Quillifer the Knight

by Walter Jon Williams

  Most travelers on the coast go by sea, and so the coast road is neglected, and now it was full of mud and storm-wrack. Squalls pummeled the coach with brief, fierce showers. The corn in the fields had been beaten down, and the orchards were strewn with wreckage and fallen fruit. Unless the authorities took care to succor the district, there would be famine here come winter.

  After a wretched, jolting ride that set pain lancing through my wounded hand, I arrived in Ethlebight after dark and found the gates closed. I had been prepared to bribe my way past the gatehouse, but as soon as the guards heard my name, they opened the gates immediately and welcomed me to my home city.

  I am well known in Ethlebight. Three years before the previous autumn, Ethlebight had been sacked by a fleet of Aekoi reivers, and I, eighteen years old and on my first adventure in the wide world, had managed to obtain succor from Her Majesty’s government. I had also procured privateering licenses for the city’s sea-captains, which allowed them to take their prizes to Ethlebight, and brought money into the devastated city.

  Naturally I used some of those privateering licenses myself, and had a share of the profits from the rest, but the city’s wealth was increased thereby, and no one in Ethlebight has reproached me—nor should they, for I spent some of my profits in the city, and also in a fund for ransoming the captives.

  The carriage passed along darkened streets to Scarcroft Square, that great jewel in the center of town. Even though the fine, many-chimneyed buildings were mere silhouettes in the darkness, and the many windowpanes but a pale shimmer of reflected moonlight, I felt a great contentment settle into me. I had wandered the world, and I was known in the royal capital of Selford and the seat of government in Howel, but Ethlebight was my home.

  The carriage drew up at the door of the Spellman home, and I alighted and beat on the door with my good hand. A groom opened the door, recognized me, and brought me into the hall. There, a moment later, my friend Kevin Spellman joined me, and we embraced.

  “Royal Stilwell is aground in Gannet Cove,” said I into his ear. “We have saved the crew, and we now must save the cargo.”

  He stepped back, and calculation was already reflected in his eyes. “Able is in port, thank Pastas. I will send a message to Captain Oakeshott at once. Have you supped?”

  “I have not. And I come in a carriage, and the driver, footman, and horses are no doubt hungry as well.”

  “They will be provided for.”

  Kevin was a sturdy man my own age, fair of hair and beard, and had been my friend from our school days. In the summer heat, and in the privacy of his own home, he wore only a fine lawn shirt above his trunks and hose, though normally he wore the brilliant fabrics his family imported into the country. He was the son of a wealthy mercer with a mansion on Scarcroft Square who owned, in whole or in part, a small flotilla of ships. Kevin’s family had been captured by the Aekoi reivers during the sack of the city, and one of their ships taken and another burned in the port. Thanks to the privateering commissions I had secured and the captures made by his ships, Kevin had been able to recover much of the family’s fortune and to ransom his parents, brother, sister, and servants. Since the end of the war, we had been partners in merchant ventures and done well.

  “Is your father at home?” I asked.

  “He is in Selford.”

  “You might send word to him, and he can alert the insurors to start gathering great cartloads of silver to pay us. Then, an we rescue some of the cargo, they may be so relieved that they will pay the balance without trouble.”

  Kevin smiled. “You have a sanguine view of maritime insurance, to be sure.”

  “Yesterday I survived a shipwreck. If that does not enhance a man’s optimism, I know not what will.”

  A footman brought in a cold supper, along with a bottle of wine from the south coast of Bonille. Kevin busied himself with sending messages and making calculations.

  “I will also need a stack of silver,” I said, “for I have engaged a small army of salvagers.”

  “You will have it.”

  Before I went to bed, I called for hot water for shaving, for I was desperate to crop my whiskers. I keep my hair long, for fair ladies such as yourself like to stroke it, but unlike most men in the kingdom I am clean-shaven. This is not because I hope to set a new fashion, but rather because my beard itches abominably, and I cannot abide the torment when there is a remedy at hand. I had not shaved in all the days since the storm had struck, and my beard had long outlived its welcome.

  Relieved of whiskers and their itch, I was given a featherbed for the night, and before undressing and extinguishing the lamp, I took the key from around my neck and opened my strongbox. From it I took out Royal Stilwell’s most valuable cargo, a chest of teak that held several trays, each lined with plush velvet of a deep violet shade. I took out the trays and viewed the contents—the diamonds, emeralds, and rubies that I had bought in the markets of Sarafsham, now glowing in the soft light of the lantern like fallen fragments of the moon. All of the most excellent quality, all quarried in Sarafsham’s fabled mines, then cut and polished by the diamond masters who live in fine homes on the Street of the Shining Stones.

  I had bought these with my own silver, not the money reserved for my and Kevin’s joint ventures. Each of the stones was held in its own velvet-lined compartment, a precaution to keep the stones from cutting one another. A few had worked out of their proper places in the storm or the juddering carriage ride to the city, and these I returned to their compartments before locking them up again.

  If the gems had been lost, I would have been near penniless. But I had been penniless before, and that prospect did not frighten me. I am young still, and should I lose my fortune, there is time to earn another one.

  I returned the teak chest to my strongbox and heard the seven bolts clack home as I locked it. I had plans for the stones and would sleep better knowing that they were secure.

  Kevin and I breakfasted together the next morning, and then he set out for the port. The vessel Able, which we jointly owned, was but an 80-ton pinnace and could carry but a fraction of the cargo in the hold of the 850-ton Royal Stilwell. Kevin would have to round up every pinnace, crumster, flyboat, and barge in the port and engage them as our cargo-carriers.

  Kevin knew the ships and captains here better than I, and so I was at liberty until Able was able to sail, which would not be till the afternoon ebb tide. So I went to my new-built house on Princess Street.

  The house in which I was raised had been burned during the sack of the city, and my parents and little sisters killed. When I was able to afford it, I had the house rebuilt, and with an eye for defense. My father’s house had a ground floor of brick, but its upper floors were half-timber, and the roof thatch. Determined that my house would not burn should all the Aekoi in the world assault it, I had built the new walls entirely out of brick and capped them with a tile roof. But I had never slept in my new home, for by the time it was completed, I was living in Bonille, and so I leased the house to a young girdler just starting out in the world. She had her shop on the ground floor and lived on the floors above with her growing family—her husband was the mate of a crumster in the coastal trade, and she was now heavy with their third child.

  Beyond a few glimpses of the women in the fishing village, I had seen no woman for weeks, and so I very much enjoyed the pleasant half hour I spent with my tenant, talking of nothing in particular while I admired the girdles and belts in the shop, and then bade her good-day and went walking through the town. Much of the damage done by the raid had been repaired, but still there were empty lots where homes had been burned and not replaced, and other houses that stood boarded and empty, still awaiting their owners’ return. The fine, rich buildings on Scarcroft Square, made all of the local brick in all its shimmering colors, had been repaired, but I could not help but remember the day of the sack, when the windows had been shattered by wanton corsairs, the square had served to pen thousands of captives, and I had wat
ched the atrocity from my hiding-place, unable to do anything but bear witness to the horror below.

  The memory seemed to float before my eyes, suspended between me and the square as if painted on one of those gauzy scrims at the theater. Haunted by this vision, I walked blindly across the square and found myself looking up at a tall, narrow building with a crow-stepped gable. Here, up a narrow stair, I had labored as apprentice to a lawyer named Dacket. He had been taken on the night of the attack, taken along with his family, and had never been seen in Ethlebight again. The tale that had come to Ethlebight was that he had been put on a ship stolen from the harbor, but the Aekoi hadn’t known how to properly sail it, and it had separated from the rest during a gale and foundered along with the crew and a hundred or more captives. That story seemed likely, though no one would ever know the truth.

  Without Dacket to promote me to the Bar, I had found no one willing to certify me as a lawyer, and so my legal career had died before it had ever begun.

  I left the square, walked north, and passed the gatehouse on the Ostra road. Running along the road is the city’s necropolis, and there I sought the tomb I had built for my family.

  The tomb was a reproduction in miniature of the celebrated round temple of Pastas four leagues up the river, built in the annular style of the old empire. My father had been a passionate partisan of the Netweaver and despised the Compassionate Pilgrim, who had been imposed on the people by Duisland’s kings. The night of the attack he had fought, defending the door with his pollaxe, until overcome by the smoke that had also killed my mother and sisters.

  And so I honored my father and his faith, and laid him to rest in a temple of a size appropriate to a human, not a god. About the tomb I had scattered the seeds of wildflowers, and so the structure was surrounded by a brilliant carpet of cowslips, harebell, corn cockle, daisies, milkmaids, brilliant red pimpernels, and sweet-scented lady’s bedstraw. Above the peak of the portico I had placed a bronze statue of Pastas with his net and trident, and as I approached, I saw that people had made offerings to the god, grain and small coins, and pots of beer and wine, all laid out in front of the tomb’s iron door.

  I had brought no offerings myself—I had learned, to my cost, the dangers that come with attracting a god’s attention—but I knelt on the grass before the tomb, drew into my lungs the morning air scented with flowers, and spoke to my family as if they stood before me in life. I told them of the voyage to Tabarzam, and the storm which I had survived, and my hopes for the rescue of the cargo. Absently I picked the flowers that were before me and made a little nosegay. Before I was done, the tears were running unchecked down my face, and an ache had risen in my chest that made speech nigh impossible.

  The flowers tumbled from my fingers to the ground. I rose to my feet and lurched to the door and pressed my cheek to the cold iron. “Forgive me,” I said. “Forgive me.”

  For I had not been home on that night of the attack, but visiting a girl on Mutton Island; and I knew that if I had been in the city, I could have somehow saved my family—if necessary I would have carried my sisters over my shoulders as I fled across the rooftops to safety. Instead, I and a milkmaid had taken our pleasure together in a stable, and I returned hours late. My family had been without me and died in fire, and the best I could offer them now was a splendid tomb.

  I clawed the door and wept for what seemed a long bitter hour, and then I fell to my knees and gathered the flowers again. With them in my hand I tottered away, to save what I could of the ship.

  * * *

  Able left Ethlebight on the afternoon tide and threaded its way through the growing salt marsh that separated the city from the sea. Ethlebight was dying long before the Aekoi came, for its bay was filling with silt, and the River Ostra had split into dozens of little channels that wound between tall green rattling reeds on their way to open water. The eighty-ton pinnace Able was about the largest vessel able to gain the port, and then only at the peak of the tide, while a ship the size of Royal Stilwell had no hope of entering at all.

  Able was commanded by my friend Captain Sir Felix Oakeshott, a man in his thirties who looked very piratical with his long black hair and gold earring. During the war, he, I, and Kevin had captured Royal Stilwell from Clayborne’s rebels, and he had captained our ships in the years since. He was severe in manner but adroit in action, and, commanding a privateer, had done very well out of the war, having won a knighthood and a manor near Bretlynton Head. He and I supped in his cabin that night, and we talked long into the evening. This last voyage had given me stories of the sea that almost matched his own.

  Kevin remained in Ethlebight to muster the fleet he was sending to plunder Royal Stilwell’s remains.

  When Able stood into Gannet Cove the next morning, we saw that a great deal had been accomplished on the wreck. Much of the deck had been torn away to expose the cargo, and with a crane made from the foremast and foresail yard, crates and bags were being shifted to the fishing boats that were ferrying it to shore. Once on the beach, the cargo was hauled on driftwood sleds to safety above the tide-line.

  Able was the first of a dozen vessels to arrive in the next two days. At the end of that time all were heavy with the most valuable goods, and much of Stilwell’s lading was saved.

  Some of the spices and incense had been doused in salt water, but were otherwise unspoiled. The ivory survived perfectly well. Some of the wine casks had been started and the wines spoiled, but the wine in other casks remained wholesome. The cedarwood had all been submerged, but cedar was by far the best wood to resist warping after immersion, and I held out much hope.

  The silks, I assumed, were ruined, but Captain Oakeshott told me this might not be the case. Silk clothing, he reminded me, should be washed in sweet-water springs, and that there was one of these upriver from Ethlebight. And so the silks were hurried to Ethlebight for their bath.

  The cargo having been rescued, Royal Stilwell itself was plundered for its treasures, the great bronze cannon, the cabin furniture, the bronze and brass fittings, the cordage, barrels, carpenter’s supplies, canvas, and even the ship’s bell. The remaining hulk was left for the fisherfolk, who could now improve their driftwood huts with well-founded ship’s timbers.

  While these operations were in train, I went back and forth from the wreck to the village, and occasionally up the cliffs to view the magnificent sweep of the bay, so well sheltered by the curving ness and the skerry, with its population of gannets. So viewing the bay, I began to conceive a plan that might work to my profit, and perhaps the profit of others as well. But first I asked the villagers if the strand was considered a part of the squire’s manor, and I found out that it was not. The villagers held their property, such as it was, in fee simple.

  When the laden vessels were beginning to disperse, and the last of the cargo lifted from Stilwell’s hold, I spoke to the head men of the village and made them an offer.

  “I will pay you not to sell your property to anyone else for ten years.”

  The fishers looked at each other, and one lean, one-eyed man spoke. “You want to buy our land?”

  “Nay,” said I. “I wish you not to sell. I will pay you to keep your own land and property.”

  Again they looked at each other. “No one has ever offered to buy our land.”

  “Nor am I offering. But I will pay you not to sell to anyone else, and I will pay generously.”

  I had drawn up a contract, but none of them could read, so I asked the squire to review it. He found it puzzling, but told the fishers that I had been truthful as to its contents.

  Naturally some felt they were being cheated in some way they could not determine, but in the end simple avarice overcame them, and every property owner in the village made their mark and received the sum of ten crowns, which was probably more than any of them earned in a month; and all any of them had to do to earn it was to keep what they already had.

  That day brought the arrival of Stilwell’s chief mate with a three-hundred-ton g
alleon from Amberstone. This enabled us to bring the last of the cargo down from the skerry, and we left the little island to its fleet-winged natives and sailed away.

  During all of this business I neglected my broken finger, and so when it set, the finger was crooked. It is no handicap, and it doesn’t prevent me from caressing you as you deserve, but it does ache when a storm approaches.

  Which is a useful talent for a sailor to possess, you must admit.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I see you have grown restless with my tale of sea, salvage, and storm, and are impatient to discover the nature of that green-eyed lady who greeted me on Gannet Isle. I have delayed this revelation not to vex you, but because the tale of my relationship with Orlanda is so far-fetched and fantastical that you might be tempted to view me as a braggart or self-seeker, or perhaps a mere lunatic.

  I see that amusement tweaks the corner of your mouth. Yes, perhaps I am after all a self-seeker, but I hope we may agree that I am not yet mad.

  You have proved to me many times that you know me better than I know myself, and so I will tell you the plain truth about this lady, and trust you will understand me well enough to know whether or not I embroider the tale.

  You have heard, I think, that four years ago I was held for ransom by the brigand Sir Basil of the Heugh, and that I managed to escape with my life and a share of the outlaw’s treasure. I have told the story of my escape many times, but any story you might have heard was a plausible fiction. I have never told the truth till now.

  We hostages were held in a cliff-walled corrie high in the Toppings and allowed to wander free during the daytime, because there was no escape but by climbing the cliffs, and this could be done only in full view of the guards. At the back of the corrie, behind some woods, I found a fresh, cold spring and a ruined nymphaeum, a monument built by the ancients to honor the spirit of the water. In the remains I found a fallen statue of the goddess herself, all of rosy marble, and set her in the place of honor. I bowed to her and offered her homage and consoled her in her misfortune.