The Ale Boy's Feast (27 page)

“Puzzle, puzzle,” said Warney, trying to speak the chemist’s language. He glanced back over his shoulder.

“You said you were bringing a guest,” said Myrton, carrying another stick to the fire.

“He’s … he’s a little slow.”

“A little afraid,” Myrton growled, and for the first time Warney sensed that the old man might know what he had meant when he said, “There’s a stranger, and you don’t know him, and he doesn’t want to talk to anybody, but he wants to bring you a problem to solve. And he wants to make something for you. Something called a ‘mends.’ ”

“Amends are hard to make,” said Myrton. “I wish he’d come out of hiding and talk to me.” As he walked, the greenhouse master absent-mindedly reached out and let his hand brush along the flower petals in the raised beds on either side. “Sometimes I rise in the morning and set to work pruning a berry-tree, and then suddenly
I’ll realize—it’s the middle of the night. So different than the pace of life out there. So different not to hasten from one thought to the next. Here each thought has time to settle in my heart.”

Warney stopped himself from declaring what a hurry he was in. He glanced over his shoulder again and caught a faint blur of movement just beyond the door—Cesylle, slinking into the shadows.

“I began here as an apprentice after hard years of rules in the shipyard,” Myrton continued dreamily. “It was Doeann. She was so enchanting as we unloaded the plants from the wild islands. I followed her back to the royal gardens and watched her work. So quiet. So absorbed. It was contagious. And when Emeriene was born, lovely Doeann tended to her with the same joy that she did these flowers.”

Warney thumped the Seers’ secret box down on the table, watching Myrton’s reaction.

An answering thump came from inside the box.

“I’m guessing it’s not a puppy.” Rubbing his hands together as if to warm them, Myrton stared at the box. Then he lifted it gingerly from the table and carried it out of the green, flourishing workshop into a bare, sterile glass room that, like the green room, had a fire burning in a brick chimney that rose to the roof. He slid the door shut behind Warney and moved to a table with a glass dome in its center.

“Why are you opening it here?”

“We should have nothing to do with the unfruitful works of the Seers,” Myrton sighed. “Instead, we must expose ’em to the light.”

He set the box under the glass dome. The dome was a solid curve except for two thick gloves, stained with dark splotches and stripes as if they’d come from a slaughterhouse, which had been attached to the inside. Pushing his hands into the gloves, he could work with whatever was covered while the subject remained sealed.

“Caution, caution,” he whispered, putting his hands into the gloves. And then he spoke in a hiss as if trying to inhabit the manner of the Seers. “Inventionssss … inventionsss … distortionsss … lies.”

Warney glanced toward the furnace. “I think we should burn it.”

“Yes, yes, practical and good,” said Myrton. “But we need better than good.
We need wisdom. We must know the truth of this box’s secret. It’s the first step toward being free of its threat.”

Raising the box with his gloved hands, Myrton set it on a device that looked like a mousetrap with a razor wire. He turned a crank, then threw a switch, and jerked his hands out of the gloves, which fell limp within the dome.

The lid of the box was sliced free, and it toppled to the side.

Nothing happened.

Myrton leaned over the dome and looked into the box. “Hmm.”

“What’s inside?”

“A branch. A dead branch. But it drips the same dark pitch I was telling you about. That pitch is a poison. And it’s spreading through the Cragavar.” Myrton’s hands twitched as if he were thinking about putting them back into the gloves.

“They twisted men into beastmen,” said Warney. “What’ll they do to the trees?”

“There’s a troubling family resemblance,” said Myrton. “It looks like Deathweed, but Deathweed’s anchored to the ground.” He put a hand back into one of the gloves and flexed its fingers over the box. “Deathweed works like a puppet. All of its lines move with one purpose, to seize and destroy.”

“So who’s the puppeteer?”

Myrton blinked, then looked past Warney toward the glass door. “Is that your friend out there, hiding behind my starcrown tree?” In half a heartbeat, everything changed.

The many-fingered branch leapt from its box and seized Myrton’s gloved hand. He yelped in surprise. The branches tightened their grip like a snake’s jaws slowly crushing its struggling prey. Myrton threw himself back, trying to pull his hand from the glove, but as he did, he pulled the glass dome with him. It slid off the table and fell, shattering against the floor. The empty box toppled aside.

Three moths skittered out of Myrton’s cloak into the air.

Cesylle came to the closed door, wide-eyed, hands pressed against the glass.

The green-black terror tumbled to the floor in a bundle like a clenched fist.

Myrton, his hand spraying blood, dashed to the opposite side of the room
beside the furnace. He picked up the ember-fork with his good hand and surveyed the room.

“Better bandage that,” said Warney.

“I’ll soak it in a blood-cure first,” Myrton snarled. “But later. Warney, we can’t let that thing out of this room … alive, for lack of a better word.” He fixed Cesylle with a look. “So you really have brought me that traitor.” He raised the ember-fork and shook it. “It’s too late for apologies, wretch! You’ve poisoned my daughter’s life and her children.”

The creature sprang up on the sharp tips of its twigs.

“It can see me,” Myrton cursed. “It doesn’t have eyes. How can it see me?” Then he paused. “Warney, I’ll distract it. Go close the other door.”

“The other door?” Warney looked around. “What other door?” It was difficult to discern an open space from a transparent barrier.

“Fire.” Cesylle had slid through the main door holding a stick he’d taken from the green room table. The end was lit. “Fire’s the only thing that can stop a viscorclaw, Master Myrton.”

“A viscorclaw?”

“Tree branches quick and vicious as viscorcats. I heard Malefyk Xa whisper about them. Never thought they’d be real.”

Warney found the second glass door open and slid its slight wooden frame along the runners until its notched edge snapped into the groove, latching the room shut tight.
I should be on the other side of this door
, he thought.

Myrton looked at Cesylle. He looked at the twitching wooden spider. And then he moved to stand before the fireplace. “Chase it to me. I’ll catch it and throw it in the—”

The creature threw itself at Myrton. He had time enough to turn, but it scraped his face before seizing the back of his neck and wrapping its sharp tendrils around his throat. He choked, clawing at its tightening grip, and fell. His chin hit the edge of the raised stone ring around the furnace, snapping his head back.

Warney cried out and dove to help the old man. Seizing the fork, he tried to pry loose the monster’s grip. Hot metal seared the viscorclaw’s limbs. It sprang away
and scuttled toward the other door, its steps tapping sounds like the clatter of woodpeckers’ beaks against a pipe.

“Father!” came a muffled cry.

Emeriene and her boys stood with their faces and hands pressed against the glass. Before Warney could warn her, Emeriene opened the back door.

She did not see the viscorclaw even as it sprang at her.

As Cesylle dashed across the room, he reached into the furnace with a bandaged hand and snatched a blazing coal. He leapt as Emeriene fell, and, screaming as the coal blazed through his bandage into his hand, he pressed the flames against the attacker’s black spine while it tightened around her throat.

The creature reversed itself, its legs bending back. It leapt at Cesylle and seized his face, thrusting two sharp limbs into his eyes. Howling, Cesylle threw himself backward toward the fire, the coal falling from his hand.

“Father!” shouted the boys.

Emeriene scrambled backward, dark blood streaming down her neck and darkening her gown. “Cesylle!” she screamed as her husband dove into the furnace.

She flung herself at the flames, reaching in for Cesylle’s feet. But he kicked at her and disappeared in the blaze. She called for help. Fire flared into the room as Cesylle became a thrashing storm in the inferno.

Cesyr and Channy backed toward the door.

Myrton rose, groaning, and grabbed Emeriene by the shoulders. “Get back, Em.”

A hissing, sizzling spray burst from the furnace and shot black, viscous lines across the floor. Smoke billowed into the room. The viscorclaw appeared again on the floor before the furnace, its spine unfurling flags of fire.

“Get out of here,” Myrton rasped to Emeriene. When she failed to respond, he said, “Save my grandchildren.”

Warney opened the door, and as Emeriene fled, he followed, closing it behind them. “To the infirmary,” he shouted at her, surprised at his own forcefulness. “Fast.”

But Emeriene, taking the boys under her arms and pressing their faces against her, turned back to watch her father.

Blood-masked, Myrton faced the burning creature with the ember-fork. He
took a deep breath, put his bloodied hand into a pocket, and pulled out a carrot. He crunched three quick bites of the root and swallowed them. Then he lunged at the viscorclaw, scooped it up, and flung it hard back into the furnace. They all gasped as they saw it turn and spider its way up the chimney.

“The roof!” gasped Emeriene.

Myrton wasn’t finished. He reached for a lever on the furnace’s side and pulled it down, sealing the chimney shut. The furnace filled the room with smoke, and the fire within shuddered and shrank.

In a flash Myrton seized a heavy brick of mossy earth from the platform beside the furnace, flung it inside, and then dove to the floor, covering his face.

The fuel exploded. They all felt the tremor as fire poured from the furnace’s mouth and filled the closed chimney.

The smoke dissipated. Fire crackled steadily inside. And a ruined mass dropped from the chimney, hissing and spitting, then crumbling into ash.

Myrton picked himself up, a man painted black and red. Coughing, he staggered to the door and slid it open.

“It’s over,” said Warney as Myrton embraced his daughter and her children.

“No,” said Myrton. “No, it isn’t. What we saw today … Viscorclaws’ll be crawling over the Cragavar like flea-mice on a muskgrazer. Panic, panic … It’s all going to come alive. For lack of a better word.”

Cesyr and Channy clung to their mother, shaking, staring wild-eyed back through the windows at the stove’s hot storm. Their sparkling eyes reflected fire and darkness.

Emeriene whispered a name. “Cal-raven.”

The morning fog muted the sounds of the city as Cyndere followed the bounding hounds along the suspended arch between the Royal Tower and the Heir’s Tower. She looked out over the domes of the auditoriums, the flags, the subdued marketplaces, and the gossiping crowds.

Mother’s ship will be at sea now
.

She could not see any ships. Only a storm of troubles, and whenever she sought to make sense of one, another threatened to disrupt her focus.

Some of our subjects are lost with the ale boy. Cal-raven’s alive, but where? Jordam’s off again, convinced that Auralia has returned. Me—why, I have a beastchild in my care. A beastchild. I’ve put her in a sealed chamber in the infirmary. Deuneroi, how do I do this?

She looked north and east over the Cragavar horizon toward Fraughtenwood.

And Tabor Jan is moving farther and farther away
.

A rock sailed past her head, so close to her cheek that she felt the air of its passage. Before she realized what it was, an angry shriek sounded from a mob below: “Jaralaine!”

And then the crowd took up the cry. “Jaralaine! Jaralaine! Just another Jaralaine!”

Cyndere ducked and crawled within the scant protection that the bridge’s parapet offered while rocks clattered around her. Beside her, the dogs barked at the missiles as if they might scare the stones away.

Within a few more rapid heartbeats, guards surrounded her, their arrowcasters aimed down at the mob. She stood, dusted off her clothes, and finished crossing the bridge, straight and proud, her temples burning and her breath short.

Back in her tower, she crawled onto a corner of her couch and folded herself up tight, hugging a pillow to her breast. She stared at the floor with its scattering of chalk drawings. “Jaralaine,” she whispered. “Why would they call me Jaralaine?”

“Queen Jaralaine stole House Abascar’s colors.” Her brother Partayn stood in the other doorway. “She called it The Wintering of Abascar.”

“The Seers’ potions. We’ve taken away what our people loved. Is that it?”

Partayn stepped into the room, carrying his twelve-stringed tharpe. “You dodged the stones. Now dodge the words. They’re small-minded hind-heads.”

“They’ll find all manner of justifications for violence now.” Bitterness soured her voice. “They’ll cheer at any accusation hurled against the throne. Rage feels good. It’s easier than thinking.”