The Accidental Highwayman (11 page)

“Dash my wig!” I cried.

“Thou hast no wig, sir,” said she.

Were I blind, her voice would have enchanted me; as it was, her looks made me fear for my sight. But now I was determined to master my reactions, so I looked her in the eye without flinching. After all, I wasn't in much better array after my excursion in the river. Then practical matters took the fore in my mind, as they usually did, given enough time.

“How came you here?” I asked.

“I heard thine horse,” she said, easily enough. I didn't believe it for a moment, but let it pass. Instead I scraped up the courage to offer a serving of humility.

“I owe you an apology,” said I.

“For what?” the woman said, and looked as surprised as her inflexible features would allow—mostly a matter of her nostrils opening wide.

“Ah,” I said. “Of course you don't know me. Since first we met, I've swapped my clothes and exchanged dust for guano. Earlier this morn, it was I who collided with you outside the Bull & Crown, and fairly knocked you to the ground. I was dressed in sackcloth then, and terribly uncivil.” I swept off my hat and bowed low, so that waterweed fell from my pockets.

“I would not have known thee,” she said, and her lips bent in as coy a smile as her teeth would permit. The meaning was clear: She knew very well who I was. Still, I was determined to play my part.

“Pray accept my apology,” I said, “and take my actions on the bridge as proof of my sincerity. Or, if you don't believe me, take my plunge in the river as divine justice.”

The woman seemed to be deep in thought. I occupied myself with battering the dust off my hat.

At length she said, “Thou art nothing like thy master, from what I have been told.” I fairly leapt out of his boots, but held my tongue, and she continued, “I took thee for a scoundrel and a coward last night, and then I took thee for a shallow-hearted boy this morning. But now I take thee for a gentleman.”

Well, you can imagine how this speech took
me
: I was at once filled with consternation that she knew who my master was, ashamed that her opinion of me had sunk so low, and delighted it had greatly improved. But how came she to know all this? I hadn't long to wonder. Her dreadful features took on a look of resolution.

She swung her cloak from her shoulders, and as the dark garment whirled about her and fell away, the snouted woman was gone. The lady from the silver coach stood in her place.

Had a thunderbolt struck me, I could not have been more amazed. I lost my legs, and sat heavily upon the floor, dropping my hat. The poor garment had spent nearly as much time that day upon the ground as upon my head.

“Your Royal Highness Morgana Elgeron-Smith,” said I.

She curtsied very gracefully. Now I saw that her entire appearance had changed, not just her face. She was about my own age, and wore a gown of green silk that was almost black; it shimmered like water, and everywhere was embroidered with fine silver thread. Her hair was ink black, caught up in a silver net decorated with silver leaves. Her olive skin and green eyes were as I'd glimpsed them the previous night, accented by strong black brows.

She was beautiful—I had never beheld such beauty—but in precisely the opposite way that convention dictated. It was such an uncanny beauty that I felt something like fear at the sight of her: Every time I looked into her eyes it seemed I might drown in their sea-green depths.

“Thou hast had enough duckings for one day,” said she.

It was as if she had read my thoughts. Her voice alone had not transformed; it bore a slight accent, as of someone returned from a decade overseas, and she used the antique form of speech.

“I was due for a rinse,” said I, foolishly, still stained with guano. She smiled her half smile, which somehow made her look sad.

“But come,” she said, and her smile fell away. “There's no time. I've sought thee since daybreak, though when we met I doubted you too much to pursue my business. I promised thine master a reward for rescuing me from that hateful coach, and thou hast fulfilled his obligation. So the prize is yours, along with my thanks.”

She raised a slender hand, and although an instant before it had been empty, now there was a wine-colored velvet purse resting in it. Then it was I saw the two rebel feyín, Willum and Gruntle, standing on Midnight's back. Whether they'd been there for the entire interview or had only just arrived, I could not guess.

“Sorry we couldn't help you on the bridge, Squire,” said Willum. “But you told us not to interfere with you any more.”

“You might at least have come to
her
aid,” said I, indignantly.

“The flowing water makes us weak. We have no magic on rivers,” Willum said, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world.

“But what of puddles and things? What about rain?”

“
Flowing
water, dunce,” Willum clarified. “In waterways.”

“I also forbade their interference,” the princess said. “It would be of little use to disguise myself if my servants revealed themselves, would it not?”

“Begging your pardon, ma'am,” Gruntle ventured, in a timid voice. “You said we wasn't servants no longer.”

“Gruntle, you blister-pated newt, show some respect,” Willum hissed, nudging his companion.

But the princess turned to the wee flying men and inclined her head, revealing a slender neck along which curled a few stray locks. “Gruntle is correct. Forgive me,” she said. “It is the habit of a long lifetime.”

“She gave us our freedom, she did,” Gruntle said, addressing me. “And then she tole us it was never hers to give, but ours all the time. We're in amongst deep waters, Master Bristol.”

By this time I was on my feet again, if a trifle unsteadily. The princess held out the purse and bid me take it.

“I cannot,” I said. “That's my poor master's price, not mine.”

“Thou need'st not be sentimental,” she said. “This is a purse of plenty. Merely reach into it and draw out whatever sum you require, as long as thou shalt live.”

I laughed aloud. “At the rate I'm going, your Royal Highness, I won't live long enough to get the price of a button from it. No, you keep your purse of plenty, and the best of luck with it.”

“I cannot compel thee?” she asked once more, fixing me with a peculiar, urgent kind of look. Her eyes were the color of spring leaves, greener than the greenest eyes I'd seen before, and flecked with darkness like small sorrows.

“No,” said I.

I wasn't trying to be chivalrous, you understand. Money was the farthest thing from my mind, that was all. And it seemed a filthy thing to take a price settled upon by a dead man. In fact, I felt there was something contemptible in the very offer of it.

But as soon as I'd refused the purse this last time, the princess closed her hand as if crumpling a piece of paper, then opened it, and the little bag was gone. Willum and Gruntle clapped like spectators at a match of
jeu de paume
.
*

“In your stories about us,” she said, “our people are always full of tricks and tests. That much is true, and I'm no different: The price of magic is trust. Hadst thou taken the purse, we would have vanished, and you'd be alone with a fortune in thy pocket. That's what has always happened before; you full-bred humans are a greedy lot. Now I confess I know not what to do.”

I didn't know what to do, either. “I was thinking about fleeing to France,” I said.

“Ireland is a free Faerie state; can I but reach its shores, my king has no claim upon me, but I am exiled,” she said, and looked very unhappy.

“You've run away from your father,” I replied, trying to sound encouraging. “If he's anything like he sounds, what with the goblings and so forth, I'd put as much distance between us as I could. If I were you, that is. Or me, for that matter. Which I am.” I was babbling. She had that effect.

The princess shook her head, and the feyín did likewise, drooping their wings. “Even Ireland may yet fall to his legions. There's no safety in all the First Realm whilst my father is upon the throne, and it's worse in the Middle Kingdom.”

“What about the other one? The Elden Kingdom?”

“The Realm Beyond? There is no safety for
anyone
there.”

They feyín shivered at the very thought, rattling their wings.

I felt a tremendous need to get a grasp on the larger picture in my mind. We all had urgent reasons to be on our ways, but until I understood what I'd gotten into, I could scarcely string two coherent thoughts together. I'd need my wits if I were to avoid Captain Sterne and begin a new life elsewhere.

“Pray believe I doubt not your father's greatness,” said I, “but there is an aspect to this situation which I cannot understand. Here stands Britain: Her greatest city is London, with close to three-quarters of a million inhabitants; I'm from her second-largest city, Bristol, whence my name. Her citizens have plunged to the bottom of the sea in a diving bell, harnessed the power of steam to mighty engines, captured electricity in a jar, and revolutionized weaving; we produce more woolen cloth, better iron, and finer beer than any other nation in the world.”

Here I drew breath; the others were regarding me with either bemusement or amusement, I could not tell which. So I continued, “The British Empire stretches from the American colonies to Bengal, and she rules the seas of the world with two hundred naval ships, over eighty of which are ships of the line, bearing some five thousand cannon and forty thousand crew aboard. Her forces at arms extend to another hundred thousand men—several dozen of whom are in pursuit of myself—and I cannot imagine why such an empire would require the services of a crowd of wee magical folk who specialize in making their bottoms blink like semaphores.”

There was a moment of silence while the others waited to see if I had finished my inventory. They didn't appear particularly impressed. I was about to mention our improved blast-furnace technology when Princess Morgana raised her hand in a gentle bid for pause.

“Here, too, stands Britain,” said she. “The average span of life is one score and ten years, and half of her citizens are beneath the age of twenty. Inclosure acts are consolidating land holdings into the hands of the gentry, driving her peasants into the cities, where poverty is rampant and wages low, a crisis that will only get worse as industrialization replaces local agrarian culture. The empire's overseas holdings are largely beholden to such entities as the British East India Company, whereby the strength of a nation is bent to the advantage of an incorporation; in the meantime, thine empire has just endured the Jacobite Rebellion and war with Spain; she is presently at war with France and the native peoples in the American colonies, as well as with France
and
India in Hyderabad, and her grip on the Caribbean relies upon human slavery. In addition, everyone smelleth of horses and tobacco smoke, and thine king was born in Germany.”

With effort I drew my eyebrows down out of my hairline. “You seem to have an extensive grasp of world affairs,” I croaked.

The princess brushed my remark aside with her hand. “I know not the first thing about daily life in the manling world, but ask me any question about politics. One doth not sit at my father's court for half a century without learning a thing or two.”

Half a century? She could not have been more than eighteen years old.

“So in fact it would be rather a great advantage to have your magic at our nation's disposal,” I concluded.

“'Tis so,” said she, “and my kingly father bethinks his advantage lieth in cannon-shot and coke-fueled engines. So must I marry the human king's grandson and hasten the union of our worlds, or flee.”

A gloomy silence fell upon the barn. Dust swirled in shafts of sunlight much as my own thoughts churned between light and dark. It seemed to me that the Faerie rebellion wasn't off to a very good start.

“Right,” I said. “Well. If nobody else has a plan, I have a suggestion.”

I went to the straw where I'd concealed Whistling Jack's equipment, and from the dusty redingote retrieved my master's will. I spread the document on a cask-head and the others gathered around it, the feyín perched atop the cask itself.

“Before he perished,” said I, “my master sketched this map. I don't understand it entirely, but this doesn't seem to be a map of places so much as a map of
time
. Here's an owl in a tree; there I met your coach. Here's a bull with a crown; there I met you. Each of these little drawings happens somewhere along this line. So if we follow it, it seems to me we might meet with what's next to be done. Which appears to be a frog.”

“'E's clever,” Gruntle remarked.

“How came your master by this?” Princess Morgana said. “Only a scrying stone could tell him of what was to come.”