Mr Drake and My Lady Silver

by Charlotte E. English

  At least her clothes contrived to ward away the cold; they might, some of them, have got a little moth-eaten down the years, but their enchantments had hardly faded at all.

  The Greestone Stairs. That was where she had last seen Wodebean — disappearing, so she had thought, through a Solstice-Gate, and back into Aylfenhame. But when she had gone through herself, he had been nowhere in evidence. Invisible? Or had he, somehow, contrived to go somewhere else altogether? The rose had not been a typical example of his arts; it was too delicate, too pretty, and above all, too useless. She did not see that there was much chance of a market for such a frippery, or not one that would much interest Wodebean. He did not deal in trifles.

  So: why had he been carrying it about with him?

  She got out of bed and lit her sole candle, but its wan glow did not afford her any glimpse of the odd rose in any part of her room. The flower proved to be absent from her chest-of-drawers, and her closet too. Where—

  Oh. It darted into her head, then: a memory of the rose, lying on the counter in the baker’s shop, and of herself, walking away without it.

  ‘Fool!’ she cried. The one link she had with Wodebean, and she had left it with that blank-faced baker’s boy? Who knew what he might have found to do with it by now?

  ‘Cabbages and sugar,’ she muttered with a sigh, discarding her nightgown — ouch, the sudden bite of the cold ate at her perishing flesh before she contrived to don her undergarments, and her favourite carmine gown. Half-boots! And today, a hat, for perhaps she ought to make some small concession to appearances once in a while. Away she went into the dark early morn, the sky snowless by some small blessing, though a brisk wind did its best to carry her hat away again.

  ‘Come now!’ she protested, clutching her bonnet as she hurried through the empty streets. ‘Propriety dictates that I must have a hat! You would not wish to expose me to still more censure, surely?’

  The wind, being an uncaring sort of fellow, did not lessen its importunity one whit.

  No lights shone in the bakery, yet, and Ilsevel was reduced to pacing impatiently outside. She could dimly discern, by the light of a pallid, sinking moon, that the rose was not on the windowsill where she had seen it before. But the rest of the shop was sunk in impenetrable gloom, and she could not determine whether the flower still lay on the counter.

  Then came the rattle of locks turning back their tumblers, and with a soft clatter, the boy came issuing from a side-door.

  ‘Good morning!’ said Ilsevel briskly, and stepped forward to meet him.

  The boy — Phineas, that was it, Phineas Drake — blinked at her, silent, and dropped a box into the icy street. He stooped at once and scrambled to collect the contents spilling out onto the cobbles. ‘G-good morning,’ he said while thus engaged, and without meeting her eye.

  Ilsevel went to help, but his nimble fingers had everything retrieved and tidied in a trice, and she was not required. ‘I’ve come about my rose!’ she said, before he could drop anything else.

  Phineas regarded her properly, and after a moment’s pause — dismayed, perhaps? — he said: ‘Oh, I… I thought you said it was not yours.’

  ‘I said that I did not drop it.’

  A faint glimmer attracted her gaze: moonlight glinting off frost and sugar. He was wearing the rose in one of the button-holes of his overcoat. ‘Oh,’ he said again.

  He had fallen in love with the pretty thing, of course. They all did, these starry-eyed human-folk, the moment anything magical came in their way. She suppressed a sigh and said, as kindly as she could: ‘By rights, I suppose, it is yours indeed, for ‘twas you who found it. But I have great need of it. Will you perhaps lend it to me?’

  Phineas shifted his burden of boxes to one hand; with the other, he tenderly plucked the rose from his button-hole and gave it to her. ‘No,’ he said incongruously, and then to Ilsevel’s surprise he added: ‘It is yours. Take it.’

  Not a trace of resentment was there in his words or his manner; nor of reluctance, either. He adored the absurd thing, but gave it freely nonetheless.

  She remembered his odd solicitude about her attire, some days before. Would he really have given her his coat?

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  He ducked his head, apparently incapable of further speech, and made to pass her. The boxes, she supposed, had to be distributed somewhere.

  ‘Wait,’ she said.

  He stopped.

  Why had she said it? The word had emerged from somewhere within her; she could not have said where. She thought quickly. ‘Do you know this city well?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, milady. I have lived all my life here.’

  ‘Suppose I might like to buy some illicit goods. Where ought I to go? Will you take me there?’

  Phineas gazed at her. ‘Illicit goods…?’

  ‘Poisons and cursed trinkets,’ Ilsevel elaborated. ‘Elf-bolts and changeling-stocks. Grass stolen from a faerie throne. A convincing replica of the rosewater-strung Lyre of Maldriggan.’ She thought a moment, and amended her speech. ‘No, I retract that last one. Wodebean does not deal in fakery. If he purports to be selling the rosewater-strung Lyre of Maldriggan then it is the real one.’

  Phineas was still gazing at her.

  ‘No?’ she prompted. ‘There must be somewhere like that around here.’

  ‘The…’ began Phineas, and stopped. ‘Elf-bolts and faerie thrones? You are… quite well, milady, are not you?’

  ‘Does your household have no brownie?’ she answered, a trifle impatiently. ‘You cannot be entirely oblivious to the ways of Aylfenhame, surely?’

  ‘My — m-my father drove him off,’ mumbled Phineas, blinking, and then said, as though the idea came as a surprise, ‘You are of Aylfenhame.’

  ‘Naturally I am.’

  ‘That does explain one or two little matters,’ he said, and actually contrived to smile at her. His gaze flicked to the soft, velvet folds of her gown, so different from the drab fabrics he was himself swathed in.

  Ilsevel smoothed a hand over her bodice. ‘I will not be here for long, therefore it is not at all necessary to blend in.’

  ‘I quite see that, ma’am.’

  ‘I wish you will cease calling me by that title, for it is not quite correct.’

  The boy blushed. ‘I am sorry. What had you rather I called you?’

  Ilsevel opened her mouth, and her true title hovered for a moment on the tip of her tongue. But one or two lucky recollections saved her from making what must be an unwise revelation, and she bit back the words. ‘You had better call me Ilsevel,’ she ordered. ‘It is a serviceable enough name, is it not?’

  ‘It is a beautiful name.’

  ‘Very well. Now then, the elf-bolts? Not that I wish to procure any such wares, you understand. I merely need to question the proprietor.’

  ‘I am but a baker,’ said Phineas. ‘I know nothing of faerie thrones or magic lyres.’

  Ilsevel looked him up and down, taking in the scuffed hem and cuffs of his threadbare overcoat and the worn, obviously beloved cap crowning his head. ‘I suppose you would not, at that. But tell me, Phineas the Baker: if you wanted to buy something questionable, where would you go?’

  ‘I… have never thought about it before.’ He hesitated as he spoke, and there was a look to his face that told her he was not telling the truth.

  Ilsevel, exasperated, made him a tiny curtsey and turned away.

  ‘But,’ he added. ‘I— I— if I wanted something such, I might go to one of the pawn shops.’

  Ilsevel turned back. ‘Pawn shop? What is that?’

  ‘If I was short of money I might take something valuable — a watch, say, or a piece of jewellery — to the pawnbroker and he would give me something for it, and then sell it in his shop. It’s sometimes said that pawnbrokers are not too particular about where the items come from.’

  ‘Stolen goods?’ Ilsevel pondered that. ‘It is not Wodebean’s trade, but perhaps such a person may know more. Let
us go to one of these pawnbrokers.’

  Phineas looked down at the pile of boxes he carried, nonplussed.

  ‘After we have delivered your confectionery,’ she amended.

  ‘We?’

  ‘Shall you object to my company?’

  ‘N-no, ma’am — um, I could have no objection.’

  ‘And since my hands are free I shall also carry a box.’

  Phineas blinked, and offered her the stack of boxes almost reverently. Ilsevel selected two from the top, and tucked them under her arm. ‘Shall we hurry?’ she suggested. ‘It is rather cold.’

  ‘You don’t look like you feel it,’ said he, setting off up the street.

  ‘No, not in the least. But you do.’

  Phineas threw her a startled look, as though he were not at all used to having his comfort considered. His nose was already blue with cold; and the fool boy had been planning to give her his coat?

  Ilsevel received a curious stare at the first house they stopped at. At the second, an outright disapproving one. Quickly realising that her accompaniment of Phineas might set tongues to wagging, and perhaps to his detriment, she took to waiting in the street while he went up to the doors, her back turned.

  And then it was off to the peculiar establishments he had called pawn shops, where she took an instant dislike to the pawnbrokers.

  ‘But it is Queen Amaldria’s ring!’ she protested for the benefit of a stout, florid man who had, by the scent of his breath, been busy at the port already. ‘She is a legend in Aylfenhame! And it is real emeralds, not glass. I will need much more for it.’

  The pawnbroker, whose cramped little establishment in an insalubrious part of town had at first raised her hopes, eyed the ring again. ‘It’s real emeralds, all right,’ he agreed. ‘But if it’s the property of some queen, how did you come by it?’

  Ilsevel, quite prepared for this question, launched into a rather involved tale. She had amended some of the truth, and presented a story wherein, she strongly implied, she had appropriated the article for herself under questionable circumstances.

  Phineas, more practical than she, allotted some thirty seconds to this narrative, and then said crisply: ‘It isn’t necessary to ask too many questions about that, is it sir?’

  The stout man snorted, and handed back the ring. ‘What would your father say, Phineas Drake, if he knew you were consorting with thieves?’

  It would depend upon the thief, Phineas thought involuntarily.

  So much for the florid man.

  Phineas took her to two more such shops, with similar results. In one, she surmised, he was not only known, but had actually made use of its services — and recently, too. Hard up, was he? He ought not to be, not with such a fine little shop under his stewardship. Frowning, she tucked that information away — and tucked a sapphire ring from her left little finger into his coat pocket, too, when he was not attending to her.

  The fourth pawn shop proved, to her relief, more useful. Unusually (as she was beginning to learn) the proprietor of this dusty little place was a woman, and a sharp-eyed, shrewd sort. She examined Queen Amaldria’s ring with efficient professionalism, pronounced it acceptable, and took it without question, even when Phineas had made clear its questionable provenance.

  The money she offered for it was insultingly low, but that was all right. She would not be keeping the ring for long.

  She was a shade insolent, too. Eyeing Ilsevel’s very handsome dress, she said: ‘T’ain’t wise, walking about in stolen dresses. Sell ‘em to me, and I’ll replace ‘em with something less eye-catching.’

  With dignity, Ilsevel declined. It was bad enough to part with Amaldria’s ring, however temporarily. To sell her gowns! Unthinkable! And the idea that they were stolen! Forgetting, briefly, their masquerade, she advanced upon the pawnbroker, her mind agreeably full of wretched and painful things to do to her.

  Phineas quietly intervened. ‘Pardon me, ma’am,’ he said to the pawnbroker, with far more courtesy than she deserved. ‘Have you perhaps encountered anyone by the name of Wodebean?’

  The woman shook her head. ‘What manner of name is that?’

  ‘He would not use such a name in these parts, I am persuaded,’ said Ilsevel. ‘Only I do not know how he may be known instead.’

  ‘Forgive me,’ said Phineas gravely to her, and gently plucked the glittering rose out of her hat. He presented this to the pawnbroker. ‘Have you seen anything like this, anywhere abouts?’

  The woman’s eyes lit up. Ilsevel recognised the same starry admiration she had seen in Phineas’s face, when he had looked at the absurd flower. ‘I’ve been trying to get me hands on one of them,’ said the pawnbroker fervently. ‘Last night, yonder by the river, there was some manner of gathering going on. Typical Christmas gaieties, o’ course, only them flowers was going around and I ain’t never seen the likes o’ them before. I never did get one, nor would anyone sell me theirs. I’ll give you a fine price for yours, sir, if’n you’ll let me have it.’

  ‘This one is not for sale,’ said Phineas quickly, handing it back to Ilsevel. ‘But if you will direct us to the site of this gathering, we’ll do our best to find the source.’

  The pawnbroker sighed, and furnished Phineas with a garbled batch of directions of which Ilsevel could make no sense whatsoever. Phineas, however, accepted them as if they were perfectly comprehensible, and tipped his hat to the woman. ‘Our thanks.’

  Ilsevel smiled warmly into the woman’s eyes, and exerted herself just a trifle. ‘My ring, ma’am, if you please?’ said she silkily.

  The pawnbroker blinked, and dreamily handed Queen Amaldria’s emerald ring back to Ilsevel. ‘Of course, milady,’ she muttered. ‘What was I thinking?’

  ‘What, indeed?’ murmured Ilsevel. She dropped the insultingly small pile of coins onto the pawnbroker’s counter and sailed out of the shop, Phineas hurrying in her wake.

  ‘How did you do that?’ he asked, once they were back on the street.

  ‘Such a woman recognises when she has overstepped herself,’ was all that Ilsevel would reply.

  Phineas frowned, and said nothing.

  ‘This gathering,’ she said a moment later, hurrying to keep pace with Phineas’s quick steps. ‘Why was there not news of it further up the hill?’ For they had steadily moved farther and farther downhill with their visits to the pawn shops, and had now left the great slope entirely behind them.

  ‘Given the type of pawnbroker she is, it’s my guess the gathering was not for the law-abiding types,’ answered Phineas.

  ‘That would be Wodebean’s audience, certainly,’ Ilsevel agreed. ‘It makes a great deal of sense! I am persuaded we shall find him there.’

  Phineas drew her a little closer to himself, looking warily about as he strode quickly on. ‘Keep close,’ he instructed. ‘It is not quite safe in this part of town, especially in the dark.’

  The street did not look so very terrible to Ilsevel. The buildings were a little shabby, perhaps, but what matter that? She could smell the river-water on the wind, and judged they were not far from it. ‘You need not strive to protect me,’ she offered by way of reassurance. ‘I am well able to take care of myself, I assure you. And of you, too.’

  This wounded his pride, she immediately discerned, for he was quick to frown, and said stiffly: ‘It is my duty to make sure you are safe.’

  With an inward sigh, Ilsevel merely said: ‘How kind.’

  Phineas led her to an unlovely spot by a dark pool, the water crowded with boats and flanked by great, hulking buildings without beauty or character. Loath though she would be to admit it, she could not be unconscious of an air of something… faintly unpromising about the place, and she was not too sorry to keep close to Phineas. If there was trouble, he might need her to preserve him from it.

  That there had been revelry of some sort afoot was evident, for she was obliged to step over some one or two supine celebrants as she walked along. Mercifully, the sun was just high enough by then for he
r to discern an occasional dark shape before she stepped on it. There were few of them, however, and when Phineas attempted to question them he received little response save a groan of protest and a curse or two.

  ‘I see no roses, do you?’ said Phineas after a time.

  ‘None,’ said Ilsevel, ‘but they would hardly be left lying in the street, would they? Would you leave yours in such a position?’

  ‘No.’

  Another shadowy human shape loomed. Ilsevel paused before it, leaned down, and grabbed it by the shoulder. With a violent shake of the recumbent drunkard she said, loudly and firmly, “Wodebean, my good man! Where is he to be found?’

  She was answered, after a fashion. The wan dawn rays glinted off the silvery blade of something sharp, which was presented dangerously close to her face. ‘Unhand me, lady,’ growled a low voice.

  With a short sigh, Ilsevel took the grimy hand in a tight grip and pinched in one or two precise, sensitive spots. The knife fell with a clatter. ‘There is no need for that,’ she admonished. ‘I merely require information. Wodebean. A shortish fellow, rounded in the shoulder, probably swathed in some unnecessarily colourful mantle. He was here last night, indulging in a quite uncharacteristic display of largesse — unless he was selling the roses, which would be much more like him. You have been here for some time, I conclude by your state; have you seen him?’

  The shape surged to its feet and stood there, swaying slightly. A face was pushed unnecessarily close to hers, and she was treated to the scrutiny of a pair of dark, bloodshot eyes. ‘Who are you, lady?’

  ‘My name is Ilsevel, and if you would be so kind as to answer my questions I assure you, my companion and I will be…’ She paused, being suddenly aware that Phineas was not with her. ‘Happy to leave you in peace,’ she finished, dismissing the problem of Phineas from her mind for the moment.

  ‘Them roses,’ said the man, for it proved to be a person of the male persuasion. ‘Fellow like that was around, handin’ them things out like they was mince pies or sommat. Though he said right enough, there was a price on ‘em. Folk seemed happy t’ pay it.’ He belched, and held a hand to his head.