Bee Sting Cake

by Victoria Goddard

  One thing I liked very much about Mrs. Etaris was that she never seemed puzzled by what seemed to me odd and unexpected problems. I wished I felt half so confident or competent as she was.

  “Ah, of course,” she replied. “It had occurred to me that you might eventually want a place of your own—radical as some will take that idea. If it appeals, there is a flat above the bookstore. I will give you a reduced rent for the first month as you will need to clear it out and clean it up first.”

  Hal snorted. “I can help. We did enough of that at Morrowlea. Even if Jemis usually managed to get out of lumber-room duty on account of his sneezes.”

  “The lumber rooms of Morrowlea are much more likely to contain magical items than the flat above my bookstore,” Mrs. Etaris said, “though I can’t promise for the second room, which was left rather cluttered by the previous owner. I shall get you the keys tomorrow, Mr. Greenwing. I believe the entries are about to be taken.”

  Hal turned forward again. I tried to focus on the Dartington town crier’s announcement of the Fair and the rules for entering the competitions. I had not been to look at the White Cross since I returned to Ragnor Bella. It was not considered seemly to acknowledge the soberer aspects of the waystones.

  I forced myself to look at the tall white stone in the centre of the crossroads. The waystone was twelve feet tall and told, to those who could read its symbolism, the history of the barony in stark simplicity.

  Pre-Astandalan stonework; Astandalan runes; post-Astandalan cords to bind the broken magic.

  I did not know on which side they had buried my father, but I supposed it didn’t matter to anyone but me.

  There were milestones throughout the Empire—every mile, in fact, along the great highways. They changed material and location by region and sometimes by magical purpose. In Ghilousette they were stone cylinders breast-high on a mounted man; down by Morrowlea they were shaped pyramids not much more than four feet high. Only the numbering system and the glyphs used by the Schooled wizards were the same.

  The waystones of South Fiellan were something else. Our milestones were waist-high fluted columns made of the local stones, white limestone in Ragnor, yellow sandstone in Yellem, pink granite in Temby. The waystones were much, much older.

  The White Cross was where the Astandalan highway met Teller Road, which followed the South Rag downriver from Ragnor Bella; Dartly Road, which crossed the East Rag on the way to Dartington and Arguty; the Borrowbank Road from the Baron’s castle via the Big Church; and Old Spinney lane, which led along the south bank of the East Rag towards the Greenway and, eventually, the Talgarths’ house and beyond it the village of Ragnor Parva in the Coombe.

  I had learned in History of Magic that most crossroads onto the highway were unremarkable, the Imperial road’s magic overwhelming, containing, and subduing any elements brought by a crossing road.

  Major crossroads—where two highways met, for instance—were more significant, and like bridges had many extra spells woven into the chains and stones of the road-bed. Those were marked by special cobbles: at the great crossroads in Yrchester the place where the Astandalas Road met the East-West Highway was shown by granite blocks flecked with gold mica.

  In South Fiellan the great hundred-weight blocks of stone were not used at crossroads because of the occasional need to dig them up to bury the criminal dead.

  The White Cross was built of 6,561 basalt setts arranged inside iron bands to form a sun-in-glory with the waystone at its centre. They were basalt because of how hard it was to enchant basalt (and how hard it was, therefore, to disenchant basalt once the spells were inlaid), set in iron because iron has the curious magical property of binding loose magic into its pattern. That was, so my tutor had said, why the Good Neighbours did not like iron; it interfered with their innate magic.

  By use of the basalt and iron bands and spells of staggering complexity, concerned officials of South Fiellan could, when necessary, pry up the cobbles, dig a hole, and without destroying the great chains of spells that had bound the Empire together bury—let us give an example—the body of a traitor and a suicide.

  Just then Hal nudged me, and without paying attention to anyone around me I entered my name in the Three-Mile Race and, a little while later, the Cake Competition.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Furnishings

  HAL AND I SPENT THE night at Dart Hall, then ambled rather slowly into town along the Greenway (this time sans dragon). We had to stop frequently for Hal to look at various plants, as a result of which we did not have enough time to acquire anything from Mr. Inglesides’ bakery before I had to go to work. I did learn that the flora of South Fiellan was, due to the isolating effects of the Arguty Forest to the North and the cradle of Crosslain Mountains and Gorbelow Hills to the southeast and -west, quite distinct from other regions in Rondé.

  “That explains more than plants,” I replied, tickled by the thought.

  “You used to be on the highway to Astandalas,” Hal observed, tucking whatever-it-was into his notebook. “Surely that brought news and, er, new ideas?”

  “You may have noticed that the towns around here are not built on the highway ...”

  “Because of the customs around crossroads, you said.”

  “Yes. But it did mean that with the exception of St-Noire in the Woods, travellers had to leave the highway to get anywhere. A few did, of course, but generally speaking Ragnor Bella rejoices in its reputation as the dullest town in Northwest Oriole.”

  Hal laughed. “Where did travellers stay, in that case?”

  I frowned, trying to remember. “The Bee at the Border in St-Noire was a famous inn. The one back up from there ... I believe there was a post-stage just on the north side of the Arguty Forest. People on foot usually would stay at the Green Dragon, I think, which is about halfway between.”

  “Which is where?”

  “Ahead of us a few hundred yards—the inn, that is; the creature I am not sure of.”

  “You shall have to put your mind to its riddle at some point, Jemis, you know.”

  I frowned at the hawthorn and holly. We had passed the Dragonstone Pool, and could see ahead of us the gold-inflected end of the ancient road.

  “I’m not ignoring it,” I protested, but the words fell lamely even on my own ears. Hal looked out at the wind-tossed trees around us, oaks and ashes and hornbeam. Some sweet fragrance cut through the air; I sneezed.

  “Sweet autumn clematis,” Hal murmured. “Jemis—”

  But whatever he was going to say went unsaid, for in a great thundering of hooves and kicking-up of clods the Honourable Rag launched his big black stallion into the Greenway at full gallop towards us.

  We scattered instinctually to the sides. He ignored us with an aristocratic indifference, neither slowing nor changing his direction, and thundered off as heavily and as mysteriously as the grey wolf-knight of the Woods Noirell.

  “Nice horse,” said Hal.

  “He might have paid the tiniest heed to us pedestrians,” I grumbled. “He might have hit us.”

  “He has not given me the impression of someone overly concerned with the common foot,” Hal replied, and linked his arm with mine. “Come now, Jemis, cheer up. Why aren’t you eagerly attacking this puzzle laid before you? It seems so much exactly what you should enjoy.”

  This puzzle being the dragon’s riddle, naturally, not the riddle of the Honourable Rag’s behaviour (which only I seemed at all concerned about, or even interested in). I considered my response. I could not, actually, quite account for my reluctance to put my mind to it.

  “Something about having a destiny bothers me,” I said at last, as we turned away from the Green Dragon onto the main highway. “And a destiny tied in with my mother’s people, who are so horrible!”

  “Only your grandmother. The other people in the Woods seemed odd, but generally pleasant.”

  “I’m not related to any of the other people, alas.”

  “But you are responsibl
e for them.”

  I considered that indisputable fact. I sighed, trying to counteract the thin frisson of panic that accompanied the thought. “Yes. I shall have to see what books are in the store—on noblesse oblige, that is.”

  “I can help you with that, Jemis.”

  I smiled at him. “Thanks, Hal. Perhaps you can give me the basics before you return to Fillering Pool. So long as you don’t object to sharing my flat with me—though I imagine the Darts would willingly put you up if you’d prefer.”

  “I shared a room with you for three years, sir! Unless you were fostering a yearning for your own home all that time.”

  “I was fostering a desire to marry Lark.”

  We walked on for a while in silence. We took the Town Road (no proper crossroad waystone there; just a milestone with an arrow pointing to Ragnor Bella, 2), round a wide bend cloaked in oaks undergirded with ivy, crested a low rise, and saw spilling in the valley below us the silver ribbons of Rag and Raggle, and in the triangle made by their confluence the attractive jumble of buildings that was Ragnor Bella, the dullest town in Northwest Oriole.

  “It’s such a pretty town,” Hal murmured, then added on nearly the same breath: “About you and Lark.”

  I carefully unclenched my jaw. “Yes?”

  The road to Ragnor Bella angled down the face of the hill. Ahead of us two wagons were being driven across the humpbacked bridge over the Rag. Hal said, “I know your betrayal is more than just ... the ordinary drama of a relationship.”

  “She was drugging and ensorcelling me.”

  “About that.” He paused, seemed to be picking his words with unwonted care. “I am, as it happens, a fairly gifted practitioner of magic. Obviously I’ve not studied it at university, but my mother studied magic at Oakhill when it was more than just fashionable, and she taught me and my sister.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that while—Jemis, Lark was definitely stealing your magic. I didn’t sense anything from you while we were at Morrowlea, and I should have, from an untaught mage. I haven’t made a study of wireweed, but I know that it has concealing effects as well as permitting unscrupulous wizards to steal other people’s innate magic. That explains why I didn’t see anything more than a certain tendency towards glamour in Lark.”

  “You didn’t say anything about magical glamour.”

  “When you had fallen that heavily? After so sweetly and tentatively working up the nerve to approach Violet, you plunged headfirst into a torrid love affair with Lark. I presumed at first that it would fade—but it lasted nearly two years, so I presumed there was something deeper than mere glamour.”

  I digested this. “All right. I grant that I wouldn’t have listened to you suggesting Lark was beguiling me.”

  “I didn’t realize she was beguiling you. I thought she was just using her magic to exaggerate her charm, which is reprehensible but has never been illegal. And I thought ... Jemis, I’m not expressing myself properly here. I thought that under her influence some of your own tendencies were exaggerated, too.”

  “Oh, thank you!”

  “Please don’t snap at me. I mean to say that the wireweed and the magic did not change who you are—they, ah, brought out certain aspects more than others. Good humour, cheerfulness, quickness of thought, cleverness—those are part of you! They’re not only the effect of the drug.”

  I bit back a bitter retort, for we had been walking far faster than I’d realized and had come abreast of the carts. I did not wish to discuss my inner life with all the good folk of Ragnor Bella—my outer life was surely sufficient fodder—so I doffed my hat to the farmers and guided Hal to the bookstore. He sighed and let the conversation go, though I was fairly sure he would bring it up again at the first opportunity.

  Not that that came for several days, as it happened.

  Mrs. Etaris was in the process of mending her fire. She straightened as the bell over the door jangled. “Oh, good morning, Mr. Greenwing, Mr. Lingham. Perfectly on time, as usual.”

  “Entirely Jemis’ doing,” Hal said, bowing politely. “I am all-too-easily distracted by intriguing plants.”

  “Oh, are you a gardener?”

  “Studied botany, ma’am.”

  Mrs. Etaris’ face lit up and she launched into a sudden interrogation of Hal’s course of study. I left them to it. A half-full box of books sat on the counter. As I moved the box I saw there was an address on the lid: in a beautiful hand was written Mrs. Jullanar Etaris, Elderflower Books, Ragnor Bella, Fiellan.

  “Jullanar,” I said aloud, surprised, then flushed when Mrs. Etaris and Hal both looked at me.

  Mrs. Etaris smiled. “My name? Yes; I am of the generation that made it, ah, infamous. You may notice both my husband and my sister avoid calling me by it.”

  “As if thereby they could escape either the renown, or the notoriety, of the name?”

  “There were six girls named Jullanar in my year at Madame Clancette’s Finishing School. I doubt you’d find one of them that goes by it nowadays. Now, let me see ... we’ll put a note on the door and I’ll show you the flat.”

  THE FLAT WAS ACCESSED by a stair winding up past the old shrine (which I had never seen any indication Mrs. Etaris used). It had five rooms: a tiny kitchen, a largish parlour, a water closet, a bedroom, and a large room up another flight of stairs in the attic.

  All of them were very well stocked with miscellaneous—

  “Bric-à-brac,” suggested Hal.

  “Junk,” Mrs. Etaris replied with cheerful insouciance. “Well, here it is, Mr. Greenwing. Do you think it will suit?”

  I had already decided that the flat would suit regardless of its appearance, condition, or character. It was a pleasant surprise that it held none of the air of decrepitude or despair that, I realized unexpectedly, I had unconsciously been expecting. Somehow I had thought it would be like the Castle Noirell, but instead it was very much like Magistra Bellamy’s cottage.

  “It’s lovely,” I said belatedly. Flushed at the choice of word, caught Hal’s mocking eye, and promptly sneezed. “Ah—what would you like us to do with the, ah, bric-à-brac?”

  “Anything that seems salvageable you may salvage; let me know if you come across anything of greater interest; true junk you can put in the lane behind the store and I shall hire Messrs. Pinger and Garsom to haul it to the junkyard.”

  “Splendid,” said Hal, and promptly slung down his knapsack into a corner. “Now, Jemis, what time is lunch?”

  THE MORNING DOWNSTAIRS passed pleasantly. We could hear the odd thump and scrape as Hal moved things around above us, and a snatch of him singing something by Fitzroy Angursell. Mrs. Etaris, unpacking the box of books, listened for a few moments, expression a little wistful, before she asked me to close the door at the bottom of the stairs.

  She was, I reflected, the Chief Constable’s wife. He probably expected her to preserve the appearances of respectability, even if her own tastes ran to banned poetry and local espionage.

  I served customers and shelved books and was occasionally distracted by Gingersnap the cat, a book on gnomic utterances from Northern Voonra that had absolutely nothing to do with dragons, Alinorel or otherwise, and my thoughts.

  I was trying to remember what I’d been like, what life had been like, that first term at Morrowlea. Before Lark and her ivory pipe.

  Mr. Buchance had insisted that he had business with his partner in Chare and therefore travelled with me and Mr. Dart on our way south. We had taken the rough road running out of the Coombe into the mountains, down the other side into the Farry March, and south on that side of the mountains until Mr. Buchance and Mr. Dart had turned off towards Chare and I had continued south and west towards Morrowlea.

  At the time Mr. Dart and I had chafed at this oversight, though I could admit now that we had been grateful to Mr. Buchance for his assistance in terms of doing business with innkeepers and horse-changers and tolls: not so much for the financial help, but for the simple fact
that he was experienced in the ways of travel, and we had never been out of south Fiellan. He knew what to ask for, what to expect, what to complain about and what to tip.

  I wondered, now that it was by far too late to ask, whether that caution and oversight was some way of my stepfather showing me that his new family did not wholly exclude me. At the time I had felt a little suspicious that he was making certain that I arrived at Morrowlea in order to make sure I was safely gone from Ragnor Bella.

  Clutching my precious letter of acceptance I had presented myself at the porter’s lodge. I had tried not to stare at the magnificent architecture, at the sophisticated older students in their bottle-green robes trimmed with the colours of their disciplines, the professors in Scholars’ black, their hoods the rich green-and-gold stripe of Morrowlea. Marvelled a little at the gardens and workshops filled with students hard at work, for Morrowlea, even more so than most Alinorel universities, was a fiefdom unto itself.

  If a fiefdom, then its lord was the Chancellor, Domina Rusticiana, Scholar of Lightning, elegant as a painting of an Astandalan princess.

  She had taken my letter and bidden me be seated. I had sat in the chair before her great desk, hat in my lap, looking at the wealth of learning and secular riches in her study—the books, the artifacts, the art. She had looked me over coolly. I braced myself.

  “So you are our Fiellanese scholar,” she said. She spoke with an accent, which I learned later was that of the Astandalan court. She spoke precisely, softly so that I leaned forward to hear her.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I replied, trying not to crush my hat, waiting for the questions.

  She nodded. “Congratulations. I shall be interested to follow your career here as you come into yourself. You understand that you are not to speak of origins here? Including your status as a scholarship student?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She glanced down at my letter, tapped it with her finger. I was nearly sick with fear.

  “You are our only Jemis this year, so we need not fret about distinguishing your name. Welcome to Morrowlea, young man: I hope it is everything you have hoped for and far more.”