Riverkeep (10 page)

“Rosie . . . I mean, Colonel Fettiplace, is not pleased!” said Rattell, shouting over the thudding clack of wheels and hooves. “He's furious. He wants the mandrake. It's his, and it's all that's left of his beloved lieutenant. There's no limit to what he'll do to get it . . . remember your tongue, Mr. Pent?”

Pent nodded and opened his vacant mouth.

“It was Rosie who did that—did it himself!” Rattell dabbed at his lips with his own dry tongue. “Now he wants us to destroy Tillinghast and k-kill anyone who's helped him. ‘I don't care how you do it,' he said. ‘I don't care how much of your ill-got money it costs you, and I don't care if you or any of your thick-skulled trolls die trying: get me that mandrake or I'll break you apart and bury you while you're still breathing!' He'll bury us alive! N-now, you two, remember we're not chasing a rational person, or even a
real
person; Tillinghast is a damned ho-homunculus—you remember the arm?”

“We knows, Misser Rattell,” said Rigby sullenly. Both his eyes were swollen, deep-bruised with round, purple lumps that spread across the bridge of his nose. Pent nodded mutely beside him.

“You know what that means? A homunculus? It means
he's not even a r-real man. He's made of straw! Straw! Like a scarecrow! R-Rosie—I mean, Colonel Fettiplace—he gave me this dossier, Tillinghast's whole history: where he was made, where he's been. . . . Rosie knows everything! Everything! He's been watching
us
too, and he
knows.
 . . . If we don't bring this damn mandrake back, he's going to have us killed and buried in the city. He has spies everywhere . . . be careful to whom you speak. Be careful. . . . Rosie is watching everything. Everything!”

Rattell's eye was twitching, and his gaping pupils seemed to be focused somewhere behind Rigby and Pent, outside of the coach.

“Like a scarecrow!” he said again.

Rigby and Pent looked at each other.

“We knows, Misser Rattell,” said Rigby again. “You said you had stuff what would help us kill 'im.”

A glint came into Rattell's eye. “I do, I do!” he said. He lifted a small painted box from the coach's rattling floor and opened it in his lap. “You'll need these,” he whispered. “These will do the job fine and well, and then Rosie will be pleased and he won't kill us or bury us in the city.”

“But what is they?” said Rigby.

Rattell looked at him with his twitching eye. “He can't be killed by conventional weapons,” he said quickly.

“We
knows
, Misser Rattell,” said Rigby. Pent clenched his fists.

“This,” said Rattell, lifting a velvet sleeve from the box, “is a rare and expensive p-piece. I sourced this through a contact in the Central Museum. It should be part of the collection of p-preindustrial occult weaponry, but she owed me a favor. They all do, eventually.” He withdrew a short dagger of dull metal and held it aloft.

Pent made a disjointed sound.

“Misser Pent says it's a hay dagger, Misser Rattell,” said Rigby.

“And he's quite right, named for the shape of the hilt, I'm told, like a hay bale. Doesn't that seem apt, given our quarry? Of course, a normal dagger would simply slip through his skin and tickle his straw. He's a homunculus, remember, like a scare—a scarecrow. . . .” Rigby and Pent looked at each other again. “B-but it's the
material
of this blade that makes the difference. . . .” Rattell slipped subconsciously into his sales voice, holding the dagger up on display. “This is made from a hundred coffin nails, each of which has soaked in the ground for a hun-hundred years before being exhumed and recast with essence of hawthorn. The homunculus is full of herbs and ma-magic and potions—this beautiful knife will put a stop to all their little workings and unravel him completely.”

“Sounds good, Misser Rattell.”

“Doesn't it? It must be driven between his shoulder blades—there is a seam there in his straw—the knife will
reach right into his middle. There's only one bl-blade, sadly, but I have other little treats for you.”

Rattell handed the dagger to Rigby, reached into the box, and withdrew three dark prickly lumps.

“These are witch balls,” he said.

Pent made a noise.

“Misser Pent says he din't think witches had balls,” said Rigby.

Rattell flicked them a twitching eye. “They're for cursing and be-bespoiling, designed for throwing. Cat fur, mostly, boiled up with animal bl-blood and hooves to make them set. But the most important inclusion is an item of the witch's own personal lo-loathing, and it is this that gives them their cursing power. Rare things, these. They can be made only once a year in the nineteen days prior to the Night of the Hungry Ghosts. My associate managed to find a witch whose personal lo-loathing is for homunculi, so these will melt the skin from Mr. Tillinghast's body.”

Rattell rolled the witch balls in his palm.

“They were purchased for a very steep price,” he said. “Each cost me a gold bar from my vault, so throw them with care.” He passed them to Rigby, who dropped them into his waistcoat pocket.

“Finally,” said Rattell, “this clutch of herbaceous plants contains every growth that has gone into our straw friend's manufacture. Burn this as you approach him—the aroma will
weaken and disorient him. I'm told he'll feel like he's on fire.”

Rattell passed the herbs to Pent, who sniffed them, then muttered noises in Rigby's ear.

“Misser Pent says they smells like old milk, Misser Rattell.”

Rattell looked at Pent, who spat on the floor of the coach.

“Yes . . . yes, perhaps,” said Rattell, sniffing the air. “Be mindful of this item—it cost me some further portion of my gold and the promise of a returned fa-favor. And be careful of its vapors; they'll disorient the scarecrow, but they affect real people too. I'm told the hallucinations can be quite ho-horrific.”

They lurched round a corner, through the city gates, and into the farmland beyond. Potholed and scattered with stones, the countryside was rougher even than the city cobbles, and Rattell hopped from his seat with each shuddering crash. He parted the curtains and peered out.

“How I hate the countryside,” he said. “It's brown and damp and it smells, but Tillinghast mentioned Lauston. R-Rosie's spies saw him scurry that way too, and so we must scurry after him.”

The coach rumbled on. A few miles outside the city, the driver was halted by a trio of highwaymen, flashing short pistols and gold-capped smiles.

The lead highwayman, a pale, rake-thin lip chewer named Greely the Nip, rapped on Rattell's window and leered
at him through the glass. While Rattell nodded stiffly back, Pent and Rigby exited the coach's other door.

Greely wiggled his toes as he eyed up the coach's contents, already shuffling through his mental list of fences and traders.

The last thing he remembered was a tap on his shoulder and the unlanguaged whisper of Mr. Pent's fury.

The oars waggled as Wull, belly warmed by a thick meat stew, tried to recapture the current's thread. Tillinghast, lounging contentedly beside Pappa on the stern thwart, trailed his fingers in the bäta's wake.

“You shouldn't do that,” said Wull, between gasps for breath. The bäta, already heavy and slow to turn with Pappa and Mix on board, was immeasurably more so with Tillinghast's bulk gleaming in the back.

“An' how's that?” said Tillinghast.

“You'll freeze your fingers, or a seula'll come and nip them off for you.”

Tillinghast laughed. “I reckons I'll be fine, thanks all the same,” he said, and began making little splashes.

“I'd rather you didn't, is all.”

“I heard you,” said Tillinghast, patting his huge, open palm on the water.

“All right, Paps?” said Mix from over Wull's shoulder.

Pappa glowered through his brows.

Wull spat over the side. The lights of Lauston had long faded into the distance, and the pain in his shoulders had resumed its droning throb. The wintered riverscape ranged up around him in jagged and unexpected ways, every inch of it unknown and unknowable. He checked over his shoulder every few strokes; the way ahead was strewn with the trunks of fallen trees and the constant turns of the river's meandering way, throwing up new barriers of land whenever his back was turned.

“Are you all right, Pappa?” he said.

“It that speaks,” said Pappa, “no more eating.”

“There's more if you want it,” said Wull. It was true—the cook at the inn had been happy to get rid of fish heads and tails, and a bucket of them was stinking at his feet.

“Why's your old man call you ‘it that speaks'?” said Tillinghast. “I thought you said your name was Wulliam?”

“It is. He's . . . not himself. He gets confused easily.”

“'S that why he eats fish heads like they's toffees?”

Wull said nothing. He waggled the oars and searched for the current as his stomach boiled.

“I's not meanin' to give offense, like, jus' wond'rin'. Never much fancied 'em myself.”

“It's jus' what the . . . what he likes to eat,” said Wull.

“No more eating,” said Pappa.

“That's fine,” said Wull. He rowed a few silent strokes. “'In't you pair hungry? Why didn't you eat anythin' from the inn?”

Tillinghast lifted his hand from the water and slumped back into his seat.

“I'm not hungry at all,” said Mix.

“An' it's fair to say I's rarely hungry,” said Tillinghast.

“Jus' thirsty?”

“Is that you judgin' me, little master? I drinks, true. An' what of it?”

Wull shrugged. “Why are you wantin' to go downriver?”

“Oh, I's not, really. Jus' you happened to be there with your boat an' found yoursel' indebted to me. I's jus' movin' away from the city, doin' my business. It doesn't really matter where I ends up, so long as it's not there.”

“What is your business?” said Mix.

“It's mine,” said Tillinghast.

“You know we're headin' back to Oracco now?” said Wull.

“Dun't matter if we's jus' passin' through. Might even be a good idea, come to think of it.”

Tillinghast folded his hands on his stomach.

“What're those things round your neck?” said Mix.

“Trinkets of which I's fond. Very useful in the right situation.”

“An' what's in the bag?” said Mix.

Tillinghast tucked the sack farther under his legs without opening his eyes. “Nothin' that should bother you, little miss—jus' my pers'nal effects.”

Wull said nothing. A few minutes passed in silence. Oracco's still-distant furnaces glowed against the sky, their orange clouds moving steadily above him as the city bled its energy into the surrounding countryside. The perfect soundlessness was broken only by his own gentle movements and the light chuckle of the river moving over rock and sand.

“'S nice not walkin' an' all, but hell's bells, this is right borin',” said Tillinghast.

“Feel free to get off. I'll even drop you on the bank.”

“Then I'll get my seat back,” said Mix.

“No, I's not meanin' that. Jus' the silence is killin' me. What is it you does with yourself, Mr. Pappa?”

“Not Mr. Pappa,” said Pappa, glaring at Tillinghast through his curtain of hair.

“Don't talk to him! I told you, he doesn't understand.”

“No shame in not workin',” said Tillinghast cheerfully, still addressing Pappa. “Are you an' your boy crooks?”

“No!” said Wull hotly. “Why would you say that?”

“You was stealin' food when I saw you. . . .”

“He's got a point there,” said Mix.

“Right. What is your business then?”

Wull sighed. He felt the current swell on his right oar, and turned the nose of the bäta into it. The boat surged forward, and he started to row with deeper, longer strokes.

“We're the Riverkeep, farther upstream,” he said.

“An' what's that?”

“We . . . keep the river. Tend it: cuttin' weeds an' so on in summer, clearin' up mudslides—breakin' up the ice when it's frozen like this.”

“I heard you talkin' about bein' Riverkeep—wondered what you meant,” said Mix.

“How d'you break up ice then?” said Tillinghast.

“Keepin' the lanterns lit,” said Wull, looking down. “The fire heats the iron rods to stop the ice gatherin'. . . . Without it, we can rescue people who've fallen in an' recover them when they're past rescuin'.”

“Past rescuin'?” said Tillinghast. “You mean pullin' folks what's dead out the river?”

Wull nodded. “Somebody has to.”

“That's an occupation, is it? Is the pay fair?”

“There's no pay, as such,” said Wull. “We get donations from the city. It's a noble calling.”

“I's heard a noble callin' a few times,” said Tillinghast, “but I never listen. So you both does this?” Tillinghast looked at Pappa, withdrawn and jumbled in the bäta's corner.

Wull cleared his throat. “Pappa's the keep for another few days, then I take over when I'm sixteen.”

“An' what does you do with bodies once you pull 'em out?”

“We take them to the boathouse. We've got a mortuary, an' they stay there until the undertaker comes from the city to take them away.”

Tillinghast nodded, dipped his fingertips in the river again.

“You ever find anythin' gruesome?” said Mix.

“You mean when I've been pullin' on corpses that've rotted in water? What d'you think?”

“I don't know,” she said. “I've never seen a body what's been left to rot. What's it like?”