by Stephen Hunt
Kirkup sighed, trying to hide his exasperation. He waved Jacob away, indicating the audience was at an end as far as he was concerned. ‘A little more prayer, Father. A little less smiting.’
Jacob stood up. ‘Don’t worry, Reverend Excellency, I think the marauders are losing their taste for our prefecture’s acres. After all, it is very cold up here in the north.’ And a lot colder for those planted in the dirt.
Outside the office, Jacob noted the bishop’s secretary coming back with a fresh guest – one sporting the stiff blue uniform of a Weyland prefect, a ribboned silver and gold star over the right breast of the bright tunic. Hugh Colbert? His hair was silver, but still as thick and healthy as a lion’s mane, tied in a fashionable ponytail at the back. Jacob stopped before the man.
‘Prefect Colbert.’
The man nodded. ‘Do I know you, sir?’
‘Not yet. I don’t reckon we met when I was down at the capital, petitioning the king for a company of his guardsmen to help my expedition.’
A look of understanding settled across Colbert’s cunning face. ‘So, you are Father Carnehan. I understand we owe the return of the man claiming to be Prince Owen to you.’
‘Claiming?’
‘I suspect he is but a poor deluded soul, a commoner driven mad by forced labour in barbaric, foreign climes. Who would not wish to be someone else, someone of consequence, as a way of escaping their true terrible circumstances? The mind is a weak vessel, easily cast adrift,’
‘Not everyone Prince Owen knew in his youth has conveniently expired,’ said Jacob. ‘I reckon the truth will out, one way or another.’
‘So it will. Whatever happened to the king’s royal guardsmen, by the way? I heard they failed to return from your rescue mission?’
‘It was a hard, perilous journey,’ said Jacob, ‘and they made a serious mistake.’ He didn’t say that the primary one was trying to murder Jacob and his comrades on the king’s orders after they had crossed the border.
‘Let’s hope it’s not one anyone is likely to repeat,’ said the prefect.
‘So, you’ve travelled north to help us with our bandit problem? That’s right good of you.’
Colbert touched the ceremonial dagger hanging from his belt. ‘Oh, I’ll think I’ll have a stab at it.’
‘Good luck, then,’ said Jacob. ‘But watch yourself while you’re here. The north isn’t what it used to be. Getting to be as dangerous along the northern frontier as those foreign acres where the guardsmen ended up under the dirt.’
‘Thank the saints we have the king to regain control.’
‘One of them, at least. I’ll be seeing you around, Mister Prefect.’
‘I think you should count on it, Father.’
Jacob pointed towards the office. ‘One piece of advice when talking with the bishop; he presently seems rather set against people in the smiting business.’
‘I fear that’s outside his hands, right now. We live in troubled times.’
Jacob grunted a careful farewell at the prefect. ‘I keep hearing that.’ He could feel the prefect’s eyes boring into him as he walked away. And he could almost taste the man’s desperation to discover where the Vandian emperor’s granddaughter was being kept as a hostage. Well outside your reach, king’s man. If her imperious little highness Lady Cassandra hadn’t been under Jacob’s control, he suspected he’d be filling the cathedral’s fresh graveyard with the bodies of the king’s assassins, killers would be crawling out of the woodwork right about now. Jacob didn’t have time for that. It was the head of the snake he needed to sever. He glanced back towards the office’s shutting door, the prefect disappearing. Maybe the tail of the snake requires a little severing, too. Jacob’s mind wandered to his son and the guild courier, safe in the librarian’s hold. Whatever the contents of the mystery message Tom Purdell had carried in, Jacob just knew it wasn’t going to be good news.
TWO
UP IN THE BIG HOUSE
As always, Willow cringed when she heard her name screeched, hating herself even as she did. Willow Landor was a free woman again, female heir to the House of Landor’s considerable fortunes. Should she really feel this helpless? After all, it was ridiculous that she had survived the worst excesses of being held as human property and worked close to death, beaten and starved, yet could still flinch at that woman’s voice. And this – Willow’s position in the family – was really the problem. At least for Leyla Holten. Or should that be, née Holten, now Landor by marriage? Not that Willow would ever recognize the woman’s new surname. To her, the interloper would always be Holten.
Of all the shocks that Willow had endured recently, the worst had been returning home to find her father re-married to a gold-digging harpy from the south. A woman almost young enough to be Willow’s sister. But give the woman her due, she certainly put on all the airs and graces of Mistress of Hawkland Park, and had taken to ordering Willow around as if she really was her mother. In reality, she was nowhere close. Willow’s mother had been a decent, kind woman before she passed away from sickness; she had been the conscience of the estate, keeping her husband Benner Landor’s worst instincts in check. What was Leyla Holten? Some ludicrous fortune-hunting stage actress from Arcadia, famed for her beauty and charm. Willow had seen precious little of the latter, although she recognized that the malicious woman could turn it on and off like a faucet, especially when it came to wheedling her way around Willow’s father or any other man in her vicinity. The Songbird, that had been her nickname in the capital. The journalists who had so named her had clearly never heard her shrieking at them at home. They probably had never seen past the wide blue eyes and long golden hair so fine it almost appeared silver in certain light; just the right height not to appear too threatening to a man – not too tall, not too short.
And the man who had fallen hook, line and sinker for her allure? Willow had hardly seen her father since she had returned. To be fair to him, he was deeply involved in rebuilding the town and improving his house’s fortunes in the process. It was obvious that it was his son’s continued absence that he regretted. And that had turned into resentment against her … that she could have been so cold and unfeeling as to flee the Vandian empire while leaving her brother behind. That was a rewriting of history if ever there had been one. Before the town had been raided by slavers, Willow’s brother, Duncan Landor, had been deeply uninterested in managing the family business, preferring to duel and drink his life away, when he wasn’t pursuing every unsuitable woman in striking distance. After Northhaven’s youth had been sold to the mines by the slave traders, Duncan had impressed another of those unseemly women, being taken away as a plaything for a local princess, eventually deigning to send for Willow and offering her a similar ticket out of the mines. Was it any wonder she had refused the rotten offer and helped lead the slave revolt back to Weyland? But Willow’s father would hear none of this. Instead, Duncan’s place in history had been rewritten to make him some sort of golden child who had done no wrong while living under the mansion’s roof. And Willow cast as the wicked villain for having ‘abandoned’ the house’s young heir in Vandia, while selfishly saving herself and daring to make it back home alive.
‘What are you doing here?’ demanded Leyla Holten, striding into the house’s great entrance hall.
Willow turned around. ‘You mean here in the hall, or here in the house?’ Given Holten was now female head of the house, Willow should have addressed the woman as Mistress, but she’d choke on the word before it crossed her lips.
‘You know what I mean. Don’t play the giddy goat with me, girl.’
As much a girl as you. ‘I am waiting for the ledgers from the bank to be sent over with the morning’s paperwork. There’s a glaring discrepancy in the last corn oil shipment we sent down the railhead, and I promised the warehouse manager I’d try to ferret it out.’
‘Oh, that,’ said Holten, sniffing as though Willow had announced she’d lost control of her bowels during the freezing night just pa
ssed and soiled her bed. ‘They arrived early this morning. I opened the accompanying letter, read it, and sent the ledgers back to the warehouse.’
Willow only just managed to choke back on her outrage. ‘You read my post … you did what?’
‘It is not the place of a daughter of this house to sully herself with matters of common trade.’
‘Sully myself?’ Willow fought to hold down her rising temper. ‘Even when my brother was here, I was the only one apart from my father to show the slightest interest in the family business. I’ve been helping him since I was old enough to read. If I’m not going to do it, then who pray tell is? You?’
‘We have offices filled with clerks who we pay to watch the accounts,’ said Holten, haughtily.
‘And just what am I meant to do?’
‘I have noted your predicament in that regard. I am not blind to it. I think,’ said Holten, ‘that you are of an age to be married. If we leave it any longer, people will start to talk. They will think that your time as a slave has left you somehow stained. In short, they will begin to wonder what the matter with you is.’
‘I seem to recall that the last time we talked about my “predicament”, you and my father almost choked at the dinner table.’
‘It is not the institution of marriage we object to, but your ridiculous affections for the mop-haired ruffian offspring of the local preacher. A penniless book-botherer who’s perfectly matched to his station buried in the librarian’s hold. You are the daughter of a Landor, and that vulgar young man is no match.’
‘And what in the world do you know about being a daughter of a Landor?’
Holten caressed her pregnant belly, smugly. On Holten, the condition just seemed to accentuate the curves of her hourglass figure. She was no stick from the south, she had a farmer’s generous frame around her bones, it was only a northerner’s soul the woman lacked. ‘I will shortly know what it is to deliver a Landor son, girl. The doctors have promised us a new male heir.’ She ran her eyes contemptuously down Willow’s plain dress. ‘And then you will be perfectly redundant, in both matters of trade and inheritance, when it comes to the course of this house. I am merely suggesting that a well-starred exit before we reach that point will be advantageous to you.’
‘Not just for me, I think.’ Willow stared in hatred at this interloper who had wormed her way under her own roof. ‘I’ve been through hell. This, all of this, is nothing compared to what I survived in the empire. There’s nothing you can do to me that isn’t water off a duck’s back. Not even on your worst day. Just you understand that, Holten.’
Leyla Holten turned around. ‘Nocks, where are you?’
Holten’s short, stocky manservant came running like a lapdog at the sound of his owner’s commands. Nocks never failed to make Willow’s skin crawl. You would think the man was a vampire, the way he skulked around the house by day, only venturing out after dark – and then, rarely. He trotted to a halt and stared at Willow, his leer made worse by the ugly red scar across the side of his face, as though someone had once tried to split the noxious servant in half. Unfortunately for her, they had failed. ‘Mistress?’
‘Miss Landor is to be confined to her bedroom for the rest of the day. I fear she is overwhelmed by the demands of her reduced circumstances in the household.’
Willow snorted. ‘Why don’t you just let me go and make my own way in the world? We’ll both be happy.’
‘I don’t think you understand what it takes to make me happy,’ said Holten. ‘Off with her, Nocks. And make sure the gatehouse staff are informed that she’s not to ride into Northhaven without my explicit permission. Anyone who disregards that order will be searching for new employment in this prefecture, a territory where very few people will be willing to open their doors to them.’
She had that much right. Willow hated the way that respect for the house was slowly turning to fear. Holten swanned off down the corridor. Nocks pushed Willow towards the upper storey, two banks of stairs sweeping up either side of the hall. He placed his slab of hand against the back of her leg, letting it linger there for far too long before she slapped it away. ‘You know, you should learn to get along with people, girl. It’s a useful skill to have in this world.’
‘I’ve had all the advice I can stomach for the day,’ hissed Willow. ‘And possess all the friends I need.’
‘That’s your problem, there,’ laughed Nocks. ‘None of them are under this roof, as far as I can tell. Now, upstairs with you. It wouldn’t look dignified if I slung you over my shoulder and carried you back to your room.’
He shoved Willow towards the higher floor and she glowered at him. ‘Where the hell did she scrape you up from, Nocks? Begging for coins around the back of the theatre when she took pity on you?’
The manservant guffawed, as though this was all playful fun. Maybe it was for him. ‘In the capital, sure. The mistress has a way about her. She makes friends easily. I was introduced by one such gent, a mutual acquaintance.’
Willow reached her bedroom’s door and unlocked it. ‘Oh, I bet she had many admirers.’
‘The mistress knows how to keep bees buzzing around the honey. I bet you could learn that too, if you tried.’ He reached out to brush her cheek and she recoiled, pushing him back out through the doorway. ‘Don’t be like that, willowy Willow.’
‘I’ll order you flogged.’
‘You won’t find any under this roof willing to raise a whip to me,’ laughed Nocks. ‘And it wouldn’t make much of a difference if you did. He tapped the wounded side of his skull. ‘Had myself a little accident a while back. Fell against something sharp. It went into my head, straight through the bit of the brain that controls pain. Everything feels the same now, like a dull throb. You could cut my arm off and I wouldn’t even whimper. A whipping or a kiss, it all feels the same to me.’ He ran his finger down the red weal down his face. ‘I thought you might like scars. I see your pretty boy, the pastor’s son, has one down his face too. Not as good as mine. Just a scratch in comparison. Overseer’s whip, I’d guess, from his time in foreign climes.’
‘Carter. You’ve seen him? When?’
‘No different to you, girly. We don’t let trash onto the estate anymore,’ said Nocks. ‘Not the beggars who trudge in from the east. Not the ill-mannered plebs from the town, either.’
‘You’ve turned him away! Is that why Carter hasn’t been visiting?’
‘What makes your buck so precious, eh? His churchman pa and all the others from the town, heading off into the far-called on a wild goose chase to get him back. And get you, of course. But not your poor brother. Never mind, petal, you came back with your young buck, didn’t you? I bet he kept you safe when you were a slave. The men must have been queuing up to do that. Did you give him a little taste? Is that why he keeps on coming to the gates to be turned away?’
‘Get out!’ shouted Willow.
Nocks stuck his face far too close to hers. ‘You’ll need a friend soon. If not me, it’ll be someone else. You’ll see.’ But the odious man finally obliged her by leaving and Willow slammed the door behind him and locked it. Through the wood she heard a strange little song drifting down the corridor, the tune Nocks often hummed to himself. ‘Keep a little songbird, feed a little songbird.’
Willow found herself shaking in anger. At the lewd servant. At her father’s new wife. At the ironic idiocy of finding herself as much a prisoner home in Northhaven as she had been when her fingers were bleeding from sorting rock in the Vandian sky mines. Willow fingered her locket and clicked the hidden trigger to open it. Inside was a brown daguerreotype miniature of Carter Carnehan’s face. Willow had bought the expensive image from a travelling photographic peddler, and kept it hidden, knowing her father’s disapproval for the lowly pastor’s son. He saved me from a life of slavery. Why can’t that be enough for my father? She let the anger pass and then took action. She sat down at her bureau, exposed a tray with pen and paper, and dashed off a letter to Carter and the pastor, explaining
her predicament. Then she pushed the letter into an envelope and sealed it with a drop of red wax. After that, it was only a matter of waiting for her young maid, Eleanor Kaylock, to come and stoke the fire in the bedroom, as she always did in the mornings. Not summoned by Willow, but following the daily routine of Hawkland Park. Nothing to arouse any suspicion. When Eleanor arrived, Willow explained what she wanted. But the maid turned pale, quite an achievement given the already porcelain complexion of the blonde servant.
‘I can’t take your letter through the gate to town, miss,’ said Eleanor. ‘It’s not that I don’t want to. But the guards search us when we pass through the gatehouse. It’s Mistress Landor’s orders. Says we’ve been stealing the silver and selling it at Northhaven market.’
‘She treats people like that and you can call her a Landor?’ said Willow. ‘That sound is the lid rattling on my mother’s coffin in the crypt.’
Eleanor lowered her eyes to the floor, embarrassed and perhaps ashamed. Willow felt her anger rise again, but not towards this kind, honest woman. The shame was all the House of Landor’s. ‘It’s not how things used to be here, miss. I wish things would turn back to how they were. Before the slavers attacked.’
Willow sighed. ‘If wishes were silver we’d all be rich. What about this: follow the trail down the hill to the river. It narrows on the bend and freezes as strong as granite this time of year. Cross the river and push my letter into one of the rabbit warren entrances along the opposite bank. Then backtrack, go through the gate and leave as normal – let the guards search you. When they’re satisfied, retrieve my letter and pass it to Father Carnehan or his son in the old church. Only one of them, you understand? Nobody else.’
‘You don’t need to write, miss, I can speak to them on your behalf.’
‘Carter and his father recognize my hand. Better they have something in writing in case they need to involve the town’s magistrate to force me out of this house.’
