Whiskeyjack

by Victoria Goddard

  My elder uncle had died there when his horse stepped into a sinkhole and threw him. No one know-how many lives the Strid had claimed.

  According to Mr. Dart’s stories it was best described as a river turned sideways: six or eight feet across; at least a hundred down, though no one had ever measured it. It was said it was the most dangerous stretch of water in the world precisely because it didn’t look it.

  Magarran Strid or not, we passed it by in the darkness. We left behind the rope bridges; descended again to the ground; and came at last to the Hollow, which was anything but.

  IN THE DARKNESS IT looked like what they called ‘fairy hills’ in South Erlingale—South Erlingale being far enough from the countries that marched along the Kingdom not to worry overmuch about naming the Good Neighbours. The Hollow was a smooth-turved low dome, bald of trees, likely to be some ancient pre-Astandalan kinglet’s burial mound. Perhaps it was that of the legendary Bloody Queen.

  I could see it so clearly because of a line of torches that spiralled around its foot. This should have seemed imprudent but some trick of topography meant I did not see the torchlight until we were close enough also to see the sentries.

  Myrta spoke a few words to one. She was answered with gestures, and led us around the bottom of the hill to what did seem more accurately called a hollow. This was a grassy dell tucked under an overhang with a huge old oak tree on the crest above us, its dry leaves clacking faintly in the wind. Here there was a bonfire, and many more people.

  “Stay here,” she said, pointing unceremoniously to a log well on the hillside side of the fire. “Food’ll be along in a minute.”

  “Thank you, Myrta.” I bowed; she sniffed and stalked off.

  I sat down on the log between Jack and Ben. If they were tired they didn’t show much sign of it. I was tired. I’d considered myself fit, but I did not generally spend all day on a forced march.

  “I’m not sure I fully relish the vagabond life,” I murmured. The bonfire had been burning long enough to throw a great heat, but the log was hard and cold and there was an icy draught coming down the hill at our back. We were facing southwest; I could see a faint reddish-green tinge remaining in the sky to our right. It could not be that late, after all; possibly seven or eight o’clock. I hadn’t heard any bells all day.

  Ben snorted agreement. “I’m getting too old for this shit. I want something fiery to drink and a warm bed.”

  “If I’ve not mistaken the place,” Jack replied, “We’re at the old hanging hill, so the drinks should be available, if nothing else.”

  “The hanging hill?” I did not like how sharp my voice was; but no one had ever said exactly where they had found my father.

  Jack spoke without any concern for my megrims. “Did you see the oak? The king oak, the old folk used to call it. Not a savoury place, certain times of the year. Even when I was a boy there were still rumours that people were making sacrifices there.”

  “The Dark Kings,” I said, heart sinking.

  Ben started. “Here? Out west, yes, but this far into the Empire?”

  “Ragnor Bella’s always been a little backward,” Jack rumbled.

  My turn to snort. “Yes; and there is, or was a month ago, an active cult to the Dark Kings in the barony.”

  Mr. Dart and I had—mostly inadvertently—flouted several of the cult’s activities. I felt an undercurrent of unease at the thought. We were at one of the turning times for the year, from autumn to winter, when both Schooled magic and the old cults held high ceremonials. Although we had seen the arrest of two of the three priest-ringleaders, both the identity and the whereabouts of the third were unknown. We had not been able to identify any of the good citizens who had been participating.

  I could only hope I had not been recognized for my part in the affair. I’d been in disguise—

  But it wasn’t exactly a difficult guess to suppose me neck-deep in the thing, one way or another.

  I shivered against a gust, pulled my jerkin closer about myself, and wished for a hat, scarf, gloves, and coat.

  That I did not keep imagining my father’s body swinging from the king oak on the crest of the hill above and behind us.

  I sneezed. From a dozen yards away or so Myrta turned at the noise, then shook her head in resignation when I pulled out one of my remaining handkerchiefs. I was almost certain that my father had not taken his own life. He had not been a traitor, was anything but a coward.

  I sneezed again. My throat was scratchier than that morning, which suggested the cold was fast developing.

  Surely the man who had held a mountain pass so the rest of his party could escape—surely the man who, trapped on the other outside of the Empire during the Fall, had not only survived but made his painstaking way home—surely that man would not have taken his own life. Not even when he was faced by the wife who had remarried, the brother who denied him, the community that thought him a traitor, the son who ... still worshipped the ground he walked on.

  “Bless you,” Ben said beside me.

  “Thank you,” I replied.

  It was very difficult to face the thought that my father might have been murdered.

  “Bless you again,” said Jack, from my other side.

  “Thank you.”

  But at least with murder there was something I could do. I could find out the truth.

  It was such a pity I was on the run from justice.

  “Anyway,” said Jack, ignoring my following series of sneezes as unworthy of attention, “since time out of mind there’s been a distillery here.”

  I caught my breath. “Surely if it’s known to be here that would lead the authorities straight to it?”

  “People knew exactly where the Gold Fort was, but that didn’t mean anyone ever reached it.”

  Mr. Dart was far better at history than I; he had written to me about the infamous fastness of the Trigoon Wastes on Voonra. The people there had flaunted their gold mines by coating their hilltop fortress in it, so that it shone as a beacon across the foggy wastelands in the middle of which it was situated.

  Astandalas was always hungry for gold. Seven armies had tried, and failed, to capture the Gold Fort.

  “Point taken,” I replied. The Lady knew I’d never be able to find my own way back through that tangled obstacle course traversed at speed in the dark.

  Ben stretched out his gnarled hands. “What do they distill out here, then? That rotgut pearjack?”

  “That and even more rotgut whiskeyjack,” a new voice said. I looked up. An older woman had walked over to us, Red Myrta and another stranger at her side. The latter carried a tray of bowls and tankards, all covered with wooden lids in the Charese fashion.

  I examined her as best I could in the shifting light from bonfire and torches. It didn’t take much to see that she was the gang’s leader—nor that she was Myrta’s mother. I rose to essay a bow. “Ma’am.”

  “This is Jemis,” Myrta said. “He’s always like this.”

  I bowed to her, too, for good measure, then sat down for what turned out to be stew and whiskey.

  “I’m Myrta the Hand. My daughter tells me you made the traverse well enough for a beginner to the wild lay.”

  I presumed that was a compliment. “Thank you.” Decided after a moment I should perhaps clarify. “I’m not seeking, ah, new employment at the moment.”

  Myrta the Hand gazed at me. “You’re Mad Jack Greenwing’s son, I presume? Heard he was back from university.”

  Red Myrta knew my first name, and it was not as if three questions in Ragnor Bella wouldn’t identify me. “Yes, ma’am.”

  On either side of me Ben and Jack shifted position; probably exchanging a meaningful glance, I thought with some amusement.

  “There are at least three different—let us call them opportunities—for those of us on the wild lay concerning you, Master Jemis.”

  “Mr. Greenwing,” I corrected politely.

  “You don’t sound surprised, Mr. Greenwing.”

/>   I sipped some the ‘rotgut whiskeyjack’, which was the smoothest and smokiest whiskey I’d ever tasted. It was even better than what the Hunter in Green’s man had laced my coffee with.

  “Ma’am, I am merely surprised that there are only three. My life is the stuff of melodrama.”

  She smiled slightly. “I’ve seen the play. It was somewhat histrionic but very well done.”

  “It was entirely false.”

  My voice came out flat and cold, not quite intentionally. Jack and Ben froze beside me. Every one of the bandits/distillers/smugglers I could see except for Myrta the Hand moved into some variation of the en garde.

  Myrta the Hand continued to regard me solemnly. “Didn’t your father teach you not to pick fights?”

  “My father taught me to pick the right ones. Ma’am. I am fully aware you could make this my last day if you so wished. Nevertheless, I will gladly defend my father’s honour.”

  “He’s a bottle covey,” Red Myrta said after a moment. “I told you about the final exams, Mum.”

  “So you did,” said her mother, still watching me.

  I decided that given the fact that I was already well in their power, there wasn’t any reason not to ask, so I did: “Would you be willing to tell me more about these opportunities you mention?”

  She looked as if I’d asked the right thing. “Disruption, distress, delay. Not, at present, death.”

  I didn’t know quite what to say to that, so I bowed to indicate my thanks. Red Myrta rolled her eyes; her mother smiled again.

  She did not say anything more, for a commotion had broken out to our right. I did not at first think too much of it, until I realized first that the commotion was a man bringing in a struggling child, and secondly that I knew her.

  If I had been willing to fight for my father’s honour, the sight of my little sister made me understand for the first time the pure desire to kill.

  “What are you doing with my sister?”

  I did not ask anyone in particular. I had snapped immediately out of the ordinary world into the world of mortal danger, which was terrifyingly attractive and in which I felt even more terrifyingly at home. Not that the terror came until after; which was part of the joy.

  The man holding Sela leered. “Hostage, ain’t she?”

  Three different opportunities, Myrta the Hand had said. Well, not this one.

  “Jemis!” Sela cried. “Jemis! Make the bad man stop! I don’t want to play any more!”

  “Hey, stop crying, you, or you’ll be sorry.”

  Sela responded to this by sinking her teeth into the man’s hand.

  Even in that state I fully approved.

  He yowled and fetched her a backhanded blow, and that was it as far and my rational mind was concerned.

  In retrospect I moved fast. In the moment I unhurriedly stood up from the log, unhurriedly made my way past Red Myrta and her mother and half-a-dozen other whiskey-distilling highwaymen, unhurriedly reached Sela and her captor—

  —And most unhurriedly indeed took aim and landed my right fist in his throat. He dropped. I put knee to chest and hands around his gasping throat.

  I turned my head so I could see Sela as well as him. She looked so surprised she’d forgotten to cry.

  “J-Jemis? He hurt me.”

  She rubbed her arm. My heart congealed.

  “Did he touch you anywhere else?”

  Below my hands I could feel the raising, slightly bubbly breath catch. The man’s eyes rolled frantically, but I saw no guilt there, only horror.

  Sela smeared snot all over her face. “N-no. But I don’t like this game! I want to go home.”

  So did I, with a stabbing longing for a home that no longer existed.

  I stood up. Turned back to Myrta the Hand. “Well, ma’am?” My voice rang clearly through the Hollow. “You have my sister and myself and my two companions. You hold our weapons. You know our worldly belongings. You could hand me over to the Yellem Constabulary or the Knockermen or the cult of the Dark Kings or the Ragnor Constabulary or the Indrillines or whoever else is looking for me or kill me out of hand. What do you choose?”

  Myrta the Hand closed her mouth. “A bottle covey, Myr? More like a hundredweight cask.”

  I waited. At my feet Sela’s captor rolled over to his stomach, where he continued to gasp, but less frothily. Sela skirted his head to run towards me, then ran back and kicked him in the side.

  I picked her up when she came back. “It’s not nice to kick a man when he’s already down,” I said to her.

  “I couldn’t kick him before,” she said, sticking out her tongue.

  I couldn’t argue with that, and transferred my attention back to Myrta the Hand.

  “You’re Mad Jack Greenwing’s son, all right,” she said, shaking her head. “This game has too many players as it is without throwing a wild runner into the mix.” She nodded sharply at someone out of my sight. Then her face changed.

  “Wait. You mentioned the Indrillines?”

  Chapter Eight: Refuge

  For the price of explaining everything I knew about the Indrilline and Knockermen activities in Ragnor barony—or at least everything I was willing to describe, which meant I did not discuss Violet by name—Myrta the Hand got some of her people to lead us back through the obstacle course.

  They let us go on the highway. They did not give us back our belongings, but that was probably too much to ask for. I shifted Sela, whom I was carrying, and wished—not for the first time!—that life made sense when the mortal danger had passed. The highwaymen melted back into the forest like shades into shadow.

  “Well,” I said, and stopped there.

  Ben snorted softly. “Well, and a scientific punch that was indeed. Where did you say you worked?”

  I smiled involuntarily. “A bookstore.”

  “And you’re Jack Greenwing’s son.”

  Jack cleared his throat. “Where did you go to university, that a daughter of the wild lay was there?”

  “He went to Morrowlea,” Sela said proudly, wriggling in my arms so she could look at them. She focused on Ben, visible in a stray shaft of moonlight. “Who are you? You look like my friend Hal. Do you know him?”

  Ben looked politely baffled. “I’m Ben. And you, miss?”

  “I’m Miss Sela Buchance. Jemis is my brother but we have different papas.” She clutched at me suddenly. “Promise you’re not going away, Jemis? You’re staying now, aren’t you? I don’t want you to go anywhere.”

  She seemed fair set to work herself into hysterics. I soothed her as best I could, smoothing her disordered hair and discovering that her skin was alarmingly clammy. I set her down, where she grabbed my leg, so I could undo my coat, then reversed it around her before picking her up again. “There, that’s better, isn’t it?”

  “Promise you won’t go away again?”

  Her voice was terribly anxious. Why would she worry that I would go away? And then I realized that to her life must seem a series of people going away, and not coming back. First our mother, to the influenza (though I did not think Sela remembered her), then me, to university; and now, this summer, her papa, my stepfather, to the wasps that had stung him to death.

  I could not bear to lie to her, even at the risk of a very bad reaction. “Sela, love, I can’t promise that I’ll never go away again. But I’ve come back, haven’t I? I can promise I’ll always do my best to come back.”

  “You came back this time,” she said darkly. “People don’t always come back when they go away. My papa didn’t. We went to visit his grave.”

  “Yes,” I replied solemnly, not sure what else there was to say.

  “I asked Mama but she said your papa wasn’t in the churchyard with everyone else’s. And then Liza said that that was because your papa didn’t stay buried the first time, and I was worried that my papa would be unhappy about being buried and what if he comes back? Then you’re not with us anymore and when the man came to say we were looking for you I wanted to hel
p.”

  It was too dark to see her face as more than a pale blur, but I could fee her trembling in my arms. I pushed down my own feelings, made my voice as calm, as warm, as matter-of-fact as possible.

  “Your papa won’t be coming back, Sela.”

  “Your papa did.”

  I swallowed. “That was because he hadn’t really died. He was far away from home, you see, and when they sent us a letter it had the wrong details, so we thought he had died but we were wrong.”

  And thus it was that my half-sisters were not legitimate, and I had for ever branded in my memory the look on my father’s face when I opened the door and he saw coming behind me my mother with the infant Lauren in her arms.

  And I was stuck having a conversation like this is in the dark menace of the Arguty Forest, where he had taken leave of his life for good—whether by his hand or another’s—in the spur weeks between autumn and winter, on the ancient Fallowday when the spirits of the unquiet dead might walk. I sneezed again, and Sela nearly giggled. “Bless you!”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Why isn’t your papa buried in the churchyard?”

  Her voice, thank the Lady, was losing some of its sharpness, but she was still shaking.

  “That had to do with the mistake in the letter. Some people believed the wrong things about my father, and ... and they wouldn’t let us bury him there.”

  “But—”

  I did not want to talk about why my father was buried in an unhallowed grave under the White Cross. I suppressed another series of sneezes. “But nothing. It’s too late to talk about this. What I want is for you to try to fall asleep as we walk.”

  “But Jemis—”

  “Hush. We need to listen very hard in case there are any nightingales.”

  Any nightingales there might have been would long since have flown south or through the green ways into the Kingdom, but thankfully Sela was not quite at the age to argue with logic, and that, mercifully, kept everyone quiet as we put one foot in front of another down the long dark road. I kept my mind firmly on that.