Hobgoblin Night: Mask and Dagger 2

by Teresa Edgerton

  Sir Simon dropped down into a chair, though none had been offered him. "I have evidence, but not such that I could carry it here with me. I believe that you—and some other witness whom the senators would be inclined to credit-—ought to view these things exactly as I found them. The crime is rather more serious than we had thought. A crime, if not more reprehensible than the one you know of, at least more likely to cause a stir of indignation among the noble senators."

  It had been a long night, and an apprehension of things to come was beginning to weigh on Sir Simon's mind, but he had gone too far to turn back now. "I accuse Count Azimet of black Witchcraft," he said wearily, "and treason against the State."

  Don Balthazar, who had been leaning forward with his elbows on the desk, now stiffened in his chair. "That is a serious accusation!" He considered for a moment. "My cousin the Baron may consent to accompany me, but where do you mean to take us?"

  Sir Simon shifted uneasily in his seat. "To Count Azimet's palace. But I do not know, as yet, how I shall go about smuggling the two of you inside without attracting the notice of the Count or his servants."

  Don Balthazar shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands wide. "That is no problem. I can gain access, unannounced, to Count Azimet's palace anytime that I wish. Would tonight be too soon? No? Then I will arrange it."

  Now it was Sir Simon's turn to sit up, rigid and suspicious in his chair. "And just precisely how—if I may ask—do you propose to accomplish this?"

  Don Balthazar grinned at him. "The Senate has spies and informants within Count Azimet's household, paid agents to do our bidding. You appear surprised, but surely you expected no less? We keep spies in all the great households; we even spy on each other. And it is no use any of us trying to weed them out, for new ones will always come to take their place.

  "Yes," he added, in answer to Sir Simon's inquiring glance, "even in this house, there are those among the servants who regularly report all my activities to the Oligarch. I even suspect which ones they are, and am careful what I say when they are present."

  From that point on, things moved swiftly. Far too swiftly for Sir Simon's comfort. An hour later, he and Don Balthazar spoke with the Baron; two hours and a number of bribes later ("Even our agents must be paid to take these risks," said Don Balthazar), they stood in the Count's gilded salon, facing the secret panel.

  While Don Balthazar and his cousin guarded the salon door with loaded pistols, Sir Simon disarmed a small explosive device which he had previously contrived with some fuses and mercuric fulminate to prevent anyone from entering the secret room and destroying the evidence during his absence. With the bomb now harmless and the way made clear, Sir Simon led the two aristocrats into the hidden chamber.

  Don Balthazar paused on the threshold, glancing around him in bewildered amazement. The museum-like room contained Count Azimet's true collection, curios more valuable than anything he kept on public display. But not for their value only did Azimet keep these things hidden, for here were the unlawful books and the diabolical tools of a black magician.

  Sir Simon drew the senator's attention to the far end of the chamber, and a little gilded stage, the size of a puppet theatre. Indeed, at first, the aristocrat mistook it for an ordinary puppet show, until his cousin the Baron lifted up an elaborately dressed and exquisitely modeled little marionette garbed in senatorial red, and held it out for him to inspect.

  Then Don Balthazar drew a deep, indignant breath. "Infamous!" he said. "Count Azimet's wickedness passes all bounds."

  Sunrise found Sir Simon and the two aristocrats back in Don Balthazar's study, where the senator filled out a warrant for Count Azimet's arrest. "Believe me," he told Sir Simon, still fuming with indignation, "justice will certainly be done."

  Sir Simon did believe him, for among the "poppets" on Count Azimet's stage were figures bearing the strongest resemblance to people Don Balthazar knew: the Oligarch and all the senators of the Conclave, which naturally included Don Balthazar himself. The senator was profoundly shaken by the idea that Count Azimet could use his puppet—perhaps had already used it on some previous occasion—to influence his actions.

  "If you will pardon one question before I go," said Sir Simon, leaning up against the door, as though no longer capable of bearing his own weight. His pulse was racing, his limbs trembling, and if he did not soon take a large dose of the Sleep Dust, he would be in a sad case indeed. Yet it had all gone so easily tonight, his success had come so swiftly and almost unexpectedly, that he had not until now begun to fully understand the consequences of his own actions. "The Count's servants, they will all be arrested and questioned?"

  "But naturally," said Don Balthazar. "Yes, even our own agents will be arrested and questioned. Though only those who appear to know more than they are telling will be put to the torture. We know our business here, and you need not fear that the innocent will suffer.

  "As for the Oranian slaves," he added with a shrug, so that it was plain to Sir Simon that guilt or innocence would play no part in their treatment, "those who do not die under torture will be confiscated by the State."

  He went back to his warrant. But glancing up a minute later and observing Sir Simon still leaning against the wall with his face so white and hard, such a savage hostility in his eyes, the senator felt moved to add: "If there is one among the white-skinned servants to whom you feel obliged, one that you would spare some inconvenience, I advise you to spirit him away before the Senate takes official action. You have, perhaps, two hours. But do not get any ideas about helping one of the Oranians. You could not possibly smuggle him out of the city. We have very strict laws about the transport of slaves."

  Sir Simon rubbed his aching forehead. He knew that this was so, yet still he wished to at least spare the little black page. A small spell to disguise a small boy was not beyond his powers, though its duration was limited and would necessitate a swift escape. Beyond that he must just content himself with rescuing Caleb and Eirena. In fact, removing Eirena had advanced to paramount importance. Whether or not they genuinely suspected she had anything to tell, the Senate would undoubtedly be zealous in their efforts to force her to talk. Since she was apparently incapable of speech . . . Sir Simon shuddered at the thought.

  But at least now it would be possible to insure Caleb's cooperation. Before leading Don Balthazar and Baron Onda to the secret room, Sir Simon had removed two of the puppets, and carried them now in his coat pocket. One was a dapper little man, dressed all in black and silver, the other, a grizzled old man with a pigtail, carrying in his arms a much smaller female figure.

  Sir Simon calculated swiftly. He need only take Caleb, Eirena, and the page-boy out of Zammarco and as far as the villa, where he might leave them to the protection of the kindly old dwarf. He would then be free to pursue his own course. "Then, with your permission," he said coldly, "I will take my leave."

  "By all means," said Don Balthazar graciously. "But before you go, allow me to express the gratitude of the Senate. In addition to putting an end to that most pernicious traffic in human flesh, as you originally intended, you have also performed a great and valuable service to the Republic, almost certainly saving the lives of a noble body of men. Baron Aquilar misspoke when he called you an assassin. You are a most heroical gentleman."

  "You are kind to say so," murmured Sir Simon, pausing on the threshold. But for himself, he was not so certain.

  He had not, of course, really put an end to the white-slave trade. The kidnapping and export of young men and women to Eastern harems and brothels would undoubtedly continue—though, lacking Count Azimet's direction, on a greatly reduced scale. And his thoughts still lingered with those Oranian slaves and the fate he most probably—in his zeal and willful blindness!—had visited upon them. The cruel torture and possible death of perhaps a dozen guiltless Oranians, in exchange for the lives of as many Zammarcan senators? That did not appear to him in quite such a favorable light as it must, perforce, appear to Don Balthazar. And it was
not the first time that innocents had been caught up in his schemes.

  "I beg you to convey my profoundest compliments to your colleague Baron Aquilar," said Sir Simon, with a self-mocking little bow. "Pray tell him that he has not mistaken me at all."

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Which deals with Diverse matters.

  Hobb’s Church—as Mr. Herring informed Jed and Mr. Jonas—was too small to merit a Guildhall of its own, so he offered to take them to visit their fellow Glassmakers in the town of Moonstone, south of the marsh. "I fancy," said Mr. Herring, "you will find their papers of particular interest and will want to spend a day or two exploring the archives." Since Jed and the gnome were at loose ends, waiting for the turn of the season to begin constructing their machine, they readily accepted his invitation.

  The Guildhall at Moonstone was an eccentric structure, a haphazard building, part timber, part brick, and part stone. The interior was a maze of chambers and corridors: smoking rooms, libraries, dining halls, sanctuaries where the guildsmen performed their rituals, wardrobes where they kept their ceremonial garments, a museum of sorts (whose principal treasures were some odd bits of glass, three bolts of fossil lightning, some potsherds, a mermaid's tooth, and half a dozen flea-ridden hunting trophies), and many more great echoing chambers that had seen no use for years. Some few of the members even lodged there, in private apartments at the back of the building. The archives mentioned by Mr. Herring reposed in two dusty little rooms: shelves crammed with antique scrolls and crumbling yellow manuscripts, cabinets and trunks and boxes filled to overflowing with deeds, letters, and documents, everything from sermons to ballad sheets.

  Jedidiah and Mr. Jonas spent a long, industrious afternoon rummaging through the archives, making several intriguing discoveries along the way. There was An Inquiry into the Optickal Properties of Balthorian Crystals, which Mr. Jonas pounced on gleefully. And Jed conceived an awful fascination, leafing through a manuscript On the Antiquity of Blood Sacrifice. Nor could either resist a document which purported to outline the precise methods for making artificial jewels "of the Very Finest quality" out of common window glass. They spent an hour or two reading that one, turn and turn about, first Jed reading aloud while Sammuel Jonas dug through a box of deeds and legal documents; then Mr. Jonas read awhile, while Jed skimmed through the contents of a trunk of letters. Pleased with the treasures they had so far uncovered, they determined to come again the next day.

  However interesting, it had been thirsty work, and the light none too good. On the second day, they brought an oil lamp with them, and a bottle of port wine. But today it was all very dull: sermons and land grants, marriage certificates that were hundreds of years old, and other documents of no possible interest. It seemed, Jedidiah thought indignantly, that the magistrates of Moonstone, the Town Council, and the church all sent their trashy old papers to be stored in the Guildhall archives.

  Then he picked up a yellowing tract and began to leaf through it. The first several pages were missing, and the manuscript began in the middle of a sentence. It ended that way, too, as if the final pages were missing as well. But the name of the author and the subject of the tract, writ very small in faded ink at the top of each page, attracted Jed's attention, causing his pulse to quicken: Iz. Barebones: Being a Discourse on Panterran artifacts, Recently Discovered in the New World.

  Jed poured himself another glass of port, sat down on a trunk by the oil lamp, and began to read. The more he read, the more elated he became, the more convinced that the subject of Izrael Barebones's essay was an ancient ruin "built in the Panterran style," which was apparently located somewhere in the vicinity of Mothgreen Hall.

  "See here," said Jed to Mr. Jonas. "Just you take a look at this!"

  The gnome took the papers and scanned through them quickly. "My dear Jedidiah," he cried with kindling excitement. "This would appear to support the map on the Duchess's parchment. And now that I think about it, I do remember stories of ruined structures, far too complex to be the work of the aboriginal mound-folk that early settlers discovered on this continent. And I remember, also, that I once read a paper—it may have been the work of this same Mr. Barebones—advancing a theory of Panterran settlements in the New World. How dull of me not to recall any of this when we discovered the map!"

  Mr. Jonas continued to glance through the papers. "How I should like to examine these ruins. We could learn . . . well, there is no telling what we might learn! But I find no indication of where Mr. Barebones found them, or what befell any of the artifacts he discovered there afterwards. We must ask Siegfried Herring and the other gentlemen what they know of these ruins. But in the meantime—" Mr. Jonas removed his coat and dusted off his hands, as if now he was prepared to begin digging in earnest. "In the meantime we must try to find the missing pages."

  They searched until late that night, then went back home and asked Mr. Herring what he knew about Mr. Barebones and his theory of Panterran settlements in the New World. "Oh, that . . ." said Mr. Herring, after only a cursory glance at the papers. "Yes, I do seem to remember some fantastical theories along those lines. Old Izrael had a habit of raving on and on about his enthusiasms, and no one really listened or took him seriously.

  "I fear that eccentricity rather runs in that family," he added, with a whimsical smile. "My dear Sammuel, you should not regard this account as a true record. As likely as not, it was only a romance Mr. Barebones dreamed up for his own amusement."

  Nevertheless, Jed and the gnome returned to the archives the next day, and the day after that, and proceeded to turn out the contents of both rooms, examining every letter, every manuscript, every legal document in the archives, without any success. It seemed that the missing pages had either been lost for good, or else carelessly destroyed.

  ***

  On Fridays, Sera spent the morning with her youngest scholars, teaching them history, geography, and deportment. Meanwhile, the oldest girls might be down in the kitchen with Miss Barebones and the cook, learning to bake bread, to boil a rose-leaf pudding, or prepare an elegant repast of lobsters and syllabub; or else they were in the stillroom, learning to make jellies, cordials, and syrups. Many of these girls came of extremely wealthy families and would never again cook another meal after leaving the Academy. However, it was a maxim of Miss Barebones that "it is always well to know more than your servants."

  After dinner at one o'clock, the little girls went downstairs for singing lessons, and the big ones came up to Sera's schoolroom to be educated in mathematics, though it frequently occurred that these unfortunate maidens received a lesson in household management as well: Miss Thorn had a tendency to set them knotty problems involving accounts and the use of household ledgers.

  Fortunately for Sera, these older pupils of fifteen and sixteen required little supervision. She had only to teach them a brief lesson, assign them some problems to work on, and then she was free to spend the rest of the afternoon as she liked.

  On this particular Friday, the morning brought a brief flurry of snow, but the clouds passed and the wind dropped a little after noon. It was only (thought Sera) a mile from Mothgreen Academy to the town, and the road would be clear, except in a very few spots. If she and Elsie dressed warmly, the walk would not be too cold or too difficult, and there was a good possibility that Jed would drive them back, if he could borrow Mr. Herring's team and sledge.

  Sera left her pupils hard at work and went down the hall to the upstairs sitting room, where Elsie and the "middle" girls—pupils between the ages of ten and twelve—occupied themselves with a number of pretty tasks. One girl embroidered a sampler, another worked on a quilt, four others engaged in artistic pursuits: cutting out silhouettes, painting a landscape, gluing dried leaves between two sheets of translucent parchment to make a decorative fire screen. Lively red-headed Luella Battersby (who could rarely hold still for more than five minutes except when she had her little snub nose in a book) read aloud to the others from a book of poetry.

  "You ca
n ask Mary Partridge to watch them until supper," said Sera. Mary Partridge was the parlor maid, the middle-aged daughter of a local fisherman. "I want you to come into town with me. Most of my stockings defy mending, and I broke several teeth off my tortoiseshell comb."

  Elsie shook her head in a disapproving way, as though she wanted to say—but could not say while the girls were listening—that Sera would not keep spoiling her combs if she would just learn to curb her impatience and not drag her comb through her dark curls in such a reckless manner. However, she was more than willing to summon Mary Partridge, and walk with Sera into the town. "Only, you know, we shall have to ask Miss Barebones first."

  "I hardly think there will be any trouble about that," said Sera. Nor was she wrong, for the headmistress readily agreed, going so far as to commission the young ladies to pick up a few items she stood in need of herself.

  The day was cold but sunny, as they left the house and began their mile-long walk into town. Their breath made big white puffy clouds in the frosty air, but between their heavy boots and flannel petticoats, their woolen gowns and hooded cloaks, their thick wool mittens, they managed to keep warm enough.

  Though Sera had only visited Hobb's Church perhaps half a dozen times, mostly on Sundays, she felt a growing fondness for the town. The cobblestone streets were always swept clean, the housewives and merchants were amiable folk, the sailors and fishermen rough but respectful. The Church of Seven Fates was a cozy old church, presided over by a benign old vicar with the entirely appropriate name of Benjamin Bliss. And if the sight of so many tilted and crooked buildings still made Sera vaguely uneasy . . . well, she had since learned that not so much as a chicken coop had come crashing down, and was forced to conclude that the rest of the buildings were probably safe.