly, Vilnix began tearing the barkscroll into very small pieces. And with each rip, he felt a little better, until a broad grin was plastered across his face – and the barkscroll letter was little more than sawdust on the tilderwool blanket.
‘So, Quintinius Verginix,’ Vilnix said, his voice a rasping whisper. ‘You want to make friends, do you?’
•CHAPTER FOURTEEN•
THE FORGER
Perule Gleet drew his grubby, paint-spattered robes of ‘viaduct’ blue tightly round his thin, angular body and shivered. It was freezing in the cluttered tower of the School of Colour and Light Studies, and had been for so long that the cold seemed to have seeped through his pores, chilling him to the marrow and making his joints stiff and painful.
But then, thought the old academic, he was no worse off than anyone else. It was freezing everywhere in Sanctaphrax these days.
It didn't help, of course, that several of the tiny diamond-shaped panes of glass in his leaded windows were cracked or missing completely, allowing the icy wind to whistle through the gaps; nor that the fire in his lufwood stove had gone out hours earlier. He'd run out of logs to burn, and given the exorbitant price of wood these days, it would be a while before he could afford to buy any more to light a new one.
He sighed, and rubbed his hands together, the finger-less gloves he was wearing rasping softly.
The trouble was, every last bit of timber was needed for those great burners which had been suspended from the East and West Landings. All that was left for the academics to keep themselves warm were chippings and splinters, and assorted fragments of bark that made more smoke than heat. Why, only the other day, Ferule had been so desperate he'd actually burned several wood panels that he'd prepared for portraits.
It was madness, he knew, for without wood panels to paint on, he'd lose his livelihood. But he was desperate. Then again, wasn't that exactly what they were doing with those huge log burners – desperately burning timber in order to buy time for the Knights Academic to find stormphrax?
Ferule crossed the studio to the window and rubbed the jagged patterns of frost from the glass. He put an eye to the small circle he'd made, like a spy at a keyhole, and peered out.
No stormchasing voyage today, he noted, as he surveyed the yellowy grey, snow-filled sky. It was far too cold. Mind you, he thought, that didn't always stop them. Sighing wearily, he sat back down at his easel and shook his head.
It had all seemed so promising when Screedius Tollinix had set off aboard the Windcutter. Now there was a real knight academic for you! The finest in the academy …
Yet that had been three long months ago and, despite the inevitable rumours of sightings and stories of what might or might not have happened, there had been no concrete news of his well-being or whereabouts since then. The great Screedius and his magnificent sky ship had simply vanished into the heart of the Great Storm, never to be seen again.
And he was just the first of many knights academic to depart. Every time the dark anvil clouds boiled up and the air filled with sourmist particles, another one of them had been selected to sail forth. All of the original thirteen knights academic-in-waiting had now gone, with Screedius Tollinix the only one of them who had got even close. As for the others -Hophix, Dantius, Queritis, Phlax, Willandis, Xallix, and all the rest - their sky ships had turned turvey within minutes of launching into the air.
It was the flight-rocks. They just couldn't be controlled in this awful cold. And after poor old Xallix Flint's sky ship, the Misthazvk, had shot straight up into Open Sky in front of the horrified crowds assembled on the Viaduct Steps, Ferule had stopped going to the launches altogether. They could ring that bell on the Great Hall all they liked, but he for one had lost his appetite for the spectacle.
These days, it seemed, all it took was a whiff of sour-mist for that crazy hall master, Hax Vostillix, to order another stormchasing voyage. Why, those they were now sending were little more than squires, newly-knighted and still wet behind the ears. But then the Knights Academy was desperate – and it was a desperation shared by every single inhabitant of the great floating city, from the twin Most High Academes down to the lowliest minor-school servant.
And with lufwood logs at eight gold pieces a bundle, thought Ferule, rubbing a bony hand thoughtfully over his jutting jaw, who could blame them?
Just then, a thin tinkling sound broke the silence and Ferule's pale yellow eyes looked up at the small silver bell on the wall above him. It twitched as the bell-pull was yanked again and, with a weary sigh, Ferule climbed to his feet and made for the tower's spiral staircase.
‘Who in Sky's name can that be?’ he grumbled as he descended the stone stairs, made slippery by a layer of frost.
Ferule had no portrait sitters arranged for this late in the day, and he was certain there were no ‘special’ commissions due just at the moment. The bell tinkled a third time.
‘Yes, yes, I'm coming,’ he grumbled. ‘Hold your prowlgrins!’
Reaching the front door, he pulled back the heavy bolts, top and bottom, and drew it open an inch, before pressing one yellow eye to the gap. A thin, sallow-faced youth dressed in the white cloak of a Knights Academy squire stood glaring back at him through a pair of tinted snow-goggles.
‘Yes? Can I help you?’ asked Ferule suspiciously. ‘There's no fuel here, if that's what you're after.’
‘Do I look like a timber scrounger?’ said the youth, fixing the academic with a contemptuous look. ‘I'm here on behalf of a good friend of mine. I believe you're amending his sword miniature …’
‘You'd better come in,’ said Ferule, opening the door a little further, and ushering the squire impatiently inside. ‘Scrape that snow off your boots before you come up, there's a good squire,’ he said. ‘Oh, and you can keep your cloak on. The stove's not lit today.’
The squire did as he was told, stamping his feet, before following the painter up the stairs to the studio. As he emerged at the top, he took a sharp intake of breath. The room was crammed so full, there was scarcely room to turn round.
There were cupboards, cabinets and chests of drawers, and rows of shelves lining the walls, each one bowing in the middle under the weight of the countless objects crammed onto them.
Hundreds of jars, half-filled with heady solvents and viscous oils, and with brushes sticking out of the top, stood in rows. There were bottles and boxes, each one containing powders and pastes, and the vast array of ingredients in labelled jars that the painter used to create his range of pigments – as well as the stone mortars he mixed them in, and the heavy pestles to grind them.
Blood-beetles. Yellowbait. Emerald tics. Ambersap. The dried purple and magenta petals of swirewort and wintleweed, and the lesser spangleshrub's indigo roots. There were drawerfuls of crumbly rocks, excavated from marshy areas in the Deepwoods, that produced innumerable subtle shades of ochre and orange. And lullabee embers, that yielded the blackest of blacks.
Then there were the tools of his trade. The brushes and spatulas, the scrapers and scratchers, the sticks of charcoal and lumps of chalk. Pastels, crayons, inks and dyes; stacks of sketchbooks and heaps of canvas nailed to their frames. And, filling up the centre of the room, the props and backcloths the artist used to compose his portraits, as well as the tall rickety easels, with paintings in various states of completion balanced upon them.
‘Now, this friend of yours,’ said Ferule, as he picked his way across the cluttered room to his even more cluttered workbench, ‘does he have a name?’
‘Here,’ said the squire, thrusting a scrap of barkscroll at him. Ferule took the scroll and scrutinized the clear, beautifully-formed handwriting on its smooth surface.
Quintinius Verginix, he read
, as the sallow-faced squire continued to look round, Lower Hall squire of the Knights Academy, requests the return of his sword miniature furnished to Professor Ferule Gleet of the School of Colour and Light Studies for amendment – namely the addition to the background of the tower of the Loftus Observatory, symbol of the squire's mentor, the twin Most High Academe, the Professor of Light, payment of three gold pieces having been supplied.
‘Ah, yes,’ said Ferule at last, his pale yellow eyes looking the squire up and down. ‘I remember the lad. Friend of yours, you say …’
‘That's right,’ said the youth, making no move to take off either the tinted snow-goggles or the thick scarf that covered half his face.
‘And you are?’ asked Ferule quietly, as he bent over to examine the miniatures spread out on the workbench before him.
‘Just a good friend,’ replied the squire. ‘Quintinius Verginix has been chosen to ascend to the Upper Halls of the Knights Academy,’ he went on, ‘and I'm sure you know what that means …’
Ferule gave a low chuckle, picked up a miniature from the workbench and examined it carefully.
‘Indeed I do, young squire. Indeed I do. This noble-looking young friend of yours, so splendid in his shining armour, will one day become a knight academic …’
He held the miniature of Quint up to the light, between a thumb and a forefinger.
‘First time I clapped eyes on him, I knew,’ he said. ‘It was something to do with the way he held himself – and the questing expression in those deep indigo eyes of his, as dark as the stormclouds rolling in from beyond the Edge themselves …’
The squire watched impatiently as Ferule's own pale eyes glazed over thoughtfully.
‘I can just see him now, passing up from the Lower to the Upper Halls,’ he said, the trace of a smile on his lips. ‘Bowing to the hall masters at the foot of the staircase, saying goodbye to the other squires who have just become academics-at-arms – and are all trying to hide their disappointment … Then climbing the great Central Staircase to present his sword, hilt first, to the High Professors of the Upper Halls.’ He paused. ‘When is the Elevation Ceremony?’
‘Soon,’ said the squire smoothly. ‘Very soon.’ He held out a gloved hand, and Ferule carefully placed the miniature of Quint in it. The squire's fingers closed around it. ‘… Which brings me,’ he continued, ‘to the second, and rather more delicate, part of my errand.’
‘Delicate?’ said Ferule suspiciously.
The squire smiled as he placed the miniature in an inside pocket of his cloak and drew out a small leather pouch.
‘Quintinius Verginix is extremely busy preparing for his elevation, as I'm sure you'll understand …’
He untied the drawstring that fastened the pouch, and allowed its contents to fall open on the painter's workbench. A cluster of marsh-gems twinkled up at Ferule. There were) jewels there for enough logs to keep his stove blazing for many, many months.
Tell me more,’ the painter said with a smile. ‘He has a very close friend in Undertown who is desperate to hear from him,’ the young squire went on, ‘but he simply hasn't the time to write to her. Of course, I could write on his behalf, but just think how cold and impersonal that would seem to her …’
‘Her?’ said Ferule, counting the marsh-gems greedily with his yellow eyes.
‘It would be a little deception, but I don't suppose, if I gave you a few scribbled words …’ The squire pulled a second barkscroll from his cloak.
‘… That I could supply that personal touch?’ said Ferule with a smile.
The squire nodded. ‘You read my mind,’ he said, handing Ferule the scroll.
The painter looked from Quint's beautifully lettered barkscroll to the second barkscroll, which was covered in a thin, spidery scrawl – and then at the squire.
‘Come back tomorrow night,’ he said. ‘I'll have it ready for you then.’
‘It must be convincing,’ the squire said, turning to go. ‘She must believe it came from Quintinius …’
‘Leave it with me,’ smiled Ferule, scooping up the marsh-gems. ‘When I'm finished, not even Quintinius himself will be able to swear that it's not his own handwriting.’
The painter followed the squire down the stone staircase and opened the door. The squire pulled his cloak around him and stepped into the numbing blizzard outside. Behind him, Ferule closed and bolted the door, before climbing the stairs once more. He had a long night's work ahead of him. After all, the young squire had paid for his very best work.
‘How fortunate young Quintinius is,’ he cackled sarcastically to himself, ‘to have such a very good friend.’
•CHAPTER FIFTEEN•
THE SWORD
MINIATURE
Quint took a deep breath and began to climb the great blackwood staircase. Beside him, he could hear Vilnix, his breath coming in short rasping gasps.
Beneath Quint's hand, the ornately carved banister felt smooth and cold to the touch. Even in the gloomy light, he could pick out extraordinary details in the bulbous black spindles and the carved treads and risers of the steps. Writhing hover worms bared their curling suckers, ornate quarms peered from behind carved clusters of del-berries, while intricately coiling tarry-vines – their life-like tendrils seemingly searching for warm-blooded prey – snaked their way from tread to tread beneath his feet.
Quint desperately wanted to look back, but he knew he must fight the temptation. Squires who were elevated to the Upper Halls didn't look back. They kept their backs straight, their heads up and their eyes focused on the black-wood staircase winding its way up to the halls above.
Below him on the Central Landing, halfway between the Upper and Lower Halls, were all the other squires – Tonsor, Quiltis, and of course his best friend, Phin. A heavy lump rose in Quint's throat. After all the time they'd spent together in the Lower Halls, the laughs they'd had and adventures they'd shared, their parting had seemed so abrupt. Quint sighed. He could hear the sound of his friends’ heavy boots retreating as they descended the staircase to begin their careers as academics-at-arms in the Academy Barracks below.
Two days earlier, it had all seemed so exciting when the cry went up that the graduation scroll had been posted. Immediately, all the squires had clustered round the newel post at the foot of the Central Staircase, good-naturedly jostling and shoving one another in their attempts to scrutinize the list.
‘Look! Look!’ Tonsor had shouted excitedly.
‘I would do, if you'd just move your fat head for a moment,’ Quiltis had laughed, pushing his friend out of the way to get a better look.
‘The swivel catapults! Both of us! We've been assigned to the swivel catapults!’ Tonsor had hugged his friend delightedly.
Phin had been peering to see over their heads. ‘Yes!’ he'd cried, when he saw his name. ‘Belphinius Mendellix: Apprentice Swordmaster! And look, there's you, Quint,’ he'd said, excitedly pulling Quint by the arm to the front of the jostling crowd of squires.
Quint's gaze had fallen on his own name, the words Upper Halls – Knight's Squire written beside it in neat, italic letters, and had felt his stomach lurch.
‘What's wrong?’ Phin had asked, when he saw his face. ‘Isn't this what you always wanted?’
‘It's not that,’ Quint had replied quietly. ‘It's just … Well, you'll be an academic-at-arms, and I'll be an Upper Hall squire …’
‘We'll still see each other,’ Phin had laughed, ‘in the Eightways.’ He slapped Quint on the shoulder. ‘After all, even high-and-mighty Upper Hall squires have to eat!’
‘Yes, but look …’ Quint had pointed to the graduation scroll. Phin had narrowed his eyes and peered at the list.
‘I don't believe it!’ he'd gasped. ‘Vilnix Pomp-olnius …’
‘Upper Halls – Apprentice High Professor,’ came a thin, sneering voice.
They had turned to see Vilnix standing behind them, with an unpleasant smirk on his face.
‘Actually, Vilnix …’ Quint had begun,
pointing to the scroll, but a bony hand had shot out and seized him by the sleeve and he'd found himself being led away by the thin squire.
‘We Upper Hall squires really ought to stick together, don't you think, Quint?’ Vilnix had said in a wheedling voice, ignoring Phin completely. ‘Now, I hear you have still to pick up your sword miniature from the School of Colour and Light Studies. Tut! Tut!’ He'd shaken his head. ‘Lucky for you, Quint, that you've got me looking out for you. After all, that's what friends are for.’
Vilnix, his friend! Who would have thought it? Quint snapped out of his daydream with a jolt. They were halfway up the staircase and the shadows were deepening. He cast a sideways look at the squire climbing the blackwood staircase beside him. Yet that was exactly what Vilnix seemed to think he was.
Quint didn't like to admit it, but there was something about Vilnix's sneering smile and wolfish grin that made his flesh crawl. That, and Vilnix's habit of sucking up to Hax Vostillix at every opportunity … After all, how else had he managed to be elevated to the Upper Halls? Vilnix was grinning now, Quint saw with a shudder, his face resembling that of the carved woodwolf they'd just passed on the stairs.
Strange, Quint thought as his mind began to wander again, that ever since that afternoon when Screedius Tollinix had set sail on the Windcutter, Vilnix's attitude to him had seemed to change. From that day on, the sour-faced squire always seemed to be hanging around, greeting him, chatting to him, offering to do him small favours.
At first, Quint had been suspicious, half-expecting Vilnix to trick him or get him into trouble with Hax. But as the months had gone by Quint had to admit that, despite his creepy ways and hostility towards the other squires, Vilnix actually did seem to want to be his friend – whether he liked it or not.
Take that incident just the other day with his sword miniature, for instance. Vilnix had absolutely insisted on picking it up for him, even though it had been blowing a blizzard outside. Quint shook his head. It wasn't as though there was any need; there had been plenty of time for him to pick it up himself before the Elevation Ceremony. But Vilnix simply wouldn't take ‘no’ for an answer, pestering Quint to write an explanatory note to the painter and then cooing delightedly over his beautiful handwriting when he'd done so.