by Paul Stewart
‘I'm sorry,’ said Quint, brushing the gathering snowflakes from his shoulders and jumping down from the plinth. ‘It's just that I can't get this nagging thought out of my head …’
‘And what thought is that, my dear fellow?’ said Raffix.
The two of them linked arms and, leaning against one another for support, began trudging back through the snow-clogged streets towards the Knights Academy.
‘The thought,’ said Quint, as they caught up with Phin, who was battling to pull a pair of snow-goggles down over his cap, ‘that Hax Vostillix might be wrong. That what we just witnessed wasn't really a Great Storm at all.’
‘He'd jolly well better not be wrong!’ said Phin hotly. ‘After all, he's just sent the finest knight academic in all of Sanctaphrax to chase the wretched thing!’ He grimaced with irritation. ‘Blast these wretched goggles! Why won't they fit?’
‘Here, you've got them all tangled up,’ said Raffix, coming to his aid. He tugged at the ear-flaps of Phin's cap, pulling them free, then turned back to Quint. ‘But you've certainly got a point, old chap. There are quite a few in the Upper Halls who also have their doubts about this Great Storm of Hax's. The thing is, the treasury needs stormphrax so desperately that they're prepared to hold their tongues and go along with him.’
They were approaching the East Landing, where the treadmills worked day and night hauling the vast log burners up and down the surface of the great rock. The steady tramp tramp tramp of the prowlgrins marching endlessly round and round in the great wheel was all but lost in the howling, snow-filled wind.
With their heads down and their thick cloaks flapping, the three squires hurried past as fast as the thick snow would allow. None of them wanted to acknowledge the awful truth about the great floating rock.
Already the freezing winter weather had made it so buoyant that the Anchor Chain was stretched taut. It creaked and cracked constantly, as if about to snap at any moment. The vast log burners warmed the rock as best they could, but they were fighting a losing battle. The icy winds which blew through the stonecomb were threatening to freeze the heartrock at its core – and if that happened, then no amount of chains or burners could prevent the great rock from breaking free and disappearing into Open Sky for ever.
No, the only hope for the floating city was storm-phrax, and everyone in Sanctaphrax knew it. Only that sacred substance – a small cupful of which weighed more than a hundred thousand ironwood trees when placed in the absolute darkness of the treasury – could provide the necessary counter-balance to the increasing buoyancy of the rock. It was little wonder that, despite any individual doubts or reservations, the crowd had reacted with such joyous enthusiasm to the departure of the knight academic on his stormchaser.
‘And Screedius is just the first,’ said Raffix darkly. They were opposite the School of Mist now, wading through the drifting snow as they approached the North Gate of the Knights Academy. ‘Every knight academic-in-waiting in the Thirteen Towers will get sent, you mark my words. Hophix, Dantius, Queritis … Hax will have them all off chasing after every single snow flurry and blizzard on the merest off-chance that it'll turn out to be a Great Storm. And the funny thing is …’ He paused.
‘The funny thing?’ whispered Quint.
They nodded to the burly gatekeeper as they slipped through the high entrance of the North Gate.
‘The funny thing is, they'll all go,’ said Raffix with a smile. ‘All the knights and all the squires promoted to replace them. Every last one of them.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘Even me.’
‘But why?’ said Quint. ‘I mean, if you doubt Hax …’
‘Because, my dear chap, this is the Knights Academy,’ Raffix replied. ‘We were born to stormchase.’ They had reached the foot of the staircase which led to the Upper Halls. ‘And one of these days …’ he called back, as he set off up the stairs, ‘old Hax might just get it right.’
Outside in the driving snow, a hunched figure turned the corner of the School of Mist and hurried towards the Knights Academy. The woodtroll matron, her skirts flapping and bonnet held in place with a mittened hand, slipped and skidded over the icy cobblestones. Beneath her feet, the slush – created by the passing of so many boots over the settling snow – was freezing into sharp, jagged peaks that cracked and crunched, and threatened to turn her ankle with every step she took.
‘Am I too late?’ she wheezed to the burly guard, his white hooded cape bearing the red logworm insignia of the gatekeepers. ‘Have I missed the young squires?’
‘’Fraid so, mother,’ laughed the gatekeeper, his deep voice muffled by the long scarf wound round his face. ‘Far too chilly for the little darlings to stay out long. Might catch their death of a cold. We gatekeepers, on the other hand, we can freeze out here for all they care …’
He stamped his heavy boots on the frozen ground and shivered theatrically.
‘I don't suppose …’ began the woodtroll, peeling off her mittens and rummaging in a tilderleather purse, ‘that you could see to it that squire Quintinius Verginix of the Lower Halls gets this?’
She held out a rolled barkscroll in a shaking hand.
‘Did you say Quintinius Verginix?’ came a thin ingratiating voice, and the woodtroll matron turned to see a wiry youth peering down at her.
‘It seems I was mistaken, mother,’ the gatekeeper said. ‘This will be the last of the little darlings - young Vilnix here is always the last one in. Browsing in the viaduct schools again, were we?’
‘Mind your own business!’ snapped the youth. ‘And it's Squire Pompolnius, to you, gatekeeper, and don't you forget it!’
The gatekeeper guffawed behind his scarf and gave a sarcastic bow. Ignoring him, Vilnix reached out and snatched the barkscroll from the woodtroll matron's hand.
‘I'll see that he gets it!’ he said, with a quick, wolfish flash of his teeth, before darting away through the gates.
‘Tell him, Welma and Tweezel send their best wishes …’ the woodtroll called after him uncertainly.
There was something about the youth's thin, pinched face and shifty eyes that disturbed her – yet he wore the robes of a squire of the Knights Academy, and seemed to know Quint. Besides, since she couldn't hand the letter to the young master in person, she had no choice but to trust him. In front of her, the gatekeeper swung the heavy gates shut again and folded his arms.
‘I'd hurry along, mother, if you intend to get back to Undertown this afternoon,’ he said. ‘What with all this heavy snow, they're talking of closing the hanging-baskets.’
Welma gasped. ‘Ooh, I can't afford to get stuck up here,’ she said and, bidding the gatekeeper a hasty ‘good-day’, she hurried away in the direction of the East Landing.
As Vilnix strode along the central corridor, lightly patting the little bulge in his inside pocket as he went, he permitted himself a rasping chuckle. How it amused him that the ridiculous old woodtroll had entrusted the barkscroll to his care. Up until that point, it had been a cold, miserable, unsatisfying afternoon, his studies interrupted by the preposterous ritual of sending off old ‘brass-breeches’ in that swanky sky ship of his.
Oh, and how the other squires had cheered and hollered, and waved their arms in the air like demented fromps. Fools, the lot of them!
Vilnix smiled to himself.
Stormchasing! It was all they ever talked about, those pampered Sanctaphrax-born and bred squires. But he, Vilnix Pompolnius, would show them! Reaching the end of the corridor, he turned right, surreptitiously patting the scroll once more as he did so.
Ahead of him, several squires exchanged looks and stepped aside to let him pass. They all hated him, he knew that – but one day Vilnix would make them fear him as well. One day, he would look down on all of them, because he – plain old Vil Spatweed, knife-grinder from Undertown – would be Vilnix Pompolnius, Most High Academe of Sanctaphrax.
He thrust out his jaw and his face took on a look of twisted pride.
He would become Most High Academe becaus
e he had what it took to make it to the very top – cunning, malice, treachery and deceit. And he knew this for a fact, because these were just the things it had taken to survive in the fetid sewers of Undertown.
The drunken grey waif who'd found him as a baby and raised him in a sewer tunnel in the boom-docks had taught him to pick locks and pockets almost as soon as he could walk. He'd shown real talent, and before long he'd left the pathetic old creature snoring in its hammock and set up on his own as a knife-grinder.
He was the best – everybody knew it. Every goblin with a grudge, every clod-dertrog on the warpath, every waif assassin, knew to come to him to have their sickles sharpened, their axes honed or their daggers given a razorlike edge.
But even back then, Vilnix had known it wasn't enough. He had wanted more, much more. He was fed up with others telling him what to do – he wanted to be the one in control, in charge. In short, he wanted power. Then the Professor of Darkness had dropped that telescope of his and the rest, as they say, was history.
It was his mentor, the professor, who had given him his name.
‘Vil Spatweed,’ he'd mused, as the pair of them had sat opposite one another in the professor's study. ‘An excellent name for a knife-grinder, but not, I'm afraid to say, quite right for a future knight academic.’ He stroked his beard thoughtfully. ‘Vil,’ he said at last. ‘The shortened form of Villox, Vilfius and Vilnix …’ He frowned. ‘Now, there's a name to conjure with … Vilnix …’
‘Pompolnius,’ the youth had said.
It was the name of one of the leaguesmen in the Western Quays who had met an unfortunate end at the point of a dagger, sharpened to perfection just the week before by the best knife-grinder in Undertown.
‘Vilnix Pompolnius it is,’ the Professor of Darkness had said, nodding in agreement. ‘A scholar could go a long way with such a name.’
To the top, Vilnix had thought as he smiled back respectfully. To the very top.
Being sponsored through the Knights Academy was the first step on that ladder. The moment he met the other squires, he was immediately confident that he could outdo the lot of them – all, that is, except Quintinius Verginix. He frowned. What was it about that particular squire that got so under his skin?
Was it because he was sponsored by the Professor of Light? Or that he, too, had been born in Undertown?
Vilnix's lip curled with contempt. Those weren't the reasons at all. He was the pampered son of a famous sky pirate – and as for his mentor, in Vilnix's mind, the Professor of Light was no match for his own Professor of Darkness.
No, there was something else about Quint that enraged Vilnix – something he couldn't quite put his finger on …
He had reached the Central Staircase by now and, roughly brushing aside several squires coming down, he strode purposefully up the circular stairs.
True, Quint had scuppered his chances to shine throughout the Lower Halls. In the Hall of Storm Cloud, he'd ruined his model sky ship. And then, how he had sucked up to Philius Embertine in the Hall of White Cloud, and made such a fuss over that forge-hand, Stope. And worst of all, the way he'd pretended to be his friend in the Hall of Grey Cloud, only to betray him to Fenviel Vendix.
Vilnix rubbed his fingers lightly over the raised scar that ran the length of his left cheek, and permitted himself a wry smile.
Still, that had actually worked out pretty well in the end, he remembered, with Vendix banished from the academy and he, Vilnix, becoming the favourite of Hax Vostillix …
But no, none of these things could explain the cold hatred for Quint that gripped his heart.
At the first landing, Vilnix paused. Down the corridor to his right was a gaggle of his fellow-squires, laughing at some joke or other. Phin, Tonsor, Quiltis … When they saw him, they stopped and moved away.
Well, the joke was on them, thought Vilnix, with a bitter little smile. While they cold-shouldered and ignored him, he had been paying each of them particular attention. The gaunt young squire had discovered that there were all manner of ingenious little potions on offer in the viaduct schools. You just had to know where to look.
Quiltis Wistelweb had never managed to work out why the notes he worked so hard on kept disappearing – but then why should he suspect the ink in his inkpot was to blame? And Belphinius Mendellix; why would he question the reason he kept oversleeping. Surely it couldn't be the little pouch stuffed into the lining of his pillow, could it? And as for Tonsor, no matter how many times he'd washed his robes they'd remained annoyingly itchy – but then the soap couldn't have anything to do with it, could it?
And then there was that very special vial he had, sealed with green wood-wasp wax and kept hidden away. The one that Vilnix was saving …
He reached the bottom of the dormitory ladder and smiled to himself. Cunning, malice, treachery and deceit – yes, that was what it took to get to the very top. Quickly, he climbed the rungs of the ladder, opened the doors to his sleeping closet and crawled inside. Then, having lit the lamp and made himself comfortable on the mattress, he pulled the barkscroll from his inside pocket and untied the ribbon – slowly, deliberately, and savouring every moment.
He'd thought long and hard about what he was going to do to Quint. Disappearing ink, drowsy-herb pouches and itching-soap were all very well for the others, but Quint deserved something better – something altogether nastier. Vilnix had even been toying with the idea of his special vial … But no, that was to be used only as a last resort.
And now this barkscroll letter had quite literally fallen into his hands. He felt sure it would be good. Just how good, he couldn't wait any longer to find out. With a soft cackle of amusement, he unrolled the barkscroll and held it to the light.
Dear Quint, he read. Thank you for the lovely long letter you sent. It was so good to get all your news. Your friend Stope gave all eight scrolls to me in the market square, hidden inside a beautifully wrought lullabee burner that he said he'd made himself. I told Dacia that I'd bought the burner in the marketplace, and she didn't think any more about it. So you see, your plan worked. How clever of you both!
I liked Stope as soon as I saw him, and I like him even more now that I have read your letter – and how beastly those furnace masters are to him. They sound like real woodhogs! Your other friends sound nice, too. Phin and Raffix … Oh, how I hope that one day I'll get to meet them all.
You won't forget me, will you, Quint, when you're a high and mighty knight academic up there in your beautiful floating city? I can hardly believe I've just written ‘your’ floating city, when once I thought of it as ‘my’ floating city. Yet it seems so far away now …
Still, it was lovely to hear how well you're doing. I'm sure you will be one of the squires sent up to the Upper Halls. But even if you're not, Quint, it is a great honour to be an academic-at-arms, so you mustn't be too disappointed.
I'm sorry the hall masters you liked are in disgrace – especially poor Philius Embertine. He was a great friend of Father's and I'm so sad that he is ill. Hax Vostillix always was too proud for his own good, at least that's what Father used to say. Which brings me to the point of this letter.
Vilnix glanced involuntarily towards the little door of his sleeping closet, just to make sure that no-one had followed him up the ladder and was, even now, peeking through the gap. Then, shifting round where he sat, he pulled the lamp a little closer.
You know I told you how Heft and Dacia, my so-called guardians, were always pestering Father for favours because he was the Most High Academe, and they were related? Well, it seems that a tilder doesn't change its stripes!
Heft's latest trick was to try and get the Professors of Light and Darkness to make him Master of the Treadmills on the East and West Landings. I know this, because he forced me to sign the barkscroll that he sent to them. You should have seen it, Quint! Heft went on about how they owed it to the guardian of Linius Pallitax's only child to make sure that he could look after her in the manner to which she was accustomed.
Well, of course, the professors were having none of it. They wrote back and told Heft politely that, while I had their express permission to visit Sanctaphrax any time I liked, no special favours could be accorded to my guardian. And what's more, that reports of Heft's cruelty to the hammelhorns he owned in Undertown showed he was not to be trusted with any creatures, especially the prowlgrins and giant fromps working on the treadmills.
That last bit really made Heft mad! He said that he'd get even with the twin Most High Academes if it was the last thing he did, and then he locked me in my room as if it was all my fault! Though not before muttering something about his good friend, Daxiel Xaxis, and how it was time to teach those high and mighty academics a lesson …
Isn't Daxiel Xaxis the Captain of the Gatekeepers? And doesn't he work for Hax Vostillix?
Heft is up to something, Quint, I'm sure of it. And whatever it is, it has something to do with that Knights Academy of yours.
Meanwhile, I'm stuck in this freezing room without even my little lemkin for company. I'll try to get this letter to Welma somehow. Please think of me, Quint, and write soon,
Your friend, Maris.
P.S. I think that squire, Vilnix Pompolnius, sounds horrible! But perhaps you're right, and he is just lonely and insecure and needs a friend. You try to see the best in everyone, Quint. That's what makes you such a good friend.
The colour drained from Vilnix's face. ‘Horrible?’ Lonely and insecure?’ he muttered. ‘Needs a friend?
At last, the exact reason why he hated Quintinius Verginix so much was beginning to dawn on him. It wasn't that he was such a goody-goody, or sucked up to the professors, or even that he was best friends with the snooty daughter of none other than Linius Pallitax himself.
No, what Vilnix really hated; what he loathed with a fury that even now was clenching his stomach into knots and made his heart thud sickeningly in his chest, was the fact that Quint felt sorry for him. That he returned his hatred with pity!
