“Quillifer,” he said, “have you recovered your father’s chain? His alderman’s chain, I mean?”
I had given up my seat, and was not inclined to give up anything else. “It was lost in the fire,” I said, the truth as far as it went.
“The chain belongs to the office,” Gribbins said, “not to the bearer. If you were to find it, you should return it to the council.”
Judge Travers had begun a fund to pay the ransoms of the corsairs’ captives, and in a spasm of anger, guilt, and frustration, I had donated half the money I’d recovered from my father’s strongbox. The chain I fully intended to keep as a memory of my father—or, if necessary, to sell it link by link to support myself in the capital.
“The house was burned,” I said. “And my family with it.”
The apothecary made a fussy little tilt of his head. “Can’t be helped, I suppose.” And then he frowned. “I see you carry a sword.”
“I took it from one of the corsairs, sir.”
“Did your father have a grant of arms?”
I blinked. The pertinence of armorial bearings escaped me.
“No,” I said. “He didn’t.”
“If your father did not have a grant of arms,” Gribbins said, “he was not a gentleman, and neither therefore are you. I do not mean to say anything against your condition, but nevertheless you are not entitled to bear a sword in public.”
“Ah.” I considered this, and put on a dutiful-apprentice face. “May I keep the sword until we are out of range of the enemy? I should prefer not to be without a weapon.”
While Gribbins gnawed on this matter, I glanced at Lord Utterback, and saw a glint of sardonic amusement in the young man’s eyes.
“Keep the sword,” Utterback said.
Gribbins chewed his lip. “Are you certain, my lord?” he asked. “I wish to be most observant of all the regularities, so as not to bring disrepute upon the dignity of the Embassy.”
Utterback closed his eyes and leaned his head against the plush velvet cushion. “He may keep the sword,” he said.
“Keep it now? By which I mean, for the present? Or also in the capital? Would that not be irregular?”
I did not stay for the answer, if there was one, but instead climbed onto the carriage roof, where my fellow drudges welcomed me with the smirks plain on their faces. There were four of them: the coachman, reeking of brandy, and three footmen, each armed with a hardwood truncheon and a blunderbuss. I sat and looked out over the square to see if Travers had witnessed this valuable lesson in humility, but apparently, the judge had left the scene.
The driver snapped his whip, the postilion kicked his lead horse with his special reinforced boot, and the great carriage groaned into motion. It swayed across the square and onto Eastgate Street, nearly deserted, and with burnt-out buildings gaping amid the others like the black stumps of broken teeth in a prizefighter’s smile. I couldn’t help but compare this dispiriting sight to the bustle that had carried me down Royall Street only days before, the great pulse of sailors and hucksters, carters and shopkeepers that had flowed through the veins of the city.
Soon enough, the carriage passed beneath the gatehouse and out into the country. It was a fine autumn day, the sun bright and the air cool, and it was no hardship to be in the open.
I looked past the two footmen on the rear seat and watched Ethlebight lurch out of sight. Before the raid, the city held eight thousand people, with another six or eight thousand in neighboring villages, farms, and estates. The reivers had taken four thousand at least, according to Judge Travers’s inexact poll, and could have taken more if they wished—and probably they hadn’t so wished, because their raid had been successful beyond their most ambitious dreams. They had as many captives as their ships could carry, and no need to seek more.
And for the most part, they had taken the best. After scaling the harbor wall on ropes and rope ladders—for sailors climb well—and then taking the River Gatehouse, the invaders had split into several groups, each with its own mission. The New Castle was taken as easily as the gatehouse, and the other gates were secured. And then groups set to work rounding up loot and captives, attacking first the wealthiest districts of the town, then expanding outward.
The Lord Mayor had been taken, most of the aldermen, the Lord Lieutenant and the Warden of the Castle, and the chief merchants like Gregory Spellman. Countinghouses had been plundered, taking even the contracts and deeds. A few hundred were killed when they resisted, and a few hundred more when they proved unworthy of ransom.
With the best folk gone, survivors now squabbled over what remained. The Cobbs and Sir Stanley, Gribbins and the supine Lord Utterback. Picking through the ashes, preening over the prospect of new titles and new dignities.
And none of them speaking aloud what to me was perfectly obvious: that the city had been betrayed. Someone who knew the way had taken the enemy fleet through the twisting channels that separated Ethlebight from the sea, and directed the corsairs to where they could find the most plunder and the richest hostages. The raid had been planned by a mind that knew the city intimately.
Perhaps it was wise for the city not to consider this at present. A hunt for a traitor would be a distraction, especially as the turncoat had almost certainly sailed from the city with his new friends and his share of the loot. At best, they would find a scapegoat, hang him, and the real villain would go free.
But still, that traitor had killed my family, and I groped in my own mind for a name that seemed just out of reach. Someone who hated the city, or who had suffered a reversal of some sort and taken this obscene way to fill his empty coffers . . .
No name presented itself. And the carriage lurched and shuddered its way east, and left the plundered city and its mysteries behind.
CHAPTER FIVE
To the Worthy and Esteemed Mercer Kevin Spellman, from his schoolfriend, the unproven ambassador Quillifer, Greetings:
The Embassy Royal stayeth a third night in Amberstone, as Master Gribbins hath not yet received the worship and acclaim of every single inhabitant thereof. There will be another banquet tonight, in the guild hall, & a breakfast tomorrow at the expense of the Worshipfull Guild of Apothecaries, & because the splendor & gravity of the Embassy knoweth no limit, Master Gribbins will wax full of rhetoric & windy addresses, all of which will be placed in his mouth by his suffering secretary, who feeds the Ambassador’s vanity with bonbons verbal, as ladies feed their spaniels. Surely no more ridiculous progress has been seen in the nation, at least since the Fool Pretender marched to his execution, while thinking he marched to his throne.
The logomania of the apothecary is met by the silence of Lord Utterback, who endures the prattle all the hours of the day & utters barely a syllable in response. His lassitude is remarkable to behold, and sometimes I wonder if he is simply an imbecile. (Do you like “logomania?” I made it up.)
I suppose you will have heard of the death of good King Stilwell in Bretlynton Head, of a sudden illness on his progress to Howel. We encountered the messenger three days ago, riding post to Ethlebight. The gods rest our King, sith the Pilgrim will not care.
The King had crossed the sea before the corsairs attacked Ethlebight, and our embassy would not have caught him even if we had ridden the fastest horses in the kingdom. But the rider told us the princesses are still in Selford, and will remain there until our new Queen Berlauda is enthroned on Coronation Hill. As monarchs often mark their accession by acts of generosity, I hope we may move her majesty to render aid to our city, at least if we arrive before our backsides are shaken to bits by the coast road.