The great oak woods and mixed thickets are host to a large quantity of game, including the famous Red Stags (which the Honourable Rag had spent most of an uninvited evening visit telling me about the week before), so that mixed in with the rest are daring hunters, charcoal burners, woodsmen, and any number of illegal stills where people turn sunlight into moonshine by way of apples, pears, barley, and yeast.
I had learned yesterday about the Tufa and their tippermongeramy. As a kind of companion piece to the Hunter in the Green, there were also the rumours of the Wild Saint. No doubt there were also people doing disturbing rituals to the Dark Kings that had once been proscribed and heavily punished by Astandalas.
I wondered how many people lived in the Forest.
The jays accompanied us and whoever else was out there like a ranging dog. Now off in the distance, now disturbingly close, they set off their alarums at irregular but frequent intervals.
“Quiet as you can,” said Ben, as we prepared to leave the juniper thicket. “Jack’s the leader; he’s the experience.”
At sneaking? At scouting? In the Forest? All of them, I presumed, and rather wished I’d taken Mr. Dart up on his occasional offers to go picking mushrooms in various parts of the barony, which was his preferred euphemism for the version of poacher that was not played with cards.
I’d been trying so hard not to make a stir.
The jays cried again, over to our right this time. I froze. Jack said, “No, this is when we move, when they’re already disturbed.”
So we moved. We went along game trails that more or less led us south and west. I had no idea how Jack was guiding us. Perhaps he had some magical means of direction. Such things had been commonplace before the Fall. Since then ... I’d heard of more than one person who’d used such a compass and found himself in the Kingdom between worlds.
Bowing to my reluctance to put myself deliberately in more trouble, Mr. Dart had given up poaching and come instead to the little flat above the bookstore where Hal was staying with me. We were friends; no one thought twice of his visits. Mr. Dart had a gift at magic and needed to be taught even more discreetly than I.
I was discreet because magic was out of fashion and I needed desperately to get safely to the Winterturn Assizes. Mr. Dart’s gift was a wild magic, and that was not only unpredictable but had once been a sentence of exile or death.
I disentangled my scabbard from an ivy-enveloped bush. So much for good intentions.
AFTER TWO HOURS OF the jays, we’d started to take them for granted. There was something almost fun in the way we moved, in the sense of those mysterious other movements marked out by the local grey jay population, in the cold, clear air, in the path a little more human-made and from the sun definitely going the right way that Jack tentatively led us onto. I had nearly figured out how to walk without getting the sword stuck on everything.
That, of course, was when I walked straight into a trap.
MY FIRST THOUGHT WAS an inarticulate profanity; my second and third progressively more pungent. Then I picked myself up off the ground and determined that nothing much hurt but my pride.
“Pit trap,” Ben said conversationally to Jack. “Haven’t seen one of those in a long time.”
“No,” Jack agreed. “You hurt, lad?”
I brushed off bits of the dead leaves that had cushioned my fall. “Not to speak of, thank you. I’m sorry to be so presumptuous, but would you terribly mind helping me out?”
Jack and Ben exchanged glances, then disappeared. I hoped my estimation of their characters was not entirely wrong and considered my predicament.
On the lam in the Forest in the company of two ex-soldiers bent on a mission of revenge and now also stuck ten feet down in a sheer-sided pit previously covered with a lightweight framework of branches disguised by leaves.
Oh, yes, and all this was on the cusp of winter; I’d forgotten that part earlier.
This did not inspire me to poetry, either.
I stamped my feet, tucked my hands under my arms, and wished I had spent more time with other sports besides fencing and cross-country running. Pole vaulting might have been helpful; acrobatic gymnastics certainly.
Not, alas, my sport.
Ben and Jack were out of range, potentially for good.
It occurred to me to wonder what Mrs. Etaris would do in such a case as this. It was no use letting her general appearance and demeanour of a respectable middle-aged middle-class woman of South Fiellan occlude one: she was far too much like the barony, and had deep reserves of mystery, mischief, and possibly even mayhem below that seemingly placid surface. There was a lot more to Mrs. Etaris than met the eye.
I had in my possession: myself; a dagger in its sheath; a fine sword in its scabbard; a belt for said weapons; a blanket; miscellaneous brush and forest litter; two consistently successful spells (to light candles and shoo away flies) and a smattering of magical theory; a head stuffed full of poetry and Poacher and the symbolism of many centuries; and a magic ring that, as far as I knew, did nothing but more or less suppress my sneezes.
I stamped my feet some more.
Over the past month, while I worked during the bookstore, Hal had occupied the portion of his days not given to scouring the barony for strange plants by systematically going over my new flat. This appeared to give him great pleasure; as I knew it was hardly an activity he (being an Imperial Duke by trade) indulged himself in at home, I was glad enough to let him run with it. He was theoretically staying with me to teach what it meant to have an Imperial title in these post-Imperial days, but I had received the strong impression that he was delaying his return home by every reasonable means. Quite why he felt the need to this I had yet to determine.
Last week he had reached the back of a wardrobe in the attic and there found a stash of what we somewhat incredulously determined to be old adventuring items: well-worn leather boots and an even-more well-worn woollen cloak, both of foreign style, a small roll of leather that held a set of pen-knives, a second of artist’s brushes and inks, and a third of what we realized (even more incredulously) were picklocks.
“They must be Mrs. Etaris’,” I said.
“Could belong to the former owner of the building,” Hal said. He had yet to become convinced as to Mrs. Etaris’ more exotic skills, though he’d been the one to discover that she’d been at Galderon during that university’s protracted rebellion from its provincial governor.
Mr. Dart was visiting for an evening drink, as he often did, saying the six-mile ride home in the dark to Dart Hall was nothing. I was starting to be a little worried about Mr. Dart, truth to be told, for a number of ill-defined impressions that did not go away no matter how I tried to rationalize them. He poked at a set of metal prongs and fabric strips that were bundled on top of an old and very battered leather bag. “What do you reckon these are?”
We spent a while drinking wine and coming up with increasingly salacious and silly uses for them. None of these were close to the truth, or at least not to the tale Mrs. Etaris spun for us the next morning.
“They belonged to a friend of mine—oh, that bag! That was his, too.” She smiled foolishly at the battered old thing.
“Was this by any chance the friend that sang going into battle?” I asked suspiciously. He was the only ‘friend’ of her university days Mrs. Etaris had so far mentioned, but from the very little she’d said I would have believed nearly anything of him, except possibly that he existed.
“Oh, that brings back memories.... I do beg your pardon, Mr. Greenwing. Yes, indeed it was he. Would you mind if I left the bag here? He asked me to look after it for him, many years ago. Not that I expect him ever to call for it, this late date, when probably he’s been dead since well before the Fall, and anyway there’s nothing much to it, but I did promise.”
I looked wonderingly at her. Her voice was brisk, her words light, her eyes full of a long wistfulness. It must have been a good twenty-five years or more since she’d been at university.
I hoped I would never be put to it, but that if ever I was, I would keep a promise to a friend long past any sensible expectation.
“And these?” Mr. Dart asked, lifting one of the metal prongs. “You must know we’re very curious about their purpose, Mrs. Etaris.”
WITHOUT PRACTICAL DEMONSTRATIONS the climbing equipment was more than a little baffling. The bands one apparently looped around the pole or tree and used to provide leverage as one climbed, as if one were creating a sort of mobile clove-hitch the way up. The metal spikes, like unsharpened knife blades, one used as handholds, jabbing them into crevices and then walking oneself up the wall or cliff or—theoretically—ten-foot-deep pit face.
It had seemed straightforward when Mrs. Etaris explained how to do it.
I considered my available tools. Unfortunately I had only the one dagger. The sword, apart from being too long, was also far too good to use for such a purpose. I dared not call out to Ben or Jack for fear of other listeners.
I scrabbled around in the bottom of the pit for a while. None of the branches were stout enough to bear being shoved into the earth, let alone bear my entire weight thereafter. The only one that was remotely strong enough I managed to break off trying to pull out again.
Well, it would provide a footrest. Maybe.
The walls of the pit were vertically cut earth, claggy in the bottom sections, a little sandy higher up. The only rocks visible were either pebbles or bigger than my head and firmly embedded.
For want of any better idea I scoured around some more, and eventually discovered a narrow rock sticking out of the pit wall down near the floor. I pried it out with the help of the dagger, figuring the blade was shortly going to be much worse abused, and closed my hand around the stone. It was about an inch wide, tapering from a wider section, rough-edged, and harder than sandstone. I decided not to wast time puzzling over geology (for instance, why was there sand, and not limestone, just here?). It was too cold, even out of the wind.
I went back to where I’d broken off the stick. That was about chest high. Clearly I needed to start as high as possible so I could swing myself up and out before my strength gave way. I was reasonably strong after years of fencing, archery, garden-digging, and wood-cutting, but I had neglected most of my exercises but for running the past year. First from illness, then from heartbreak, then from lack of opportunity, and finally from lack of habit.
I resolved to remedy this as soon as I’d resolved my more urgent legal affairs. Mr. Dart would fence with me if I asked him, surely; he was trying to learn to accommodate his stone arm.
It was a pity that Ben and Jack appeared to have absconded. They surely knew what they were doing with a sword. They might conceivably have been willing to give lessons once their efforts at vengeance were completed.
Without further ado I put Mrs. Etaris’ theory into practice.
It would no doubt have been easier with the proper equipment.
But it worked, albeit slowly and with much difficulty. I shoved the stone into and heaved it out of the earth. If I plunged the dagger angled slightly downwards, my weight bound it into the soil. Then I could brace my feet to swing up the other side, stone forced in—
Yes, I really needed to work on the strength of my arms and shoulders. Hal wouldn’t be much use, he had to be reminded to leave his plants, books, and food alone to do anything more energetic.
Except for polo. Hal did love polo.
I didn’t have, nor could afford to acquire, a horse.
I was feeling very proud of myself, and very thankful to Mrs. Etaris, when I rolled over the lip of the pit-trap and discovered I had an audience.
Ben and Jack had dragged a dead tree onto the path for me to use as a ladder. For a moment I was so glad they hadn’t abandoned me to my fate I didn’t register any of the other people.
I was still on my knees, catching my breath, when someone pushed me down onto my stomach and stepped onto my back.
“Very pretty,” an unexpected voice said. “I’ll have to remember that trick. Hans, disarm him.”
“Aye, m’lady,” said a gravelly voice, and in short order my sword, dagger, and bedroll were gone and I was trussed neatly as a pheasant. Hans then turned me over so I could look up at ‘m’lady’.
I felt, as I rolled over trying to place the voice, a moment’s annoyance that the jays had not warned of us any near intruders. Then I saw that the young woman facing me had a grey jay on her shoulder and another come to her hand for the seeds she held out for it. I blinked at her. “Myrta?”
Chapter Seven: The Hanging Hill
My first, stupid thought was that banditry must pay far more than I’d imagined, since Myrta had been in my year at Morrowlea and therefore could not have been the Rondelan scholar. My second, third, and fourth thoughts were none of them much better.
Myrta frowned meditatively at me. She was a strong, handsome woman, her hair a rich auburn like Mr. Dart’s, but her eyes hazel-green to his blue. We had not been particular friends, since Lark and she did not get along, but I had liked and respected her intellect in the classes and work we’d shard. She’d studied weather; she was very good at archery, needlepoint, and carpentry; she had no sense of the absurd; and that was about all I knew of Red Myrta, as we’d called her to distinguish from Dark Myrta in the year above us.
“Jemis,” she said at last, unsmiling. “I see you’re recovering about as poorly as I expected from the lovely Lark.”
Had everyone known what was going on except for me and the professors?
I replied with what dry insouciance I could muster. “Thank you. Is this new, or a family profession?”
I reminded myself again that she had never demonstrated a sense of humour when she just stared at me. “Family.” She surveyed me again, more slowly. “What about you? I’d not figured you one for the wild lay.”
It was flattering, in a way, to be taken as sufficiently ruthless; but then again, Red Myrta hadn’t exactly said she figured me for a successful highwayman. I tried to maintain suavity. “It has been suggested to me as appropriate, but at the moment I’m afraid I have a much more bourgeois occupation.” I reflected for a moment. “Presuming my employer doesn’t fire me for being absent due to a slight misunderstanding with the law.”
“What do you stand accused of?” Myrta asked politely.
“Wrongly accused. The murder of Fitzroy Angursell in the form of a dragon.”
“How strange,” she said, giving the words face value.
I tried not to sigh. “May I ask what you intend with us? You can see we haven’t much in the way of worldly goods.”
“You do not presume very much on our shared alma mater.”
“Ought I?”
She did smile. “Up until the last day of the viva voce examinations, I should have said not on your life.”
She paused, presumably to give me the opportunity to appreciate the full import of that phrase.
“That was before you had the guts to perform one of the most spectacular break-ups I’ve ever heard of. My favourite was always the story of how the warlord Tzië Hu chose to announce her break with the Emperor Eritanyr by way of sending him the governor of West Voonra’s head in a barrel of rice wine, but now, when I reflect on splendid and stupid gestures, I visualize you standing up to Lark.”
Myrta had not cast the first stone. I knew that; she’d been sitting on the other side of the room. “Thank you,” I said, which was weak.
“So now that you have broken with the lovely Lark, I am more inclined to consider you a potential ally. You understand I cannot let you have your weapons?”
“Naturally not.”
“Will you vouch for your companions?”
They had been returning with a way for me to climb out; and one had to start trusting somewhere. It had to be said I rarely found it difficult to decide on the characters of strangers. It was my family whose motivations I distrusted.
“Yes,” I said firmly, “if you will take the assurance of a ma
n once besotted with Lark.”
Myrta smiled bitterly. “You were not the only one besotted with the lovely Lark. You were the only one who broke with her before she was done with him. Jack Ready, untie our—guests.”
The faint emphasis reminded me not to underestimate Myrta’s commitment to her profession. I was grateful for the chance to move my hands, which were stiff and numb with the cold. “Thank you,” I said politely to Jack Ready, who glanced incredulously at me before going over to Ben and Jack.
Once they were untrussed and also stamping feet, blowing on hands, and contriving to get close enough to each other to talk, Myrta said, “Right then, onwards. To the hollow.”
“Aye, m’lady.” Jack Ready let out a piercing shriek, the near echo of the grey jays.
Myrta’s gang moved through the forest as if it were theirs, which perhaps it was in all the important ways. Myrta strode in the lead, followed by two of her men, then Ben, Jack, and me, and Jack Ready and four or five others behind. Someone had taken our weapons, and there were many hidden someones in the trees around us. Jay calls echoed frequently. Some of those were from the birds who flocked to Myrta; some certainly were not.
It was full dark long before we stopped. As the twilight began to gather shadows I began to stumble. The third time I nearly fell one of the gang appeared at my side to take my elbow. I was embarrassed, but she held me as gracefully as if for a ball, and I needed the guidance too much to demur.
The route took us through an increasingly elaborate series of obstacles: along a tree-trunk bridge, through a narrow cleft in a stone ridge, up into a hidden tree-top structure of rope and wood bridges and platforms that I was a trifle embarrassed to be grateful was hidden by the heavy twilight. At one point below us I heard the sound of a great river, but could smell water only briefly. I wondered if it were perhaps the fabled Magarran Strid.
The Magarran was a major tributary of the Rag. The Strid was a section of its route through the Arguty Forest, where it passed through a limestone gorge. This was the special haunt of the Red Stags; it was also the most dangerous topography in the Forest.
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