by Lian Tanner
He patted his stomach with vast satisfaction.
‘But—’ began Pummel.
‘Of course I cannot take just any lad,’ continued Lord Rump. ‘You must pass a medical check first.’ He took a piece of writing paper from a drawer in the table, picked up a pen and dipped it in a bowl of ink. ‘Duckling, you will help me. First question. Eyes?’
Duckling inspected Pummel briefly, and said, ‘Two.’
‘Excellent!’ Lord Rump marked the paper. ‘Arms?’
‘Two.’
‘Legs?’
‘Two.’
‘Then I am pleased to say,’ cried Lord Rump, putting down his pen, ‘that you are in perfect health, Pummel. The job is yours.’
Pummel felt as if he had fallen into a strange world where he didn’t know any of the rules. His head was spinning, and all he could say was, ‘But I’ve got flat feet, Herro. And chilblains.’
Lord Rump picked up the paper again, read it and nodded. ‘I thought so. Chilblains are required for this particular job. As for flat feet – pfft! Keep your boots on and no one will know the difference.’
‘No, Herro – I mean, Lord Rump. What I meant to say was, I already have a job. I’m a cadet Snuffigator.’
For the first time since he’d arrived, silence fell over the little room. Pummel stared at the carpet, embarrassed. Duckling had been so nice to him. It seemed a poor payment to refuse her grandfather’s offer.
But I DO have a job, he reminded himself. And he looked up.
Lord Rump was smiling so kindly that Pummel felt embarrassed all over again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled.
‘No, no,’ said Lord Rump. ‘I admire your strength of character. Why, there are boys in this city who would abandon their old job as soon as they heard that the new one paid twice as much.’
Twice as much? Pummel’s mouth fell open. I could send twice as much home to Ma!
Except he couldn’t. He had only just started his new job, and it would be wrong to leave so soon.
‘If you ever change your mind,’ continued Lord Rump, ‘you know where to find us.’
And with that, Duckling showed Pummel the door.
As soon as the boy was gone, Duckling hurried back inside. ‘I knew he had a job, Grandpa, but he was the only boy I could find. And—’
Now, she thought. I’ll tell him about the breeze now.
Except Grandpa had so many secrets, and she only had this one.
‘And what, my dear?’
‘And I’m sorry I couldn’t find someone better.’
‘There is no need to be sorry. I think he will do very well.’ Lord Rump rubbed his hands together. ‘Now, who do we talk to, in the Snuffigators, to make a complaint?’
DISGRACE
Two days later Pummel was called into Principal Captain Rabid’s office.
It was the end of a long shift, and he was feeling tired but satisfied. He was getting much quicker with the iron-tipped staff, and could scatter the pebbles of a Snare or uproot a tree that had grown overnight as smartly as his fellow cadets. What’s more, just an hour ago he’d found his first poisonous vapour. He’d cried a warning, plugged the hole and given the ‘all clear’ in just under a minute, with the passers-by clapping loudly.
And the day after tomorrow was payday, when he’d be able to send money home to Ma for the first time.
It was true that he hadn’t yet managed to get rid of the leather pouch. He’d tossed it over a dozen fences and tucked it between the branches of two dozen trees. He’d thrown it away with great force, dropped it casually into the river, and kicked it under a stationary street-rig. But it had reappeared every time, either in his pocket or in the palm of his hand.
Hypnotism, he told himself, over and over again.
He still didn’t know what was inside the pouch. He didn’t want to know. Right now it was tucked inside his boot, where he could pretend it didn’t exist.
Captain Rabid was sitting at his desk, shuffling a pile of papers. He didn’t look up straight away, and when he did, his mouth was pulled down at the corners, as if he had tasted something sour.
Pummel felt an odd lurch in his stomach.
‘Cadet,’ growled the captain, ‘you are a disgrace.’
The lurch came again. He’s found out about the leather pouch, thought Pummel.
But Captain Rabid said nothing about the pouch. Instead, he stabbed his finger at the topmost piece of paper and said, ‘There have been three complaints about your behaviour. Not one, Cadet. I could overlook one. I could even overlook two if you were excellent in other areas. But three cannot be ignored, especially in the light of your bad start. A more suspicious man might think that you had joined the Snuffigators just to cause trouble—’
‘No!’ cried Pummel.
‘A more suspicious man might have you arrested and carried away to the cells for interrogation. You are lucky that I am not a suspicious man, Cadet.’
Captain Rabid pushed a different piece of paper across the desk, followed by a pen and inkwell. ‘Sign.’
The expression on his face was so grim that Pummel picked up the pen, dipped it in the ink and signed his name at the bottom of the document without even reading it.
He’d barely finished the last loop when the captain snatched up the paper, threw Pummel’s identity card at him and said, ‘You have failed your probation. Return your uniform and clear your locker. You are no longer a cadet Snuffigator.’
Pummel tried to say something, but his voice had got lost somewhere around ‘failed’. He picked up his identity card and stood there, with no idea what to do next.
Captain Rabid slammed his fist onto the desk. ‘Get out!’
Once, when Pummel was about seven, a travelling entertainer had come to the village nearest the farm, bringing an automaton – a mechanical man no higher than Pummel’s knee. He could still remember how the entertainer had wound it up, and how it had walked in jerky circles with its head nodding and its eyes blank.
That was how Pummel felt now. He stumbled out of the captain’s office and up the stairs to the dormitory, barely knowing where he was. He folded his uniform and left it on the end of his bed. Then he cleared out his locker, stuffed his few possessions into Ma’s old haversack, and walked back down the stairs to the front door.
No one tried to stop him. No one said a word to him, which was just as well, because Pummel didn’t think he’d ever be able to speak again. He blundered through the gate, and heard it slammed and bolted behind him.
He was no longer a Snuffigator.
He wandered down the crowded street in a daze. The whole thing had happened so quickly that he almost thought he’d imagined it. Perhaps he had imagined it. Perhaps he’d got caught in a Snare at work this morning, and was walking in circles, just thinking that Captain Rabid had fired him—
No.
The truth was far worse. He was out on the street in disgrace, with no job, no home and no money.
With a groan, he slid down the nearest wall and put his head in his hands. People stared, but this was the city, so no one stopped and asked him what was wrong.
What am I going to tell Ma? She had such hopes for me! And such hopes for the farm too, with a bit of money coming in.
All that was gone now. Who would employ a disgraced Snuffigator?
It was only the thought of Duckling that saved him from complete despair. She and Lord Rump had been thrown off their farm by a greedy landlord, but were they sitting in a gutter feeling sorry for themselves? No, of course not.
Country people know what to do when bad luck knocks us down, don’t we, Herro Pummel?
We get up and start again, Frow Duckling.
Pummel took a deep breath. He couldn’t go back to Ma and tell her he’d failed. He must keep trying. Maybe he could get work on the nightsoil carts. At least he’d be earning something—
It was then that he remembered the seven copper miseries Ma had sewn into the lining of the haversack.
Just for emergen
cies, she’d said. Keep them for when you really need them.
At the time, Pummel had sworn to himself that he’d never use them; that one day he’d give them back to Ma, along with a pile of silver gloats.
But now he needed them.
He dragged himself to his feet, slung the haversack over his shoulder and set off up the street again, trying not to look at the people all around him, who had probably never been fired from anything.
In his wretchedness, he didn’t hear the running footsteps. It was only instinct that made him swing around at the last minute.
The kick, aimed at the small of his back, caught him in the belly instead.
He doubled up, heaving for breath. Bright flashes were going off inside his head, like stars falling to the ground on a winter’s night.
Someone said, ‘Grab his haversack.’
Pummel tried to cling to it, but he had no air in his lungs or strength in his hands. The straps were torn from him. A second kick, to the chest this time, knocked him flat.
The footsteps ran off up the street. The citizens of Berren stepped around Pummel with their faces turned away, as if they were afraid his bad luck might be catching.
AN ILL WIND
Even when Pummel got his breath back he didn’t move. His chest hurt and so did his belly. But that wasn’t the worst of it.
I’ve lost everything. Even Ma’s emergency coins.
He could have wept, except that wouldn’t have made any difference at all. So he just lay there, watching the feet walk past, and the wheels on the roadway, and trying not to think about the hopeful expression on Ma’s face as she had waved him goodbye.
When he heard more running footsteps, he flinched and tried to sit up. But to his relief it wasn’t his attackers come back to finish him off.
It was Duckling.
‘Pummel!’ she gasped, throwing herself onto her knees beside him. ‘What happened?’ Then, without waiting for an answer, she shouted, ‘Grandpa, it’s Pummel! I think he’s been attacked!’
Pummel heard a roar of outrage from the corner. ‘What? Attacked in broad daylight? Oh, the fiends! The ruffians! Is he badly hurt, Granddaughter? Tell me he is not.’ And Lord Rump came blundering through the crowd like a wasp-bitten bull, waving his walking cane.
From that moment on, Pummel hardly had to do a thing. Duckling and her grandpa hauled him to his feet, dusted him off, exclaimed over his bruises and his lost haversack, then half-dragged, half-carried him towards their home.
After the awfulness of what had come before, it almost brought him to tears.
He tried to thank them several times. ‘You’re so kind.’
‘Nonsense, lad,’ said Lord Rump. ‘I know all about bruises. Did I not tell you how my father beat me every morning of my childhood?’
That wasn’t quite how Pummel remembered it, but he was too grateful to say so.
Besides, Lord Rump was still talking. ‘What you need is a quiet place to recover. And someone to take care of you – no, do not argue!’
Pummel hadn’t said a word.
‘You may as well – give in – graciously,’ said Duckling, puffing a bit under his weight. ‘Once Grandpa – gets an idea in his head – he can’t be stopped by anything smaller – than an omnibus.’
‘True, Granddaughter, true.’ Lord Rump chuckled, and the vibration of it went right through Pummel’s bruised body, and made him feel better.
Ma always said you can find good people everywhere, he thought as they helped him through their front door. And she was right.
Duckling installed the boy in her own bed, telling him that she would sleep on the back porch, and no, it wasn’t any trouble at all, she had plenty of blankets and she liked sleeping out there, especially in winter.
She didn’t tell him that, out on the porch, she could hum her shiny little tune without Grandpa catching her. She didn’t tell him that in the last couple of days the breeze had brought her six more miseries, someone’s lost identity card, three socks and a brand-new pillowcase.
‘You’re so kind,’ said Pummel for the ninth or tenth time.
He really did look awful. He was greenish-white around the gills, and his eyes were bloodshot. Those thugs Grandpa had hired must’ve hit harder than they were supposed to.
‘You get some rest,’ she said. ‘You need to recover nice and quick or you might lose your job. I’ve heard that the Snuffigators don’t take kindly to their people getting sick—’
She broke off as Pummel went whiter than ever. For a moment she thought he was going to cry, but then he pulled himself together and said, ‘I – I’m not a Snuffigator. Not anymore.’
‘But that’s wonderful! That means you can take Grandpa’s job!’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Pummel. ‘They fired me.’
‘Fired you? What for?’
‘They said there’d been complaints. Three of them! Lord Rump won’t want to hire me now. I thought maybe the nightsoil carts?’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Duckling. ‘If Grandpa likes someone, he doesn’t care how many jobs they’ve been fired from. And I know he likes you. Hang on, I’ll get him.’
She found Grandpa waiting impatiently in the kitchen. ‘Well?’ he whispered.
‘He’ll take anything he’s offered,’ said Duckling.
‘Good, good. I can almost hear the delightful clink of silver gloats in my pocket.’ And the old man headed towards the bedroom, with Duckling close behind.
‘Now, lad,’ he said, ‘I want to tell you about this job—’
‘I’ll take it,’ said Pummel, struggling to sit up.
‘Don’t you want to know what it is first?’
‘I don’t care what it is, just as long as I can send money home.’ The look of hope in the boy’s eyes was painful. ‘Otherwise we’ll lose the farm – just like you did.’
Duckling saw a flash of confusion cross Grandpa’s face. Oops, she thought. Forgot to tell him about the farm.
But Lord Rump was an old hand at this sort of thing, and he covered it up quickly. ‘Indeed,’ he murmured. ‘A sorry business. It still pains me to think of it.’ He brightened. ‘Which is why I am giving you this splendid opportunity. You see, these days, when I am not busy being an ambassador, I am a bit of a businessman. And my business is people.’
That was true enough. Grandpa adored people. He moved them around like chess pieces, nudging them here and there until they stood exactly where he wanted them. And if some of those pieces got broken along the way – well, that was just part of the game.
But Duckling wasn’t going to say so to Pummel. Instead, she leaned against the door looking interested, which wasn’t hard under the circumstances.
‘What I do,’ said Grandpa, ‘is put people in touch with one another.’ His plump finger tapped the quilt. ‘If Person A, over here, has a job on offer, and Person B, over there, needs work, then I bring them together. Simple, heh?’
Deep inside herself, where no one could see, Duckling rolled her eyes. There was nothing simple about Grandpa’s Schemes. They were as tangled as old fishing line, with hooks everywhere.
‘In this case,’ continued Lord Rump, ‘Person B is you. Person A is—’ He paused dramatically.
‘Yes?’ said Pummel.
‘Person A is the Margravine of Neuhalt.’
Duckling had spent much of her childhood learning to control her reactions. But this was so unexpected that her mouth fell open in shock.
So did Pummel’s. ‘I – I’m sorry, Lord Rump. Did you say – the Margravine?’
‘I did indeed, lad.’
‘In the Strong-hold?’
Oh, help, thought Duckling. What’s Grandpa got us into this time?
‘According to information I’ve received,’ said Lord Rump, ‘the Margravine is looking for a companion for her son, the Young Margrave. She wants someone honest and brave; a boy of the people.’
‘But I thought no one could go in or out of the Stronghold,’ said Pummel.
‘They do?’
‘Of course they do.’ Lord Rump slapped his hands on his thighs. ‘So, what do you say?’
Before Pummel could answer, Duckling leaned forward. ‘Can I talk to you for a moment, Grandpa? In private? Sorry, Pummel, this is just a bit of family business that I forgot about earlier. Won’t take long.’
‘Ah, yes, family business.’ Lord Rump hauled himself to his feet. ‘You think about the job, lad. I shall be back before you know it.’
As soon as they were out of earshot, Duckling hissed, ‘Grandpa, you said the Scheme wasn’t dangerous!’
‘And neither it is, my dear. Not for us.’
‘Anything to do with the Margravine is dangerous. Do you know how many people she’s beheaded so far this year?’
‘Two cooks, a brewer’s assistant, and the four grafs who bribed them to poison her supper. I believe that adds up to seven.’
‘And I don’t want you to be number eight. Please, Grandpa, whoever you’re dealing with, can’t you tell them that you couldn’t find a boy? Let’s get out of here. Let’s leave Berren. No, let’s leave Neuhalt. We’ll be poor, but that’s better than messing around with the Margravine.’
Lord Rump shook his head. ‘Impossible. I have already sent a message about the lad who is occupying your bed.’
‘But we’ve only just got hold of him!’
‘One has to think ahead. I had complete faith that he would be ours by this afternoon.’
Duckling groaned, then slapped her hand over her mouth in case her voice carried as far as the bedroom.
‘And the Margravine,’ continued Grandpa, ‘is expecting us tomorrow morning at ten.’ He beamed with satisfaction. ‘I am dreadfully sorry, my dear, but it is too late to pull out.’
A LETTER HOME
Dear Ma, wrote Pummel. He chewed the end of Lord Rump’s pencil for a moment or two before continuing. I hope this finds you well. How are the calves? Did you get someone to help with the milking?
