The Chestnut King: Book 3 of the 100 Cupboards (6 page)

Henry rubbed the smooth metal between his fingers and for a moment forgot the cold breeze.

“The metal has no power of its own,” Mordecai said. “But much is now vested in it. It has a memory of courage and strength well used and knows the patterns both of bravery and goodness. Perhaps it shall guide you. Best of all, unlike your flesh and mine, it knows no fear in the darkest of places. It has a rich story. You shall make it richer.”

“Mordecai?” The voice was Hyacinth’s. Henry and his father turned and watched three shapes rise out of a doorway and onto the roof. Uncle Frank stood beside Franklin Fat-Faerie. In front of them both stood Henry’s mother. She looked like her daughters. She looked like something made from trees and starlight. The breeze combed her dark hair. Her eyes caught the moon’s light and threw it back into the world.

She walked to Henry’s father. “Caleb is in the street with horses. Three of his men ride with you.” She kissed him. “You cannot stay one night?”

Mordecai shook his head. The faerie flopped silently onto his back and shut his eyes. Uncle Frank winked at Henry and leaned against the wall, staring out at the harbor. “Don’t care much for that ship,” he said. “Not a lick.”

Mordecai looked out at the galley masts, stark silhouettes. Lanterns glowed around the ship’s rail. “Nor do I. But James says the captain has no ill intentions, and we live in the empire’s frontier. This is no time for petty resistance. Treat them well.”

“What was the message James brought?” Henry asked.

“The emperor requested that your father return with the ship,” Hyacinth answered. “He has need of his service.”

“Is that where you’re going?” Henry looked at his father and then back to his mother. She looked up into Mordecai’s face.

Mordecai shook his head. “I will attend him as soon as I am able.”

“Oh, ho,” Fat Frank said suddenly. Henry had thought he was sleeping. “He won’t take kindly to that. No, he won’t, the power-drunk puppy. He’ll piddle his satin trousers.”

“Franklin—” Mordecai said, but the faerie sat up and continued.

“The lord of the eastern and western seas, the lord of all the fishes and the peoples and the planets. Last I heard, he was only letting God have a go every second Tuesday.” He flopped backward and splayed his limbs. “The little throne monkey.”

Uncle Frank laughed. “Didn’t know you were an anarchist, Frank. No surprise we get along.”

The faerie snorted. “That from the Lord Mayor of Hylfing with his shiny chain. In a fortnight, you’ll be regulating donkey behavings and tariffing figs. I’m a free creature, free as the Chestnut King himself, though he probably fears his mother. Free as rubbish in the road. I give account to no one.” Still lying on his back, the faerie crossed his arms. “No one will have me,” he added.

“Franklin,” Mordecai said again. “Stand up and come here.”

After a moment, the faerie obeyed, but slowly.

Mordecai crouched. The faerie adjusted his belt and sniffed loudly. “You are no longer a mound member, no longer a citizen of the district, nor a subject to the queene!”

“Do I need reminding?” Fat Frank muttered. “My spark’s been doused.”

“Not doused,” Mordecai said. “Your strength’s not ashen yet. I must ask you to do something, but I am no longer your bonded green man. I live because of you, my son lives because of you, and many others in this city as well. And so I ask you to do something freely, as a friend.”

Fat Frank shifted his feet and squared his small shoulders. He said nothing, and so Mordecai continued.

“My brother and I leave in a dangerous time, looking for an even greater danger. Keep this house safe while I am gone, and my family in it.
The Book of Faeren
no longer constrains what remains of your magic. Use it all in their defense if you must.”

Henry looked from his father’s face to the faerie’s.
Frank gave a little nod, and his jaw crept out. His nostrils flared, widening his round nose.

Mordecai rose, hugged his wife, kissed Henry on the head, and then ruffled his hair. “Soon,” he said. “The storm must break soon, and we will be done with the waiting.”

Henry watched his father disappear into the black mouth of the stairs. His mother followed him. Shivering, he looked at one Frank and then the other. Behind him, the raggant snored.

“Odd,” Uncle Frank said, “having a brother like that. Makes me feel like a hen hatched in a hawk’s nest.”

Voices rose up from the street. Hooves clattered on cobblestones. Henry looked down at Fat Frank, rubbing his nose. The faerie wasn’t much of a replacement for Mordecai.

“Good night,” Henry said. And he walked to the stairs.

As the sky pinked with the dawn, Henry dreamed. Ten gray threads ran out of the scar in his face, and ten men in black held the ends, tracking Henry wherever he ran, wherever he hid.

And then his grandmother snipped the threads with sewing scissors and wound them into a braid.

Henry
jerked in his bed and opened his eyes. The room was blurry. He blinked hard, and the world slowly came into focus. His curtains had been pulled back, and gray daylight crawled sideways into his room. The sun wasn’t high.

He yawned, stretching. It was too early to be awake.

“Henry. Get up. Something’s going on.” Henrietta poked him.

Henry blinked again and looked down over his blankets. His room was crowded. Richard stood by the doorway in some kind of nightshirt, bare-legged and wide-eyed. Isa and Penelope, the two oldest, stood next to each other, both dressed, both clearly worried. Penelope was pulling nervously at her hair. Una was leaning against her sister and chewing on her lip. Anastasia was bouncing, and her hair, undone, straggled in every direction. Henrietta jerked back Henry’s blankets, and he was grateful for the linen pants his mother had given him, even if they were too big. With Henrietta and Anastasia around, it never paid to sleep in your underwear. He only wished that he was wearing a shirt.

Henry levered his elbows against the mattress and sat up. “What is it?”

Isa’s hair was more red than auburn in the morning light. She stepped forward, and the other girls all turned toward her. “Father and Uncle Caleb left in the night.”

“Yeah, I know.” Henry swung his legs off the bed. “They’re witch-hunting. I don’t know where.”

“I do,” Una said. “Father told me they were going to Endor.”

Henry coughed. He’d never thought they might do that. But where had he expected them to search? They weren’t vacationing. Had they gone through the little black door in the old farmhouse? Was there a way through the old wizard doors in the hills? A familiar sickness crept into his gut. He tried to push it away. “What happened to them?” he asked.

“It’s not about them,” Henrietta said. “It’s just they’re not here to help. We’re the ones with the problem.”

“We shouldn’t rush to conclusions,” Richard said.

Anastasia stamped her foot. “Yes, we should. They took Dad and Aunt Hyacinth, and Monmouth called them names, so they took him, too. And Mom is on the roof crying.”

Henry stood up, holding his pants with one hand. The girls’ eyes all went to his stomach, where the glyph of a tree stood out in pink scars against his skin. “Will someone just tell me what happened?” He looked back to Isa, but Henrietta was the one who answered.

“Two more ships were in the harbor this morning.
They were both galleys like the first one, but not as big. All three unloaded soldiers on the dock, and one of the captains marched them up here and banged on the front door—that’s when I woke up—and then they asked for your dad. When your mom said that he’d gone, they took her away, and our dad, too. From the roof you can see a bunch of soldiers in the square and on the walls and patrolling all over. We don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Henry looked around at all the worried faces. Henrietta popped her thumbnail between her teeth. They’d come to him. All of them. His sisters, cousins, and Richard. What could
he
do?

“Where’s the faerie?” Henry asked.

Isa answered. “He was in Mother’s room a few minutes ago.”

“He won’t talk to us,” Henrietta said.

“You were rude,” said Anastasia. “I wouldn’t talk to you, either.”

Henrietta rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t rude. I was in a hurry.”

Anastasia put her hands on her hips. “Penny?” she asked.

Penelope sighed. “Anastasia, you’re not being helpful.”

“Listen,” Henry said. “It doesn’t matter. Everybody out. I need to get dressed. If you see Fat Frank, ask him to come here.” He looked at Henrietta. “Ask him nicely.”

“What are you going to do?” Una asked.

Henry snorted. “I don’t know. But I’ll start by trying to figure out what’s going on.”

*  *  *

Henry stepped into the street, shrugging on a brown oilskin cloak. Fat Frank stood beside him. The day was cold and overcast. Occasional drops shattered in dust on the cobbles, but the clouds seemed halfhearted. He hadn’t known what to bring, if anything, and so he had only a small knife and his baseball tucked into an oversize pocket for good luck. It was hard to know what to bring when you didn’t know what you were doing. For now, they would try to find his uncle and his mother. He didn’t want to think about what might come next. Hopefully, nothing. The adults were just answering some questions and would be home by lunch. Easy enough. Somehow, he didn’t believe that.

Henry turned and looked at Henrietta, standing in the doorway with her arms crossed.

“Don’t let anyone leave the house,” Henry said. “And don’t let anyone in.”

“Not that she could stop them,” the faerie muttered.

“Why are you visible?” Henry asked.

The faerie seemed surprised. “Your uncle Caleb made a rule.”

“I don’t care,” Henry said. “And neither would he.”

“Well—” The faerie huffed up his belly and held his breath. Henry watched his cheeks turn red and then purple. The faerie gasped for air and then grinned. His edges shimmered in the sunlight.

“Are you invisible?” Henry asked.

Frank sniffed. “Yes, I’m invisible, and you can stop
being so smug about yourself.” The faerie began walking quickly down the cobbled hill, toward the river and the bridge, toward the square and whatever was in it.

“Fine,” Henry said, and he hurried to catch up.

“No one listens to Fat Frank,” he heard the faerie say. “‘Guard the house!’ says Mordecai. What good is a guard when no one listens? Don’t answer the door. Don’t go with the troopers. Oh, never you mind. Do what you like. Fat Frank doesn’t have any worries of his own. He’ll mop yer mess.”

Henrietta blinked when the faerie disappeared. She watched her cousin turn and jog down the street, and then she shut and bolted the door.

In the front room, Grandmother Anastasia was feeling her way carefully toward her chair with a blanket over her arm. Her blind eyes were open, but there was no smile on her face. Henrietta kissed her cheek, smelling human age, fermenting life.

Her grandmother squeezed her arm and winked. “Her memory is long,” she said. “She has made fingerlings.” She extended her hand, fingers spread, and fluttered them. “Little daughter, grow wings and fly away.” She shuffled to her chair and collapsed into it. Henrietta spread the blanket over her legs, but her grandmother was asleep before she’d finished.

Fingerlings? She hurried to the stairs and climbed them two at a time. The others would be on the roof, clustered
around her mother. Except for the raggant. Henry had shut the raggant in his closet before he left. Henrietta could hear its muffled bellowing on the second-story landing. She hesitated but then moved quickly on. She couldn’t risk letting it out. The little barrel-shaped creature would bite and butt its way free of her arms for sure. And then Henry would be all pompous about her mistake. She climbed to the third floor, twisted down a narrow hall, and found the stairs to the roof.

The few townspeople in the street quietly hurried past Henry, though one or two glanced at the muttering patch of air beside him. They passed three small groups of soldiers on their way to the bridge, and another on the bridge itself. All wore red tunics marked with the same symbol that flew over the galleys—three serpents braided into one, sharing a single head—and white trousers tucked into boots. Most carried crossbows; some pikes, double-headed with curved blades; and others wore short swords, always sheathed. All seemed nervous, chewing lips or nails, watching doorways and alleys with their backs against windowless walls.

“Are they afraid of the people?” Henry whispered.

“More likely they’re afraid of your father,” the faerie answered. “Or didn’t you know that he’s a demon what could suck your soul straight out your nose?”

Henry tried to watch the soldiers’ faces without catching any eyes, but he didn’t do well. They all seemed to look
at him right when he took his glance. Each time, he put his head down and hurried on, but he knew they were watching his back, and that made his skin tingle.

As they reached the square, Fat Frank stopped. Two soldiers were standing on a corner with their backs to the wall just beneath a stone ledge. Frank looked them over, sniffed, and then grinned at Henry.

“Pretty little popinjays. So handsome in red.”

Before Henry could say anything, the faerie skipped toward the two men, and then, in an explosion of balance and speed, he ran up the wall and perched on the stone ledge between their heads.

Henry stood motionless, slack-jawed, staring. Both soldiers slowly turned toward him, staring back. One lowered his brows and opened his mouth to speak, but Fat Frank had already swabbed thick forefingers through the insides of his cheeks. He crouched down and poked his findings into the soldiers’ ears.

Both men jumped and yelped and slapped at their faces, spinning, looking behind them, above them, looking for any culprit. And then they both, each still with one hand over an ear, turned and looked at Henry.

Suddenly, he was very aware that his eyebrows were up, and that he was grinning.

“Come here, boy,” one of them said, and he reached for his sword. Henry erased his smile and took a step backward. Fat Frank rolled his eyes and shook his head. Then he pushed up his sleeves, leaned over, winked at Henry, and hooked both soldiers by the nostrils.