The Bitterbynde Trilogy

by Cecilia Dart-Thornton

  Whistles shrilled. The master and mates yelled commands. Aeronauts frantically cranked the onhebbing winch-handles, adjusting chains of andalum plate that slid back and forth between the sildron lining and the outer hull, to negotiate altitude so that ramps could be stretched across the gap for the exchange of cargo; for this was a supply ship from Gilvaris Tarv on her way to Rigspindle. A name was painted on her bows in flowing script—Dragonfly. She bobbed lightly, as a ship would in calm waters—shifting weights on board lent her this movement. Small mosses and lichens bedizened her wooden outer hull, where barnacles would have clung on a Watership, and she cast a stupendous shadow over the kitchen gardens.

  “She’s passing fair, the Dragonfly, ain’t she!” An uncouth voice shattered the youth’s reverie and he started guiltily.

  Dain Pennyrigg, a stablehand who ofttimes frequented the servants’ kitchen on Floor Five, walked into the harness room. His lively eyes missed nothing. Freckles foxtrotted across a face with a turned-up nose and a wide mouth.

  “No need to cower, lad, anyone with half an eye could see you’re no shirker.”

  He paused, a corner of his mouth quirked.

  “Don’t go bragging that I said so, but you may have done a better job than any lad since I worked in here. Here’s a packet of bread and cheese for your dinner—Keat Featherstone sent it. The well’s around the corner if you’re wanting a drink.”

  The youth knew he would have to go thirsty; others invariably complained of pollution if he drank from a common source.

  “You’ve not been here before, eh, lad?” The eyebrow Dain Pennyrigg cocked was not unkind. The youth shook his head.

  “You be always stuck in that dungeon with old mother Grethet. ‘Mind your ways now, mind your ways,’” he mimicked, cackling. “Silly old crone. I only go up there to hear the stories. Brinkworth’s the best Storyteller hereabouts—better than Hoad the Toad, at any rate. The Toad relishes gloom and darkness—makes it all up—invents characters just so’s he can kill ’em off in nasty ways. Lucky if anyone’s alive at the end. Now stop your chattering, lad, you’re distracting me from my work—Featherstone sent me to take you to your next job. Put away your polishes and follow me.”

  Tucking the bread and cheese into his wallet, the youth followed, glancing up intensely at the moored Windship floating beside the Tower, now linked to it by wide boarding ramps, mooring-lines, flying foxes, and baffles and swarming with sailors and cargo-handlers. Down in the yards, horses and stablehands trotted to and fro. Shouts mingled with the hammering of iron, the blowing of bellows, the clanking of metal, boots ringing on stone. Gaps between buildings revealed glimpses of long meadows fringed by dark forest whence a westerly breeze brought green perfume and the “tink” of bellbirds. An andalum-lined horse-float clattered past, taking a sildron-shod eotaur to the Tower. Overhead, a whirlpool of Skyhorses cantered in training circuits, and the sun was a goldfish in a blue bowl.

  As the two servants crossed the cobbles in front of the smithy, three riders almost mowed them down. They jumped to one side as landhorses squalled past.

  “Curse him,” growled Pennyrigg, recovering equipoise, “Mortier the arrogant, the sly. Cares nothing. Does anything he pleases—how does he get away with wearing colors instead of trainers’ gray?”

  The crimson-cloaked Master at Swords with his two attendants cantered around a corner of the stables and out of sight. Ivory chestnut-blossoms swirled in their wake. Pennyrigg was about to speak again when a commotion by the smithy door cut him short.

  A gray Skyhorse reared and plunged, wild-eyed, snorting, out of control. Its huge wings thundered at full span with the noise of ten thousand feathers; dust billowed. At the eotaur’s hooves crouched a capuchin, one of the small, apelike creatures that were kept as pets. Someone had covered the urchin’s hairy, half-armored hide in a decaying leather jerkin. Shrieking stridently, the animal waved its hands, then ran off on all fours toward the nearest chestnut tree, a party of stableboys hard on its heels.

  “Cock’s passion! How came that vermin here?” bellowed the blacksmith, scarlet-faced, appearing at the doorway brandishing red-hot tongs. Eotaurs were notoriously spooked by capuchins—the smith’s enraged blustering exacerbated the situation. The stallion screamed, backing into the wall. Two strappers hung from its rope, but it was too strong for them in its distraction, flinging them aside and breaking loose. Feathers flew.

  Hooded men came running from every direction. An eotaur was far too valuable to be allowed to injure itself. The mighty gray pounded blindly down the smithy ramp, heading straight toward Pennyrigg and his obedient follower. Pennyrigg bawled a curse and flung himself aside for the second time in five minutes—his companion reacted from instinct. As the gray passed, he snatched its halter and hung on, was dragged several yards, and slid to a sudden stop.

  Steam rising from its trembling flanks, the stallion stood motionless in a dust-haze, snorting like a dragon, its nostrils the color of flame. The great wings remained outstretched, the sun shining through the radiating pinions, frost white.

  The youth never took his eyes off the horse. Holding its gaze, he reached up, still holding the halter in one hand, and stroked its girder neck. His fingers combed the coarse mane, traced the small silvery horns protruding from the brow ridges. His breath mingled with its burning exhalations, and he saw one of these amazing creatures closely, for the first time. Avian and equine, the two forms of life fused perfectly. The wings simply grew out of the hide at the withers, a velveted swelling musculature budding into the long arc of bone, down-wrapped, from which blossomed the primaries, the secondaries of flight in a sweeping fan, feather overlapping feather in perfect tessellation down to the pointed tip. The eotaur regarded the boy, and the boy held its liquid gaze. The crowd made a horseshoe of itself.

  After a time, dust settled. The great animal breathed evenly and folded the powerful wings.

  “Sods and little fishes!” Keat Featherstone strode forward to take the halter easily. Without turning to the new polish-boy, sweat-stained and streaked with dirt, he said quietly:

  “That was well done, lad. Well done indeed.”

  As the second groom began to lead the stallion away, three riders burst the bubbling crowd apart. Casually they reined in.

  “What’s the fuss here?” a nasal voice demanded. Master Mortier’s crimson taltry, brocade-edged, rested heavily on his head. Although the drawstring was tied under the chin, strands of long, lank hair showed, pulled back from a face that might have been handsome had the chin not been so weak and the pouting lips so soft and shapeless. A slight paunch betrayed his propensity for sampling new and different flavors. Gloved hands held the reins lightly. At one side he was flanked by Galliard, Master at Aerial Navigation, and on the other by his valet.

  The blacksmith, rotund and rubicund, panted down the ramp from his forge.

  “Sir Masters,” he announced imperatively, “I never seen no ’puchin loose in these grounds that I can remember of, lately, at any rate!” Then he added as an afterthought, “And I never seen nothing like that there, neither.”

  He pointed at the uncomely youth who followed Keat Featherstone. Here was a likely scapegoat.

  “That there distempered wretch is what caused all this mischief, I’ll be certain—upsetting Storm Prince’s nerves like that, getting him all of a pother so’s he can’t be shod.”

  The Master at Swords gazed down upon the accused from the height of his horse’s back. The youth stopped in his tracks, flushed. The crowd of stablehands loitered uncertainly.

  “How now! ’Tis himself,” cried the fencing-tutor, adjusting his riding-gloves, “a known troublemaker. Have our lessons taught you nothing, young paragon? Alas, we shall have to teach them again.”

  The valet giggled—short, sharp, high-pitched. Mortier pointed his riding crop at the youth.

  “He shall accompany me now.”

  A stocky figure pushed through the crowd.

  “Good sir,” Dain Penny
rigg rasped grimly, “the lad is not at fault.”

  “Hold your tongue, lackey, this is not your business.”

  Keat Featherstone paused in his stride, turning on his heel impatiently.

  “Nor is it yours, sir. These are stable-yards, not fencing-halls. The lad saved the gray from certain injury. The ’puchin which frightened the horse belongs not to the lad, nor did it accompany him. I know not how it came here, but it is being removed by my lads, as you can see.”

  The lads in question, having been unable to entice the little ape out of the tree, had taken to hurling stones at it. Hissing and insulted, it bared its yellow teeth, leaped from a branch, and fled away across the rooftops.

  His expression subtly transformed, Mortier turned his gaze back to the object of his previous discourse. His beady eyes raked the youth from head to foot. Then his lip curled.

  Without deigning to reply, the Master at Swords and his companions jabbed their spurs into their landhorses’ ribs and galloped away, scattering the crowd.

  “A bad enemy,” said Keat Featherstone later in the harness room. “I cannot guess how you’ve crossed his path and come to his attention, but it is the worse for you.” Abstractedly he picked up a currycomb that had been left on a shelf and turned it around and around in his hands. “If you’re as good with horses as it seems, I would have you work here, from time to time. Keep out of his way, lad. I don’t want to see you end up in the same straits as poor clubfooted Pod, the little half-fey lad Mortier keeps as a page. The Master … er,”—Featherstone scratched his nose, and his gaze slipped sideways for an instant—“studies the Nine Arts. He prefers def—I mean, weak sort of folks to perform errands for him. ’Tis said he has dealings with unseelie wights. The Lord Stormriders are unaware or seem to be unaware of all such matters as do not interfere with their own doings. Mortier is a master swordsman, there’s no doubt, and an excellent teacher for the young riders, who ought rightly to be skilled in such ways. His services are valued.” He sighed. “You’ll be safe, just as long as you stay out of his way.”

  Having replaced the currycomb, he headed for the door. “Come, lad—it be nigh on dusk. You’d better be getting on up the Tower.”

  There were things he would have liked to say; questions he would have liked to ask. They hammered at his skull from the inside, demanding to be freed, but they were locked in, as he was locked within this Tower and its demesnes. There was no password, no key, not even a hairline crack to suggest the door might be ajar.

  ‘And the raging trees, the raging trees did roar,

  And the stormy winds did blow,

  While we jolly sailor lads were skipping up aloft

  And the landlubbers lying down below, below, below,

  And the landlubbers lying down below.’

  Tren Spatchwort sang out of tune, in the servants’ kitchen on Floor Five.

  “Hold your noise, Spatchwort,” said Dain Pennyrigg. He yawned. “I’d rather hear a capuchin squalling.”

  “That’s an old sea-shanty, is it not?” said the Keeper of the Keys. “But you’ve changed the words to suit Windships. Got a mind to sail on Windships, have you?”

  “Aye. One day I’ll crew my way out of this place,” Tren Spatchwort answered.

  “Why? It’s not so bad. Besides, what would you do to earn a crust? Not sing for your supper?” Pennyrigg took a draft from a cracked mazer of hot medlure and propped his boots on a table. Wooden paddles leaned against the still-warm bread-ovens. Lamplight danced off belt buckles wrought like various animals’ heads, reflected in eyes, and softened the faces of the gathering. Lounging on benches and stools around the tables, they gambled at cards and dice, drank, conversed, whittled. Children played Mouse and Stringtangle.

  “I would assay for the Dainnan, just as you would, Pennyrigg, just as any of us would. Unlike you blunderheads, I would pass the trials and become a member of the Brotherhood. I would travel, then, and see the world, and fight, and be part of great ventures, and the Royal Bard would make songs about me. How can anyone do anything in this place? ’Tis like an island, here. We’re trapped, surrounded by a sea of forest filled with evil wights, gray malkins, and bruigas and—” Tren Spatchwort bit off his words. “Other things. And ships sail on it. If the forest has become the sea, shall the sea become the forest?”

  Pennyrigg punched his friend lightly on the arm. “You’ve been drinking too much spike-leaf. You’re in danger of becoming a philosopher.”

  “And my friend Sheepshorn is in danger of becoming worm’s meat.”

  “In trouble again?”

  “Aye, and locked in the cellars for punishment.”

  “The cellar-keeper had better beware. Grod will drink the barrels dry by tomorrow morn!”

  Spatchwort’s proclamation of discontent touched a chord within the nameless one. He yearned to leave this place of no answers, to journey until he found answers, and if there were none, to travel on. He knew that strange dangers and untame things lurked in the forest—such things were often spoken of among the Household. To him, as strength developed, the prospect of the forest’s eldritch perils seemed no worse than spending the rest of his life cringing in humiliation and servitude.

  Curled in the lap of the Keeper of the Keys was a capuchin clothed in a perished velvet jerkin. It whimpered.

  “Inch grieves for Punch,” the woman said softly. “He got into the stables today, and they chased him off into the forest.”

  “Indeed, and ’puchins are supposed to be trained not to go to the stables, so who’s at fault?” commented a scullion offhandedly.

  “I heard it had something to do with Poxface over there,” said a footman. He indicated a figure crouched in a corner that drew even farther into itself, toward the spark of anger within.

  To most of the other household servants, the only thing that made amends for the presence of the spindle-shanked lad was that they were now the second-lowest-ranked group. This warmed their spirits somewhat, although not toward him. In fact, most of them were torn between bullying him to prove their rank and ignoring him out of laziness or because it pained their sense of the aesthetic to look at him. This conundrum proved too much for their intellects to resolve, and to avoid further mental suffering they ended up alternating between the two approaches.

  “Why is it always creeping around here with real people?” interjected a drudge. “Why doesn’t it stay in the furnace room with batty Grethet?”

  “Grethet’s sheep, it is,” gibed another. “Grows its yellow wool for her. Says she’ll sell it off for a pretty penny, and why should she get the benefit? Why not us?”

  “Things like that oughtn’t to be allowed in places where people eat,” muttered another.

  A bowl thrown by one of the older children found its mark on the youth’s shoulder.

  “Leave off—he’s harmless enough,” snapped the Keeper of the Keys.

  Attention drifted from the youth. The servant Grech began to hold forth about the hideous monster known as Nuckelavee, which came out of the sea spreading evil wherever he went, blighting crops, destroying livestock, and killing every mortal he encountered.

  “His head is ten times the size of a man’s,” Grech grinned, accidentally spitting as he spoke, “and his mouth juts forth like a pig’s snout, yet ’tis wide enough to drive a wheelbarrow in. His home is the sea. He blights crops with mildew and sea-gales, he throws livestock over the rocky cliffs along the coast, he brings plague amongst all mortalkind. Poisonous is the foul blast from his nostrils, withering plants and causing animals to sicken. Never does he visit the land when rain is falling, and ’tis known he brings long droughts.”

  “Droughts?” someone questioned. “Has he then some earnest disapprobation of fresh water?”

  “That he does, and no mistake,” replied Grech wisely.

  “You’ll be giving us nightmares! It’s naught but a sournatured and pestilent fat-guts you are, Grech!” the other servants exclaimed. “You polled bachelor!”

&nb
sp; “Pray tell us a kinder story, Brand,” implored Rennet Thighbone. The old man obliged, and the evening passed quickly with the telling of tales.

  As the nameless youth pursued his task of polishing the door fittings, a man came to him.

  “You have been summoned, Lickspittle. The Master of Swords summons you to his presence now!”

  Mortier’s chamber was dark. Velvet curtains muffled the slits of windows. No fire shed its cheery glow; the only light emanated from a quincunx of blue flames on a long table of polished oak. A broken orrery stood before a tall and tarnished mirror; also a tellurion, slightly damaged. Dirty retorts and vials disarrayed a wooden trestle. A similar edifice opposite supported rusted iron cogs, toothed wheels, springs, an astrolabe, a headless automaton, and several other half-gutted clockwork apparati of whose purpose the visitor had no idea. Over the whole chamber hung a heaviness, a shroud of lethargy. Things dismantled had never been reassembled; nothing stood complete—all projects abandoned, half-done.

  The Master at Swords had melded with a high-backed chair.

  “Come here.”

  Accustomed to obedience, the lad obeyed, fighting for breath. Rising terror threatened to suffocate him. Even twilight could not hide the unsavoriness of the master’s helminthic features. For bleak moments the cold, watery eyes scanned the lad from head to foot, as if measuring him, while the youth trembled, wondering when the blow would fall. Mortier was not one to prolong suspense. Abruptly, wordlessly, he leaned forward and struck, suddenly and hard. The lad reeled and on finding his balance retreated a step or two.