The Tasters Guild

by Susannah Appelbaum

  This was to be the end of her inner debate. The food before her smelled like nothing else. And seeing as there was no one there to tell her otherwise, she began with the dessert.

  Ivy took a small, delicate forkful of the cake, a rich, deep chocolate—so very dark and fluffy. Superb and irresistible, it was almost an inky black.

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  The Dose

  The nature of scourge bracken is so very unpredictable, and so very little is known about it in a land where so much is known about plants in general. Indeed, it grows in hallowed ground far away from the sun and was rescued from extinction by Hemsen Dumbcane. It holds its user captive while it searches for yet another, more powerful victim to transport into its dark realm. It attracts insects—and other creatures—to its unwilling host as it assumes power. It lulls and whispers kingly promises while laying waste to all around it—and would have probably overtaken all of Caux had not the Good King Verdigris banished it just in time.

  But why it strikes down some while elevating others is a mystery.

  Snaith had reserved for himself a small portion of Dumbcane’s inks and set about his plans to test this new, intriguing poison. He regretted instantly that there weren’t any orphanages in the immediate vicinity—it was a wonderfully anonymous place to try out new and deadly wares. The next best thing: his loathsomely tedious class of untested tasters. The final exam featured a year’s worth of pernicious poisons in a tempting and distracting environment—a realistic enough occurrence in life outside the Guild’s walls. But none had learned of scourge bracken before, so no student could possibly be prepared.

  Did this worry the subrector? Not at all. He plotted the exam, one that would feature this new inky toxin, and prepared to catalog his observations as carefully as he would in any hospital for the indigent or home for wayward youth.

  Ivy Manx swallowed a second mouthful of velvety chocolate cake and suddenly began to feel entirely peculiar. Immediately, wavy shapes floated before her eyes, thick spots of ink—or were they insects? She waved her hands before her eyes to shoo them away, only the spots returned, this time more vigorously. Her stomach lurched in fear.

  Then, inexplicably, she was far, far away from the lecture hall, in a dark and ruined garden. Clouds circled the perilous sky. Barbed wire ran along a ravaged iron fence, and beneath her feet lay nothing but charred earthen remains. It was a garden transformed, but she still knew it. She had been there before. Once prosperous and now a wasteland, this was the garden she had seen when curing Peps.

  In his silent chamber high atop the Library, Vidal Verjouce suddenly, horribly, stood. He had been in a Kingmaker reverie, blank dreams of ultimate power and burnt ground. He readied his cane.

  There was an intruder in his Mind Garden.

  He knew at once of Ivy.

  Ivy had been standing quite vacantly, Snaith looking on with a curious expression upon his paunchy face. The girl did not clutch her sides or cry out in despair, he noted. Nor did she scream and grip her chest, as did Gripe, while a deadly stain of scourge bracken spread across her vital organs. Was there some antidote of which he was unaware? He looked about the table. He was certain he had served her an enormous dose. Yet she defied him, standing there unblinking. A rage surged within him.

  The Guild’s students, unaware of his treacherous experimentation, were readying themselves for their inevitable turn at the table, and those not busy whispering were silently spraying their mouths with distilled water or using their tongue scrapers to earnestly clear their palates.

  Snaith clapped his hands for his assistant—he was tiring of the impasse—and immediately she was there. Ivy watched wordlessly as Rue stood before her, speaking quite familiarly with the awful subrector.

  “Failing grade!” Snaith pronounced loudly as Rue made a note.

  “The Infirmary, sir?” Rue then asked. Her face was inscrutable as she reached for Ivy’s arm.

  But Snaith waved the question away. He was already scanning the seating greedily for a new subject. Rue began to guide Ivy away from the curious eyes of the class, into the shadows of the large hall.

  “You!” He pointed at a thin, frightened boy. “Dinner’s served!”

  As the student made his way haltingly down the stone steps, Snaith turned. He watched the pair go, his assistant guiding the stiff-legged creature away from him. An evil surge of excitement swept through his belly. Fresh with the memory of the subrector Gripe, he knew she was doomed. Clearing his throat, he looked around him, and sharpened a knife.

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  Shadow

  There are beings that rule over fire and beings that rule over shadow, much in the same way alewives rule over troubled waters, but these creatures are mercurial, dangerous, and should not concern us here—except that Ivy now straddled these two worlds, one of light and the other of dark. The world of shadow is a suspect one, and one unused to tourists.

  As Rue led her by the elbow into the dingy courtyard, Ivy saw a glimmer of these two worlds—fierce, shifting black shapes, small, insistent sparks of fire. The ox and the plaque upon the door had undergone a transformation—the bees were now dark, sleek wasps and appeared on the verge of a swarm. Upon another, a brass salamander writhed in agony as fire consumed its hide. In fact, the small courtyard seemed to hold an extraordinary amount of doors suddenly—all repellant, fierce, and glimmering with life.

  Ivy stumbled on a loose stone, and Rue caught her beneath the arms. Propping her upright again, and stealing a look back toward the lecture hall, Rue continued in the direction of the Infirmary.

  They came upon a twisting alley, and with a look behind her, Rue quickly ducked into its damp mouth—their shoes dripping at once from the sluice of water that ran along the path. It was here, over the calming tones that water can bring, that Rue whispered to Ivy.

  “I will take you back to Grandfather’s, but I do not know what will become of me for this,” she said.

  Ivy watched Rue’s face twist and glow.

  “This way.” Rue ushered Ivy home as best she could, the young subrector guiding Ivy’s stiff form through the backward alleys.

  But how strange it was that Ivy’s trip home differed so entirely from Rue’s—although their path was the same! For Ivy was not walking in the sunshine, the light of day—or even within the gloom of the city’s tall spire. She walked the land of shadows—the very blackness where the walls met the street were thick, fertile places where they bred, a sweeping swath of the darkest velvet. Her own shadow towered over her and seemed to possess a distinct dislike for Rue. She began noticing strange insects that darted around her and was forced on several occasions to wave her hand about in a vain effort to dispel the pests.

  They had reached Breaux’s garden wall.

  “Quickly,” Rue urged. A noise in the distance startled her, and she gripped Ivy’s arm tightly.

  Finally, the doorway swung inward, and the pair entered into what was previously an oasis but now brought Ivy no relief. The world was reduced to light and shadow, with no middle tones. Brightness burned into her pupils; blackness brought a deep, wrathful peril. Spiky weeds had invaded Breaux’s paradise, unseen by all but her. They menaced the silvery blooms and tugged mercilessly at their roots.

  Suddenly, before her in a sea of phosphorescence, the figure of Breaux—his robes aswirl with moonlight and shadow—a pattern like ancient writing upon them.

  “Ivy?” he asked, as he knelt down to inspect her.

  “Two parts crabgrass, a pinch of saltgrit, and a suspicion of seadew,” Ivy answered, reciting the recipe for an obscure tea.

  “Hmmm.” The Professor bent forward holding her chin, turning her face this way and that, inspecting. “Rue?” he asked. “What happened here?”

  “Snaith,” Rue whispered. “Irresistible Meals.”

  “Not enough can be said about the necessity of a good mortar and pestle!” Ivy added inexplicably.

  “She looks well enough,” Breaux assessed fina
lly.

  “I told him I was taking her to the Infirmary,” Rue added.

  What person in Caux might say they were spared the effects of poison? Not many. But Ivy was unable to speak of her experience directly, for every time she opened her mouth to complain, she found herself speaking a strange litany of recipes, unguents, and obscure inks. Her mind was completely aware of her odd behavior but powerless to intercede.

  “Snarewood!” Ivy cried. Her doom settled heavily upon her shoulders. The Prophecy—Pimcaux—what would become of them now?

  Rowan and Peps were there suddenly, battling the shadows of the garden as Ivy watched, appalled. As the foursome exchanged a meaningful, worried look, Ivy tried again to explain herself but was capable only of reciting an elemental table from her apotheopathic studies.

  She finally gave up speech and agreed to be led by Rowan to the relative comfort of a back room, where she sat dully, ignoring a cup of tea beside her.

  The Field Guide to the Poisons of Caux does not attempt to offer advice to those who have been poisoned by scourge bracken. Indeed, because the plant was believed to be extinct, very little was known about its lethal legacy. The book, however, did offer the girl a certain measure of comfort, and as she held it close to her, she wondered what its author would say about her current predicament.

  Before her tea had even cooled, Snaith’s Watchmen appeared at Breaux’s door, banging with confident authority. They acquainted themselves with the idiosyncrasies of the garden ramble, and thereafter the house, swept past the flustered Rue, and soon enough, the scarlet-clad group found both Ivy and Rowan.

  They took the outlaw pair into swift custody.

  Chapter Sixty

  Arrivals

  It was with great expectation that Vidal Verjouce prepared his playground—the Guild and the city of Rocamadour—for the production of Dumbcane’s scourge-bracken inks. The Warming Room had been given over entirely to this new venture, and even the massive round firepit was not enough for the bed of coals the Director wished ready. He had ordered his subrectors and many of the advanced students to forage for all burnables—nothing was sacred.

  All that was needed was the weed.

  The vast iron-studded portals of the old city were flung open to the hawthorn wood beyond, the impenetrable overgrowth hacked away at, revealing an old, ghostly road. Great axes clanged against cobble and the thorny path, and the bramble was gathered and hastened to ash. Outriders poured from the city, searching every grave.

  Dumbcane was given a leather apron and a reprieve, and allowed to supervise the preparations. The stinging scent of char replaced the damp, and from his chambers high atop the city, Vidal Verjouce sat and waited.

  He was not alone.

  Upon his lap, matted and ink-stained, a set of large claws gathered the boiled wool of his cassock. They drew in the stiff threads, snapping a few, finally piercing the thick fabric effortlessly—and releasing. Purring haughtily sat Six, and Six and Verjouce were waiting for word from the Outriders that their beloved scourge bracken had been found.

  A different sort of word came, however.

  “Director.” A subrector named Mimp cleared his throat. Mimp’s duties were few that led him to personally set eyes upon the Director, but here he was now. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Verjouce, the horrible wasps that circled his head, his posture of tense expectation. That cat.

  “You have visitors, master. I explained that you are not receiving anyone at present, but, well, they will not go away. They insist—”

  Verjouce fixed his potent stare on the nervous man.

  “Have Snaith see to them.”

  “Snaith, er, cannot be located currently, Director.”

  There was a moment of silence in which Mimp wished to be anywhere—even overseeing the enormous bellows that fired the cauldron’s scorched air—other than here.

  “Who are they?” asked Verjouce, stroking the matted cat.

  “They are called Taxus. They wish to file a petition.”

  “Taxus?” Verjouce intoned in a throaty voice, one not often used to ponder the unknown.

  To the subrector’s great surprise, the Director stood, not menacingly but hungrily, eagerly, the awful feline falling ungracefully from his lap with a hiss. Mimp wondered fleetingly whether he should mention the discarded clumps of cat hair that occupied the blind man’s lap—but thought better of it.

  “Yes. Show them in.” The Director gestured to the door, the wasps shifting lazily and instantly regrouping.

  The subrector bowed and departed quickly, and quite soon there was another knock.

  “Enter,” came Verjouce’s voice, and if given a choice, most would do well not to obey.

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Caged Reverie

  Axlerod D. Roux, famed trestleman and guardian of apotheopathy, sat, very cramped, in a filthy gilt cage. The cage’s owner, a surly albino vulture Verjouce had raised as a hatchling, knew no other home—and since he was displaced, he crouched atop a nearby urn. He directed an evil grimace at his unlikely usurper and occasionally pulled his head back, emitting a low hiss at the small man, shaking his feathers into spikes and spreading his wings wide.

  For the trestleman, this room held a great many memories. Ignoring the bird, Axle drifted off into a quiet, caged reverie.

  The walls were lit with mirrors and crystals, and the shadows had yet to take up residence. Rocamadour was still the school King Verdigris intended it to be—an academy for healing, for apotheopaths. Axle saw before his eyes the chamber transformed into the welcoming beacon it once was. Years of misuse peeled away in his mind’s eye. The floors were scrubbed of the recent ink stains, the black splashes upon the walls and ceiling vanishing in a mist to be replaced with rich carpets and woven tapestries. Sumptuously pigmented murals returned to their rightful place within the paneling. Only the stone table and diamond-shaped window remained the same. The bare, pitted walls had been replaced with ornately carved shelving. Huge and impressive as the cabinetry was, it was of no comparison to what it held. For lined along the room’s four walls were glorious, leather-bound books, the Good King’s own writings, and they were currently being attended to by a tall and quiet man—a man who, it was quite obvious, possessed in him great respect for the books he handled.

  Malapert.

  Axle remembered him now as a somber, learned man in his youth, before the fires had ravaged his body and mind. He paged through one enormous tome, lovingly, eagerly. Finding finally that which he sought, he turned, revealing a companion, and with great satisfaction displayed the page to this cloaked figure, a man in a long robe of silver, and one well known to the trestleman. He nodded, reading. And Axle was strengthened by the vision of his old friend and Master Apotheopath, Cecil Manx, as a younger man.

  A new scene materialized.

  The room shifted to shadow, but Cecil was still there. Behind the stone table sat Vidal Verjouce, his face vague in the dimness. Smoke filled the air. Ash drifted across the floor. Cecil gestured angrily, arms wide, staff midair, as the moon, battling smoke and flame from outside, made its abrupt appearance through the angled window above. The weak light now splashed across the Director’s face—revealing a new, terrible feature. His face was freshly bruised, and where his eyes had been that morning, there was nothing.

  Cecil Manx grew quiet—appalled. Verjouce said something, but Axle was distracted by a door opening. In the square of yellow light, there was framed the slight figure of the Director’s new servant. Although a younger incarnation, Axle recognized at once the particular stoop to the man’s silhouette—the long and haughty nose, and tatty, unkempt robes.

  Sorrel Flux neglected to bow—for who needs to bow before a master who is blind?—and, with fresh bandages in his arms, made his way over to where Verjouce waited.

  With a jerk, Axle awoke from his vision.

  The jerk was delivered by a velvet rope that attached Axle’s housing to the Director’s wrist.

  It was fortu
itous timing. The Director was preparing to greet the Taxus Estate.

  Chapter Sixty-two

  The Petition

  The Taxuses were a pair of stout fellows, one tall, one not, and as they entered the room, they carried themselves—even in this devastatingly grim environment—with confident swaggers. Yet as the elder, Quarles, greeted the Guild’s Director and looked into Verjouce’s pitted face, his voice faltered and failed him. When he realized that the man wore a crown of what seemed to be vicious stinging insects, he stopped dead in his tracks.

  “What is your errand here?” Verjouce asked in the silence, leaning forward on ink-stained hands. The meager daylight from the diamond-shaped window found his face now, and the Taxuses took an involuntary step back.

  “I—uh—we are here with an Epistle.”

  “An Epistle.”

  “W-we wish the taster Rowan Truax—as is our r-right.”

  “So it is.” His crown droned loudly.

  The elder of the two Taxuses stammered his appreciation.

  “A petition. For a graduate named Truax. So … disappointing to hear the Tasters’ Oath has been broken. We have such severe deterrents, you see.” The Director turned to the silent subrector without the aid of vision.

  “Have you examined their paperwork?”

  Mimp held a tidy ribbon-clad scroll. “The Epistle is here, Director, and all appears in order.”