Whiskeyjack

by Victoria Goddard

  “Oh yes?” I said weakly.

  “Good morning,” he added to the others, sweeping a bright smile along the table. “Thank you for summoning me—oh! Uncle Ben!”

  He produced a half-bow of evident respect to his great-uncle, who shook his head and snorted. “Rapscallion.”

  “A graceful one,” murmured Jack, which was a pun I’d somehow not yet myself made.

  Hal looked quizzically at Jack. “One of your old comrades-in-arms, Uncle?”

  Jack smiled crookedly. “You could say that.”

  Hal stared at him, then swung around to frown intently at me. Ben was half-smiling, and did not seem at all surprised when Hal returned his now very sharp gaze to Jack. Hal, I reflected, was good at recognizing relationships in more than just plant families.

  “Surely not,” Hal breathed.

  Ben was definitely amused now. He spoke formally, the words rolling off his tongue in an accent I now wondered might be Astandalan court: “Your grace, may I present my good friend and former comrade, Major Jakory Greenwing of the Seventh Army? Jack, my great-nephew Hal, the Duke of Fillering Pool.”

  “I am honoured,” said Hal, bowing very deeply.

  Jack stood so that he could bow back. “Thank you.”

  I did know Hal’s preferences, so I made him coffee. My hands barely shook this time. My stomach seemed to have taken up the quivers, but that was to be expected.

  He thanked me and sat down beside his great-uncle. “I’ve some letters for you, Jemis; they seemed like ones you might want as soon as possible. I was glad to meet the Darts’ messenger this morning, I must say. Mrs. Etaris and I have been quite concerned about your whereabouts, especially once Miss Sela disappeared last night.”

  “Jemis rescued me from the bad man, Hal,” Sela informed him. “He hit him in the throat and he fell over.”

  Sela, I reflected, showed definite signs of a bloodthirsty streak. I wondered at what age it was appropriate to start teaching one’s little sister how to fight.

  Hal did not like physical violence, though he was one of the most morally courageous people I’d ever met. “How, er, efficient of him. So, what have you been doing with yourself this week, Jemis besides hitting bad men in the throat?”

  I sighed. “Most of a day in the Yellton Gaol, then a day and a half in the Arguty Forest. We got here last night at midnight.”

  He made an encouraging gesture. “And for the rest of the week?”

  I blinked at him as this, and a few other things, fell into place. Their pattern of meaning confounded me utterly. “What day is it?”

  Chapter Ten: Correspondences

  It was mid-morning in Dart Hall, and my father was alive.

  I had somehow lost two a half days of my life, and my father was alive.

  I was on the lam, a gaol-breaker and a wanted man: and so was he.

  “Walk us through what you remember,” he said intently. “You were out running?”

  He did not seem to care that I participated in the poor man’s steeplechase. Perhaps years as a slave on a pirate galley wore off the sharper points of pride.

  “Yes. I left early, for I was intending to make a twelve-mile circuit.”

  Everyone looked at me. I tried not to flush, thinking firmly instead that I liked the gold-on-blue brocade of the curtains. After a moment Master Dart asked, “How long did you expect that to take?”

  “About two hours. I’d not gone on a long run for a while, and I was feeling restless.”

  “Not my response,” Mr. Dart muttered nearly under his breath.

  Master Dart nodded. “Very well. You left at—?”

  “In the pre-dawn. I’ve been running the barony the last month. I am tolerably well acquainted with the condition of the roads. I wished to be back in time to bathe before work.”

  “Work?”

  I found it very difficult to look at my father as I described my life. My throat felt scratchy with the burgeoning head cold. And ... my life was surely so different from what he had hoped for his son ...

  “I work as an assistant clerk to Mrs. Etaris at her bookstore in town. I have rooms above the store. Hal’s staying there with me.”

  Ben guffawed. “That must spite the noses of half the town.”

  “The Baron finds it exceedingly difficult to comprehend,” murmured Master Dart.

  “The Baron finds most things exceedingly difficult to comprehend,” Sir Hamish responded. “Do continue, Mr. Greenwing. You set out for your exercise in the pre-dawn, heading—?”

  “I went up along the highway to the White Cross, and—that’s it. It’s as if I stepped directly from the cross-roads into the Yellton Gaol. I didn’t even see the gaoler clearly.”

  Mr. Dart passed the sugar to Sela, who was gazing adoringly at him, or possibly his beard. “There must be something—some clue or key. Perhaps if you describe it?”

  I might be talkative, but I was not used to talking about my private impressions of a place, a moment, a situation. Certainly not the White Cross in the grey light before dawn.

  I sneezed, muttered an apology. “It didn’t take me long to get there; it wasn’t yet light.” I closed my eyes to call up the memory; or perhaps to hide from it. “It was quiet. I could hear a rooster starting down the road—Mrs. Hennessy’s cock is always the first to crow. There was mist in the river-valley. Not too much on the highway.

  “It was thicker on the Borrowbank Road and—yes, and along Spinney Lane, too, because I was planning on going that way and I remember wondering how difficult it would be along that soft spot by the Wester Marsh. It had been very muddy the last time I went down it.”

  I drank a few sips of coffee to clear my throat and to distance myself from the eerie dawn errand. It did not help at all to have him sitting there across the table from me. He did not look as he had in any of those dreams, but—

  I cleared my throat again. “An owl hooted just as I stopped before the waystone. I jumped, and—and I was in Yellton.”

  “Again. Refine your vision.”

  Jack’s voice was the brisk commander’s, as if I were a young soldier giving his report.

  I tried again. “I stopped running where the Borrowbank Road comes up to the highway, where the surface changes. I walked up to the waystone. The owl hooted as I came past Spinney Lane.”

  “Why did you stop running?” Ben asked intently.

  I felt piercingly embarrassed. Could not meet anyone’s eye. I traced a spill of salt on the table before me instead. “I was ... wanting to make the spur-week offering.”

  Jack said, “Why on earth would you—”

  He stopped abruptly, hearing the shocked dismay in his own voice that a son of his would be doing anything around a cross-roads before dawn.

  We had had a few classes in Philosophy and Theology where we were invited to imagine having a glimpse of how our reputations fared after our deaths. I had found it a very difficult exercise, knowing firsthand how painful that realization could be.

  It did not appear any easier the second time.

  “I’m sorry, Jemis,” he said quietly.

  I had been feeling numb, except for the raw throat, but the quiet dignity of that apology woke some fire within me.

  “Need you be? Did you stage your own suicide?”

  “Jemis—no! Never—I would never have left you—I would never have pretended that!”

  His voice was raw, his visible eye horrified.

  I had had too many dreams when he said that to me.

  —No. I would not let those dreams govern me. I would not. I would not.

  I spoke with precision, not so much for him as in defiance of those dreams. My throat was thick, with tears or phlegm or both. “Then let us find out who did.”

  ALL THE THINGS WE DID not know could have filled several books. After a struggle to return to some semblance of normal conversation I was relieved to be reminded of my letters by the arrival of the second post for the Darts.

  I had three letters. One was m
arked Tarvenol, one South Erlingale, and one bore no postmark at all.

  I couldn’t help myself, and opened the Tarvenol one first. I felt such a crushing disappointment that it wasn’t from Violet that it took me several moments to realize what it was about.

  “Shocking news?” Mr. Dart asked lightly. “Are you summoned to attend the Last Emperor?”

  “I’ve been offered a place at Inveragory.”

  They were fulsome with their congratulations, so it took me a while to explain my shock. “I haven’t applied there yet.” I looked at my father, whose expression was unreadable. “I was planning on writing to them, but I haven’t yet heard from my tutor about sponsoring me.”

  “You did come First at Morrowlea,” Mr. Dart pointed out. “Faculties seek out the top students from other universities for advanced degrees, you know.”

  “That’s right—you said Tara had offered you—”

  Too late I realized that this had not been something Mr. Dart had shared with his brother and Sir Hamish. They both frowned, the Squire profoundly. “Perry—”

  “Of course, you wanted to come home,” I added hastily, knowing it was lame, knowing I had unwittingly betrayed a confidence. I had thought Mr. Dart had truly wanted to come home to be his brother’s land agent and learn to steward the estate.

  Looking at their faces now I had the sinking sensation that I was wrong.

  Mr. Dart had managed to hide a gift at wild magic from everyone for most of his life.

  Mr. Dart was always the one starting adventures.

  Mr. Dart smiled easily at his brother. “What would I want with Tara? I’ve already been to Stoneybridge. Look at the quality Tara’s putting forth nowadays.”

  “Roald Ragnor went to Tara,” Sir Hamish said for Jack’s benefit. “He’s the Baron’s son, and rather wild, too,” he added for Ben’s.

  I looked down at my letter. A full scholarship to Inveragory for Law. That made so many things easier ... and others so much harder....

  The letter from South Erlingale was from my tutor, and explained, at least, that the Dean of Law from Inveragory had been visiting his brother, one of the other professors at Morrowlea, and had been in the Senior Common Room when my letters arrived.

  “Letters?” enquired Mr. Dart.

  My correspondence was none of their business, except for all the ways in which it was.

  “I wrote to ask about Inveragory.” I wouldn’t explain everything about the spring’s disastrous examinations, I thought, though I had also written to explain that my defence of the virtues of scholarly rigour and logic—in the form of meticulously taking apart Lark’s final paper—had not been fully disinterested. She had written a brilliant rhetorical argument for why Major Jack Greenwing’s name should not be recorded in the House of Fame. I had not said then that I was his son; but I could not bear for the university senate to think I was not.

  I cleared my throat. “I also wrote about the dragon and to ask if any of the Scholars wanted to come examine the carcass.”

  The Squire harrumphed. “Do they? I shouldn’t mind having the old granary back sooner rather than later.”

  I focused on the letter. “Ah—yes. They’re coming as soon as possible, Dominus Lukel from Morrowlea and a couple of other Scholars he knows from other universities. He’s the Master of Arms.”

  “He spent a full month on dragons in Self-Defence,” Hal said brightly. “He must be overjoyed to think his best student actually met one.”

  THE REST OF BREAKFAST passed with innocuous conversation. Hal carried most of it; neither Mr. Dart nor I said much. I was tired and emotionally overwhelmed; Mr. Dart seemed ... shadowed, or perhaps he, too, was just tired. He had been coming home as late as we’d arrived. I presumed he had been out picking mushrooms, but he might not have been.

  “Why am I here?” Hal asked rhetorically after Ben said something.

  “It seems a reasonable question.”

  “First it was to find some Noirell honey, and then since I found Jemis along with it, I decided to stay a while and see if you turned up.”

  Ben snorted, but I could see he was pleased. “You thought I’d come?”

  “I was sure you would once you learned about that play. You did know about the play, sir?”

  “Yes,” Jack growled.

  My father. I sneezed. Everyone ignored me except for Sela, who said, “Bless you!” with amazing condescension.

  “We went to see it this spring with Jemis—they didn’t advertise it with the subtitle. I wrote to you, Uncle Ben, then decided I’d come visit. When I heard you’d gone off I presumed it was here, after the truth of the story, and came myself.”

  Ben regarded him shrewdly. “Cruel of you to leave Elly to your aunt’s list.”

  Hal whooped, startling everyone as his laughter usually did. “The list of eligible parties,” he explained. “It’s my aunt Honoria’s masterpiece. Every possible good match itemized and ranked according to elaborate criteria. I shall have to send you a copy, Jemis.”

  I looked up from my toast crumbs. “Er, why?”

  “Reference. It’s pretty well the same list for you, though I believe Aunt Honoria would permit you to consider regional nobility. She thinks I ought not look below a ruling countess.”

  I stared at him some more. “Hal, I am currently under allegations of murder. I work at a bookstore. I am probably going to end up a lawyer. I don’t think anyone on your aunt’s list—”

  “Wouldn’t be interested in the son of Mad Jack Greenwing, Viscount St-Noire and heir to the Marquisate of Noirell? Don’t be absurd, Jemis. You must see the appeal to more than the criminal element.”

  I ignored this slight on Lark and Violet (I did not think I had yet mentioned Red Myrta, who anyway had never shown any indication of romantic interest in me). “You can’t be seriously thinking of choosing a bride off a list?”

  Hal shrugged. “I shall marry either for love or dynastic succession. It would be best to do both, of course, but the second is far easier to attain, and then again there’s the difficulty in finding the truth of emotions when a title and a fortune are involved. Elly’s marrying for love—” He smiled quickly at his great-uncle. “Not that anything’s official yet! The betrothal will be announced at our Winterturn ball. I in my turn shall, no doubt, be expected to seriously consider the young women produced to attend the various festivities.”

  “The Ironwood heir and so on?” I enquired lightly, though I felt sick to my stomach in a way difficult to describe.

  “Precisely. One of them will doubtless suit well enough, or if none of them will do at all—or will have me, though any unattached young woman who comes to my house this winter will be well aware of what’s toward—then my sister’s wedding in the spring will bring the rest, I shall choose one, and that will be that.”

  “Seems cold-blooded,” Sir Hamish ventured at last. I looked up at a note in his voice; he was gazing with a mild frown at Mr. Dart.

  Mr. Dart himself was smiling cheerfully and unabashedly. Hal shrugged again. “I have been the duke since I was seven, Sir Hamish, as you know. I have always known my duty. At least the circumstances since the Fall have changed so that I am not obliged to entertain a purely arranged marriage, as would have been the case a dozen years ago.” He grinned at me. “Don’t look so troubled, Jemis. Your grandmother probably doesn’t know the fashion is for marrying young nowadays, so you have a few years yet to study Aunt Honoria’s List and make your acquaintance among the beau monde.”

  I struggled with a great many sentiments, none of them helped by the presence of the stern-faced man sitting across from me. I pitied Hal’s matter-of-fact acceptance of his duty; I envied him it; I wished I understood my place in the world with such unshakable confidence.

  Eventually I managed a pretence of nonchalance. “It may be that I end up with one of my dashing criminals unless I can clear my name of these bizarre charges. No one of gentle birth will want to wed such a scandal.”

  “I think yo
u underestimate the upper-class ladies of Northwest Oriole.”

  I had not many any besides any other incognito ones at Morrowlea (whom I had, of course, not recognized as such) and the Honourable Miss Jullanar Ragnor, who was decidedly uninterested in scandal after her abortive attempt to elope with an itinerant knife-sharpener who was actually the Earl of the Farry March in disguise.

  “Perhaps your final letter will be of assistance,” suggested Mr. Dart.

  I slit open the third envelope, not expecting anything but a local’s anonymous gossip. I had already had a few such missives, which Hal and I had been ceremoniously burning during magic practice.

  It was not a crank letter of support or condemnation.

  It was from my mother.

  Chapter Eleven: The Third Letter

  —My darling Jemis:

  It is my dearest hope that you will never read this letter.

  —I must start again.

  How can I not hope to speak to you across the years?

  If you are reading this it is because my worst fears have come to pass. My darling, I’m so sorry to leave you orphaned. I cannot shake the belief that I will not see another spring. I will never see you grow up to your full potential ...

  My love, I am weary. I must not delay—there are too many things that you must know, if all that I see comes to pass.

  First: I have the Sight, much good it has ever done me. I can see that you have a gift buried deep. If it wakens, know that our family’s line holds magic from and for the Woods. It comes out sometimes in the Sight, sometimes in healing, and every once in a long while in what one our ancestors called the ‘wild green luck’, which was half affliction and half glory.

  The blood of the Good Neighbours runs in our line, my son. That always has strange and mysterious effects. Part of ours is that the farther we are from our Woods the weaker our magic ... If you never return across the boundary stream your magic may never awaken. You may find you have the odd dream that comes true; that is as much as most of our family has ever had of the wild green. You will certainly find that honey from the Woods helps you.