Quillifer

CHAPTER FOUR

ou know what it is to feel loss, a loss so great that you feel sick, and your head swirls, and your limbs turn to water. That is how I had felt that day, with the loss of everything I had known.

My little sword stuck through my belt, I climbed down from my hiding place just after sunset. Red stained the southwestern sky, but the square was in deep shadow, as if to hide the horrors that had taken place there.

My muscles had stiffened, and my arms felt as if they’d been drawn from their sockets. It had been three days since I’d slept. Hunched with pain and faint with thirst, I walked to the fountain, caught the edge of the basin with my hands, and drove my face into the water as if I were diving into a lake. I took two swallows so prodigious that they pained my throat, then came up gasping for air, throwing back my head and my hair. I dunked my head again, swallowed again, and kept swallowing until the taste of ash was gone from my throat. I hadn’t had anything to drink since the cider on my return journey from Mutton Island.

When I’d had enough water, I found my apprentice cap floating on the surface of the fountain. I washed the blood from my hands and the soot from my hair, then put the cap back on my head. Water coursed down my face.

I was not alone on the square: a few ghostly forms drifted through the big open space, some coming for water, others hoping—or fearing—to find their friends or relatives among the bodies the corsairs had left strewn on the brick pavement. I wiped my face, and tried with dulled mind to decide what to do.

Not all the fallen were dead. I heard voices calling out for help, saw a hand wave in the air. I walked to the fallen man and crouched by him, and saw that he’d been stabbed, his shirtfront red with blood.

“Water,” the man said. I didn’t know him. He was elderly, with a lined face and white hair and thin sticklike arms. The corsairs had probably thought he was too old for slave work, and not worth enough money to bother with ransom.

I rose to my feet and wondered where I could find a vessel for water before I remembered my cap. Most of the water drained through the fabric before I could return to the wounded man, but I managed to dribble a small stream onto the man’s parched tongue.

“Thank you. Thank you. More water, please.”

“It will not help,” I wanted to say. “You’re dying.” But I didn’t say it; instead, I went back for another capful of water.

I wanted to go to my home on Princess Street and find out what had happened to my family. But the old man was not alone in wanting water, and others were calling out, and people who were not wounded were wandering out from their hiding places. No one seemed to know what to do, so I decided to pretend that I was in charge. I led a group to a tavern, not to drink but to find cups for water. Those made of valuable metal had been stolen, and those made of glass smashed for the sheer sake of destruction; but the old pewter drinking vessels were still there, and these were carried out to succor the injured.

After this, it occurred to me that the wounded shouldn’t be allowed to lie in the square all night, and I sent people into the Grand Monastery for blankets and the simple beds on which the monks slept, and the injured were carried in blankets to the guild halls and laid on the beds. There was no doctor or surgeon to care for them, but I saw that their wounds were bandaged.

At midnight, an armed group of young men arrived, carrying pikes and led by one of the Warriors of the Sea in his antique bronze armor. I sent them to the Harbor Gate to keep watch on the enemy. Their leader soon came running back.

“The corsairs haven’t left. They’re still on the docks and in the harbor, trying to carry away all the ships.”

I could only shrug. “Let us know if they come back to town, will you?”

The Warrior peered past the visor of his ancient helmet. “Do you want us to fight them?”

“I don’t think that would be advisable.”

Toward dawn, another armed party arrived under the command of Sir Towsley Cobb, whose park and country house lay a few leagues north of the city. He was a small, bustling man in armor, with a little smear of a mustache and a youthful countenance. He and his sons rode chargers, and with them marched the men of his household, armed with clubs and spears.

“Who is in charge?” he called.

I was with a group by the fountain, trying to organize a party to round up food supplies, and I walked to the baronet and his party. Sir Towsley looked me up and down and seemed unimpressed.

“What exactly has happened in the city?” Getting straight to the point.

I told of the Aekoi attack, the looting of the city, the fires, the captives carried away, the corsairs still busy in the harbor, the injured being carried to the guild halls.

The baronet nodded. “And you are organizing things? Who are you again?”

“I am Quillifer, Sir Towsley.”

“Ah.” The mustache twitched. “The Butcher’s son.” The baronet’s tone was dismissive, and my assumed authority twisted and vanished like smoke in a breeze.

“I shall take command, then,” the baronet said. “I shall establish my post in the New Castle.” He turned to his sons. “Set these people in order, and have them do something useful.”

I tried to explain to the sons what had been done and what still needed doing, but they ignored me and did whatever suited them—and they rarely agreed about anything, so amid the fraternal anarchy only the loudest voice prevailed, and that temporarily.

I decided there was no reason to stay, and went to Princess Street in search of my family.

In the wan light of the rising sun, I found them all. My father and the apprentices had held the door with their pollaxes and killed at least three Aekoi, whose bodies still lay stretched on the pavement. The reivers then fired the thatch, and my father had known that to fly into the street would mean nothing but their execution at the hands of pirates angered by the loss of their mates; and so he had stayed at his post till the smoke overcame him. He and the apprentices were unwounded, and had died before the floor above collapsed. Their weapons were still in their hands.

My sisters and mother had locked themselves behind the stout door of the buttery, and lay with their arms about one another under a shelf, where they had probably crawled in search of fresher air. They had smothered, and were not burned at all, only covered with a fine silver layer of ash.

I knelt by the bodies in the cramped, ruined space, and I saw the fine ash tremble in the lashes of my sister Alice, and at the sight I felt my heart swell in my breast until there was no room left for breath. I staggered out of the house sobbing, and a few doors down the road crouched beneath the overturned cart of a tinsmith, and surrendered for a long black hour to despair.

When I next crawled into the light, the sun, behind a low listless blanket of cloud, had risen well over the ramparts of Ethlebight’s useless walls. Limping, muscles an agony, I returned to the ruins of my home, and I picked my mother and sisters from the ruin of the buttery and brought them out into the street, where I laid them as best as I could on the bricks. I dragged out my father and the apprentices and laid them out as well. The pale, waxen faces of my family gazed sightlessly into the sky, and suddenly I knew I couldn’t leave them like that.

I turned up the street and walked through a broken door into the shop of Mrs. Peake the dressmaker. All the expensive fabric had been looted, but I found a bolt of unbleached muslin, and there I made simple shrouds for my family, which I draped over them. I weighed the shrouds down with broken brick at each corner, then went back into the ruins and took my father’s pollaxe.

“I will come back to you,” I told them, then turned and limped away down Princess Street.

I turned into the broader lane that led to Scarcroft Square. Others walked in the same direction, and I looked to see if I knew them. I saw a grim-looking barber-surgeon named Moss, a frightened boy called Julian, and a stout, furious, red-faced woman with clenched fists, who looked ready to give the corsairs’ admiral a box on the ears.

And then I saw a man in faded, soiled blues and yellows, and my heart gave a leap.

“Kevin!”

My friend lurched into sight, fair hair uncombed and straggling over his unshaven face. He stared, slow to recognize me, but I rushed to Kevin and embraced him.

“I saw your father!” I said. “He’s taken but alive!”

“Praise Pastas,” Kevin said. His voice was a coarse whisper. He licked swollen lips, then said, “I need water.”

I took his arm and led him to Scarcroft Square and the fountain. Kevin drank greedily, then washed his face and blinked at me with reddened eyes.

“My mother?” he asked. “My sister and brother?”

“I didn’t see them,” I said. “They were probably taken.”

“I must go to the house.”

The Spellman house was one of the grandest on the square, with walls patterned with bricks of different colors, its chimneys carved with mythological beasts, and its many windows brilliant in the sun. The windows were less brilliant now: faceted glass panes built to dazzle in the sun’s rays had been knocked out, possibly under the impression they were gemstones. The door stood open, its lock smashed. Kevin walked into the hall and called out. There was no answer.

With heavy, reluctant feet, Kevin trudged up the steep, narrow stair. He turned his face away from a streak of blood on the upper step.

“This is where my father tried to fight them,” he said. “I came from my room to see what was causing the commotion, and he turned to me and told me to run.” He closed his eyes. “The Pilgrim help me, I obeyed.”

“You could not have fought them,” I said. “You would only have been caught or killed.”

“I should have tried to save my brother,” Kevin said. “Or my sister. But the pirates were right on my heels.” He looked down the upstairs hall. “I ran up to the servants’ floor, and bolted through the grooms’ room to the dormer, and out the window. I was shouting for everyone to run, but I don’t think they understood.” He turned to me. “I was the only one who got out. I heard more fighting in the house, and there was a swarm of pirates in the square in front, and some took shots at me.” He raised his hands. “I ran across the rooftops. And when I saw they were sending men up on the roofs, I hid. I burrowed beneath the topmost layer of thatch between two dormers, and stayed there until just a while ago.” He gave a forlorn look down the hall. Tears overfilled his eyes and spilled down his cheeks. “I should have stayed,” he said.

I took a step toward my friend and put a hand on his arm. “You did the right thing,” I said. “Someone must remain in Ethlebight and manage the business, and make up the ransom to save the rest.”

Kevin stood silent for a moment, and then his chin rose and a hard light caught his eyes. “The ransom!” he said.

He ran down the stairs past me and through the door into his father’s countinghouse, and there looked for the door, hidden in the carved paneling, where the ready money was kept. The door had been torn open and the contents looted, and many of the remaining panels had been torn from the walls in an attempt to find more hidden valuables. The heavy ledgers, with records of the Spellmans’ affairs, were scattered on the floor. Without a word Kevin turned, and knocked shoulders with me in his haste to dash again up the stair. From there he ran to his parents’ bedroom, where he beheld the strongbox torn from the window seat where it had been hidden. The strongbox was nearly three feet long, two broad, and a foot high, made of thick oaken panels strapped with iron, and with a complicated geared mechanism that, on the turning of a stout key, would shoot no less than eight steel bolts into place to secure the contents.

The reivers hadn’t tried to find the key: instead, they’d hacked the box to bits with a halberd or some other heavy weapon. With a groan, Kevin threw himself on the floor and searched the wreckage, and found nothing. He rose and turned to me. “The silver’s gone, of course,” he said. “But also the contracts! Loan agreements! The deed to the house! Deeds to other properties!” He looked at me. “Of what use would any of that be to pirates?”

The loans might be sold at a discount to brokers, I supposed, but the usefulness of the rest was obscure.

“They could not read or write,” I judged. “So, they took all.” I looked over the wreckage of the room, saw the drawers pulled from the bureau and emptied, the closets emptied of all fine clothes, the looking-glass smashed. The Aekoi had even carried away the feather mattress.

And then the sight of the broken strongbox brought to me a memory erased by hours of pain, fatigue, and misery.

“My father’s strongbox!” I said. “I’d forgotten it.”

Kevin’s expression mirrored my own surprise. “And I had forgotten your family entirely,” he said. “Are they—are they taken?”

“Dead.”

Kevin looked stricken. “All?” he said, and I nodded. Kevin stepped to me and embraced me. “I had thought only of my own kin,” he said. “Yet how much better my parents are in captivity than yours in the grave.”

Not in the grave yet, I thought. I returned Kevin’s embrace, and said, “We have survived, and now we must rebuild. We have nothing with which to reproach ourselves.” I hoped this last statement was true.

We returned to my house, and found the strongbox where it had fallen to the ground amid the burning ruins of an upper story. I searched my father’s body to find the key on his belt, where he had always carried it. Inside the box were three gold royals, enough silver to make up twenty-four royals in value, a few pennies, and some foreign money of uncertain value—hardly enough to rebuild the house. There was also the gold alderman’s chain belonging to my father. Documents—property deeds, records of money owed to Alderman Quillifer, agreements to deliver sheep and beeves—all had burned to ashes when the box baked in the fire.

There will be many suits at law over all this, I thought. I would put Lawyer Dacket on retainer, if I could; but since my master was lost, I should hire the first surviving advocate I could find.

The strongbox was too heavy to carry with me, so I found a box with a broken lid that the reivers had thrown away, and put the money and the chain in it, then bound the lid with twine.

Kevin and I returned to Scarcroft Square, where a surviving alderman, an apothecary named Gribbins, was arguing with Sir Towsley Cobb over who was in charge. I could not bring myself to care about the outcome, and Kevin and I went into the Spellman house, where we found some cheese in the servants’ pantry and made the best meal we could, after which I went to sleep on a groom’s pallet, lying on bundles of sweet-smelling rushes. My last memory was seeing Kevin, who had got pen and paper from his father’s study, staring at the paper and murmuring to himself as he made a record of all of his father’s transactions that he could remember.

* * *

In the morning, I found Kevin asleep in his father’s countinghouse, his head on the desk, the ledgers stacked around him, the candle burned out, his fingertips black with ink. We finished the cheese and walked to the square, where we found Gribbins and the Cobb family still arguing over the proper course of action. Gribbins should have been overwhelmed by sheer numbers, but the Cobbs could never agree with one another, and the arguments looked like every man or boy for himself. Nevertheless, some things seemed to have been accomplished—there were regular companies of men drilling with pikes and firelocks, and enormous cauldrons had been set up to make porridge out of whatever grains could be brought to the square. At least one bakery was delivering loaves of bread, but these were promptly confiscated by the Cobbs and doled out to whoever they saw fit. Sir Towsley and his sons dismissed me without a word, but Kevin’s social prominence rated a loaf, which he shared with me as we considered what next to do.

Smoke hung again in the air. The Aekoi had towed off whatever ships they could from the port, and burned the rest along with the looted warehouses. They had not left the Duisland coast, but moved most of their power to Cow Island while small squadrons of chebecs patrolled the coast in search of fresh prey.

Kevin’s family concern had lost one pinnace set afire and another carried away, and Kevin fretted after a third ship that was expected soon to return from Varcellos, and might sail right amid the pirate fleet before they knew they were in danger. He paced in agitation, but I was too weary and sore to keep pace with him.

While prowling the square, Kevin overheard Gribbins arguing for building a funeral pyre for the dead, an idea which the Cobbs, for the moment, declared premature.

“They’re going to wait till carrion bursts the crows’ bellies,” Kevin said in disgust.

“I am not going to burn my family on a common pyre,” I said. “Nor wait for the crows. Or that quarrelsome oriole Sir Towsley Cobb.”

Kevin and I returned to Princess Street and confiscated a cocking cart from a neighbor who kept fighting birds—all the cocks eaten now, it seemed, and the neighbor carried away. I threw the cages off the cart, and made further space by removing the rear seat intended for the groom. The cart was pulled to where my family had been laid on the bricks. I saw that the bodies of the two apprentices had been carried away, I presumed by their families.

Kevin mutely assisted as I lifted my family into the cart, and in the absence of a horse, we two set ourselves between the shafts and pulled the cart out the North Gate, and to the city of the dead that stretched north from Ethlebight toward the old, abandoned city upriver.

The necropolis was deserted, and a fitful north wind sighed and muttered among the half-sunken tombs and tilted, lichen-crusted slabs that stood as the silent guardians of the worm-eaten dead. Cows and sheep grazed upon the grass, and had cropped away the underbrush to reveal old mounds, broken urns, and a few old bones that had worked their way to the surface. Here, in the shadow of the gray tomb of an extinct noble family, was a section of ground owned by the Quillifers, where Quillifers dating back to the foundation of new Ethlebight were buried. I had taken a pair of spades from a shop on Royall Street as I passed, intending to bury my family in a single grave atop my grandfather until more proper burial could be arranged. But on the sight of the old tomb, I paused for thought.

The outlines of the tomb’s irregular blocks of gray stone were revealed by crumbling plaster. For some reason, there were geometrical objects standing on the four corners: a sphere, a cube, a tetrahedron, and a cone.

I smashed the tomb’s rusted padlock with three swings of my spade. Because the tomb had partly sunk into the soft soil, there was some digging before I could wrench open the iron door. Ancient hinges shrieked, and birds took flight from nearby monuments.

The tomb smelled of damp earth. Lying on their slabs, beneath moth-eaten shrouds, the sad remains of a noble house gazed blankly at the sun for the first time in generations. My spade cleared away skeletal rubbish from a pair of the slabs, and then Kevin and I carried my family into the darkness that was their new home. My father was laid to rest on one slab, with little Alice lying under his arm; and on the other slab, my mother, Cornelia, with Barbara. I draped the unbleached muslin over them for shrouds.

“I will raise you a tomb of your own,” I told my family. “I swear it.”

Kevin nodded. “I am witness to the oath,” he affirmed.

And then I heard the sound of hoofbeats outside the tomb, and I froze, my mind alight with the absurd possibility that after all this I would be arrested for tomb-breaking. Cautiously I peered out the door.

A carriage rolled past on its way to the North Gate, drawn by four weary horses. Burly footmen rode atop the vehicle, and I could see a heraldic badge on the door.

“That would be Judge Travers,” I said, “come for the Assizes. A fine mess will he find, with the Cobbs and Gribbins at odds and the docks still smoldering.”

“Ay,” said Kevin. “There’s more for him to do than to judge whether or not Sir Stanley Mattingly stole a river.”

We left the tomb, and I closed the door and stopped it with turf and stones. My body ached, and I rolled my shoulders against the pain and looked at the silent tomb with its geometric figures. My eyes lifted from the rusted iron door to the name carved above the lintel, and I read, shaype.

I smiled. From somewhere a warbler called.

I cleared my throat. “Ta-sa-ran-geh,” I chanted. “Ta-sa-ran-geh-ko.”

Kevin was surprised, but then quickly joined in the chant of the Warriors of the Sea. We circled the tomb as the chant rose in the air, the chant so old that no one knew what it meant. But well I knew the words had meaning for my father, and so with the chant I sent my father on to his blue-skinned Pastas, the god he had served all his life, and with whom he had shared food on the last day of his life. Nor did I forget my father’s correction, “Ren-far-el-den-sa-fa-yu.”

Five slow revolutions of the tomb brought the chant to an end. Here the Warriors of the Sea, at the festival, would have started over, but I felt a single repetition was enough, and fell silent. The necropolis was still. I felt my spirits rise, and a strange stirring in my soul, as if I had in some way been touched by the divine, perhaps a blue-skinned god who whispered some half-heard affirmation, and now welcomed my family to their new home.

I wiped the stinging tears from my eyes, blew out my breath, and turned toward the town.

“Shall we bring the cart back?” Kevin asked.

“It may be useful still,” I said. “Our lives are full of ruins that yet need to be shifted.” So, Kevin and I stood in the traces again, and brought the cart back to Ethlebight.

I limped as I walked, a hamstring protesting with every step. Pain wracked my arms and shoulders, and my back was a torment.

There was nothing, I thought, to keep me here. My family was dead, my house destroyed, my master taken prisoner. Kevin had offered a chance of employment, but that was before his own family trade had been brought to the edge of ruin.

I would take the money I had found in the strongbox and go to the capital at Selford. What I had in my box was enough to live on for two or three years, if I were careful, and surely I would find employment in that time, and be on my way to becoming an advocate at the court, or a member of the House of Burgesses, or a judge renowned for my wisdom . . . or all three, as Kevin had said.

Though what I most wanted now was to be the admiral of a fleet, to bring fury and destruction upon the Aekoi.

On the way we passed by Crook’s bookshop. The place had been broken into, and books hurled from their shelves by reivers in search of money, but nothing had been destroyed or burnt.

Without a word exchanged, Kevin and I began to move the books to the cocking cart. I had browsed the shop regularly, and knew the contents well. I chose only the best—tomes on law, rhetoric, and history, the epics of Bello, the entire cycle of the Teazel romances, the love poems of Tarantua, the comic verse of Rudland, the tales of Erpingham. We piled the cart so high that it could hardly be moved.

If Crook were ever ransomed, the books would be returned. And if Crook were never released, the books would form the core of a fine library.

After unloading, we put the cocking cart in the courtyard behind the Spellman house. I had seen Judge Travers’s heavy coach standing in Scarcroft Square, and it occurred to me that my storied legal career might as well begin now as later. I left Kevin with his lists of debtors, and returned to the square to find the judge in conference with Gribbins and various Cobbs. I did not approach, but went to the narrow house where my master Dacket had lived, and climbed the stair to the office. There, amid a riot of destruction, I found my master’s fisher fur–trimmed robe with the reivers’ footprints still on it, and cleaned the robe as well as I could. I cleaned myself as well, and my apprentice cap, and then found some wax tablets in a cupboard and put them in the pockets of the robe. I donned the robe—very narrow in the shoulders, but it must do—took a stylus, and then returned to the square again to approach the judge with as much gravity as I could manage.

Travers was a tall, solidly built man in a judge’s robe of black watered silk trimmed with glossy otter fur. His posture was military, and he took immense care of his own dignity, which was enhanced by his white pointed beard, a curling halo of white hair, and his commanding blue eyes.

“There should be an informal census as soon as possible.” His trained rhetorician’s voice spoke with the accent of Bonille. “Those bringing relief must know how many souls are in need of help.”

Gribbins and the various Cobbs seemed impressed by this argument. Their own thoughts had not reached so far as a census.

“And there should be a fire watch set,” Travers said. “New conflagrations may yet be brought to life by smoldering embers.”

“We have no lack of volunteers,” said Gribbins. “We can set watches—and should, to prevent looting.”

I waited patiently at Travers’s elbow, my stylus poised above a wax tablet, until the judge became aware of me.

I donned my learnèd-advocate face. “My lord,” I said. “I wonder if your lordship is in need of anyone to keep a record of these decisions.”

Travers’s blue eyes surveyed me from cap to shoe, and back again. “Who, sir,” he said, “are you?”

“The Butcher’s son!” called Sir Towsley Cobb in mockery. “The Butcher’s son dressed up like a lawyer!”

I ignored the baronet. “My name is Quillifer, my lord. I’m apprentice to the advocate Dacket.”

“And where is your master?”

“Taken by the reivers, my lord, and his family with him.”

“I already have a secretary,” Travers said, and frowned across the square at a young man—dressed in satins, bejeweled—who was amusing himself by brandishing a pollaxe borrowed from members of a militia company. Laughter trickled from the group.

“Well,” Travers said, and turned back to me. “You may prove of use.”

I made notes of the day’s actions: watches posted, surveys made of all granaries, of all available weapons, of cannon and gunpowder. Plans made for an informal census. Scouts set to keep a watch on the Aekoi. A search made for all surviving doctors and surgeons. Clothing and blankets to be distributed to those without homes. Bakeries to be operated through the night. And bodies to be brought out of the city early the next day, and burned. Gangs were set to work taking apart the temporary stage set up in the square, to be used in the pyre.

I learned much from Travers as I trailed the judge through the afternoon. Not so much about the proper response to a catastrophe, but about how to make oneself heard and, having been heard, obeyed. Outside the boundaries of his courtroom, Travers had no authority in Ethlebight—he wasn’t an alderman, or the Lord Warden or the Lord Lieutenant of the County, or an important noble. But he carried himself with a quiet, erect air of authority, and he spoke quietly and with finality, and what he spoke made sense. His success was aided by the accent of Bonille, which carried with it a suggestion of urbanity and sophistication and the air of the royal court, with its subtle, unspoken promise of patronage and power. By the end of the afternoon, even the Cobbs were eager to run Judge Travers’s errands.

This in contrast with the apothecary Gribbins, who shared a great deal with Travers—the white beard, the blue eyes, the distinguished profession—but who despite his status as alderman seemed unable to get anyone to listen to him. He made some good arguments, but more bad ones, and he tended to wander from one to the other. His ideas clattered with each other and sometimes collapsed in hapless confusion. By contrast, Travers raised his ideas one at a time, reached a decision, and then offered the next.

More people arrived over the course of the day, nobles and gentry with their personal following, among them a pair of aldermen who had been at their houses in the country during the attack. So, a rump town council was able to convene, and once they assembled in the city hall and declared themselves in session, Travers told them what to do.

Apparently, not every pantry had been looted. The day ended with a dinner of spit-roasted meats, bread, and beer, which my famished stomach accepted with gratitude.

Afterward, I made my way back to my groom’s straw bed at the Spellman home, and paused in the square for a moment to sniff the fresh, cool wind hunting down from the north. For a moment, I felt a sensation of soaring delight; and then I thought of the wind muttering around the Shaype tomb, and the scent of ash as I laid my family to rest, and for a moment the wind seemed to blow bitter through the empty hollow of my chest, and to freeze to my eyelids the tears that rose unbidden to my eyes.

I had always known that I would leave Ethlebight, but I had been in no hurry to do so—I had been content to live with my family, amuse myself as an apprentice lawyer, and spend my free time in pursuit of women and love.

But now my boyhood had gone in a single blazing night, and with it the security and support of my family and city. The catastrophe had thrown me into premature independence, reliant in the war-ravaged world entirely on my own gifts. To my former self, my talents had been toys, baubles for my own amusement; but now the game had turned grim, and the stakes were life and death.

If I did not seek my fortune, fortune would abandon me in the ruins of my past.

* * *

The Warriors of the Sea did not dance on the first day of the Autumn Festival, and the Mermaids did not sing. The actors didn’t perform their plays, and the guilds did not parade. Instead, a small crowd watched as a pair of priests prayed outside the great old temple north of the city, and sheep were sacrificed along with a white heifer. The rump council and the members of the Embassy Royal, followed by me, came into the temple for a personal interview with the god.

The temple was built in the old annular style of the Empire: round, with a double row of columns, a dome, and a peaked portico. Embedded in the white limestone were remains of the god’s own creatures: skeletal fish, sea lilies, sharks’ teeth, the spiral shells of nautili. The dome was covered in bronze scales that had corroded to shades of sea green, and looked as if a piece of the ocean had been captured under a glass bowl.

The azure-skinned god stood atop a plinth in his sanctuary, five yards tall, pieced together of ivory, bronze, and a glittering array of blue stones: lapis, kyanite, turquoise, blue sunstone, chalcedony, iolite, and aquamarine, with eyes of blue opal that shifted subtly in the light, at times bright, at times somber, at times pensive and withdrawn. A net of copper wire dangled from one hand, filled with jeweled fishes; and the other held a gold-tipped trident.

The light of sacrificial fires glimmered in the eyes of the god as I entered on the heels of the Embassy. Standing quietly behind the others, dressed in my robe and cap, I bowed to Pastas on his plinth, and politely voiced to the deity my hopes for a journey to the capital.

The grandly named Embassy Royal would travel to the capital of Selford, and petition the throne for aid for survivors, protection against the reivers, and ransom for the captives. If, that is, they were able to catch King Stilwell before he departed for the winter capital of Howel.

The embassy consisted of the alderman Gribbins, who had somehow dithered himself onto the delegation, and Richard Hawtrey, who because his father was the Count of Wenlock, bore the courtesy title Lord Utterback. Utterback was a saturnine young man of twenty-four years, dark-browed, scant of speech, and careless of manner. He had ridden into Ethlebight two days after the sack, leading a company of thirty men, all well equipped out of his father’s armory. And though his martial bearing had won a degree of popular regard, he hadn’t been nominated to the delegation on account of his ability to command men, but rather the letters patent that ennobled his father, which would guarantee him a hearing in the capital.

If, that is, Utterback could be persuaded to speak at all. So far, he showed little inclination.

Judge Travers, alas, would not make the journey. He had assizes to conduct, not just in Ethlebight but elsewhere in the southwest, and he held no real authority in the city. He did, however, provide me with a letter of introduction to an advocate in Selford, from whom I might be able to find employment.

There was certainly none to be had in Ethlebight. Even if I were willing to act on behalf of Lawyer Dacket’s clients, none were left. Mr. Trew, whose river had been stolen by Sir Stanley Mattingly, was now a captive on Cow Island. So was Alec Royce, who had cut a fern tree in the King’s forest, and had been freed from his jail cell not by the judge but by the reivers who had come to enslave him.

The council and the delegates bowed their heads before the statue of Pastas, and the priests asked for the god’s blessing on the journey. Their voices echoed beneath the dome. Sacrificial firelight ran up the golden trident as the Embassy Royal promised to conduct their business for the benefit of all, without partiality or favor. After which the formal part of the ceremony was over, and the group broke up. I saw Utterback and Gribbins together, and approached.

“I have arranged for us to travel in a carriage of some magnificence,” Gribbins said. “We shall not be out of place in the capital, I assure you.”

“Didn’t bring a carriage myself,” Utterback murmured.

“I hope your lordship will approve of my choice. It is the carriage used by the Court of the Teazel Bird to carry their King, and is ornamented with allegorical carvings and the armorial bearings of the court’s members.” Gribbins smiled with the pleasure of his own self-regard. “We will have no reason to be ashamed of our equipage, my lord, not in the capital or anywhere else.”

“It’s very fine, I’m sure,” Utterback said. “You will excuse me?”

He turned, took a pace, and encountered me, who stood as ever with my stylus and wax tablet ready, and my attentive-courtier face fixed firmly to his visage.

“I beg your pardon,” I said, and took a step away to allow Utterback to pass. As the count’s son walked on, frowning at the floor, I followed.

“My lord,” I said, “it’s clear that the mission of the Embassy Royal will require a large correspondence, both with the court and with those here in Ethlebight. I wonder if you are considering a secretary to manage these affairs.”

Utterback’s frown deepened, and he halted. He looked at me briefly, then returned his gaze to the floor.

“I write my own letters,” he said.

“Of course, my lord, but—”

Lord Utterback looked up again. “Write my own letters,” he said, with more emphasis, and turned to walk on.

I saw little point in pursuit. Instead, I turned back to Gribbins and asked the same question.

“So irksome will be your correspondence,” I said, “I wonder if the Embassy should employ a secretary.”

Gribbins smoothed his beard with ringed fingers. “The town has not seen fit to vote the Embassy a secretary,” he said, “greatly though it would add to the dignity of our emprise. Alas, we will have to write our own petition to the throne.”

“Ay, you must,” said I, “if you know the form.”

Gribbins looked up sharply. “The form?” he asked.

I put on my pompous-magistrate face and affected a sniff. “Boors and rustics may scrawl their petitions on scraps of paper and push them through the crack beneath the palace door,” I said, “but the Embassy of a great city would be expected to know the proper form for a royal petition, the modus sanctified by protocol, usage, and the custom of centuries. Everything from the choice of the calfskin to the arrangement of the seals must respect the proprieties.” I looked at Gribbins in alarm. “Surely, you do not want the petition rejected because some chamberlain turns up his nose at deficiencies in the punctilio, or a lawyer points out infelicities in the phrasing!”

Gribbins clutched at the purfled border of his robe. “Indeed I do not!” he said. “Where can I find this form?”

“Many lawyers would know,” I said. “But of course, we have few advocates left in the city, and these are consumed entirely in preparation for the delayed assizes. I myself may claim a clear proficiency in the art of the petition, as Master Dacket drilled me ceaselessly in the praxis.” I drew closer to the apothecary. “Do you know, sir, that the wording in the induction is drawn from Mallio’s Rhetorica Forensica, and in the Rawlings translation, not in the Delward as you might expect?”

“Not the Delward,” Gribbins muttered, “but the Rawlings.” His voice sounded like a blind mouse scrabbling in its nest of paper.

Within another two minutes, I had secured my post as the secretary for the Embassy Royal.

* * *

The Embassy left not the next day, for an astrologer hired by Gribbins had declared the day inauspicious, but on the afternoon of the day following, which the occultist declared ideal.

“A pity that this magus, so perfect in his auguries, did not forewarn the city’s sack,” I said to Kevin.

“He could not scry the stars,” Kevin said. “Remember the night was cloudy.”

We stood in the square and watched the loading of the expedition’s grand carriage. The carriage was a great, heavy object, tall and stately as a galleon, and like a galleon festooned with ornaments and carvings painted gold, knights and monsters twined in battle. A smaller, much plainer carriage, like a light, agile pinnace, carried the baggage.

The Court of the Teazel Bird, whose King the great carriage bore in procession, was a fraternity of wealthy burgesses who dressed as knights and lord of ancient times, and named themselves after the legendary heroes of the Teazel romances. They feasted regularly in their towered palace on Scarcroft Square, and sponsored jousts and other entertainments on days of festival. But now most of them, including this year’s King, had been carried away by the corsairs, and the survivors were content to loan their carriage to the Embassy.

“That great heavy thing will take forever to reach Selford,” Kevin said. “Wouldn’t a fast messenger serve better?”

“A messenger will not serve Gribbins’s vanity,” I said. “He wishes to make a grand entrance into Selford, and become a great figure at the court.”

“And Lord Utterback does not check this?” Kevin said. “He puts up with this preening fathead?”

“Utterback can’t be bothered to oppose or propose. He can barely be bothered to speak.”

“Ah, well.” Kevin made a sour face. “Ethlebight will then be on its own for the winter.”

“The winter will at least drive the corsairs from our door. Those little galleys of theirs will never bear our winter gales.”

A small group came from the broken doors of the city hall, Gribbins and Utterback, Judge Travers, the Cobbs, and Sir Stanley Mattingly clanking in armor. When the reivers had occupied Cow Island, Sir Stanley had brought the entire household away from Mutton Island, marching them along the mucky causeway at low tide, and with as many sheep and goats as his shepherds could bring. The dependents now lived in the Forest of Ailey, feasting on mutton where the corsairs were unlikely to find them; and Sir Stanley had donned armor and come riding on his big-framed yellow horse to Ethlebight, where he anointed himself the savior of the city.

In my capacity as secretary to the council, I had transcribed the great debate between Sir Stanley and Sir Towsley Cobb over which would be appointed Deputy Lord Lieutenant and placed in charge of the county’s defense. The two had shouted and roared and proclaimed, and in the end, Sir Stanley had outbawled both his rival and his sons and secured the appointment. Sir Towsley had to be content with becoming Deputy Lord Warden, an appointment meaningless as the Lord Warden commanded only royal troops, and the royal soldiers in the New Castle had all been taken or slaughtered.

In any case, the appointments would have to be confirmed by the King.

I appreciated the scene as a kind of low, earthy comedy; but otherwise couldn’t help but note that one candidate for commander of the military despised me as a Butcher’s son, while the other had shot at me only a few days earlier. I kept my eyes on my wax tablet when Sir Stanley glanced my way, and decided that, under the circumstances, I was not destined for martial renown.

At least I was pleased the milkmaid Ella was safe. I pictured her lying on a bed of moss in the Forest of Ailey, her heart-shaped face turned up to the night sky, the moonlight a shimmer in her dark eyes. Did she think of me, I wondered, as she lay there, and wonder how I fared, caught in the fall of the city and perhaps killed? Did she mourn me, without knowing I was alive? Did she long for me, alone on her verdant couch?

Gribbins began to speak from the steps of the city hall. The alderman had prepared a farewell address, and he was determined to read it even though my audience consisted of perhaps a dozen bystanders, plus the footmen and servants atop the carriage. I stood in an attitude of respect while my mind returned to midnight thoughts of Ella, languorous on her bed of moss. A voice murmured in my ear, one with the accent of Bonille.

“Ambition is laudable in its way. But advancement comes in its season, and a man who grasps at a passing opportunity with such desperate fervor runs the risk of becoming ridiculous.”

I turned to Judge Travers and bowed. “You refer to our vaunting embassy?”

“Not at all.” Amusement played about Travers’s lips. “If anyone, I refer to you, and to your great petition.” He reached out a hand, not unkindly, and touched my shoulder. “I trust you have acquired a copy of Rhetorica Forensica in the Delward translation, and not the Rawlings?”

I felt heat rise to my face. “My lord, I have so provided myself.” The Delward was part of the booty from Crook’s bookshop.

“That is well. I have assured Alderman Gribbins of your ability, but he will want to check your work.”

“I hope that he shall.” I realized that I spoke a bit more defiantly than I intended, and I lowered my voice. “I thank you, my lord, for your kind interest.”

“I think you may do well in the capital,” Travers said, “particularly if you learn to mask your ambition behind a pretense of humility.”

I felt my lip curl in anger. “Sir, I have lately encountered much in my life to keep me humble.”

Again the judge touched my shoulder. “I believe, young Goodman Quillifer, that I did say pretense.” And with a smile, he turned away. Kevin’s voice came into my other ear.

“That seemed unnecessarily cryptic.”

I let out a breath, then turned to Kevin. “Nay,” I said. “Not cryptic enough.”

Judge Travers had warned me against grasping for advantage; but that grasping was what I saw all about me, a greedy rush for vacant offices and honors, the candidates all a-froth with vaunting and vanity. Why should I refrain when everyone else was clutching with both hands?

At last the Embassy Royal left the stairs and went into the carriage, and I gave a farewell embrace to Kevin and followed Gribbins into the carriage. The scent of leather and polish rose to my senses. I took the little sword from my belt, tucked up my lawyer’s robe around me, and prepared to sit next to the alderman. I became aware that Gribbins was staring at me with his rheumy blue eyes.

“What mean you here?” said the alderman.

“I, sir?” I was surprised. “I mean to sit. Would you rather have this place?”

“Young man,” said Gribbins, “you are a servant. Admittedly, a secretary is a superior sort of servant, but still your place is atop the carriage, or with the luggage in the servants’ conveyance.”

I was too startled to be offended. “As you wish, sir.”

I opened the carriage door and prepared to step out, but Gribbins put me another question.

“Quillifer,” he said, “have you recovered your father’s chain? His alderman’s chain, I mean?”

I had given up my seat, and was not inclined to give up anything else. “It was lost in the fire,” I said, the truth as far as it went.

“The chain belongs to the office,” Gribbins said, “not to the bearer. If you were to find it, you should return it to the council.”

Judge Travers had begun a fund to pay the ransoms of the corsairs’ captives, and in a spasm of anger, guilt, and frustration, I had donated half the money I’d recovered from my father’s strongbox. The chain I fully intended to keep as a memory of my father—or, if necessary, to sell it link by link to support myself in the capital.

“The house was burned,” I said. “And my family with it.”

The apothecary made a fussy little tilt of his head. “Can’t be helped, I suppose.” And then he frowned. “I see you carry a sword.”

“I took it from one of the corsairs, sir.”

“Did your father have a grant of arms?”

I blinked. The pertinence of armorial bearings escaped me.

“No,” I said. “He didn’t.”

“If your father did not have a grant of arms,” Gribbins said, “he was not a gentleman, and neither therefore are you. I do not mean to say anything against your condition, but nevertheless you are not entitled to bear a sword in public.”

“Ah.” I considered this, and put on a dutiful-apprentice face. “May I keep the sword until we are out of range of the enemy? I should prefer not to be without a weapon.”

While Gribbins gnawed on this matter, I glanced at Lord Utterback, and saw a glint of sardonic amusement in the young man’s eyes.

“Keep the sword,” Utterback said.

Gribbins chewed his lip. “Are you certain, my lord?” he asked. “I wish to be most observant of all the regularities, so as not to bring disrepute upon the dignity of the Embassy.”

Utterback closed his eyes and leaned his head against the plush velvet cushion. “He may keep the sword,” he said.

“Keep it now? By which I mean, for the present? Or also in the capital? Would that not be irregular?”

I did not stay for the answer, if there was one, but instead climbed onto the carriage roof, where my fellow drudges welcomed me with the smirks plain on their faces. There were four of them: the coachman, reeking of brandy, and three footmen, each armed with a hardwood truncheon and a blunderbuss. I sat and looked out over the square to see if Travers had witnessed this valuable lesson in humility, but apparently, the judge had left the scene.

The driver snapped his whip, the postilion kicked his lead horse with his special reinforced boot, and the great carriage groaned into motion. It swayed across the square and onto Eastgate Street, nearly deserted, and with burnt-out buildings gaping amid the others like the black stumps of broken teeth in a prizefighter’s smile. I couldn’t help but compare this dispiriting sight to the bustle that had carried me down Royall Street only days before, the great pulse of sailors and hucksters, carters and shopkeepers that had flowed through the veins of the city.

Soon enough, the carriage passed beneath the gatehouse and out into the country. It was a fine autumn day, the sun bright and the air cool, and it was no hardship to be in the open.

I looked past the two footmen on the rear seat and watched Ethlebight lurch out of sight. Before the raid, the city held eight thousand people, with another six or eight thousand in neighboring villages, farms, and estates. The reivers had taken four thousand at least, according to Judge Travers’s inexact poll, and could have taken more if they wished—and probably they hadn’t so wished, because their raid had been successful beyond their most ambitious dreams. They had as many captives as their ships could carry, and no need to seek more.

And for the most part, they had taken the best. After scaling the harbor wall on ropes and rope ladders—for sailors climb well—and then taking the River Gatehouse, the invaders had split into several groups, each with its own mission. The New Castle was taken as easily as the gatehouse, and the other gates were secured. And then groups set to work rounding up loot and captives, attacking first the wealthiest districts of the town, then expanding outward.

The Lord Mayor had been taken, most of the aldermen, the Lord Lieutenant and the Warden of the Castle, and the chief merchants like Gregory Spellman. Countinghouses had been plundered, taking even the contracts and deeds. A few hundred were killed when they resisted, and a few hundred more when they proved unworthy of ransom.

With the best folk gone, survivors now squabbled over what remained. The Cobbs and Sir Stanley, Gribbins and the supine Lord Utterback. Picking through the ashes, preening over the prospect of new titles and new dignities.

And none of them speaking aloud what to me was perfectly obvious: that the city had been betrayed. Someone who knew the way had taken the enemy fleet through the twisting channels that separated Ethlebight from the sea, and directed the corsairs to where they could find the most plunder and the richest hostages. The raid had been planned by a mind that knew the city intimately.

Perhaps it was wise for the city not to consider this at present. A hunt for a traitor would be a distraction, especially as the turncoat had almost certainly sailed from the city with his new friends and his share of the loot. At best, they would find a scapegoat, hang him, and the real villain would go free.

But still, that traitor had killed my family, and I groped in my own mind for a name that seemed just out of reach. Someone who hated the city, or who had suffered a reversal of some sort and taken this obscene way to fill his empty coffers . . .

No name presented itself. And the carriage lurched and shuddered its way east, and left the plundered city and its mysteries behind.