The Shepherd of Weeds (8 page)

“How—how did you know about the stones?” Ivy asked. But Lumpen had fallen into a startling curtsy, a puffy, straw-studded affair, and when she struggled again to a standing position, she loudly declared herself Ivy’s servant.

“Nonsense!” Ivy’s eyes were wide. “You are a well keeper. Not a servant!” And upon further reflection, “And certainly not
my
servant.”

Lumpen’s gaze narrowed—and for a moment Ivy wondered just what her fate might be if the odd woman changed her mind. But the moment passed into one of silence, and Ivy found herself in an uncomfortable standoff that was ended only when Ivy snatched the scroll from the well keeper’s callused hands.

The parchment indeed bore a remarkable likeness to Ivy—the
image of a girl with golden hair beside a hardscrabble well astonishingly similar to Lumpen’s. Gardens of lush roses and vegetation grew at her feet in abundance. In places it was blurred, having suffered for so long inclement weather and the confines of Lumpen’s bosom. Cramped scratchings framed the image, and small insets contained incomprehensible images with strange writings in the old tongue. It was an unmistakable relic from Dumbcane’s archive—but most astonishing was the distinctive rendering of a set of odd stones the Good King had given her in Pimcaux.

“Where did you get this?” Her voice cracked.

“Dumbkin,” Lumpen Gorse confirmed. “That scoundrel paid me with it the first time he came scrounging around.”

“Hemsen Dumbcane gave you this?” Ivy asked sharply. She knew the scribe’s troves of valuable parchments were stolen from ancient, magical texts. “Are there others?”

Lumpen Gorse shrugged.

“I’ve got to go—” Ivy was suddenly, overwhelmingly worried about the safety of her stones. “I need to show this to my uncle.”

Ivy looked around the hills of ice and snow, gigantic eggs beneath a blanket of spun glass. She sagged.

“How do I get to Templar?”

Lumpen thought for a long moment. It had been much time since she had departed her valley, and although she was certain she once knew the way to the capital, words were not her forte. The stricken elm tree, blackened by lightning—did
that still stand? Perhaps. There were old stone walls she knew to follow—but surely the paths were overgrown and desolate. The landscape had likely changed greatly while she tended her well, and any old markers were lost to time.

“I will show you,” Lumpen finally decided. She propped her thin yarrow stick upon her shoulder.

“No—I hardly think that’s necessary …,” Ivy weakly protested.

Lumpen Gorse wiped her scratchy hands upon her skirts.

“Here, miss.” She offered her arm. “Come along to Lumpen.”

Ivy meekly joined the stout well keeper. And it was here that Lumpen Gorse, solid arms and strong spine, hoisted Ivy Manx upon her back and, with little complaint, began trudging up the path.

As they set out, Ivy couldn’t help but notice strange behavior in the dried stalks of the surrounding hills. They swayed and rolled on a day without wind, bowing and rippling in graceful arcs ever more toward them, finishing at the bristly boots of the well keeper as they walked by.

“As light as a wisp in the wind you are, miss,” Lumpen scolded.

“We need to get my friend Rue on the way. She’s sick. She needs water,” Ivy responded meekly.

“Good thing I’ve got another shoulder,” Lumpen said, and smiled broadly, her corncob pipe burning a pleasant scent of hay as they made their way first to Rue and then to Templar.

arden angel?” Rue tried to laugh, but fell into a distressing cough. “Never heard of them. Garden gnome, on the other hand …”

Ivy felt the color rise to her face. After a few meek protests, Ivy had let the name stay—for indeed, upon this, Lumpen would not be swayed. The trip back to Mrs. Mulk’s well had been a warm one in the folds of Lumpen’s padding, and her great strides were gentle and relaxing. Ivy had closed her eyes for a few minutes of rest.

And now before her, Rue looked anything but better.

“You do look a bit like an angel here—” Rue decided, blinking at the parchment. “Your hair is either on fire or that halo is.”

Ivy gave her a warning look and would have been more fierce if Rue had not looked so completely unwell. Her lips were parched even after the restorative drink that Ivy and
Lumpen produced from Lumpen’s wineskin, and deep, dark circles cradled her eyes. Her teeth, even from within the woolen shroud, were chattering uncontrollably.

“Did you rest?” Ivy asked, concerned. She felt her friend’s flushed cheek for fever, pulling her hand back quickly at the touch of her blazing skin.

Rue nodded, looking into the distance. “I’ve been admiring the view.”

The light had been too low when Ivy left Rue by the fetid well for Ivy to notice much of anything. The slight hilltop opened out onto the orphanage nearby, the brick walls bulging at unsteady angles. A plume of steam belched from a crooked chimney, but otherwise all was quiet. The dismal play yard was empty.

What worse, more dispiriting view could there be? Ivy wondered.

“Do you see the vultures?” Rue’s voice was thready. “Circling the spire?”

Ivy squinted, but there was no sign of the dark city of Rocamadour.

“Rue?” she asked. The girl was shivering beneath the carpet.

“The smoke,” Rue continued, more to herself than to Ivy or Lumpen. “It burns so thick, so black. Did you hear that?” Rue straightened, alert. “That voice? It’s
him
. It’s the voice of … of … ruin.”

“Whose voice?” Ivy asked sharply.

“Why, your father’s.”

“Really.” Ivy scowled. “And what does he have to say?”

“Once you ingest it, its darkness grows inside you—it takes up residence,”
Rue whispered.
“Kingmaker is now a part of you forever, Ivy. You and I are one. You will never again feel right in the shadows.”

Ivy sat down, stunned. In Irresistible Meals, when Snaith had poisoned her with scourge bracken, he had tried simply to kill her. But in some ways what she got was worse: a lifetime of battling scourge bracken’s dark urges within her, a lifetime of skirting the shadow world. In Pimcaux, the alewives had told her just this. Her father was right, she thought dismally.

“Shh—” Lumpen stepped forward. She bent down and, picking up Rue, cradled her within the rug. “She’s even lighter than you—” Lumpen said to Ivy, a frown deeply furrowed in her tan brow.

But before Ivy Manx could comment upon Rue’s doleful vision of Rocamadour, or her friend’s dwindling health, or her father’s unlikely message for her, something very strange indeed occurred.

It began at Mrs. Mulk’s dismal well, which groaned, gurgled, and finally belched a thin tendril of greenish fog.

A slow rumble followed this, inexplicable, as if the earth were quarreling with itself. Then, before the threesome could
react to these newest of oddities, a roaring wall of scorched air hurtled over them with such force that it seemed the ensuing rain of bricks and debris that scattered all about them was doing so in utter silence.

It was an explosion, from the very bowels of the orphanage.

Stranger still, interspersed among the bricks and devastated mortar were children’s valuables—a wisp of a blanket, a beloved teddy, treasured family portraits, a red ball. A particularly pricey ascot.

Completing this odd weather was a drifting rain of some sort of dark material—a black lacy moss, it seemed to Ivy at first—clumps of it landing simply everywhere, wafting through the choking air lazily, settling softly on the ground, muffled and dusty.

“My dress,” Ivy gasped.

Indeed, in the old windowless laundry room, the dastardly vat and frayed, sparking cord had finally given out. With the aid of a silk scarf to the vent pipe, Mrs. Mulk’s Boil Pile was no more. And, unbeknownst to them, the explosion had at least one other victim. It blew off Mrs. Mulk’s carefully plucked eyebrows, before dispatching her to the place that people who are mean to orphans go when they die.

“Babette,”
Fifi had said. The word hung in the air like the lightest of feathers
.

How could the name strike fear in the hearts of such ancient, enchanted creatures as the Mildew Sisters? The story of Babette is the story of petty jealousy and familial betrayal. And, of course, punishment. Consider this: Fifi, Lola, and Gigi were not a mere trio. No, they were, at one time, a quartet. Together, in Pimcaux, they had a shop
.

Four ancient sisters from an earlier time. The sisters were beauties, refined and elegant, and enrobed in dresses of soft, spun silk: one the color of the golden sun, the next of starlight, another of
the evening sky, and the last—Babette—the pure white of a billowing cloud. They were weavers, producing magnificent works of art and draping kings and queens alike. Their creations were impossibly intricate, unpredictably magical textiles, made from the very ribbons of the Tree of Life
.

The Four Sisters were weavers of such expertise that they threatened even Nature with their masterful realism. Their panels were so lifelike that an admirer faced the very real possibility of taking a wrong turn and stepping within their delicate threads, only to be trapped within the weave forever
.

Because of this, the Four Sisters soon found it necessary to grant a concession
.

Only Nature is capable of true perfection. And since no one would want to offend Nature, the foursome made a pledge. They promised to place an inaccuracy—an intentional mistake—in each of their otherwise perfect tapestries, thereby rendering their work suitably inferior. These inaccuracies were of the simple sort: a small patch of awkward color in the dye, an area of unappealing thinness of the weave, or perhaps a tiny knot in the silk
.

Although these concessions were hardly noticeable—certainly the artistry of the works was not at all impugned—the Four Sisters soon regretted their promise. Babette, in particular, possessing indisputably the most talent for the work, quickly grew resentful
.

And so, when the Good King Verdigris commissioned a series of seven panels, each more beautiful than the next, and as Babette finished the last of them, she prepared to insert some token of
submission. But her hand wavered, and in the end she neglected to fulfill her pledge. She refused to make a concession. The tapestries remained pure perfection—so very lifelike that one’s reflection might be spotted within the shining morning dew
.

The very next morning, Lola, Gigi, and Fifi searched their small shop in vain. They upturned silver teapots, boxes of fine ribbons, and silver pins for any clue as to the whereabouts of their sister. It was only when Fifi offhandedly examined the masterpieces for King Verdigris upon the far wall did she see the truth. Calling Gigi and Lola to her side, the three remaining proprietors of the Royal Haberdashery stood in a stunned silence
.

There, frozen in the weave, was Babette
.

So it was that Babette was punished first by Nature herself, and then more astonishingly by her sisters, who rolled her up and delivered her to the King along with the other six tapestries. The enchanted seven were installed first in Underwood, and then, after the unfortunate rise of the Deadly Nightshades, in Queen Artilla’s dining room
.

Yet the remaining three sisters did not escape judgment
.

While Babette’s beauty was forever frozen in time, they soon found theirs abandoning them, and became the creatures we see today—the decaying, moldy hags of the Eath
.

Ah, life’s rich tapestry
.

Currently in Axle’s trestle, the Mildew Sisters braved a most dreadful predicament—their betrayed fourth sister
.

“Babette!” the three sisters now said in unison. They were stooped within the trestleman’s darkened study. Together, the Mildew Sisters faced a vision they had not seen in many years
.

“Oh, my dearest Babette,” they fretted. “But how
good
it is to see you!”

he former scribe and calligrapher Hemsen Dumbcane was back in the business of ink-making. He had made ink from scourge bracken but once successfully, in his small shop on the Knox. It was a delicate mixture from a mysterious recipe he had found in one of his pilfered papers. The ink itself was caustic, it stank, and above all it was petulant—it needed to be coaxed into existence. Re-creating the ink here, at the Guild, had not been easy, even though his life depended on it.