I swallowed. “One, the number of eyes seemed important, and two, who is Miranda?”
She beamed at me. “Very good, Mr. Greenwing. And there is also three: what has Mr. Shipston done for someone to accuse him of treason in such a roundabout manner?”
I waited, but she merely took my arm for balance as we picked our way across slick cobblestones and between the puddles in the close. I glanced at the sky and hoped the lighter colour meant that the clouds were clearing, or that Mr. Dart just wanted to gamble or carouse and not poach salmon (or, Lady forbid, actually go truffle-hunting) in a storm.
“Yes, very intriguing indeed,” Mrs. Etaris murmured as we turned the corner. “Now, shall we see Dominus Gleason before we call it the end of the day?”
I wanted to demur, for I had no desire to speak to Dominus Gleason again today (or, really, ever), but before I could formulate an excuse, Mrs. Etaris had turned down a narrow lane I hadn’t even noticed and led me up to the old wizard’s door. I resigned myself to yet another uncomfortable conversation and rang the bell.
Dominus Gleason’s house smelled of old things: dust, books, corruption. I remembered the odour from those illicit library visits, though it seemed far stronger than I recalled. While Mrs. Etaris enquired of the butler whether the Scholar was in, I backed down the close until I stopped sneezing.
I was still wiping my face when Mrs. Etaris returned to my side. She frowned, then started to sneeze herself at a sudden gust of wind that threw a handful of leaves and small particulate matter in our faces. I pulled out my third handkerchief and passed it to her with a little bow.
She used it without comment, then looked briefly disconcerted. I grinned. “I always carry several spares with me, Mrs. Etaris. One never knows.”
“How foresighted of you,” she replied. “Dominus Gleason is not at home today, and his butler does not expect him to be so this evening, tomorrow, or the next day …”
“I saw him this morning in the square.”
“Did you? Oh, yes, you mentioned. Hmm. Well, there are several reasons he might not be at home to us.”
I was the source of at least one of those reasons, I suspected. Mrs. Etaris took my arm to negotiate another large puddle at the bottom of the close. As we turned the corner, me thinking dispiritedly of how wet it was going to be tonight, we came face to face with Mrs. Etaris’ husband, the Chief Constable of Ragnor Bella.
And my uncle.
While the Chief Constable greeted his wife, my uncle and I studied each other. He wouldn’t have liked what he saw regardless of circumstances, but I knew that after the summer I wasn’t at my best, being too thin from the influenza, red-nosed from the sniffles, and a bit bloodshot in the eyes from the lingering hay fever; only the tan I’d acquired from being so much out-of-doors in the summer ameliorated the winter’s pallor.
He looked more like my father than I did. I’d inherited the long Greenwing nose and dark hair, but otherwise took after my maternal grandfather, or so people said, being short and lean and prone to freckles. Sir Vorel Greenwing was tall, with dark curly hair, broad shoulders, and naturally browner skin.
He also had a growing embonpoint, as Mr. Dart might say (I myself would be more inclined, with regards to my uncle at least, to call it a paunch), and had developed another chin since I’d seen him last, which the older fashion of narrow cravats still popular in Ragnor Bella did not flatter. The thought that the foamier cravats and higher collars that Mr. Dart and I both were wearing would suit him physically much better, if psychologically be deeply aggravating, made me rather more cheerful, and so I was able to smile almost sincerely when I bowed and said, “Sir Vorel. Chief Constable Etaris.”
The Chief Constable nodded shortly. My uncle’s nostrils flared as he pinched his lips together. I still felt a bit light-headed from all the sneezing at the door to Dominus Gleason’s house, and not very politic at all, so I added with the most exaggeratedly polite tone I could muster, “I hope Lady Flora is well?”
“She was grievously disappointed to hear you’d come back to town,” he growled.
I tried not to let my smile twist into a mortified grimace, which I fear it very probably looked like. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
He stared at me, hard, for a good long moment before sneering. “You would do better to remedy the cause, but I’m sure that’s too much to ask for.”
I stared back, unable to believe he’d just said that outright. I had no idea what to say. Mrs. Etaris was still holding my elbow, and now her hand tightened on my arm, hard enough that I reflexively glanced at her. She was smiling placidly, but spoke with a noticeable edge to her voice. “I do hope you don’t mean that, Sir Vorel, as your nephew returned at an ideal moment to help me, and I shouldn’t want to lose another assistant so soon. People would begin to think me very careless indeed.”
Sir Vorel flushed angrily, as I was interested to see, while the Chief Constable frowned hard. Mrs. Etaris gave my elbow another squeeze and stepped forward between Sir Vorel and me to take her husband’s arm. Her movement swung us all around so that the Etarises formed a pair between the Greenwings.
She went on amiably. “It’s Friday, so the store’s closed early, Sir Vorel. Mr. Greenwing was just helping me carry Mr. Shipston’s order. Are you finished with your day, my dear?”
Her husband looked at Sir Vorel, obviously awaiting permission.
My uncle shook his head, jowls wobbling a bit, as I was distressingly glad to see. “Mr. Greenwing, eh. Go home with your wife, Etaris, there’s nothing more to be done about it tonight, since you were so late finding the news.”
“Sir Vorel,” began the Chief Constable, but Sir Vorel made an abrupt angry gesture that silenced him and was, evidently, his only farewell, for he brushed past us with a deliberate shove against me with his shoulder.
I swallowed and looked (about as plaintively as the Chief Constable) at Mrs. Etaris. She gave me an encouraging smile. “I will see you tomorrow at the market-bell, Mr. Greenwing.”
And thus ended my first day of honest work.
***
I stopped outside the house gate to gird myself before entering, and a young woman picking flowers in the garden next door straightened and said, “Mr. Greenwing! You’re back in town! Did you want my mother?”
I started and looked around wildly, before remembering that while I was away at Morrowlea the Buchances had moved houses, and I’d gone unthinking to the old one. “Oh … no,” I said, and cursed myself for blushing. “To be honest, Miss Kulfield, I was woolgathering and forgot where I was going.”
She grinned, with a blessed lack of anything besides honest curiosity in her expression. The family of the town blacksmith, the Kulfields had been good friends to us after we’d moved to town. Miss Kulfield in particular had been captivated by my mother’s stories of growing up in the Woods Noirell.
The highway to Astandalas the Golden had run down the centre of that enchanted wood, right through my mother’s people’s land, and my mother had wonderful tales of seeing knights and lords and high princes and all sorts of people riding down the road in procession. She had once even seen the Red Company go a-riding two by two one midnight by the light of the moon, the year the companions had crashed the Imperial Heir’s birthday party in the Palace of Stars itself, and had never forgotten the sight—nor the secret pleasure that she had warranted a verse in one of Fitzroy Angursell’s song as a result.
“Understandable, Mr. Greenwing. You’ve only been back, what, a week?”
“Only since Tuesday.”
“Not enough time to get accustomed to a new house.”
“No …”
Mrs. Kulfield came to the door, wiping floury hands on her apron, no doubt wondering what strange man was speaking to her daughter. She looked me up and down. “Mr. Greenwing. Come back at last, are you.” Her tone was uncharacteristically cool. “You look as if you’ve been unwell.”
“I have,” I admitted. Miss Kulfield made a concerned noise; her mother s
till was frowning. “Although it’s not exactly a good excuse for writing so little this summer, and not giving good directions.”
“A terrible reason,” she agreed, but her voice was warmer.
I bowed to her with a flourish like Mr. Dart’s curlicues, which made her smile. Mrs. Kulfield flapped her apron at me. “I’ve known you far too long for that, Mr. Greenwing. Will you come in for a drink?”
“I should be delighted,” I said, “but I’ve been invited out later this evening, and really must get back to Mrs. Buchance before it gets any later. I was going—” I faltered on saying, home, and lamely finished up with, “I was thinking of other things, and forgot where I was going.”
Mrs. Kulfield gave me a penetrating glance. “You do know that you will always be welcome here.”
I bowed again, gravely. For all that I might prefer Morrowlea’s egalitarianism, it has to be said a bow is a very good response when you can’t think of anything else to say.
***
The route to the new house took me back along the high street. As I passed along the shops I saw Mr. Kim, the fishmonger’s assistant, turning into Mrs. Jarnem’s sweet shop. Filled with a vague sense of guilt about Mrs. Buchance—and a vague curiosity about the pie, which for lack of a better idea of what to do with it I was still carrying—I followed him in.
Mr. Buchance had been something of an inventor in the Ghilousetten model (he’d gone to Newbury and studied containers: “Somebody has to,” he always used to say, with an abrupt chuckle; “somebody has to”), and had made quite a lot of money in the Interim and subsequently by his inventions for preserving food without the use of magic.
The roll-top herrings in jars at Mr. Fogerty’s were from a Kingsford recipe, but the jars were Mr. Buchance’s. So too were the jars containing mustard and pickles, jams and conserves, fermented cabbage and pickled capers from down south that ranged in every Fiellanese housewife’s pantry.
So were the bungs on the barrels of beer, the corks and wine hoods in the bottles of perry and cider, the special lids on the bottles of vinegar and verjuice.
So were the canisters of liquorice and candied angelica in the confectioners, and the tins of cocoa, the jars of clarified cocoa butter and clotted cream from Ronderell; all of them bore the little double B sigil that stood for Benneret Buchance.
Mrs. Jarnem was doing brisk business in the few minutes left before closing, selling chocolates and sugared violets and butterscotches and all that jazz to the other young folk who were just finishing their day’s work and heading home.
I made sure the pie was still covered in its cloth and slid into the crowd, exchanging heel-click bows with half a dozen people, most of whose names I half-knew at best. Their faces were vaguely familiar from their shops—the haberdasher’s, the grocer’s, the rival grocer’s—or from the kingschool from before I went to university. I sidled up to Mr. Kim, who had been in the year above me in the kingschool.
“Back from your round, are you, Mr. Kim?”
He was choosing four chocolate truffles with exquisite concentration, and scowled at me for interrupting. After a shocked moment, he smiled in cautious welcome. “Mr. Greenwing! Which should I get, do you think?”
“Who are they for? Your mother?”
He blushed. “No … I’m meeting … do you know Alisoun Artquist, sir?”
I considered. Three years away from Ragnor Bella, but everyone seemed fair set to assume I remembered everyone who’d ever passed through town. Artquist was a Kilromby name, not Fiellanese at all. I vaguely remembered reading, in one of Mrs. Buchance’s chatty letters, that several families from north Kilromby had sought refuge from the island wars. I tried to concentrate. “Is her father the one who grows the prize marrows?”
Mr. Kim gave me an impressed glance. “Yes. Miss Artquist is in service with the Talgarths, and she and I … well, it’s her half day today, and she gave me permission to call on her after my work was through. I wanted to bring her something as sweet as she is … but I’m not sure what I should get.”
I looked at the array on offer. Dark chocolate, milk chocolate, cream; mint, violet, liquorice, lavender; hazelnut, walnut, pistachio. I shifted the pie in my arms and suppressed a sneeze. Each square of chocolate had a few grains of the flower or nut on the top in a decorative little pile. “She might appreciate a pattern,” I said; “and if her family are gardeners—”
Mr. Kim nodded eagerly. “The marrows.”
“Well then. I should choose the violet and lavender, one dark and one white chocolate of each type, and arrange them kitty-
corner in the box.”
“How clever you are,” said Mr. Kim. Mrs. Jarnem made up the order without even waiting for his agreement. “I should still be hemming and hawing over it, as if I were a housekeeper deciding what fish to buy.”
“Do you often have people debating long?” I asked, pointing out the sweets I wanted. Mrs. Jarnem passed across the glass jars of bright candies like a round smiling planet, rather like one of the year-counters across the face of Mr. Shipston’s cogswork wall. “Mr. Fogerty likes to introduce new fish every once in a while, so I suppose people dither about that? He had herring this week, I thought he said?”
Mr. Kim was counting out his pennies carefully, and did not look down at the wrapped object in my hands. I hoped its fishy smell was overwhelmed by all the chocolate and sugar and the crush of people behind us. Hopefully he would think any lingering fishiness was from himself.
“Oh, yes, that herring. Mind, herring’s not new—we just don’t get it in often. Not like them foreign ducks Mr. Dart was trying to make believe were all the rage.”
“Really? I shouldn’t have thought herring would be so popular here. Who bought it?”
I paid for my sweets and accepted the paper bag Mrs. Jarnem handed me in return. Mr. Kim, clutching his precious box of chocolates, said, “What? Oh, there wasn’t much. The Baron and the Talgarths took all I had—the Figheldeans were sore put out that the Talgarths had their tally first, but what can I tell you? Fashions. Mr. Fogerty’ll get in another barrel in a month or so, if you think Mrs. Buchance will want some? Reckon you brought a recipe or twain home from your travels, eh?”
“I’ll be after Mr. Dart to make some Charese delicacies, just you wait and see,” I returned, and Mr. Kim laughed and went his way.
The Baron and the Talgarths: neither of them had connections to Ghilousette that I knew of, though perhaps the Baron … but the Honourable Master Ragnor had disclaimed all—
Well, no, I thought, cutting down side streets, nodding to people as I passed them, bowing to a few of the grander folk. He hadn’t, had he? He’d identified the fish as Fultoney herring, and then eaten two eyeballs (ugh!), and then his sister had come in and interrupted his discourse before he’d said whether or not he’d had anything to do with it.
I would have expected him to say something—or I would have expected the Roald who’d gone runabout with Perry Dart and me to say something. The Honourable Master Roald Ragnor was something of a stranger.
Still, I wasn’t sure that I could possibly credit the Honourable Rag (yes, I liked Mr. Dart’s term) having anything to do with a Ghi-lousetten accusation of treason being passed on to Mr. Shipston.
***
My sisters were playing in the front hall when their mother opened the door for me. Mrs. Buchance was young and plain and had married Mr. Buchance for the opportunity to mother his two small children (my half-sisters Lauren and Sela, now seven and six) and have her own (my three stepsisters, Elinor, Zangora, and Lamissa—the latter two names the result of both Mr. Buchance and the second Mrs. Buchance being ardent imperialists), rather than for the money that Mr. Buchance was already accumulating.
She had blossomed: still not beautiful, she’d become gracious and warm and motherly, all of which I found deeply strange because she was, after all, only five years older than I, and had come back from university in Fiella-by-the-Sea the spring of the year my mother died to assist her br
other in his bakery. When my mother died, Mr. Buchance had desperately needed help with the children. Miss Inglesides had been hired as a nursemaid to Lauren and Sela in the early summer, and by the autumn was the second Mrs. Buchance.
By the spring of the next year Elinor had made her appearance, and I was studying harder than I’ve ever done anything in my life to get good enough marks on the Entrance Examination to have my pick of the continent’s universities.
I’d done well enough to make Morrowlea: only one Miss Alvorline of Yellton, over in the next barony (and no doubt as desperate to get out of Yellem as I was to get out of Ragnor), had done better in all of Fiellan. Miss Alvorline had chosen Tara, and so with a full scholarship to any other university in Northwest Oriole open to me, I had ignored all questions of academic specialization and gone for the only one that required the abdication of one’s surname upon matriculation.
“Mrs. Buchance,” I said, with another bow and a smile.
“Mr. Greenwing,” she replied, with a curtsey and a giggle, scooping up Lamissa, who had just learned to crawl and was scooting around the polished tile floor like a water strider. “How was your first day of—No, Sela, I don’t know what your brother brought home. Ask him nicely and perhaps he’ll tell you.”
Sela came running up to me before slamming to a halt and performing a wobbly curtsey. I set my hat down on top of the pie while I took off my coat, but once it was off I made her as fine and florid a heel-click bow as for anyone else. “How can I help you, Miss Sela?”
“Did you bring anything for us, Jemis? You’ve been gone ages and ages. We thought you’d be back at half of four!”
“And here it is almost a quarter after five!” I said apologetically, hanging my coat on the hooks beside the door. “However can I make up for it, Miss Sela?”
She began to grin. I smiled and shooed them towards the kitchen. Mrs. Buchance might be a very wealthy woman, at least in theory, but my stepfather’s sudden death had left his paperwork in such disarray that no one knew exactly where to find anything, including most of his fortune, which was in any case tied up until the Assizes. Moreover, she liked housekeeping and felt uncomfortable with live-in servants, and contented herself (as she had immediately informed me on my arrival, with just a hint of defiance) with a bit of help with the charing and the girls during the day.
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