The Shepherd of Weeds (25 page)

As Flux pattered across the cobbles, he blended in perfectly, for Sangfroid had enabled Flux with a means by which to escape. He produced a disguise of such cleverness that the former taster—not one for praise of another—congratulated his friend wholeheartedly before dispatching him to the hereafter with a sprinkling of the antimony Sangfroid had so favored. Then, in a surprising display of strength (for Flux possessed very little muscle, and was mostly sinew—and as a meal he would be deeply unsatisfying), he managed to jettison his accomplice Sangfroid into the old castle moat, where, after a few worrying moments, the man finally began to sink.

Alas, however, Sorrel Flux’s treachery was not complete.

He left behind another victim. In Ivy’s workshop, Flux had found it impossible to move the body of the enormous bettle boar—the pig had died quite quietly, curled in a ball on the
floor, beside her tainted water bowl. Flux had been too exhausted from his exercise with Sangfroid to see to the creature’s disposal, and besides, he was already consumed with his new freedom—for, as Teasel would attest, there is nothing like captivity to make you appreciate hard-won liberty.

n the morning, a field of sunflower and thistle had grown up where the Knox deposited itself on the far bank of the river—huge, round disks of gold facing the sun, interlaced with wiry purple spikes. Birds dived and soared above the feast Ivy had provided. A loud affair it was—it nearly drowned out the clanging of Templar’s many bells.

Sorrel Flux’s escape had been discovered.

Ivy and Rue awoke to the birdsong interspersed with the alarm—Ivy had been dreaming of dark, overgrown passages filled with ghostly plants and hidden, shifting shadows—and at first she was quite relieved to climb from her bed. Groggily, Rue emerged from under a heavy down comforter, and together the pair stared at each other.

The stone floor was cold on their bare feet, and they
quickly threw on some thick woolens that the cobbler Gudgeon had provided in a generous pair of trunks, bursting with clothing.

“What do you suppose …?” Rue asked Ivy as they made for the door.

Ivy’s face was still creased from her pillow, and she gave Rue a look of worry.

Outside, they raced through the congregating scarecrows, Ivy’s uneasiness growing with each toll of the bells. Guards and sentries fanned out around them on some urgent errand.

In the workshop, the worst was confirmed.

A group was gathered there—everyone, that is, but Sorrel Flux.

At once Ivy noticed the long chaise that Flux had occupied was empty—his binds were severed and abandoned—and the only reminder of his stay was a slight wisp of an impression that his scrawny body made upon the soft velvet. Upon the tasseled pillow, his boutonniere of staunchweed.

“Flux!” Ivy snarled.

“That man was like a poisoned well—no good to anyone, and impossible to mend,” Lumpen muttered.

“How did this happen?” A cold fear swept over Ivy now as she noticed another absence.

“Where is … Poppy?” she hardly dared to ask.

Cecil, his back to her, lowered his head.

“Where is she?” Ivy pleaded. “Please, Uncle!”

Cecil spun around, his long cloak fanning out.

Ivy had never seen her uncle so enraged. A dark, mad anger washed over his features, pale where his teeth clenched, flushed at his brow, hair a wild mane. But his eyes—his eyes were unlike anything she had ever before seen. Glimmering, vicious daggers—eyes belonging not at all to her uncle Cecil but to a stranger. A murderous stranger. They flashed, searing the room with their ferocious power, and then, just as suddenly, their fire was gone.

“It’s not too late! I—I can heal her.…” Ivy’s voice faded in her throat. The image of the awful, stagnant Mind Garden swam before her eyes, and she willed it away.

“You cannot heal the dead,” Cecil replied quietly.

Behind her, Rue gasped.

Poppy was curled in the corner, as if asleep.

Ivy sat beside the mountain of white fur and bristle, tears in her eyes. Reaching, she felt the haunch of the enormous boar that was her friend and traveling companion—and pulled her arm away. Poppy was cold to the touch, and somehow her fur felt unreal.

“Where’s Rowan?” Ivy asked suddenly. She knew Rowan adored the boar perhaps more than anyone else did. “Does he know?”

“He has flown out in search of Flux,” Cecil said.

“Against my advice,” the trestleman Grig faltered. “The wings are imperfect, highly mechanical. They are, after all,
canvas and wire. I expressly warned him that after each flight, they would need adjustments, and I haven’t seen them since his last flight.”

The exuberant look upon Rowan’s face returned to Ivy suddenly, as he soared to meet them in the sky, his oiled wings reflecting back a thousand little suns.

“And Flux—where was he going?” Ivy wondered, dreading the answer.

“Where else?” Peps replied. “Where we all are headed. To Rocamadour—drawn to scourge weed like a moth to a flame.”

The cloud of gray moths had made quick business of the remnants of the remaining six magical tapestries in Underwood—the great pieces were no more. Lola, sitting on an enormous toadstool, picked her teeth absently and threw some bones upon a small fire, where they crackled pleasantly
.

“Are you thoroughly done?” Babette demanded
.

Lola nodded and stood, throwing a white rabbit skin over her shoulder
.

There, before the Four Sisters, was a loom of enormous proportions. It was made of a silvery gray wood and seemed somehow both sturdy and transparent. And after a quick spot of tea, and a toast to their reunion, the sisters were now ready to weave. Their gnarled, crooked fingers coursed with creativity; snaggle-tipped nails and tea-stained fingers flexed and stretched. Hearts beat with a contentment only found when doing one’s true desire
.

They gathered before the loom, as they had done so many times
.

“Well.” Lola sighed, looking each of her three sisters in the eye. “Here we go again!”

“One more time.” Gigi giggled
.

“Yes.” Fifi’s head bobbed adorably. “One more time.”

“One last
, final
time,” Babette clarified
.

Four sets of fingers flexed, followed by a symphony of knuckles cracking. Hands on sinewy wrists whirled, mottled skin a congregation of liver spots. The threads eased, and then strained
.

The weave began, bewildering the eye
.

For their palette, the Four Sisters had chosen hundreds of spools of thread spun from the ribbons from an ancient tree in Pimcaux—the Tree of Life. With names such as Faded Whimsy, Faint Star, Bygone Tragedy, and Boneset, all the threads were of varying shades of white
.

As the Four Sisters wove their fabric, a calm spread about the vast chamber of Underwood. A slight, melodious tune could be heard—just barely, as if rising from the very earth and settling down as dew. For the Four Sisters were weaving the very fabric of life, and as they did so, their transformation began
.

A small mouse, at home in the hem of Lola’s skirt, peeped out, alert to something magical. A parade of wood lice crawled along Gigi’s eyebrows. The dark fuzz that lined Fifi’s upper lip sprang to life—a woolly caterpillar—and crawled away
.

“You’re shedding, dear.” Fifi motioned to Gigi, for indeed clumps of green and brown were beginning to drift from her oak moss shawl
.

n Rocamadour, Hemsen Dumbcane kneaded his eraser—a pleasing soft putty made from boiled sap, which captured the scribe’s fingerprints, raised whorls and ridges particular to him alone. Here he was again—at the disgraced fountain before sunrise. What was it, he wondered, about the broken plumbing, cracked drains, and decrepit statues that brought him back, morning after morning? For indeed, he seemed drawn here. Certainly there were other fountains, other subjects with which to pass the time, to practice his forging talents and keep his hands supple, his mind clear.

Now was his chance for a glimpse of sunlight.

He toiled all his waking hours over vats of thick, caustic ink, black as pitch and darker than night. It sapped his soul. He craved the radiance of the sun—he’d settle for even the
flickering gas lamp above his drafting table back on the Knox.

His former profession, forger, calligrapher extraordinaire, required perfection—as did ink-making. But it also required light. And nothing in Rocamadour needed the sun. Dumbcane had come to realize the city was built of moisture, mildew, and nightmares.

Here it comes
, he realized.

The small beam of sunlight slid through the mossy square, illuminating dust motes in a spray of effervescence. It bumped along the dreary cobbles and tiptoed over the rim of the once-great fountain, finding the gloomy vultures in hapless clusters, bald heads hidden beneath their wings.

The very center of the fountain featured an enormous horse and rider drenched and half submerged in filthy water as they toiled in eternity to reach the safety of some imagined shore. The rider was a woman—her stone skirts were drenched and held fast to her body, draping marble weighing her down. Her steed, a spectacular warhorse, his eyes wide with terror and determination.

Dumbcane’s sunbeam threw itself to assist her, the light catching her outstretched fingers—and he sketched quickly. The beam scattered small pinpricks of sunlight down upon her dress, illuminating it, for one mere frustrating second, in a spray of stars.

This time he’d come as close as ever before in capturing the vision before him—but in the end, it had eluded him. He
now stared blankly, as the fountain receded again into shadow, clutching his parchment before him, disgusted, and ready to crumple and discard it.

But something caught his eye in the gloom.

The vultures were rising with unpleasant yawns, and they raked their beaks against the marble of the fountain, sharpening them. The ugly scene was nothing like the moment of sunshine just before, and Dumbcane grew more dejected.

There, though, it was again.

A small bird. Drab gray-green along her back and pale busy wings, a curved downward-pointing bill. The drone of an insect.

What was a hummingbird doing here—of all places? Dumbcane wondered. What business could she have with the despicable vultures before her?

ot far—not far at all—from the desperate fountain and turncoat hummingbird was a very notorious classroom, in a city filled with fearsome classrooms. Dumbcane knew nothing of this lecture hall—but Ivy did. Ivy, Rue, and all the students and graduates of the Tasters’ Guild knew of the class held behind the brass emblem of the ox head. Rowan had failed the course three times before advancing to his Epistle.

Behind the ox head lay Snaith’s class in Irresistible Meals.

The curriculum of the Tasters’ Guild, a notoriously difficult and trying collection of requirements—all life-threatening—culminated in the lecture hall of the subrector Snaith. His imperviousness to pity and lack of empathy had caught the eye of the Director, Vidal Verjouce, when he needed a replacement for his treacherous assistant Sorrel Flux.
But even with his newly acquired administrational duties, Snaith still preferred to teach this one class in his roster. It was the one place outside of orphanages where he might perform dastardly experiments on unwitting children. All under the auspices of education.