The Winter Knights (6 page)

‘Yes,’ said Wind Jackal, ‘I can see that.’

Behind them, Vilnix gave a sneering laugh, which the Professor of Darkness silenced with a disapproving look.

‘Besides,’ said Quint, ‘it isn't just for the Knights Academy that I want to stay in Sanctaphrax. There is another reason, too.’

‘And that is?’ said Wind Jackal, staring deep into his son's dark, troubled eyes.

For a moment, Quint was lost in memories of the past. Dark memories. Painful memories. He returned his father's gaze.

‘Maris,’ he said.

•CHAPTER FOUR•
THE GATES OF
HUMILITY

M
aris!’ Quint called, seizing the handle of the heavy gilded door and pushing it open. ‘Maris! Maris, I …’

He stopped, scarcely able to believe his eyes. He was standing in what had been Linius Pallitax's magnificent personal apartment in the School of Mist. But now the place was an empty, echoing hall, with open doors leading to other deserted rooms. In the middle of it all sat a great, glassy-bodied spindlebug trilling mournfully to himself.

‘Tweezel?’ Quint began uncertainly. ‘What in Earth and Sky …?’

‘Gone,’ trilled the spindlebug, shaking his huge angular head slowly from side to side. ‘All the master's things. His scrolls, his instruments, even his bed … and Mistress Maris with them. Gone, all gone.’

‘Gone where?’ Quint demanded.

‘To Undertown,’ Tweezel replied, turning and fixing his sad eyes on the youth. ‘They had an order, signed in the master's own hand,’ he added sorrowfully. ‘Mistress Maris didn't want to leave, but when she saw her father's signature, she couldn't argue. So she left with them …’

‘Left with
who
?’ Quint demanded angrily. ‘I don't understand, Tweezel. What's going on?’

‘Heft Vespius and his wife, Dacia,’ the spindlebug trilled. ‘He's a prominent leaguesman in the League of Wicktwisters and Waxdippers. She's a distant cousin on Mistress Maris's mother's side.’

‘Cousin,’ Quint repeated.

‘Yes. Always pestering the master for favours, they were, and in the name of his poor, dear wife,’ said Tweezel scornfully. ‘Most distasteful. Mind you, he never gave in to them …’ He paused. ‘Never until, it seems, now. Made them Mistress Maris's guardians, he did …’

‘Her guardians?’ said Quint, frowning.

‘They showed me the scroll, signed in his own hand. It said that they should look after her until she came of age,’ the spindlebug continued. ‘They came at noon, Master Quint. Cleared the place out. By the time Maris returned from her father's funeral, they'd all but emptied her room, and then they whisked her away, too. I scarcely had time to say goodbye myself.’ The spindle-bug gave a sharp trill of misery. ‘And then they dismissed me, just like that!’ He gave a click of his claws.

‘They dismissed you!’ said Quint, shocked.

‘And Welma too,’ said the spindlebug, nodding vigorously. ‘After all the years we've served the Master, and the young Mistress …’

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Quint.

‘Oh, they can't get rid of old Tweezel that easily,’ he said fiercely. ‘Welma and I are going to follow them down to Undertown. And we'll stay close enough to keep an eye on the young Mistress. You see if we don't. Which reminds me,’ he added, handing Quint a small barkscroll he'd been clutching in one of his front claws. ‘She left you this.’

Quint looked down at the familiar handwriting on the outside, a painful lump forming in his throat. With a sigh, he pulled the ribbon and unfurled the scroll.

Dear Quint,
he read,
it seems that Father has entrusted my care to my mother's cousin, Dacia, and her husband. He is rather fat and short-tempered, but I'm sure it must be for the best, or Father wouldn't have arranged it.

Don't forget me, Quint, now that I am to be a lowly Undertowner while you are to become a lofty squire at the Knights Academy. Yes, I heard your good news! The Professor of Light told me himself at the funeral. It'll help me, to think of you up there in beautiful Sanctaphrax if the sorrow I'm feeling now should become too much to bear …

As he read those last words, Quint pictured Maris's face, her green eyes full of tears but her jaw set firmly, and her eyebrows furrowed in that look of brave determination he knew so well. As he turned back to the letter, he knew just how much he was going to miss her.

Don't let those Sanctaphrax born-and-bred squires push you around, Quint, my old friend. You're better than the whole lot of them put together. I bet none of them has fought a gloamglozer, and won!

I will send word as often as I can. Your friend always, Maris.

Quint rolled the barkscroll up and pushed it inside his top pocket, his fingers trembling.

How ironic life could be, he thought. He had wished to stay in Sanctaphrax so that he could be near Maris, and that wish had come true. Yet now she herself was in Undertown, alone and friendless, and in the care of strangers.

Could this
really
be what Linius had wished for his beloved daughter? he wondered. It didn't make sense.

Quint shivered, though whether from unease or simply the cold, he wasn't sure. Certainly the empty room was freezing, and outside the window, the snow was thicker than ever. Like a mighty swarm of white woodbees, it swirled this way and that in the shifting eddies of wind, obstructing the view and muffling every sound.

All at once, Quint was stirred from his reveries by the sound of someone clearing his throat. He turned to see his father standing beside Tweezel, his arms folded.

‘Come, son,’ he said gently. ‘It's time to pack your things and get ready. You're to be at the Knights Academy at dawn.’

The morning broke even colder than the night it had followed, with a blistering wind slicing through the air, as sharp as slaughterers’ knives. The frozen snow creaked and crunched beneath the feet of the sky pirate captain and his son as the pair of them made their way through the city. It lay thick and even, covering every step, every statue, every dome, cupola, bridge and buttress in a featureless white blanket that rendered everything the same. What was more, fresh snow was still falling from the slate-grey skies above.

‘And there was me saying it was too cold to snow,’ a young under-professor from the Institute of Ice and Snow commented to his older colleague as the pair of them hurried past.

‘Never known anything like this in all my born days,’ the older academic, his hair as white as the snow itself, replied solemnly. ‘It's so cold, the quicksilver in the cloudmeters has set hard.’

As Quint and his father turned the corner of the Academy of Wind, the west wall of the Knights Academy came into full view. Its polished surface, made of rock hewn from the cliff-face of the Edge itself, shone and shimmered, as if countless million glisters were trapped beneath its surface. At its very centre was a small entrance in front of which a line of shivering squires-to-be had formed.

Wind Jackal laid a hand on his son's shoulder. ‘This is where I must leave you,’ he said gravely. ‘If it gets any colder, it will be impossible to keep the flight-rocks warm enough for safe flight, and I've got business to take care of at Wilderness Lair.’

Just then a shadow fell across the snow-covered square and, looking up, Quint saw the huge hull of a sky ship looming over the tops of the towers.

‘The
Galerider
,’ he breathed. ‘Wilderness Lair … I almost wish I was going with you, Father.’

‘No, Quint. Your future lies over there,’ said Wind Jackal with a wave of his arm. ‘Through that gateway.’

Quint looked across and nodded. The squires were clearly freezing, stamping their feet and hugging their arms tightly about them. There were twenty-one others in all, waiting patiently for the hefty gatekeeper in the white tunic with its red logworm badge emblazoned on the front to motion them forward to enter. Quint was the last of them. They wouldn't be going anywhere until he joined them, he knew that – and yet he was finding it so hard to leave his father.

From above his head, a rope-ladder dropped down. Wind Jackal grasped it and put a foot on the first rung.

‘I must bid you farewell,’ he said, ‘but before I go …’ He paused, reached inside his greatcoat and pulled out a small open-fronted box, with a lufwood perch inside and a large ring at the top. ‘This is in case you need me, my son,’ he said.

Quint took the cage and peered in. A small creature tethered to the perch peered back at him. ‘A ratbird,’ he said.

Wind Jackal nodded. ‘From the
Galerider
,’ he said. ‘If you need me, tie a message to its foot and release it. A ratbird always finds its way back to its roost ship, wherever it may be.’

Quint smiled and nodded.

‘Make me proud of you, son!’ called Wind Jackal as he climbed the rope-ladder towards the hull-rigging of the mighty skycraft.

An icy blast of wind made the
Galerider
lurch upwards as its flight-rock was cooled to the core. There was a bright burst of flame from the rock cage as the stone pilot battled to keep the sky ship steady The
Galerider's
sails billowed, and it soared off into the slate grey sky.

‘I'll do my best,’ Quint shouted after it.

‘“I'll do my best,”’ came a mocking voice behind him, and Quint turned to see Vilnix Pompolnius at the back of the line of squires, an unpleasant sneer on his lips. ‘Well, you could start by doing your best not to keep the rest of us waiting. It's freezing out here,’ he added, ‘or hadn't you noticed?’

The other squires had turned and were staring at him. Quint felt the blood rush to his cheeks as he joined the back of the line. The squire next to Vilnix winked at Quint.

‘Sky pirate for a father,’ he said, whistling through his teeth and smiling. ‘I envy you. My father's a fusty old raintasting professor. Not nearly as much fun!’

He stepped aside as Vilnix pushed past him, and joined Quint at the back of the line. A shock of brown, curly hair fell over his wide forehead and across one of his smiling grey-blue eyes.

‘Belphinius Mendellix,’ he grinned, holding out a hand. ‘But you can call me Phin. Pleased to meet you.’