The Master of Heathcrest Hall

by Galen Beckett

  Canderhow was a plump man slightly older than Rafferdy and Coulten, being about thirty, and seemed far too mild of speech and accommodating of behavior to be a highly successful barrister—though in fact he was one. It was Canderhow’s cousin who was the pewtersmith, and it was his request for a meeting which had appeared in all of their black books at the very moment he wrote it down in his own.

  “I’m very sorry to have come between you and your enjoyable evening,” Canderhow said in his characteristically sympathetic tone.

  “Don’t you dare apologize to him,” Coulten said with a laugh. “I assure you, he never does anything at his club except drink brandy, take tobacco, and pretend to be interested in a broadsheet. I’m sure such pursuits are nowhere so important as anything we might do here.”

  “Indeed, they are of no importance at all,” Rafferdy said, scowling at his friend, “which is precisely why they are so important to me. When all of life becomes crowded with profound and weighty matters, making time to engage in trivial things becomes an even greater priority.”

  Canderhow bowed in his direction. “You argue the point cogently, and I concede that you are likely right, Rafferdy.”

  While Canderhow was a barrister, and not even a baronet let alone a magnate, he did not say Lord before Rafferdy’s name. No titles or honorifics were allowed within the circle. Whatever the nine of them were outside its bounds, within they were all of them equals.

  “It is, in the end, the smallest delights which impart to us the greatest satisfaction,” Canderhow went on. “But for us to enjoy the littler pleasures in life, ofttimes the larger problems must first be solved.”

  “In that case,” Trefnell said, “if we are quite done with the matter of apologizing for disturbing everyone’s supper, perhaps you can tell us your reason for calling a meeting, Canderhow. I presume it regards a matter of some urgency, as it was done with little notice. Though I am pleased to see everyone was able to attend.”

  For his part, Rafferdy was not so much pleased by this fact as he was relieved by it. The circle of silence would be at its most powerful if the number within it was no more and no less than nine.

  Canderhow gave a half bow. “I hoped, once you heard the news, you would forgive me for providing so little warning.”

  “And I had hoped we were finished with apologies,” Trefnell said, raising a shaggy gray eyebrow.

  Trefnell had once been a headmaster at a school for boys, and he possessed an uncanny ability to speak in a tone that was at once kindly and formidable. Rafferdy found it difficult not to immediately leap to attention when the older man spoke, harkening back to his own years at boarding school—a time during which he had earned the ire of his headmaster on more than one occasion.

  “Yes, of course, I’m sor—” Canderhow shook his head. “I mean, yes, I’m quite finished.”

  “Then go on.”

  Canderhow did so, and the news was not good. Like Trefnell and a few other members of their little order, Canderhow occupied a seat in the Hall of Citizens, and he had a great many connections there. Through some of these, he had heard whispers that a crucial vote was to come up during the next session of Assembly.

  Specifically, an act was going to be put before both Halls at precisely the same time—a measure that would call for the immediate reduction of all stands of Wyrdwood within thirty miles of Invarel (with the exception of the Evengrove) to no more than five acres in extent. If the vote carried in both the Hall of Citizens and the Hall of Magnates, then the act would immediately become law, and all throughout central Altania groves of Old Forest that were deemed too large would be cut back to the proscribed size.

  “Five acres?” Coulten said. “I confess, I have no idea how much that is, but it doesn’t sound very large.”

  “That’s because it isn’t,” Wolsted replied in his typically brusque fashion. He was a red-faced man who sat in the Hall of Magnates and had once been a member of the Stouts. “I am well used to walking about the lands of my estate, and I can tell you that you could stroll all the way around a five-acre grove in ten minutes, going at an easy pace.”

  “Precisely how many stands of Wyrdwood in the vicinity of the city do you think exceed that size?” Canderhow asked, as always attempting to apprise himself of the facts.

  “I would say at least a dozen of them,” Wolsted said, a grim look on his weathered face.

  Coulten shook his head, causing his tall crown of hair to bow and sway. “But if that many groves are cut back, won’t it only cause more of them to rise up and strike out? If their wish is to protect Altania from the Wyrdwood, it hardly makes sense to provoke it.”

  “On the contrary, it would make perfect sense to the Magisters, who are no doubt behind all this,” Rafferdy said. “And I am sure their intent is anything but the protection of Altania.”

  “What do you mean?” Coulten said with a frown.

  Rafferdy gave a sigh. Coulten was clever, but he had a tendency to ask for explanations rather than think things through on his own, even when he was perfectly capable of doing so.

  “How many Risings have there been of late?”

  Coulten cocked his head. “Very few. In fact, I should say there have been none at all. Despite the loss of the lord inquirer, the other inquirers have been doing their work well.”

  “Indeed. Too well, I suspect some think. Due to the efforts of the inquirers, the Wyrdwood has not been antagonized, and so there have been no Risings. Which is why, in Assembly, there has been little impetus behind any calls for the Wyrdwood’s destruction of late. Yet given what happened, there are bound to be many who feel a reduction in the size of those groves closest to the city is a prudent measure. Indeed, so reasonable will the idea seem that most will find it difficult to oppose.”

  “But it is anything but prudent or reasonable!” Coulten exclaimed. “We saw that ourselves at the Evengrove, Rafferdy. If the groves are cut back, they will surely lash out at those who do the deed.”

  Rafferdy gave him a pointed look. “Precisely.”

  For a moment Coulten’s expression was one of puzzlement, but then he blinked. “The Magisters want the groves to rise up. They want to make people afraid again.”

  Rafferdy nodded. “There have been too many other things for people to worry about of late—the cost of goods, brigands and rebels on the roads, and the rumors that Huntley Morden is planning to sail a fleet of ships from the Principalities to Torland. No one is thinking about the Old Trees. Which means, if the Magisters are going to get an act through Assembly calling for the eradication of the Wyrdwood, they’re going to have to make people afraid of it again. Once people are rioting in the streets, calling for either the Halls of Assembly or the Wyrdwood to be burned—well, I suppose you can guess which of the two the Magnates and the Citizens would choose.”

  “I suppose I can at that,” Coulten said with a sigh. “But are you certain the Magisters are behind it?”

  “Of course they’re behind it,” Rafferdy said. “Or rather, the High Order of the Golden Door are behind it. I’m surprised I should even need to state it, Coulten. You know their proclivities.”

  After the rumors he and Coulten had spread in Assembly that Lord Mertrand was to be avoided at all cost, Rafferdy had thought the High Order of the Golden Door would disband. Only then Mertrand was murdered, and soon after the order was revived. As far as anyone knew, nearly every Magister now belonged to the High Order of the Golden Door.

  “Yes, I know their proclivities quite well,” Coulten replied darkly. “But it is baffling nonetheless. After all, the act to reduce the Wyrdwood is to be proposed in the Hall of Citizens as well.”

  It was Canderhow who answered him. “I fear the Magisters have more than a few allies there. Now that the Magisters have suddenly become fervent supporters of royal power, many of the Citizens are following their lead.”

  “Well,” Coulten said, “now that we know they’re planning a vote on the Wyrdwood, what do we do about it?”

/>   Eight pairs of eyes turned toward Trefnell.

  While the Fellowship of the Silver Circle had no magus, Trefnell was closer to being its leader than anyone else, and they all looked to the former headmaster before making any sort of decision. It was Wolsted who had discreetly approached Rafferdy and Coulten one day at the Silver Branch and spoken to them about joining the Fellowship, having observed their actions in Assembly as well as the House rings upon their hands. Yet it was very clear at their first meeting that, had Trefnell not approved of them, they would not have been admitted to the circle.

  Fortunately, after no small amount of questioning—and a demonstration of their ability to read and invoke several magickal runes—Trefnell had shaken both their hands and welcomed them into the order. With the addition of Coulten and Rafferdy, the fellowship of nine was complete. Five of their number belonged to the Hall of Magnates, and the remainder to the Hall of Citizens. The purpose of the fellowship, Trefnell had told them during that first meeting, was to do all they could to make certain that Assembly passed no act or made no law that might cause harm to the Wyrdwood. And they had all of them together sworn an oath binding them to this aim.

  Rafferdy had never been much for making pledges. After all, promises could become quite inconvenient when one had a sudden wish to change one’s mind. All the same, he had few misgivings in swearing this particular oath. He would never forget entering the Evengrove with Mrs. Quent and traveling to the ancient pyramid in its center—the tomb of a powerful Ashen entity which was hidden within, and its vile powers contained by, the Old Trees. Rafferdy was in general a man happily free of convictions, but there were two notions to which, after that night, he now hewed with great faith. The first was that the Wyrdwood must never be harmed. And the second was that, in all of Altania, there was no woman more intelligent, more brave, and more beautiful than Mrs. Quent.

  While it was not Trefnell who had founded the Fellowship of the Silver Circle, it was he who had quickly turned it to its present purpose upon joining the order. “It is no coincidence that, after so long, the Risings have begun again even as Cerephus approaches in the heavens,” he had said quietly to Rafferdy after that first meeting. “We all of us in the circle know that the Wyrdwood has the power to thwart the magicks of the Ashen. But only you and I have seen it with our own eyes.”

  It was half a year ago when Trefnell had witnessed the abilities of the Wyrdwood for himself. A member of the arcane order he had belonged to at the time had been made into a gray man—his body hollowed out to a shell and his organs, along with his soul, replaced by a daemon.

  After Trefnell, in the course of his research, stumbled upon this awful fact, his former compatriot pursued him, intending to murder him to conceal the secret. In desperation, Trefnell had fled to the country and there went to a small stand of Wyrdwood—for in his reading he had encountered a few hints of the ability of the Old Trees to resist daemons.

  And that night, by the stone wall at the edge of the Wyrdwood, he had discovered it was true. He had watched as the branches of the trees lashed out, snatching his former compatriot up from the ground and rending the daemon into pieces that dissolved away into a gray sludge.

  After hearing this harrowing tale, Rafferdy had related something of his own experiences at the Evengrove, how he had observed the trees stand in resistance to the magicks of the Ashen—though he had given no details that might have indicated the presence or identity of Mrs. Quent, or even the true nature of what they had found there.

  Despite Rafferdy’s vagueness, Trefnell had been excited to learn of these additional facts, which added weight to his belief that the Wyrdwood had some important role in what was to come. For none of them had any doubt that the Ashen would continue to seek a way into the world.

  “It seems the hour we have been preparing for has come,” Trefnell said as the other magicians looked to him. “We must find a way to prevent the measure calling for the reduction of the Wyrdwood from being enacted. And I fear it is not enough to vote against it and hope others do the same. For should the act carry while we were in the negative, it would surely direct attention toward all of us.”

  Trefnell did not need to explain further. Lady Shayde continued to observe Assembly on a regular basis, and if she did not come, then Moorkirk—that hulk of a man who served her—came instead.

  “Then we are bound to fail,” Wolsted said, his ruddy face going grim. “If we do not vote against the measure ourselves, then we can hardly expect that others will do so.”

  “What if nobody were to vote on it?” Rafferdy said, an idea forming in his mind.

  “I don’t follow you, Rafferdy. If we speak nay to the motion to bring the act to the floor, or to the motion to end debate and call for a vote upon the act, we will draw as much attention to ourselves as if we opposed it outright. In any case, we cannot succeed.”

  “So it would seem,” Rafferdy said. “Unless, of course, it is impossible for a vote to be called at all.”

  Canderhow stroked his jowled chin. “But that would only happen if a quorum was not present. And if word gets out that there is to be an important vote—which the Magisters will make sure happens just in time, mind you—then we cannot expect many will stay away from Assembly.”

  “Can’t we?” Rafferdy said, arching an eyebrow for effect. “And what if some number of magnates found themselves otherwise … engaged?”

  The others stared at him. Then, as he explained his idea further, he saw looks of understanding go around the circle—followed by grins.

  All at once those grins ceased as there came three loud thumps on the ceiling above. These were followed, after a pause, by three more. Despite the protections of the circle of silence, they all held their breath and uttered no word. There was only one reason for the signal from above.

  There were either soldiers in the pewtersmith’s shop or suspected agents of the Gray Conclave.

  For several tense moments they continued to stand within the circle, making no sound. Trefnell pointed at the door of the room, then clasped his hands together. The message was clear: have your spells of binding at the ready.

  While Rafferdy had practiced his binding enchantments a number of times, so that the harsh words of magick came easily off his tongue, he had never used the spell on a living being. Nor did he ever have wish to do so. All the same, he tightened his grip on the ivory handle of his cane.

  Suddenly there came two thumps from above, followed by two more. So loud was the noise that Rafferdy jumped in his boots, though he quickly let out a breath of relief.

  “Whoever was here, they’ve left now,” Canderhow said, dabbing at the beads of moisture on his brow with a handkerchief.

  “Then I suggest we do the same,” Trefnell said. He gave a nod in Rafferdy’s direction. “I believe we all know what we are to do in advance of the next session of Assembly.”

  With that, the circle was broken and the cloth pulled away from the door. By ones and twos they went up and out into the night, allowing a few minutes to elapse between their departures from the pewtersmith’s shop so as not to draw attention.

  “I do hope you know what you’re doing,” Coulten said as he and Rafferdy walked down Coronet Street.

  “What a peculiar thing to say,” Rafferdy replied cheerfully. “Of course I don’t know what I’m doing. You know I prefer to invent things as I go.”

  COUGHS SOUNDED about the Hall of Magnates, along with a constant rustling as lords and viscounts, earls and dukes fanned themselves with a folded broadsheet—always The Comet or The Messenger, of course, never The Fox or The Swift Arrow. Though it was still morning, the day was already sweltering, for the umbral had been exceedingly brief.

  Another round of throat clearing echoed up toward the domed ceiling. Everywhere magnates turned their heads to look about them, as if expecting some event to occur. Despite this, the High Speaker’s gavel lay still upon the podium, and the floor at the center of the Hall remained empty.

  Acros
s the aisle from where the New Wigs were situated, Lord Davarry sat alone upon a bench. Several rows of benches behind him were similarly empty. While he sat stonily, gazing forward without expression, it was plain to all that his agitation was growing. His cheeks were red, and his bluish wig had steadily crept forward on his head over the past half an hour as he repeatedly clamped his jaw.

  There was a loud noise at the back of the Hall. Davarry leaped to his feet and turned to look toward the large gilded doors. But it was only an usher who, having grown dull with the heat and quiet, had leaned against one of the doors, causing it to slam shut. The young man gave a sheepish look, then hastily pulled the door back open, for the doors were not to be shut until Assembly was called to order by the High Speaker.

  And that could not occur until a quorum—two thirds of their total number—was present.

  Davarry glared at the usher, then sat back down on the empty bench.

  “Were you waiting for something, Lord Davarry?” Rafferdy said, rising to his feet. He spoke as if merely making idle conversation—though his volume was more than enough to carry throughout the stifled Hall.

  Now it was at Rafferdy that Davarry’s glare was directed. “And what might you presume the answer to be, Lord Rafferdy?” He gestured to the empty benches around him.

  “Ah,” Rafferdy said, as if just noticing the empty seats. “It appears that you have misplaced your party, Lord Davarry.”

  “So it would seem.”

  A bout of nervous laughter went around the Hall at this, though it was not so much directed at Davarry as at the absurd situation. Rafferdy had to grant the other lord his due. Davarry was not one to be made a fool even when caught in foolish circumstances.

  “Curiously, I find that I am in a similar plight,” Rafferdy said, gesturing to the empty seats to either side of him, which were usually occupied by the other New Wigs.