The Tasters Guild

by Susannah Appelbaum

  “Reward, kind Director?” Dumbcane inquired. He thought of feeling the sun on his back again, drawing sweet water from a deep well.

  “I will reward you with your life,” he stated flatly.

  Dumbcane was quick to see the merits in this proposition.

  “Of course. I understand completely. What, exactly, do you want to know?”

  And here Verjouce was to learn how Dumbcane came upon the recipe for his treacherous inks, in the margin of an ancient text. And how, one late night after much searching, he found a single small shoot of the weed in a dark forgotten wood, growing beside an old slab of granite with ancient carvings written on its face. It was an eerie graveyard, even by Caux’s standards.

  “Kingmaker grows only on hallowed ground,” Dumbcane sobbed.

  “Then that is where I search.” Vidal Verjouce gathered his Outriders about him. Their instructions were simple. Find a specimen of the bracken, find it alive, and find it now.

  He turned back to Dumbcane.

  “You will soon be in the business of ink-making again.”

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Capture

  Axle and Peps, with their thin and faintly illuminated line between them, had only just recovered from their fright when they were again spooked—this time by a less organized group of the same servants of the Tasters’ Guild. The Outriders were fanning out, muttering to themselves in an incomprehensible guttural language, one that rendered any last feelings of brightness and optimism extinct. Peps threw his cloak over his face in a vain attempt at hiding, terror-stricken.

  They were overlooked, but the spirit of adventure within them had departed, and they made their way with supreme caution through the remainder of the route, arriving finally—and without further incident—before the cell door.

  Hemsen Dumbcane was there, imprisoned in a sad crypt, lying on the floor beside a pile of old bones.

  “You there …,” Peps whispered. “Hemsen Dumbcane.”

  Dumbcane did not bother to look up. His eyes skittered about to the sound of his name, and then quickly back to where they were contemplating the curve of what appeared to be a finger bone. His was a place of such dejection that he thought it entirely possible that his mind might be manifesting visions of further torment. Didn’t that small man belong back on the Knox? Hadn’t he been a regular—and annoying—presence on the bridge for all of Dumbcane’s long years performing his illicit activities? Certainly he was not here, in this hellish prison, then, but a vision manufactured to remind him of his previous life.

  “Away, you dull spirits! How perfectly tedious to be bothered by a pair of nosy trestlemen of my own imaginings!”

  Axle cleared his throat as loudly as he dared. “Dumbcane. Pull yourself together. You are not dreaming! We are here just as you are—the only thing that separates us is these bars. If you help us, we will do our best to see that they are opened.”

  Dumbcane raised himself enough to lean upon a worn elbow. Indeed, they were persistent, these small, make-believe visitors.

  “What do you want?” He humored them.

  “You were, er, entrusted with a document.…”

  Hemsen sighed audibly. This was beginning to sound familiar.

  “A very ancient document, one that you recently … lost.”

  Hemsen knew the one. He sagged. It was the reason for his current incarceration, and suddenly he felt a wave of anger course through him.

  “The bounty hunters!”

  “Who?” Peps asked. “What bounty hunters?”

  “The ones who came for the taster.”

  “Bounty hunters came to your shop? Were they by any chance called Taxus?”

  Hemsen nodded dully. “They came for an Epistle. I gave it to them—but …” Dumbcane was reliving the hurried exchange in his shop and becoming more and more agitated. “I just wanted them to leave! I gave them the ouroboros scroll by accident.”

  “The Estate of Turner Taxus has the scroll?” Axle asked.

  “This—all this is because of that horrid taster! Everything I’ve lost is because of him. Truax, they called him. Rowan Truax!” He spat. His voice was escalating, echoing against the dank walls.

  “Shh—” Axle advised, to no avail. Dumbcane was lost in his realization.

  “Truax! Wait until I get my hands on him! He is the source of my demise! I will make him suffer as surely as I have been made to suffer.”

  It was an impossible task to console the scribe—he was mad with his years of scourge bracken and suddenly deeply offended at his current situation—for all of which he found not himself to blame, but Rowan. His voice took on a tone of great injury, the volume rising quickly. Peps looked at Axle helplessly; neither knew what to do or say that might soothe Dumbcane, and quite soon they were certain to be discovered.

  “Shut your terrible racket!” Peps hissed.

  By now Dumbcane’s pronunciation had pulled the name out to two very long and plaintive syllables, and it was all he would say, over and over into the dark passages, where the name took an echo on, becoming even louder.

  “Tru-ax! Tru-ax! Tru-ax!” he sobbed.

  They were there silently, before either trestleman knew it. The Outriders, a pair of them from earlier who were busy searching the burial grounds beneath Rocamadour for their master’s desire. Quite quickly, they had settled their terrible and cold grasp upon the tiny shoulders of Axlerod D. Roux, and as Peps drew further back into the shadow, he watched in horror as they ushered his brother away to the rhythm of Dumbcane’s lament.

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Gloamwort

  Peps felt himself unable to breathe as panic began to overtake him. His arms flailed about in the dark—he had backed himself into a small vestibule, or so it seemed, for it was utterly and completely black. When an impossible amount of time had gone by and he had not been discovered, and that traitor Dumbcane had fallen again into a stupor, Peps finally allowed himself a moment of hope. This small sparkle, though, was immediately extinguished upon recollecting that his brother was now in the hands of the Tasters’ Guild—in the hands of Vidal Verjouce.

  Peps realized that for his brother he must find his way back aboveground. He must warn Rowan. He must report on the missing scroll. It’s what Axle would want him to do. He took what he hoped would be a deep, calming breath, and his hand alighted upon his unfamiliar belt. There was the brass fastener, he realized. They had unclipped themselves as they made their way to Dumbcane, leaving the gloamwort tacked to the wall before his cell. He merely needed to creep forward and find it, and follow it out.

  And so with great courage—for some are born with this glorious trait, and still others, like Peps, seem to manufacture it just when they need it the most—the lone trestleman tiptoed by the open bars of the sleeping Dumbcane’s cell, freezing when it seemed at first that he might have roused him, freezing again when the forger’s eyes fluttered open in a fit of delirium, and finally grasping with his cold, clammy hands the languishing roll of thread from the wall where Axle had tacked it.

  Its faint phosphorescence somehow calmed him—or perhaps it was touching something with origins aboveground. For it was now that Peps realized just how draining the utter depth of the darkness was down here, devoid of life and light. Of course, Peps thought nothing now of scourge bracken, nor would he have guessed its very nature thrived away from the life-giving sun.

  He reeled in the twine, carefully, and as quickly as he could, and at each mount where Axle had attached it to the crumbling wall, he clinked off his carabiner and, heart racing to be detached from his lifeline, reattached it on the next lead. Thus it was that he did eventually return to the light—the stone steps that before seemed foreboding were now a most welcome sight.

  He sunk down to his knees and kissed the ground.

  Trestlemen no longer walked the cobbled streets of Rocamadour, and those who lived nearby lived in fear. The rising dawn brought with it the dangers of being noticed, and Peps felt more conspicuous on h
is own. He scurried along the cobbled streets, avoiding any that looked busy or required him to pass by the menacing iron grilles that encased most windows in the city. Cacophonous bells rang at intervals, announcing classes and laboratory sessions for the students. He passed a small group of younger pupils who huddled together eyeing him, and he ducked further beneath his hood.

  “First years, this way!” a voice commanded, and the nearby crowd jumped to attention.

  Peps hurried his pace.

  “You there!” the voice called, and to his dismay, Peps realized it was directed at him. “Where do you think you’re off to?”

  Peps turned, keeping his face lowered, and mumbled something about being on an errand for Professor Breaux.

  “Breaux? He should know better than to send a first year out without a badge. Come with me, then. I am forced to report you.”

  Peps opened his mouth in protest but remembered his hurry. His brother needed him. He turned and ran, breathless, his short legs carrying him to Breaux’s large stone gate, the indignity of being mistaken for a mere child stinging a crimson color in his proud cheeks.

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  The Final Exam

  It had occurred to Ivy that she hadn’t seen Six in a while. Indeed, Rowan had noticed his sneezing was better, but Ivy hadn’t thought to inquire after the cat. When she stopped to think about it, she hadn’t seen him since they deposited him at the foot of Breaux’s fountain after the horrors of the sewer. Now she had looked up and down the entire compound and, with growing concern, still could not find him.

  But at hearing the muffled knock on the old wooden door, her spirits lifted. Axle would surely know just what to do! But Peps’s face told her at once of trouble. She rushed over.

  “Peps! You look awful!” Ivy glanced around. “Where is Axle?”

  Peps found his knees buckling with the general relief of being back safely beside Ivy, and she half held him and marched him to a nearby bench, where they were joined by the rest of the group, eager for news.

  Peps had never delivered so much bad news at one time, and the severity of it threatened to strike him mute. Where to begin? He took a deep breath and told them of Dumbcane, and that the scroll of the ouroboros was now with the Estate of Turner Taxus. He told them that the Taxus kin were pursuing Rowan and had obtained his Epistle. And then—words tumbling out of his mouth lest his courage fail him—he announced that the Outriders had captured Axle.

  Ivy was silent for a moment, contemplating Axle’s fate.

  “Well, we’ll just have to rescue him!” she decided, looking about the gathering in the garden.

  No one would meet her eye except Professor Breaux.

  “I’m afraid that’s an impossibility, Ivy,” he said softly.

  “Hardly!” She looked to Rowan. “If the situation were reversed—”

  “Let’s all be glad it isn’t,” Breaux replied. “But Axle is equipped for his arrest. His vast knowledge of his … captor will be helpful.”

  Ivy felt her face redden. “You expect me to sit around and do nothing while Axle is … is …” She realized she couldn’t bring herself to finish. She straightened. “Well, I’m afraid that’s an impossibility!”

  Ivy turned on her heel, and, throwing the hood of her robes over her golden hair, she heaved open the very same door through which Peps had entered, and stepped out into the dark alley.

  “Ivy!” Rowan called, but she was gone.

  Ivy was unprepared for the bleakness of the Guild’s design, and departing through the small arched gateway onto the cobbled streets of Rocamadour, she sagged suddenly with regret. If melancholia had a weather system, this was it: a dampness that crept into your very spirit and made you move as if underwater. Stepping through the portal from Breaux’s garden into the heart of the lower city, the pleasant scents within the Professor’s compound were instantly replaced with the overriding smell of decay. The patches of creeping moss that covered most of the Guild’s stone surfaces were a tatty, unhealthy brown. Ivy pulled her robes closer to her face.

  She had little knowledge of the twisting streets and even less of where she might find Axle. Soon she came to a small square—congregating around the once-lovely fountain were the baleful forms of Rocamadour vultures, their untidy roosts making piles of filth. At the sight of the birds, she took a step back, unconsciously, and found herself against something soft, something that wasn’t there a second ago—not something, she realized as she turned, startled.

  Someone.

  Snaith’s hunched spine and protruding belly made him an appalling sight indeed, but his scarlet robes—the robes of the Watchmen—caused the young girl’s blood to run cold.

  He regarded Ivy with interest, his eyes shining from beneath his jutting forehead and odd, paunchy cheeks.

  “You’re late,” he assessed. As if to demonstrate this, a discordant bell chimed nearby. He glared at her. “Well?”

  Ivy’s heart was in her throat, but she managed to nod.

  The subrector held out his arm—at the end of his red cloak, one blunt, pudgy finger pointed to the nearby door. On it, Ivy noticed as she swallowed hard, was a peculiar symbol. An ox head—a swarm of bees flying forth from its mouth. Pulling her cloak about her tightly, she ducked as she passed him by, entering the lecture hall.

  And oh, what a hall this was! It was long and narrow, with a ceiling as high as the cliffs around her, tiered with balconies and velvet chairs. In the center was an extraordinarily long dinner table. It was hung with low chandeliers and set with the most alluring of golden flatware, and laid with a meal like no other. Running along its great length was a supper of such splendid proportions as Ivy had never seen—not at any trestleman’s table, not in the royal halls of Templar at the queen’s table. Attending to the feast was a long row of impeccably dressed waiters, poised and ready.

  Every type of food was represented in its most alluring form. Tarts burst with sweet fillings and were kissed with crystals of sugar. Buttery rolls nearly popped with their own plumpness, beside carved pats of butter. Roasts glistened, each outshining the last in delectability. The gravy steamed and puddled invitingly. Fowl and beast were arranged in a fashion of utter temptability, and it was all Ivy could do not to rush to the table and begin eating. It had been some time since her last hot meal—she had left Breaux’s compound before her breakfast.

  The long table was assembled in front of receding stone benches, and here the students waited. Ivy joined them.

  Snaith advanced on the lectern and faced the group.

  “Let us begin.”

  He eyed the assembly, his body swiveling as his ruined neck could no longer turn.

  “I am sure you are all well prepared for today’s final exam.”

  Ivy looked about as the Guild’s pupils, in varying states of preparedness, all awaited their examination. A few were reviewing their notes, paging through for any last glimmer of knowledge. Ivy’s nearest neighbor was muttering to himself, arranging his Guild-issued utensils and brushing up on the Field Guide.

  With mounting horror, Ivy returned her attention to the front of the lecture hall, where Snaith was now seated at the head of the impossibly long dinner table, snapping a taster’s collar about his drooping chin. His thick lips were unusually wet as he leaned over a silver-domed credenza and, with practiced authority, flicked the polished lid open. Inside, a selection of bone-handled carving knives, the smallest about the size of a trestleman’s pinkie, the largest—a broad knife meant for both hacking and carving—suitable for an entire steer. But the one that brought a wave of revulsion over Ivy was a modest one, off to the side, with a particularly nasty-looking hook blade, not polished like the rest of the subrector’s collection. His fingers fidgeted over the tool, pausing to lovingly thumb the crooked teeth of the instrument—and Ivy felt her flesh crawl. His attentions finally alighted upon something in the middling range, something polished and sleek, meant for carving food, and once chosen, he brandished it—gleaming—to the
crowd. Beside the knives awaited a long, thick emery, and he took this now and began artfully running it up and down the sharp edge of the blade, producing an uncomfortable noise.

  “Let us not delay any further. You—” He pointed his steely spear directly at her. “Last in, first up.”

  The room of tasters turned to her expectantly, and Ivy noticed among the foreign faces a few smirks. She looked behind her, hoping to find someone rising in her stead, but the benches merely carried on upward, seemingly forever. With great reluctance, she stood.

  “Yesss,” Snaith coaxed.

  Ivy arrived at the staged table.

  “Your three?” he asked.

  Ivy blinked. “My three?”

  “Choose your three.” Snaith’s voice was tinged with impatience. “The three dishes you wish to taste for the final exam in Irresistible Meals.”

  She looked at the table again from this closer vantage point. A heaping bowl of fruit beckoned her, dewy and great, like a living still life. It was all she could do to not reach out and pluck a pomegranate from the platter. In fact, there wasn’t a thing within reach—within sight—that she wouldn’t eat readily. Her stomach grumbled.

  Ivy looked about—all thoughts of the many eyes upon her forgotten in her hunger. She walked along the endless display, past large roasts and savory side dishes, until she came to the desserts. In the very center, a majestic chocolate cake iced with little white flowerbuds sat upon a crystal plate. How was she to choose only three?

  Somehow she pointed, and quite soon before her a place was set, and she sat down to a meal of buttery, crisp fried chicken, a savory corn pudding, and the cake. For each, Snaith served her himself, fastidious with the presentation, dismissing the waiters who stepped forward eagerly.

  Of course, Ivy knew she was eating at a table of the Tasters’ Guild, in a class designed to test its tasters’ abilities to detect poisons. And she knew also that she was better equipped than most at poison detection because she was better than most at making poisons. But she was no match for the Guild’s most dreaded course—it was mandatory, after all, to take Irresistible Meals, and not uncommon for a student to repeat it several times until receiving a passing grade. Or die trying.