The End of Time (Books of Umber #3)

by P. W. ; David Ho Catanese

  “You seem different lately,” she said.

  “I do?”

  She nodded, and her gaze grew more intense. “When we found you, you were like a little boy. So lost. But you’ve changed.”

  Without thinking about it, Hap put his hand to his temple and felt his hair under his palm.

  “I don’t mean what’s happening to your hair,” Sophie said. “It’s you. You’re . . . older somehow.”

  Hap felt tiny dots of perspiration at the top of his forehead. “I am?”

  The door to the studio squeaked open, and Umber’s head angled into the threshold. Hap let out a deep breath. Somehow the interruption was both welcome and unwelcome.

  Umber’s eyes were avid and wide, and he spoke quickly, louder than necessary. “Happenstance! There you are. Get to your room and put on your best clothes.”

  “Are . . . are we going somewhere?” Hap asked.

  “We’ve been summoned to the palace,” Umber replied.

  “We’ve both been summoned?”

  Umber grinned. “Well, just me, obviously, but you know how it is—I need you to come with me. So put on your finery and meet me downstairs, right away.” Umber’s head vanished, and his footsteps tapered.

  Hap turned to Sophie, but she’d put her back to him and was cleaning her brush, swishing it inside a glass jar with unnecessary vigor. “Have fun at the palace, Happenstance. I suppose you’ll see your little friend.”

  The carriage trundled down the causeway. Hap noticed how carefully Umber had primped himself for this visit. He wore his best boots, freshly blackened and with shining gold buckles. Instead of the many-pocketed and well-worn vest that he favored, he had donned a black surcoat embroidered with gold, over a snowy silk shirt. His chaotic hair was combed and tied back with a black ribbon. Umber was normally an energetic sort, but he was particularly effervescent at the moment, humming loudly with his feet tapping. He stuck his arm out the window, cupping his hand to catch the wind.

  Hap, meanwhile, slumped on his bench, so low that his knees were almost at eye level. Umber eventually took note. “Now, Happenstance, I know you don’t like being dragged to these things. But you know the reason.”

  Hap nodded. “The note from Willy Nilly told you to take me on all your adventures. But this isn’t really an adventure, is it?”

  “One never knows when adventure will strike,” Umber said, spreading his arms.

  Hap put his hands on the bench and pushed himself straight. “Who wants you at the palace, Lord Umber? Is it Fay?”

  Umber shook his head. “I wish it was. But no, it was the king himself.”

  “The king?” For months it was rumored that King Tyrian was near death. He had even been too ill to attend the funerals of the two sons he’d recently lost, only weeks apart.

  “Yes,” Umber said. “Apparently he’s felt a little better these last few days. Thanks to some friends of mine, I might add.”

  “Friends of yours?”

  Umber nodded. “Improving the quality of medicine in this world has been one of my priorities. I’ve established a school of medicine to train a new generation of physicians. But some people are stubborn about the old ways. King Tyrian was among them. He insisted on using his royal physician—who is the practitioner of some of the most outdated quackery that you can imagine. Tyrian finally relented and allowed a pair of my best physicians to treat him.”

  That’s good, Hap thought. The conniving Prince Loden had seemed on the verge of taking the throne. But perhaps that day would not come so soon after all.

  They were met inside the palace by a servant of the king, a well-fed man in a green robe. When he saw Umber, his expression softened like butter in the sun. “Lord Umber—how nice to welcome you to the palace again!”

  “Hello, Tattersall,” Umber said, clasping the royal servant’s hands. “I hope it’s all right that I brought my ward, Happenstance.”

  Tattersall stared, captivated like so many before him by Hap’s eyes. But this time Hap stared back, because there was something on Tattersall’s face that he’d never seen before: a round piece of glass over each eye, connected by a thin frame that bridged his nose and metal bands that hooked behind his ears.

  “Oh, you’ve noticed my spectacles,” Tattersall said. He took the thing off his face and held it out for Hap to see. “I have your Lord Umber to thank for these!”

  “How are they working?” Umber asked.

  “Perfectly. What a delight to see clearly again!” Tattersall replied. He’d been squinting since removing the spectacles, and he put them back over his eyes and grinned.

  “Another one of my ventures,” Umber told Hap. “Just getting started, really. I hope to make them widely available.”

  “As for this young fellow,” Tattersall said, putting a hand on Hap’s shoulder, “I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you, but I have seen you. When you were here for Prince Galbus’s birthday party.”

  “Poor Galbus,” Umber said. He looked over Tattersall’s shoulder, and back over his own. When he spoke again, his voice was almost a whisper. “Tattersall . . . it’s being said that Galbus died after a drunken fall. I was surprised to hear that. It seemed to me that he’d forsaken wine.”

  Tattersall’s body went rigid. His jaw lifted and his throat convulsed as he swallowed hard, and he seemed on the verge of speaking when a sound came from the second-floor balcony—a foot scraping, or a back sliding against a wall. “It . . . it was a terrible tragedy,” Tattersall stammered. He suddenly adopted a stiff and formal manner, but his eyes were locked on Umber’s, wide and filled with alarm, with his eyebrows lofted high on his forehead. Hap saw him give Umber the tiniest shake of his head, something that could not have been seen if they hadn’t been standing so close.

  “Tattersall,” Umber began, but Tattersall raised a hand to silence him.

  “Please, Lord Umber,” Tattersall said, dropping his voice to a whisper, and barely moving his lips. “You must

  understand . . . I can’t be heard discussing such things.” He gulped, and his throat bobbed. Then he composed himself and raised his voice. “Let me take you to the king.” His heels clicked on the marble floor as he walked away.

  They followed Tattersall through an enormous room where a throne sat empty before a long table lined with tall chairs, and up a wide, curving stair that climbed past the lofty first floor of the palace. At a landing they turned down a corridor, while the steps continued higher into the palace. There, a voice floated down from above.

  “Lord Umber!”

  Umber jolted to a stop. Hap looked up and saw Fay at the top of the stairs.

  “Why, Fay,” Umber said, putting a hand to his heart. He stared up, blinking. “You look as lovely as a metaphor.”

  Fay glanced down at her exquisite dress, and her hand wandered up to cover the glittering necklace at her throat. “Thank you. And you, Lord Umber. You seem . . . restored?”

  Umber patted the side of his face and chuckled. “Ah. Yes. Certainly an improvement over the last two times you saw me. I’m happy to tell you, the moods that afflicted me are probably gone for good.”

  Fay’s foot was poised at the top of the first step. She peered sideways before speaking again, with a tremor in her voice. “I hardly know what to expect when I see you. But now you’re the man I remember . . . the one who saved us.”

  Umber mounted two steps, caressing the banister as he rose. “Could I speak with you again, Fay? I have an audience with the king. But after that?”

  Fay’s lips paled as she pressed them together. “I . . . I don’t think we can.”

  Hap looked to Fay’s left and right, wondering if Sable was nearby. He heard Tattersall clear his throat and saw him pull a handkerchief from his sleeve to dab his forehead.

  Umber nodded at Fay. “Not here? Then come to the Aerie, as soon as you can. Or name a place, and I will meet you there.”

  Fay’s hands were shaking. “The . . . the prince worries for my safety, and wishes me to
stay at the palace.”

  “Your safety?” Umber said, narrowing his eyes. He mounted another step.

  Fay leaned forward, and seemed ready to rush down the stairs, when a sound came from her right. She glanced sideways and clamped her teeth on her bottom lip. With her eyes glistening, she mouthed a silent word toward Umber. It might have been help. Then she rushed away, as Umber watched with his hand raised toward her.

  Behind her, where the noise was heard, Hap saw a profile appear. Eyes stared down, and then the face withdrew from sight. But it was there long enough for him to recognize Larcombe, the dangerous man who served Prince Loden.

  Umber stared at the place where Fay had disappeared, until Tattersall pulled at his elbow. “Please, my lord. We mustn’t keep the king waiting.”

  CHAPTER

  12

  A pair of tall doors angled together at the top, ten feet high. A guard stood before each, leaning on the shaft of an inverted battle-ax, but they stepped aside when they saw Tattersall approach.

  Tattersall pushed one door open. “Your ward will stay here?” he said to Umber. It sounded more like an order than a question.

  Umber had quietly seethed since the encounter with Fay, but he composed his expression and put a hand on Hap’s shoulder. “Actually, he will join me for this audience.”

  Tattersall’s head jolted back, hard enough to shake his jowls. “I hardly think the king—”

  “Oh, never mind, Tattersall, send them in and get on with it,” came a voice from beyond the doors, weak and raspy but still bristling with authority. Tattersall’s neck seemed to shrink. He extended an arm, guiding Umber and Hap into the room. When they were inside, Hap heard Tattersall’s heels clicking down the hall at an urgent pace.

  The walls of the room dazzled Hap’s eyes. They were golden, reflecting the light of the candles that stood on gilded tables. The row of windows in the opposite had the purest glass Hap had seen, offering an undistorted view of the coastal city of Kurahaven, the market, and the glittering blue harbor. The room was filled with kingly trappings: soaring tapestries on the walls, woven carpets on the polished wooden floors, claw-foot chairs, and a silver-faced clock as tall as a man. When Hap saw the canopied bed at the far right, he realized that they had entered the king’s bedchamber. I don’t belong here, he thought, as a rush of doubt dizzied him. Umber leaned sideways, trying to peer through the gauzy purple curtains that surrounded the bed.

  “Over here, you fools,” came that creaky voice. Hap and Umber turned together to see King Tyrian sitting at a lavish desk made of dark red wood. Parchments were piled high, and a feathered pen stood at the ready. The stuffed head of an enormous hart loomed over him, staring with brown marble eyes.

  “Your Majesty,” Umber said. With his arms spread wide, he bowed low, putting a leg forward with his heel on the ground and toes up. He used one of those arms to prod Hap, who copied the bow as best he could. Hap looked up sheepishly, and was glad to see the king ignoring them to scratch the parchments with the pen. The feather was so long that it could have tickled his ear as it shook in his trembling hand.

  Umber remained deep in his bow. “So good to see you, Your Highness . . .”

  “Good to see me out of that accursed bed for once, you mean?” growled the king. “I should hope so.” He rolled his hand in the air, which seemed to mean that they could stop bowing. When Hap straightened up, the king peered at him. Hap lowered his gaze to the floor, but he’d gathered his first impression of the monarch’s face: red-rimmed eyes with dark satchels suspended below, hollowed cheeks, and wrinkled skin spattered with the discoloration of great age. The hair was yellowed gray and thin at the top, with a beard cropped straight across the bottom.

  “Heard about this boy,” Tyrian muttered. “And those green eyes.”

  “Your Majesty,” Umber said. “Let me first offer my sincerest condolences for the tragedies that have—”

  “Enough of that,” Tyrian snapped. He slapped the desktop with an open palm. “I’ve mourned for weeks. You weren’t brought here to wring more pain from my heart.”

  Umber lowered his head. “My apologies, sire. Please tell me how I can serve you today.”

  The king smacked his lips wetly, and winced as he shifted in his seat. “What are we to do with you, Umber? You’ve done so much for the kingdom. And yet I wonder, have you done enough?”

  “I don’t understand, Your Highness.”

  Tyrian snorted like a bull. “Don’t you. Hmph.” He rolled his shoulders and arched his back, seeking some comfort that eluded him. “Tell me about that vile prisoner of yours. Does she still live?”

  “Turiana,” Umber replied. “Yes, Your Majesty. She is alive, but spends her days in a trance, unmoving.”

  “We should have executed her. It was a mistake to let her live.”

  “She is no danger to us now, my king,” Umber said.

  “We’ll see. Remember our agreement—it’s your neck on the chopping block if the sorceress escapes.”

  Umber massaged his throat. “I remember perfectly, Your Majesty. I’ve grown attached to my head—I’d hate for it to become unattached to me.”

  Tyrian’s expression soured at the joke, but then he looked past them to where Tattersall had just entered with a young man beside him. The man was barely out of his teens, if out of them at all, and he held a striped cat in his arms that stared around the room with sleepy eyes. Tyrian waved them closer, and Tattersall tapped the young man on the shoulder and pointed. The man walked past Umber and Hap and stood before the king.

  “This fellow was on a ship of our navy that approached the Far Continent,” Tyrian said. “His name is Burrell.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Mister Burrell,” Umber said, extending a hand. Burrell did not respond, and kept his eyes downcast before the king.

  “He can’t hear you,” Tyrian said. He picked up the parchment he’d written on and thrust it under Burrell’s nose. Hap’s sharp eyes read the words written in the unsteady hand: Tell them what happened.

  Burrell shifted the cat to cradle it in one arm, and he took the note with his free hand and studied it carefully, laboring to comprehend. He finally nodded, and looked at Umber and Hap—taking a second, longer glance at Hap’s eyes, of course. When he spoke, his voice swung between too loud and too soft, as if he wasn’t sure how to temper his volume.

  “I was on the Gabrielle,” Burrell began. Hap saw the king sigh and turn toward a portrait on the wall over his desk. The subject was a woman with dark hair braided at the temples and embraced by a slender crown on top. She stood on a balcony overlooking the sea, with the folds of her blue-green dress rolling like waves, and the white fur on the hem draped at her feet like foam on sand. The face reminded Hap of poor Prince Galbus. He was lost in sad memory for a moment, and when he emerged he found that Burrell had plunged into his story.

  “. . . orders were to approach as close as we dared, and perhaps send a small boat in under cover of night, with a party of spies who might see what was happening. I was the carpenter’s mate, understand, and so heard most of this from others in the crew.” His voice had dropped low, and when he saw Umber leaning close to hear better, he raised his voice so loud that Umber winced and reared back.

  “But we never got that far. We were miles from the coast when it happened. I was plugging a leak in the hold with the carpenter, so I didn’t see anything. All of the sudden we heard shouts up top, and feet pounding, and the ship made a hard turn. We ran up the stairs to see what was about. When we got to the middle deck I heard my mates shouting, and the captain calling for more sail, and from high above—the crow’s nest, I think—I heard someone shout, ‘What is that thing?’”

  Burrell pulled the cat close to his chest. The cat stretched, rubbed its cheek against the sailor’s chin, and started to purr, unconcerned with the drama of the tale. “Then came a . . . a roar,” Burrell said, growing louder still. “In the distance. Like thunder, or a great wave crashing, or some sea-beast I’d never
heard before. But that was nothing next to what happened next. There was a sound I can’t explain that consumed the

  ship . . . the world ending. It was the last thing I ever heard, except for the great bells still tolling in my skull.

  “And the ship . . . it broke apart. A gap appeared right in front of me, all ragged and splintered. The carpenter . . . his name was Jake, and a fine carpenter he was too, and a better friend, and the sea flooded right into the middle of the boat, and I tried to grab Jake’s hand but no force on earth could have held him . . . the sea just smashed him down like a fist. I wrapped my arm around a beam, and the ship turned upside down, and then the water came and tossed me, and a barrel rose from the deep and saved my life. I wrapped my arms around the barrel and it floated up . . . and a hand or two tried to grab me, but I was still deep underwater and afraid to die, and I kicked those hands away like a coward, and right before my lungs were ready to open up and drink the sea, I came up, and everything was smoke and fire.

  “Pieces of the ship were all over, hissing and burning. The smoke stung my eyes and I couldn’t see much. My mates were bobbing all around me, not alive, not any of them, except for one, and that was Pressley . . . he was floating near me, sprawled on the ship’s wheel, or half of it anyway, and he was bleeding all over, the water gone pink all around him . . . I asked him, ‘What happened? What was it?’ And he answered me, but I didn’t hear anything, and that’s when I knew my ears were ruined . . . but he said it again, and I watched his lips, and I think he said fire and monster, or maybe it was all one thing: fire monster.

  “Well, a big piece of the ship was right behind Pressley, and it rolled over on top of him, and it sank and took Pressley with it. Then the wind took the smoke away, and I looked back to see if the monster was still there . . . but I didn’t see anything, except maybe for something big and dark, far away, heading back to the Far Continent, but I couldn’t be sure. Then I looked around and called for my mates, but the only living thing was the ship’s cat. I found her clinging to a broken spar, and I grabbed her.”