The Chestnut King: Book 3 of the 100 Cupboards (12 page)

“That your work?”

Frank said nothing.

“Franklin, formerly Faerie, now waning, sometimes known as ‘Fat’?”

Frank nodded.

The fatter faerie pulled his mustache, then put his arms behind his back. “Franklin Waning Faerie, formerly of the Island Hill of Badon Chapter, who knowingly rebelled against the policies of District R.R.K., trampled upon the letter and spirit of the
Book of Faeren—
all rise—and disregarded the ruling of the queene’s—may her eyes never squint—duly appointed committee? Franklin ‘Fat’ formerly Faerie, who is to be considered a danger to all parliamental faeren and a consorter with villains, who has been cast out from the mounds and severed from the source of his soul, the faeren peoples, and the protection of the queene?” He stopped, looked Frank up and down, and blinked his one eye.

“Aye,” Frank snorted. “Keep talking if you fancy a brawl.”

“I have a package for you.” The faerie dropped a small wooden box into Frank’s hands, took ten steps backward, and pulled at his mustache. “A response is required,” he said, and turning on his heel, he walked proudly down the center of the street. He pointed up. “By moon’s noon!” he yelled, and disappeared into the shadows.

Frank
Willis shifted his weight in the darkness and leaned forward, trying to ease the pressure of the shackles on his wrists behind his back. And trying to breathe through his mouth. The stench belowdecks in the galley was like nothing he had ever experienced, and he’d once fallen into a septic tank. When they’d been brought on board the hulking five-tiered galley, heavy with chains, the soldiers had plugged their own noses with wool before dragging the prisoners down through the stacked rows of slaves.

More than three hundred slaves slept in five outward sloping tiers, hunched over the oars in the belly of the big ship. Chained to their benches and to the oar grips, the night moans of the slaves mingled with the popping and creaking of the great timbers as the ship shifted in the waves.

Frank stared at the men’s backs and then tried to shift again. He and the others had been chained to timbers in the bow, in a small open room stacked with provisions for the slaves. Isa and James were wedged together between the sacks. Poor Monmouth had been laced up in a kelp wizard bag to contain his magic, and then hammocked
from the ceiling. Dotty and Penelope and Hyacinth slept in a cluster, chained to the same ring in the same timber. Frank had his own, but with the ring and his arms behind him, he could only slump forward.

Slumping was about all he felt up to.

Had Henrietta burned? His mother? Dotty had told the story in spurts. Henrietta had been knocked on the head and thrown back into the house before the soldiers had torched it. And then Henry …

Somewhere deep inside Frank, wrapped up in worry and grief, there was a spark of hope. Dotty said Henry had killed the big man who’d dragged him out and then jumped right back in. She’d also said that no one had come out again.

But Henry could do things. Sometimes.

“Not like me,” Frank said quietly. “Mayor for a day.”

Footsteps crossed the floor above Frank’s head. He listened as they found the ladder and descended. Two soldiers, white fluff sticking out of their nostrils, stepped down into the room and approached Frank. Without a word, they unlocked his chains and pushed him in front of them, out of the little room and up a steep ladder. They passed out of the slave hold, through the middle deck—a forest of hammocks and sleeping soldiers—and on up into the night and its cool salt air.

Frank filled his lungs, gasping with relief, and looked around at the easy seas, up past the loudly ruffling sails at a clear sky full of stars and a sliver moon not yet at its zenith. Sailors moved quietly through the rigging and
across the deck, around the housings and barrels of the four enormous brass guns the galley carried. As long as a wind blew, the ship would not be anchoring. Land stood out in a thin shadow on the horizon.

The soldiers took Frank’s arms and led him down the deck and around the monstrous sleeping guns, each scaled like brass serpents. Viperous heads gaped around barrel mouths large enough to swallow and spew men. And then they climbed up steps, and up again until they stood on the stern.

There was no wheel. Twin tillers had been joined by a beam, hinged at its ends, and two men stood inside them, guiding the ship. The captain leaned against a rail, his arms crossed and a short, fat-bowled clay pipe smoking beneath his nose.

He pulled the pipe out of his mouth. “For the smell,” he said, and tapped his foot on the deck. “All that filth belowdecks.”

Frank rubbed his jaw. “I don’t know,” he said. “I sense a bit more filth up here. I prefer dirty humans to, well, dirty humans. But that’s just me.”

The captain nodded at the two soldiers, and as they turned and walked back down to the lower deck, he took Frank’s arm and moved him to the rail. The two faced out to sea.

The captain was shorter than Frank, though not by much. His hair, graying and long around his ears, tangled in the sea breeze. He wore no hat.

“There are times,” he said slowly, “when I miss Hylfing.”

Frank turned and looked at him. He looked familiar. Barely.

The captain looked back. “How old were you when you left, Francis? Thirteen? Fourteen? It wasn’t too much later that your father and older brothers were killed, and your little brothers set out to trap the witch-queen. And they did, too, the little buggers. I was twelve, peeking out a window, watching your father out on the harbor jetty fighting back the witch’s storm. He had this sword that was all blackened and bent, and the lightning hit it, and the windows shook, and I ducked down because I couldn’t watch. When I stuck my head back up, he was still there, still doing whatever it was he did. All I could see was the rising water and the waves and the lightning striking again and again. Never have seen anything else like it. Never hope to.”

Frank’s eyes were hot. His throat was tight. He looked back out to sea, blinking. “I wasn’t there.” He took a slow breath. “I was playing baseball. In Kansas.”

“Whatever you were playing, wherever you were playing it, you’re lucky you weren’t in the city that night. Your brothers were already dead. Lady Anastasia, your mother, was the only one on the walls, the only one who could stay on the walls in that wind, her long hair all wet and cracking like a whip. When the waterspout took your father and the waves came up over the walls, she was still there. People said she didn’t budge till morning, when the storm broke.”

“Roderick?” Frank asked. Roderick. He’d been a nice kid. No dad. No siblings.

The captain nodded and then dropped his head. “I sat at my window all that night. I worshipped your father. And your brothers.” He puffed on his pipe and watched the smoke trail away on the wind. “And you. But you all never had much time for kids outside the tribe, did you?”

Frank said nothing. Memory was grinding. Was that true? Maybe.

The captain sighed and shook his head. “No, you didn’t. Your family had no use for the rest of us except as pawns, to be thrown into the fight and lost when needed. In the morning there were your crazy twin brothers…. I stood outside the walls with close on a hundred other boys, and we watched the two of them march off into the hills, serious as priests, Caleb with that enormous bow over his shoulder almost as tall as he was. A few tried to follow, but they got cracked and sent home. Your brothers said they knew the old mountain doorways and were going to trap the witch in her own lair. I thought your family was done.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Frank asked, and he spat over the side. Anger was growing in him, but he forced his voice calm. “Gettin’ all nostalgic about my family is a bit odd, what with the chains on most of them down in the hold.”

The captain turned and faced Frank. “After your brothers left, I did. I hopped on the wagon my mother had been loading, and we went south. You know what she said?” He paused, as if Frank might actually answer. “She said, ‘We have to get away from this family. We have to get as far
away as can be got. They’re like wands to death and evil, the same as towers to lightning.’” He knocked his ash out, and Frank watched the glowing leaves flutter down to the water. “She was right. Once we got away, all the trouble your family kicked up had a different effect. Funny thing, in the south, most good things came to me because I knew your family. Got my first ship’s berth easy enough as I was from Hylfing and a friend to Mordecai Westmore, the boy who’d buried the witch-queen. When her witch-dogs and wizards all scattered, he got the credit—rightly or wrongly—and I got promoted. After all, my friend had saved the empire. Learned a few parlor tricks to add to the mystique. Always said that Mordecai had taught me. That was good for free drinks. Truth is”—he tugged at a serpent on his sleeve—“when it came to the captaincy, Hylfing blood was no hindrance, and having eyes that had seen the great Amram taken into the sea, and his sons march into the mountains, well, that’s been a bit more than a help.”

Frank spoke slowly. “Gratitude would put Mordecai’s blood and bone ashore. What are you doing?”

The captain laughed, and his laughter had a hard edge. “Why won’t you say my name? Say my name. Am I beneath the great Francis? I shouldn’t be. You always were the least of Amram’s sons. As for gratitude, well, I took the benefits as something owed. My father was killed behind yours in one of his petty wizard skirmishes.”

“Roderick,” Frank said. “My mother always liked you. Caleb and Mordecai always liked you.”

“They liked everyone.”

“What are you going to do with us?” Frank asked.

“Take you to the emperor,” the captain said. “I was told to bring Mordecai peaceably or by force. This was the only other option.”

“Bait a hook with his family?” Frank asked. “Why are you doing this?”

“The emperor considers him a danger to be corralled, contained, or destroyed. I don’t know which, and I don’t need to.”

“You don’t want that,” Frank said. “You don’t want that hanging round your neck.”

The captain flexed his jaw. “Mordecai made his choice when he angered the emperor. He chose again when he refused to come peaceably. He’s the one who gave you chains.”

Frank leaned over and looked closely at the captain’s face. The man’s eyes were scrunched, like he was staring into the sun, and he was gnawing his lip. “Call a pickle a peach, it’ll still make you pucker,” Frank said. “You don’t want this.” He turned around and shoved back his wrists. “Chain me on up. Take me back down to where you got the grandbabies of Amram of Hylfing in shackles. Take me down to my wife and the wife of Mordecai Westmore.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Come down yourself. We’re in the slave hold. Tell ‘em all some stories about the family.”

A clay pipe smashed into the side of Frank’s head, and he staggered forward. The two soldiers ran up the stairs and grabbed his arms.

“Your family draws death and evil like a tower draws
lightning!” the captain yelled. “I’m not bringing you anything you didn’t ask for!”

Frank twisted around in the soldiers’ grip. “Tall trees get struck. Ditch weeds got no cause for fear. They can watch out the window. Maybe later, they can blame the tree.”

His legs dragging, Frank stared at the captain as the soldiers lugged him across the deck.

“Give him some wool,” the captain said, and one of the men shoved two clumps of fleece up Frank’s nose.

He snorted them out on the deck. “I’ll smell it.”

The captain pointed at him. “I refused to chain your mother! I wouldn’t!”

“They burned her house,” Frank said. The soldiers shoved him onto a ladder. He looked back at the captain, at the boy who’d lived three houses behind him. “She was in it,” he said, and he climbed belowdecks.

When he had been reshackled and the soldiers had gone, Frank thumped his head against the post behind him. “Brainless,” he said. “Can’t coax a turtle with shouts. He’ll be shelled up now.” Shutting his eyes, he breathed in deeply.

Through his nose.

Fat Frank pushed away a fourth empty bowl of what had been crab stew and licked his lips. He’d brought Una and Anastasia and Richard to an old inn on the square—The Horned Horses—and they weren’t being charged for any food. A woman with red cheeks and an apron ruffled
Richard’s hair as she walked by. Mordecai’s people wouldn’t pay. Not today. Not any day. The place was dark, the ceilings were low, and the plank floors rolled like hills, but the food was good and a fire swarmed in the hearth between the two big, black, and badly chipped stone unicorns. Some people said that the inn had been built first—by a fisherman who’d lost his ship—and then the town had been built around it, by people who wanted to be closer to his cooking. Others said that the unicorns had been carved first, and the inn built around them, and the town built around that. But what everyone knew is that the inn—in its first incarnation, and in every bit of repairing and growing that had been done through the centuries—was entirely built from the timbers of broken and wracked ships. The dark beams that carried the low plaster ceiling, the posts that braced the leaning stairs, the planks in the floors and tables, all of it had been fished from the sea, and every piece had been branded with a ship’s name, the number of souls lost, and the date. Between the beams, where the walls were plaster, strange designs and scenes and sea creatures and battles had been painted by sailors long dead. The walls were covered with the faded colors, coated over with pipe smoke and the grime of years, but the sailor artists and doodlers had each left their own mark—a name or self-caricature and date—though most were smudged over. It was the first time Anastasia and Richard had been in the place, and they couldn’t even look at their food. Instead, they were scanning the beams for
names, or slipping out of their seats and walking to a wall to stare at some wild doodle older than Kansas.

“Two Deaths?”
Anastasia asked. “How’s that a name for a ship? And fifty souls lost.” She looked down at her cousin. “It’s like we’re eating in a graveyard, but without the bodies.”