The Chestnut King: Book 3 of the 100 Cupboards

by N. D. Wilson

  He was fire.

  Cold ice pressed in around him, and he weakened. He faded. And then something else, something clean and white, silk like his grandmother’s hair, hung above him. It pulled at him, and his heat rushed into it. He was rising, bursting from the ground and the cold. He had eyes and hands and legs. The air cracked, and he was out, standing in the witch’s garden, glowing with orange light, for a split second blinking at his grandmother’s face. Her hands gripped his, pulling him away, pulling him from something stronger than she was.

  Gasping, coughing, choking, Henry woke, still sitting up in his little bed. Sweat as cold as ice water beaded on his forehead and dripped off his nose. His body rocked, struggling to fill his lungs with air. Weak light drifted through the window, and Henrietta and Zeke still slept. Beo’s black pony head was up, with ears lifted, staring at Henry. The raggant was on Henry’s lap, staring at him with one eye wide open and one eye closed.

  As Henry’s breath leveled, he touched the animal’s coarse, doughy skin and leaned his head back against the wall.

  What had happened? He had lost all track of himself. He’d been nothing but a cold breath, a breeze inside the witch. He could remember his thoughts, his confusion. In the end, the only thing left of him had been, had been … he looked down at his palm and his eyes darkened. Twisting slowly, smaller than he had ever seen it, bent and pale, his dandelion story sat above his skin, rooted in his burn.

  He thumped his head against the wall three times. He should be dead. Henrietta and Zeke should have woken up to find him as cold as Nimiane’s breath. His grandmother had saved him. He shouldn’t have shaken her off. She knew what she was doing. She’d been damaged by dream-walking too far and too dangerously in search of Mordecai. She knew what could happen. He hoped she was all right. He’d apologize the next time he dreamed. But at least he knew his father was no fingerling. He had captured a fingerling and invaded its mind to challenge the witch. Maybe his father had found the Blackstar. Maybe he knew what that meant and what to do with it. Somehow, Henry didn’t think so. If his father did have it, he wouldn’t have warned the witch. He would have just done something.

  Henry reached up and scratched his jaw. Dry powder, as fine as flour, snowed down from his face and coated his fingers gray. His throat tightened in sudden fear. His ears began to ring. Swallowing, breathing slowly, he touched his face again and watched the falling death. He slapped at his jaw, and kept slapping until no more fell. Then he traced the outline of the scar. It wasn’t much bigger, but half of his face felt cold. His cheekbone and jaw were both numb. He looked at the little table by the window, where his sword leaned and Nimroth’s pages rested beneath a square chestnut and beside a baseball.

  He needed to get to the faeren now. Dumarre was in chaos, and his mother and family were on their way. But he didn’t want to try for the queene. Una and Frank and Anastasia were with the king. And Richard.

  Henry, slipping quietly out of his bed, pulled on Zeke’s borrowed jeans and his hoodie and moved over to the table. The raggant snorted. Henry looked at him with raised eyebrows and put a finger to his lips. The raggant snorted again. Louder.

  “Okay, Rags,” Henry whispered. “You’ll come, too. But we won’t be gone long.”

  He started to sling Coradin’s sword onto his back, but then he froze, looking at the raggant’s tattered wings and weakened legs. He grabbed Henrietta’s backpack and emptied it quickly onto his bed. He buckled the sword to the side of it and then opened the main pouch as wide as it would go.

  Behind him, Beo whined. “We’ll be back,” Henry whispered. “You’re taking us up to the wood today.” Then he stroked the raggant’s head and rubbed the knobby joints where his wings attached. The animal went limp on the bed, sputtering deep in his chest. Henry folded his wings tight and picked him up as he had dozens of times, with the creature’s hind end dangling loose like a paralyzed basset hound’s. Only this time, he set the raggant down in the backpack.

  “Good boy,” he whispered. “You know you’re coming. Nobody’s leaving you behind again.” Henry zipped the pack up slowly, until only the raggant’s head stuck out. Then he stepped back and smiled at the strange picture. The raggant, apparently completely comfortable, shut its eyes.

  Henry grabbed the papers and his baseball off the table, but left the chestnut. Looking around, he finally drew Coradin’s long sword and stared, almost horrified, at the blade and its edge.

  BACK SOON, H

  When he was gone, Beo, who knew about early-morning needs, rested his chin on Henrietta’s side and watched the door with nostrils flaring. He would not sleep again. Not with Henry gone. But he could track him if he needed to. Even through the smells now rising up from the floor below.

  Henry moved quickly down the creaking hall and found the stairs.

  Lamps glowed below him. Low voices and groans climbed up the stairwell. At the bottom, he stopped and tried to take in the scene. The innkeeper had his sleeves rolled up and his apron on. He was covered in blood. Seven tables held bodies. Only two were moving. Five more shapes were in a line by the front door, all beneath old sailcloth. Two women helped the innkeeper as he worked on a man’s tattooed chest with needle and thread. One of them looked up and into Henry’s eyes. Hers were empty, despairing. Henry walked toward them, toward the table and the groaning man. He recognized the gruff sailor from the day before. His eyes were shut, and he was whispering to himself.

  Zeb glanced up at Henry, at the raggant on his back, and then back down at his thick fingers. They moved quickly and easily with the heavy needle.

  “You sleep hard, lad,” he said. “Though you look no more rested.”

  “What happened?” Henry asked.

  “What happened is that one of the galleys was taken, and then burned and rammed and sunk by the other, which now sets to a little beyond the jetty. The wharf and harbor were all swords and flaming arrows for a while.” Zebudee looked up and dropped his needle and thread onto a corner of the table. “They’re still fighting in the streets.”

  “How many were killed?” Henry looked around the room. “What can I do?”

  “Ten dead within these walls,” one of the women said. “Who knows how many in the gutters.”

  Zeb nodded and wiped his brow with his forearm. “Can’t say how many souls were on board that galley, nor how many mothers’ sons reached the shore. And I don’t need to tell you what to do. You know that already.”

  “What?” Henry said.

  The sailor groaned on the table, and a woman squeezed his hand. Zeb patted the man’s cheek, then looked into Henry’s eyes. “You said it yourself. The witch-queen dies, the ships and the reds are gone, and that was true enough, though these brave lads couldn’t wait on it. But there’s two barbs to that hook, Henry Maccabee. She dies, and this storm lifts, but if she lives, tonight’s blood will look a picnic next to what comes, in this city and every other within the serpent’s strike. Wars, Henry. Wars that can’t be won. Wars to plow cities under and peoples into the sea.”

  “War,” the sailor whispered.

  “Do you need help?” Henry asked, and he began to shrug off his pack, forgetting what he’d been planning to do.

  The innkeeper grunted. “Haven’t you been listening? A rook can’t play the pawn. Leave that for us. Go. You have your own game—and a dangerous one. Hurry to it.”

  Henry backed slowly away, pulling the straps of his pack up. He felt guilty leaving the room, and worse because of the man’s words. This fight wasn’t just about him. It wasn’t just about his own life, or whether or not he would go mad, and it wasn’t just about his family. He’d seen the streets of Dumarre.

  Turning, he pulled the door open and stepped out into the cold predawn.

  Nimiane lay on her couch, angry, breathing slowly, stroking her cat, her eyes, and watching Maleger, the emperor’s son, groan and twist between the two trees. She had convinced him to poison his father. She had promised to be his queen. And then, when the emperor
had been saved from his son’s vile plot, she had asked for him. And she had asked for the ten most dangerous men in the city. The emperor had offered her soldiers, but she had chosen only three. The rest had been prisoners, much harder men. Only five remained to her now. Four strands trailed away from Maleger’s right hand, but only one from the left. That was Coradin’s thread, the deadliest of all and the hardest to hold, but not so hard as the boy. Coradin resisted too much; he was still too human. And the boy had escaped him three times. But with only five fingerlings to focus on, control would not be so difficult. He would become as deadly as she knew him to be. She needed him to be. She needed Henry dead.

  Sitting up lazily, she looked around her couch between the four trees. Dandelions surrounded her in a thick ring, carpeting the ground with gold, running away through the gardens. The closest dandelions were dead, withered up in curls. Farther out, they were tall, gray-headed, and seeding. The rest of the weeds were bright and thriving. He had been here, not merely in her dreams. He had dream-walked so far from his body and then entered her mind, and still he had lived, still he had escaped. And the woman. Nimiane had forgotten that she still lived—old Amram’s bride. But she would join him now. The damaged dreamer had reached too far. Nimiane’s anger grew, and she filled her nostrils with the foul scent of the blooming weeds. And she drank them in. In one sweeping motion, the fiery blooms withered, curled, and dropped into dust. Nimiane savored the taste. It was the taste of the boy, the slippery, fiery boy.

  Shutting her eyes and leaning back onto her couch, she wandered through Maleger and into Coradin. He was standing in the hills, well outside of Hylfing. She whispered into his mind.

  The boy dies today. Bring his head and right hand to me.

  Henry hurried through Hylfing’s streets. Soldiers were moving in tight groups, cold and stiff beneath the gray predawn sky. Their boots were loud, and it wasn’t hard for Henry to avoid them. He ducked into alleys or doorways and watched them pass. Some looked confused and freshly woken. Others were already marked with the spattered blood of angry townsfolk. Henry was making his way to the rear gate. He needed to reach the faeren, and the closest place was the outpost mound just beyond the city walls. He had used it before, but not since he had set up his own doorway to Kansas.

  Henry stepped into a straight and very empty street. Tucking his thumbs through the pack straps, he began to run. The raggant bounced against his back, grunting.

  “Sorry, Rags,” Henry said. “You wanted to come, and we’ve got to hurry.”

  Six armed soldiers stepped cautiously out of a side street, looking around themselves. All of their eyes fell on Henry where he had stopped, rooted to the cobbles beneath his feet. They moved toward him.

  “Hey,” Henry said, taking a step backward. “Sorry about the ruckus. Hope you all survive.”

  One of the men, young and blood-spattered, opened his mouth. “You’re the boy. I was at the fire. I saw you. You should have burned.”

  “Yeah, well,” Henry said, still backing up. “I didn’t. But my mother’s house did. Look on the bright side.”

  “You killed Croese when he rescued you.”

  Henry forced a smile. “It wasn’t exactly a rescue.”

  “Lay down your sword.”

  “My sword?” Henry held out his hands. “I don’t have a sword.”

  “The one on your back.”

  “Oh,” said Henry. “Right.” He reached back with two hands and drew the blade out of its sheath. His pulse quickened. He was holding a sword, facing six soldiers. He wiggled the thing in his hand, feeling its weight, testing it like a baseball bat. The blade sucked at the air.

  The soldiers stopped. All of them seemed to be measuring him up. Two of them had actually seen Henry at the burning house. They had seen a cobblestone explode into dandelion seeds, and they had seen Henry somehow kill Croese, the old, scar-faced mercenary and assassin. The other four had heard stories of Henry, son to the green devil, and the stories were vastly more frightening than the truth.

  In the silent morning air, a young but large trash-eating beetle smelled something on the other side of the street, something damp and heavy. Something he could crawl beneath to find moist happiness. The creature spread its shiny green wing casings and decided to fly. Flying was always faster.

  He thrummed between Henry and the soldiers. The sword twitched in Henry’s hands, and the beetle parted in two. The beetle halves bounced and rolled on the cobbles and came to a stop. Curious what had gone wrong, the beetle looked around. He twitched his antennae and tried to flap his wings. He felt lighter than he had since he’d been a larva, and suddenly, he wanted to sleep. Sleep would be nice.

  Henry looked at the beetle, and he looked at the soldiers, all of them perfectly still, glancing from the halved insect to Henry.

  “Okay,” Henry said. “I need to go.” A bit nervously, he sheathed the sword over his shoulder, and while the soldiers watched, unmoving, he ducked into a side street and again began to run.

  He couldn’t afford a fight right now, and he didn’t want to draw the sword again. He wasn’t sure what exactly had happened. The blade had moved in his hands before he’d even noticed, jumping when life had passed in front of it. Henry heard more boots and then shouting and the sound of fighting. He turned into an alley away from the noise, straightening back toward the gate at the next street. He could see it ahead of him now. It was open, but more than a dozen soldiers stood around it.

  Slowing down, evening out his breath, Henry pulled up his hood and ducked his head. He didn’t want to be recognized again. The raggant bellowed loudly, and the red-shirted gatekeepers all turned. They were as on edge as Henry was. How could they not be with one of their galleys on the bottom of the harbor?

  “Name?” one asked.

  Henry glanced up. “Ezekiel Johnson.”

  “Johnson?” the man asked.

  “John’s son,” Henry said slowly.

  The soldiers all studied him—his shoes, his jeans, the hoodie, the sword, and the backpack full of raggant. “Your clothing is strange,” the soldier said.

  “Yes.” Henry nodded. “Yes. My dad’s a tailor.” He wasn’t sure how that would help, but he stopped himself from saying more.

  A few of the soldiers whispered to each other. The one who had been doing the speaking, a thick-chested man with a black mustache, moved forward.

  “What is this creature?” he asked.

  “A raggant,” Henry said. “It’s, uh, sorta like a pig. I’m going to look for mushrooms. He’s good at it.”

  The raggant bleated loudly and scuffled around inside the pack. Henry could feel the short legs thumping and pawing at his spine.

  “The sword?” the soldier asked.

  “For wolves,” Henry said quickly. “They like raggant.”

  “Wolves,” the man said. It wasn’t a question. He stuck his thumbs in his belt and looked Henry up and down. Then, reaching out, he pulled back Henry’s hood.

  Wheezing through its nostrils, the raggant lunged up and snapped at the soldier’s fingers. The soldier jumped back, yelping and shaking his hand.

  Henry ducked his head and hurried forward, trying to ignore the eyes that were on him, trying to pretend like there was no reason in the world that the soldiers would want to stop him. He was in the gate. He was through, trying not to break into a run, straining his ears for any footsteps, but all he could hear was the raggant’s irritated breathing.

  As soon as he could justify it, Henry slipped off the road and into the brush and trees that would grow quickly into the wood that climbed into the hills and mountains behind the city of Hylfing. He wasn’t far from the little faerie hall, he knew that, but spotting it was never easy. It wasn’t supposed to be, not even for a green man.

  After one hundred yards or so of brush and pocket groves, Henry stopped and looked around himself. He thought he recognized some of the trees. After his first trip, he had carved a big H into a trunk to mark the spot, but the next tim
e back, the faeren had healed the bark.

  Henry whistled and then stood quietly, waiting. The raggant sneezed on the back of his neck.

  Henry grimaced, wiping the moisture off. “Rags, c’mon now, be a help. Let me know if you see something.” He turned in place and whistled a tune his mother sang in her garden. Then he walked slowly forward and whistled again.

  The raggant sputtered its lips, and Henry turned just in time to see a bush shift at the root. Henry hurried to it, grabbed the branches, and pulled it out of the hands of a round-faced faerie squatting in a low, arched door set in a mound of brush-covered earth.

  The faerie’s cheeks were puffed out, and his face and neck were purple. The air shimmered around him and around the doorway.

  “What’s your name?” Henry asked.

  The faerie blinked, but was otherwise motionless.

  “I can see you,” Henry said. “What’s your name?”

  The faerie didn’t move. Henry leaned over and pinched his nostrils closed. “What’s your name?”

  The little man slapped at Henry’s wrist and jumped back through the doorway. Henry shoved his leg through the shimmering, supposedly invisible opening before something physical, wooden or earthen, could be used to close it. When nothing slammed on his shinbone, Henry sat on the ground and slid down inside.

  The room had changed little. It was long, with its peaked earthen roof and walls covered with muddy sculpture. Committee proclamations and guidelines were pinned to the dirt wall on one side. A table—dotted with cards and dirty mugs—and barrel chairs were positioned in the center. It could hold a number of faeries, but right now, there was only one. He was on the far end of the room, rubbing a mixture of mud on the wall between some sticks that had been pressed into it in the shape of a door. One bucket of charmed water and one of charmed earth sat by his feet.

  “Little faerie,” Henry said. “Do you know who I am?”

  The faerie glanced back and then continued trying to make himself a doorway back to the Central Mound. Henry squeezed past the table and barrels, grabbed the faerie’s shoulders, and pulled him back to the table. Pushing the small, terrified faerie onto a barrel seat, Henry wedged himself down across from him.