Rise of the Ragged Clover

by Paul Durham

  “What do you see?” Truitt asked.

  “Not much. Let me have the torch.”

  Truitt handed it to her, and she waved it around to get a better look.

  “We’re in a tall chamber. There are stacks and piles everywhere—some sort of storeroom.” A glint of glass on a table caught her eye. “Wait, I’m going to light a lantern.”

  The ground crunched under her feet as she moved, as if she was stepping through gravel.

  Rye opened the lantern and lit it. As it flared to life, the entire chamber twinkled around them. She sucked in her breath at the sight.

  “What is it?” Truitt asked.

  “Coins,” Rye said in disbelief. “Jewels. Mountains of them.”

  All around the circular chamber, loose hills of gold grommets seemed to grow like mounds of earth. A carpeted floor of silver shims shifted under her boots. Coin purses, large and small, were stacked like sandbags. Towering shelves much taller than Rye overflowed with ornate platters and bejeweled picture frames.

  “Longchance’s Treasure Hole,” Truitt said. He crouched and picked up a handful of loose coins, letting them fall between his fingers. “Slinister must not have found it; otherwise they’d have emptied it by now.”

  Rye found a casing to house the torch, picked up the lantern, and wandered about the chamber in disbelief at the wealth strewn around her.

  “There are more coins here than all the shops on Market Street will see in a lifetime,” she said. “And—oh!”

  Rye leaped back when she came to a large wooden worktable. A chair was occupied by an emaciated body, thin onion-like skin pulled tight over its skull that lay slack-jawed on the table. Gray hair stuck up like dried thatch from its balding head, and ragged clothes hung from its skeletal shoulders. The jewel-encrusted scabbard of an ornamental sword dangled from its belt. She saw only one arm, and suddenly felt sick. Tied on its sole wrist was a familiar, faded blue hair ribbon—one that was once worn by her mother.

  “What is it?” Truitt said.

  Rye covered her nose with her arm. “There is—well, there was—a man here. Constable Boil. He’s seen better days.”

  Truitt’s face tightened. “I’ve heard of nobles who wall up guard dogs in their treasure holes. One was even said to keep a full-grown cave bear in his. They’d throw down just enough food and water to keep the guardians alive, but the solitude made them deranged and vicious—a final defense against any unwitting robber who stumbled upon the hole.”

  “It seems Longchance took it one step further,” Rye said flatly.

  “With the Earl locked away, nobody would have known he was here,” Truitt said solemnly. “He must have starved.”

  Boil had been a vile man, but even he didn’t deserve such a fate.

  Rye gave the condemned Constable a wide berth as she explored the Treasure Hole. In addition to the mountains of coins and piles of precious stones and fine jewelry, the secret storeroom was filled with other, less conventional treasures. Goblets and platters, precious silks and sculptures. Rye examined some of the fine paintings stored on easels and protected under drop cloths. But her eyes were soon drawn to a less obvious one, a portrait housed in a silver frame much smaller than the cover of Tam’s Tome. This painting lay on its side and was covered only by a layer of dust. But when she blew it off, it was clear that, unlike Longchance’s own paintings that lined the walls of the Keep, this one had been the work of a master. The lifelike details were extraordinary given the small size of the canvas.

  It was a portrait of a seated young woman with lush black hair pulled up in a graceful bun. She held an infant on each knee, the babies swaddled in fine black-and-blue gowns. Rye studied their faces. The artist had made their cherubic cheeks rosy and full and, in each case, their big wet eyes were mismatched—one brown, the other blue.

  Rye’s own eyes darted to Truitt, who was running his fingers over various items in the Treasure Hole. She looked back at the face of the woman in the portrait. Her high cheekbones and delicate nose were vaguely familiar. This was Lady Emma—Truitt and Malydia’s mother.

  “Truitt,” Rye said, clutching the painting carefully. “There’s something here you should have. It’s a pocket portrait. Of you . . . and Malydia, and . . . your mother.”

  Truitt paused and approached Rye. She held out the frame and placed it in his hands carefully. Truitt felt the ornate edges, and ran his fingers over the canvas’s small surface, as if trying to glean an image from the topography of oils.

  “I’ve never known what it’s like to see, so I can’t say I’ve ever missed it,” Truitt said. “But for the first time, I wish I had my eyesight.”

  Truitt furrowed his brow. “What does she look like?” he asked quietly.

  Rye watched as his unfocused eyes ran over the surface of the painting.

  “Beautiful,” she said.

  Truitt nodded. “Thank you for finding this, Rye. I shall keep it.” He eased it inside one of the many large pockets lining his leather courier’s coat.

  Rye glanced again at the awe-inspiring wealth around her. “Truitt, if you become Earl, will all this be yours?”

  “I suppose it will,” he said. “Not that I have much use for a dark hole full of gold and silver.”

  “But think of all you could do with it,” Rye said. “You could provide homes to the link children. Rebuild the bridges and walls, and make sure that every villager could have a feast on Silvermas.”

  “That’s certainly more sensible than hoarding it in the walls of a castle,” Truitt said. “But all of that remains a job for another day. Right now, we need to get ourselves out of the Keep.”

  Truitt was right, of course. While Tam’s Tome might be able to tell her how to summon a Reckoning, nobody would be able to see any signal inside this decrepit vault. She studied the walls with her lantern. Rye didn’t like the idea of heading back into the main corridor while Slinister and the Fork-Tongue Charmers were still searching for her, but she could find no other exit except for the way they’d come.

  “Longchance sealed the passageways,” Rye said, “but he must have gotten his treasure in and out of here somehow. What good’s a Treasure Hole if you can’t get to your treasure?”

  “Maybe that’s what the lift is for,” Truitt said.

  “What lift?” Rye asked, pivoting the lantern toward him.

  “Have a look, and you tell me.” In his hand, Truitt held a thick rope fixed to a pulley, its length stretching high up into the darkness above them.

  For a long while, Rye just squinted up to where the rope disappeared in the shadows, trying to see how high it extended overhead. With her foot, she tested the small wooden platform rigged to the ropes. It wobbled under her weight but remained reasonably secure.

  “Will it hold us?” Truitt asked.

  “Not together, but maybe one at a time,” Rye guessed.

  They both turned at the sound of dull, distant voices from the far end of the hollowed passage. The Fork-Tongue Charmers were still searching the corridor.

  “Do you think they’ll find us?” Rye asked.

  “Does it matter? We really can’t wait to find out.”

  “Then we better get started,” Rye said. “Who’s first?”

  Truitt thought for a moment. “You go. You’re lighter, but more importantly, you’ll be better able to see what’s at the top of this chamber. Take the lantern, and be sure we’re not going from bad to worse.”

  Rye positioned herself on the wooden platform, shifting her weight to achieve an uneasy balance. She gripped the rope tightly in her palm.

  “I’m ready,” she said.

  Truitt wrapped his hands around a length of rope closer to the pulley. “Me too. Pull with all your might.”

  Truitt pulled downward, hand over hand. Rye did the same, as best as she was able, until the platform slowly wobbled and began to rise under her feet. Rye felt the wood pitch beneath her and dropped into a crouch to keep from tumbling over the side. She could feel the strain
in the ropes as she inched ever-so-slowly higher.

  Rye pulled until her shoulders ached and the skin of her palms burned. She carefully peeked over the edge, where she could still see Truitt far below in the light of the torch they’d placed at his feet. She looked up, where the looming shadows of a circular ceiling neared.

  “Almost there,” she called down, nerves in her voice.

  “You’re not afraid of heights, are you?” Truitt called back.

  “Not of heights,” Rye clarified. “Of falling.”

  Rye kept tugging and heaving until she was out of breath. Finally, the platform came to a stop, nestling into a smaller alcove at the top of the Treasure Hole that housed the upper pulley. She stepped out onto a narrow but sturdier landing and took a moment to appreciate the solid footing. Just overhead was an even smaller portal. With her skinned palms, she pushed aside what felt like a flat wooden covering.

  “That’s it,” Rye called down. “I’m here. There’s some sort of hatch. It’s small but we can fit through it.”

  “Send it back down,” Truitt called.

  They reversed directions on the rope, and with Truitt’s help from below, the platform quickly descended to the floor of the Treasure Hole.

  Rye caught her breath and waited for the rustle of ropes to indicate that Truitt had boarded the platform. When they remained still, she carefully peered down and could just make him out in the torchlight.

  “You’re not afraid of heights, are you?” Rye joked.

  Truitt tilted his head up, then back at his surroundings in the Treasure Hole. He seemed to hesitate.

  “Come on,” she called again. “Climb on.”

  But she heard only the shuffle of coins in reply. Truitt was stooped over, gathering up as many coins as he could carry in his arms. Rye couldn’t believe her eyes.

  “Truitt! What are you doing?”

  But he disappeared, hurrying away from the torchlight. Then she heard his voice again, muffled but calling loudly, somewhere farther in the distance.

  “Help!” he cried out. “Here! In the wall! She’s here in the Keep’s Treasure Hole!”

  Truitt was at the crack behind the tapestry, crying out for the Fork-Tongue Charmers.

  16

  A Tome Guards Its Secrets

  Truitt’s words shocked Rye worse than a hornet in the ear, and she had to grip the ledge to keep from tumbling off.

  Just as she righted herself, the ropes lurched and the platform bobbed far below.

  “Come on, Rye,” Truitt’s voice called out again. “Give me a hand.”

  He was on the platform, urgently working the lower pulley. Still stunned, Rye took hold of the rope and pulled. Truitt clambered off quickly when it reached the top, and she just stared at him blankly.

  “We should get moving,” he said. “It won’t take them long to chisel through that wall.”

  “I thought . . . I thought you . . .” Her words trailed off.

  “You thought I what?” he asked with a bewildered look.

  Rye just shook her head. “Never mind.”

  Together they squeezed through the small portal above them.

  Rye and Truitt hurried through what turned out to be Earl Longchance’s master chamber. Judging by the mess, the Earl’s private living quarters had long since been picked clean by the Fork-Tongue Charmers. But Rye now understood why the Keep’s new occupants had yet to find the Treasure Hole.

  The hole itself, and its lift and pulleys, were hidden beneath what appeared to be the tower’s garderobe—the Earl’s toilet facilities. The portal Rye and Truitt had crawled up and through was built to look just like a stone privy. It was an ingenious disguise, as no looter was likely to carefully investigate that.

  “Why did you lead them to the Treasure Hole?” Rye asked, finally regaining her composure as they continued through an antechamber and cautiously descended a flight of stairs. Truitt had spent years secretly exploring the Keep under the cover of darkness, and they were back in an area he knew well.

  “Because we needed to give them something they’d find even more interesting than you,” he said. “A handful of gold grommets helped whet their appetite.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Stop and listen,” Truitt said.

  They both paused. “What do you hear?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” Rye said.

  “Exactly. I’ll bet Slinister and the Fork-Tongue Charmers are attacking that wall as we speak, probably already squabbling about how they’ll divvy up their riches. Otherwise, they’d be searching this tower right now.”

  Rye and Truitt continued downward. When the stairway ended at the main corridor not far from the Great Hall, they found the stretch of Keep quiet except for the crackle of fire from inside the Hall’s doors.

  “You cleared the way for us,” Rye said quietly, and felt ashamed for ever thinking otherwise.

  Truitt just shrugged. “It might buy Malydia some time, too. Let’s get you to the Spoke, then I’ll come back for her,” he said.

  “All right, but just one more thing,” Rye said, hurrying toward the double doors. “Keep an ear out.”

  Rye rushed into the Great Hall, where the fire still raged over a carpet of broken plates and goblets. But the towering chamber was empty of all Fork-Tongue Charmers, except for one. From his chair, Gibbet’s blank face stared out at her as she made her way to the pile of medicinal pouches in the corner. If he took notice of her, he gave no indication. Someone had balanced a ripe apple on his motionless head. The fruit didn’t even wobble as she passed by.

  Rye filled her pockets with as much medicine as they would hold.

  “It serves you right, you know,” she said, pointing an accusatory finger at Gibbet. “Shame on you, chasing little girls up into trees.”

  Rye turned to make a hasty exit but paused, her conscience getting the better of her. She sighed and approached Gibbet carefully.

  From an arm’s length away, she snatched the apple from his head and placed it into his cold hand.

  Better that the Fork-Tongue Charmers not get the idea to use it for target practice.

  Rye was exhausted by the time she dragged herself up from the familiar wine cellar, her oversize boots heavy on the worn wooden steps. The hour was late but there was no need to be silent—she knew the Dead Fish Inn never slept. And yet, when she reached the main floor, she found the inn deserted. Its great iron portals were securely barred but unguarded. No barkeep manned the taps, and overhead the candles of the inn’s looming sea monster skeleton chandelier burned low. All the tables were clear of patrons and platters. All except one, that is.

  Two bodies rested their heads on the carved top of the table called the Mermaid’s Nook. A boy’s sleepy face pushed itself up from its spot among the mermaid’s curves.

  “Rye!” Quinn called, rising to his feet.

  Folly’s white-blond hair stirred and she blinked her blue marble eyes awake.

  “We’ve been waiting up all night,” she said groggily. “We were afraid you’d never get here.”

  “You found Tam’s Tome,” Quinn said in awe, spotting the leather-bound book wrapped tightly in her arms.

  Rye placed it on the table with a thud and dropped herself into a chair, fatigue catching up with her.

  “Like taking sweets from a baby,” she said.

  “Really?” Quinn asked.

  “No,” Rye said with a slump of her shoulders. “It was awful. But I got this, too.” She placed the pouch of yarrow flower on the table. “For the Pendergills.”

  Folly pushed herself up and wrapped her arms around Rye’s shoulders. “No more waiting around for you,” she whispered. “From now on we stick together.”

  Folly walked behind the bar and began to steep some tea.

  Rye glanced over her shoulder at Folly, then turned back to Quinn. “Where is everyone?” she mouthed.

  “Asleep,” he said with a shrug. “Turns out there’s not much to do around an inn when you have no g
uests.”

  Folly returned to the table with three steaming mugs, and Rye told them about Malydia and the Fork-Tongue Charmers, of the Treasure Hole, and of her narrow escape from Longchance Keep. Rye’s friends had been through too many scrapes with her to doubt a word of her story.

  “So what now?” Folly asked once she’d finished.

  “Now we summon a Reckoning,” Rye answered.

  “How do we do that again?” Folly said.

  “Tam’s Tome will tell us.”

  “What part?” Quinn said, eyeing the thick volume.

  Rye shifted the heavy book so that it lay between them on the table and cracked open the cover. “Harmless said there’s a chapter called ‘The Reckoning.’ So I guess we start there.”

  The daunting, tight-knit scrawl of the tome’s handwritten words stared up at them. There must have been a hundred lines per page, occasionally broken up by painstakingly lifelike illustrations.

  Quinn sputtered his lips and scratched his hair. “I hope this tea is strong, Folly.”

  The three friends scoured the pages of Tam’s Tome well into the early morning hours, until they could no longer see straight. They were on the verge of giving up for the night when they finally found the chapter titled “The Reckoning.” A pit grew in Rye’s stomach as they read about the contest. As Harmless had explained, the Reckoning was a harsh and ancient method of trial by combat—one used to resolve only the most serious differences among the Luck Uglies. In order to avoid a civil war that might destroy the brotherhood, the parties in dispute and their designated men-at-arms would compete under a set of agreed-upon rules. No other Luck Uglies were permitted to intervene. There could be only one winning team. Those who lost but otherwise survived the Reckoning were forced to leave the Luck Uglies in one final manner. Via the Descent.

  It was the thought of yet another Descent that churned Rye’s stomach.

  But despite reading and re-reading the text, studying its words, and debating their possible meaning, they had yet to find any clue as to how to actually summon a Reckoning. As a distant cock began to crow outside, announcing the imminent arrival of dawn, Rye tried to shake a disheartening thought.