Quillifer Read online

  Kevin was thoughtful. “The river was dammed after the rite of rock-and-hard-place, or whatever it’s called.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I don’t see how Sir Stanley can possibly defend his action.”

  “Ah.” I made an airy gesture and put on my pompous-magistrate face. “That is where you fail to perceive the supreme suppleness and flexibility for which the common law of Duisland is justly famed.”

  Sniffing the gingerbread. “Apparently, I do not.”

  “Sir Stanley maintains, first, that the deed does not mention the river or any other water source—”

  “And does it?”

  “Alas,” said I, “the river is not mentioned. And furthermore, Sir Stanley maintains that it was perfectly clear he never intended to sell Mister Trew rights over the water, as is proved by the fact that at the sale he did not perform the rite of water and porringer, where—”

  “Where he would have given his poor victim a porringer of river water,” said Kevin, “to go along with his lump and his branch.”

  “Just so.”

  “I say it’s fraud,” said Kevin, “and to hell with the porringer.”

  “And Judge Travers at the Assizes is likely to agree with you, which is why Sir Stanley is careful to avoid his summons. As Judge Travers is retiring, the next quarter’s judge is likely to be Blakely, who is some kind of cousin to Sir Stanley’s wife, and who bears a reputation for sharp practice of his own, and who therefore may appreciate the ingenuity of Sir Stanley’s argument.”

  “One fraudster to another.”

  “Just so.”

  Indignation lifted Kevin’s chin. “I shall tell my father to avoid any dealings with Sir Stanley. If anyone in the Mercers’ Guild behaved in such a fashion, he’d be disciplined or expelled.”

  “Alas,” said I, “there is no Worshipfull Guild of Landowners to enforce honest behavior.”

  A large, old house loomed on our left, the first floor of plain Ethlebight brick, the upper storeys carved wood that projected over the street, with a thatch roof that projected farther still. My heart warmed at the sight of my home, a friendly welcoming sanctuary after my cold night on the rooftops. I turned inside and was followed by my friend.

  The ground floor made up a butcher shop owned by my father, and the family lived in the storeys above. My father shared my name of Quillifer, and I had been named after his own father, and his father after his, the name stretching back into antiquity.

  For all that I was wary around my father’s weighty authority, it has to be said that I greatly admired my senior. My father was not only Dean of the Worshipfull Societie of Butchers but a respected alderman of the city, entitled to wear a gold chain on formal occasions, and often mentioned as Ethlebight’s next lord mayor. He shared my height and the broad shoulders developed from years of wielding the cleaver and pollaxe. He kept his hair short, and shorn up around the ears, which kept it from being spattered with blood. He wore the cap and leather apron of his profession, though in fact he made most of his money from moneylending, speculation, and land-dealing.

  My paternal grandfather had been the first in our family to learn to read, and my father was the first to learn to write. I myself had been to a dame school for my letters, and to a grammar school for writing and recitation, after which I apprenticed with Master Dacket. I was raised with books and the beauties of poetry and the sonorities of ancient languages—for now with printed books, education was no longer the domain of monks and nobles with private tutors. What would come of that change, I felt the whole world would soon see. The profession of the law would allow me to travel, perhaps to the capital and the court of the King. For our family was rising, and I intended to rise as far as my talents would take me.

  At the moment, my father was serving a well-dressed Aekoi, an older woman who had powdered her golden complexion white and painted on her face an expression of fey, perhaps even malevolent, interest. She had come with a human girl servant, who stood in the center of the room and stared down the long hall behind the counter, the hall that ended in the open courtyard at the center of the big house. I, standing behind her, could see a calf that had been slaughtered and hoisted head-downward by a chain. Its blood was draining into a large basin even as two apprentices, naked from the waist, were taking off the hide.

  None of the calf would be wasted at the House of Quillifer. The hide would be sold to a tanner, the bones to a button-maker or handle-maker. The hooves would become glue. The meat would be sold, to become roasts or steaks or chops, and miscellaneous organs put into pastry for kidney or umble pie. The tripes would be cleaned and turned into sausage casings or fried chitterlings or white tripe for soups and stews. The stomach would become rennet and would be sold to a cheesemaker. Tongue would be roasted, lungs poached or stewed. The edible parts of the head would become a gelatinized loaf known as brawn, and the bladder used as a container in which other parts of the animal would be cooked. The heart would be cut into strips and cooked on skewers, the liver fried or made into pâté, and the blood itself cooked down with spices to make a kind of pudding, or mixed with oats and turned into blood sausage.

  None of which was likely of interest to the servant girl, who probably ate meat only rarely. Instead, she watched the apprentices at work, the fit young men, nearly naked, who worked up and down the carcass with their sharp skinning knives.

  I didn’t interrupt the girl’s reverie, or my father at the counter. Sweetbreads were wrapped in paper, the result weighed, and the Aekoi woman’s payment accepted. The Aekoi woman turned to the daydreaming servant, observed her woolgathering, and slapped her briskly across the face. The painted expression on the Aekoi’s face did not change. The girl yelped an apology, took the package, and followed her mistress out.

  I waited for the customers to walk out of earshot. “That fair painted face charmed me not,” I said.

  My father shrugged. “Well. Not human.”

  “I’ve known humans to behave worse,” Kevin offered.

  My dad nodded in the direction of the departing Aekoi. “Her name’s Tavinda. Her daughter’s the mistress of Lord Scrope, the Warden of the New Castle—the daughter may be earning the family’s living on her back, but it’s Tavinda who looks after the pennies.” He tossed the coins in his hand. “She’s always trying to barter me down.”

  Kevin was curious. “Have you seen the daughter?”

  “Oh, ay. Fetching enough, if you like ’em golden.”

  “I’ve never”—Kevin searched for the word—“experienced an Aekoi.”

  “They are as other women,” said the older man, and then—hearing his wife on the stair—added, “or so I am told.”

  My mother, Cornelia, came down the stair, her white apron starched stiff and crackling, and she stood on her toes to buss me on the cheeks. Graying blond hair fell out of her cap in corkscrew curls. I basked for a moment in the warmth of maternal affection. “Why are you dressed like that?” she said. “Are you not in the office today?”

  “I’m delivering a writ to a man who would run if he saw me dressed as a lawyer’s apprentice,” I said. “Kevin’s taking me in his boat.” I smiled. “And I arranged for Mrs. Vayne to send you three baskets of pearmains, just come down the river!”

  “Pearmains! Oh, lovely!” She kissed my cheeks again, and I allowed myself a moment of pleasure in my mother’s benevolence.

  There was a clattering on the stairs, and my two younger sisters, Alice and Barbara, appeared. They were twelve and fourteen, and had inherited the Quillifer height: both were beginning to overtop their mother.

  They were both attending the grammar school, the first women in our family to learn to read and write. My father had initially been opposed to this innovation, but my mother had convinced him that it would get them husbands from the better classes.

  “We’re going to the Fane to help decorate for the festival,” Cornelia said.

  All the fruits of the year were to be laid at the feet of the god. “D
on’t give him too many of our pearmains,” I said.

  “He gets a basket of sausages,” said Alice.

  Actually, the god Pastas got two baskets, which my father handed to the girls. He kissed his wife and daughters, and sent them on their way, then looked at his son in an expectant way.

  “Are there any sausages for us?” I asked. “Sailing is hard work.”

  “Help yourself,” said my father.

  From the pantry I took some smoked pork sausages, slices of ham, a loaf of bread, a brined goat cheese, and a hard yellow cheese. The food went into a leather satchel. I took also a jug of cider from the buttery, and carried it and the satchel into the front room.

  “I hope you find your quarry,” my father said. “Otherwise, I’ll have been looted for nothing.”

  “Charity to the wandering sailor is accounted a fine virtue,” I said. “No doubt the god will reward you.”

  “Just possibly he may.” My father regarded me with a careful eye. “Though I hope you have been doing your duty to Pastas as well.”

  I looked at Kevin. “We have learned our lines.”

  “Let’s hear them, then.”

  “Ta-sa-ran-geh,” I recited obediently, and then Kevin joined me in the next part of the chant. “Ta-sa-ran-geh-ko.”

  The chant was ancient, so ancient that no one any longer understood the words or their meaning. But it was known that the words honored Pastas Netweaver, god of the sea and principal god of Ethlebight, whose great round temple stood four leagues above the town.

  The temple of Pastas had once crowned the center of the city, but as the muddy River Ostra filled in its delta, the city had followed the water and crept downstream over the centuries, and eventually the huge temple was stranded in the country. Major ceremonies were still conducted at the great old building, but a newer, smaller temple, called the Fane, had been constructed on Scarcroft Square for everyday use.

  The Autumn Festival, coming just after the Assizes, was one of the great festivals of the city, and featured a ceremony at the old temple featuring the Warriors of the Sea and the Mermaids, each impersonated by young folk from the city’s leading families. Both Kevin and I were Warriors this year, and obliged to wear antique bronze armor, carry weapons, dance, and chant the incomprehensible words that honored the deity.

  My father listened to the chant, nodding his head to the rhythm, and when we were finished, he clapped his big hands once.

  “Very good!” he said. “But look you, it’s ren-far-el-den-sa-fa-yu, not ren-far-el-den-sa-sa-yu.”

  “We are corrected,” said I. “Thank you.”

  His father pointed a thick finger at me. “The god knows when you care enough to make it right.”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Pastas has always had the best people in his service,” said my father. “His priests are the most important citizens of the district, who give their time and money freely.” A look of scorn crossed his face. “Not like those monks who serve the Pilgrim, and who are supported by our taxes no matter what the King claims. Let King Stilwell but stop his gold one day, and those monasteries would be deserted the next.”

  I had heard these opinions before, and Kevin too. But the recollection of the festival and its Mermaids brought an uncomfortable memory to my mind.

  “Father,” I said, “I should forewarn you of the possibility that you may receive a call from Master Greyson.”

  The master Butcher frowned. “The surveyor? What’s the trouble?”

  “A misunderstanding. You may remember that Greyson’s daughter Annabel is a Mermaid this year and . . .” My poise faded under my father’s cool eye. I put on my innocent-choirboy face. “She asked me to adjust her costume,” I said.

  “And you adjusted more than that, I suppose.”

  “It is possible Annabel will refuse to give my name,” I said. “In which case your peace will not be disturbed.”

  My dad had received fathers on my behalf before, and did not seem unduly disturbed. “Greyson, eh? I had thought the next would be old Driver, Bethany’s father.”

  “It fell out otherwise,” I said. I looked at my father. “At least I may be saved by my reputation as a steady, sober young fellow, walking the streets with his nose in a book of law.”

  He answered only with a sardonic laugh, just at the moment when Mrs. Vayne’s boy arrived carrying the first basket of pearmains, and I took the opportunity to say good-bye and make my exit into Princess Street. I and Kevin turned toward the Harbor Gate.

  “Annabel Greyson,” Kevin said. “I thought she fancied Richard Trotter.”

  “His name did not come up.”

  “And her father caught you? What happened?”

  I preferred not to relive my moments hanging off the roofbeam. Instead, I looked at Kevin. “Are you well shod?”

  Kevin glanced down at the glossy boots that rose to his calves. “I believe I am.”

  “Those boots are too heavy,” I said. “They’ll slow you down.” I smiled. “Remember, when Sir Stanley sets his dogs on us, I need not run faster than the dogs, but only faster than you.”

  “The boots serve as armor against their bites,” Kevin said. “These are good leather.”

  “We’ll see.” I passed among the carts and wagons that labored through the great River Gatehouse, and from the paved apron outside I looked up at the great red brick city wall, thirty feet high, with fifty-foot towers at regular intervals. The wall’s outlines were blurred with vegetation, grass, and bushes and even a few small trees growing through cracks in the masonry.

  “Look at all that rubbish,” I said. “Time for another Beating of the Bounds.” In which packs of the local children were gathered together and marched to every important point of the city, then beaten with willow withes until they could remember Rose Street from Turnip Street, the Gun Tower from the Tower of the Crescent Moon. After which they were lowered on ropes from the battlements to clear away all the vegetation that had grown up since the last cleaning.

  I still remembered the whipping I’d received from old Captain Hay, when at the age of ten I’d been driven from one tower to the next. Hay had laid on as if he were flogging a mutineer.

  That had been eight years ago. There hadn’t been a Beating of the Bounds since.

  I would speak to my father about it. It wouldn’t do for the city to look so unkempt—and I was happy the cleaning job would be undertaken by a different generation.

  CHAPTER TWO

  * * *

  he lugsail rattled overhead as the sailboat came across the wind, and then it filled and the boat surged forward, cutting the water with a fine, crisp murmur. Sunlight glittered from wavetops, shone gold on the tall reeds that surrounded the channel.

  I leaned against the weather gunwale and smiled up at the sun. Loafing about in boats is perhaps my second-greatest pleasure, and my pleasure was only increased by the knowledge that I was sparing myself a day copying documents.

  Kevin tucked the tiller beneath his arm. “Do you think the god truly cares whether we sing sa-sa or sa-fa?” he asked.

  I squinted into the bright morning sky. “I think if the god truly cared about his worshipers and his city, he wouldn’t let the harbor silt up.”

  “True.”

  “My father hopes that we’ll be struck by a strong-enough storm to blast open a new deepwater channel. Perhaps he even prays for it.” I looked at my friend. “Does your father pray for such a thing?”

  “My father owns ships. He does not pray for storms.”

  “In any case, let us pray there are no storms today.”

  Kevin surveyed the brilliant blue sky, the small clouds perched high in the inverted azure bowl overhead. “I hardly think prayers are necessary.”

  “Pray, then, that when we meet Sir Stanley, he isn’t carrying his gun.”

  The sailboat raced along the channel, carving a perfect silver wake behind. Tall reeds rustled on either side. Doomed, I thought.

  The city of Ethlebight had
at last come to the end of its centuries-long crawl down the banks of the Ostra. Below Ethlebight the river spread into dozens of small fingerlike channels separated by reefs of silt, each islet crowned by golden-brown reeds. The once-open bay had filled with alluvium, and even the strong tides couldn’t keep it clear.

  The winding channels, surrounded by reeds taller than a man, were a daunting maze that required an experienced pilot, but it was the silt that would choke the life out of the city. Already there was no passage deep enough for a galleon, and with the galleons gone, Ethlebight had lost its deep-sea trade with foreign nations. Only barges, pinnaces, hoys, flyboats, crumsters, and other such small craft could now hope to gain the port, and ere long Ethlebight would become a city of ghosts. This sad truth was why my father had encouraged me to adopt the law as my profession, as a lawyer could work and lodge anywhere.

  I loved my home city, but perhaps my fantasies were beginning to overleap its walls. I could feel another world beckon, a world with more scope.

  The tide had started to ebb before Kevin and I had set sail, and the current helped draw the boat out through the vast, rattling sea of reeds. The channel split before us, and we bore right and were at once confronted by a pinnace aground. She was a handsome little vessel, with a vermilion hull and a broad ochre stripe, and on her canvas shimmered the waves’ reflection. She had backed her sails and put out a kedge anchor in hopes of towing herself off, but was almost certainly stranded till the next high tide.

  “Eighty tons,” Kevin judged. “Too big for the port.” There was sadness in his voice.

  The pinnace flew the ensign of Loretto, the kingdom with which Duisland had been at war at least as often as it had been at peace. In times of conflict, my city’s merchants abandoned their countinghouses for their quarterdecks, and sent their ships to seize the commerce of Loretto, or the Armed League of the North, or Varcellos, or any other nation declared an enemy by the King. The harbor of Ethlebight filled with their captures, the warehouses were stuffed with plunder, and the pockets of the sailors grew heavy with silver. The privateers of Ethlebight were famous for bringing the wealth of other nations to their city.