Whiskeyjack

by Victoria Goddard

  “Forgive me for opening old sorrows, but how did he die?”

  I couldn’t hold on to the insight. “He broke his neck out hunting.”

  “Yes,” said Sir Hamish. “He’d gone into the Forest—there’s excellent game—and his horse missed a jump down in the Magarran gorge.”

  “Were there any witnesses?”

  I took a sharp breath and coughed long and hackingly before I could catch my breath again. Sir Hamish said quietly, “No. Rinald liked to hunt alone. It was only when he didn’t return for dinner that people started to worry. I was part of the search party that found him the next day. We didn’t wonder about foul play. The Magarran limestone is treacherous to man and beast.”

  “Someone could very easily have disguised their activities, in short,” said Mr. Dart.

  We all knew who had the most to gain. I stared glumly at the dragon. That was another victory hollow in so many respects.

  “Might they have bene working together?” I said at last.

  “Tadeo and Vor never liked each other,” my father began.

  “Except it wasn’t Tadeo,” Mr. Dart finished. “If they were working together it makes sense why Jemis would be cursed to, well, if I have understood you correctly, to have a physical revulsion to certain thoughts or sentiments regarding his father.”

  My mind was too slow. Was this—all this physical malaise—the curse?

  Domina Enory nodded gravely. “It explains many of the symptoms: that the three great illnesses were after his father’s first unexpected return and subsequent appearance of suicide, when he—how old were you then?”

  “It was after the Interim ... about thirteen or fourteen,” supplied Mr. Dart. I was speechless, my chest so tight I wondered that I could still breathe, my stomach roiling.

  “Old enough to make a great deal of fuss seeking out the truth,” suggested Domina Enory. “But young enough that no one would be shocked at so extreme a reaction. Then this spring, when the need to defend his father’s honour overwhelmed every other consideration, enough to break free of serious enchantment and to waken a slumbering curse, whose effects would slowly subside only to gain incredibly in strength when his father returned alive—”

  “Excuse me,” I said abruptly, and fled outside.

  I KNELT BEHIND THE old grange until everything conceivable that could come out did so. I had, however, not eaten very much that day; and what I most wished to eject was not actually in my stomach or lungs at all. It felt very physical, nevertheless, and my body did its best to oblige.

  At last I sat back on my heels. Fishing wearily for a clean handkerchief I discovered I was clean out.

  “Ah! Have I the opportunity to supply the inexhaustible Mr. Greenwing with a handkerchief? Please, take mine.”

  I was too weak and dishevelled to do more than accept it gratefully, although I was not much in the mood to be grateful to the Honourable Rag.

  “Here,” he added; when I turned, aching in my ribs and heart and unable even to pretend I was glad to see him, he handed me a dipper of water.

  I took it slowly, and sipped even more slowly from it. The dipper was battered old tin, the water cool and fresh and exactly what I needed. I cleared my throat. “Thank you.”

  He reached out a hand and pulled me easily to my feet. “You have not been eating enough, Mr. Greenwing.”

  This was said wholly earnestly. I was shaken. The Honourable Rag and I did not have a relationship of earnest friendship, or even earnest indifference. Earnestness, in point of fact, was nowhere evident in the Honourable Roald Ragnor’s personality.

  He was still holding my hand, I realized. He wore tan kid gloves, but I could feel the hard line of the ring he wore underneath. It was the match of mine, gold with a stylized flower-pattern in garnets—except that I was not wearing mine, as he could see; I had no gloves.

  “You’re not wearing the ring.”

  I gazed up at him. Tall, blond, muscular, and today, this moment, earnest as well as handsome. I wonder, I thought, and asked without pressure: “Why should I be?”

  He seemed to have forgotten all his usual tricks of misdirection and bluff. He frowned. “You wouldn’t have joined Crimson Lake if you didn’t believe in the mission.”

  He put a faint emphasis on you, as if to indicate he thought me a man of great principle and honour. I stifled an inward hollow laugh to the effect that though I tried, I really did, I seemed always to end up making everything personal. By the Lady, I was curious about Crimson Lake.

  “I won the ring in a game of Poacher,” I said as neutrally as I could.

  “Whom were you playing?”

  “A Tarvenol duellist.”

  The most dangerous person I had ever met. That core of utter ruthlessness the game had revealed ... and the deeper core of iron honour that the game had so tantalizingly been beginning to show.

  Never had I regretted a game of cards being untimely halted as that one.

  The Honourable Rag narrowed his eyes in speculation. ‘Tarvenol duellist’ meant something to him, clearly; equally clearly he didn’t feel like sharing his thoughts. I waited patiently. I could feel all the thick sickness hovering around me, waiting sluggishly but inevitably to envelop me again. I felt sluggishly resistant. I did not even try to draw my hand away.

  Roald himself did not move. His eyes were narrowed, his attention turned inward, his face intent and thoughtful.

  It wasn’t long that we stood there like that. Not even a full minute, I supposed. It was long enough for me to think two things about the Honourable Roald Ragnor: One was that for the first time since I’d come home from university there was not even the hint of alcohol on his breath.

  The second was that I always saw him either with his family or alone. Oh, I’d often seen him talking to people, and a few times out dining, but never with people our own age, who might conceivably be called his friends.

  Abruptly he let go of my hand. I bent to pick up the dipper from the ground, which was a mistake: I gritted my teeth as nausea rose and stuffiness descended, and more slowly stood up again.

  There had been only a dozen students in our year at the kingschool (which anyway Roald had not gone to, the baron having preferred private tutors). That was not many for a community the size of Ragnor Bella. For whatever reason there had not been so many our age to begin with, and several had been lost in the Interim or moved away shortly thereafter. If you looked only at those who sat easily within the category of ‘gentry’ there was only the Honourable Rag, Mr. Dart, and me among the male persuasion. Roddy Kulfield was down a step, and he was anyhow away at sea, and Mr. Kim down another; and that was it. There were not very many girls; none of gentry rank in our year at all.

  “Do you have any friends coming to visit over Winterturn?” I asked.

  His face slid into its customary pleasant vacuity. “Been invited upcountry a ways for winter hunting. Boar’s good this season, you know.”

  “I’m not much of a hunter,” I replied, disappointed and a little puzzled, and then even more puzzled when intensity returned in one brief skewering glance.

  “No? There’s a fine trophy in yonder hall that says otherwise.”

  The dragon. Was he giving me clues? Or was I just reading too much into what I wanted to be true?

  “I’d like to know more,” I blurted. “About Crimson Lake.”

  “’Tis a paint colour,” he said, grinning. “Ask Sir Hamish; I am happily ignorant.”

  And that was that. I sighed and watched him saunter off at a deceptive pace. I returned the dipper to the nail next to the well, fussed fruitlessly with my clothing in the hopes I didn’t look a total mess. Glanced around the deserted area behind the old granary one last time.

  Over by the bushes something white gleamed. One of my handkerchiefs, or Roald’s, I thought, and went over to reclaim it. The way it was crumpled on the ground reminded me of—O Lady—

  At the White Cross had been my aunt.

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Anatomy o
f a Curse

  “But what on earth was Lady Flora doing there?”

  I grimaced.

  Mr. Dart, who had met me at the door and thus received my blurted discovery, nodded sympathetically. “That is the question, isn’t it? At least your memory’s starting to come back.”

  I nodded, which set up a throbbing in my sinus cavity. I must have looked particularly green around the gills, for Mr. Dart grasped me firmly by the arm and drew me over to where Domina Enory and Hal were deep in conversation.

  “Ah, there you are back again,” said Hal, quite as if my disappearing to be sick in the bushes was commonplace—which it wasn’t, thank the Lady. “Domina Enory and I have come up with an idea, Jemis, but we’ll need to go back to the workroom in the Hall. Will that be acceptable, Mr. Dart?”

  “Of course. I’ll tell Hamish. Do you want, ah, the major?”

  “I don’t believe his presence will be necessary,” the professor replied. I looked across the dragon’s body. My father stood next to Ben, who seemed to have finally been able to trade his place next to the Marchioness with the Chancellor. The waves of roiling sickness churned. I put my hand on the back of Hal’s chair, hoping my dizziness was not apparent.

  “Go on,” said Mr. Dart. I blinked at him. “To the house,” he added, and frowned.

  “It’s to be expected,” Domina Enory said briskly, standing up. “Come, Mr. Greenwing, will you take my arm and show me the way?”

  “Yes,” I said, grateful to have a simple and clear task to do. It seemed longer than usual to get to the Darts’ house, even though Hal paid no attention to any of the flora we passed. I even pointed out a patch of saffron crocus.

  “Thank you, Jemis,” he said, barely glancing at it. “Domina Enory, are you sure he should be reacting like this?”

  “We have been waking the magic. Curses are strange things, half-alive at times. It will know, at some level, that we are trying to remove it.”

  They continued to talk. I focused on not losing my footing on the road, and not losing my bearing, either. The fog had come back, but this was one of the most familiar roads in the barony, and I shouldn’t lose my way. I felt dizzy and was grateful to the need to guide Domina Enory, as it kept my mind off everything else.

  We did eventually reach Dart Hall. Mr. Brock opened the door. He bowed courteously. “I believe everyone is out, Lord Jemis.”

  I was too dizzy even to wonder where Mr. Brock had pulled that particular address from. Hal nudged me. I swallowed down a thickness in my mouth. “Mr. Dart will be by shortly. He asked us to meet him in the workroom.”

  “Very good,” said Mr. Brock. “Shall you want refreshments?”

  “Yes, please,” I said, since it seemed proper to have them. Mr. Brock nodded and set off down the hall one direction. I blinked stupidly for several moments into the relatively dim light, then turned to Hal. “I’m feeling very turned around.”

  “We’re in the entrance hall of the Darts’,” he said neutrally.

  I closed my eyes. “Oh yes. Uh, upstairs first, then I think it’s left.”

  “Do you want some directions?” a cheerful voice asked. I opened my eyes again to see the parlour-maid—Ellen, that was her name, I remembered now—looking at us with bright eyes.

  “Mr. Dart’s workroom, please, Ellen,” I said. “He’s joining us later.”

  She smiled at me, as if to say she didn’t particularly care one way or another whether Mr. Dart was or not. “This way, sir.” I followed along behind her, Domina Enory still holding my elbow, Hal showing his injured ankle by a very slight limp. Why did I see those things so easily, but yet feel completely turned around in a house I had been in and out of since I was a boy? Ellen held open a door for us. I smiled gratefully, for I would never have found it on my own. She was several years younger than I, perhaps not much more than fifteen or sixteen. I could not think why she looked even the least familiar, but she did.

  “I thought it was upstairs,” I said, puzzled, when we finally landed in the room.

  “Why don’t you sit down, Mr. Greenwing,” Domina Enory said. “This would be a good chair.”

  I sat down obediently where she indicated. “Hal, is your ankle hurting?”

  “Nothing to speak of,” he said. “No, don’t get up, Jemis, you can’t do anything to help at the moment.”

  I sat down again. My head felt wrapped in thick wool, inside and out. Things jumbled together for a while; I’m not sure I didn’t fall asleep. Certainly I opened my eyes and there was a tray of coffee and water, but when I looked again the tray was full of the objects Hal had laid out for me during the ill-fated attempt to find out the nature of my magic.

  “Can I have the candle?” I asked sleepily.

  Mr. Dart was beside me. “The candle?”

  “The one from the Woods. On the tray.”

  He glanced across the room where Hal and Domina Enory were deep in discussion; and then he was back again, seemingly without having moved. “How did you do that?” I asked, taking the candle from him. “I love the feel of wax.”

  “I walked across the room and back,” he replied. “Yes, it is a pleasing texture, isn’t it?”

  “And beeswax smells so good.” I inhaled deeply, expecting to pay for it with a tithe of coughing and sneezes, but instead the honey-scent seemed to work to clear my mind. I frowned at him. “Perry, I’m sure I’m missing something ... it’s the ebraöni again ...”

  “The what?”

  “You remember, when we were writing letters about the Gainsgooding conspirators. Ebraöni was the word that started to unravel the mystery.”

  His face cleared slightly. “Yes. It meant ... cloud, didn’t it?”

  “Mountain-cloud—wool—pulling the wool over your eyes—”

  “Jemis, I’m sorry, but you’re not making any sense.”

  “My mind doesn’t make any sense,” I said in frustration. “And I can’t breathe.”

  “We’re working on it,” he said soothingly.

  Time jumped, both directions.

  Domina Enory made me stand in the middle of the room, where she drew a circle made out of salt and iron filings and lavender petals.

  I was hovering in the sky over the pirate galley: cruel white birds, golden-throated trumpets, the pirate whipping good magic out of the air, my father turning his oar to turn the ship.

  I was on the dragon, knees clenched, wishing I’d spent more time riding instead of running so my thighs would be stronger for gripping. It threw back its head and laughed and fire came through its laughter and all I could smell, so incongruously, was cinnamon and lavender. Mrs. Etaris would know whose cake recipe involved lavender.

  Hal pricked each finger on my right hand with a small golden pin. He was speaking words in Old Shaian, the language after Antique Shaian and before Modern, the last one still written in the old ideographs, the one the Gainsgooding conspirators had spoken. He spoke words of cleaning, of purifying, of healing. I hoped it would help his ankle.

  Violet and Lark stood on the battlements of some building at the edge of the sea. Lark was smoking the long ivory pipe with which she’d drugged and enchanted me. She looked even more beautiful than I remembered her, even more desirable. Beside her Violet looked diminished, smaller, lesser: and anger kindled in me.

  I laughed with my father and set my old pony over the Leap.

  My uncle grabbed my hands in his and told me intensely that he had loved my mother and only married Lady Flora because he could not have her.

  Poor Lady Flora, I thought compassionately.

  Dried flowers fell down around me, lavender and marigold and larkspur and heartsease, and the words that Domina Enory was chanting were from a very old poem whose meaning teased at my mind. I should know those words—I should be able to understand the lines—but they hovered like a fading dream just outside my consciousness.

  The Morrowlea bell rang the hour, and I said to Hal, “One day we’ll be glad to know how to bake,” and he, who I did not ye
t know was a duke imperial and one of the highest-ranked people on the continent, grinned at me and said, “You never do know where the road leads.”

  And a scent of saffron burning made me sneeze, and I was back in the workroom. The dragon reared up suddenly in front of me, no longer green and gold but grey and maroon. I reached out for a weapon, any weapon. My hand closed on a handful of petals and salt and iron filings like grit.

  “No, here!” cried Mr. Dart, and threw me the beeswax candle.

  My mother had told me in the letter that my magic was dependent on the Woods, and that honey would help. The wax, too?

  The grey dragon coiled cold and dank and loathsome around me. It smelled like corruption, like bitter saffron, like the sort of glue made from dead things. I cried the first spell I had learned, calling fire to the wick of the candle, but it did not light. How could it not light? The grey dragon was cold and slimy, oozing between its scales. I felt my body want to vomit from disgust at the corruption, the maroon blood seeping through the squamous hide.

  It spread its wings and cut out the light around me. I did not want to be in a box—No more boxes! I cried in my mind, and as in the tunnels, in the narrow secret passages, my thoughts turned to poetry. This time I pulled out an image from those perfect sonnets of the Correspondence of Love and the Soul.

  The anonymous poet had found, in the infinite darkness and tiny space of his situation (her situation? No one knew; and no one knew whether the prison was the body around the soul or the stones around the body), a centre of light that nothing could put out.

  Airo was the central metrical foot of the central line of the central sonnet. I am. I exist. I am here.

  I am here, I said to the grey dragon; I exist; I am.

  And I am not going to let you win.

  In my mind I held that line from a poem, and I drew on the images of light that were everywhere in the Correspondence, fascinated as the poet was with the light and the dark and all the possible variations that might be rung on their symbolisms.

  The dragon coiled.

  The candle lit.

  I held the fire with my mind and my hand and pushed with all my might, and everywhere the scent of honey grew stronger, and stronger, and I held it like that until I could smell no more saffron and no more corruption and no more glue and then in the heart of the blazing light I saw the darkness open like a doorway and the dragon burned at my feet to a line of white salt and black iron and silver-glinting scales.