The Chestnut King: Book 3 of the 100 Cupboards (7 page)

Henry saw the pulse of magic flick out of the faerie, too fast for him to understand, and he saw the faerie jerk both men’s heads back into the stone wall. For a moment, they were scrambling on their toes, trying to ease the pressure of the faerie’s pulling, and then they went limp and tumbled to the street, limbs entwined, eyes shut in total sleep. White liquid, lots of white liquid, streamed out of their noses and pooled beneath them.

Frank jumped down beside Henry. “You ever have milk come out your nose?” he asked, wiping his hands on his trousers.

“Once actually,” Henry said.

“Ah,” said Frank. “But not that much.”

“Hoy!” Three soldiers at the top of the street were running toward them.

“Right, then,” Frank said. “They’ll blame that one on your father. Let them think he’s lurking on every ledge. We’re off.” Laughing, he grabbed Henry’s sleeve and dragged him around the corner and into the square. “Violation,” he said. “Unnecessary Human Engagement and/or Conflict.
Book of Faeren
, II.ii. Let’s see the committee call up Fat Franklin now, hey? Petty gavel-bangers.”

At one end of the square hulked the cathedral. On the other side, beyond a simple fountain, a building with round roofs heaped up in three tiers squatted symmetrically. The Hall of Governance. A white flag with the red serpent emblem flew at its crown, and soldiers blocked the steps in even lines. Perpendicular to them, arranged in three squares, stood the usual city guard. Not one of them
was armed. The weapons that had been theirs were in a large pile beside the fountain. Townspeople milled around the group and chattered. Men stood in circles with arms crossed, and one or two occasionally cupped their hands and shouted some insult or other at the men in red.

“Lovely,” Frank said. He jerked Henry into the next small side alley, hurried to a mound of trash, and shoved him behind a stack of crates brimful of rotting vegetables. He sat down next to him, rubbed his belly, and chuckled. “And Overt Bovinization. I’d forgotten that one.
B.O.F
. Appendix XII. Oh, this
is
a holiday.”

“Bovinization?” Henry asked.

“That’s right,” Frank said. “Cattle spells, human use. Sometimes irreversible. Sometimes fatal.”

“Frank!” Henry said.

Fat Frank jumped to his feet. “Oh, it’s just milk. They’ll have headaches and the odd gush for a moon or two and nothing more.” He moved back toward the alley mouth. “Wait here, Henry York Maccabee. Snack if you like.”

The rogue faerie disappeared around the corner, and Henry climbed to his feet. He walked slowly forward until he could see out into the square, and then more. He could see the soldiers in formation in front of the hall. A small shape ran toward them, twisted through the lines, and reached the stairs.

Henry sighed. He shouldn’t have come at all. The faerie didn’t need him. Fat Frank could find everyone alone. He reached up and scratched his jaw. His burn was prickling.
The skin around it was cold, almost numb. Shivering, he turned, and a yell froze in his throat.

Not ten feet behind him, a man stood. Tall, cloakless, dressed in black. His unnaturally dark hair was pulled into a tight knot at the back of his head. At the top of his left ear, there were three deep notches.

The man lifted a long arm and pointed at Henry’s face, at the burn. “You and I share the same blood.” His voice was strained, as if speaking were difficult. Henry couldn’t look away from the pale face and its hollow eyes. “In a way,” the man said slowly, “we are brothers.”

He smiled.

Henry stepped backward.

“I am Coradin,” the man said. He held out his hand. “Come. I will take you to our mother.”

Henry turned and ran into the square. In an instant, the man was on him. A strong hand gripped the back of his neck, and a heavy body drove him down into the cobbles. Henry didn’t notice the pain. He twisted onto his right side and kicked hard while the man’s hand shifted to his throat. Henry’s teeth found a wrist, salty skin, and the grip loosened. Yelling as loud and as long as he could, Henry rolled onto his back, freeing his right arm. His dandelion was burning. His blood was burning. His bones crackled inside him. His eyes went black. This man had killed Uncle Frank, even if only in a dream. In someplace deeper than Henry’s mind, deeper than any logic, he wanted this fight. He wanted to finish it.

Henry forced his dandelion hand into the cold face, searing icy skin. Yelling, the big man rolled off and scrambled to his feet. Henry jumped up and glanced around the square. To his eyes, it was slow with twisting stone and crawling wind. The men in red were running toward him.

The city guard had broken ranks and were racing to their piled weapons.

“Henry Maccabee!” someone was yelling. “They attack Mordecai’s son!”

Henry looked back to his enemy. The man stood still with his head tipped slightly down. He expected to see strength, angry strength winding its way out of the man, but he was nothing but coldness, and the life inside him, the soul’s spark, was tiny and slow. Something else, a great gray serpentine mass swirled behind his head. He looked up.

“Pauper son,” he said, but the voice was another’s. “Pauper son,” he said again. “My blood is in you. You cannot run.”

Henry reached into his pocket and gripped his small knife. His mind reached into the ground and gripped the earth’s breathing. He grabbed at the cobbles and the sky, and with the yelling of guards approaching and the bright shirts of the emperor’s men blurring in the background, his tongue shaped words he did not know, and he ran at his enemy.

Frank Willis sat by the window. Technically, this was his office, though it hadn’t felt like it. It felt even less like it now. His sister-in-law, Hyacinth, sat beside him, and James was
beside her. Monmouth was in the corner. None of them had been tied up, but clearly, they would be the instant they caused trouble.

The room was big. Five soldiers stood with backs against the wall on the far side. Closer, seated, rubbing his head and leaning over, clearly not enjoying himself, sat the captain of the great galley in the harbor. Beside him sat a character that was far more unnerving. At least to Frank. He was large and dressed in black. Both his cheeks were scarred, and his hair, oiled darker than it already was, had been pulled into a tight knot at the back of his head.

His eyes, deep and empty, studied each of the pseudo-captives in turn. He hadn’t spoken.

The captain looked up. “I am sorry,” he said. “But you have no choice. You and all of yours must come aboard.” He looked at Hyacinth. “Unless your husband comes alone.”

“My husband is away.” Her voice was crisp.

“So you’ve said.” The captain straightened. “You have no choice. I have no choice. You’re to be brought aboard. Those are the orders.”

Frank licked his lips. “Can’t say yes.” He wished he knew how to be diplomatic. Was there a special smile? “And I’d like to see the orders. If our emperor stuck his seal on something special for you, there’s no reason to be shy. Show it around.”

“My orders are verbal,” the captain said. “And the emperor did set his seal to something. He summoned your brother, and your brother ignored the summons. These are the consequences.”

“Right,” said Frank. “I did see that. He requested that my brother head on down as he had particular expertise in a current rumored situation or somesuch. And my brother sealed up a reply—and I don’t mean to be rude, but it seems that someone up and read the emperor’s mail—saying that he would come as soon as he could. And—here’s the kicker—he will.”

The big man in black drew in a slow breath, and then he spoke. “The witch-queen rises. The emperor commands your brother’s presence. He must answer charges about his family’s involvement in loosing that curse on the empire. He must suffer justice. He will come, and quickly. He will come for his family.”

“There was nothing about any charges,” James said suddenly.

“Then why did he run, James?” the captain asked.

James flushed. “He did not run. He’s hunting the witch now. He and my uncle are traveling into Endor itself in search of her. Is that running?”

“James,” Hyacinth said, and she shut her eyes.

“Oh, stop,” Monmouth said from the corner. The young man stretched his legs and sat up straight in his chair. His pale eyes sparked in irritation, and he ran his hands through his dark hair. His recovery after the siege of Hylfing had been slow, and his strength still was not what it had been when he had first met Henry. “The way of all kings,” he continued. “Lie and connive and order and seal and complain of dishonor and disrespect and treason. Rule by designs and plots, never by honesty.” He looked
from Frank to Hyacinth. “Can’t you see that they’ll have us one way or another? They have their designs to look after. Do not reason with them. They will lay a snare for the great Mordecai, and they cannot be dissuaded. Invite him politely or charge him with treason or kidnap his blood and bone. Mordecai will stand before the emperor, oh, and he will slip, for the floor will be greased with lies.”

“You disrespect your emperor.” James’s voice was cold.

“My emperor?” Monmouth laughed. “I have no fealty to him. My father is a king in the west. He is petty but un-conquered, and he is no better.”

“Enough,” the captain said. He looked at Frank. “Shall it be pleasant, with the ladies of the city tossing flowers at your departure? Or shall we take you trussed up in a wagon?”

Frank smiled. “Flowers make me sneeze. But I should warn you, the folk in this town aren’t over-sophisticants when it comes to trussing up the mayor and his family—no mentioning the family of their favorite hero. They might not realize that it’s all friendly and diplomatic and get a bit testy.”

The big man snorted. “Fishermen and farmers do not concern us.”

A yelling erupted outside in the square. Frank turned to the window and looked down three stories at two bodies rolling on the ground. A boy and a man dressed in black. Hyacinth stood up behind Frank.

“Henry?” she asked. The bodies separated. She gripped Frank’s shoulder. “That’s Henry.”

The yelling grew to a roar as the city guard broke ranks and rushed to their weapons. Soldiers in red moved forward to meet them.

The big man in black rose from his chair. “Now,” he said to the captain. “We do it now.” He turned to the soldiers along the wall. “Tie them.”

Monmouth leapt from his chair and a blade flicked from his fingers, but the big man cupped his head in one hand and slammed him against the wall. The young wizard slumped to the floor, unconscious, but his knife was buried in the man’s gut. He picked it out and dropped it on the floor. “Only the boy must be taken alive. Get all you can of the rest, but kill any who resist too long. We must be on the ships before the anthill swarms.”

In the south, nearer to the world’s belt, a woman rose from her dreaming and stepped out from between four trees. She walked into the sun, a cat in her arms, her eyes unfocused. A man, suspended between two trees, moaned softly behind her.

“Mordecai,” she whispered, smiling. “You would walk again in Endor?”

Near a black pool, a woman waited, kneeling with her head down. A velvet chair had been set on the grass. Beside it, a wicker cage busily peeped with young birds.

Nimiane sat. “This is for the emperor,” she said, and dropped a small scroll in front of the woman.

“Mistress.” The woman crawled away backward before standing and hurrying through the arbors.

The heir to Nimroth the Devouring, Blackstar, half-human, reached into the wicker cage and pulled out a bird. It blinked in the sun, wobbled, and slumped on her palm. She closed her fingers around it.

“The boy has grown,” she said. “But not enough.”

She opened her hand and released a small pile of ash into the wind. It swirled and descended, dusting the surface of the lifeless pond. It was a small life, but she savored it. Greater lives would come.

Inhaling slowly, she reached for another bird.

Henry
slumped into a doorway, panting. His second sight was gone, his head was throbbing, and something sharp had nicked his calf. His jaw was ice-cold. Henry touched it, and his fingers came away sticky and red. The old burn was bleeding.

He hadn’t been able to touch the man again. Coradin, or the one who worked through him, had been far too strong. Henry thought about what he’d seen, the thick, gray, spinning ropes on the back of the man’s head. They were like his own, like the fine webs that twisted out of his jaw. Is that what his would look like in the end—huge, braiding serpents? Would the witch be able to control him, too?

Henry knew Coradin could have killed him. But he hadn’t. He’d wanted to take Henry alive. And he would have succeeded if the city guard hadn’t swept over them both in their rush to meet the soldiers.

In the square, the guardsmen were drawing back now, scattering. The soldiers, disciplined in the extreme, moved through them in a dense phalanx, guarding a small group in their core.

Henry sat up, straining to see. A lean man bobbed along in the center. Uncle Frank? It was his uncle, and his mother was beside him. Henry scrambled to his feet and limped forward. But what could he do? They were surrounded by more than two hundred men.

He didn’t care. He had to do something. And then, pushing out from the soldiers, came two tall men, both in black. Both looked straight at him.

Henry turned, and with tears of anger in his eyes, he bit back the pain in his leg, and he ran. He had to get to the house, to his sisters and his cousins.

From the roof, Henrietta watched the wagon roll up the street and stop. She watched soldiers take up positions at every door and every window.

“What are they doing?” Anastasia asked.

Dotty sighed. Her arms were wrapped around Penelope. She wasn’t crying. There was no use in it. “They are coming to get us,” she said.

Una glanced over the wall. “I don’t want to go,” she said, and leaned against her sister.

“I don’t think we have much choice.” Isa’s voice was surprisingly calm. Henrietta looked at her and then back down at the street.

“We can fight,” she said.