Hobgoblin Night: Mask and Dagger 2

by Teresa Edgerton

  "As I suspected, you are a liar," his lordship said weakly, as a spreading wetness soaked through his coat, staining the wool a dark red.

  "As I did not suspect, you told the truth," gloated Jagst, dropping the spent pistol on the table with a thud. "You are a very poor shot." Grown marvelously steady for a man who had so recently quaked in his shoes, he moved toward the door to summon his minions.

  "Regrettably, I am," murmured Skelbrooke, reaching with his good hand into his pocket. "Which is precisely why I always carry a second firearm with me." And his hand emerged from his pocket holding a large-barreled pistol, with which he coolly proceeded to blast the astonished Mr. Jagst between the eyes at point-blank range.

  ***

  Outside the apothecary shop on Blue Phoenix Lane—a street so narrow that the overhanging stories of the ancient buildings to either side made a kind of dim tunnel between—a hanging green lanthorn cast a welcoming glow at all hours of the day and night.

  It was very late indeed when the little owl-eyed apothecary, Mistress Sancreedi, fresh from a mission of mercy, trudged up the lane between the hovering buildings and paused outside her door, fumbling in the basket she carried, searching for her key. But the door, she suddenly realized with a start, already stood cracked open, and when she checked the lock, she saw that it had been battered and broken with some heavy object, like a rock or an iron bar.

  Mistress Sancreedi hesitated. But she was too old now and too set in her ways, she told herself sternly, to act the coward. Very slowly, she pushed the door aside; very cautiously, she entered the shop. A single candle, placed on the counter, illuminated the room and its familiar contents: the shelves crammed full of bottles and boxes, jars and pots; the strings of poppy heads and bundled herbs hanging from the beamed ceiling; the big cauldron by the fireplace, in which she had last boiled up a batch of rose-scented soap—

  A fragrance of rose petals lingered on the air. She put her basket down on the counter, and picked up the candle.

  A faint voice called to her from the next room, the little kitchen where she cooked her meals and brewed up some of her simples. Taking the candle with her, and gathering up her skirts in one hand, she hurried into the kitchen, giving a soft cry of distress as she recognized the blood-stained figure slumped in a chair by the hearth.

  "Francis Skelbrooke . . . my poor boy! What has happened to you?"

  "A pistol ball in the shoulder . . . not likely to prove fatal . . . and I've already staunched the flow of blood. But to remove the ball myself, that effort is quite beyond me."

  "As I should think so indeed," said the apothecary, putting the candle down on the table. Removing her hat and her woolen shawl, she immediately set briskly to work, helping him to remove his coat, examining his wound—which was a good deal uglier than he had led her to believe—and bringing in the basket containing her lancets and bandages.

  Then she brought him a tumbler full of brandy. "Drink all of this down. I am like to cause you considerable pain."

  His lordship obliged. She was silent after that, intent on her task, removing the ball, stopping a new flow of blood, dusting the wound with basilicum powder, and finally bandaging the shoulder, neatly and deftly, with several yards of lint. Skelbrooke endured it all with a white face and his teeth set tight, but he slumped a little lower in the chair when she had finished.

  "I suppose, unless you were carried here," she said, "that you can walk?"

  "With your assistance, I believe that I can."

  She slipped an arm around his waist and supported him up a short flight of stairs to her bedchamber, where she helped him to lower himself down on the bed.

  "If you would be so good," he said, just above a whisper, "there is a little box, a little pearl and gold box in a pocket of my coat . . ."

  Mistress Sancreedi left the room and came back a few minutes later with his blood-stained coat. But when she opened the box and recognized the fine crystalline powder, she favored him with a sharp, disapproving look. "You still carry the powder with you? You remain addicted to the Dust?"

  But this was not the appropriate moment for a lecture. So she put a large pinch of the drug in the palm of her hand, slipped her other arm under his shoulder, and lifted him up that he might inhale the fine powder.

  "I thank you," he said, lying back with a gasp. "I will rest easier now."

  ***

  When he awoke the next morning—or perhaps it was the next afternoon—she was sitting in a rocking chair beside the bed. A faint light from the street crept in through a window, and a lighted oil lamp hung from the ceiling. In the circle of golden lamplight the little old woman looked almost translucent, and considerably more frail than he remembered her.

  "I wonder if it would be dreadfully impertinent for me to inquire how old you actually are?" he asked, with the faintest of smiles.

  Mistress Sancreedi returned his smile. "It is, but I see no reason why I should not answer." She folded her beautiful white hands in the lap of her old-fashioned velvet gown. "I am approaching my second century. I hope you will now say that you are astonished to hear it."

  He laughed softly. "You do not look it, but I am not surprised. You are the most ethereal creature I have met in my life, even more so than the Duchess."

  She continued to regard him with that benign look. "Yes, we hybrids are an unpredictable lot. Marella Carleon is three-quarters fay, and I only half . . . yet I bear the more visible marks of our shared heritage. Then again, there are others who bear no resemblance to fairies at all—or to Men, dwarves, or gnomes, poor monsters! Yet even for those who look most human, there are certain signs, which are unmistakable to those who know how to look for them . . ."

  His lordship flung up his hand, as if imploring her not to go on, but the lady continued anyway, in her low, sweet voice. "You shall hear me, Francis. My poor boy, I know very well that you received a wound six years back . . . far worse than the hurt which brought you here last night, for that earlier one was a wound to your heart and your mind, and infinitely deeper. Since then—"

  "I deplore the necessity of contradicting you," his lordship interrupted, "but it was not I who suffered six years ago, not in any extraordinary way. I was but ill for a very few weeks. Others, entirely innocent, suffered horribly due to my criminal weakness, and for that—"

  "Pardon me," said Mistress Sancreedi, "but I only meant to say: I believe that you were unhappy long before that. Not so miserably unhappy as you are now, but a man at peace with himself might have forgiven himself for mistakes he made at such a young age and with all good intentions, and not have taken so deep a blow to his self-esteem. And Francis, if you wish to be well again, you must finally recognize the nature of your complaint."

  His lordship made a wry face. "Since you would have it so, madam, pray tell me the nature of my complaint."

  "It is a complaint which Marella Carleon—and, yes, I myself, to a lesser extent—knows very well," said Mistress Sancreedi, stretching out a hand to give his good arm a comforting pressure. "Come, Francis, you know what I would tell you, but you refuse to believe it. Can it be that you carry a prejudice against my kind?"

  Skelbrooke frowned and shook his head. "I am not a bigot, but . . ." One hand plucked uneasily at the covers. "I should like to think that someday I might be whole. But if this thing you would tell me should chance to be true, then I never will be, will I?"

  Mistress Sancreedi made a hopeless gesture. "Perhaps we should speak of this later, when you are feeling stronger. Instead, I shall attempt to say something reassuring. The ball did strike the bone, but only just, and you are not like to be permanently disabled. But perhaps I need not tell you that."

  He smiled ruefully up at her. "I am not in the habit of sustaining these wounds quite so often as you seem to suppose, dear lady." He struggled to sit up, and she left her rocking chair to rearrange the pillows under his head and shoulders.

  "I was alluding, of course, to the years you spent studying medicine, before I knew
you," she said. She draped a grey wool shawl across her shoulders and settled back into her chair. "You may tell me, now, who it was that shot you, and under what circumstances."

  "I fought a duel with a man who had once done me a great wrong."

  She heaved a great sigh, as though some weight had been lifted from her mind. "It was a fair fight, then? There is no danger of being taken up by the Watch?"

  "It is unlikely that I will be taken up by the Watch. My enemy is dead, and no one knows that it was I who called on him last night." Skelbrooke winced as he changed position on the bed. "I regret to say that it was . . . not entirely . . . a fair fight. I believe I neglected to mention that I had two pistols to his one."

  He could see that he had shocked her, and very likely disappointed her as well, though she struggled to conceal the extent of her dismay. "Two pistols to his one? And what kind of behavior is that, pray tell!"

  He looked up at her with a hurt, wistful smile. "Not the behavior of a gentleman, or a man of honor, certainly. Though that was how I originally meant to conduct myself," he said quietly. "It was a deed worthy of an assassin, I should say."

  The old woman shook her head disapprovingly, but her voice remained gentle. "An assassin. I see. And is that what you are, Francis Love Skelbrooke—is that how you intend to go on? I seem to recall a time when your ambitions were far more noble than that."

  His lordship shaded his eyes, as if to protect them from the light. "It is rather late for me . . . now . . . to consider changing what I am. I very much fear that I am no longer fit for anything better."

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Wherein Jedidiah and Mr. Jonas experience a Delay, and Sera begins to feel Persecuted.

  The season of Thaw had nearly passed, and the days hastened on toward the Festival of Quickening. In the countryside surrounding Hobb's Church, the first green shoots of crocus and snowdrops pushed their heads above the soil, fuzzy catkins began to appear on the branches of birch trees, and red-gold buds virtually exploded on a stand of horse chestnuts outside the gates of Mothgreen Academy. In the town itself, flocks of migrating robins joined the sea gulls and pigeons feeding on the square; and the wych-elms shading the little white church were suddenly covered with tiny, wine-colored blossoms.

  Meanwhile, everyone began to prepare for the coming holiday. Girls made wreaths of twigs, straw, and bits of red yarn, meant to resemble bird's nests, which they hung over the doors of their homes or attached to the crowns of their bonnets. Housewives boiled eggs and baked tiny seedcakes. And their men climbed up to the roofs and took down all the weathercocks, which, painted in fresh bright colors and decorated with ribbons, they would put back in place on the eve of the holiday.

  In Hobb's Church, the Festival began at daybreak with a bonfire (fed by nine different kinds of wood) on a barren stretch of ground just outside the town. That same afternoon, a pole was erected on the green, and the dancing went on for hours. But in Moonstone the events were rather more colorful, with processions by all the guilds, and a particularly impressive ceremonial at the center of the town, conducted by the Glassmakers of both villages.

  A great wicker house had been previously erected, like a gigantic birdcage, and a multitude of artificial birds made of cloth and bright feathers was perched inside. At noon the Glassmakers emerged from their hall, in their most splendid robes and their powdered wigs, bearing on their shoulders enormous wicker beasts adorned with flowers and colorful ribbons, which they carried through the crowded streets to the center of the town, and deposited as offerings in the house of branches. The antiquity of the ceremony was known to all: in a wicked and violent era, midway between the fall of Panterra and the present enlightened age, the birds and the beasts had been living creatures, a sacrifice of blood and bone to terrible pagan gods. Some who observed today could not repress a shudder, thinking of that ancient horror.

  But now it was very different. The Glassmakers had soaked their creations in essential oils, and when the wicker house burned, the flames leaped up in lovely jewel-like colors and filled the air with the scent of flowers.

  The holiday over, the citizens of both towns settled down to their usual pursuits. It was therefore to the most sober and hardworking of communities that Moses Tynsdale returned, two days after the Festival, from a journey of several weeks' duration.

  He rode into Hobb's Church just after sunset, left his horse at a public stable, and started toward the respectable boarding house, run by a decent old dwarf, where he maintained a set of rooms. The lamps already burned on every corner, but in between there was only pale moonlight to illuminate his way. Crossing Gooseberry Lane, he met Jedidiah Thorn and Mr. Jonas.

  "Reverend Tynsdale, sir. We believed we had seen the last of you," said Jedidiah, amiably enough, but with a sparkling hostility in his glance. The clergyman wondered, with contemptuous amusement, if young Thorn actually deluded himself that his frequent pastoral visits to the Academy were motivated by a desire to court either of the young schoolmistresses.

  Tynsdale bowed solemnly. "I have been out to the western settlements. They are rough folk, but godly. I believe that my talents may be put to better use here in Cordelia."

  They exchanged a few polite insincerities, then the youth and gnome bowed, and continued on their way. Tynsdale watched them go, with something like a sneer on his face. They made a singularly ill-assorted pair: young Thorn so tall and broad, and the short, squat figure of the gnome stumping along beside him. They did not appear to notice when Tynsdale fell in behind them, and, keeping to the shadows as much as possible and moving with a soft step, followed silently after them.

  They disappeared inside the Eclipse. Tynsdale waited a moment or two before entering the tavern. Once inside, he lingered in the shadows near the door, sweeping the room with his brilliant glance, until he spotted his quarry seated in an ingle-nook at the back of the common room, well removed from the other tables. They were deep in conversation with an old man in a rough coat and a cloth cap which marked him as a sailor.

  Tynsdale experienced a moment of doubt. He had supposed that young Thorn and his female relations were settled in Cordelia, at least for another season or two. If they were not, if they planned a sea voyage, at this of all times . . .

  The clergyman insinuated his way up to the bar, procured a mug of porter, moved a three-legged oak stool, and sat down on it just around the corner from the alcove, where he could hear most of the low-voiced conversation.

  "Them repairs to the Otter is taking longer than I anticipated," the old salt was saying. "And it ain't been easy to recruit just the sort of crew you're asking for." He dropped his voice still lower, and Tynsdale had to lean toward the inglenook in order to hear him. ". . . and off we go without any cargo to speak of, to an unknown destination, and no explanation to what's it all about . . . naturally, the men have got questions. I hope the gentlemen won't take any insult if I speak out plain. We're honest seamen in these parts, and we don't want any part of piracy or privateering. Yes, and the trustier hands, which are inclined to keep quiet and discreet like you asked, they're just the ones as ask the most questions before they sign on."

  "I can assure you, Captain Hornbeam, that we contemplate nothing of the sort," said Mr. Jonas. "We propose an honest enterprise, though we mean to keep it secret. The merchandise that we mean to obtain: you must understand that our . . . competitors . . . are not at all scrupulous men and might use any information they could obtain to our serious disadvantage. It is often so in trade, you know."

  "That may be," said Captain Hornbeam. "Well . . . I know it's often so, and I'll pass your assurances on to the men. But what about that machine of yours you mean to bring on board? I can't make head or tail of it, and neither will my men. What they don't understand, they're not going to like. You might say we sailors are a superstitious lot, but there it is: we're mindful of our luck."

  Mr. Jonas cleared his throat. "Perhaps you, Jedidiah, could address the Captain's concerns. I should tell you, Captai
n Hornbeam, that Mr. Thorn at one time lived among fishermen and seafaring men and had a most particular acquaintance with—with the tides and the natural elements. Would you, Jedidiah, consider our device to be unlucky?"

  "Were you a sailor, Mr. Thorn?" asked the Captain. Tynsdale cocked his head, listening for the reply; this was certainly the first that he had heard of it.

  "I used to . . . navigate . . . a river, not far from the sea," Jedidiah said carefully. "I've a fair degree of familiarity with sailors' superstitions, and entertain the very highest respect for the sagacity of seamen like yourself. You may accept my personal assurance that the magnetic device we mean to bring on board will in no way interfere with the luck of the crew."

  Captain Hornbeam hemmed and hawed, but when young Thorn had regaled him with half a dozen stories, all of them bearing the ring of authenticity, current among "the sailors of the town where I was born," the Captain accepted his credentials, allowed himself satisfied, and said that he would speak with the men and attempt to reassure them.

  The Captain then rose and took his leave. Moses Tynsdale, who did not wish to be recognized by Jedidiah or Mr. Jonas—particularly in the act of lurking around the corner—concluded that the time had arrived for him to depart, and left the tavern somewhat precipitously.

  ***

  "All these delays," said Jedidiah to Mr. Jonas, as they left the Eclipse and proceeded down a lamplit lane in the direction of Mr. Herring's cottage. "If we remain here too long, Sera and Elsie will grow fretful, they will want to move on. Indeed, we ought to move on, for the safety of all concerned. That is the only way that we can continue to elude the Duchess.

  "And there is another reason I ought to resume my travels. I promised Mr. Owlfeather I would keep traveling and that I would send back word, from time to time, telling him all I had learned about the manufacture of glass and porcelain in the New World. It's been a year and more already, and I've scarcely learned anything."