by Paul Stewart
‘Leave this to me,’ he said, getting up from the sumpwood desk. He strode to the door and opened it. ‘Well, if it isn’t my old friend, the skymarshal,’ he said smoothly.
Cade looked over Tillman Spoke’s shoulder to see a severe-looking hammerhead goblin dressed in a blue uniform and black crushed funnel cap.
‘Apologies for the intrusion, sir,’ the skymarshal said.
‘If it’s about the prowlgrin eggs,’ Tillman began, ‘you should speak to the holdmarshal . . . I paid him five gold coins for the privilege of keeping them here with me. And I’m not paying a brass groat more.’
‘It isn’t that,’ said the skymarshal, cutting him short. ‘If you wouldn’t mind, sir.’ He pushed past Tillman Spoke and into the cabin. ‘I’m afraid there’s been a report . . .’
‘A report?’
‘Well, more like a tip-off, sir,’ said the skymarshal, his wide-set eyes scanning the cabin.
‘I don’t understand,’ said Tillman Spoke, pulling himself up to his full height. ‘If you’re accusing me of something, then come out with it. I’ve got nothing to hide.’
‘You might not have anything to hide, sir,’ said the hammerhead skymarshal, taking the phraxpistol from his belt. His eyes turned to Cade. ‘But can your young friend here say the same?’
Cade flinched under the skymarshal’s penetrating stare. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong,’ he protested.
‘There was a robbery up on the promenade deck, by the spyglasses,’ the skymarshal said, ignoring Cade and talking directly to Tillman. ‘A snatchpurse answering to the description of your assistant was seen fleeing the scene.’
‘Cade?’ said Tillman. ‘Do you know anything about this?’
The sight of the rich goblin matrons at the spyglasses on the promenade deck flashed through Cade’s mind and, despite himself, he felt his face begin to redden. ‘No, nothing, Tillman, I swear . . .’
‘Then you won’t object if I search your belongings,’ said the skymarshal, crossing swiftly to Cade’s hammock and seizing the backpack which lay beneath it.
‘They’re just my personal things,’ said Cade weakly as the hammerhead unfastened the straps at the top of the pack and rummaged about inside.
‘And what have we here?’ said the hammerhead, withdrawing his hand from the pack. His long-nailed fingers were clutching a small package, carelessly wrapped in brown paper.
‘That? I . . .’ Cade frowned. ‘I’ve never seen it before in my life.’
He glanced up at Tillman Spoke, but the fourthling’s face was unreadable. The hammerhead tore the paper at one end of the package and shook it, and like a serpent emerging from sloughed skin, a long mire-pearl necklace slithered out into his open palm.
Cade gasped. ‘It . . . it isn’t mine,’ he said.
‘First honest word you’ve uttered,’ said the skymarshal grimly. His eyes darted around the cabin, then fixed on the coathooks on the wall by the door.
‘I didn’t take it,’ Cade protested, staring blankly at the stolen necklace.
‘It’s an old trick,’ the skymarshal went on, putting the necklace in the pocket of his topcoat. He strode over and plucked the footman’s jacket from the first coathook. He held it up to Tillman Spoke, his fingers and thumbs pinched at the shoulders. ‘First they steal a uniform so they can get access to the upper decks without being noticed. Then, when they spot some rich goblin matron, they rob her. It’s disgraceful,’ he added, shaking his head. ‘Thankfully, we skymarshals of the Xanth Filatine like to keep one step ahead . . .’
‘Tillman . . . sir,’ said Cade desperately. ‘I had nothing to do with this. You’ve got to believe me . . .’
‘I did believe you,’ said Tillman Spoke coldly. ‘I believed you were an honest footman looking for a new start.’ He frowned. ‘Are you – or have you ever been – a footman, Cade?’
Cade swallowed. ‘N-no, sir, but—’
‘Well, then,’ said Tillman. ‘It seems that the skymarshal here knows you a lot better than I do.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘You’ve disappointed me, lad,’ he said. ‘I can’t pretend otherwise. I believed you. I trusted you. And it seems my trust was ill-judged.’ He turned to the skymarshal. ‘What do you intend to do with him?’
‘You don’t need to concern yourself with that, sir,’ the skymarshal told him. ‘He will be punished appropriately.’
‘Please, please . . .’ Cade persisted, but he knew his entreaties were falling on deaf ears.
Rumblix must have sensed that something was going on, because Cade could hear the pup whimpering and whining in the corner.
‘Right,’ said the hammerhead gruffly, seizing Cade by the arm. ‘You come with me.’ He scooped up Cade’s backpack, then thrust the muzzle of the phraxmusket into Cade’s side. ‘And don’t try anything stupid.’
Cade found himself being marched out of the cabin. He turned, craned his neck, looked back at Tillman Spoke. But the prowlgrin dealer had turned away and was gazing out of the open porthole.
‘That’ll teach me,’ Cade heard him mutter.
Then the cabin door slammed shut.
With a grunt, the skymarshal twisted Cade’s arm up behind his back and propelled him forward. Sharp jags of pain shot through Cade’s shoulder and he bit his lip to stop himself crying out. At the staircase, the skymarshal shoved him a second time and Cade started to climb. Glancing back over his shoulder, he caught sight of a figure lurking in the shadows.
It was Brod the grey goblin. He was staring up at Cade, his eyes wide, brows drawn together and lower lip trembling; a look that was somewhere between guilt and pity. It was the same look the goblin had worn when he’d returned Cade’s backpack to him earlier that day.
‘Keep moving,’ the skymarshal barked, and shoved Cade up the stairs.
At the top, the skymarshal pushed Cade roughly down one long covered gangway, then another. It was a part of the skytavern Cade had never ventured into and he soon lost his bearings. When they emerged into the light, he squinted against the brightness of the midday sun.
He found himself standing on a raised platform. To his left and right were jutting gantries, with large baskets hanging at the ends of ropes. One of them was being used. A family of opulent-looking fourthlings – mother, father and a pair of young’uns, the two of them squealing with delight – were being lowered down towards the treetops by a cloddertrog at the winch, so that they might get a better view of the forest-life below.
The skymarshal did not hesitate. Head high, jaw set and grip still tight on Cade’s twisted arm, he continued along the platform. Glancing up painfully, Cade saw the great bulbous prow ahead of them and he wondered whether this was where they kept prisoners, in the hold below the prow, until they came to Hive, or even returned to Great Glade to be tried for their crimes.
Then the hammerhead came to an abrupt halt. He loosened his grip on Cade’s arm, and rubbing his shoulder, Cade looked up. They were at the prow-rail, clouds scudding high overhead, and the mighty Deepwoods below, a carpet of green stretching off as far as the eye could see.
‘I could chain you up in the fore-hold,’ said the skymarshal, as if reading Cade’s thoughts. ‘But your friends in the Depths would probably bribe one of the cargo-guards to let you go . . .’
‘I haven’t got any friends in the Depths,’ protested Cade, only for the skymarshal to silence him with a hard blow to the head with the butt of his phraxmusket.
Stunned, Cade slumped to the deck. When he came to, he couldn’t move his arms or legs. Craning his neck, Cade looked about him desperately. He was strapped by thick rope to a lufwood plank which was propped up against the rail of the prow. Cade’s heart began to hammer in his chest.
Lufwood was a buoyant wood. He remembered how it had bounced about inside the woodburner at home, the flames bright purple through the glass. He remembered how once, sneaking off to the woodpile at the back of the house, he had set fire to one of the small logs. It had blazed across the sky like a shooting star.
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Like a shooting star . . .
The smell of smoke penetrated Cade’s thoughts. He turned. The skymarshal was standing beside the lufwood plank holding a blazing torch.
‘No. Please. You can’t . . .’ Cade implored the hammerhead goblin.
‘Oh, but I can,’ smiled the skymarshal as he lowered the flaming torch to the base of the plank. There was a hiss and a crackle, and Cade smelled the familiar spicy smell of charred lufwood. He could feel the heat of the torch through the soles of his boots, and squirmed and wriggled and . . .
There was a muffled thud and a soft groan. The blazing torch clattered to the deck, extinguishing itself as it did so. Then the skymarshal slumped down heavily onto the boards, a thin, flute-tailed dart embedded in his neck.
Drax Adereth stepped out from behind a basket winch, returning his silver blowpipe to his belt as he did so. His eyes glinted behind the green glass of his bone-rimmed goggles. ‘Haven’t got any friends in the Depths?’ he said. ‘Shame on you, Cade Quarter.’
· CHAPTER THIRTEEN ·
‘I’M INTERESTED, THAT’S all,’ Drax Adereth said softly, his mouth close to Cade’s ear. ‘Did you not believe me when I told you that you couldn’t hide from me?’
They were back in Adereth’s candlelit lair, deep down in the Depths of the skytavern.
Drax moved round and brought his face close to Cade’s. Cade tried to avoid Drax’s large pale eyes. Up close, his skin was white as candlewax, and Cade could see the maze of blue-grey veins that crisscrossed his temples. His breath was warm on Cade’s face and smelled of fish and sour milk.
Behind Cade, the flathead goblin called Teggtut had one arm tightly round Cade’s throat and the other outstretched, pressing Cade’s hand down hard on a small stone cutting-slab. Next to the slab was the glass bowl of severed fingers, brown and desiccated.
Drax held up the jag-blade knife and twisted it so that its teeth glinted in the candle light. The pupils of his eyes widened as he took in the quivering fear in Cade’s face.
‘I wasn’t going to let that skymarshal rob me of what’s owed to me.’ Drax smiled as he held the knife over Cade’s outstretched hand. ‘One finger or two?’ he mused. ‘Now let me see. I gave you a week . . . seven days. And then you hid from me – for how long?’
‘Two days, boss,’ growled Teggtut.
‘I want to hear him say it,’ said Drax testily.
‘T-two d-days,’ stammered Cade. Sweat was trickling down his face, stinging his eyes. But he couldn’t tear his gaze away from the bowl of severed fingers.
‘Two days in hiding,’ said Drax.
Cade felt the blade touch the knuckle of his little finger. Then the knuckle of the finger next to it.
‘Thought you were safe, didn’t you. Locked away up there in a cosy cabin with that rich fourthling for protection. But you don’t hide from Drax Adereth that easily . . .’ He held up the mire-pearl necklace and dangled it before Cade’s eyes. ‘A little tip-off to the skymarshal to get you out of there. And then a little “tip-off” for the marshal himself . . .’ He giggled unpleasantly.
Cade flinched as he recalled Adereth casually tossing the skymarshal’s body from the prow.
‘I’ve got this skytavern sewn up. Nothing happens without my say-so. That skymarshal was in my pay and had no business skyfiring you without my permission.’ He smiled. ‘So here we are, Cade Quarter,’ Drax continued, all trace of humour gone. ‘Back where we started.’
Cade felt the knife’s pressure on his little finger. He wanted to cry out, to scream for help, but here in the suffocating Depths of the skytavern, what good would it do?
‘You see, I’m not unreasonable,’ Drax’s voice intoned, slow and measured, with a casual taunting inflection. ‘If someone works for me, pays their dues and doesn’t try to hide, I see them right. Just like I did for your friend, Brod. He helped me out and now he’s free to steal in peace. But you, Cade Quarter, you think you’re special. You think you’re better than everyone else down here. You think the rules don’t apply to you . . .’
‘No, I don’t. I . . .’ Cade could feel the pressure of the blade increasing slowly. Agonizingly slowly.
‘Just like those two professors . . .’
‘From the School of Flight?’ Cade blurted out the words, then bit his tongue.
In front of him, Drax’s face loomed close again, his large pale eyes narrowed. Cade felt the knife lift from his finger.
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘How did you know?’ Drax’s voice was quizzical, interested. The slow taunting tone had gone.
‘I . . . I saw them.’
‘Did you now?’ said Drax, smiling. He raised a hand. ‘Let him go,’ he said to the flathead goblin.
Teggtut relaxed his grip round Cade’s neck then, glancing at Drax, released Cade’s arm. Cade straightened up. Drax Adereth took a step backwards and looked him up and down.
‘My master in Great Glade has an important message for the professors, which he has asked me to deliver. They work for him too, but they consider themselves so much better than me that soiling their fine robes coming down to the Depths is beneath them.’
Drax frowned. His voice was sincere; he sounded genuinely hurt.
Cade backed away, rubbing the knuckle of his little finger.
‘Take me to them, Cade,’ said Drax. ‘I’ll deliver my message and you’ll be free to go.’
‘You work for the High Professor of Flight?’ said Cade.
Drax smiled. ‘Everybody works for someone,’ he said, then added, ‘Though if you do this little thing for me, I will consider your debt to me repaid.’
Quove Lentis!
Cade’s heart lurched. The night he had fled his bedchamber, Cade had paused only to gather up his most precious possessions, stuffing them into a backpack alongside the barkscrolls his father had entrusted to him. He had run through the deserted cloisters and courtyards of the Cloud Quarter and down the avenues of Ambristown to lose himself in the alleys and backstreets of the Ledges district. After an hour of searching he had found the small tumbledown house belonging to Lembit Flodd, a humble cargo-handler, and his young family. Lembit had been expecting him, and his wife had given him a warming mug of charlock tea before showing him to a hammock by the chimney place.
Cade would never forget the next day. Lembit had returned from the marketplace, his face ashen and the tufts on the end of his ears quivering.
‘Quove Lentis’s guards are searching the alleyways house by house. They’ll be here within the hour,’ he’d announced breathlessly. ‘But that’s not the worst of it . . .’
The tufted goblin’s three tiny young’uns were clustered at his knee, looking up at their father’s frightened face and whimpering.
‘Your father, Cade. He’s been found dead at the foot of the central tower of the School of Flight. They’re saying he jumped. But none of us believe that. I’m so sorry, Cade . . .’
Cade’s eyes had filled with tears, but he had dashed them away with clenched fists. ‘And now they’re searching for me. I can’t stay here,’ he’d said, grabbing his backpack and hurrying to the door. ‘I won’t put your lives in danger.’
It was then that he had looked up at the towering gantries rising up above the rooftops of the Ledges district and seen the ragged figures at the top of the highest one gazing expectantly at the sky.
‘Who are they?’ he’d asked.
Lembit Flodd had swallowed hard. ‘Forlorn hopers,’ he’d said . . .
Quove Lentis! The person who had been responsible for his father’s death. Even here on board this skytavern sailing over the Deepwoods, Cade wasn’t beyond the High Professor’s reach. But Drax clearly didn’t know who Cade was, and Cade didn’t want to do anything to give himself away. If he just showed him where these professors were, Drax would let him go. It seemed a good deal.
Returning Drax’s intense gaze, Cade nodded stiffly. And moments later, he was making his way back up through the skytavern, his backpack on his
shoulders and Drax Adereth at his side.
‘Don’t look so worried, Cade,’ said Drax as they climbed the steep ladders that led up to the flight platform. ‘I left Teggtut and Mank down in the Depths, didn’t I? They’re the muscle.’ He smiled. ‘I just want to deliver my message.’
They emerged onto the platform as the orange sun was slipping down towards the treetops on the distant horizon. The skytavern had slowed right down and was flying low over the forest crown. The wind was balmy.
Cade paused by the maze of scaffolding that supported the great phraxchamber and pointed to the half-hidden door of the maintenance cabin. The purple glow of the lufwood stove was just visible beneath the door.
‘They’re in there,’ he whispered.
Drax stepped forward and rapped lightly on the door. ‘Second engineer needs the hex-wrenches,’ he called out, then retreated as the handle turned and the door slowly opened.
The two academics that Cade had seen stepped out, both looking cold and miserable – and both holding phraxpistols.
‘Lemtrius Korn and Hengruel Paxis,’ said Drax, his arms crossed, hands buried inside his pale topcoat.
‘Do we know you?’ said the first academic, a short stout individual with a double chin and rimless glasses. His phraxpistol was cocked and pointed straight at Drax.
Behind him, his companion – younger, taller, thinner – blinked nervously.
Cade backed away uneasily towards the far railing of the flight platform. Below him, the tops of the tallest trees seemed almost to graze the hull of the low-flying skytavern. A thick stream of white steam rose from the funnel above.
‘You don’t know me,’ conceded Drax Adereth, smiling thinly. ‘But I know you. Cloud Quarter academics in charge of phraxship building, if I’m not mistaken. You paid for a fleet of twenty phraxvessels out of the treasury of the School of Flight. Twenty vessels.’ He paused. ‘Except that eight of them did not exist, did they? You must have made a tidy sum to line your own pockets.’ He shook his head, his lips crimped with disappointment. ‘My master doesn’t appreciate cheats and swindlers . . .’