One of the older women in the café, a fearsomely proud matriarch in Astandalan-era black silks, made a vague gesture, which distracted my attention. Miss Featherhaugh looked around, bit her lip, and said, “Oh, I must return to my work. Saya Etaris will want some coffee with her tart.”
When she had bustled off (Mr. Dart and I both observing her thoughtfully, at least until I realized that half the room was observing us in turn), we sat down again. “I begin to see why you come here.”
He made a vague gesture, stroked his beard again. “Mrs. Landry opened her parlour for lunches and afternoon teas in the spring. My brother sent me in to enquire whether she wanted duck eggs, and, well, I’ve made a point of dropping in occasionally, on my visits to town.”
“What is all this about ducks?”
He chuckled. “Even less interesting than your mysterious pie, I’m afraid. My brother—I said he asked me to be his land agent? Well, when I came back in the spring, I thought we could introduce some Charese specialties here. I loved the duck confit we’d get in Stoneybridge—I think I took you to Malcor’s when you visited, didn’t I?—and I brought back a dozen ducks and as handsome a pair of drakes as ever you saw of the right breed, and started hatching them out.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“It is. Except as you’ve heard, my skills at making the confit aren’t quite … well, I think I might head back down to Chare this winter and see if I can’t find an artisan to come up with me and show me how to make it properly. It can’t be that hard, dammit! but by the Emperor! You’d think I’d suggested pies with fish heads sticking out of them, the way people carry on about my ducks.”
“Perhaps you need to try abandoning them in the middle of town, and let mystery make them popular.”
“I don’t think stealth abandonment would make me eat something—who’d know how old it was? Or what was in it? Besides, everyone knows I’m the one with the ducks.”
Miss Featherhaugh eventually returned to ours with two glasses full of sparkling perry. I sipped mine experimentally. It was made from Arguty pears, the bittersweet flavour as complex as my relationship to my family estate. Mr. Dart said, “It was a good year for pears out on the easter side of town. Hagwood said he expected this year’s vintage to be the best since the Fall.”
“Good to hear,” I said. Hagwood was the Arguty Greenwing estate’s factor. I’d met him often as a boy, when my father was alive, and liked him well enough, though naturally hadn’t had much to do with him after my mother’s remarriage, and certainly not after my mother died.
The pork arrived and we ate in silence for a while. The women in the room chattered softly, genteelly, in voices too low for me to make out the topics of conversation. Clothes and husbands and business, probably, and gossip masquerading as news—unless it were the other way around.
Judging by the glances across at us, most of them were talking about how I’d had the nerved to return to town after missing my stepfather’s funeral and how very interesting it was that Mr. Dart wasn’t shunning me. I finished before him and looked out the window to see if it had stopped raining.
It hadn’t. Baron Ragnor was coming down the street with his party, which had swelled to include a tall and skeletally thin Scholar unknown to me. They were all bundled in coats and capes and picking their way through puddles.
I felt a savage pleasure that they did not appear to have had a very satisfactory meal. Dame Talgarth’s sister seemed to have an even more tenuous grasp on her surroundings than in the bakery, judging by how glassily she was smiling at the Honourable Miss, whose own expression was petulant and angry. The Baron was speaking earnestly with the Scholar, who was frowning, and Dame Talgarth’s shoulders were set in a furious rigidity. Only the Honourable Master seemed to be enjoying himself, as genially boisterous in his saunter as he’d been inside the bookstore.
Mr. Dart said, “I say, Mr. Greenwing, you’ve gone quite still. What’s the matter? Another pie?”
I shook my head and quickly attended to the soufflé that had been placed before me. “Just woolgathering, Mr. Dart. The Baron and his party are coming down the street. They’ve a Scholar with them and I was wondering who he might be.”
Mr. Dart twisted around to look. “Oh, that’s Dominus Alve-stone. He’s from … oh, I forget. Either Inchpoint or Inkpoil.”
“One’s in Ronderell and the other’s halfway to Pfaschen.”
“And one is known for anthropology and the other for alchemy, I know. I just forget which it is. I met him at a ball the Baron held a couple of months ago, and again at one of the Talgarths’ dinner parties. The Emperor, those are even more boring with the Justice away.”
“Oh? Where is he?”
“Teaching a class in Ormington. Makes a big difference to the dinner parties, not having a host to lead us astray to the back room with the port.”
I chuckled, pleased at the thought that Dame Talgarth’s cutting me meant that I would be able to avoid her infamously dull dinner parties, at least. “Has the Scholar been here all summer?”
“I think so. He’s researching something in someone’s library. Or all of them. I think my brother mentioned seeing him at the Woodhills’.”
“You’re a fount of information, Mr. Dart.”
“I do try, Mr. Greenwing. Oh, look, there’s Mrs. Landry come out to make her courtesy to Saya Etaris. I bet she’s glad she’s not her mother-in-law.”
“Shh,” I said, but he’d already lowered his voice.
“Not much of a radical at home, are you?”
“Shh,” I said again, embarrassed, and he winked.
“Of course! You’re undercover.”
Saya was the old Astandalan honorific, which used to be widely applied—every adult gentleman or woman was Sayo or Saya when I was a boy—but after the Fall the fashion for that changed, too, and people started going with Mr. or Mrs., and only the starchiest of the old guard still went by the Astandalan title. Saya Etaris, Mrs. Etaris’ mother-in-law, was one of these. As soon as Miss Featherhaugh had mentioned her name I recognized her, though I’d never had more than a nodding acquaintance with her as a boy.
“I’ve always wondered what she was like in her salad days,” Mr. Dart said. “I bet she was a right beauty.”
I gave a surprised snort and hastily drank perry to cover it up. Saya Etaris had risen and was making her majestic way through the room to the door, trailed by her silent cousin-companion, a woman of such extreme propriety I could barely hold her in my mind’s eye a moment after looking at her.
Saya Etaris herself wore black silks and a hat of exquisite featheriness, and had an ebony cane from Zunidh that must have been expensive even in Astandalan days, and though she was short and plump and wore too many rings on her fingers, you just knew that if she’d decided that something was so it was, well, so.
She stopped before our table. Mr. Dart and I rose with alacrity. “Mr. Dart,” she said, and then, with a rather cooler tone of voice, “Mr. Greenwing.” We bowed; Mr. Dart clicked his heels a moment after I did. Saya Etaris smiled slightly, so that her piercing blue eyes glittered. She wore small pince-nez with gold frames. “Miss Featherhaugh tells me you are intrigued with new things, Mr. Dart.”
Mr. Dart glanced at Miss Featherhaugh, who was hovering behind with Saya Etaris’ cloak in her hands and a pained expression on her face. He bowed again. “Saya Etaris, one of the joys of travelling is discovering new things. I merely wished to share the pleasanter traditions of Chare with my own countryfolk.”
“Not bad,” she said, and then gazed gimlet-like at me. I met her stare as composedly as I could manage. “We did not think to see you back in town again, Mr. Greenwing, but then that is something of a specialty of your family, is it not? I hope you do not take after your father in too many other particulars.”
There was a playwright in Erlingale who’d written a tragedicomedy called Three Years Gone. It had been a smash hit in Kingsford in the spring, and continued to be wildly popular throughout
most of the kingdom.
It was, ostensibly, about my father. My friend Hal’s mother, to whom I had not told my surname—there never seeming quite the right moment, after a sneezing fit in the middle of my first effort had made Hal himself think it was “Greene” simpliciter—had taken us to see it when I was in Fillering Pool, thinking it would be a pleasant diversion.
They had, thankfully, been willing to attribute my morose silence to a relapse of my illness.
One of the more popular catchphrases was “Welcome as a Greenwing come home.”
It infuriated me to admit even the smallest grain of truth in the play: but the world did not bend to my will, alas. I swallowed several times, and finally I said, “It’s true, I can hardly hope to win commendation from the Emperor himself for my bravery, Saya Etaris.”
Someone on the far side of the room dropped her fork; it chimed loudly against a plate. Saya Etaris didn’t even blink. Everyone in the room knew—everyone who’d seen Three Years Gone knew, everyone who’d read Tadeo Toynbee’s Guide to the Kingdom of Rondé knew, everyone who’d been in Ragnor Bella when my father came home three years after he’d been twice reported dead knew—what I wasn’t adding.
Treason, cowardice, perjury, bigamy, suicide.
I kept my back and my face straight.
Saya Etaris’ smile was a humourless twitch of her lips. “I cannot think what possessed my daughter-in-law to give you a job. But then she always was more than a bit contrary.”
I swallowed again. “I’m very grateful to Mrs. Etaris for giving me the opportunity.”
“Good,” she said, and swept off with her cloak half-on her shoulders. The room suddenly frothed with chatter. I slumped back into my seat and earnestly regarded the remnants of my salad.
Mr. Dart said, “I am actually growing curious about this pie of yours.” I looked up at him; he grinned. “Whom do we interrogate next?”
“I have to go back to work,” I said, hearing the bells from the town clock ring the hour in the gust of damp wind that came in the wake of Saya Etaris’ exit.
“All the better, we can ask Mrs. Etaris what she thinks, she’s always putting her nose into things. Are you done? Miss Featherhaugh, will this cover it?”
“You haven’t had the pear tart,” she said, taking the coins he offered her with a hint of disappointment.
“I know—but Mr. Greenwing is a working man these days, and I mustn’t keep him from his honest labour.” I started to protest, until he winked at me. “I invited you, gosling. Come—where’s your hat gone? Such a fine tricorner it is, too. I hope Fogerty the Fish is correct and the local haberdashers have taken note. Please mark the plural: we have graduated to two now, you know. Mr. Jack Pepper had a fight with Mr. Ben, and set up as a rival.”
I stared wordlessly at him. He took my hat, stuck it on his own head, and banged out the door. After a stunned moment I hastened after him, to find he’d stopped to light a pipe.
“You smoke?” I said in astonishment. “First the beard, now the pipe—how far back in time has Stoneybridge gone? It sounds like something out of a Ystharian novel.”
“Fewer orgies than in a Ystharian novel,” he said sadly, blowing a smoke ring with the evidence of much practice. “Though even more unprovoked and unsubstantiated gossip. How degenerate we’ve become since Astandalan days.”
Chapter Five
Mrs. Etaris had left a note on the door for me:
Mr. Greenwing: I have been called to receive a shipment at the post office. Please carry on with your duties. I should return by half past two. Mrs. Etaris.
“The Poker in writing,” Mr. Dart said, blowing another smoke ring as I fumbled for the key under the flowerpot. “Like something out of a calligraphy book. D’you know where she went to university, Mr. Greenwing?”
“No, I don’t,” I said, a bit surprised; it was usually what one first found out about someone, after their family. “If you want to come in, will you put out the pipe? I shouldn’t think Mrs. Etaris would want her store to smell like pipe smoke.” Though I was more concerned about being unable to breathe in the enclosed space.
“You never know, she might consider it a mark of distinction,” he replied, but he took a few last puffs and then proceeded to tamp down the bowl and close it off with a small cork while I took off my coat. “I have the cork from before I got the windcap, which I’ve got somewhere in my pockets, but—curses! I must have left it in my saddlebags. I’ll have to ask Cartwright when I meet him. Huh. I don’t think I’ve been in here since the last assistant left.”
“Who was the last assistant?” I asked, ignoring the nonsense and plucking my hat from Mr. Dart’s head to put on the coat tree. The fire was banked and the room still smelled strongly of fish, though I found the saffron undertone increasing. I sneezed. “Excuse me.”
“If you insist. Is this the famous pie?” Mr. Dart went forward to lean over it. “That’s revolting. I don’t remember the assistant—a stranger to these parts, I believe. Possibly another second cousin or the like out of Fiella-by-the-Sea. There was some small difficulty a month or two ago … he’s no longer in town, anyway. Is there a book about the stargazing?”
“Stargazy pie out of Ghilousette. I think … yes, Mrs. Etaris left the cookery book there.” I stirred up the fire, then looked awkwardly around the store. There didn’t seem much to do. Mrs. Etaris had tidied all the paperwork away, leaving only The New Salon and Traditional Dishes of the Wardrider Coast next to the pie. Mr. Dart took Traditional Dishes and sank meditatively into the chair.
“This is when a pipe is a doddle,” he said, looking at the smoothly polished wood of his and sucking on the end, then making a face and putting it back in his pocket. “For thinking.”
“I thought it was a dottle?”
“Oh, very good! But you don’t smoke yourself?”
I shrugged, and decided I might as well organize the cookery books while we were talking. “No. I tried it once in Morrowlea, but I found it a bit queasy-making.”
“What on earth were you smoking?”
I decided not to describe the night spent retching helplessly in a vile post-Astandalan outhouse after I’d tried what had turned out to be wireweed-laced tobacco, and which had put me quite definitively off all forms of both drugs, legal and not. “Do you think cookery books should be organized by food or by region?”
Mr. Dart looked up at where I was pulling them down from the shelf. “What striking covers they have. Why not by colour?”
“People don’t usually come in and ask for books by jacket colour.”
“Don’t they? The aesthetics of bookcases are probably as satisfying as anything else. I know my brother only cares about his Collian scrolls. Everything else is ordered by the yard from the publishers.”
“If you send me a list of colours his library his lacking, I’ll keep out a selection.”
He laughed, and flipped through the book in his hand. I decided to go by type of food, which was how cookbooks were arranged in the Morrowlea library, and worked silently for a while, the noise of the rain on the window and the sound of turning pages soothing. Mrs. Etaris’ cat Gingersnap jumped up onto Mr. Dart’s lap and started to purr. Some wave of tension started to ebb, and I thought that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to work in Elderflower Books in Ragnor Bella, after all.
“Hullo!” said Mr. Dart suddenly. “This is odd.”
I blinked up from trying to decide whether Fifth Imperial Decadent Style Dinner Parties should go under Cookery, History, Ethnology, or Etiquette.
There was an entire chapter, I noted with some astonishment, on how to host an orgy. With diagrams for partner placements based on rank. Dame Talgarth’s dinner parties would probably be better attended if she included—I tore my gaze away with difficulty. “Odder than fish-head pie?”
“I thought I’d look in the Encyclopedicon,” he said, and I saw that at some point while I’d been focused on the shelves in front of me, he’d found the reference section. Gingersnap was
kneading her claws on the arm of the chair, her ears flattened to protest that no one was petting her. “And look what I found. This is the new edition, by the way, the one that came out of Tara this spring, so it’s got post-Astandalan references in it.”
I took the volume. “I hadn’t realized it was out. I’m impressed she has a copy already.”
“She’s the hinge-pin of town, I told you. The person who controls access to books—and the newspaper—” He gestured at the stack of New Salons on the counter—“controls information.”
“You should have come to Morrowlea.”
“I should have enjoyed running riot with you, but my tutor was spectacular,” he said. “Actually—no, I’ll tell you later. I have a paper I want to show you, but I’ll have to fetch it next time I come to town.”
I felt a pang at the reminder that he lived six miles out—not so far for a gentleman of leisure with a horse, nor if I had the time to walk—or the courage to continue flouting social mores and run—but— “Do you come into town often?”
His gaze strayed out the window. “I might come more often now that you’re home. Go to, Mrs. Etaris is coming down the street.”
“She said it might be the beginning of adventures,” I said, in portentous tone, and we both laughed.
I rifled through the Encyclopedicon until I found the S entries. There was no entry for Stargazy Pie itself, but Stargazing warranted one—or rather two. The first entry was dedicated to the normal meaning, with cross-references to Astronomy, Astrology, Navigation, and the Astandalan Court, but the second … “It’s slang for hobnobbing with hobgoblins?”
“What a way with words you’ve got,” Mr. Dart said with mock admiration. “Hallo, Mrs. Etaris! Let me take that from you.” He jumped up to relieve her of a well-wrapped parcel while she dripped on the front mat. “We’ve been probing the mysteries of herring pie. Read the passage aloud, Mr. Greenwing, if you would.”
Stargazy Pie: Greenwing & Dart Book One Page 4