I glanced sideways down at Sela, who was tugging at a handkerchief hanging out of my pocket. It was in my clean-handkerchief pocket, so I let her. “I did happen to stop by Mrs. Jarnem’s, but I’m not sure … you shall have to ask your mother whether you might have a piece of candy now or must wait until tomorrow.”
“Oh, please, Mama, please!”
“They’ve eaten their supper already, so they can have one each,” Mrs. Buchance said, giving me a grateful look as Lamissa emitted a frightful fart and started to cry, as if she’d surprised herself. I parcelled out a piece of liquorice to each of the girls, made sure that Zangora was sucking at hers rather than choking, and had been roped into a game of ride-the-horse (me being the horse) before Mrs. Buchance had finished changing Lamissa’s garments.
I eventually managed to get upstairs to bathe and change my clothes for supper. My room still felt entirely a stranger’s, decorated in Mrs. Buchance’s very conventional taste. The three small chests from my mother were arrayed under the window to one side; my childhood books, romances and adventure tales for the most part, filled one small bookcase, and otherwise … I had the clothes and books I’d acquired in the summer, and that was it.
It wouldn’t take too much to leave this behind, I thought.
I sat on the edge of my bed, looking at the small portrait I had of my mother and father. It was an exquisite miniature, painted by Sir Hamish, who had once been their good friend as well as cousin.
My father was in his dress uniform; gleaming bravely on his chest was the great golden pectoral showing the Emperor’s favour, which he’d earned by saving the life of General Halioren in the Battle of Loqui in East Orkaty. He was smiling, as if about to laugh.
All my childhood memories seemed to involve him laughing, especially those from that wonderful long summer when I was nine and he was between wars, and against my mother’s token protests kept me out of the kingschool so we could spend as much time as possible together.
My mother, chestnut-haired and beautiful and barefoot like a Traveller, in a flaring dress in a fine bright blue, with a hat full of flowers, smiling up at my father. Sir Hamish had captured love in their expression, and a fierce pride; but I thought, for the first time, how very young they had been. My age. She’d been barely nineteen when they met one summer between her university terms, and he one-and-twenty and on his way to take up his first commission in the Imperial Army.
This picture must have been painted a year or two later, after their marriage but before the crowded week in which my father received his second commission and my mother found out she was increasing. Before the Fall, but still a time of propriety: neither her family nor his had liked that they’d eloped, despite him being the second son of a marquis and the hero of Orkaty and her heiress to the Woods Noirell.
And one-and-twenty years from this portrait, they were both dead, the Empire was fallen, and their only child had at the very end of his degree failed out of Morrowlea, failed abysmally to win the lady he’d been courting, and was sliding inexorably down the social classes to—
A crash from downstairs interrupted my meditations, and I hastened down to find that one or other of my sisters had let her curiosity get the better of her, and the stargazy pie had broken across the entry hall floor.
Mrs. Buchance, coming out of the kitchen, said, “Oh, Jemis, I’m so sorry—it was such a—an extraordinary pie—”
“It was at that,” I agreed, trying not to laugh, and starting to sneeze instead when my breath caught.
“I … it was a kind thought, though we have lamb for supper,” she added, bending over to begin picking up the pieces of egg and fish and potato and clay, and then, in a changed voice, while I attempted to say why it had not been intended as a gift for her: “Oh! Is this yours, Mr. Greenwing?”
And she held out a ring.
Chapter Eight
As a result of my sisters’ insistence that I read a story to them before bedtime, I was a bit late leaving. I hoped that since the new house was on the eastern (or easter, as Dartington folk said) side of town and therefore the right direction for heading towards the Little Church, the Green Dragon, and the walnut tree, I would be able to make up the time.
I had not, however, reckoned with the effect of a week’s heavy rain on the Raggle. The usually placid little river was boiling and grey, well over the old bridge footings that provided stepping-stones, and so I was obliged to pick my way along the backs of houses to get to the new bridge.
For the most part, the houses had long gardens running down to the stream, with shrubberies, chicken coops, and post-Astandalan outhouses tucked here and there. The slow rebuilding of magic, along with the cleverness of artificers out of Ghilousette and further afield (the Lady of Alinor herself had put forth an award for engineers who could recreate clean water indoors without the constant flow of magic that had provided it previously), had meant that the wealthiest folk in Ragnor Bella were no longer using their outhouses … but everyone still had them, covered over with shrubs and vines, just in case. Mr. Fogerty’s comment about people being afraid of becoming too fond of new things after the Fall extended to a fear of other things going missing again.
It was starting to get dark as I made my way along the footpath. I’d thought to provide myself with a candle-lantern, but I didn’t it need it for the footpath, even the bit beyond the old bridge pilings.
I’d gotten in the habit of extended daily exercise while at Morrowlea, long-distance running for a while seeming the only thing I could focus on through the hay fever, and continued even while on my walking tour. Marcan and Hal hadn’t been inclined to go more than a handful of miles a day afoot, wanting to spend the rest of the time lounging about in country pubs talking to people. To be honest, I’d enjoyed that, too, but had felt the need for more exercise—and solitude—than either of them.
No wonder I was feeling a bit out-of-sorts, I thought. I had only gone for a run once since I got back to Ragnor Bella, and that was on Wednesday. And I was very much with other people. Mrs. Buchance had been very curious about where I’d gone so early in the morning, and more confused when I told her, and it had seemed easier not to go on Thursday … and then this morning I’d been worried about work … I’ll go tomorrow, I promised myself.
I passed by Mrs. Etaris’ house just as she was drawing the curtains against the evening. In the glow of the oil lamps her mousy hair looked auburn, and I saw the inner chamber like a play set: the lady of the house in a pale blue dress, the heavy white wool curtains with their geometric embroideries in black and red folding around her as if she were the goddess coming into her aspect as the White Lady of Winter. A table set with copper and pewter and white porcelain dishes. And stepping in to this scene, like the White Lady’s own hunter, the Chief Constable still in his official uniform of green and yellow.
Mrs. Etaris paused a moment at a word from her husband, her eyebrows drawing down in a grimace, turned towards the night; he looked briefly smug; and then she smiled and let the curtains swing shut as she turned to take the hand he’d stretched towards her.
I felt inexplicably as if I’d just witnessed a secret, and picked up my pace, rather glad that the other houses on that stretch had all already drawn their drapes close and guarded against passers-by. The water rushing away on my left sounded like it was chewing the ground. After a moment I thought, the Lady’s hell with it, and began to run.
Over the new bridge, nodding at a pair of men fishing there, the same pair I’d seen Wednesday morning, though I had yet to learn their names. Or they mine, obviously: one flicked his finger across his cap, the other nodded. Both had pipes clamped in their mouths, sending billows of smoke across my path as I dropped to a walk to stride past them. I felt in my pocket to make sure I had replaced my handkerchiefs safely, but the whiff of tobacco didn’t make me sneeze.
The road bent after a row of cottages and the Ragglebridge public house, which had a swinging sign and a candle lantern in a glass chimney. The ligh
t formed a cone in the fine drizzle. No one was sitting on the bench tonight, though there were a couple of horses tied up to the railing. Both horses and tack were of a good quality, and a groom stood beside them. He was hooded in a closely-fitting coat; he turned as I walked past the light, and I saw that he wore a sword.
That was no strange thing in the Farry March or in south Erlingale, where the wars past the borders of Rondé threatened to pour up into our kingdom, but it was highly unusual in most of Fiellan, and very unusual indeed in peaceful out-of-the-way Ragnor Bella.
He might have been guarding a Scholar going to—or from—one of those more conflicted regions, but in that case why spend the night at the Ragglebridge, when the far better inns of the town were visible across the bridge? And why go through Ragnor Bella at all, which wasn’t really on the road anywhere? There were easier ways to get to the Farry March than across the Green Mountains.
I spun out a handful of possibilities to amuse myself once I was around the bend and it seemed safe to start running again. He was a spy—they sought adventure—they were looking for the Border between worlds, which used to pass south of town—he’d heard rumour of a dragon in the Gorbelow Hills or the Woods Noirell—he was an addlepated wannabe knight of a chivalric order—he was a Fairy prince passing as human for his own nefarious and enigmatic reasons.
No doubt, I thought.
I rather wished any of those things might be true, for any of them at all (well, except perhaps the first one) would be something of more interest in Ragnor Bella than my return home. Social disrepute is trumped by actual physical danger any day; even the starchiest of the old guard would bend the rules if it meant their continued survival.
I thought of my uncle. Well, probably.
The tower of the Little Church caught low streamers of clouds ahead of me, barely visible in the gloom and rain. Somewhere behind the clouds the sun had set, and the light was draining out of the sky. A fine old poem about the building of a church in Rondelan came to mind, but as I tried to recite its lines to myself the words failed and faded.
No, I wouldn’t be going on to higher studies, not when I couldn’t even remember the words of a poem I’d written a paper on. I couldn’t remember what the essay had been about—something to do with how the imagery in the poem was structured
according to the symmetry of the White Lady of Winter (and war) and the Green Lady of Summer (and peace), running counter to the description of the church as an expression of—what was it?
I frowned at the darkness. My head hurt. That had been the last paper I’d written before the start of my illness. It was one of my better papers—better than my final paper, anyway. At least only Violet and my tutor had read that one.
I kicked viciously at a rock in the path before me, then hugged my summer coat closer about me as a gust of wind blew cold rain in my face.
The goddess’ churches were always built on hillocks in Fiellan, and always fairly close to—though never at—crossroads. Nothing was ever built at crossroads in South Fiellan, the hinterland of Rondé and always one of the last holdouts to sweeping change. It had been one of the last civilized holdouts of the old religion after the Conquest of Western Alinor, and it was one of the last holdouts of truly ardent Imperialism now. Other places might put churches at crossroads, but not us.
Crossroads were for murderers, suicides, traitors, and black magic. Waystones pinned magic into spells of protection and safety, the magic everyone had been most desperate to maintain even during the Interim.
The waystone at the Lady’s Cross was split top to bottom and bound with black and white and golden cords tied in elaborate knots, which Dominus Gleason—who still kept them knotted and tied—said maintained the old Schooled enchantments and prevented those buried there from rising.
(And that, right there, was why Dominus Gleason was considered not quite the thing himself.)
I glanced past the hillock towards the crossroads. A few furlongs along the north road I could see the warm lantern-lights of the Green Dragon, beckoning any fools ready to part with their money into its welcoming fold. Well, one of the few ways I actually did take after my father was in my skill at games of chance; the ill luck of the rest of my life didn’t follow me there.
The walnut tree I presumed Mr. Dart had meant was located on the southern side of the church, down the hill towards a little beck, in the ruins of the old priest-cote from back when the Little Church had had a priest of its own. The same stormy-night battle of magic that had split the waystone had seen the death of the last priest and the Baron’s decision to build a new church on the north side of town, close to the Whiteroad Cross under which my father had been buried.
I nearly turned my ankle in a rabbit-hole, and decided to cut more closely to the church. I also dropped down to a walk. I did feel better, even if a quarter-hour run was nothing to my usual several-hour circuit.
Once off the main road the ground was plastered wet leaves, and it was getting dark enough that I couldn’t see well. The sky itself was a peculiar light grey, not dark but certainly not permitting light down. After a moment I remembered from Mr. Shipston’s cogswork that it was the new moon.
“House of the Dragon,” I murmured aloud, hesitating before plunging between two thorn bushes.
Three months to the Winterturn Assizes. I just needed to keep my head down, refuse any particularly foolish suggestions of Mr. Dart’s, and keep an even keel. Not make any more waves than those inevitably caused by my presence in town already. Be so meek and humble that everyone just accepted that I was Mrs. Etaris’ new
assistant, no threat to anyone—
Something moved in the shadows.
Three times a week we’d had compulsory self-defence at Morrowlea, but this was the first time I’d ever actually fought in earnest.
It was entirely different.
He was wiry and strong, and wore an oiled cloak, but my actions were clear and supple as water.
I got my leg between his, and we staggered backwards through the thorn bush. We rolled sideways across the bush again, the thorns gouging me in shoulder and side. Crashed up against the side of the church, and I pushed hard against it to break the stranger’s grip on my shoulder.
I nearly had him, until he tripped over a stone and stumbled backwards. I tumbled after, like Jack after Jill in the nursery rhyme, and made sure each roll landed on him. We hit the edge of the slope, and somersaulted down in a messy tangle of limbs and cloth until we fetched up in a squelchy pile, panting and choking, near the beck. The calm in my mind evaporated.
In a sudden panic I rolled over to get out of the immediate way of my assailant, discovered his cloak was wrapped around my arm, and as I disentangled myself I realized I’d not only landed in nettles but also autumn-mildewy wild mint, and the combined dust and volatile oils made me start sneezing violently.
As I tried to suppress the sneezes I saw my assailant get up on his hands and knees. There was light glimmering off the burn, which caught a gleam off a dirk—my astonished intake of breath caught on my sneeze going out, and I started to choke in earnest.
Trying not to choke put all thoughts out of mind. I rolled over to get water from the stream, and lay there catching my breath for a good few minutes before it occurred to me that the person seemed to have thought better of his attack. I sat up again warily to see a shadowy Mr. Dart sitting on top of him.
He tossed me the dirk. “And here I thought I was going to be the one doing the entertaining tonight.”
I caught the knife, got another whiff of nettles, and started to sneeze again, and this time Mr. Dart laughed. “Seriously, Jemis, don’t you ever stop sneezing?”
The figure under him jerked, swore, and said, “Jemis! It would be you.”
I got my sneezing under control, and said, cautiously, for I couldn’t see the face, but that voice—I would always recognize that voice—
“Violet?”
Chapter Nine
She cursed fluently.
“I’m from here! What are you doing here?”
“You’re going to ruin—Jemis.” She spat another curse out, anatomically impossible to the point of hilarity. The pause afterwards was so awkward that I started involuntarily to laugh, and then started sneezing again, and finally I scrambled to my feet, followed more cautiously by Mr. Dart and Violet.
After another awkward pause she said: “So you’re still alive, then.”
I stopped laughing. “Didn’t you think I would be?”
“You were remarkably ill this spring.”
Her tone was off-hand and factual, as if it were all one to her whether I had lived or died. I certainly had not wished to see her again after the disastrous viva voce examinations, but I—well, I couldn’t say I’d be indifferent to learning she or Lark were dead.
To give myself a moment to gather my thoughts, and also because I was uncomfortably damp and afraid the mildew would set me off again, I said, “Perhaps we could get out of this muck?”
“Good thinking,” Mr. Dart said, as one grasping at a straw of sanity. We retreated up to the ruined priest-cote, where he’d left a new-style oil lantern with the wick turned low. The old hermitage had a table in half-way decent repair, but no benches or chairs. Violet and I seated ourselves gingerly on the table. Mr. Dart turned up the wick before perching himself in the window embrasure where he could look at us.
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