by Garth Nix
‘Sire, the good villagers of Lenburh are assembled.’
Hundred’s soft voice broke the breath that Eleanor had been holding as she waited for Sir Halfdan’s burial rites to begin. The elderly knight’s body had rested all night in the manor house’s great hall, wrapped in his best cloak with his shield across his chest and his sword at his side. Eleanor had volunteered to sit with him, and Odo had joined her, relieving her at the old knight’s side when she grew tired. The two times she slept, she dreamed of her mother, who had once lain in that very spot. It seemed an age ago.
Now it was Sir Halfdan’s turn. Reeve Gorbold relinquished his position at the head of the funerary procession to Sir Egda and joined the others bearing the body. Even though he was already one of the strongest villagers in Lenburh, Odo suppressed a grunt of effort as they raised Sir Halfdan high. What the old knight had lacked in a complete set of legs he had more than made up for in girth. A lonely bell tolled as the solemn procession made down the hill to Sir Halfdan’s family crypt, past the small fenced-off area of the estate where Eleanor’s mother was buried.
Eleanor wondered if she would join her mother there one day. Someone would need to assume the mantle of Sir Halfdan’s estate, and Odo was the most likely to settle here when he attained his majority. Eleanor herself would prefer to be adventuring and seeing the world.
Deep in these thoughts, Eleanor walked into Hundred’s back as the procession came to a halt. The bodyguard clicked her tongue.
‘Brave in heart,’ said Sir Egda, tapping one end of his staff softly against the earth, ‘and noble in death, we farewell this good knight and remember his deeds.’
He stood aside to let Sir Halfdan’s bearers into the darkness of the crypt itself, to the stone plinth that had long ago been prepared by Borden, Sir Halfdan’s loyal squire, who had gone to his own grave earlier that day. Odo stooped to avoid banging his head, and tried to ignore the stories he’d heard about carnivorous barrow bats inhabiting such places. He had avoided asking Biter if they were real, in case it turned out that they were. When his hauberk snagged on the sculpted foot of a knight’s effigy protruding from another plinth, he freed himself with a quick tug and a reminder to concentrate on moving quickly but respectfully. Being a funeral bearer was a great responsibility.
Ahead of him, holding Sir Halfdan’s feet, Symon turned and bent forward. Odo followed, and together the bearers settled the fallen knight on his final resting place.
When that was done, Odo stepped back and bowed.
Outside, Runnel twitched. Eleanor drew her from her scabbard, raising the sword in sad salute. A grey light shimmered along the blade, reflections from the cloudy sky.
‘Be at peace, knight of Lenburh,’ said the blind old man. He turned and tapped the way to the village hall, following the sound of the bell. The villagers followed him, grim-faced. They had much to discuss.
‘Our lands cannot stand unprotected!’ cried Gladwine, whose sheep grazed the southeast meadows. ‘Without a steward, we are vulnerable to any passing thief or brigand!’
‘How will we find a new one?’ demanded Leof the woodworker.
‘Who will guard us?’ went up the cry from several people.
‘Not these children,’ scowled Elmer, Addyson and Aaric’s father. His sharp eyes took in Eleanor and Odo where they sat to either side of Egda and Hundred at the front of the hall.
‘We’d do a better job than a baker,’ muttered Eleanor, resenting the implication that they wouldn’t be good enough. They were knights. They had fought serious enemies and had stared down a real, live dragon – or at least they’d survived an encounter with one, which was more than most people could say, Elmer included.
‘I have sent word by pigeon to Winterset,’ said Symon across the restless crowd’s murmuring. ‘My colleagues in the capital will report to the regent, who will appoint the next steward.’
‘How long will that take?’ asked Swithe the leatherworker, who had wanted to skin the bilewolves before burning but found the hides too foul-smelling for any purpose. ‘What if more of those terrible creatures come?’
‘There will be no more,’ said Hundred in a clear and steady voice. ‘I traced the pack’s spoor to a hollow where a craft-fire recently burned. This fire was lit to summon the bilewolves and send them against my liege.’
This was news to Odo, who struggled to keep the shock from his face. Someone had deliberately called the beasts that had killed four of his fellow villagers? As well as Sir Halfdan and Squire Bordan, Lenburh had lost Halthor, an apprentice smith, and Alia, who had moved from Enedham last year to look after her sick aunt.
A flame of sudden rage burned in his chest.
‘Can we track the person who lit the fire?’ he asked in a pinched voice. ‘They must be brought to justice.’
‘They will be long gone from here now,’ Hundred said with finality. ‘Our best hope of finding them is to wait until they try again.’
‘We’ll be ready when they do,’ said Eleanor, patting Runnel’s hilt. The swords stayed silent during the meeting, knowing that some in the village were still unnerved by their enchanted nature.
Elmer snorted. Egda’s beaked nose swivelled to point directly at him. The baker swallowed whatever further comments about the young knights’ competence he might have offered.
‘You will be ready,’ Egda said, ‘and Lenburh will be safe, for I am leaving at tomorrow’s dawn.’
A gasp rose up from all assembled. Only Hundred was unsurprised.
‘So soon, sire?’ asked Reeve Gorbold, who Odo had overheard making plans to profit from Egda’s presence by charging villagers in the area a halfpenny to see the former king in his new home.
‘Word of trouble in the capital reached me in my self-imposed exile,’ Egda said. ‘Winterset is my destination. Besides, I cannot remain here and put innocent lives at risk. Better to continue on my journey north and east and cut the source of our troubles from the kingdom once and for all.’ Eleanor felt a stirring of excitement in her gut. After a month of waiting for something to happen, an adventure had come right to her doorstep.
‘We must accompany you, sire,’ she said, leaping to her feet and drawing Runnel in one swift movement. ‘We will be your honour guard!’
‘If you would have us,’ said Odo, doing the same, but more cautiously. Biter clashed against his sister’s steel with a ringing chime over Egda’s head. ‘We do not wish to impose.’
A flicker passed across Hundred’s face. Was it a smile?
If so, was it of gratitude or amusement?
‘My liege needs no honour guard,’ she said. ‘He has me, and we travel fast and light into unknown danger—’
‘That’s why you need us,’ Eleanor insisted. ‘Because it’s unknown.’
‘Numbers are no substitute for experience, knightling.’
Eleanor ground her teeth. Were they always to come unstuck on this point? ‘But there’s only one way to gain experience, and if you won’t let us—’
‘Your place is in Lenburh,’ Egda pronounced. ‘I must return to Winterset and see what my great-nephew Kendryk has wrought.’
Odo frowned over this piece of information, wondering at its import. If the old king was displeased with his heir and tried to take back the throne, could that lead to unrest in the court, perhaps even civil war? Tofte had been peaceful for many generations, all the way back to King Mildred the Marvellous. The thought of villager fighting villager again was a terrible one.
That was reason enough to accompany Egda, to ensure no trouble came to the young Prince Kendryk. After all, Odo and Eleanor ultimately owed their fealty to him, the heir to the throne, not to Egda or even to their home …
Before Eleanor, following the same reasoning, could find a diplomatic way to press for their inclusion in the party journeying to the nation’s capital, a horn sounded outside the guildhall, then a rapid patter of running feet came near. The doors burst open.
‘Strangers!’ cried a wide-eyed lad half
Odo’s age. ‘Lots and lots and lots of them, on horses!’
‘More strangers?’ gasped Reeve Gorbold. ‘What are the odds of that?’
‘Very small, I hazard to say,’ said Symon with a thoughtful expression. ‘Lenburh has never seen such a flood.’
A babble of speculation rippled through the gathering, and Egda rapped the end of his staff against the floorboards for silence.
‘Reeve Gorbold, perhaps you should invite them in.’
‘But name no names,’ warned Hundred. ‘We are not here.’
‘Of course, sire, uh, madam, of course.’ The reeve bowed in confusion and hurried from the hall.
Odo and Eleanor exchanged a glance and followed as fast as their armour allowed, holding their swords at the ready.
‘What if it’s the people who sent the bilewolves?’ Odo whispered at Eleanor’s back.
‘I don’t hear any howling or snarling, do you?’ she cast over her shoulder.
‘We are a match for any beast!’ Biter declared.
‘Be wary, little brother,’ Runnel cautioned. ‘Someone with the skill to light a craft-fire is a worthy foe. Not to mention the person who commands them.’
Eleanor gripped her sword tightly and hurried out into the light, where she came face-to-bridle with a band of travellers on horseback, all sporting the royal seal on their breasts – a blue shield, quartered, with a silver sword, a black anvil, a red flame and a golden dragon in each segment. All the new arrivals were armed, although none had unsheathed a weapon. At their head rode a tall, thin man wearing an unfamiliar red uniform with silver piping, topped by a wide-brimmed cloth hat, which he raised on seeing the reeve’s chain of office, and then again for the two young knights.
‘Well met, bereaved citizens of Lenburh,’ he said, holding the hat now at his chest, revealing a pate of fine white hair, brushed in a spiral descending from the top of his head. ‘Rest your troubled hearts, for I have come to give you ease.’
‘And you are?’ Reeve Gorbold asked.
‘Instrument Sceam,’ said the man with a brisk bow from his waist.
‘Your name is ‘Instrument’?’ Eleanor repeated in puzzlement.
‘Instrument is my title. I have been sent to assume the mantle of responsibility so recently vacated by Sir Halfdan.’
‘Sent by whom?’ bristled the reeve.
‘By the regent, of course,’ said Sceam with another bow.
‘So you’re to be our steward?’ Odo asked.
‘Not steward,’ the man said. ‘Instrument. Of the Crown.’
‘But we don’t know you,’ said Eleanor.
‘That hardly matters, does it?’
Reeve Gorbold straightened with a sniff. ‘Only people whose families have lived in Lenburh five generations can be stewards. That’s the rule.’
‘The rule has changed. May I come in and explain?’
‘You’d better come, I suppose. Your horses will be attended to.’
‘My thanks, Reeve Gorbold.’
‘You know my name?’
‘And those of your young companions also, Sir Odo and Sir Eleanor. I know everything about you.’
‘But … how? What are you doing here?’
Instrument Sceam dropped lightly to the ground and produced a rolled-up parchment from one pocket. It was crumpled and stained brown at one end, as though by blood. ‘Why, I received your note.’
The message-carrying pigeon informing the capital of Sir Halfdan’s death had travelled only as far as Trumness, a town on the mountain road east of Ablerhyll. There it had caught the attention of one of Instrument Sceam’s companions, a keen-eyed archer, and been immediately shot down.
‘You shot,’ Reeve Gorbold spluttered, ‘my pigeon?’
‘Of course,’ Sceam replied.
‘But … why?’
‘It was white.’
‘So?’
‘White pigeons are no longer authorised to carry messages to Winterset. Only the speckled variety. This is another of the many changes I have been sent to inform you about.’
‘What are these changes, exactly?’ asked Symon.
‘Well …’ Instrument Sceam placed his hands on his knees and scanned the crowd. He was seated in the place Egda had occupied a moment ago, alone on the raised dais. The former king was wearing a hood that covered the upper half of his face and standing well at the back. Eleanor recognised his nose and the stubborn jut of his jaw, but only because she was looking for it.
Of Hundred there was no sign at all.
‘The pigeons, for one.’ Sceam was happy to have their full attention and showed little sign of letting it go. ‘All communication with the capital is now limited to official channels, from Instruments such as myself to the Adjustors and the Regulators, who take the messages to the highest level. I have cages of the speckled breed in my baggage for that very purpose. They are not to be used without my express permission.’
‘Let me see if I understand this correctly,’ said Symon. ‘Instruments report to the Adjustors.’
‘Yes.’
‘And Adjustors report to the Regulators.’
‘Yes.’
‘To whom do Regulators report?’
‘To the regent.’
‘And the regent – Odelyn – reports to Prince Kendryk, the heir?’
‘Why, yes, of course. It is only proper that the regent keeps young Prince Kendryk informed for … ee … educational reasons at the least.’
Sceam’s smile was wide and seemingly sincere, although there was something in his eyes that made Eleanor’s hackles rise. Perhaps it was the familiar way he referred to the regent, the old king’s sister, and the dismissive tone he used for her grandson, the young heir who had not yet been crowned.
Or perhaps it was something more immediate.
‘Where do knights fit in?’ Eleanor asked.
‘Ah. As traditional stewards of the estates of Tofte, these honoured individuals will of course be found a role in the new system.’
‘What kind of role?’
‘It’s not my place to say. Something ceremonial, I imagine, such as standing by doorways in the capital to make them look more regal. You will be told in due course.’
Odo felt Biter stirring in his scabbard in response to the word ceremonial. No sword wanted to end up on display, doing nothing but growing dull with time and dust. No knight either.
‘There must be some kind of mistake,’ Odo started to say, but was cut off by a frail-seeming but penetrating voice from the back of the room.
‘Forgive me, I am an old blind man, and hard of hearing to boot … This new system I believe I heard you speak of … is it the work of Prince Kendryk himself?’
‘Of course,’ Sceam said, not recognising his interlocutor. ‘The regent made the announcement on his behalf three months ago. Implementation throughout the kingdom is well under way, although outlying regions such as this one are naturally behind schedule. We will soon make that up, now that I am here!’
The Instrument clapped his hands in eagerness to get started.
‘My collectors will move among you over the coming week,’ he declared, ‘collecting this month’s tithe.’
‘But Sir Halfdan paid the Crown just last week!’ spluttered Reeve Gorbold.
‘I’m afraid there’s no record of that in the capital,’ Sceam said. ‘Also, from this month, tithes will increase by five silver pennies per household.’
‘What?!’ the reeve exclaimed, but he was far from the only person in the room to think it.
‘To cover the costs of instituting the new system. Prosperity has its price!’
‘This is preposterous—’
‘It is progress, Reeve Gorbold. Now, I am weary. I will retire to the manor house to rest. No need to show me. I know the way.’
With that, he stood and pressed through the dumbfounded crowd, flanked by two of his well-armed aides. Eleanor went to step into his path, unwilling to let the matter of this ‘new system’ go so readily. She hadn�
�t spent her whole life dreaming of being a knight only to end up standing around in a doorway holding a pike!
Before she could take half a step, however, a small but very strong hand gripped her elbow.
‘Discretion,’ whispered Hundred into Eleanor’s ear, ‘is our best stratagem at this time.’
Eleanor frowned at the old woman. How would saying nothing be of any use to anyone?
‘We will talk around the back,’ Hundred reassured her, nodding to where Odo was being led off by Symon, with Egda bringing up a close rear.
Under cover of Sceam’s departure, the five of them slipped from the guildhall by the tradesperson’s door.
‘This cannot stand,’ said Egda.
‘Never has a truer word been spoken!’ exclaimed Biter, lunging out of Odo’s scabbard and flashing about the smithy in which they huddled, well out of earshot of Sceam and his cronies. The furnace was cold out of respect for the dead apprentice. ‘My liege, let us slay the upstarts while they rest, before their unrighteous hold of the estate is established!’
Odo expected the former king to scold Biter for being too rash, as Odo himself always did, but he was surprised.
‘Yes, Biter, I believe you are half right, at least.’ Egda leaned on his staff, looking all his years but no less determined. ‘Slaying should not be necessary, but it is time for direct action.’
‘Sire,’ said Hundred, ‘you must not openly declare yourself.’
‘That would be unwise,’ Symon agreed. ‘If the Crown is truly behind this strange new system—’
‘It is not Kendryk,’ Egda interrupted with surprising venom. ‘This must be the regent’s doing. Odelyn was ever ambitious. I hoped she would be true, but it is clear she is loyal to nothing other than her own desires and ambition. Kendryk’s coronation has been delayed long past his turning sixteen, and treacherous efforts have been made to keep this news from me, and from all at the Temple of Midnight where I formerly made my home. Now I must help Kendryk claim his proper birthright. Odelyn cannot prevail against both of us.’