The Tasters Guild (5 page)

If not an alewife, who, then, would see to Peps’s safety as he bore down upon troubled waters?

The answer, Peps soon realized, was no one.

He hit the water hard and flat upon his profound stomach.

Yet, as he sank, he thought he heard in the watery distance the silvery thin chime of an alewife’s bell.

C
ecil pulled his cloak in tighter, raising his hood. His eyes strayed to the far edges of the quay. All was quite silent, except the sloshing of the river against the tethered houseboats, an occasional squawk from the unwelcome vultures. Rowan held his breath, looking about desperately.

“Can he swim?” he asked Ivy’s uncle.

“Somewhat,” Cecil replied, scanning the water’s slick surface. A dead fish bobbed gruesomely before them, caught in a web of knotted rope. Cecil moved away quickly along the bank, with Rowan urgently trying to keep up.

“Somewhat?” Rowan repeated, more worried than ever.

“Trestlemen have an uneasy truce with the water. Under ideal circumstances, that is. But the Marcel has changed. It runs dark.”

Rowan’s panic grew, and his mind cast about for a reason Peps might have found himself so high up on the rooftops—and with a growing sense of responsibility, he realized
sickeningly that it must involve him and Ivy. The apotheopath was contemplating a small dinghy when Rowan was distracted by movement.

“Look!”

Something was indeed advancing on them—making slow and erratic progress from beneath the bridge. The silhouette wobbled unsteadily and stopped at one point to crouch beside a stone bench—resting, apparently, and gathering strength.

Cecil and Rowan were quickly by the trestleman’s side, the Steward removing his own cloak and laying the small man down upon it. Rowan’s initial relief was shattered as he eyed the proud trestleman.

Peps was a sad sight indeed. His clothes—his fantastic cloak with pearl embroidery—were in tatters, and his face and palms possessed unseemly and painful abrasions. He was completely beside himself and for the first minute could not find the strength to voice anything more than a high-pitched squeak.

After composing himself as best he could, the trestleman looked down at his cloak, and the shock of his presentation sent him yet again into a mute panic.

“My—my cape!” Peps finally managed, fingering the once-splendid detailing along the collar. As his hand passed over the lovingly assembled pearl beading, the gems disintegrated upon touch into dust. The trestleman recoiled.

His eyes were burning from the fetid water, and he reached for a small pocket, searching for his handkerchief, but
stopped, remembering it was lost. He sagged, dissolving suddenly into tears.

“Peps, what were you doing on the roof?” Cecil asked.

Peps sobbed. “I was trying to find you to tell you the news.”

“The news?” Cecil’s brow lifted.

“Dumbcane. Hemsen Dumbcane.”

“The calligrapher?” Cecil demanded, wary.

“You asked me to keep an eye out for any suspicious behavior, you know, and just this very morning Dumbcane packed himself up and left the Knox. It struck me immediately as highly irregular, and I had no doubt you’d wish to know. He had a sack of scrolls with him, and he seemed in a hurry.”

“Hemsen Dumbcane,” Cecil repeated sharply. “Did you see where he went?”

Peps shook his head. “I came straight here to report to you.”

“By way of the river,” Cecil replied kindly.

“One other thing …” Peps paused, trying to formulate his thought.

“Yes?”

“There was something odd.” Peps’s whisper was fading, and he could barely be heard. Cecil and Rowan leaned in. “As he went along the Knox, it seemed—I don’t know how this could be, but it seemed as if everything he passed withered and died.”

R
owan was being punished. He had been remanded to the palace for his part in the morning’s curing capers. He was to have no further contact with Ivy, who was similarly assigned to the Apothecary to complete her studies with Mrs. Pulch.

Being punished at a palace had its benefits, Rowan was realizing. There were many places to entertain oneself, many treasures to admire. He was sure he had gotten the better of the deal.

He stood now quite still before a panel of an enormous tapestry.

The seven tapestries—all marvels of creation and relics from the magical reign of King Verdigris—depicted a series of garden scenes, and the particular one that interested Rowan was the final in the sequence. Amid the lush forest and abundant plant life, a young lady in a cloud-white dress stood so lifelike that she might have very well stepped out of the scenery if Rowan had but extended her his hand.

Yet Rowan was not interested in her. He stared at the woven wool, at a black gloss that perched upon the lady’s delicate shoulder, so dark that the light from the flickering lamp he held was gobbled up in its small, starched form.

Rowan was staring at the image of Shoo. Ivy’s old crow had been so full of life when he knew him, and had rescued them on more than one occasion. Now he was captive to these tapestries, taken hostage when Cecil had spoken the ancient words that made the gardens within the weave come briefly to life.

He tapped on the darkness, the scratchy wool warm with his breath, and his lamp revealing—could it be?—a flicker of life in the bird’s inklike eye. For the briefest of moments, the taster was certain he saw the room behind him—and his own likeness—reflected in the crow’s eye. But then it was gone, only fiber and weave remaining.

“You’ll catch the thing on fire if you get any closer,” came an old voice from behind the former taster.

Axlerod D. Roux’s small steps were soft, and he hadn’t meant to startle Rowan, who jumped back in alarm. The famous author of Caux’s most treasured reference book,
The Field Guide to the Poisons of Caux
, and informal sage and historian, stood beside the boy.

“Courage!” Axle grinned at his young friend, but his smile faded at the sight of Shoo, captive in the intricate weave. “One last look?” the trestleman asked.

Rowan nodded. “He’s off—the whole thing’s off to Underwood today.”

By decree, Cecil Manx was having the entire seven magisterial panels reinstalled in the underground palace of the former King, where they had been confiscated by Queen Nightshade. (She had indeed been quite fond of them—particularly the ever-so-lifelike image of her namesake, the belladonna plant.) Finally, the panels would be back where they belonged.

“He looks happy. Not bad for an old crow,” the trestleman said.

Rowan stepped back further, nearly tripping over the sprawling body of Poppy, the bettle boar, who had earlier made herself quite comfortable in his shadow. Her ears now perked at the stone doorway just beyond Rowan’s golden circle of light.

“I was admiring the garden beside him,” Rowan confessed.

“Ancient hands wove these, ones with great and magical knowledge.”

“In the
Guide
, you write of Flower Code,” the taster recalled, referring to his favorite book, Axle’s own
Field Guide
.

Axle nodded, a twinkle in his eye. He had always thought this young man well read.

Rowan, encouraged, continued. “So—here.” The taster pointed. “There’s maiden heart and shrew’s berry growing beside Shoo and this lady. According to the Code, that means
imprisoned soul
and
unfinished business
. Is it simply a coincidence?”

Axle was silent for a moment, admiring the weaving.

“There’s also an acorn there, beside the maiden,” the trestleman commented.

“Acorn—that’s
eternal life
, isn’t it?”

Axle paused. “Or
imminent death,”
the learned man added thoughtfully. “It depends on how it is presented.”

“Which is it, then?”

“The Secret Language of Flowers is everywhere. One need only recognize it for what it is.”

Rowan waited.

“Then—and this is the hard part—one must be able to comprehend it. Take all the bits and pieces and put them together into a language. Plants have much to say, much to teach. Except for the really basic meanings, it is a talent beyond most.”

Indeed, in this, Rowan realized, the difficulty lay. If the natural world outside the door was a vast and intricate language, what might it be saying?

“The Secret Language of Flowers is a lost language, a dead one—one of ancient kings.
Whosoever speaks to the trees speaks to the King,”
Axle quoted. “Nature has retreated now and does not want to be interpreted.”

“Really?”

“When you use plants to poison and harm, you are not
using plants as nature intended. So nature retreats, becomes separate and distant. Angry. But”—Axle’s voice became suddenly more confident—“there is hope! There are signs that the plant kingdom awakens. When Cecil uttered the ancient words before the Nightshades and the tapestries temporarily came to life, there was an unintended effect. Things are simply more potent, more
alive
now. It’s as if the tapestries never fully retreated.”

“A lot of good it did Shoo in the end,” Rowan said bitterly.

The pair turned again to the weavings.

“Who’s to say this is his end?” Axle mused. “He’s surprised us before,” he reminded Rowan.

Indeed, the taster remembered Axle feeding the crow Ivy’s potent elixir, watching Shoo’s remarkable return to life. Rowan, too, had been saved by this potion, but his memories of that were steeped in humiliation—he had suffered the indignity of being poisoned. He was truly a taster of little talent.

“Who is it that Shoo perches upon?” Rowan changed the subject. He squinted at the image of the lady, a bemused look upon her face, but one that held something else in it, too—a cloying complexity. She was amazingly beautiful.

Axle was silent, frowning. He was a man of great learning, and when confronted with an unknown—not very often—his brows knit.

“It’s one of the great mysteries of these tapestries,” Axle said finally.

“And this panel.” Rowan gestured to a nearby nighttime scene. He could just make out the dim imagery of a tidy, disciplined garden. It was so obscured that it seemed to be made of threads cast from the blackest ash, the thickest tar, the deepest moonless night. The woolen clouds swirled about the sky in an unfriendly manner, and the entire copse was surrounded by a very ornate, very imposing wrought-iron fence. “It seems that a storm is brewing,” the taster decided.

“Quite so,” agreed the trestleman.

As the taster peered into the dimness, he rose up on tiptoe in an effort to get closer, although feeling a great revulsion for the piece. Behind him Poppy bristled. Rowan could not help but feel that something was there,
someone
was there, just out of sight. Peering closer, he was struck by a slight scent of mildew. Off to one side was an abandoned folly—a small, circular building with a peaked roof, at one time meant for doves.

He was interrupted by the clatter of hurried heels hitting the stone hall behind him. The bettle boar snorted, alarmed, but it was merely a page who appeared, greatly out of breath, his chest heaving dangerously against his waistcoat.

“Ah—Masters Truax and D. Roux—I’m so pleased to have found you!”

Rowan frowned at the sight of the usually crisp servant.

“How is Peps faring?” Axle asked, hoping for further news.

“He mutters only that the waters are, well,
unfriendly
.” He
paused, appearing to weigh his words carefully. “He talks of a Wilhelmina, sir.”

“Wilhelmina?!” Axle asked sharply.

The servant nodded nervously.

“Who is Wilhelmina?” Rowan asked.

Axle was silent, a furrow upon his brow.

“I have not heard that name in many years,” the trestleman finally said.

“Here, I’ve brought your greatcoats,” the servant urged.

Rowan turned to the page. “Did you see to that … 
delivery?’”

“Of course, Master Rowan. It has been done.” The servant held open Axle’s small cloak.

“Oh, I am quite capable of doing up my own jacket,” Axle muttered.

“Of course, sir. But do hurry. The Steward awaits you both upon the Knox.”

A
bove the Apothecary, in her current workshop, Ivy’s thick books on herbs and plant lore sat unopened, despite her uncle’s admonition that she approach her studies with more seriousness. He had dismissed her from the bridge with a withering look—saying she had done enough healing for one day and Peps would be attended to quite well without her. Ivy sat, chewing on a pencil, staring out the window at the hulking visiting birds.

As it often did these days, the image of Pimcaux, her small but tantalizing peek through the Doorway, returned to her. Her mother had entered, imploring her to come. Clothilde looked, in that last image Ivy had of her, stricken and sickly against the yellow fields beyond.

Sorrel Flux had gone instead.

The thought of Sorrel Flux—her malingering former taster and servant to the Tasters’ Guild—in Pimcaux was almost too much for the girl to bear. The small, pasty man
spread enormous blight in his wake. He had been about to tell her—before the wild Winds of Caux slammed closed the heavy door—just who her father was. From the sniveling look of pleasure upon Flux’s yellowed face, Ivy knew she was not going to like the news.

“Young lady,” came a shrill voice from the front of the room. “Page 137, if you please.”

A series of alembic copper vessels boiled away merrily in the workshop, spewing their concentrated essences, and a vast array of misted bell jars held living specimens—Ivy’s attempt at a garden. In the corner, a smoke bush, with its lazy pompoms of wispy florets, puffed away, now and then sending up small crescendos of perfumed haze. Her uncle’s favorite snapdragons strained testily toward the window, pushing and shoving, competing for the pale autumn light.

Mrs. Pulch was a tedious woman, Ivy had immediately decided, and there was something about her tutor that made Ivy resist all attempts to study her texts. She sighed and, dragging out the book in question, propped the massive thing up on her table. But her distraction was complete. She thought then of Peps and desperately hoped her friend was all right. She remembered the look upon Rowan’s face at the arrival of the frightful vultures—and that brought her to the very thought she had hoped she might avoid for a while. The small worry that kept her fidgeting through her long lessons was this: