Whiskeyjack

by Victoria Goddard

  I watched him take a werelight from Ben, as easily as if magic had not gone awry in the Fall and become decidedly unfashionable in the years since.

  I made an involuntary noise, mostly of amazement. Ben said sharply, “Hush, lad. Jack needs quiet to find his way. He hasn’t been here for nigh on twenty years.”

  “Not quite that long,” Jack rumbled without turning his head. “I’ve spent my time in the Forest, that indeed I have.”

  He set off down the tunnel at that. I wondered why he had hesitated, given that there were only the two tunnels to choose from—the one by which we had come in, the other one, which we took now. Perhaps there was magic in the tunnels—or magic beyond the werelight. I spun my ring. I had the faint prickle of a sneeze in my passages between nose and throat, but that could as easily have been from the soil around us as anything else. I had not progressed far enough in my studies to reliably sense magic at work.

  I walked along behind Jack, the dim werelight casting strangely multiple shadows. We ducked roots, skirted damp patches, startles the odd spider in its quiet corner. My question about the snow seemed retrospectively foolish.

  THE ARGUTY FOREST HAD for generations been the haunt of outlaws and misfits of one sort or another.

  The Forest was large, wild, ran up into the uninhabited mountains, and not many people cared about Ragnor barony to its south. On the other hand, the Forest also had rich pickings of game—and of travellers, for the Imperial Highway to Astandalas ran through the western edge of the Forest. This had always been something of a problem.

  Usually such things were the province of local authorities, but the Marquisate of Noirell to the south had enough to do with managing the actual Border crossing and the magic-haunted Woods Noirell, and for some reason my friend Mr. Dart would probably know, but which I didn’t, neither the baronet of Arguty nor the barons of Ragnor or Yellem had the imperial title or duty. Instead of their wardenship, a division of the Army had been garrisoned in Yellton and given the job of ensuring the highway’s safety.

  That, of course, had ended with the Fall of the Empire, and no doubt what soldiers had been present at the time had either married into local communities, gone seeking family or fortunes elsewhere, or ended up on the other side of the law in the Forest themselves.

  Probably Jack had been posted to the Arguty garrison at some point. Two or three divisions of the Seventh Army had been, though never my father’s. It was standard practice that local officers never served within three prefectures of their home. The Seventh Army was a blend of Alinorel and Zuni divisions, with, I vaguely recalled, a few Voonran regiments as well. A blend of the peoples of the five worlds of the Empire, back when travel between the worlds was made possible by the magic of Astandalan wizardry.

  Jack and Ben were old enough to have travelled far. Ben’s odd accent could as easily be Zuni or Ystharian as from some distant corner of Alinor.

  I would almost certainly never see anywhere but Alinor, probably nowhere farther than Northwest Oriole—once only one province among many, now most of the civilized world.

  I was old enough to remember the Empire—I had been ten when it Fell—but soon enough the tales of its riches and wonders would be just that, tales.

  I stumbled on a rock and brought my attention back to the present with a jerk. What was wrong with me? I was never so prone to woolgathering before—

  I sighed. Before I spent three years unwittingly drugged on wireweed, besotted with an unscrupulous wizard who used the drug to steal my then-unknown gift at magic and ensure my abject devotion.

  It was infuriating in so many ways. Not just that Lark had been doing this under the noses of the entire university, but that as a result I didn’t know which of my behaviours were truly my own, and which were residues of drug and enchantment.

  Was I naturally prone to wandering thoughts? Possibly. Probably, even. The only counter I could think of was my single-minded focus when I studied for the Entrance Examinations. But the Entrance Examinations were the gate through which the future could open for anyone, and that was the year after my mother had died and my stepfather had remarried. I had only had one thought in my mind, and that was to leave without relying on him.

  I had done so: I had come second in the duchy, coincidentally also second in the kingdom, and won a seat and a full scholarship to Morrowlea, the most radical of the Circle Schools. I could have gone anywhere but Tara, and chose the one where all exterior trappings of rank, including surname, were left behind the doors.

  I was the son of a man reputed the most infamous and reviled traitor of the Emperor Artorin’s reign.

  My roommate Hal had turned out to be the Imperial Duke of Fillering Pool.

  Much to the consternation of the local gentry, Hal was staying with me in my lodgings above the bookstore. He would be a little concerned about my whereabouts by now. I had been gone for—

  I frowned. I had been gone for ... at least a full day. It had been early morning when I went for my run, and it was early morning again now. But ... But I had the niggling suspicion that something else had happened between reaching the White Cross to make my spur week offering at my father’s burial site (one could not, really, call it a grave) and being pushed through the door of the cell in Yellton Gaol.

  Well, obviously plenty had happened. I had somehow traversed the Arguty Forest—indeed, traversed the entire distance between the White Cross and Yellton, which was fourteen miles. I had not intended to run that; I hadn’t wanted to go into the Forest. I had ... I frowned again, turning it over in my mind. I had intended to run ... where?

  “Walk a little faster, lad,” Ben said from behind me. “We’ve a long ways to go.”

  WE WALKED UNDERGROUND for a long time.

  I had no way of measuring time. I was the owner of a most up-to-date pocket watch, gift of my stepfather on my sixteenth birthday, but I had not taken it with me running. After a month I had a good sense of the lengths of roads in the barony, and I had a very steady pace on a practice run of exactly six and a quarter miles an hour.

  Walking through a twisting tunnel at the pace Jack set, I had no temporal markers at all. My—companions? comrades in escape? captors?—whatever Ben and Jack intended, they showed no inclination to talk. I fell to pondering again.

  My thoughts wandered to the perfidious Lark and, naturally, from there to the dashing and dangerous Violet, whom I was more than half in love with despite every rational thought in my head and her own stern warnings. It was cold comfort to think that as an Indrilline spy she could not really quibble at my being on the lam.

  On the lam. Yes, I did like the phrase. The reality, not so much.

  As a matter of principle I did not approve of trying to evade justice and the law. Yet I had not even hesitated, had immediately sought escape.

  I amused myself for a few more minutes querying whether the Faculty of Laws at Inveragory would be more or less inclined to take someone with a criminal history as spectacular as mine was shortly going to become. Jack Lindsary, the author of Three Years Gone, could pour all the clichés and melodramatic literary tropes his soul could hold into a sequel play, and they would probably fall short of reality.

  Possible titles for said sequel amused me a bit longer.

  Were we never going to come out of these tunnels?

  I had a blank between leaving the White Cross and crossing the gaol threshold. I would not even recognize the gaoler by sight. Perhaps by hand, as he’d held it out for graft or whatever he’d wanted.

  Did the Ragnor constabulary take bribes? I considered Mr. Etaris, the Chief Constable; decided that he must, but nothing so crass as a handful of coin. His corruption lay in subtler form, in whom he looked at and how and when and what treatment was meted out. The Honourable Rag, the baron’s son, was indulged in all his vices of gambling and poaching and riding roughshod over crops on the cusp of harvest; Jemis Greenwing, ill-loved nephew of the new chief magistrate, was scrutinized and accused by the court of public opini
on of every sensational act in the barony.

  I made a tally of said sensational acts attributed to me. All right, I had rescued a mermaid from a burning building, and I had slain a dragon, and the two of my university friends who had so far shown up had been a beautiful cross-dressing Indrilline spy and an Imperial Duke, and I had broken a curse on the bees of the Woods Noirell, and I had been involved in the strange matter of the disastrous Late Bastard Decadent dinner party given by Dame Talgarth, but that was incognito, as was the small matter of the cult to the Dark Kings sacrificing cows at the Ellery Stone, which Mr. Dart and I had witnessed.

  The rest of the rumours were totally wrong. I had had nothing at all to do with the summer’s flooding, the wireweed at the Talgarths’, the existence of said cult, the rumours of a twa-tailed vixen running around and not doing any of the things said magical creatures were reputed to do in the Legendarium, any of the multiple groups of highwaymen in the Arguty Forest, or the government’s deliberations over whether to change the inheritance laws of the kingdom and institute a barrel tax on whiskey.

  And we were still in the tunnels.

  I sighed and started reciting poetry to myself.

  I was deep into the sequence of odes from the Gainsgooding conspirators when Jack stopped suddenly, cursed once under his breath, and shoved me back several awkward yards to a cross-path I had entirely missed on my way up. Ben gazed at him intently; Jack said, “Tufa. In there and silent, lad.”

  ‘In there’ was inside the branch tunnel, which was not really a proper tunnel, not like the one we’d been following. A musty, heavy scent saturated the air. I pinched my nose against the certainty of sneezing.

  It was a badger sett, I realized. Ben caught my arm and pulled me to sit on the cold ground beside him. Jack glanced at us, then pulled—actually pulled—the roots above us until bushels of dirt and sand showered down. I buried my head in my knees to muffle my reaction.

  When at last I recovered sufficiently to lift my head everything was dark and I could hear the knocking.

  I pulled a handkerchief out of my pocket. Even running—even after a month as bemused owner of a magic-induced sneeze-suppressing magical ring (my acquisition of it was a long story; the background to the ring, or indeed the sneezes, remained an item on the long list of things about my life I did not fully understand)—I had a goodly store of handkerchiefs. Nearly three years under wireweed had ingrained the habit.

  I repaired myself to the best of my ability. The knocking faded off into the distance. It reminded me inevitably of my adventuresome first weekend back in Ragnor Bella, when Mr. Dart and I had stumbled headfirst in the competing—or possibly colluding—activities of the cult to the Dark Kings, the reprehensible business affairs of the Indrillines, and the even more reprehensible activities of their main rivals, the Knockermen of the Isles.

  It did not stretch the imagination unduly to suppose that the Knockermen might be involved in mysterious tunnels in the southern portion of Yellem barony. It could even have been the Knockermen of the Legendarium, for they were traditionally associated with mines.

  I weighed the merits of encountering the human criminals versus the bloody fey.

  I was enough a child of the Empire to believe in the power of reason and law, and enough a man of the new order to have a deep-seated distrust of unschooled magic.

  I breathed slowly through my mouth, thinking of things other than my tickling nose. If I had to meet one, I’d prefer the criminals. I was an enemy of the Indrillines, and might conceivably be able to bargain my way to safety with the Knockermen, though every gentleman’s instinct in me revolted at the thought of selling out my former lover. Even if she had drugged me, deceived me, stolen my magic, and finally betrayed my deepest confidence. And somehow had power over Violet ...

  What was Violet doing this evening? Safely ensconced in the counsels of the Indrillines, presumably, dashingly dressed and surrounded by dashing criminals—

  O, Lady, I was a total idiot.

  At last Jack said, “They’ve reached further than I’d heard. Must be a good harvest this year.”

  “Is this about the wireweed?” I asked quietly, hoping tone hid any nervousness my voice might have belied.

  “Wireweed?” Ben said incredulously. “Has the blight reached so far?”

  I blinked, uselessly in the darkness. “I beg your pardon?”

  “There’s an epidemic of addiction—and worse, death and, well, I don’t know how much you know about wireweed.”

  His voice was suspicious and cold. I felt cheered by this small and possibly mendacious indication that whatever they were up to, it wasn’t anything to do with the Indrillines, the wireweed, or the cult.

  “More than I’d prefer,” I replied dryly, but decided not to expand on my up-close-and-personal acquaintance with the drug. “I travelled in Ghilousette earlier this summer.”

  I felt them relax. Something made me add, “About a month ago the chief magistrate of Ragnor Bella’s sister-in-law was found to have been growing wireweed on the premises.”

  “Not old Justice Talgarth?” Jack said incredulously.

  “Yes. To be fair, he was away for the summer.”

  “Surely to the Lady he’s not still the magistrate after that going on at his estate?”

  “No.” I sighed involuntarily and realized I’d dropped my handkerchief. I started to fish around for it in the dark, hand closing on the damp earth below me and then someone else’s fingers. “Oh, sorry, Jack, I’m trying to find my handkerchief. The acting chief magistrate for the Winterturn Assizes is Sir Vorel Greening.”

  There was a pause. I felt sure that had there been any illumination whatsoever I would have seen Jack and Ben exchanging one of their meaningful glances. Whatever they were up to, the identity of the chief magistrate mattered. Well, it probably would, to highwaymen.

  Finally Jack said carefully, “Sir Vorel Greenwing?”

  “Yes, he’s a baronet.” I was quite pleased at how neutral my voice was.

  “He any relation to Mad Jack?”

  I smiled wryly into the darkness. “Younger brother.”

  Ben said thoughtfully, “I seem to recall Jack boasting endlessly about his son. He’s not the baronet?”

  The question hung there for a moment while I digested the idea that my father had boasted of his son—of me—to such an extent that his comrades would remember it ten—twelve—who knew how many years on.

  I gripped a handful of earth tightly, swallowing against my always-too-ready propensity for tears. When I could speak tolerably unemotionally, I said, “Mad Jack was found hanging in the Forest some weeks after his sudden reappearance. His death was ruled a suicide and proof that the accusations of treason were correct. As a traitor forfeits his patrimony, his son was therefore attainted and his brother received the title and estate instead.”

  The silence was very nearly absolute. I could clearly hear my heart beating.

  I was glad withal for the darkness.

  Ben said, “The knocking’s stopped. Shall we go on?”

  “You’ve the light,” Jack replied in a low rumble. When Ben lit the were light and passed it over, Jack picked up the white square of cotton that had fallen between us. He smiled crookedly at the Old Shaian character monogrammed in the corner. “‘Racer’?”

  “Thank you. Yes, I like to run. A friend embroidered it as a joke.”

  I didn’t add the second layer of the joke, that I’d been named for my grandfather’s favourite racehorse. “That’s what I was doing, running, when I was taken up.”

  “Not running from?”

  “Just running. The poor man’s steeplechase, my father used to call it.”

  “A man after my own heart,” Ben said jovially, not clarifying whether he meant me or my father. “Lead on, Jack, you know the route.”

  “I know our destination and that these tunnels used to lead there.”

  He set off walking again down the taller and less musty main tunnel. “Who built t
hem?” I asked diffidently.

  “These? They’re part of the smugglers’ network along the Magarran. The Tufa are looking for tippermongeramy. Not too much trouble usually, but better not to have to deal with them, especially not this time of year. Surely you’ve heard of them?”

  “The smugglers, yes.”

  I could hear the amusement in his voice. “And spent plenty of time looking for them?”

  “We didn’t come this far in.”

  Mr. Dart had read about the caves in one or other of his beloved histories (being the sort of boy who’d read histories as soon as he could read), and had been most insistent we go looking for them. This was when we were ten or so, in the summer after my father’s departure for Loe but before the first report of his death. It was the last of the gilded summers before the Fall of the Empire.

  In retrospect we’d not gone anywhere deep enough to reach the limestone country and find the caves. We’d been sternly warned against the dangers of the Magarran valley, which were full of sudden sinkholes and treacherous waters. Then again, we hadn’t really thought there was treasure to be found. As the rest of Jack’s explanation was gibberish to me, I said, “What do you mean by the tufa? What is tippermongeramy?”

  “Well said,” Ben muttered. “Took me three tries to get it the first time.”

  Jack rumbled again. “Tippermongeramy? The natural caves are full of stalactites and stalagmites, which condense a kind of magic-enriched water. The tippermongeramy is algae that grows at a certain level of magic and nutrients. The Tufa—well, that’s the name for a kind of rock, but in this case it’s also the name for people who come harvesting the tippermongeramy. The Tufa are a very old community, as old as anything in the kingdom. They do something with the tippermongeramy and sell it for use in cosmetics. It used to be illegal for anyone below the rank of provincial governor to use it. The taxes made the Governor of Northwest Oriole rich.”