5 A Dark Cloud in a Bright Day
The road down into Yuhlm grew steadily busier as the Halcyon pressed on south. More stoom-wagons rumbled back and forth, their chimneys staining the air yellow and leaving small drifts of white ash against walls and kerbs. In places, where parked, they jutted out so far into the road and in such profusion that Nephril had problems getting the Halcyon past.
Not only were there stoom-wagons but a fair few of the new naphtha-lorries, with their smaller cabins and sleeker lines but narrower and shorter beds. Clearly unfussy, their stacked goods and wares weighed down each without favour, the cartage cost of a bale or crate dropping lower as their loads grew higher.
The buildings that lined the road had not only steadily grown higher themselves but more familiar one with the other, hard pressed together like drinkers in a tavern. In like manner, they filled the stifling air with thick blue smoke, passed soiled water into the street and belched bad breath into each other’s faces.
When it seemed the Halcyon could go no further, not without chivvying surly-looking drivers and their burly loaders, Nephril turned them east into a side street, narrowly missing a stack of bales. This new way may have been less cluttered but it stank to high heaven. Prescinda quickly covered her mouth and nose with her sleeve.
“Spirits…” Nephril began but choked. He coughed, and then breathed in slowly through his mouth before wheezing, “Spirits of … of hartshorn,” but again began coughing. Prescinda grabbed the steering wheel for a second time, on this occasion narrowly saving a masked porter and his cart.
The air soon cleared, though, allowing them both to gulp mouthfuls of the vapours of cow dung, something Prescinda found quite comforting. She was just asking, “What on Earth are spirits of hartshorn,” when, through a half-opened gate, she caught sight of a huge mountain of manure.
“Err, well, it has its uses,” Nephril said but she didn’t hear, too amazed by the shimmer in the air above the yard’s high wall.
“By ‘eck, but there’s some heat there, Nephril.”
He seemed content to leave her aghast as the long wall behind which the mound lay hidden passed interminably by. It left him free to press on east more quickly now the traffic had thinned.
Once they’d left the olid press of buildings behind, and steadily began rising between scrubby fields of sedge and bog grass, the road became unusually smooth and wide. Bare earth dusted its frayed edges, littered with stark white ballast through which coarse grasses grew.
Its arrogant newness seemed to deny the land its contours, eschewed its ditches and hollows as the road cut an unfailing arc towards the southeast. When they came through a rocky cutting into the next shallow valley, a bluff ridge came into view at the furthest side. Tight-packed buildings encrusted its steep rise, a grey, higgledy-piggledy and dourly old pile.
“Yuhlm College, mine dear,” Nephril announced, nodding that way.
“What? All of it?”
“Ha. Nay, only the large building, the one just back from the drop. Dost thou see?”
“It’s not quite what I expected.”
Nephril turned to her as he laughed, about to say something when he nearly ran off the road again.
“Don’t do that, Nephril. Watch where you’re going, for Leiyatel’s sake.”
An involuntary apology slipped his mouth before he again tried to keep his mind on his driving. It turned out to be an uneventful last few miles, on towards the heaped jumble of buildings above which the college rose.
The end of the new road took Prescinda by surprise, the Halcyon squeezing between two leaning gables where a gravelled drop dumped them onto a steep and ancient street. A tight turn east, and the Halcyon made short work of the few remaining torturous bends of the climb.
They emerged from the street’s last drunken stagger and came before Yuhlm College, rearing proudly above them. Whereas the old main street had been almost empty, here the roads about and the college yard itself fair teemed with bustle.
Although mostly young folk hurrying to and fro, an amble of more ancient figures lent a hint of chalk-dusted blackness to the throng, their far distant thoughts somehow immune to the jostle. Their immunity, though, didn’t extend to the Halcyon’s bright blue passage.
“Ah, Nephril,” a particularly large impression of a rather overfed crow exclaimed, his chin bobbing as the sun glinted from his prominent brow. Wayward black hair - somewhat acock towards the crown - trounced back and forth as he folded over the Halcyon’s halting grille.
“Good day, Melkin Mudark,” Nephril hailed back, in a seemingly well-practiced affable manner.
“I assume this to be the illustrious Mistress Prescinda,” Melkin crooned warmly, despite being a little winded. He soon removed his soft, stout fingers from the Halcyon’s grille, sailed to Prescinda’s door and there enthusiastically offered his hand.
She offered her own in return, which he elegantly raised to his lips as he inclined his head. He paused, brushed the back of Prescinda’s fingers with his breath alone and smiled as he looked at her through thick and bushy brows.
“Enchanted,” he oozed before returning her hand.
“Thanks. Nice to meet you ... I’m sure.”
“Melkin Mudark be steward of Bazarral, Prescinda, if thou did not know already,” Nephril said.
Melkin grinned. “Here today only in my capacity as chancellor.”
In the silence that fell between them, the hubbub of passing voices, of footfall and swishing robes, all seemed as but a windy day chasing through a summer woodland. Nephril then simply waved Melkin aside.
The Halcyon nudged its way across the yard amidst smiles of recognition and the fondest of pats to its bright blue bodywork - a scholastic sea proudly parting before the product of its finest and latest learning.
Nephril and Prescinda soon returned on foot, Melkin coming beside as they walked in through the college entrance.
“I take it your own spot was empty this time, Nephril?” Melkin asked.
“As promised, yes. Free of presumptuous postgraduates.”
“Good.”
Nephril then asked after Falmeard only for Melkin to draw them to a halt to one side, away from the river of students.
“Ah,” he said, a little abashed. “He’s not actually here at the moment I’m afraid.”
“Well, when will he be back? Thou know he and I need to talk with Prescinda.”
“Ah, well, you see, the dunager was ready a little earlier than expected. The full load at that. You know it can only be corked for a limited time, Nephril. There was no way we could delay it.”
“No, no indeed not, I see that. I suppose it cannot be helped. When did he leave for the Royal College?” Nephril caught Prescinda’s eye but their narrowing quickly turned his gaze away.
Falmeard had left mid-morning, Melkin informed them, and so was likely already half way there at the very least, despite the stoom-wagon’s cautious progress. The discourse was clearly meaningful to the two men, but only raised suspicion in Prescinda.
“I’m sorry, Nephril, Steward Melkin, but I have to...”
“Just Melkin if you wouldn’t mind.”
“What?”
“I prefer to use my name rather than my title, my dear.”
She looked between them, her brow furrowed. “Why’s Falmeard gone to the Royal College when I’m supposed to be helping him climb the Star Tower?”
Nephril and Melkin stared at each other, but it was Nephril who then turned her an apologetic look.
“I am sorry, mine dear, but I had hoped to explain everything with Falmeard’s help. Thou would then have better appreciated the importance and true nature of what we ask of thee. I suppose, to be fair, t’would be unreasonable to make thee wait much longer, now the cat has seen light spill into its bag.”
He looked at Melkin who only nodded. “Perhaps,” Nephril said as he raised a guiding arm, “thou might favour us with thine indulgence, at least until a drink be in thy hand and some few mors
els of food before thee?”
Nephril held her gaze unwaveringly, but out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Melkin couldn’t bring himself to do the same. In fact, he’d begun to shuffle his feet rather uncomfortably.
6 When Bollocks Makes Sense
The afternoon had stayed warm despite the sky growing hazy, softening the shadows and removing some of the sun’s stark heat. Although the high balcony on which they sat wasn’t shaded, a gentle breeze made it more than pleasant.
On a wooden table before Prescinda, a plate of cold meats and salad lay untouched, a half drunk tumbler of weak ale beside. Opposite, Nephril’s own plate had been half-heartedly picked at for their midday meal had kept the edge from both their appetites.
Only Melkin’s plate lay empty, having a moment before been wiped clean with the last of his bread. The man himself rested heavily against the back of his chair, dabbing daintily at his unsullied mouth. He sat on Prescinda’s left and faced out across the balcony’s low balustrade, out over Yuhlm’s shallow basin to a splendid view across Foundling Bay.
“But why can’t you tell me?” Prescinda again asked Nephril, who sighed as he looked down at his plate. He felt her stare, though, and so shifted uneasily until turning to join Melkin in regarding the view.
At least the steward had the decency to look at her when he spoke. “We wanted Falmeard to tell you himself, Mistress Prescinda. When the time was ripe.”
“So you expect me to wait until we catch up with him? I think not.” She quickly looked between the two, but turned to stare at Nephril when he noticeably swallowed, his voice now seeming strained.
“Falmeard suggested thee because of the very fact that thou knowest not, that and thy firm resolve of course, thy ... thy no-nonsense approach.”
She heard the sound of metal being beaten, ringing sharply from a hidden yard somewhere below. It softened to a dull thud, a curse following on.
“And it’s nothing to do with the Star Tower?” she asked, to which Nephril only nodded. “Then why did you lead me to think it was?”
He looked as though he was about to speak but clearly thought better of it.
Prescinda sat up straight, removed the napkin from her lap, threw it on the table and stood. “Right. Who’s taking me to Blisteraising, or do I have to make my own way there?”
She glowered at them, at their clearly shocked faces.
Melkin had half-risen, his own napkin almost lost in the pink squeeze of his hand. “I told you it wouldn’t work...” he said to Nephril, who quickly interrupted.
“Very well, Prescinda. I wilt tell thee as best I can without spoiling the task, but I cannot tell thee all. If I did then it would devalue thy worth in the matter for thou art unique, and I need keep thee that way.”
She again looked at them both, hesitated, but slowly sat down. “You’d better make it convincing this time, Nephril. If I think you’re taking advantage then...”
“Please, mine dear, please at least hear me out.”
More clattering of metal filled the taut air now between them, but this time with no trailing curses.
“All right,” Prescinda allowed, “but if I smell a rat at any time ... well, you can stuff whatever it is you’re up to. Understood?”
Both men dutifully nodded.
“So,” she pressed, “what can you tell me, and what’s all this about helping Falmeard with his fear of heights. I should’ve realised something was wrong. I can’t ever recall him complaining of such a thing.”
The halting and painfully considered explanation Nephril now embarked upon didn’t auger well, but she prepared herself to hear him out nonetheless. Her silence, however, gave her the opportunity to notice something that softened her anger towards him.
His delivery had a reticence to it that didn’t seem entirely on her account, but perhaps to some extent on Melkin’s presence. It brought to mind the mention Nephril had made of a bribe.
His explanation now, though, began by addressing the Scarra Face’s famous mirage, what Nephril thereafter took great care to refer to only by that term alone - the mirage. Even when he moved on to the Bazarral engers’ suspicions that it may be something else, he dutifully kept to it.
“Its infrequent appearance,” he was now saying, “has always kept its true nature hidden, at least from the dry consideration wont of the engers, but that has recently changed.” He looked towards the east, towards that distant mirage, despite the college itself being in the way.
“A vantage has been found to spy it out at will, more or less, irrespective of time of day or season of the year. The engers have now studied it at some length, although no hard fact has yet been arrived at, only mere speculation.”
Melkin quietly gasped, “It’s more than...”
“There are,” Nephril said, narrowing his gaze at the steward, “differing views as to what exactly is being seen. And that, mine dear, be where Falmeard and thyself join our tale.”
That Falmeard was not of their own time was something Prescinda already knew, although she still found it hard to believe. That he may have carried with him some insight from a much earlier time, as Nephril had previously described it, was what gave him his own particular value. It meant he might recognise something no Dican ever could.
“Why me, though, Nephril?” Prescinda asked. “What makes me worth all the trouble you’ve gone to to fool me into coming here?”
Nephril clearly overlooked the barb. “The fact that thou knowest nothing of what I am now trying mine hardest not to reveal be the very answer. That be the true nature of thy irreplaceable value.”
“Sometimes, Nephril ... in fact most times it seems to me, you don’t half talk a load of bollocks. Either that or...” something fell into place, her face lighting up as her voice sank to a mere whisper, “or I’m a ... yes, or I’m a naïve Dican bumpkin.”
She darted a look into Nephril’s eyes, seeing there a glint of guarded truth, one he held onto only long enough for her alone to see. When she looked into Melkin’s, though, she saw expectancy there, a mist of hope before his eyes.
7 The Bending of a View
A muted breakfast amidst the din of the college refectory marked the start of Prescinda’s day. She assumed it had been chosen in preference to the balcony precisely because it made it difficult to talk. She had tried, but the wariness in both Nephril and Melkin’s eyes had soon been deterrent enough. She’d hoped for better after they’d said goodbye to Melkin and were once more alone in the Halcyon, but Nephril’s appalling driving had again put paid to that.
They’d returned down the hill and up the steep gravel rise to the start of the new road, soon sweeping around it and into the stench of the spirits of hartshorn. Maybe it had been the earlier hour that had given them such a clear run, but before long they’d put the Hanging Chain Towers behind them and were approaching Nordgang Road.
Another hour or so and they’d also put Bazarral behind, almost seeming to fly past the Weyswal turn for Galgaverre, then quickly on through Eyesget and out along a deserted and more northerly road. Prescinda hardly recognised the views from her fateful trip the year before for it all looked so different, not being seen from the high seat of a coachbank.
By midday they were drawing near the Aerie Way, the Southern Balconies’ new road steadily lifting them from the heavy heat of the day. As they got nearer, the Scarra’s viewing gallery began to draw Prescinda’s thoughts just as steadily. Where they were now seemed a dangerous place to distract Nephril, but her words had already begun tumbling out.
“Why’s the mirage so infrequently seen from the gallery, Nephril?”
He turned to look at her as she’d feared he would, his mind now clearly far from the task of driving. Instinctively, she shot a hand out to the wheel. “Never mind, Nephril. You just keep driving, but promise we’ll stop there to talk.”
He nodded and returned his mind to driving.
The Aerie Way resolutely refused to be widened, a challenge too far even for the Bazarr
al engers. The Halcyon’s stop at the gallery would therefore block the road and so could only last as long as the Way remained clear. As they’d met few vehicles since the start of the climb, that prospect looked quite favourable.
When they arrived, the Halcyon’s squeaking brakes soon died away, leaving an eerie stillness to their lofty perch. The Scarra Face cut its own oblique shadows across the road’s winding ledge, and despite being almost a thousand feet above the Eyeswin Vale, their own sudden lack of motion let the stifling heat of the day rush in. Prescinda now wished she’d brought a hat.
Nephril, though, shifted in his seat and squinted across her to the east, taking her own gaze that way. “’Tis a property of heated air, mine dear Prescinda,” he began, “that bends an otherwise obscured view into sight.”
He turned from the absent mirage to look at Prescinda. “The kind of heated air that oft swaddles a distant desert, or any such expanse of sun-baked land. But how a view is bent be subject to the many vagaries of nature; the degree of heating, the dampness or dryness of the air, the direction of the sun, the wants of men...”
“So, where we are now, here on the Scarra, we’re at the furthest ... at the furthest, well, the furthest bend that nature can cause, all things working together? But all things coming together like that at the same time is going to be pretty rare, isn’t it, Nephril?”
A genuine smile spread across his face and a twinkle flashed from his eyes, but then a horn blared out in the distance.
A coachbank, perhaps the one upon which Prescinda had first heard talk of other cities, now sat impatiently at the far end of the Aerie Way, waiting for them to move on and so make way. Nephril raised his arm and waved an assent to the driver before jerking the Halcyon forward once more.
“That means,” Prescinda reasoned, “that wherever you’ve found a reliable view, it has to be somewhere where it doesn’t need much bending.” She stared at him, his eyes fighting to ignore her. “Somewhere high up, but somewhere that isn’t the Star Tower.”
Nephril remained silent, giving a good impression of concentrating on the road ahead. He remained so, far beyond having passed the coachbank’s disgruntled driver and his few dozing passengers.
An Artist's Eye (Dica Series Book 5) Page 3
