Umber looked with heavy-lidded eyes at the silver pot. He lifted it and poured steaming black liquid into the mug. Without bothering with cream, he raised the mug to his lips, took a joyless sip, and set it down again. “Tried it.” His gaze returned to a meaningless point in the afternoon sky.
Hap twisted his lips. “I’ve been thinking about what Smudge said, Lord Umber. About the Meddlers and steering fate. And then I remembered that strange thread of light I saw. Do you think those things are connected somehow?”
Umber only grunted again in reply.
Hap sighed, wondering if there was anything he could say to rekindle Umber’s enthusiasm. “I’ve been reading your books,” he finally said.
Umber didn’t respond, but Hap pushed on. “They’re amazing. I can see why you want to share them. That’s what your new printing press is for, isn’t it? So you can make copies of them, and everyone can know what you know.” As he waited to see if Umber would reply, a sound came from behind: a displeased huff of air.
“Did I not tell you to leave Lord Umber alone?” Lady Truden said. She was at the top of the stairs with her arms crossed and her fingers tapping her elbows. It was obvious to Hap that she’d prowled up quietly. He would have heard footsteps otherwise. Most likely she wanted to catch him here, just so she could scold him.
Hap glanced at Umber, hoping for words in his defense. But Umber’s thoughts were still adrift. He’d plucked a leaf off the tree and was tearing it into tiny pieces.
“I was just trying to help,” Hap said.
Lady Truden pointed toward the stairs.
Hap left the terrace with his hands crunched into fists. As he departed he heard her snap at Umber: “You haven’t touched the tea I made. How do you expect to get better? And the food, do you mean to starve yourself to death?”
After that, Lady Truden made it her mission to know where Hap was at every moment and to keep him from seeing Umber. Hap had to find other ways to spend his time in the days that followed.
At first most of his hours were devoted to absorbing Umber’s books. He read about giants, ogres, goblins, gnomes, faeries, elves, witches, warlocks, serpents, and other things too strange to believe. Not once, though, did he read about people with eyes or unusual abilities like his.
A boy who never slept had many hours to spare, and he soon sought other pastimes. He observed the habits of the nameless fisherman and his wife who dwelt in Petraportus, the crumbling castle: Every morning they tossed their nets into the harbor; every afternoon they rowed their tiny boat to the Spout for fresh water; and every night they lit their driftwood fires. He wished he knew their names and their stories. Balfour said they had simply sailed into the harbor on a rickety craft years before and taken residence in the old castle, refusing to speak to anyone.
Hap inserted himself where he could into the routines of the Aerie. He made himself Balfour’s apprentice in the kitchen, which suited him well, since he enjoyed learning to cook and could better satisfy his own remarkable appetite. Balfour was amazed by the quantities of food that Hap could ingest.
Hap spent time with Sophie as well. In another room of the Aerie devoted solely to her craft, he watched her produce the illustrations for Umber’s books. Before Umber, she explained, engravings were done by carving wood. Umber introduced a new process that delivered a far more detailed result. Hap watched her work on an exquisite print of the tyrant worm. With her sketches pinned to the wall to guide her, she painted her design onto a smooth slab of limestone, using a brush dipped in greasy ink. When that was done, she treated the stone with a solution of Umber’s invention. This, she explained, ate away the areas of the limestone that were not protected by the ink. Next she would put the etched stone into a press to create her prints.
While Sophie was busy, Hap wandered around the room, looking at her other sketches and color studies. They reminded Hap of what he saw the night he crept past Lady Truden’s room. He hesitated, wondering if his question was better left unspoken. “Sophie, did you ever paint a portrait of Lord Umber?”
The brush Sophie had been holding clattered on the floor. “What? No!” She reached for the brush and wiped it on her smock. “Well, why do you ask?”
“It’s just that I saw a painting … it was very good, and I wondered if it was you that—”
“She showed it to you?”
“Lady Truden, you mean? Um … not exactly. Her door was open, and I—”
“Hap! Don’t ever speak of this again!” Sophie dropped her voice to a whisper. “Yes, I painted it for her. I didn’t want to without asking Lord Umber, but she begged me, and she made me swear not to tell. She’d be furious if she knew you saw it. Especially you!”
“But why did she want it? Why would she be angry that I saw it?”
“Oh, Hap,” Sophie said. “You seem so smart in most ways. But so dim in this one way. Can’t you see how she feels about Lord Umber?”
Hap stood with his mouth hanging open. That explains some things, he thought. Her fierce loyalty to Umber, and her protectiveness. “But why does she hate me so much?”
Sophie glanced at the door before answering. “When you first came, I heard her arguing with Balfour. She said she had a bad feeling about you, and that Lord Umber was too quick to trust you. Then, when that … Creep attacked, and people got hurt, she was sure she was right. She thinks something might happen to Lord Umber because of you.”
Hap slumped into a chair. “And now that Lord Umber is … not well … she blames me.”
He looked at Sophie. She turned her head away and bit her lip.
Hap felt hot moisture in the corners of his eyes. “Is that what everyone thinks? That I did this to Lord Umber?”
Sophie sat beside him. “Oh no, Happenstance! It’s not like that at all! Don’t worry. He’ll get better soon, and Lady Truden will see that she was wrong about you. She’s really not so bad, you know. You just seem to bring out the worst in her.” She shrugged and smiled, and Hap smiled back, glad that she was getting comfortable around him. When she spoke now, it wasn’t the bashful whisper she’d used before. Once or twice, she even looked him in the eye before dropping her gaze. But she still kept her damaged hand out of sight whenever she could, under her smock or behind her back.
Days later, while Hap was walking with Oates, Smudge popped his head out of the archives and called to him. “You there! I need you!”
Hap froze in his tracks. “Me?”
“Who’d you think I meant, the ignorant hulk beside you?”
Oates shook his head and brushed past the sneering little man.
“What do you want me for?” Hap asked.
Smudge scowled. Whatever the favor was, he wasn’t happy that he had to ask. “I … er … have a scroll or two in a language I’ve never seen,” he muttered, scratching at the floor with toes that poked from torn stockings. “Thought you might be able to … you know. Tell me what they say.”
And so Hap took on another responsibility, as a translator for Umber’s library. Smudge guarded his archives jealously and only gave Hap a precious few documents to decipher. But Hap was thrilled—here was a chance to delve beyond The Books of Umber. Each time he got hold of another ancient text, he hoped to discover some secret about himself or Occo. But it never happened. Most of the books and scrolls were dull histories of ancient lands.
The passing days might have been pleasant except for the pall that Umber’s mood cast over the Aerie. The despair did not lift. If anything, it grew worse. At night, when Lady Truden slept, Hap would climb to the terrace. Sometimes Umber was locked inside his rooftop tower. More often, even in the darkest hours, Hap found him slumped on his favorite bench with his face turned toward the starry sky and a barely gnawed piece of fruit at his side.
When Hap first met him, Umber floated through the world as if buoyed by his relentless good cheer. Now he moved like a man whose clothes were lined with lead. His slender body thinned until he looked frail. A sparse beard grew on his usually shaven face, a
nd Hap was surprised to see gray hair amid the sandy brown.
Umber’s gloom began to infect the others. Lady Truden took it hardest of all. If a book or package arrived for Umber—and they did, on a regular basis, brought by ships from the far corners of the world—she’d rush up the stairs, hoping it might be delightful enough to propel Umber from his miserable state. But each time, she’d plod back down with her mouth clamped in a thin grim line. Grief pooled inside her, fermented, and bubbled up as fury. If she couldn’t catch Hap doing something she considered wrong, she’d find someone else upon whom she could unleash her temper.
Hap met Thimble a second time, late one night when the others slumbered. While Hap was looking through bureaus for artifacts to ponder, the tiny voice drifted up from ankle-high. “Is Umber better yet?”
Thimble stood near the crack in the wall that Hap supposed led to his home. Hap was several steps away, so he walked over to close the distance.
“Stop there!” Thimble commanded, thrusting a pen-size spear forward. “Or you’ll be in more pain than you can imagine.” He must have seen the smirk that flashed quickly on Hap’s face, because he lifted the spear over his shoulder and poised to fling it. “What, you don’t believe me? One nick from this and you’ll be thrashin’ on the floor, screamin’ for your mother!”
Hap winced at the reference to a mother he did not know. He narrowed his eyes at the little man. “Why? Does your little spear have that spider venom on it?”
“You’d better believe it,” Thimble said, shaking the spear.
“If you say so,” Hap said, pursing his lips.
“Don’t give me that look!” snapped Thimble. “I’m happy to stab you if you doubt me. But know this: There’s a spider you see every day, and you think it’s harmless. And it is, but only because its little fangs can’t pierce your skin. But that poison is deadly, and it’s all over the tip of this spear!”
Hap let his head tilt to one side. “And how do you get the poison from the spider? Does he lick the spear for you?”
Thimble’s pinhole nostrils flared. “Idiot. You catch ’em and lash ’em down. Then you have to know where to stick ’em.” He jabbed his spear at an imaginary spider.
“I hope you’re careful,” Hap said.
“Still alive, ain’t I?” Thimble said, puffing himself up to his full height of just a few inches.
Only because of me, Hap thought. “Well, to answer your first question: No, Lord Umber isn’t better yet. But you obviously know that something is troubling him.”
Thimble rested the spear across his shoulders, behind his neck. “I’ve heard people talk. And I’ve seen him, mopin’ in his garden.”
Hap leaned back in surprise. “Seen him? How could you possibly get all the way up there?”
Thimble glared up. “I know my way round this place. There are ways I can take that others can’t.”
Hap was impressed. He couldn’t imagine being Thimble’s size and venturing all the way to the terrace. He wondered what path the little fellow took to get there. Did he mount the stairs? Did he climb the chains of the water-lift, or the tapestries on the walls? Or were there fissures in the stone behind the walls that he could squeeze through? Hap wondered, too, exactly how far Thimble had explored.
“So you’ve been all the way to the terrace,” Hap said.
“And what if I have?” replied Thimble, rocking the spear across his shoulders.
“I just wondered if you’ve been inside Lord Umber’s tower,” Hap said. He was thinking about the secret thing he accidentally saw when he leaped up to Umber’s window: the sleek silver box that glowed with unnatural light.
Thimble shook his head, disgusted. “You’re pokin’ your nose where it don’t belong.”
“I just—”
“You just mind your own matters, you nosy whelp. I know what you’re askin’ ’bout. It’s Umber’s secret, and I’ll keep what I know to myself. That’s how I repay him for what he done for me.”
And what about what I did for you? Hap wanted to ask, but he held those petty words inside. “But you have seen it. And you know what it is.”
“I’ve seen it. And I got no idea what it is,” Thimble said. He turned and vanished in the crack in the wall.
CHAPTER
25
On the eleventh day of Umber’s great despair, the weather turned. Sun changed to gloom, and gentle breezes to stiff winds that made clothes snap. Hap found Balfour staring wide-eyed at a device with glass tubes and dials, mounted on the wall. Balfour had both hands against his cheeks. “Maybe this is why my bones ache more than usual,” he said.
“What is that thing?” Hap asked.
“Umber invented this. Or introduced it to us, as he prefers to say. He calls it a weather glass. See the liquid in that tube? It’s dropping like an acorn. So unless this thing is broken, it’s telling us that there will be a storm. But …”
Hap waited. “What, Balfour?”
Balfour rubbed a hand across his forehead. “I’ve never seen it fall this fast. Not even close. We have to tell Umber.”
Hap reached the terrace without Lady Truden spotting him. Umber wasn’t in his usual seat. He’d wandered to the edge, where he leaned heavily on the balcony.
“Lord Umber,” Hap said.
“Mmm,” Umber replied.
“Balfour says a storm is coming. A bad one.” Hap looked at the long hill beyond the city. At the horizon he saw a thin band of blue, the only sky not yet engulfed by the gathering storm. Hundreds of gray-white gulls chased the blue as clouds swept inland.
“Storm. I can see that,” Umber mumbled.
“What should we do?”
Umber’s reply was barely audible. “Nothing. Harbormaster has a weather glass. So does the palace, and all my captains. They’ve spread the word.”
Hap joined him at the balcony. In the harbor below, the smallest boats had been dragged ashore, and men hurried to secure the larger craft. More ships sailed in from the open sea with sails stretched to the breaking point. “Look—your weather glass is saving lives, Lord Umber. That must make you glad,” Hap said. Umber didn’t respond.
The surface of Kurahaven Bay was churned by the wind into a million foaming peaks. For Hap, this was infinitely worse than the sight of calm waters. His fingers hurt, and he realized it was from gripping the rail with all his strength.
The first drops of rain spattered his face. “You should go inside, Lord Umber. Would you like to come down to the kitchen? Balfour will make us something to—”
“Just leave me alone,” Umber said.
“But—”
“Alone,” Umber repeated, raising his voice. He rubbed one temple with the heel of his hand.
Hap backed away. He wiped the rain from his eyes and trudged toward the staircase landing, where he heard someone else’s feet on the stairs, rising quickly. As Lady Truden rushed onto the terrace, he ducked behind a vine-covered trellis. After she passed, he slipped downstairs unseen and went to his room. There he stood by his window and watched the storm. What made its gathering power worse was that the wind blew straight into the mouth of the harbor. The tall peaks on either side of the bay gave no shelter.
Hap’s door was open, so he heard clearly when Lady Truden came down the steps and slammed her door. Though the wind whistled loud through a seam in Hap’s window, he still heard her wailing cries.
* * *
The tempest frightened Hap but also amazed him, and so he left his window open despite the slashing rain. He pulled a chair to the sill and watched as darkness fell. There was genius in the way his windows served as the eyes of the face carved into the Aerie. The rain was channeled past the corners of the eyes, so that the face seemed to weep.
The wind and waves pummeled Petraportus. He hoped the nameless fisherman and his wife would be all right. Nobody was in sight at the docks and in the streets of Kurahaven. He saw a canvas tent in the marketplace take flight, and wondered if the merchants, including the clothier Poncius, had t
aken good care of their wares.
By midnight the storm doubled in strength. Hap gazed at the water, knowing that, with his nocturnal sight, he was the only one who could see the new peril amid the churning waves: a small boat trying desperately to reach the safety of the harbor.
He pressed his face between the bars of the window to get a better look. Two were aboard: a man and a boy. Father and son, most likely. There was a single mast, but only the shreds of a sail were left, and even those tore away and fluttered inland as Hap watched, blinking away the driving rain. The boat yawed wildly as the man fought with a single long oar to keep the bow pointed at the docks, an unreachable salvation still a half-mile away. The boy clung to the man’s waist and buried his face in the shirt. Not a thing could be done for them, Hap knew. No ship could venture out to rescue them.
A frothing gray wave reared up, loomed over the boat, and collapsed. For a moment the craft vanished, and then it bobbed up with sheets of black water streaming off. The man had lost the oar or let it go, because he held the boy by the wrists as they sprawled across the steep tilt of the deck.
“No!” Hap screamed aloud, as another wave rose up, curled high, and slammed down, pushing the craft deep into the sea. It vanished, as if it was never there. Hap shoved himself away from the bars and put his back to the window. He seized his hair and pulled. No, he screamed again, inwardly this time, dumbstruck by horror at the thought of the poor man and boy, lost to the very fate he feared the most.
CHAPTER
26
Hap pressed his hands against his face, hating the unnatural eyes that had let him see such a thing. And then he heard a sound that somehow cut through the roar of the storm. It was booming, sonorous, and familiar. He whirled to look outside once more, daring to hope. Where the boat had been lost, something enormous rose from the brine.
“Boroon!” Hap shouted. “Oh, Boroon!” He leaped so high, his head thumped against the stone ceiling.
Happenstance Found (Books of Umber #1) Page 17