“And do you tell me that no one else ever asked uncomfortable questions?”
The Wryneck shook his head. “There were Men who came—I will call them Men; they never told me otherwise. They asked many questions about the mother. I told them what I knew of her, which was essentially nothing, and as they did not seem to know there was a child, I saw no reason to enlighten them.”
Val rose to her feet, still keeping a hard grip on the little girl’s arm. “We will take the child with us, as you suggested in your letter. No doubt you will be glad to be rid of so tiresome, so dangerous a charge.”
“Let us say,” said the Wryneck, bowing, “that I shall be glad to place her in the care of those able to protect her.”
Val moved toward the door, leading the child by the hand, while Sophie trailed behind with the phial and the handkerchief. But the old Goblin stopped them, asking to speak a private word to Val. She considered for a moment, then sent the others on to the coach without her.
The rag-and-bottle shop was suddenly very quiet as Val faced the old Goblin across a pile of broken furniture. “I suppose you expect to be rewarded,” she said, her lips curling into a scornful smile.
In the pale yellow light of the horn lantern, the Wryneck looked immeasurably ancient. Val wondered how old he might be; his kind were fabulously long-lived, even among Goblins. It was impossible that his life and memory stretched all the way back fifteen hundred years to the glorious days of the Maglore Empire, but it was just possible that, as a very young Goblin, he had spoken with those of his own kind who had lived then and did remember.
“A reward? Madam, you wrong me. Rather, I wish to be unburdened of another responsibility that has been mine—most reluctantly mine—these ten years and more.”
He disappeared into a room at the back, and reappeared several minutes later holding a small brass coffer. Placing the box carefully on a pile of books, he opened the lid and drew out a necklace: a double string of milky white stones. They looked like pearls, but they were not pearls, and Val knew they were something far colder and infinitely more perilous. At the point farthest from the clasp, linking the two strands together, there was a heart-shaped pendant of clouded crystal.
“Perhaps you have seen this before?” said the Wryneck.
Val reached out and took the cold stones into her hands. Even through her black gloves the chill penetrated. Yes, she had seen the necklace before. It was not one of the Great Jewels, which the Maglore of old had invested with such awesome power, but these artificial stones had been created at the same time and of the same elements as those in the greater Jewels. Though potent enough in its own way, it was doubtful the necklace had ever been intended as anything more than an amorous plaything for a Goblin princess, who had far greater forces at her command. It had never been more than a toy to Chimena, who had used its peculiar properties to attract and entrap, and sometimes to torment, her numerous lovers.
Holding the necklace, Val felt a queasy sense of wrongness. For a moment, it was as though she could actually see inside the old Goblin: the long, thick, fibrous spinal cord, glowing with the scintillating colors of the astral light—that complex structure of tiny vessels which was the rete mirabile, at the base of the brain, busily transforming the red blood into a pure, subtle spirit—most of all those delicate branching nerves, which she might set vibrating either in ecstasy or in pain with the barest intention—
A shiver passed over Val’s skin, and she looked away. “How did you come by this?”
“It was sent to me by the mother, a few months after she left. I understood it was to be passed on to the child.”
Val gazed down at the necklace, with a deep sense of revulsion. It seemed a peculiar gift from a mother to her innocent newborn child. “You might have sold this any time these last ten years.”
The Wryneck looked at her reproachfully. “The necklace was not mine to sell. Madam, I’m only an humble shopkeeper, but I come of a distinguished family, an honorable race. My father and grandfather were philosophers, scientists—”
“Well, they must have been,” Val interrupted him. “They could hardly have been otherwise.”
“As you say,” he agreed, blushing faintly. Wrynecks were as shy about discussing the details of their dry scientific conception as other creatures, more conventionally conceived, were reluctant to discuss theirs. “I, on the other hand, am as you see me—yet I am an honest Goblin. I had an idea this Jewel had never been profaned by Human hands, and I wished it to remain so.”
Val slipped the necklace into the front of her gown. “If you are wise, you will forget that you ever saw these stones, the child, or her mother.”
Back inside the coach, she pulled out the necklace and showed it to Sophie. Sophie shuddered distastefully, screwing up her face. “Oh Val, you had the thing there right next to your skin! I remember how Chimena—”
“Yes, yes. It is a wanton’s plaything, but I doubt I’ll be infected with a taste for perversion just by touching it.” Nevertheless, Val wrapped the necklace up in a handkerchief before she slipped it back inside her gown.
“Will we sell it?” asked Sophie. “But how can we? Dangerous to sell, but much more dangerous to keep!”
The hackney lurched into motion. “I haven’t decided. It is the only thing the girl will ever have of her mother’s. And who knows—it may prove useful.” Val looked down at the child, who had curled up under the other seat and apparently fallen asleep. “What a vile little thing she is. It will take months to undo the neglect of so many years. The first step will be to break her will.”
Sophie smiled wistfully at her friend across the coach. Though they appeared much the same age, that appearance was deceptive. Val was considerably older and had played an important rôle in Sophie’s upbringing. “I daresay it will go hard with her if she doesn’t learn quickly.”
“It will go hard with her regardless. She will be controlled; she will be disciplined. I’ll not see her grow up to repeat her mother’s mistakes.”
Sophie raised her voice in order to be heard over the creaking of the wheels. “What of the Wryneck? Poor old fellow. Must we have him silenced?”
Val considered for a long time before she spoke. “I think—not immediately. It might cause others to draw dangerous conclusions. And perhaps not at all.”
Sophie was amazed. “Compassion—from you, Val? I hardly expected it.”
Her friend passed this off with a wave of one thin white hand. “He is honest and loyal; I believe we may rely on his discretion. Besides, like the necklace, he may prove useful.”
Book One
She was an ancient city, grown gaunt and weather-beaten. Her origins were shrouded; she had been old when the Maglore Empire was still new; even then, no one had ventured to guess at her age. And when Men rose against the race of Goblin sorcerers who had ruled them so harshly for five thousand years, when they cast off their chains, shattered an empire, and reconfigured the map, they made Hawkesbridge the capital of one of their small new kingdoms.
For a time, she enjoyed a glorious renaissance: old buildings were razed; imposing public works—libraries, gardens, universities, observatories, palaces—rose in their place. The arts and the sciences flourished. Metaphysicians and philosophers flocked to her. For culture, sociability, novelty, there was no place to match her in all the world. But time was not kind to Hawkesbridge, the aging process was relentless, and all that she had once possessed in the way of beauty and charm had since withered away to little more than a frail skin of humanity on an angular skeleton of brick and stone.
Many of her buildings stood half empty. These Men of the new age were increasingly conservative, less and still less inclined to tamper with the work of their ancestors—those stalwart men and women who had brought down the Goblin civilization and created a new Society, nearly perfect, in its place—nor to remove anything created by previous generations. Nowhere was this so strikingly evident as in Hawkesbridge. When the lower floors of a house became
dank and musty and uninhabitable, the owner simply erected new stories on top. When the whole pile collapsed, often with a great loss of lives and goods, instead of hauling the ruin away, he scavenged the better parts of marble and masonry and built a new house over the wreckage, as much like the house that had been there before as it was possible to make it. By now, Hawkesbridge was a city of crooked tall buildings with bow-front windows, cracked marble columns, and winding exterior staircases crawling up from the deep overshadowed streets and alleys below.
Yet sometimes of a cold winter’s night, when the black north wind came roaring down those subterranean lanes—when the gas flares were lit and windows glowed with yellow firelight—when fine ladies and gentlemen came out in butterfly satins and jewel-toned velvets, and rode through the icy streets, uphill and downhill in gilded carriages and painted sedan-chairs, on the way to some brilliant dinner or theatrical event—when the very snow that piled on the roofs and drifted against the houses, and made the going in some of the steep places exceedingly difficult, nevertheless seemed to soften the broken outlines and the harsh corners of the ancient city—then a feverish gaiety set in, a hectic flush of youth was momentarily restored, and it was possible to envision Hawkesbridge as she had once been.
It could not last long. In the first grey light of dawn she lost her artificial bloom. When the fires died and the gas-lights were extinguished, when the chairmen trudged wearily through the streets and the gay gilded carriages went rumbling back home, to be supplanted by the rattling black wagons of the city tradesmen, then Hawkesbridge shriveled back into hideous old age.
1
Hawkesbridge, Mountfalcon—1 Niviôse, 6538
(Midwinter Solstice / New Year’s Day)
It was a raw morning, with a chill on the air that bit like steel and went all the way through to the bone. But a large crowd gathering in the long shadow of the Theomorphic church seethed with excitement. Word of a duel about to be fought had brought them together on a level stretch of ground between the church and the frozen River Zule, and every man of them anticipated bloodshed.
Yet one of the seconds appeared to be reconsidering. He stood arguing with his principal in low, urgent tones.
“Will, Will, I beg you to stop and think before this goes any further. That fool Macquay, so eager, so insistent about pressing a quarrel, when all the world knows you are the better swordsman. He can’t be so ready to die as it seems, and I thought more than once during the night he was not so drunk as he pretended. There is mischief afoot. If you have any sense you’ll refuse to meet him. As the injured—”
“As the injured party, I intend to do nothing of the sort,” Will Blackheart replied, grinding his teeth. He was a small man in a rough soot-colored coat many sizes too large for him and a wide-brimmed hat of black beaver, pinned up at one side with some draggled turkey feathers and a large brooch in the shape of a scarab beetle. His long auburn hair had been loosely tied back with a piece of frayed ribbon, and in the cold light of morning he looked pale and dissipated.
Despite his slovenly appearance, despite that of his companions, there was a certain something about them—inbred and entirely unconscious—which marked them all for exactly what they were: rackety young aristocrats who had spent the night just past celebrating the New Year in taverns and gambling houses. The watching tradesmen, the shipwrights, caulkers, and carpenters from the docks and shipyards, even the handful of Ouphs and Padfoots hovering on the edge of the crowd, moved a few steps closer to hear what was being said.
“By the Shades of the Damned, Blaise, what Macquay said was unendurable!” Will gestured in the direction of his opponent, who was holding a heated conference with one of his own seconds—while Finn and Pyecroft, the other two men involved, met in the center of the field to inspect the weapons and make the final arrangements. Will lowered his voice to a hiss. “The fellow spoke disparagingly of Lili. Am I to allow a man to insult my wife without demanding satisfaction?”
Blaise released a heartfelt sigh. His appearance, in a patched blue coat and a big tricorn hat, a dirty yellow handkerchief knotted round his throat, and a pair of thin steel hoops piercing his left ear, was almost as villainous as Will’s, though he was actually the steadiest of all young Blackheart’s friends.
“God love you, Wilrowan, it seems to me your entire existence is an insult to your wife. Your wild behavior, your numerous love affairs, the way you go from scandal to scandal—Lilliana can scarcely be ignorant, even if she does live in the country thirteen months out of the year. And having endured so much, can you really suppose she cares what a drunken fool like Macquay says at a private gathering?”
“No.” Will clenched a small fist under the deep cuff of his sleeve. “But if she knew I was present to hear and I took no action, she would care about that.”
“That makes no sense. I wish you would explain to me—”
“I can’t explain to you.” Will turned even paler than before; his hazel eyes went uncommonly bleak. “Not without touching on things that are neither decent nor right for me to discuss.”
His friend looked away in patent disgust. Such scruples were not remarkable—but they did seem curiously out of place in Wilrowan, who otherwise treated Lili with so little consideration.
In any case, it was too late to draw back now. Pyecroft and Finn had already reached an agreement and Finn came back with Will’s rapier.
“I tried to hold out for first blood, but Macquay refused. He means to make this a killing affair. Or at least to do you some serious injury.”
“He can’t.” Will spoke curtly as he shrugged out of his coat, doffed his hat, unknotted his fringed neckcloth, and began to unbutton his ratskin waistcoat. He took the hilt of his rapier, made a few experimental passes with the blade.
The observers were quick to notice that his figure—now that he had stripped down to a loose-fitting white shirt, tight satin trousers, and thigh-high boots—possessed the wiry, muscular grace appropriate to a swordsman.
“I’ve no mind to accept first blood either,” he said, showing his teeth. “I mean to teach Macquay a sharp, unforgettable lesson.”
A flock of glossy black ravens had settled on the roof of the old limestone church, up among the stone sphinxes and the lion-headed women, as though they, too, took an interest in the proceedings. As the duelists met and saluted in the center of the field, the earthbound onlookers, Human and Goblin, moved in closer. After a few preliminary feints, there was a clash of steel as the two men engaged, then a rapid series of attacks and counterattacks.
Wilrowan was swift and relentless, his swordplay dazzling, while the tall, loose-limbed Macquay fenced with a dogged determination, a lack of daring and imagination, which made him look slow and awkward, if only by comparison with young Blackheart’s reckless brilliance. Despite the advantage of his extra inches, he remained purely on the defensive, which fact Will noted with grim satisfaction as he forced him back and back.
Seeing a chance when Macquay clumsily shifted his weight, Will lunged forward, beat the other blade aside, and continued on to strike just below the heart. But the rapier met unexpected resistance. Low and extended as he now was, Will was vulnerable when Macquay took a half step backward and slashed down at his head.
The thin blade hissed through empty air as Wilrowan ducked under the blow and sprang back, well out of reach.
“I believe I touched you,” said Will, with a brief, mocking salute. “Do you wish to call a halt, while your seconds determine the damage?”
Macquay shook his head. “You are mistaken, Blackheart. I wasn’t even scratched. Have at you!”
Certain that he was lying, fueled by a surge of indignation, Will obliged with a furious offensive, a series of feints and thrusts his opponent barely countered. Rotating his wrist to disengage from another of Macquay’s awkward parries, Will lunged again. This time, the tip of his blade grazed the other man’s shoulder.
Again, he experienced a curious impression of resistance, and Macq
uay continued on with his riposte, apparently unaffected. There was a slashing of cloth, a grating of steel against bone, and Will felt a sharp pain in his right arm just above the wrist as Macquay’s blade flicked past.
Startled, yet swiftly recovering, Will backed out of range, holding his sword hand high, to keep the bright gush of blood from running down his arm and making his grip on the hilt slippery.
“Undoubtedly, the first touch was mine.” There was a sheen of perspiration on Macquay’s bony forehead, his long fair hair was dripping wet, and his sword arm shook ever so slightly, yet he managed a broad grin. “Do you want a moment’s pause, so your seconds may bind up that wrist?”
Before Wilrowan had a chance to accept or refuse, his friends had already rushed to his side. While Finn rolled up his sleeve, Blaise pulled out a clean handkerchief and contrived a quick bandage.
“You were right.” Will spoke under his breath as Blaise finished knotting the linen in place. “There is mischief afoot. I touched him twice and yet—nothing. He’s found some Padfoot magician to sew a spell of protection into his shirt, the beastly coward.”
“You have the right to demand we examine him,” said Finn. “It’s not always possible to be certain, but—”
“No.” Will shook his head stubbornly. “And look like a fool and a craven if nothing turns up? Besides, these spells are generally good for three hits only. I have but to touch him lightly one more time and then I’m free to skewer him like a damned pig.”
Blaise stared at him in disbelief. “And never discover what this is about? Show a little sense! Cut him to pieces if you must, but at least leave him alive long enough to answer some questions.”
But Will’s mind was awhirl with thoughts of blood and revenge; he was only dimly aware of the pain in his wrist, and he hardly heard what his friend said.
The Queen's Necklace Page 2
