The Shepherd of Weeds (21 page)

“Start the fire,” Lola whispered to Gigi
.

Lola, who had been thinking it was high time for some tea, had also remarked that nothing does a tea justice as well as roasted rabbit—and she began making her way toward the unsuspecting creature. This was not at all easy; the lushness of the reawakened plant world made a silent hunt impossible. She cursed the rustling beneath her feet as she flattened a patch of sicklepod, trampled a growth of fiddleheads
.

The rabbit, meanwhile, tempted by a clump of cloudberry, had loped forward beneath the thorny archway, and, as Lola watched, he took one ambling stride on two large back feet, and then another—and vanished through the thorn gate
.

“What?” Lola accused. “Where the—?” Lola turned impatiently to the others, but was greeted with little sympathy
.

“We must start from scratch,” Babette decided, indicating the obvious need for replacements
.

They quickly reviewed their options
.

“Indeed,” concurred Gigi, who was busy discouraging a snail from taking up residence on her greenery shawl
.

“We have no choice,” Fifi echoed
.

“So be it.” Babette removed from her gown the specimen jar she had taken from the trestleman’s study
.

“Oh!” Gigi cried, trembling. It was all the Mildew Sisters could do to steel themselves against what was to come
.

Babette unscrewed the jar’s lid and, with a grim look of determination, released the cloud of moths into the air
.

s the sun did its business throughout the land, dragging day along by the ear, it did so with little regard to the natures of those below—whether they be good or evil. But consider this: along with light comes shadow, for darkness cannot exist without the sun.

On this morning, the sun shone down on the barren fields beside Jalousie—the birds had vanished, leaving behind a collection of feathers and trampled snow. Wispy bird tracks remained everywhere, waiting to be deciphered like an undiscovered language. The sun shone a little ways away upon a dejected creature—a cat, who crept along the outskirts of a small weald, hungry and tired, alert to creatures larger than even he.

The sun rose upon the enchanted and forlorn Hawthorn Wood, whose canopy of interlaced barbs knitted a foreboding
blanket of darkness over its mysteries and secrets—all safe for the time being. It drenched Templar in day as Cecil—who had yet to see his bed—busied himself in the workshop over a hastily scrawled parchment from Babette and the Mildew Sisters, and with plans of war.

And it rose equally over the dark city of Rocamadour, where the black stones and dead moss shrugged off illumination, preferring night’s embrace. Yet within the ancient city, a single spear of light defied the inviolable walls, moving diligently along a narrow alley, across the ancient cobbles of a fabled square, vanishing into the recess of a darkened doorway, only to reappear upon the stricken figures of a disgraced fountain.

Beside the fountain crouched the figure of Hemsen Dumbcane, sketchbook and pen and ink in hand, ignoring the silhouettes of the roosting vultures and their stench. The scribe had timed his visit, awakening before dawn, trundling blindly through the small, twisted alleys to this very spot, where many of the school’s larger lecture halls could be found. The fountain beckoned him, the way an old memory would, for he was certain he had seen it somewhere before—perhaps in one of his pilfered magic scrolls.

In a greedy attempt to keep his forging talents alive, the calligrapher often found himself sketching, using his hands in the manner that had once brought him such fortune. (But in the end, they had only led him here, to desolation.)

Dumbcane now waited in the darkness for the sunrise. As it approached, its golden beam slicing through the floating dust and ash, the calligrapher urged his hand quicker along the paper, agonizing over the exact angle of the stone sylph’s wings, the majesty of the dazzling statues before him now gloriously illuminated. But his fingers failed the exercise. The sunbeam vanished. He had not been quick enough.

Cursing, the scribe vowed to return again the next morning—every morning, if need be—until the sketch no longer eluded him, for it was in this activity that his sanity was ensured.

A clattering on the cobbles in the dim square alerted him to another’s presence, and he expertly slipped back into the shadows. It was in this way that the scribe saw a hunched Watchman—the ruined silhouette could be only one man, he knew—arrive with several hulking Outriders. The group had with them a cart, the contents of which were giving the Outriders much difficulty. A set of wooden planks was arranged; a bale of straw was opened and spread over them. Finally, a large blackened cauldron was pushed along the entire contrivance, making its heaving debut upon the doorstep to Snaith’s own lecture hall, beneath the peculiar image of an ox head, a swarm of bees flying forth from its mouth—the dreaded home of the infamous course in Irresistible Meals.

Dumbcane, against all instinct, peered farther into the square, his curiosity piqued. He knew Snaith little, if at all—but
he did know this: the subrector was to be avoided at all costs. While Vidal Verjouce’s evilness was the burning pyre of destruction, Snaith’s was worse, in Dumbcane’s view. Snaith’s villainy was the fickle spark that fanned the Director’s flame—darting, caustic, and completely unpredictable. He was an unapologetic assassin. He seemed to be everywhere at once, his feet at home in Dumbcane’s inkworks as well as the Director’s chambers. His bulbous features and missing ear cast horrid shadows from the fire in the Warming Room, and Dumbcane was happy to relinquish all his small triumphs to Snaith, allowing the Watchman to claim them as his own. His soft-slippered feet and crablike gait seemed to be forever in the shadows—behind him, always behind him.

He was bent on vengeance, Snaith was. Dumbcane knew this; he could sense it. Snaith’s devotion to the Guild was complete, but for one thing. A girl had escaped him—an eleven-year-old girl, and it was during this unlikely event that Snaith had succumbed to the wounds of the giant cat, the fearsome wasps.

So here it was: the uncommon solidarity between the two, the calligrapher and the assassin. For Hemsen Dumbcane, too, could not rest until revenge was his. Revenge upon the errant taster call Truax, Rowan Truax, whose pitiful existence had been the source of his own downfall, and who, he had heard Snaith grumble, traveled with the girl called Ivy.

Dumbcane peered closer at the early-morning operation playing out before him. The Outriders were encountering some difficulty with their burden, and it seemed of some interest to the scribe that they were forced frequently to step back, shielding their faces, gasping with their dark mouths for lungfuls of air.

His parchment escaped his hands, the delicate tip of his quill broke off as it hit the dusty cobbles, but Dumbcane hardly cared.

The giant charred vat was distinctly familiar.

The subrector Snaith had somehow procured a vat of ink—the potent ink made in Dumbcane’s Warming Room from the destructive scourge bracken weed—and was hiding it away in his lecture hall for his own secretive purposes.

he trestleman Grig had arrived in Templar with an overloaded cart, several of his most trusted assistants, and a desperate need for a workshop. Cecil Manx quickly obliged, handpicking the venue: it was centrally located, and a convenient walk to the palace. And it was vacant. It was also a place familiar to the apotheopath—and Ivy and Rowan, for that matter—for, until quite recently, it had been occupied by a tenant of some infamy, the calligrapher Dumbcane. The scribe’s oversized quill, advertising his trade, still hung above the doorway, and in the window, the ghostly remnants of the Nightshades’ seal could just be made out.

Grig had wasted no time in establishing himself in the scribe’s old storefront. The place was soon unrecognizable. In fact, to the casual observer, Dumbcane’s old shop might now
be mistaken for a junkyard. The single window let in no light, since it served not as a window but as an appendage to the ledge below it, upon which Grig had stacked various grease-smeared boxes, vigorous fabrics, and machine parts. About the only thing in its proper place was the front door—which had a naughty tendency to disappear when ignored.

The inventor Grig considered this to be a temporary operation, and for his assignment he had brought with him from home merely the necessities of his tinkering profession: a sturdy oak table, his collection of tools, and what he called—when apologizing to Rowan for the general disorder—“a few odds and ends.”

“Not at all,” Rowan had responded. “I can see everything has its, er—place.”

“Indeed!” Grig agreed with some enthusiasm, and as if to illustrate this very point, he began turning in a small circle (for beneath his feet was the only clear patch in which he might perform this act) earnestly looking for something or other. His efforts provided him with a small coil of copper tubing, and this he brandished triumphantly.

“Aha!” His eyes twinkled. “Yes, this is exactly what I was looking for, you see. And now I’ve found it. How wonderful! Let’s see, where should I put it so I don’t forget …”

“I’ll take it, if you wish.” Rowan looked worriedly about the workshop—he feared if Grig put the tubing down, it might never be found again.

They had been discussing Grig’s incessant preoccupation: the weather. Grig’s presence in Templar could mean only one thing: that he and Cecil were conspiring together on some weather-themed invention, and, judging by the immense book atop precariously stacked crates of cogs and spokes—and what appeared to be giant clock mechanisms—Rowan was right. The book’s gleaming gold title caught the taster’s eye.

Grig, like nearly all trestlemen, was a masterful inventor of sorts, and his area of expertise was exceptionally wide. Over his long years he had experimented with various contraptions—most weather-related, some more successful than others. His snow twirler, for instance, performed as promised, and his sleet beater was renowned throughout the land. He even had mastered a small metal box that would every so often produce a heavy ball of snow—a clever invention indeed, until he was asked to what purpose such a snowball might serve. Having no answer at first, he soon improvised. He used milk (rather than water) and served the result to his critics for dessert, topped with flavored syrup. This improvisation brought him great wealth and afforded him the leisure of his more eccentric pursuits.

These eccentric pursuits were familiar to both Ivy and Rowan from their recent journeys. They were small, coiled
packets of canvas and strapping, called springforms, that when released—usually with a surprising amount of force—would transform into objects of varying usefulness. In this way, something the size of your palm might suddenly become a kitchen sink (it’s surprising how watertight waxed canvas can be), or—Axle’s favorite—a weather balloon.