The Tides of Avarice (14 page)

“They killed him,” said Sylvester heavily. “By sending him on the Exodus, they killed him.”

Celadon turned the pads of his forepaws upwards. “Who's to say? Perhaps he's still alive.”

“You don't think so, do you?”

“No.” The older lemming bowed his head. “No, Sylvester. I'm sorry, I don't.”

There was a long silence. Sylvester stared at his clenched paws, resting on the desk, through a red haze of angry tears.

Eventually he was able to force out some words. “Who was involved?”

“It was a long time ago.”

“I don't care how long ago it was. I just want to know.”

Celadon sighed. “The High Priest at the time was our present Sardonicus Spurge, although he obviously looked younger and was actually more carefree then. The Mayor was our very own Broncolard Hairbell whose appearance actually hasn't changed much. I've always been convinced that it was those two who were behind the conspiracy to get rid of your father. Anyone else involved was just a catspaw.”

“Who were the others?”

The Archivist spread his arms. “I honestly don't know. That's the truth, Sylvester. I'm not trying to shield anyone, not at this late stage in the game. There must have been minions, I'm sure, but I don't know who any of them were. I'd tell you if I did.”

“I believe you. You're a good friend to me, Celadon. Better than I sometimes realize, I think.”

“It's the least I could do for your father.”

Sylvester chose not to think about that.

He clenched his paws again and pushed himself to his feet, walking across to the window. Not far below, beyond the edge of the Library's peaceful grounds, he could see the bustle of Foxglove. Everyone was walking around on their errands without any knowledge that the world they lived in was based on a lie. They had no awareness that the people who controlled it were prepared to kill, without a moment's pause for regret, in order to maintain the illusion. There was some kind of commotion going on in the far distance, but he couldn't make out what it was.

“This can't be allowed to go on forever,” he hissed quietly. “They can't be allowed to get away with it.”

“Those are dangerous things to say, Sylvester,” came the Archivist's voice from behind him. “Dangerous even to think.”

“It's a danger I'm prepared to accept.”

“Spoken like your father's son,” said Celadon. “Which means, Sylvester, that it was a damn stupid thing to say. There's nothing to be gained from rebellion against the authorities. Go along with their fairy tales, boy. Pretend you believe in the scriptures, just like you're supposed to do. Acceptance – that's the name of the game, the key to survival.”

Sylvester banged his own forehead with the side of a fist. “That may very well be true, old friend, but it's a charade I can no longer play a part in.”

There was a long, sad sigh from the Archivist. “I should never have allowed this conversation to develop. I should have stamped down hard the moment I heard you begin to utter a word of heresy.”

“Would you have been able to live with yourself if you'd done that?”

“Most certainly. It's a compromise I've been making for decades. Besides, it's not all bad. Some of the use of language in the scriptures is magnificent. It's glorious.”

Sylvester began to snigger derisively. “You can't mean what you've just said.”

“I do. I wish I didn't, but I do.”

“Beyond these walls no one knows yet. Well, perhaps some of them are just beginning to.”

“Knows what? Don't speak in riddles, Sylvester.”

“The arrival of the strangers; it's changed everything, everything. And it seems I'm the only person who's aware of it.”

Celadon's voice grew stiff. “You're one of the most gifted translators the Library has had the privilege of employing, Sylvester, but that doesn't mean you're some kind of immortal genius who's able to understand the world better than anyone else. You're still just a youngster, with the cocksureness that drives youngsters to make stupid mistakes their elders would never make.”

Sylvester turned back to look at him.

“I know all of that,” he said. “I realize perfectly well that I'm too young to have acquired much wisdom, that there are a million things I don't know yet, that I'm a bit of a dimwit if you take the quill pen out of my hand and the parchment away from in front of my nose. But I say it again. The arrival in Foxglove of the ferret, Levantes, and now the gray fox who calls himself Robin Fourfeathers has changed everything. Our people can't look back and pretend none of it happened. Can't you feel, beneath your feet, the shockwaves beginning to spread out? If it doesn't come from these two rogues, soon there'll be others coming to our town and spreading the word about the truth of the world. The day's very soon coming when the lies we've been living by will be exposed in the glare of the sunlight for all to see.”

“But that day is not here yet,” hissed Celadon. “And until it dawns, Sylvester, you'd be wise to keep your lips tightly shut.”

“In case they do to me what they did to my father?”

“Yes, exactly. Think of how your mother would suffer if, having lost Jasper to the Mighty Enormous Cliff, she were to lose her only son as well.”

Sylvester didn't like to admit it, but Celadon had a point. Hortensia would be devastated if anything happened to the apple of her eye.

Nevertheless, he hardened his resolve. Progress was a structure built of sacrifices. Only the most cowardly would expect the sacrifices always to be made by other people.

He changed the subject.

“What does happen to the lemmings who go over the Mighty Enormous Cliff?” he said.

“I wish I knew.”

Just then, through the open window behind Sylvester, there came a long, piercing shriek of terror.

“What's going on?” cried Celadon, pushing Sylvester aside to look through the opening.

“I don't know,” he replied, but in his head, for no immediately apparent reason, there came the sound of Levantes's voice as the wounded ferret lay dying in Sylvester's arms: “Beware of … beware of appearances. He will seem yer … best friend. And he will come.”

Levantes had never said who he was, but now Sylvester could make a pretty shrewd guess.

He was the fox who went by the name of Robin Fourfeathers.

And he was already here!

Sylvester barged past Celadon, making the old lemming stagger. “Sound the alarm!” Sylvester yelled. “It's started.” He didn't wait to see whether the Archivist obeyed or not. Instead, he charged for the door. He was aware of shocked faces staring at him as he sprinted through the Library, not caring who or what he shoved aside in his dash.

The scream heard by him and Celadon hadn't reached the inner areas of the Library, but Sylvester had heard it clearly enough to recognize the voice.

Viola!

What a fool he'd been.

Last night, already aware that the gray fox was someone not to be trusted a millimeter, he'd nonetheless been jollied into admitting that Viola Pickleberry was someone special to him. The most important person in the world, to be precise. He'd admitted that the two of them were an item.

No wonder the gray fox had wanted to worm this information out of him. The only individual in the whole of Foxglove who had spent any time with Levantes was Sylvester. Levantes had died knowing something that Fourfeathers desperately, desperately wanted to learn. There was a chance, a very good chance, that Levantes had communicated something to the young lemming but, if so, the young lemming wasn't prepared to admit it. What better way to change his mind about that, to put persuasive pressure on him, than to seize the person he loved beyond even his own life?

It was so obvious, with the benefit of hindsight.

Hadn't Levantes warned Sylvester about exactly this sort of thing?

Later, thought Sylvester as he sprinted down the Library steps and along the path towards the gate. Later I can beat up on myself for being the idiot I am. First I've got to get Viola out of the jam my stupidity's got her into.

If I can …

It seemed to take him hours, and yet just the merest of moments, to reach the town square.

When he did, he skidded to a halt, aghast at what he saw.

The normally orderly lines of market stalls around the sides of the square were in disarray. Several of them had been thrown over, their wares strewn across the ground. Most of the traders had fled.

No wonder.

The area had been taken over by scores of the most disgusting looking creatures Sylvester had ever seen. There were rats, bobcats, weasels, ferrets, skunks, raccoons, possums and groundhogs, and those were only the ones he could identify. It seemed there was not one of them that hadn't been maimed in one way or another. There were wooden legs, eyepatches, hooks for paws. Amongst them, teeth bared in a hideously threatening grin, was a mongoose with only a knot of tormented flesh where his right ear should have been.

All of the invaders were heavily armed with swords, daggers, cudgels, maces – weapons he recognized only from the illustrations in old scrolls, and some he didn't recognize at all. He could even see a couple of crossbows.

No wonder the vendors had scattered.

Wait . . . not all of the vendors.

Viola's mother sold pies here on Mondays, and today was a Monday.

Some Mondays Viola helped, and today was evidently one of those Mondays.

There was a large, grease-stained rat leaning weakly against a wall, who could attest to the fact that Viola had been helping her mother today. He was still spitting out pieces of his teeth while trying to get his jawbone to fit back into its sockets.

The cause of his misery, standing just a few paces away and threatening another even larger rat with what appeared to be a rolling pin, was Viola's mother.

“I'm warning you, buster. You lay one of your filthy paws on a pie you haven't paid for and—”

“Mrs. Pickleberry!” howled Sylvester.

Viola's mother shot a glare in his direction. The rat she'd been intimidating grabbed the chance to sneak away.

“What do you want, boy?”

“Viola, where is she?”

“How the devil do you expect me to know?”

“I heard her scream.”

Mrs. Pickleberry turned back to where the rat had been and discovered it wasn't there any longer. She took two determined strides and grabbed by the scruff of his neck a mangy ocelot who'd been planning to feast on the pastries that bedecked the stall next to Mrs. Pickleberry's. She whirled the ocelot around and threw him face-first into the nearest wall. There was a sickening crump before, almost to Sylvester's relief, the ocelot started to wail in agony.

At least she hasn't killed him.

“How the blazes do you expect anybody to tell one scream from another in the middle of all this?” bellowed Mrs. Pickleberry at Sylvester. “Grab yourself a cudgel and start smashing yourself a few skulls.”

She was a tough lady, was Mrs. Pickleberry.

Any other time, Sylvester would have done exactly as she ordered him to. But he hadn't been imagining things when, from the Library window, he'd identified the scream as Viola's.

He paused then.

Viola had been known to scream just for the heck of it, high spirits, joie de vivre, call it what you will.

Sylvester's mouth set in renewed determination.

No, Viola hadn't been screaming just for fun when this cutthroat army invaded Foxglove. She'd been terrified; he'd heard the terror in her voice.

“Where is she?” he thundered.

Mrs. Pickleberry froze as if he'd administered a physical blow. When she looked at him again there was a new expression on her face, one of dread.

She dropped the weasel she'd just picked up and came storming across to Sylvester.

“Stupid ol' besom,” snarled a raccoon she'd shouldered aside. She paid him no attention as he wheeled toward her, his pikestaff held high above him, ready to strike her a killing blow. “How'd ye like me to slit yer gizzard and feed ye to the sharks?”

Mrs. Pickleberry seemed to pay him no attention at all. She didn't break stride. The rolling pin in her hand suddenly became a blur.

There was a soggy sppllattt that Sylvester hoped wouldn't haunt his dreams for the rest of his life. The raccoon vanished head-first through a shop window. His dilapidated boots remained upright in the roadway.

Sylvester gulped.

No wonder Mr. Pickleberry was always so very, very polite and deferential toward his wife.

And everyone said Viola took after her mother.

“Leave her alone,” he cried at the miscreants in a general sort of a way, feeling it was his masculine duty to do so. He wished his voice hadn't sounded so shrill and squeaky just then – a lot shriller and squeakier, in fact, than Mrs. Pickleberry's.

There was a tap on his shoulder.

He turned and found himself looking at a mass of scar tissue, on each side of which was an ear. He recognized it as a face, but with some difficulty.

“Oh, wot 'as we 'ere?” came a sarcastic voice out of a toothless mouth. “We 'as a 'ero 'amster, that's wot we 'as. And 'e wants to rescue the lady 'amster, like wot 'ero 'amsters do in books. But Jolly Jack Cutlass 'ere 'as different ideas about that.” The creature drew an immensely long, curved, blood-encrusted sword from its scabbard and swung it back, preparatory to a lethal swing. “Such as, 'ow do 'ero 'amsters do any rescuing when they is in two 'alves? Lessee now. They could—aaargh!”

There was another of those terrifying blurs and Sylvester's assailant dropped, amid a spray of blood, like a stone to the ground.

For a moment, Sylvester thought the swordsman must be dead, but then the creature started pawing its way through the dust in a very slow attempt to escape.

“You want to know where Viola is?” came Mrs. Pickleberry's harsh voice in Sylvester's ear.

“Yes. I heard her scream and I simply can't find her.”

“Last I knew, she'd gone off with some of her fancy friends to have a preprandial cocktail in the Snowbanks.” Mrs. Pickleberry jerked a claw back over her shoulder toward the tavern. “If Lady Muck was screaming, it was prob'ly because she discovered the olive wasn't to her taste.”

Mrs. Pickleberry spat on the ground expressively, then with a swish of her rolling pin felled a marauder who'd made the mistake of charging at her while swinging a morning star around his head.

“I've never seen Viola so much as look at a cocktail in her entire life,” protested Sylvester.

“Well, yes. I was exaggerating a bit. She went off near an hour ago to fetch herself some lunch – as if her mother's individually home-baked pies weren't good enough for her.” Sylvester, who'd had one of Mrs. Pickleberry's pies and understood Viola's point entirely, did his best to look appalled at the girl's effrontery. “She hasn't come back yet,” concluded Mrs. Pickleberry. “She's had her head turned, I'll warrant, by some smooth-talking—”

BANG!

For a moment, Sylvester and Mrs. Pickleberry just gaped at each other, ears ringing.

“What in the heck was that?” gasped Sylvester before he realized Mrs. Pickleberry couldn't hear him.

He could barely hear himself.

BANG!

He registered the second explosion only in a sort of muffled way, thanks to the residual effects of the first.

The marauders didn't seem concerned by the interruption or by the smell of rotting eggs hanging in the air, but carried on looting and vandalizing much as they had been.

Mutely, Sylvester pointed past Mrs. Pickleberry towards the door of the Snowbanks Inn.

Standing there, holding a strangely shaped metallic apparatus and blowing smoke from its tip, was Fourfeathers.

His other arm was around the neck of a struggling Viola. As Sylvester's hearing returned he could make out the noise of her grunting and gasping as she tried to prize the bigger animal's muscular arm off.

“Take your hands off me you . . . you stinking heap of manure.”

Mrs. Pickleberry growled.

Sylvester reached out and put a restraining paw on her arm. “If you move against him now,” he whispered, hoping against hope she could hear him through her rage, “you'll have every single one of his cutthroat crew descend on you. You'll just get yourself killed and you won't be any use to Viola if you're dead.”

Mrs. Pickleberry nodded reluctantly, but Sylvester could feel her muscles tensing as she fought the urge to go to the aid of her daughter. The same struggle was going on inside himself.

Robin Fourfeathers, or whatever his name might be, slowly and deliberately gazed in Sylvester's direction. Gone were the ragged, road-dusted clothes he'd been wearing yesterday. Today he was dressed in a black leather vest, black leather trousers and black boots. His arms, hidden by his jacket yesterday but now revealed, were covered with old scars and tattoos; he had half a dozen earrings in each ear. Despite himself, Sylvester conceded that the fellow cut a dashing figure.

“Oh, there you are,” called the big gray fox chattily, as if they might be two acquaintances who'd run into each other at some social gathering. “Young Sylvester, my good friend and drinking buddy. How's your head feeling?”

“At least it's still on my shoulders,” said Sylvester as loudly as he could. “Which is more than yours is likely to remain for long.”

A loud hissing noise filled the square as the cutthroats sucked in their breath.

“'E's bein' disrespectful at Cap'n Rustbane,” said a voice somewhere. “The Cap'n don't like being disrespectfulled at – not at all, 'e don't.”

But Cap'n Rustbane (assuming the big gray fox who'd called himself Robin Fourfeathers was Cap'n Rustbane) didn't seem disconcerted at all.

“Pluckily spoken,” said the fox, as if solemnly adjudicating a competition, “and especially so in the circumstances. Remind me not to hang you after you've given me the map.”

“Map?”

“Yes, map. Approximately one-third of it anyway. Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about.”

Sylvester's mind was racing. He knew what a map was, because Celadon had told him, but he'd never actually seen one. All those little shapes and squiggles at the bottom of the torn sheet must be places, or geographical features of some kind – towns, perhaps.

“What's a map?” he said, stalling for time. Beside him, Mrs. Pickleberry's knuckles cracked audibly as she tightened her grip on the rolling pin.

Rustbane let out an exasperated sigh. “Sylvester, you are, are you not, the proud possessor of the job description, Junior Archivist and Translator of Ancient Tongues, no?”

Sylvester mumbled an admission that, yes, this was indeed the case.

“In which case,” Cap'n Rustbane carried on without apparently paying Sylvester's mumble any attention at all, “it is inconceivable that you don't know what a map is. Kindly do not waste my time, and the time of everyone else here, by pretending otherwise.”

His vocabulary has changed, thought Sylvester. His accent too. He put them on as disguises when he was acting the part of Robin Fourfeathers, minor ne'er-do-well and trickster. I wonder if this is what he really sounds like or if it's just another disguise.

Before Sylvester could respond to Rustbane, another voice cut across the square.

“Stop bullying the boy, whoever you are, and let go of the girl at once.”

Rustbane's eyebrows seemed to darken as he shot a hard stare toward the newcomer. “And you are?”

“Celadon, the Chief Archivist and Librarian of Foxglove, but that's unimportant. Who I am is someone who doesn't require the back-up of half a hundred armed ruffians in order to persecute young people who have no weapons and can't defend themselves.”

Sylvester could see something he never expected to see on the gray fox's face: shame. It was there for only a moment, but it was there.

Slowly Celadon advanced across the square. Every eye followed his progress. Even Viola ceased her struggles.

“Let the girl go,” the Archivist repeated, more quietly this time.

“Why should I?”