‘Do what?’ said Nate.
‘You’ve been an excellent worker, Nate Quarter. And true to your word, you’ve learned quickly and applied yourself to your tasks with enthusiasm and good humour. One day you’ll make an excellent phraxengineer.’
‘Thank you,’ said Nate, his face colouring.
‘Alas, the same cannot be said for my son, Branxford. He has proved a great disappointment to me. Not only has he shown no interest in the factory, but he has run up enormous debts and even taken to stealing from me. The last straw came when my neighbour in New Lake, Galston Prade, informed me that Branxford had offered to sign over Glemlop and Drew to him in the event of my death, in return for a substantial payment in advance! Of course, Galston sent him packing, but it is the thought of it that I find so disappointing – attempting to sell his inheritance like that …’
Friston paused for a moment and looked down at the scattered documents and working drawings on his desk.
‘Which is why,’ he said, looking up and clearing his throat, ‘I would like to make you, Nate, my junior partner – a junior partner who, one day, will inherit the business. After all, you have proved to be the son I always wished I’d had. How does “Glemlop, Drew and Quarter” sound to you, my boy?’
Nate swallowed hard. He didn’t know what to say. Branxford already hated him with a passion. This would make things immeasurably worse.
‘And don’t worry about Branxford,’ said Friston Drew, as if reading Nate’s thoughts. ‘You leave him to me. I’ve drawn up the necessary papers. All you have to do is sign. But there’s no rush. Why don’t you sleep on it? You can give me your answer tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow is the Reckoning,’ said Nate.
From outside there came the sound of a muffled cough.
‘So it is!’ exclaimed Friston Drew. ‘Branxford speaks of little else. Why, I’ve just received a bill for a set of white body armour and a carved blackwood thousandstick, would you believe? Well, never mind, things will keep till after the match, Nate. I hear our Copperwood team is not to be underestimated this year.’
‘It certainly isn’t,’ said Nate with a smile.
The factory owner smiled back. ‘Much like yourself, Nate Quarter.’
• CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE •
Clawing his way up the steep side of the high hill with his thousandstick, Nate struggled to the top – but not before Branxford Drew. As he got to his feet and looked up, Nate saw that Branxford was already half a dozen rungs up the towering high pine. He hadn’t a moment to lose.
Around them, the crowd rose to a new crescendo of excitement. They’d already witnessed mighty shoves, ambushes, two hill captures and a breakaway pursuit. Now there was a double climb. It was proving to be the most exciting Reckoning in years.
In the distance came the rumble of thunder even though there wasn’t a cloud in sight. But the crowd were too engrossed in the contest to pay it any heed.
Nate grasped the first rung and began to climb the tall, gently swaying pole. High above was the platform they were both making for. The first to haul himself onto it and raise his thousandstick would earn victory for his team. In his wildest dreams, Nate had never thought he’d get this close. But he wasn’t there yet, and if he dropped his thousandstick now, then it would all be over.
‘Concentrate!’ he told himself fiercely.
Above him, Branxford was tiring, blowing hard and pausing between rungs to regain his breath. Nate pushed himself on, reaching up for rung after rung with his gloved hand and clutching the thousandstick with the other.
In the stands around the stadium, the crowd seemed in turmoil. People were leaving their seats, hurrying down the wooden steps, mingling with the players on the outer track, gesticulating wildly. Overhead, the sky marshal swooped low and steered his phraxlighter down towards a contingent of constables that had just galloped in on wild-eyed prowlgrins.
But the two climbers were oblivious to the commotion beneath them. Now almost face to face, on opposite sides of the high pine pole, they matched each other rung for rung.
‘It’s all over … lamplighter …’ gasped Branxford Drew breathlessly. ‘Your … glittering … career …’
Nate ignored him. Reaching up, he pulled himself a rung clear and continued to climb. The platform was tantalizingly near.
‘The factory … It’s gone …’ hissed Branxford. ‘And … my … stupid … father … with it.’
Nate looked down into the hate-filled face of the factory owner’s son. ‘Gone?’ he breathed. He grasped the platform above his head with his gloved hand.
In the stands around the field there came the sound of screams and wailing.
‘The thunder … That … was … the sound … of a phrax … explosion …’ Branxford spat the words out as he climbed up in pursuit of Nate. ‘Lamps … set … to go … out …’ An evil sneer spread across his face. ‘I … suspect … murder.’
Nate hauled himself up onto the platform and stood up. From the top of the high pine, he could see all the way to the distant stiltshops of Copperwood. Sure enough, a great white cloud was rising in the sky above it. The crowd could see it too. Many of them were streaming away from the field and off towards their homes in the district. Others were staring and pointing at the lone figure standing at the top of the high pine, thousandstick held limply at his side.
‘You!’ gasped Nate, looking down at Branxford, who was a single rung from the platform. ‘You did this!’
‘Who do you think they’ll believe?’ sneered Branxford. ‘The grieving son of a factory owner – or a thieving lamplighter? Goodbye, Nate Quarter.’
Branxford swung his blackwood thousandstick viciously at Nate’s legs. With a startled cry, the lamplighter toppled headlong from the platform …
• PART TWO •
HIVE
• CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX •
Nate opened his eyes. His head hurt; a dull throbbing band of pain across his forehead which intensified when he tried to sit up. His right arm was tightly strapped and his chest felt decidedly tender. He was lying on a soft bed of fragrant gladegrass, carefully layered and woven with the expertise of a banderbear.
Overhead, low beams crisscrossed the ceiling, from which wooden trugs, barley sacks and tallowrope nets hung down, bursting with white steam celery and purple gladeonions, steamtubers and woodplantains. There were garden tools – rakes, forks, spades, trowels and shears – dangling from mounted hooks on the wall beside him, and a tall stack of pumpkin casks and bedding trays that looked ready to topple at any moment.
Nate felt a damp compress on his forehead, deliciously cool and soothing and, turning his head, found himself looking up into the clear green eyes of Eudoxia.
‘You’re awake,’ she smiled, removing the compress and soaking it in the copperwood bowl by her side before placing it gently on Nate’s forehead once again. ‘That was a nasty fall you took. We were worried …’
‘We?’ Nate’s throat felt tight and scratchy, and his voice was barely a whisper.
‘Me, Weelum, Slip, and the Professor of course,’ she replied. ‘Here, drink this. Pure cold steam water, fresh from Slip’s roof well.’
Eudoxia held a flask to Nate’s lips and he drank gratefully.
‘You’ve sprained your shoulder and cracked a few ribs. Nothing too serious. I’ve treated prowlgrins in far worse shape. What you need is rest, and plenty of it …’
‘Wuh!’ came a familiar voice from the far side of the bed. ‘Wuh-wuh.’
Nate turned his head to see Weelum the banderbear tapping a tusk with the third claw of his right paw. The keeper of light has escaped lightly from the heavy fall.
Nate smiled ruefully. ‘That’s easy for you to say,’ he told him. ‘You’re not the one who feels like they’ve been hit on the head by an unlit phraxshard.’ He paused as the memory of the thousandsticks match came back to him. ‘I remember standing at the top of the high pine and seeing a great cloud rising up over Copperwood … Then I was fa
lling and …’ He tried to sit up, only to be enveloped in pain once again. ‘Where am I?’ he gasped. ‘And how did I get here?’
As if in answer, there came the sound of a hatch being lifted on rusty hinges, and Slip the scuttler’s face appeared at Nate’s bedside, his wide eyes clouded with concern.
‘You’re safe now, friend Nate.’ The grey goblin set aside the huge blue pumpkin he was carrying and took Nate’s left hand. ‘Safe in Slip’s stiltshed on the allotment,’ he said, and added, ‘You haven’t ever seen Slip’s stiltshed before, have you, friend Nate?’
Nate shook his head.
‘Built by his own hands, nice and hidden and out of the way among the tuber stalks. Too busy practising thousandsticks – and look where that’s got you …’
Slip’s lower lip was trembling and his large eyes were filling with tears. Eudoxia put an arm around him.
‘Don’t worry, Slip,’ she reassured the grey goblin as large teardrops trickled down his cheeks and dropped from his trembling chin onto Nate’s blanket. ‘Nate’s had a nasty fall, but his thousandsticks armour saved him. What he needs now is peace and quiet and time to heal.’
‘Peace and quiet,’ Slip repeated, nodding slowly and trying to smile. ‘And time to heal. Slip understands. Come on, Weelum. Let’s leave friend Nate to sleep, and go and dig up some gladeonions.’
‘Wuh,’ replied the banderbear, shaking his head and making a juddering sweep of his right arm, his claws trailing for a moment along the floor. Such pain in the back for such bitter fruit.
Nate smiled and shut his eyes as the cool compress was refreshed and placed back on his feverish brow with gentle hands …
‘Nate … Nate …’
He wasn’t sure how long he’d slept, but when he opened his eyes, sunlight was streaming into the small wooden stiltshed from a circular skylight in the thatched roof. His head no longer hurt, and Nate was able to sit up with only a twinge of discomfort.
At the foot of the gladegrass bed was the Professor, sitting astride a sack of cloudturnips. His angular face looked drawn and tired, and his usually neatly combed sandy-coloured hair was dishevelled and windblown.
‘How are you feeling?’ the Professor asked, his cool blue eyes as penetrating as ever behind the silver-framed spectacles.
‘Much better, thanks, Professor,’ Nate said. ‘A little stiff – and my chest is sore. But my headache has gone.’
‘Good, I’m glad to hear it,’ said the Professor with a thin smile. ‘I suppose you’re wondering what happened, and how you got here?’
Nate nodded.
‘Well,’ the Professor began, ‘I’d better start by telling you about the disappearance of Eudoxia’s father. You asked me to look into it, remember, a few weeks ago?’
‘I remember,’ said Nate. ‘But what’s Galston Prade got to do with all of this?’
‘Eudoxia said he had gone to Hive to recruit hammerheads for the New Lake thousandsticks team,’ the Professor continued in his dry, carefully modulated academic voice – a voice which Nate had never heard raised in anger. ‘Well, that’s as may be, but I’ve spoken to several blockers in the New Lake team who tell me that the hammerheads had been recruited and were bound for Great Glade before Galston had got even halfway to Hive. According to them, the chief clerk, Felftis Brack, had already arranged everything, and there was no need for Galston’s journey. And that’s not all …’
The Professor calmly removed his spectacles and polished each lens in turn with the lapel of his topcoat, before putting them on again.
‘A junior clerk in Prade’s office told me that Felftis Brack had instructed him to draw up a document after Galston left for Hive. An extremely interesting document, by all accounts. It was an agreement between Felftis and Branxford Drew, giving the chief clerk a controlling share in the phraxchamber works when Branxford inherits, in return for five thousand gladers paid immediately.’
‘It’s beginning to make sense …’ murmured Nate. ‘Galston turned Branxford down when he came to him with just such an offer. With Galston out of the city, Felftis felt free to make a deal himself. Eudoxia and I saw him hand the money over to Branxford …’
The Professor nodded. ‘But it seems it went deeper than that. Branxford and Felftis got impatient. They rigged a lamp to go out in the works directly beneath Friston Drew’s office, blowing the old man sky high just as Branxford and you were climbing the high pine.’
‘He admitted as much to me before he knocked me off!’ Nate blurted out, his face flushed with indignation. ‘But how could he do it? I mean, to his own father … ?’
He hesitated as he remembered his own conversation with the old factory owner. Of course! Branxford must have been eavesdropping and learned that Friston Drew was about to disinherit him and make Nate a partner in the works. He grasped a handful of blanket in the fist of his left hand and twisted it savagely.
‘He murdered him!’ he exclaimed. ‘Branxford Drew murdered his father! I remember it all now, and he wants to blame it on me!’
The Professor sighed. ‘I’m afraid you’re right, Nate, my lad.’ His dour expression grew harder. ‘Sky above, I’ve seen my fair share of scoundrels in my time,’ he said. ‘Knifeticklers and snatchwallets, gamblers who would sell their own grandmother to secure a wager. But what Branxford did …’ He shook his head. ‘He and Felftis had it well planned. The phraxchamber works were deserted because of the big match, and they must have ambushed Friston in his office. I chased off a couple of Felftis’s cronies who were planting stolen working drawings and forged accounts in your cabin just before the thousandsticks match. I was on my way to the field to warn you when the explosion happened, and arrived just in time to see you fall.’
Nate stared back at his friend, his eyes wide with outrage at the Professor’s words.
‘Branxford accused you of murdering his father, and of attempting to murder him too, right there on the field. Told the constabulary that you’d been cheating his father and had been found out, and that he had the evidence to prove it.’
Nate buried his face in the blanket.
‘Things were turning ugly, so I grabbed the sky marshal’s phraxlighter and got you out of there, right from under their noses, together with Slip, Weelum and Eudoxia. I’m afraid I had to play a little bit rough and it seems that, so far as the Great Glade Constabulary are concerned, we’re all in this together. They’re calling us …’
‘The Copperwood Gang,’ came Eudoxia’s voice from the hatch as she climbed into the stiltshed and stood up, dusting off the sleeves of her topcoat. ‘And I, Miss Eudoxia Prade, rich heiress from New Lake,’ she continued, with a tinkling laugh, ‘have been kidnapped by you and am being held to ransom. We’re the talk of the city!’
Nate looked up and, despite himself, had to smile at the mixture of indignation and amusement on Eudoxia’s face. The Professor, however, remained unsmiling and serious.
‘Slip, Weelum and me, we’re named as your accomplices, Nate. They’ve searched the Copperwood cabins, the phraxchamber works, and it’s only a matter of time before they start on the allotments. Our descriptions have been posted on roost poles and tether posts all over the twelve districts, and there’s a watch on all phraxships in and out of the Ledges – not to mention patrols in the outer city districts. They’ve got most of the Old Forest Militia out looking for us, together with guards from every factory owner and mining boss in New Lake.’
‘We’ve got to get out of the city,’ said Eudoxia, her green eyes flashing defiantly, ‘and go to Hive. The Professor has friends there, and I have to find my father.’
‘Yes, but how?’ said Nate, painfully aware of his strapped arm and cracked ribs.
The Professor stood up and swept back the tails of his topcoat to reveal two silver phraxpistols holstered at his side.
‘There might just be a way,’ he said slowly.
• CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN •
Apale moon hung low in the sky over the steam gardens and allotments of
Copperwood. Bathed in silvery light, the huge vegetable forms – some as tall as the surrounding stilthouses – rose up from the rich steam-nourished earth and spread their extravagant leaves.
A cluster of crinkle-edged cabbages, each as big as a hammelhorn, nestled beneath the sturdy stands of white steam celery that sprouted six feet high. Red tubers, their feathery fronds fluttering in the wisps of steam, carpeted the ground beneath rows of half-submerged gladeonions and blue pumpkins, the size of prowlgrin carriages. Here and there, half-hidden by the thick vegetation, small sheds rose up on spindly timber stilts, lufwood ladders leading to hatches in their floors.
In a distant corner of the Copperwood allotments, a hatch opened and a tall individual in a tattered topcoat and crushed funnel hat stepped down onto the first rung of the ladder and began his descent. Pausing at the bottom to push aside the curling fronds of a gladeonion, the Professor scanned the balconies of the overlooking cabin rows, his spectacles glinting in the moonlight. Satisfied that he wasn’t being observed, he set off through the allotments in the direction of the Copperwood bridge.
Several hours later, the Professor had left the cobbled streets and stilted workshops of Copperwood far behind and was striding along a compacted mud road rutted with wagon tracks and potholes. The weather had turned cold as he’d made his way through the sleeping city and his breath was coming now in thick clouds, while the streets were slippery with glittering frost.
He’d avoided the patrols of Great Glade guards in East Glade and Old Forest, but in New Lake he’d had to creep past a pair of fat low-belly goblin constables asleep beneath the statue in Barley Fields Square. The yellow glow from their crackling brazier fire flickered on the bronze statue of a charging banderbear, its tusks bared and claws splayed in a menacing lunge. It commemorated an ancient battle which had taken place on this spot back during the wars for the Free Glades in the Second Age of Flight. The Professor glanced over his shoulder at it as he went on his way. The statue looked tall and majestic – so different from the shambling mountain of fur that young Nate called his friend.
Edge Chronicles 10: The Immortals Page 20
