The Curse of the Gloamglozer (9 page)

Maris started. It wasn't the first time she'd wondered whether her old nurse could read minds. If she hadn't already been so red in the face from the heat, she would have blushed with embarrassment. ‘We're getting on all right,’ she said.

‘More than all right, if you ask me,’ Welma persisted. ‘After all, why else would we be making him Wodgiss spiced scones?’

Maris whisked the mixture more vigorously. Glops of it splattered down her front, on the table, on the floor. ‘Like I told you,’ she said, ‘we're getting on all right.’

‘Only you did say you thought he was a little…’ Welma placed the lid back on the bubbling pot ‘… rough and ready.’

Maris snorted. ‘Well, he is,’ she said.

‘Hmm,’ said Welma thoughtfully. ‘Your father certainly seems to think highly of him,’ she added.

Maris's lips pursed. ‘Does he?’ she said, and began beating the mixture so violently that a huge dollop landed in her face. ‘
Ugh!
’ she exclaimed and the bowl slipped from her arm and fell to the stone floor with a loud
clang
!

‘NO!’ Maris shouted and burst into tears. ‘Oh, Nanny,’ she sobbed. ‘I'm hopeless! I'm useless! I can't do
anything
right!’

‘Maris, my little sugar-dumpling,’ said Welma, her face crinkling up with concern. She trotted across from the stove, wrapped her arms around Maris's waist and squeezed her tightly, warmly. ‘There, there,’ she whispered, as she reached up and wiped Maris's face clean with her apron. ‘Don't fret so. It's only a bit of batter.’

‘But I've ruined it,’ said Maris. Scalding tears streamed down her cheeks. ‘We're going to have to start all over again. Separating the snowbird eggs, sifting the barley flour, grinding the spices…’

Welma pulled away and glanced down at the floor. She shook her head. ‘No we won't,’ she said. ‘Look!’

To her surprise, Maris saw that the ironwood bowl
had landed on its base. None of the mixture – frothy light as it was – had been spilt. She picked it up, placed it on the table and wiped her eyes.

‘You see,’ said Welma, taking Maris by both hands, ‘things are never so bad as they first seem.’

Maris flinched.
Never so bad as they first seem.
The words echoed in her head.
Never so bad as they first seem.
She tore her hands away. ‘No, they're not,’ she laughed bitterly. ‘They're worse! Far far
far
worse!’

‘Why? How?’ said Welma. ‘What in Sky's name are you talking about, child?
What
is worse?’

‘Everything!’ wailed Maris. ‘I mean, I try …’ she sobbed. ‘I try so
hard
. But Father never even seems to notice me. Whatever I do. I know it's not his fault. He … he spends so many hours on that Great Work of his, and – oh, Welma, I do worry about him so. He never even seems to sleep…’

Welma nodded sympathetically. She was only too aware of how much the young mistress worried about her father.

‘And then
he
comes along.
Him!
That cocky little know-it-all son of a sky pirate, QUINT!’

‘But you said you were getting on all right,’ said Welma, patting her arm.

‘We are,’ said Maris. ‘But now my father's got even less time for me. It's all “QUINT, can you do this? QUINT, can you do that?”' She looked away. ‘It's as if he'd rather have a son than a daughter…’

‘That's
enough
, Maris,’ said Welma sharply. She shook her head. ‘All this carry-on! I mean, I'm not saying that
the Most High Academe doesn't spend too much time on his work. He does. But that doesn't mean he loves you any the less. Work is work and family is family and…’

‘And Quint is both!’ she said. ‘Work
and
family.’

‘He's not,’ said Welma.

‘He
is
,’ said Maris. ‘Father includes him in everything. Sending him on errands, giving him tasks …’ She looked up angrily. ‘He's never given
me
a task!’

‘He's made him his apprentice,’ said Welma gently. ‘
That's
what apprentices do.’

‘Yes, but what was it he told Wind Jackal?’ said Maris, still fighting back the tears. ‘ “While Quint is here, he will be like my own son.”
His own son!
You see! Work
and
family. He is both! And where does that leave me?’

‘Maris, my treasure,’ said Welma, ‘if you don't mind my saying, you're sounding a bit jealous.’

‘Jealous?’ Maris stormed. ‘Don't be ridiculous! Jealous of that oaf. I'm not jealous, I'm … I'm …’ Her lower lip trembled. ‘Lonely,’ she said at last, her voice small and wobbly.

Welma shook her head sadly. ‘Oh, Maris,’ she whispered.

‘I can't help it,’ Maris blurted out. ‘It's just the way I feel…’

‘
What you feel is what you feel
– that's what we woodtrolls say.’ She patted Maris on the shoulder. ‘And
knowing
how you feel is the first step to
changing
how you feel,’ she said. ‘If you really want to.’

Maris shrugged. She still felt like crying. ‘How can
I
change if nothing else changes?’ she said. ‘I mean, if
Father continues to work so hard and Quint takes all his attention the whole time…’

‘Well,’ said Welma, ‘you must make things change.’

‘How?’ said Maris.

Welma's eyes twinkled. ‘Let's look at this logically,’ she said slowly. ‘You feel your father ignores you. You can't seem to get close to him. And you're lonely. Quint, on the other hand, seems close to him, but is new here. He doesn't have any friends. I would think he was a little lonely himself. He probably needs someone his own age to talk to. So…’

‘So, I ought to make friends with Quint?’ said Maris.

Welma smiled. ‘Let's just say that I don't think it's any bad thing us preparing delicious Wodgiss spiced scones for tea,’ she said. ‘So, come on then, Maris. You dollop out the mixture into the baking trays while I give the oven a final blast of the bellows, and…’

‘And when they're in the oven,’ said Maris.

‘Yes?’ said Welma.

‘Can I scrape the bowl?’ she asked.

Welma smiled so hard that her eyes disappeared and her button-nose creased back on itself. ‘Of course you can, my little sugar-dumpling,’ she said. ‘Of course you can.’

In the upper gallery of the kitchen, far above the heads of the young mistress and her woodtroll nurse, stood a solitary figure, his head swathed in the clouds of steam. It was Quint.

Too tired after his long night in the Great Library to do any of Wordspool's homework, yet far too excited to sleep, he had taken to the palace corridors once again. The whole place fascinated him.

He'd just stumbled upon a music chamber. It was amazing. On the platform stood a klavinette – a keyboard instrument that seemed to produce sound by the internal plucking of its strings. Beside it were three chairs, each with a different instrument on it. One was a wind instrument, one was a string instrument, while the third was a combination of the two, with a bow leaning up against the back of a chair. It was made from the outer carapace of some giant barkbeetle, with a hollowed length of lufwood and woodcat gut. From what he could make out, it was designed to be bowed and blown at the same time.

What impressed Quint most was the fact that, thanks to the attentions of the faithful spindlebug Tweezel, the room was so clean. And not just clean – but
ready
. At any moment, that quartet of musicians could walk through the door, pick up their instruments and play as if nothing had ever happened.

And it was the same in the other rooms he stumbled across as he roamed the corridors, storey after storey, trying door after door. Room after room, each one lovingly tended to – yet so still, so unused.

There was the ground-floor Caucus Ante-Chamber – a wood-panelled room with leather chairs once used by the senior librarians who, following the death of the previous Most High Academes, would cluster together there until they had selected a new one. And on the third storey, the Gift Chamber where cavernous glass cabinets housed generations of officially received gifts – everything from a set of crystal woodgrog goblets to a stuffed and gilded banderbear. Further along the corridor was the Portrait Gallery with its paintings of Most High Academes – each one carefully dusted – stretching back down the centuries. Some were famous, like Ferumix the mathematician and Archemax, whose philosophical musings on light had once been considered heretical. Others were nonentities, forgotten even before the white ravens in the Stone Gardens had picked their bones and set their spirits free.

Quint had stood looking at the portrait of Linius Pallitax for several minutes. It smelt of fresh paint and, from the dates on the plaque below, he could see that
it was the first new painting to have been hung in decades – one more of the old traditions to have been reinstated by the current Most High Academe.

Certainly, the likeness was good; the hooked nose, the wispy beard and the ears, almost twisted at their tips, had all been faithfully reproduced. And as for the eyes, the artist had captured the expression in them perfectly – that sparkle of childlike eagerness, tempered by a haunted look of…

‘What
is
that look?’ Quint murmured. ‘Weariness? Despair? Fear?’ He shook his head. ‘Or perhaps a combination of all three?’ He sighed. ‘But
you're
not going to tell me, are you?’ he said to the portrait. ‘I'll have to find out for myself.’

As Quint closed the door of the Portrait Gallery behind him, all thought of the Most High Academe vanished. The smell now filling the corridor was intoxicating. Sweet, fruity, laced with honey and spices – it reminded him so much of the oakapple cordial his mother had made all those years ago. Head raised and nose up, Quint followed the smell along the corridor, down the stairs, to the rear of the palace and through a small door…

‘
Mmmm
,’ he sighed. He had found the source of the mouthwatering smell. Clouds of it wafted round his head, billowing up from somewhere far below.

Quint walked forward to the stone balustrade and looked over. Between the clouds of steam, he could see several massive pieces of machinery. At first he thought he must have stumbled across some kind of workroom,
but a closer look revealed that – as the smell of cooking itself suggested – he was standing on the gallery above a vast kitchen. The huge machines were merely ovens, boilers and broilers, on a scale large enough to feed the army of academics and domestic staff who must once have filled the erst-while Palace of Lights. Now, as the Palace of Shadows, the number it housed was down to five and, like so much else in this great building, the kitchen apparatus remained carefully tended but unused.

‘But
someone's
cooking on
something
,’ he murmured. He could smell the simmering oakapples. He could almost
taste
them.

Quint peered down. The steam was coming from directly below him. There must be a stove there, he thought, just out of sight – and he was about to move round to the other side of the gallery to check when…

‘QUINT!’

Quint jumped.

‘QUINT!’

The voice was coming from down in the kitchen. It was Maris.