In Dark Service

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘It’s like a knife, boy,’ grumbled his father. ‘It’s got to grind up against life to stay sharp and stay in its guard until its edge is truly needed. That means holding your temper, treating your neighbours well, helping strangers, and not looking to sink a sabre into the gut of a man you were calling friend up until last year.’

  ‘What, you afraid old Benner Landor will forbid his tenant farmers to come to church on Bible day?’ laughed Carter. ‘Their family might hold every acre worth owning out to the sunset, but Duncan Landor doesn’t own me. He doesn’t get to push me around, he doesn’t get to order me about!’

  Mary Carnehan banged the table, making the heavy plates jump across the polished oak. ‘Do I get to tell you what to do, under my roof, my own blood?’

  ‘I’m working out at the library, aren’t I?’

  ‘And saving your money for a riverboat ticket down to the coast by the sounds of it,’ she added, raising her fork towards Carter. ‘Is that the way it’s going to be? I wake up one morning and your bed is empty and your clothes are packed in a roll tied to your back?’

  ‘I’ve respected your wishes well enough,’ said Carter. ‘I even withdrew my name from the rolls of the territorial army. Two weeks with the home regiment, filling in as marines for an exercise with the royal fleet. It was a couple of weeks away and I couldn’t even do that.’

  ‘It’s dangerous,’ she protested.

  ‘Dangerous?’ retorted Carter. ‘Redwater hasn’t seen a lick of pirates’ masts for centuries.’ Carter was used to his mother lecturing him. As one of the teachers at the local royal free school, she had pretty much been doing it since he had been able to talk. When he got his lessons right, the others in his class would rib him about his parents… the teacher and the pastor. When he got them wrong, they’d lay into him even worse. Much like his duel with Duncan Landor, life always seemed determined to damn him for a coward if he ran, and brand him a scoundrel and hothead if he fought. A big pile of lose at either end of the street.

  Mary Carnehan wasn’t about to back down. ‘Clumsy drunken idiots from town playing at being marines for two weeks, tumbling down from masts, letting cannons roll over their toes and toasting each other’s foolery with rum before falling over the side of a ship.’

  ‘Sounds better than filing paper for the Master of the Codex.’

  Mary Carnehan jumped out of her chair and yanked open the kitchen curtains. Across from the rectory lay its graveyard, the church silhouetted against a velvet night embedded with pale stars. ‘When the plague took your brothers, I made a vow before the saints that nothing would happen to you.’

  ‘Well, your vow’s been kept,’ said Carter. ‘Nothing’s ever happened in my life. That was over ten years ago.’

  ‘Ten years,’ his mother seemed startled by the truth of it, sitting down as if she had been struck. That was often the way with his mother’s fire and passions. They would bloom and flare before petering out as quickly as they had risen.

  ‘Corn oil isn’t Northhaven’s main crop,’ said Carter. ‘It’s boredom we’re growing out in our fields.’

  ‘Boring’s just fine,’ said Jacob, poking at a roast potato.

  Yes, his father, the pastor, was more of a river. Slow, steady, but relentless. Able to wear boulders down to pebbles given enough time. ‘Although I appreciate it takes time to grow into that conclusion. How about we take a stroll as a family? Look at the stars and see how many of the constellations’ names you can remember?’

  Carter shrugged. What was the point of learning to navigate by the stars if you never went further than the woodland on your doorstep?

  ‘No, it’s late and getting cold,’ said Mary, drawing on a shawl hanging on the back of her chair. ‘Throw some more woodchips in the heater.’

  Carter’s father stood up. He opened the door of the box nesting inside their fireplace. ‘We’re running low. Need to lay in a couple of barrels’ worth before autumn and the prices start to rise.’

  ‘Market week begins tomorrow,’ said Mary. ‘Best we don’t get any from the Chethill timbermen this time. Don’t know what kinds of trees they cut for lumber in Chethill, but their chips smell worse than cigar smoke when you burn them. If we wait for the end of the week there’ll be a caravan in from the east. Gask wood chips, those I like.’

  ‘I saw one of them earlier today,’ Jacob smiled. ‘A young gask rolling his luck around like dice and calling it holy. Plays cards a mite too slick for the patrons of the Green Dragon.’

  ‘Short-root Tobacco Cedar,’ said Carter.

  ‘What?’ Carter’s mother looked intently at him.

  ‘That’s what they grow in the forests down at Chethill. You know. Library. Archives. Atlases.’

  What type of woodchips to lay down for winter – damn. ‘The excitement never stops,’ Carter whispered into his plate.

  TWO

  WHAT YOU HAVE TO SELL

  Much like the Landor mansion itself, the family’s dining hall at Hawkland Park was massive, rising through two of the mansion’s three storeys; well, four, if you included the maze of basement rooms and storage chambers below. The hall floor had been lined in dark brown wood, polished up to a mirror shine. A mahogany gallery ran all the way around the second storey, hanging off castle-thick grey limestone, walls mounted with colourful metal shields and the stuffed heads of stags and deer and mountain lions. Duncan Landor never much saw the point of that gallery; enough helms and crests to keep a chamber of heralds busy for a year studying all the mantlings and coronets. Were the Landors expecting to invite a couple of hundred locals inside to fill the gallery anytime soon? A hungry crowd to watch the feast below, scrutinise the Landors stuffing themselves on silver platters full of more sliced meats and garnished fish than a wharf full of hungry dockers could be expected to finish? That was the thing about great wealth. Most of it seemed to bring no comfort that meant anything to Duncan Landor, and the rest just seemed to deliver duties and responsibilities which none of his friends were required to shoulder as burdens. Didn’t seem much point in having an army of retainers in dark tunics and starched white shirts either, just because they were expected. Expected by whom, exactly? The same people who seemed to think that the best way to get a chuck of steaming beef on your plate was to ask the head butler who would ask the footman, who would carefully serve it across Duncan’s plate in twice the time it’d take him to reach out and pick the piece he wanted. The people with all those expectations didn’t seem to inhabit Northhaven. Maybe they live down south in the large cities and the capital, Arcadia? God knows, my father seems to talk about them enough.

  Willow didn’t seem too bothered by the ridiculous formality of dinner at Hawkland Park. Seated so far down the table for supper that Duncan might as well have commissioned the radiomen to pass his sister messages, rather than hear his voice echo around the cavernous space. People said Willow took after their mother, but with Lorenn Landor in the grave from the fever from almost before Duncan could remember, he only had the oil painting of his mother hanging up above their fireplace to go by. Same red curls, maybe. Same pert lips and quizzical look as she chewed thoughtfully, but he doubted if his tall sister took after their mother in character. There were plenty of people in Hawkland Park who still fondly remembered Lorenn Landor, and from the sound of it, she’d had none of the pretensions of her husband. A simple woodsman’s daughter who had appreciated the luck that had brought her family to this position. A mixture of hard work and common-sense. Unlike Willow, she wouldn’t have played along with all of this – every meal set like a court banquet; formal clothes laundered daily and passed on as soon as they began to wear. She would’ve told Benner Landor to shut his face and patch the kids’ jacket sleeves the same as everyone else, and what the hell do you mean we got to go through this pomp and circumstance just to get some victuals down you? Northhaven ain’t the royal court and you, Benner Landor, you squat old fool, you ain’t King Marcus, so get over yourself.

  Willow took matter
s at her ease, calmly, serenely, as if it didn’t affect her. Nothing fazed her. Calm, always so damn calm and logical about matters. As though this was normal, which it surely was not. Did she think that cold-hearted fool Carter Carnehan was sitting at home right now, asking three ranks of servants if they could maybe, please, pass some horseradish for the steak? No, he’d be talking and laughing with his parents like a real family. Probably boasting about how Duncan Landor couldn’t hold a sabre worth a damn because his father expected him to hire a fencing master to stand in his stead as champion, rather than facing Carter down like any normal man would. Saints, it would have been good to have given Carter Carnehan a fine cut or two at Rake’s Field. It was a lesson he sorely needed. And Duncan knew the bull-headed fool well enough to see that their business hadn’t been cancelled, merely postponed to another day. Just the thought of it made him shake with anger; want to send the plates and glasses flying off the table as he seized one of the ornamental swords from the hall and set off to avenge Carter’s slights against Adella. That’s how it would have been done in the old days. Blood for blood, until one of them was finished.

  ‘You need to travel to the wharves tomorrow morning,’ said Benner Landor, bringing Duncan back to the present. ‘Early. We need to take an inventory, every tank of ether, every barrel of oil accounted for. And when that’s finished, same needs doing in the yards at the railhead.’

  ‘It’ll need maybe fifty clerks to do all of that,’ said Duncan. ‘Fifty-one makes no difference.’

  ‘The difference,’ said Benner Landor, his voice heavy and weary, ‘is that a Landor needs to supervise the count. So that some half-arsed yard-hand and his wharf rat friend isn’t tempted to pull our cargo and re-stamp the manifest with the name of their cousin’s damn farm, rather than the House of Landor.’

  ‘So you don’t trust our staff to run an honest inventory?’

  ‘I trust our people to act like people. When you’re not minding the shop, you’re hanging a sign up asking the next customer through the door to dip their hand in your till and walk out with a pile of what’s yours by right and effort.’

  ‘I’ll manage the count, Father,’ said Willow.

  ‘You can both do it,’ said Benner Landor. He raised a fork towards his son. ‘Early, you hear. You need to take more of an interest in the estate business now you’re of an age, Duncan. And I don’t mean carousing along the river with the last crew of sailors to fall off the Redwater ferry. The harbour barges will be sailing towards us tonight along the White Wolf River and it’s the first day of market tomorrow. There’ll be travellers and peddlers in town from places that aren’t even on the map. And if our barrels aren’t rolling through the auction gates along with every other landowner’s by sun-up, then those gypsy merchants won’t be waiting around for Landor oil to show up before bidding for their cargoes.’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ grunted Duncan, raising his hand in surrender as a servant moved forward to refill his empty glass with ginger-root sugar water. He’d drink the cup and it would refill as if by magic every time. Truly was a wonder he wasn’t heading to the bathroom twice an hour after he turned in for the night.

  ‘And when it’s time to head up to the old town with the auction shipment,’ added Benner, ‘it can be you that goes, Willow.’

  Duncan glared at his father, although with the table being so long, where Benner was sitting he might not even notice. ‘You’re pranking me! Please tell me that you are?’

  ‘Does this look like my mischievous face, Duncan? The clerk of the town’s going to be at the auction. Which means that fool daughter of his I gave a lift to in my carriage is as like to be there also.’

  ‘Do you really think you can stop me seeing Adella Cheyenne?’

  ‘Count on it. You will be going to court as soon as we’ve cleared this year’s harvest business. The season will be starting in a couple of months. I think I’ve honoured your mother’s last wish for long enough – you’ve been educated here, rather than the academy in the capital I wanted for you. Duelling and drinking with ploughboys is all you’ve learnt at Northhaven.’

  ‘This is my home!’

  ‘Ambition and drive has no home!’ shouted Benner, standing up. ‘It travels on the seas where there’s wind to fill its sails and carry its cargoes. It grows in the land wherever a man has got the wit and gumption to work it. It travels to the capital where Landor oil lights street lamps and heats kitchen ranges; where that fat lazy rascal of an assemblyman, Charles T. Gimlette, sits in the national assembly with his expenses greased by my purse for a goddamn decade. That’s where it travels. And it does so obediently and gratefully for a chance no one else in his home is ever going to get.’

  ‘You started with nothing but a hoe and a strong back,’ said Duncan. ‘You don’t think I’m man enough to do the same?’

  ‘The Landor name means something now,’ growled Benner. ‘And that means you’ve got to be man enough to live up to it. Maybe that’s harder than I ever had it, maybe it’s not. But it’s the way things are; I can’t change it and neither can you.’

  Duncan shook his head in disgust and said nothing. Our name means more to my father than I do. Me and Willow, both.

  ‘Old Cheyenne’s girl is a pretty enough flower, but when all’s told and tallied, that doesn’t count for a single thing. Down at the court there’ll be daughters just as fine – ladies who call counts and dukes and barons, father. You’re expected to marry well and by the saints you will. Long as I’m drawing breath, I won’t have you travelling to the palace with rumours of a mistress trailing behind you. Maybe a couple of bastards wailing in the wings to sour your inheritance.’

  The old hypocrite. It was fine for Duncan Landor to be moved around like a pawn on his father’s chessboard, shuffled to fulfil an old man’s vision with hardly a thought of what the son’s dreams might be. But what about father? Benner Landor had seen his fill of suitors since their mother’s death. Fine matrons and noblewomen – young and old – travelling up to Hawkland Park by train and carriage, paraded like a travelling tailor’s shirts in front of the head of the house. But he had never appeared even the slightest bit interested… just going through the motions to keep dynastic relations open with other houses. Too loyal to the memory of their mother to ever commit to a second wife. But were his children to be afforded the same dignity? No. Of course not. We’re expected to bend to his will, same as everyone else in Northhaven.

  Duncan laid down his cutlery. His meal was over. He made to get up.

  ‘You can wait for us to finish,’ ordered his father.

  ‘My courtly manners are lacking, I know,’ said Duncan. ‘But if I need to wake as early as you say, I’ll skip heading to the tavern to see my friends and turn in now.’

  His father grunted something that might have been approval and Duncan left, the servants tucking in his chair and briskly removing all trace of his presence at the dinner table. There was something very fitting about that. Home isn’t really home, is it? Hawkland Park was more an idea how the Landors should be seen to live. Half the time the estate never seemed real to Duncan, so why shouldn’t all signs of his existence automatically fade after he left? Perhaps the manor house only existed when he was there to watch it. There was only one thing that felt real in Duncan’s life, and she – naturally – wasn’t allowed to impinge on his existence, any more than his presence was allowed to mark the mansion. Turning in for the night was the last thing on Duncan’s mind right now.

  Duncan made sure none of the servants were watching as he slip­ped into the main library. Outside the tall windows he could just see the silver river in the moonlight, forking silently through the bottom of their valley. Landor territory all the way out to the horizon’s scattered stars. Their neatly trimmed formal garden lay outside, an acre of lawn rolling down to the river, orchards on the hillside opposite, the tenant farmers after that, a rollcall of wealth and territory growing longer every year for the family. He slipped through the shadows. Nobody u
sed the books here except for Willow. Just a display of how all-fired educated the Landors were. Most of the titles were volumes you had to be seen to own, rather than enjoyable enough to want to read. Histories and philosophies and treaties and dry learned journals from the capital, leather-bound by the finest local bookbinders, but otherwise ignored by Northhaven eyes.

  All Duncan’s father wanted was a little more than he already possessed. All that Duncan wanted was waiting for him, concealed in their garden. It seemed a fact of life that what was forbidden to you was what you burned for, and so it was with Adella Cheyenne. Duncan quietly unlatched the patio door and slipped away from the grand house. Adella was waiting in their sunken garden, tucked inside an alcove within a tall dark hedge. This particular alcove was Duncan’s favourite, a line of vases on plinths, each twice Duncan’s height. You could have concealed a company of royal marines inside. Adella emerged when she saw he had come alone. Duncan quickly checked behind him. The mansion was well lit tonight. Smoke from its chimneystacks coiled into the air, but its light didn’t spill far enough to reveal their assignation.

  Adella took a seat on the alcove’s stone bench and patted the limestone surface beside her. ‘What you did for me today at Rakes Field, Duncan. Nobody’s ever stood up for me like that.’

  ‘I did what I thought was right,’ said Duncan. ‘Someone so careless of your feelings needs to be wakened to their duties.’

  Adella’s long delicate fingers reached down to rest on his knee. ‘What if it wasn’t his duty, what if it was yours instead?’

  Her words awoke mixed feelings in Duncan. Carter Carnehan’s behaviour towards Adella was shameful. The pastor’s son knew exactly how much Duncan had always loved Adella, and had clearly resolved to barb Duncan by stealing her away from him forever. After Carter had grown old enough to understand the wealth and power of the House of Landor, the previously amiable heart of the pastor’s son had turned bitter and hateful with jealousy. Duncan wished he could say it was an uncommon reaction to his family’s success, but it wasn’t. Duncan and his father might have their differences, but even he could see that what Benner Landor had built, he’d built from scratch, from thin air and nothing. But his success only served as acid to those who hadn’t worked as hard or as cleverly over the years. It was sad that it should be so, but his father’s almost limitless wealth just reminded lesser people of their limited natures. Some Weylanders turned obsequious and fawning around the family, others foul and resentful. Carter was one of the latter. Carter should have listened to his father’s droning sermonising about sinning against the saints through jealousy; as it stood, sooner or later Duncan would have to leave the selfish dog with a duelling scar down his cheeks to carry with him as a reminder that this Landor was his own man. Not some damn symbol of the house that could be slighted and shoved into the mud to make a pastor’s son feel better about his common means.