In the Shadow of the Bear

by David Randall

  “‘Well, boys,’ said Snuff, ‘do you have coin to wager?’ He asked as if he was sure that the answer was no.

  “‘I have money,’ said Andiron Grinder, and ‘So do I,’ said Charfennel Comb, and ‘I do too,’ said the others, and I just jerked my head up and down while my heart raced and my shirt itched and sweat trickled down my eyebrows. We poured our coins on the table. I took out two silver shillings, twenty-odd copper pennies, and a few half-coppers and quarter-coppers. That was my entire life’s savings, bar the house my parents had left me. I always kept my money on me, to guard against the burglars of Lackey Lane. My home had been broken into twice since my parents died.

  “We all put about the same amount of money on that table. Our piles of dull copper were dross next to his glittering coins. He could have bought and sold all six of us with one gold sovereign.

  “‘Penny-ante players,’ Snuff said. He caught my eye and smiled so I could see his filed teeth. I—I saw bones in his pupils, Clo. The gnawed bones of men. I heard a bear roar. I was afraid for my life, and I nearly ran out of the Periwig then and there. I stayed where I was. I could not leave that gold.

  “‘They’ll never believe me back in the City,’ Snuff said. ‘The smallest bet in the Mayor’s cellars is a shilling—don’t blanch, children! We’ll play for good old copper here. Who’ll be rich tonight?’ The cards were hummingbirds as they fluttered between his hands.

  “Snuff toyed with us poor fools. Silver sloshed back and forth across the table at his command. When one of us was tempted to leave, Snuff would take the man’s money away or give him more—whichever was more likely to keep him at the game. We were entranced. The other servants left for their homes and families, but we stayed. Mr. Pellitory usually closed at two in the morning, but a silver piece dropped offhand into his palm kept the Periwig open. Snuff treated us to ale, beer, wine, whatever we wanted. We didn’t need the liquor. We were already drunk with the game and the play and the shining, dazzling coins.

  “Snuff talked while we played. ‘It isn’t easy to labor for the Mayor,’ he said. ‘His steward’s a tough man and there’s no shirking under him. I emptied chamber pots before I came to work in the cellars, and let me tell you, an Alderman stinks as much as you or I, or maybe more, from all that rich food he eats. I’ve scrubbed floors till I was bone weary. I spent six solid months scrubbing floors. I felt my strength go out from me, and friends, if I may call you friends, I was sure I’d be scrubbing floors for the rest of my life, weaker and weaker, till I was a pale husk of an old man who could only look back at a life of drudge work for a man too proud to know my name. Is it also like that here in Chandlefort?’

  “He looked around with those terrible, bone-filled eyes of his, and I heard myself babbling words. ‘It’s just like that,’ I said. ‘My mother was a scullery maid. She scrubbed pans all day long and her hands were hard as bricks. Father was servant to the horse doctor in the stables. He’d hold mares still while the doctor birthed them, work like that. A horse kicked Father in the head and he died. Mother wore herself out in the kitchens.’

  “‘Chandlefort used them up and spat out the husks, yes? I know how it goes, boy,’ said Snuff with a sort of sympathy that tore at my guts. ‘Chandlefort is a machine, just like Low Branding. The laborers serve the upper servants, the upper servants serve the lords and ladies, and the lords and ladies serve Lady Cindertallow. Lady Cindertallow, bless her callow, highborn heart, never knows the names of the laborers who work themselves to death for her pleasure.’ Snuff smiled lazily. ‘But it need not be that way for us, hey? Fortune smiled on me, the way it appears to be smiling on you at the gaming table, friends. I was transferred to the wine cellars, and now life is sweet.’

  “The others didn’t say anything, but I did. I knew I was going to lose all my money, but I wouldn’t let him insinuate that I had no dreams or hopes besides his sneering coins. ‘I won’t just scrub floors,’ I said. ‘Before they died, my parents bought me a place as an indoor servant. I’ll rise. I’ll make them proud. I’ll become understeward before I’m done.’

  “‘A noble ambition,’ said Snuff. He said it almost gently and that was even more cruel. I heard my own words echo in my ears and I saw more than ever that my life was small and dreary and bleak. ‘Well, life is sweet. It’s a pity about the arguments between His Eminence the Mayor and your Lady Cindertallow. Have you followed the nub of the dispute? In the pride of her youth, having succeeded her venerable grandmummy to the Ladyship, Lady Cindertallow has renounced her allegiance to those weaklings down in Queensmart. His Eminence argues that the city of Low Branding owed its allegiance directly to the Queen and that Low Branding’s obedience to Lady Cindertallow was due to her solely as representative of the Queen. Therefore, though Lady Cindertallow claims that her rule over Linstock survives her declaration of independence from the Empire, His Eminence argues that Low Branding is now independent of both Queensmart and Chandlefort.

  “‘Lady Cindertallow is not indulgent of this argument. She is perhaps foolish to be so stubborn, since her Yellowjackets have become lamentably disorganized since Lord Cindertallow’s death in that unfortunate hunting accident. Such a lot of accidents happen to the Cindertallows lately! Parents gone when their boat ran onto those rocks on the Whetstone River, husband gone; Lady Cindertallow must be feeling awfully lonesome. Overworked, too—I gather Lady Cindertallow is hard pressed to run Chandlefort without a Lord Cindertallow to help her out. She should remarry, but she will insist on staying a mourning widow. Silly woman.

  “‘Well and well, a fine mess. But despite this dissension within Chandlefort, Lady Cindertallow won’t compromise an inch with His Eminence. There are sharp words and mutual threats of force, and the nuns of Our Lady run about clucking and preaching peace and praying to that dead whiteness in the sky—pardon me, that’s a partisan effusion. I meant no disrespect. Clearly I think His Eminence is in the right, since I am his man, but I don’t think so terribly hard. What do you think of the matter, friends?’

  “By then I must have been half crazy with greed and drink and despair. ‘Why should we care?’ I asked. ‘We work and die without honor in Chandlefort. If war comes, the Yellowjackets will fight with the Mayor’s soldiers, taxes will go up, my house will be burned, and nothing will change. I’d have fought for the Empire. My parents told me the Queen’s justice was fair and swift when they were young, before the legions went back to Queensmart. I’d die for Our Lady, but Lady Cindertallow’s nothing to me. I wouldn’t move a finger to save her.’ That was the first time I’d ever dared say out loud what I felt. The other servants moved a little away from me, but none of them contradicted what I’d said.

  “‘Is that the truth?’ asked Lucifer Snuff softly. He chuckled and the tide of play turned for good. His pile of silver grew, ours dwindled, and Andiron Grinder, Charfennel Comb, and the others fled the table one by one, clutching what paltry profits they had eked out of the night.

  “I had as much money on the table as I did at the start of the evening. ‘Play,’ I said. I knew I would lose all my savings and I wanted to play anyway, for the hope of wealth and freedom. I wanted Snuff to run me through with his sword and gnaw on my bones. I didn’t care to be a servant anymore. I pushed everything I had to the center of the table. ‘Double or nothing.’

  “Snuff looked at me thoughtfully. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked. ‘Are you quite sure, Mr. Waxmelt Wickward?’

  “And then I wasn’t sure at all. I was only a foolish young man who’d almost lost his future. ‘I can’t,’ I said. I scrabbled for my money and I started to cry. ‘Dear Lady, I can’t. I want to be more than a servant, but I can’t. My wife’s pregnant with our first child. I want our children to be more than servants, but I don’t dare gamble their future away. My children will be servants all their lives, and their children too. It’s stamped in our souls, Mr. Snuff. We’re small, and we’re scared, and we’ll never be free.’

  “Snuff accompanied me down Lackey Lane. I was too drun
k and exhausted to make it home by myself. I lived in the far end of Lackey Lane, among the stinking hovels built up against the east walls of Chandlefort, downwind of the castle privies. My wife was waiting at the door, angry at me and frantic with worry. Snuff took a long look at her. ‘The mother of servants,’ he whispered in my ear. He dropped me in my doorway and stalked off, laughing, into the night.

  “He returned five months later. Your mother had just died in childbirth. I held you in my arms and fed you cow’s milk. I was clumsy and dribbled the milk on your cheeks, and you cried. I should have farmed you out to a nursing scullery maid down the way, but I couldn’t bear to part from you. You were the only family I had left.

  “Snuff opened my door without asking and sat himself down on my best chair. ‘I heard about your loss, Mr. Wickward,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry to learn of it.’ He couldn’t have cared less and he didn’t mind that I knew. ‘I have an offer to make you, old friend,’ he said. ‘I think you’ll be interested.’ He opened his hand and there was gold in it.

  “He was pain and mockery and something bloody and corrupt, and I should have thrown him out of my house and into the night. But I didn’t. Ah, Clo, I wanted that gold. I wanted freedom from a servant’s life for us both. I listened to his offer.

  “‘I am not a wine steward,’ said Snuff. ‘I serve His Eminence, the Mayor of Low Branding, but not in a menial capacity. I provide . . . special services, shall we say. Of an irregular nature.’ He grinned. He had bronzed the tips of his teeth since the last time I saw him, and the metal glowed red in the firelight. ‘Right now my duties bring me here, to make certain preparations before war comes. War will come, Mr. Wickward. His Eminence wants to be his own master, and Lady Cindertallow will not see reason about the matter. As you said so eloquently, soldiers will fight, farms will burn, and what does it matter to us below? Nothing. But work is work and I have mine. I am here to steal the Cindertallow Ruby.’

  “The Cindertallow Ruby. Do you remember those silly stories you read about robbing temples, Clo? All that nonsense about strange priests who’ll fight to the death to keep hold of a magical jewel? Well, it isn’t all nonsense.

  “The Cindertallow Ruby was dug out of the ground from the very first ruby mine in the Salt Heath, long before Queensmart sent its legions up into Linstock. That was in the time of the first Lady Cindertallow, who built Chandlefort’s walls and trained a rabble on horses until they had become the Yellowjacket Guardsmen. Her miners found the Ruby, and her jewelers polished it and made it the center of her coronet. The second Lady Cindertallow wore the coronet as she led the armies of Chandlefort toward the Whetstone River. Each Lady Cindertallow wore it into battle thereafter, and the Ruby became the talisman of Chandlefort’s power during the two hundred years it took for them to conquer Linstock. Even after Chandlefort submitted to the Empire and we Fortmen came to believe in Our Lady, we still reverenced the power of the Ruby.

  “Every Lady Cindertallow was crowned with the Ruby, was married with the Ruby, and died with the Ruby. She was supposed to wear the Ruby when she led the Yellowjackets into battle. Servants, Guardsmen, and lords all knew that Chandlefort was doomed to fall if it ever lost the Ruby. We were superstitious fools to think so, but still we believed that our fortunes were linked to the Cindertallow Ruby. The Cindertallows knew how we felt, and they guarded the Ruby very well. Which is why I laughed in Snuff’s face.

  “‘Nevertheless,’ Snuff said imperturbably, ‘I will have the Ruby. I’ll pay you ten gold sovereigns if you help me. You don’t even have to lead me to the Inner Keep. You can go alone. I’ll distract the Guardsmen from somewhere else while you take the Ruby from the Treasure Room.’

  “‘I’ll be chopped to bits if anyone finds me within three hundred feet of the Treasure Room,’ I said. ‘I suppose you think servants wander all around Chandlefort unnoticed. That’s true of some areas, but not of them all. There aren’t any chamber pots to empty in the Inner Keep. Mr. Snuff, you can’t distract every Yellowjacket Guardsman in the Keep. There are dozens of them. I’d be very obvious and then I’d be very dead.’

  “Snuff smiled and rubbed his brown tooth. Old blood flaked onto his fingers and he licked their tips clean. ‘Call me Snuff, Waxy. Everybody does. The Guardsmen are not a problem, old friend. You won’t need to do much. I’ll give you directions through the Keep to the Treasure Room. Just walk there quickly. The Ruby is in a glass case in the center of the room. Break open the glass and take the Ruby with you. Then walk out again. Once you’ve returned to the Outer Citadel, you’ll be just one servant in the crowd. Leave through Menials’ Gate. I’ll wait at the end of Lackey Lane with a spare horse. I’ll pay you for the Ruby, and then you and your daughter can ride with me to Low Branding. From there you can flee Linstock and make yourself a new, better life, somewhere very far away.’

  “I knew I was a dead man if I said no. Snuff couldn’t let me go after he’d told me his plans. Maybe if I got the Ruby for him, I’d be a dead man anyway—corpses tell no secrets. Just then you whimpered in your sleep. I wondered if he’d let you live.

  “I thought about informing on him. I supposed I would be given what the lords and ladies called ‘a handsome reward, for someone of his station.’ Lady Cindertallow would have an upper servant thank me for her and pay me some shillings. Then I would return to my servant’s life and you would follow me in your turn, Clovermead. We would never be anything more.

  “Snuff offered me a dream of yellow gold. I knew he’d most likely kill me, but I thought I’d take the chance. My wife was already dead and part of me with her. I didn’t think you had anything more to lose than a servant’s life.

  “‘I’ll do it,’ I said.

  “Snuff gave me two gold pieces and seven silvers that night, as an advance payment.

  “A week later, at the time Snuff had arranged, I put my scouring rag behind a marble statue of Our Lady and walked to the Inner Keep. I heard a bear roar, and I shuddered in my bones. I smelled putrid flesh and felt a thickness in the air. Somewhere ahead of me men screamed in terror.

  “I came to the entry of the Inner Keep and I saw Guardsmen sprawled on the ground, still screaming. Their arms jerked and their mouths foamed and they looked at some horrible shadow. No one saw me. The lucky ones had fainted. Beyond, I heard more screams, and more, and more. The roaring was louder than ever.

  “I kept walking through the Inner Keep and saw servants and Guardsmen mad with fear. Their noses bled and their eyes rolled up and some Guardsmen swung their swords at phantoms before they turned and ran. The bear roared again and the air was thick with madness. I wanted to go mad myself. I heard the bear huffing in my ears, barely leashed from clawing at my mind. I heard Snuff laugh and I knew he was protecting me. I wanted to pray to Our Lady, but I would not dirty her with my filthy prayers.

  “I finally reached the Treasure Room, where five more Guardsmen lay trembling and moaning on the floor. I stepped over their bodies and looked down at the Ruby. I—I fell in love, Clo. I had seen the Ruby before, but never so close. It was perfect—dazzling and beautiful. It was as large around as a baby’s hand, faceted, and set in a filigree of gold and pearls. Its color was half scarlet and half a summer sunset. I almost wept to see it. I looked at the Ruby and I knew that I couldn’t give it away. Not to Snuff and Low Branding and that thing that was killing those Guardsmen. I didn’t care what happened to Chandlefort and Lady Cindertallow, but I couldn’t give the Ruby over to that sort of enemy. I would have become something foul if I’d done that.

  “I looked at the Ruby, Clo, and the thought gleamed in me that I would take the Ruby for myself. I would steal from Chandlefort and Low Branding alike. I felt giddy, and astonished at my own daring. I was anything but a servant now, for Snuff or Cindertallow. I smashed the glass case with a hammer I had secreted in my clothes, and I picked out the Ruby from the glass shards. I also picked out a brooch engraved with the Burning Bee of Chandlefort, though it didn’t look so valuable. I dropped the Ruby and th
e brooch into my pocket and walked out of the Treasure Room. All the way back to the Outer Citadel I stepped over screaming Guardsmen musky with fear.

  “I went to my house in Lackey Lane, picked you up from your cradle, and put the money Snuff had given me in my pouch. Then I walked over to the horse market and bought a gray nag for a silver piece. I got onto the nag with you and turned north, onto the Tansy Pike. I had only a hazy idea of what lay that way. I’d heard of Snowchapel, though, and it seemed as good a place to go as any.

  “I waited for Lord Ursus to strike me down as he’d struck down the Guardsmen. Later that day I felt something in the air, roaring, sniffing for me, sending out fear, but I had already come many leagues from Chandlefort and the fear was weak. The thing passed me by and it never came again. Afterward I began to think I was safe from Snuff.

  “And sometime later, when I’d had time to think about matters, I decided that I didn’t need to keep the Ruby with me. That would have been too dangerous for you. I was happy as long as neither Chandlefort nor Low Branding had it. I hid the Ruby. But I kept the brooch. I . . . made changes to it. Clo, to people who know how to look, that brooch is a map to where the Ruby is.”

  Clovermead took out her brooch and peered at it. “It doesn’t look like a treasure map.”

  “It isn’t supposed to be obvious,” said Waxmelt. “I told you before to keep it hidden. Now do you understand why?”

  “Not entirely, Father. You’re still lying to me. I can’t tell what was true in your story and what wasn’t, but I’m certain that something important was false. Or a number of things.”

  “A few things,” Waxmelt said.

  “I didn’t expect better,” said Clovermead. A tear trickled down her cheek and inside she roared. “How did Snuff summon Lord Ursus?”

  Waxmelt shuddered. “I think he killed a man. Killed more than one man. Killed them slowly. I’ve heard since that Lord Ursus gives more power if his sacrifices hurt while they’re dying. I’ve also heard the power he gives is strongest while the blood is fresh. I’ve had some time to think about it, Clo, and I think that’s the reason Snuff wanted help to steal the Ruby. He had to kill his victims somewhere private, where he wouldn’t be interrupted, but that would have to be far from the Chandlefort walls. The blood-power would have gone stale before he reached the Treasure Room. He needed an indoor servant, like me, to get to the Ruby while the blood was still fresh and the summoning was still strong.”