Quillifer

CHAPTER SIX

thought the journey to the bandits’ camp took two or three hours. My hands were tied behind my back, and to keep me from learning the path, my head had been covered with a baize bag. The track led up and down, and forded streams. One of the bandits was detailed to stay by my side to steady me and guide me over the obstacles, but the man amused himself by letting me stumble and fall, once full-length in a stream, and by the time I staggered into camp, my clothes were sodden, my scraped knees were bleeding freely, and there were bloody cuts on my face from branches that had whipped me through the baize hood.

The last part of the journey was alongside a stream, and I could hear the chatter of water and smell the fresh, free air of the brook. Then I was hauled up some stone stairs and shoved into an area paved with cobbles that I could feel through the soles of my boots. The sound around me—horses clattering, shoes scraping, rude laughter, and ruder greetings—seemed to have a slight echoing quality, and I suspected that I was in an enclosed space.

I had a few moments to catch my breath. And then the baize bag was pulled from my head, and I shook my hair from my face to discover myself in one of the old forts that crowned the hills in the Toppings. To make the place useless as a bandits’ lair, the walls had been torn down in two places, and the keep ripped open; but the bandits had moved in anyway, and built their refuge amid the ruins.

I gasped in air tainted with woodsmoke, and stood in a rough line with the prisoners. Lord Utterback, I saw, seemed to have suffered no injury, and looked about himself with a distracted air. Perhaps, I thought, he was consoling himself that all this was Necessity.

Around them prowled the robbers, looking at the prisoners as wolves might stare at a lost calf. The outlaws were more ferocious at close range even than they had seemed charging along the road, as now it was possible to see the mutilations that had been inflicted on them for past crimes—cropped ears, cheeks burned with the King’s brand, fingers missing joints or twisted by the thumbscrew. Despite the mutilations, they all seemed fit and hardy, and they were well armed with swords, bucklers, pistols, spears, and firelocks, and some wore bits of armor. Almost all were young, for few seemed older than five-and-twenty—the great exception being the old scarecrow who had taken me hostage, and who swaggered around the court with his spear on his shoulder, toothlessly cackling along with his fellows.

There were also women in the company, for the most part looking worn and well-used, though some carried weapons and seemed as lethal as the males. Others made a brazen parade in looted satin finery, rings glittering on their fingers, as if to leave no doubt they were willing to barter their persons for a share of the loot that was to come.

Most surprising were a pair of monks, dressed in dirty robes, with their tonsures growing out. They carried no weapons, but otherwise looked as disreputable as the others.

And as for the loot, the baggage had been brought up on horses, along with Gribbins, who when his legs had given out had simply been tossed across a horse.

The bags and Gribbins were unloaded in a pile, and then two of the bandits jerked Gribbins off the baggage pile, and stood him up with the other captives. When the bag was taken from his head, he blinked about him with milky blue eyes, and seemed not to know where he was. There was a bruise over one eye, and his nose had been bleeding.

Of the prisoners, only Gribbins had been damaged. Perhaps he was the only one who had resisted: none of the stout footmen, whose job it was to protect us, seemed to have suffered at all.

Under the direction of a tall, narrow-shouldered man, the luggage was opened and ransacked. Lord Utterback’s fine court clothes, with their bright velvets and silks, occasioned both comment and laughter. His purse and a bag of silver were emptied into a large wooden bowl produced for the purpose, as were the purses of Gribbins, myself, and the others. Rings taken from Gribbins and Utterback were added to the bowl.

I didn’t feel sorry for my lost clothes—they were loot to begin with, taken from empty Ethlebight houses to replace the clothes lost in the fire, and now they were being looted again. But I winced as the tall bandit unwound the twine on the narrow box that I had found in the ruins my father’s house, and emptied out my entire fortune. The man stared down at the bowl, then fished out the alderman’s gold chain that had belonged to my father, and held it out for the appreciation of the crowd.

“Lo!” he cried “It is a great official we have before us! Give a proper welcome to the liegeman of the King!” The crowd bayed in response.

I couldn’t help but cast a look at Gribbins, who was staring at the chain. The apothecary’s dazed look faded, and for the first time since he had been thrown off the horse, comprehension entered Gribbins’s eyes. He looked at me, then back at the chain, and then at me again.

“You are a liar, sir!” he hissed. “You assured me the chain had been destroyed! You are a liar and a thief!”

I was about to ask if he hadn’t other things to worry about besides a lost chain, but one of the bandits, who thought Gribbins was referring to his chief, clouted Gribbins on the head and knocked him to his hands and knees.

Hearing the apothecary’s moans, I decided to hold my tongue.

The tall robber continued to rummage through my bag, and came up with the two books I had brought with me. He opened the first, and glanced at the title page. “Corinius, is it?” he said. “The Satires—strong stuff! And though he was an Aekoi, he had the measure of Man well enough.” He stuffed the book into a pocket, then looked at the other. “Mallio!” he said, and his voice was full of scorn. “Know you not that the Delward translation is superior to the Rawlings? Rawlings barely knew a fee tail from a defeasible estate!” He looked up at the captives. “A beef-witted, folly-fallen stinkard of a lawyer you would make if you depended on this Rawlings!” He threw the book onto the pile, then continued to sort through the baggage until he lifted Gribbins’s gold chain from the apothecary’s trunk.

“Another magistrate!” he proclaimed. “Should we bow before their glory? Should we tremble in terror before these representatives of public order! Surely the gewgaws on their coach proclaimed their majesty!”

The grand coach, after having been looted—and after the bandits had assured themselves that the ornaments were gold paint and not gold leaf—had been declared useless and tipped into the stream. I had last seen it lying on its side, grinding over stones as the current carried it away.

It might see Selford before any of us, I thought.

Interestingly enough, the carriage horses and postilions had been allowed to leave. The horses didn’t belong to the Embassy, but to the last posting inn, and the postilions were the inn’s hired men who returned the horses to their home after each stage. I guessed that the inns probably paid blackmail to the bandits in order to not lose their horses time and again—and also likely tipped the robbers to any rich travelers passing through.

The bandit leader finished rummaging through the baggage, then mounted a stair that led to the gaping keep and turned to his prisoners. He was tall and lean, and wore a brilliant green doublet and trunks, yellow hose, and tall jackboots—all looted from travelers, I assumed. The man’s dark, pointed beard was shot with gray, and his hair straggled down his back. An overcoat, gray as the sodden morning light of the Toppings, hung to his ankles, and he wore a tall-crowned hat. He turned to his captives.

“Lord, magistrates, and other suchlike blockheads!” He spoke in the rolling tones of north Fornland. “I am Sir Basil of the Heugh. Perhaps you know of me!”

He said this with a sharklike grin, and in fact I did know of him, though all I knew was that Sir Basil was an infamous bandit.

In a purposeful, theatrical way, Sir Basil reached behind his back and drew out a long dirk, bright steel blade and a black iron handle with an acorn-shaped pommel.

“This is my dirk!” he told the captives. “This weapon has been in my family for two hundred years, and was crafted by the dark enchanters of the Nocturnal Lodge of the Umbrus Equitus. Twelve necromancers prayed over the iron for twelve nights, twelve virgins were entombed alive to guarantee the steel’s purity, and twelve captives were sacrificed to provide the blood that quenched the blade.” He drew the blade slowly through the air above his head, as if cutting the throat of an invisible giant.

“Because of its origin in the Nocturnal Lodge and its use in ritual sacrifice by depraved and murderous sorcerers, this dirk lusts for blood.” Sir Basil laughed out loud as his dark eyes sought out each of the captives, one by one. “It is all I can do to keep a firm grip and prevent my knife plunging into your livers! And so”—with another flash of the knife—“I will need your help in restraining my dagger. You must help me to help you to survive! And the best way to help me”—again that sharklike grin—“is to urge your kin to pay me a generous ransom! That is the best and only way to impel me to restrain my weapon’s appetite for blood.”

The grin remained, though the dagger was returned to its hidden scabbard. “I shall first speak with Lord Doubleback, or whatever your name is. Come this way, young sir.”

Utterback declined to move. “I should like my hands untied,” he said. “You need not fear me, as your men have seen I’m unarmed.”

The bandit affected surprise and amazement, then took off his hat and offered a sweeping bow. “I fear my courage may not be up to the task of facing such a foe as an Unarmed Crumpleback, or whatever you claim as your title.” He rose, smiling. “Yet I shall summon up what little valor still attaches to my debased knighthood, and dare to meet with you, tremble though I may!” He made a sweeping gesture. “Cut him free. Cut free them all!”

Utterback’s lashings were cut, and he stood swaying for a moment as he contemplated his crabbed, swollen, empurpled hands. Then, his useless hands at his sides, he walked up the stair to the ground floor of the gaping keep, where a table and a number of chairs waited before the keep’s ancient carved fireplace. The bandit and his captive sat, and for all appearances began what seemed to be a civil conversation.

In the meantime, my bonds were cut, and I looked down at hands as swollen and useless as those of Lord Utterback. For the first few moments they were numb, but as soon as the blood began to beat through my veins, the numbness was replaced by piercing pain. I was determined not to be an object of mockery to my captors, and I tried not to cry out, and attempted not to hunch protectively over my tortured hands—I stood with my hands clasped in front of me, and clenched my teeth, and blinked back the sudden sharp tears that filled my eyes.

My eyes cleared, and before me I saw one of the outlaws, a young man in a slouch hat, with a scarred face and a contemptuous sneer. I straightened, and returned a defiant look. The outlaw laughed at my pretensions, and walked away. I busied myself with brushing away mud and gravel from my skinned knees.

Utterback and Sir Basil concluded their conversation, and both stepped out onto the stair. The outlaw grinned broadly and addressed the crowd. “I am pleased to record that Lord Smotherback has agreed to pay us a generous sum in return for our hospitality!” The bandits raised a cheer, followed by a moment of polite applause for Utterback’s magnanimity. Sir Basil paused to join in the applause, then turned back to his audience. “So generous was he that my lord shall be quartered in the Oak House, where he shall enjoy all the rude comforts the Toppings can provide, and where he shall be given writing materials so that he can write to his father, the Count of Shylock.”

A stoic, ironical expression lay on Utterback’s dark face as he listened to the mangling of his father’s title, and he was then led away by a pair of bandits through one of the gaps in the fort’s curtain wall. Sir Basil surveyed his remaining captives.

“Perhaps I shall have one of the magistrates now?” he said. He pointed at Gribbins. “That one, then, who crawls like a dog. He and I had best make an arrangement before he succumbs to his honorable wounds.”

Gribbins, who had been wheezing on all fours since being hit by the robber, was picked up by a pair of bandits, rushed up the stair, and dropped into a chair. Sir Basil jauntily swung a leg over another chair, and the two began to speak.

I watched the conversation while I massaged warmth and feeling into my hands and arms. The outlaw spoke, and Gribbins replied, and then the outlaw spoke again. Gribbins’s high, peevish voice answered. “Sirrah, I am an ambassador! An ambassador to the royal court! You shall release me at once, or the King shall hear of this!” He gaped a moment as he realized his error. “The Queen, I mean!” He waved an admonishing finger. “The Queen shall hear!”

I winced. Everyone but Gribbins could see where this was bound.

Sir Basil, for his part, affected surprise. “You call upon royal protection?”

Gribbins seemed very pleased with himself. He folded his arms. “Ay! In the Queen’s name, you must release me at once.”

Sir Basil rose from his chair and turned to his audience. “The gentleman calls upon the Queen!” he said. “And well must he be situated between her fine white thighs, to call upon her instead of his royal majesty!”

There was a laugh from Sir Basil’s claque. The toothless old bandit in the big boots raised quivering hands. “Nay!” he cried. He quaked in mock terror. “Not the Queen! Call not upon the Queen!”

“Not the Queen!” cried the bandits. And they all began to moan and wail, and stagger about as if in bewilderment and terror. Their pleas echoed from the fort’s mossy stone walls as they beat their breasts and begged Gribbins for mercy.

I could imagine the sequel all too well. I tried to think of something that might alter the course of events, but my inspiration failed me. I clenched my teeth and tried to resign myself to Lord Utterback’s god of Necessity.

Gribbins reddened, but maintained his attitude of defiance. Sir Basil watched his men with a leer of approval, and then made a gesture, and they fell silent. He cocked an eye at the apothecary, and put a hand to his ear.

“Sir Ambassador, I hear not the Queen. Nor the King. Nor their armies. Perhaps Their Majesties have abandoned you? Or should you call louder?”

Gribbins’s answer was firm. “I will not bandy words with you, sirrah. I am an ambassador and you must release me.”

Sir Basil turned back to his audience. “Despite his ambassadorship, this gentleman is by profession an apothecary, which is to say a mountebank. What fine have we established for a self-confessed mountebank?”

“Ten royals!” came the answer.

“Ay, ten royals. And the gentleman is also an alderman, which is to say a man who lives well on money he has taxed out of the people. What is the fine for a self-confessed tax collector?”

“Twenty-five royals!” shouted the bandits.

I winced at the numbers. A skilled workman might earn twenty royals in a year, and Gribbins doubtless earned more, but he would not earn it all at once, and I guessed that it would be rare for an apothecary to have thirty-five royals lying about in cash, even if his home hadn’t been looted. And if he didn’t have the money, then whoever raised it on his behalf—wife? brother? son?—would go to a moneylender and agree to an interest of a hundred or hundred fifty percent, perhaps more, considering how scarce cash would be in Ethlebight at the present.

Sir Basil spun and threw out an arm toward Gribbins. “And the gentleman is also an ambassador!” he said. “No ambassador has ever enjoyed our hospitality before, so I know not what fine to ask. But I understand that the task of an ambassador is to lie to the King, and then to send the King’s lies back home, and to carry such lies back and forth, and to otherwise be a procurer for lies. So, what should be the fine for pimping lies?”

“Twenty royals!” said one bandit.

“Thirty!”

“Fifty!”

“Fifty!” Sir Basil laughed. “Ay, make it fifty!” He stepped toward his audience and leered at them knowingly. “And the gentleman ambassador has called upon royal protection.” He spread his hands. “What, my friends, is the penalty for calling on royal protection?”

“Double the fine!” they all shouted in joy.

“Ay! Double the fine!” Sir Basil swung toward Gribbins, who only now was beginning to show comprehension of his situation. Sir Basil held out a cupped hand, as if asking for a tip. “That is a hundred seventy royals, master apothecary. How do you intend to pay?”

Gribbins’s face was a mask of horror. “I cannot pay,” he said.

“Have you no friends?” Sir Basil said. “No wife? No sons?”

I knew that Gribbins owned a house, with his shop on the ground floor, but it couldn’t be worth more than fifty royals. And even if he mortgaged it, it would pay only a fraction of his ransom, and leave his family in debt. He probably invested in merchant ventures, but these would only pay off at the end of a voyage, and very possibly had gone up in smoke during the corsairs’ attack.

Doubtless these same calculations were whirling through Gribbins’s mind. His mouth opened and closed, as if he were trying various arguments and rejecting them before they quite got out of his mouth. If only, I thought, he’d tried that approach earlier.

Again I tried to think of a way to intervene, something clever that would save Gribbins from the consequences of his own vainglorious folly. But I could not imagine anything that could stop the onrush of events, not unless I was willing to rush onto the bandits’ swords, run myself through, and hope my death provided enough entertainment to satiate Sir Basil and the other outlaws.

“I do not have the money,” Gribbins said. “Though if the ransom remained at thirty-five, I could raise it.”

Sir Basil snarled. “Do you bargain with us, sir?” He stepped to Gribbins’s chair, took his arm, and pulled him to his feet. He dragged Gribbins to the top of the stair, where he could view the bandits growling up at him, shaking weapons and fists. “Do you bargain with them?” he demanded.

Gribbins made an effort to control himself. “Sir,” he said, “I am heartily sorry if I impugned your—”

“Do you bargain with this?” Sir Basil asked.

I tried to turn away, but I was too late. The dirk was swift as a striking serpent, and flashed from beneath the outlaw’s cloak and into Gribbins’s side before I could so much as blink. And then, unable to turn away, I saw Gribbins’s look of shock, saw his knees begin to give way, and then saw Sir Basil withdraw the dagger and kick Gribbins down the stair, where the apothecary disappeared behind a wall of robbers.

The bandits bayed their approval, their weapons brandished overhead.

Sir Basil flicked the dirk several times to shake off the blood, then re-sheathed. His restless eyes prowled over the courtyard, then lighted on me. He made a gesture.

“You are next, Goodman. Come.”

I slowly walked through the mob of bandits, which parted only reluctantly. There I saw Gribbins dying at the bottom of the stair, his watery blue eyes blinking as they stared into onrushing darkness.

My stomach turned over. Many were the times in the last two weeks when I had cordially wished the apothecary dead, but now that it was happening, I found no pleasure in the sight.

To mount the stair, I would have to step over the dying man. I contemplated this action and found myself unable to do it, so I stepped to the side of the stair, reached up to the crumbling floor of the keep, and pulled myself up.

Sir Basil of the Heugh looked at me with mild surprise as I popped up in front of him, and stepped back to invite me to sit in the chair that Gribbins had just occupied. I seated myself cautiously, but Sir Basil threw himself carelessly into his own seat, the skirts of his overcoat flying. He crossed one booted foot over his knee, and looked at me with bright black eyes.

“You’re a lawyer, I see,” he said.

I was surprised to realize that my apprentice cap had stayed on my head through the whole adventure.

Sir Basil narrowed his eyes. “I don’t like lawyers,” he said.

“I don’t care for them myself,” I said. I had decided to agree with the outlaw whenever I could.

“My own advocate was no use at all,” said Sir Basil. “He thought I was guilty. He served me up to the jury like a mincemeat pie.”

Apparently, Sir Basil felt his fame was such that I would know this detail. I thought it impolitic to correct him.

I donned my learnèd-lawyer face. “The advocate must have been unfit.”

“I unfitted him,” said the outlaw. “I slit his nose and burnt his house.”

I nodded what I hoped Sir Basil would view as approval. “A resolute action, Sir Basil.”

“I failed to catch the judge,” the outlaw added, “but I robbed his wife.”

A flush burned in Sir Basil’s cheeks, and his black eyes flashed. The murder had stimulated him, and he shifted restlessly in his chair and spoke with restless, rapid animation.

“I was innocent of that theft,” he said. “I was a devoted priest of the goddess Sylvia, and ’tis true I had a key to the treasury under the podium of the temple. But it was another who opened the lock and took the money and the temple offerings!” He snarled. “I will admit to any deed I have committed—I will own to killing that blockhead a few moments ago—but I will not admit to a crime of which I am innocent!” He jabbed an angry finger onto the table. “They found not a single stolen article in my house—they had no evidence at all—and yet I was convicted!”

“It sounds like a monstrous injustice,” I said.

“I prayed to the goddess,” said the outlaw. “But she was as useless as my lawyer.” He snarled, and brandished a fist to the sky. “Damn all lawyers! Damn all gods! Damn the Pilgrim, and the King with him!”

I nodded, and began to think it a good idea to change the topic. “One item of your program is complete. King Stilwell is dead.”

Sir Basil raised an eyebrow. “So, that is why that imbecile called upon the Queen?”

“Yes. We have Queen Berlauda now.”

The outlaw made a noise of disgust. “She won’t last. Women can’t rule. Some ambitious knave will chuck her off her throne, or marry her and keep her so stuffed full of children she won’t think to say ‘boo’ to him.” He ran his fingers along his jawline, thoughtfully smoothing his beard. “And yet women are sentimental and foolish—would she be inclined to offer pardons, d’ye think?”

“Many pardons are issued after coronations.” I considered for a moment, then decided to seize the slight opportunity this seemed to open. I put on my respectful-apprentice face. “I could be your advocate in the capital, if you like.”

Sir Basil gaped at me, then laughed. “My advocate!” he scorned. “That is precisely what I need, another advocate! And further, one who reads his Mallio in the Rawlings translation, hah!” He pointed a finger at me. “Look you—how would you translate the following: ‘Quatenus permittit aurum prodit lex’?”

I was a little surprised to find myself at school again, but rose to the challenge. “ ‘Laws goeth where gold pleaseth.’ ” Though there was no way to translate “prodit” in all its subtlety, with its hint of betrayal, and of keeping the subject on a short leash, and bound by strict Necessity.

“Ay, plain but serviceable enough,” Sir Basil judged. “Yet Rawlings has it, ‘Howsoever gold and laws goeth ever in company.’ He understands not even that prodit, which is plain as—” He made a fist. “As the corruption of the common law by the judiciary!”

“I have the Delward translation at home,” I said. “But I preferred not to risk it on the journey.”

“That is the first wise thing you have said.” The outlaw laughed again, and shook his head. “My advocate!” His glittering black eyes regarded me for a long, unsettling moment. “So, you are not an ambassador, I take it?”

“I am a drudge,” I said, “a mere secretary. Nor am I an alderman, nor a magistrate. Nor will I call upon the Queen of Duisland when I am in the power of the King of the Toppings.”

The outlaw gave a thin smile. “Flattery may win the favor of royalty, but not Sir Basil of the Heugh. We have yet to determine your fine, Goodman . . .” He reached for a word and failed to find it. “Goodman,” he said, “I know not your name.”

“Quillifer, Sir Basil.”

“Is that a forename or a surname?”

“It is my only name,” said I. “It is one of the ways in which I am singular.”

The outlaw laughed. “And the gold chain?”

“A keepsake in memory of my father. He was an alderman, and was murdered with the rest of my family two weeks ago in an attack on Ethlebight by Aekoi corsairs.”

Sir Basil was not moved by this story, but entertained. “So, you plead that you are an orphan? A penniless orphan?”

“I was not penniless until this last hour, Sir Basil.”

“The fine for penniless orphans, Goodman Quillifer, is five royals.”

I had expected worse, though five royals was bad enough. Perhaps my drolleries had encouraged Sir Basil to lighten my ransom.

“I will write to my friend,” I said. I knew Kevin had no money, but could probably raise five royals if he needed, especially as his ship Meteor had come into Amberstone.

The thought of Meteor brought to mind the galleon Irresistible, and suddenly I realized how I might save myself the debt, and perhaps do the new Queen a good turn. I leaned back in my chair and looked at the outlaw.

“Sir Basil, I wonder if I could beg a pardon from you on condition.”

The outlaw’s eyes turned cold. “On condition? Condition? When I hear the word condition, I hear also my dirk crying for blood.”

“I can put you in the way of a ransom larger than any you have collected,” I said. “If my information is correct, will you let me go free?”

“You wish to turn informer?” The outlaw was darkly amused. “Certainly I can foresee for you a glorious and successful career before the bar.”

The man was probably a traitor anyway, I thought. In any case, he owned an estate and a high-charged galleon, which he could afford better than I could afford five royals.

“The Marquess of Stayne will be riding south on Mavors’ Road in the next few days,” I said. “He will be joining his galleon Irresistible in Amberstone for a voyage abroad.”

Sir Basil’s cynical look faded, replaced by one of calculation. “How do you know this?”

I explained while the outlaw listened carefully. “I know not whether he will ride a coach or come on horseback,” I concluded, “but he will probably have an armed company of men with him. Yet such an expert in ambuscade as Sir Basil of the Heugh need not fear such a troop.”

“No, I need not fear them.” Sir Basil’s tone was not defiant, but thoughtful. Abruptly he lunged to his feet, overcoat swirling. “You will be given pen and paper, and you may write to your friend. Whether the letter is sent or not depends on whether your information proves sound.”

He broadly gestured me to the stair, then looked balefully over the crowd, to his remaining captives, all servants. “Come, then,” he said. “All of you.”

I saw Gribbins still lying at the foot of the stair, and rather than step over the corpse, chose to leap down from the keep to the court below. I slowed as I passed the white-faced body, the eyes blank yet still somehow conveying the bewilderment that so often filled them in life, and knew that Gribbins’s vainglorious journey to the capital had finally reached its end.

* * *

A pot of ink was presented by one of the bandits, along with a piece of paper and a board on which to write. I penned my brief letter to Kevin, and included as well the information that Gribbins had been killed for trying to barter over his ransom. I also suggested that another embassy be sent to the Queen, as it might be some time before Lord Utterback and I were released to deliver their message in person.

While I wrote, the party’s loot was disposed of. The money in the wooden bowl was counted, then returned to the bowl along with the gold chains and any jewelry with valuable gemstones. The bowl was carried away, presumably to be added to the bandits’ hoard and divided up later. The rest—the clothing, luggage, weapons, and the less valuable jewelry—was given away to the robbers by a method they all seemed to judge fair. The bandits sat on the ground, facing away from Sir Basil, as he held up one item after another and said, “Who wants this?” Whoever shouted first, or raised a hand, received the article. Afterward, there was a great deal of merriment as the bandits tried to trade away unsuitable items.

My letter was taken to Sir Basil for his approval. Apparently, the outlaw had no objection to my message, and so put the letter in a pocket. Sir Basil by this time had finished interviewing the servants, and announced that one of the footmen along with Gribbins’s bodyservant had decided to join the band of robbers. The other bandits roared their approval, and hooted at the others as they returned to captivity.

There followed a formal initiation ceremony, in which Sir Basil had each of the new recruits swear a horrible, godless, bloody oath on the dirk that had just killed Alderman Gribbins. I thought the business of the oath ridiculous, but the bandits themselves took it very seriously indeed, and so while the oath was pronounced, I kept my face composed in an attitude of awed respect.

By the time this was all over, the sun was burning red through the western trees, and the shadows were long.

“To supper!” Sir Basil proclaimed. “And let’s drink to our new companions!”

The company filed out through one of the gaps in the curtain wall, and I saw that the fort had been built to guard a corrie surrounded by a great semicircle of cliffs. The hidden green valley had a dimple in the center filled with a small lake, a limpid blue eye which emptied into the small fresh stream along which I had marched on the last stage of my journey.

By the lake was a corral with the troops’ horses, which now included my traitor chestnut, Toast. I also saw milk cows, goats, and a great many dogs.

In the corrie the outlaws had built their camp, a clutch of buildings clumped against one of the cliffs. I saw that the bandits’ huts had been built of old, worn dressed stone, and I concluded that the robbers had built their settlement atop the ruins of a much older town, and made use of what materials they’d found.

One of the bandits had killed a roe deer that morning, and this had formed the basis of a stew with parsnips and carrots, wild onions, mushrooms, thyme, rosemary, and other herbs found in the area. There were also flat oatcakes with butter and homemade cheese, which argued for a very well-organized commissary. The bandits and their new recruits pledged each other in wine, but I and the other captives were given sour ale.

After returning my wooden bowl and spoon to the ramshackle kitchen, I went to the lake to wash the cuts on my knees and face. I was wincing through this procedure when a man approached, a man of middle years. His beard was long and untrimmed, and his clothing soiled and worn.

The man was, in fact, another captive, a man named Higgs. He had been held for five months, a merchant captured on the road with two wagons of goods. Higgs had applied to his brother for his ransom, but the money had not arrived, and now he was beginning to suspect that his brother had betrayed him.

There was another merchant here, Higgs reported, who had been abandoned by his partner, and who had been captive even longer, since before the band had moved to the Toppings from their former range to the north. The two captives were used by the bandits as slaves.

“I begin to think I may have to join them,” Higgs said. “I begin to think it may be the only way to survive.”

I, shaking the cold water from my hair, had little comfort to offer. “Join them, then. Gain their trust. Then run away when you can.”

“That is not as easy as you might think,” said the captive.

Higgs showed me over the camp, pointed out the Oak House, a small building in a field, with barred windows and an entrance through the roof. There Lord Utterback had been locked away, a privileged prisoner but with a guard who prevented him from speaking to anyone.

Utterback, I thought, would have plenty of leisure to contemplate Necessity, and to cultivate the proper attitude of resignation.

Higgs took me past the armory, which was locked and in a very public place, and the dairy, which along with the kitchen were under the command of an Aekoi woman named Dorinda. In contrast to her species’ usual gracile form, she was broad and powerful, her golden complexion darkened by exposure to the elements. She stood before the kitchen and glared at everyone with strange, fierce eyes, irises small and dark and surrounded by white, each like a black pearl in the middle of an oyster shell.

“Is she Sir Basil’s lady?” I asked, for her fierceness seem to sort well with that of the outlaw knight.

“She’s her own,” said Higgs. “And you do not ever want to be her kitchen slave.”

“I shall try to avoid her,” I said, though I knew that, as long as I remained here, that choice would not be mine.

“And that,” Higgs said, pointing out a building, “is the treasury. Your money lies there, and my goods, those that haven’t been sold.”

“It looks like a temple,” I said. It was a sturdy, square building, with a portico and four pillars. What had probably been a tile roof had been replaced by the same crude thatching used in the rest of the camp.

A roughhewn wooden fence surrounded the building, with gaps between the pickets, so that no one could hide there. A large padlock secured the timber door. I saw something slither along behind the pickets, and I felt a cold hand touch my spine.

They undulated across the ground like thick-bodied snakes, their scales lawn green and midnight black, but when one of the beasts seized a picket the best to view me, I saw that it had small, clawed hands. Malevolence and hatred glittered from its eyes. I could not bear its stare, and turned my own eyes away.

“Ay,” said Higgs. “Wyverns. Sir Basil raised them from their eggs, which he found up in the Peaks. Stay clear from them, for they breathe fire.” He pointed out another structure. “Their master lives in the next building.”

There was the clop of hooves on the turf, and the master himself came trotting up on a dapple gray courser. “You, Quillifer!” said Sir Basil of the Heugh. “Come up to the keep! Your master’s body needs burying!”

Dogs had to be chased away from Gribbins’s body. I and the other servants of the Embassy Royal carried the body in a blanket to a sward below the old fort, where four graves already lay in a row. It was full night by the time we began to dig, and the only light was that of the stars and the slow-matches of their two guards, who each carried a sword as well as a blunderbuss so kindly provided by their captives.

Afterward, sweating and dirty, we were taken to confinement, locked in the echoing dungeon of the fort, surrounded by massive great stones at the base of the keep. There we were shown our places by the light of a horn lantern, pointed at the slop tub in the corner, and then left alone in darkness while the sound of the slamming door echoed in their ears.

I rolled up my cheviot coat for a pillow, and wrapped myself in the coarse blanket I’d been given. I was asleep at once, and I dreamed of Ethlebight, strong and intact, the brilliant window glass of Scarcroft Square shining in the sun. I walked the streets of my city, admiring the beautiful brickwork, the ornate gables, the detailed carving on the wooden frames.

But I walked the streets alone. The city was empty, and I saw no other person, and heard no sign of life beyond my own echoing footfalls. I was walking a city of the mind, and no one shared my dream.