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

Henry looked up. He hadn’t noticed a new ship when he’d first tumbled out of the shed, but there it was, anchored farther out than any of the others. Henrietta was right. It was huge. Five masts—three towering—five rows of oar banks. A flag he didn’t recognize rippled slowly above the stern—white with a red emblem, long, and three-pronged at the fly.

“James?” Henry asked. James was the sixth son, one up from Henry, one of the four still alive. Nervousness forced away the last of Henry’s dizziness, giving his stomach a new reason to burble. He had been an only child for twelve years. He didn’t know how to be with siblings, how to act or talk or touch. He was still closer to his cousins than his two sisters. And it wasn’t his sisters’ fault.

Henrietta stepped past him and turned around. “Just be normal,” she said. “You’ll be fine. And now tell me where you were. Because I know you can’t have been in that shed.”

Henry licked his lips. Crusting blood. “I have to clean up.”

“Were you in Badon Hill?”

Henry shook his head, put his hand on his cousin’s shoulder, and stepped past her. “I need to hurry.”

Henrietta didn’t follow him. “You do that,” she said. “I’m going to have a look around.”

Henry sighed and moved across the roof to the low, arched doorway that held more stairs. The raggant, no longer offended, snored in the shadows behind him.

In his room, Henry dipped his hands in a porcelain bowl on his dresser and splashed his face. Then, looking in his small mirror, he rubbed at the blood. Had it been worth it? He’d seen Zeke. He’d pitched. But now his head was drumming, he’d lost his glove, and Henrietta was suspicious. And when Henrietta was suspicious, life could be terrible.

Blinking away water, he leaned forward and examined his face. First, his eyes. A little bloodshot but fine. His hair had been cropped short a month ago, but now brown tufts stood out awkwardly above his ears and on the back of his head, where his baseball hat had left a crease. Where was his hat? Had it fallen off in Kansas? Was it on the roof? He didn’t have another one.

Henry reached up and touched his jaw, where the witch’s blood had marked him. For a moment, he let his eyes relax, and he watched the gray spiderwebs float out of the scar, twisting slowly. And then he pressed his palm against it and shut his eyes. Inside, his bone grew cold, and his teeth ached. But his skin was hot. A shifting, twisting, growing warmth pushed in, struggling against the witch’s deathless trace, forcing her cold away. The brand on his palm, the mark of his second sight, the mark given to him behind a barn in Kansas, where his blood had mingled with the soul of a dandelion, turned his itch into pain. A better pain. For a moment, the pleasant burning was all he
felt, and then he dropped his hand, his warm jaw cooled, and the gray death strands reappeared, Nimiane’s strands, trailing away from his face in their slow dance. His scar had been growing, the strands had been thickening, and Henry didn’t want to think about what that might mean.

Shivering, he turned from the mirror, pulled off his T-shirt, and kicked away his jeans. Someone, probably his mother, had laid a white shirt with half a collar on his bed. Dark trousers and a matching coat lay beside it. He hadn’t seen them before, and they looked new, a change from all the altered clothes his brothers had outgrown. His brothers. He hadn’t met any of them. Three of them, he never would. He had seen the dead trees in his mother’s orchard, where his own sapling had been planted. One he would meet tonight.

Henry swallowed and jumped quickly into his clothes. His white socks were dirty, and cheatgrass seeds pricked his skin through the ankles, but he didn’t bother to change them. He forced his feet into the brown leather things that he’d been given for shoes and hurried out his door.

In the hall, he was met by laughter. His sisters’. His cousins’. He could hear his aunt Dotty, his uncle Frank, and then the big voice of his uncle Caleb. His father’s laugh was absent. One more flight of stairs lay between him and a brother. He tried to descend them with confidence, but Henrietta was leaning against the wall at the bottom. She looked up at him, and her eyes were sparkling. Her brows went up, and she flashed him a tight smile. She was holding Henry’s hat.

“You look nice,” she said.

“Shut up.” His voice was flat.

“Great socks.”

Henry stopped beside her. “Shut up,” he said again. He hadn’t seen her look this happy in a month.

She leaned over to him and whispered in his ear. “I can’t believe you. Does your mom know you’ve been going to Kansas?”

Henry didn’t answer.

“Your dad?” Henrietta examined his face. “Fine.” She turned, grabbed his arm, and pulled him into the room. “Come meet your brother.”

The room was full, and James was seated at the far end of it, beyond the long table. His hair was the same shade of brown as Henry’s, but his jaw was much broader. His skin was dark and sea-cured, though he still looked young. Barely eighteen.

Henry’s sisters were clinging to him. Isa, tall, with straight, shimmering auburn hair, stood at his shoulder, laughing. Una, with her black hair piled up on her small head, sat on her brother’s lap.

Henry stopped and ignored Henrietta’s tugging. He wanted to take in the room. He loved it when the table was set, when people, his family and friends, gathered around it and seasoned the meat with laughter. Uncle Frank stood by the door, looking as he always had, though his clothes had changed and his eyes were more focused. A heavy gold chain hung around his neck. A plain carving knife stuck out of the wall above the doorway beside him. Caleb
leaned against the wall on the other side of his brother, wine in his hand. Henry wondered if Frank liked the chain. He didn’t think so, but he had to wear it now. This whole evening would be a celebration of that gold around his uncle’s shoulders. Monmouth, the pale, young wizard, sat limp and smiling in a chair against the wall. Richard, with his thin legs crossed, sat perfectly upright to one side of him. He waved at Henry. Penelope and Anastasia, his other Kansas cousins, were bustling around with drinks and aprons and shining, oven-warmed faces that reminded Henry of Aunt Dotty. Anastasia’s hair was even straggling out of its braid. Penny smiled at Henry and dropped into a chair on the other side of Monmouth. Various strangers and couples that Henry had seen before but could not name milled through the room, picking at the table’s offerings and filling plates. His mother and aunt must have been in the kitchen. Grandmother Anastasia slept soundly in a corner chair, buried beneath a patched-together blanket. Her mouth was open, and thin white hair clung to her cheeks. She spent most days asleep, resting her blind eyes, and when she was awake, she rarely spoke, instead passing the time pinching and kissing whomever was closest. She had given Henry York Maccabee his new name in this room, at this table, and Henry loved her.

The smells were as varied as the voices, the smiles as broad as the table. Henry felt hungry and somehow already fed. This was his tree. He loved Kansas and parts of his other life. But his branch, cut off from this trunk for twelve years, had been grafted back in. That didn’t mean he was
used to it. Henry sighed and turned toward the kitchen. He would see his mother before meeting James.

“Henry?” A hand gripped his shoulder and twisted him back around. He was suddenly looking into a hard, friendly face in some ways like his own. Apparently, he would meet his brother now.

Henry smiled and realized that his brother’s other hand was hanging in the air, waiting to be clasped. He gripped it, winced at the sudden pain in his fingers, and then coughed as his brother wrapped him up. Henry’s already sore ribs creaked, and a series of pops rolled up his spine. Henry slid his arms around his brother and held on, grimacing, waiting to be put down, inhaling salt and sea from the cloth of his shirt. Muscled knots moved beneath his fingers, knots he wasn’t sure that he would ever have over his own ribs.

And then he was free and breathing again. James stepped back and looked him over.

“So, you’re the seventh, the one with double eyes. Our sisters say we resemble, but I can’t see it. What do you think, little brother, are we alike?” James lifted his eyebrows, strained his neck, and preened, turning his head side to side. Isa smiled, demure like her cousin Penelope. Una burst out laughing. Even Monmouth’s smile grew.

“A little,” Henry said.

“A lot,” Hyacinth said behind him. “All of my sons are cast from the same earth and shaped by the same hands.” She kissed Henry’s cheek, and then James’s, and put her arms around their shoulders, bringing their heads together
with her own. “You may look like your brother, Henry,” she said quietly. “But you are not so much the rooster.”

James laughed and pulled away. Henry smiled. “I saw your ship,” he said suddenly. “It’s huge.”

“Oh.” James turned to the table and began piling cold meat and olives and spiced apples onto a plate. “Well, it’s not mine. I was taken from my own ship and ordered on this one.”

“Why?” The voice was Caleb’s. He no longer leaned on the wall, and his pale eyes had sharpened. “That flag has not been in this sea since my childhood. Not since your father and I went into the south as boys.” Caleb looked at Grandmother Anastasia in the corner. Henry was surprised to see her blind eyes open, her smile gone. “Not since the sea rose and took your grandsire.”

The feel of the room had changed. Henry stepped backward. Caleb looked a great deal like Mordecai, Henry’s own father. He was tall and dark-haired with light eyes—blue with green centers when the light was bright. He could laugh as easily as he could breathe, but there was a hardness inside him, in his bones, that could make him seem as tough and unbreakable as one of the ancient trees he tended in the hills. For the first time, Henry wondered if Caleb and his father were twins.

James was the only one eating in the room. A few of the guests sipped nervously at their wine.

“I was summoned to one of the imperial galleys,” James said quietly, “and the commander told me that my father lived. But the word that Mordecai had returned
was already being whispered in every inn and in every harbor along the continent. Green man to the northern imps, keeper of Hylfing, barbarian, savage, ape, witch-bane, what have you. The rumor men and storytellers flavored it as they liked. Mother tells me that she sent a letter, but I never received it. A dozen different times, and in a dozen different ways, I heard old sailors entertain the mess with tales of how you, Uncle Caleb, and my father imprisoned Nimroth’s heir when you were only children. I heard every breed of lie and truth and mythic tale that could be told. And then I began to hear a new story about Mordecai’s return and his missing son and a wizard shattering the walls of my mother city and the golden flight of a magical arrow. Some said it was the Arrow of Chance, the shaft of Ramoth Gilead itself, and others that Mordecai had woven it from lightning and fitted it to his brother’s bow. All told of how the earth shook and the mountains heaved up fire when the arrow found the wizard’s throat. I had already resolved to request early leave to return to Hylfing when the emperor’s men came aboard in Lahore and claimed me for their own service.” James grinned. “The mates and crew—some tale-tellers themselves—were shocked to learn my pedigree. Only the captain had known.”

Caleb had not looked away from his nephew’s face. His voice was quiet but stone-hard. “What service did they require?”

“Delivery and introduction,” James said. “The stories were not only about my father’s return. There were dark
stories about Endor and a new life for it as well—the return of the deathless queen. I have a parchment with the emperor’s seal to give to my father. And I was to introduce him to an imperial liaison, but the man was not on our ship. He may arrive within the week.”

Caleb said nothing. Uncle Frank smacked his lips. “Hard to imagine anything that needs a warship to deliver it being good news. How many slaves are chained to oars out in the harbor right now?”

James had been cheerful throughout the conversation. Now his smile faded. “I know,” he said. “I’ve only ever served on free ships. I’d hoped to be given leave to sleep ashore, but the captain won’t grant it.”

Hyacinth stepped over to her son and wrapped her arms around him. “The harbor is still the closest you’ve been this year.”

Outside, bells began ringing. Uncle Frank set down his glass and plate and yawned slowly. Aunt Dotty bustled out of the kitchen and began fussing with Frank’s shirt, fiddling with the collar and the chain on his shoulders.

“I don’t suppose I can get out of this?” Frank asked. The room laughed. Dotty pretended to be offended.

Caleb slapped his shoulder. “Not a chance, Francis. You’re the oldest.”

Uncle Frank looked across the table at Henry and grimaced, contorting his lips.

“Frank,” Dotty said sharply, but her voice didn’t match the smile on her face. “If you want to be taken seriously as mayor, you can’t act like a child.”

Frank snorted. “Lord Mayor to you. And if you think I want to be taken serious, then you haven’t been paying much mind to your husband all these years.”

The bells rang on, and the leaded-glass windows shivered with each peal. Dotty finished with her husband and stepped back to admire her work. As she did, the front door opened, and Henry’s father, Mordecai, stepped in. Franklin Fat-Faerie, knob-nosed and bleary-eyed, squeezed in beside him. Henry tried to catch his eye, but the faerie hurried straight through the room and into the kitchen without looking up. Mordecai grinned at Uncle Frank and gave the chain a little tug.

“You like the city collar?” he asked.

Frank snorted. “You want it? We might be able to melt it down and make something useful—a bookend maybe. Or a shoehorn.”

“Mordecai,” Hyacinth said. She walked to her husband. “James is here.”

The last peal of the bells faded slowly. Mordecai turned, and Henry watched him take in his son. He stepped around the table and wrapped James up in his arms, and James seemed small beside him. Then he held James away, with a hand on each shoulder, and stared into his son’s eyes. The moment was frozen. The room was silent. Hyacinth wiped her eyes, and Henry felt his own growing hot, his throat tightening. He looked down at his hands, at his arms. He seemed so weak, next to his father and his brother, next to his uncles.