The Poisons of Caux: The Hollow Bettle (Book I) (22 page)

he dreadful King Nightshade stared out the window from his private chambers. He was looking at the mountains in the distance, particularly at the snow that draped itself over the peaks in a way he found intruding, encroaching—perhaps even invading. It was no accident that most of his time was spent in the south, on the sandy shores of the tropics there. He pictured his good foot, hale and hearty, alongside his horribly disfigured one, pale and ineffectual, walking in the white powdered sand of his favorite beach.

He thought of his beloved Kruxt now, during this Windy Season, being battered and bruised. The fruity palm trees flailing about in the gusts. The thought saddened him, so he turned his homesickness into anger once again at the looming mountains. His thoughts often went round in circles this way and might continue on for some time, after which extruding themselves in the form of a poem.

But today he was bothered by another thought.

His wife, the queen, had been single-mindedly focused on the Festival of the Winds, particularly her favorite part—the execution—and he hadn’t seen much of her at all. He felt neglected. And everywhere she went, that awful yellow man was by her side, anticipating her every need and sharing, often, a private joke or two with her. A joke, he couldn’t but somehow feel, at his expense—he was sure he’d caught the man imitating his limp. This smarmy taster was everywhere the queen was—particularly since the Royal Perfumer, once glued to Artilla’s side, had seemingly disappeared overnight. If Artilla missed her advisor and perfumer, she didn’t show it. She seemed utterly satisfied with her new taster’s attention.

And then there was the rash of poisonings he had to contend with. More than usual, by far. The servants were upset and nervous. These things rarely distressed him—if ever. But they had been affecting his quality of life, and that would never do. The king sighed.

The butcher—gone.

The last of five generations of bakers—gone, too.

The iceman—sick and unable to make his deliveries, causing vast amounts of good food to spoil, which in turn was causing a great deal more illness.

The fishmonger, the milkmaid, the stable boy—all unaccounted for.

Had the queen succumbed to her own overenthusiasm?
Was she poisoning willy-nilly? And—this thought was a particularly difficult one for him—
was he perhaps next?

For once, he grew suspicious of her and regretted his choice of his twin brother as his sole taster. The logic of using his trusted brother was wearing thin in this time of extreme need. He made a note to inquire to Verjouce for an understudy from the seminary.

And with that, he turned his back upon the hulking mountains, and the town of Templar below, and made his way over to his writing table, with some foul poetry on his mind.

It was these offending mountains off of which both Ivy and Rowan had successfully found their way.

They had sat, freezing, by the chasm’s edge, calling for Poppy to no avail. The crevasse was deep and icy blue and seemed to open up into nowhere and extend down forever. Finally, it was Rowan who insisted it was time to get warm. Ivy left behind her last token of her home, and source of great comfort, and Rowan, his new and faithful friend. A traveler passing by them (although, of course, there was none) might have seen two of the saddest faces ever to be seen before in Caux—a land, admittedly, full of forlorn faces.

The thought of Verjouce and Clothilde united against them was a chilling one and one that eventually drove them into the Abbey’s carriage house. There they found a dark sled, and frantic with fear and worry, Ivy unlashed its tethers while
Rowan flung open the wide doors. Paying no mind to their vehicle’s sinister ownership, they pushed off.

Axle had once said it would be an odd sort of carriage that could convey its passengers in both swiftness and stealth without the aid of steam or rail. But as a trestleman, he can be forgiven for this oversight, since not once had he found himself aboard a grand sled. And what a sled it was upon which Ivy and Rowan now embarked! Rich in detail, and no expense spared: it pierced the snow with a mighty stallion’s head carved of ebony, as if ready for battle. The beast’s wild eyes and frantic grimace were flecked with white as the children pushed off down the mountain pass. The cabin was warm and neatly kept, equipped with upright seats and thick woolen lap blankets, but this finery was lost upon the children, for they were each mourning their great loss. They sped down the Craggy Burls in Vidal Verjouce’s personal snow carriage, the edges of the runners honed and sharp as knives.

Finally, they came to a place where the sled could go no further: the snow was scarce, and rocks and rubble littered the pathway. An awful grating noise emerged from beneath the carriage. They left behind the black horse head to a gallery of sharp rock and to the company of no one, a wisp of fine snow swirling about its dark nostrils and lolling tongue.

The remainder of the trip was left to their own feet, and since it was not far, they were quite agreeable. By then the
view of Templar was clear, and the thought of arriving at the Knox bridge—Axle’s favorite place, after all—gave them the energy they needed to complete the journey.

The Knox! The bridge was impossible to miss. It spanned the Marcel, which here was quite wide, and harkened the beginning of the city of Templar. The Knox was like a village to itself, its tenants draped over the river with ingenuity and daring. The bridge was almost as wide as it was long, and either side of it was populated with stores and watering holes where a railing or barrier would normally be found. Some of the more outrageous buildings even reached up several stories high over the water, claiming every last inch of real estate in extreme feats of engineering.

And the din. It was a place of commerce, true, but also discord. Both Ivy and Rowan had been so used to long stretches of silence in their travels that the pandemonium they encountered at the city’s edge took them aback. As their ears adjusted to city living, their eyes were treated to a dubious breed of Cauvians—true, there were merchants and tavern keepers, as well as other similar citizenry. But they mostly kept to their storefronts and apartments. No, the Knox bridge seemed to attract little of the fine and respectable folk to its wide cobbled street, but rather, shifty-looking individuals, city dwellers up to no good.

Everywhere vendors called from movable carts. Wheelbarrows of poisonous mushrooms and droopy, suspicious-looking herbs blocked walkways. Small vials of vicious syrups clinked seductively on top shelves. Ragmen sipped pitchers of flat ale while trading in tabletops of patched clothing and old and moldy shoes from the recently deceased. Rowan was appalled to see ersatz tasters—impostors not properly trained by the Guild—floating about looking for dangerous work.

A murmur rose from the crowd ahead, and Ivy looked up in time to see a ragged man fall to the ground and a circle form around him. This man, in his short life, had been called Klaxon, and Klaxon had made a surprising number of enemies. He was common to the bridge, and once the crowd saw there was little else to see, they dispersed.

But no sooner had the dead man hit the street than a gaggle of undertakers—Rowan knew them instantly from their beaver-skin
top hats and dark suits—appeared, elbowing their way in to inspect the unfortunate. They came to an agreement among themselves, and after much nodding and negotiating, an apprentice was ordered to load the deceased into a plain wooden cart.

“Watch your pockets,” Rowan advised Ivy in her ear. He knew in tight places with people like these, a pocket might be emptied of its valuables quite expertly. He clutched his tasters’ robes tighter to his chest; with the other hand, he reached for Ivy’s.

“There’s nothing to watch,” she replied dejectedly, and Rowan felt his heart sink again at their loss.

“Here.” Rowan tried to press his small green bettle into her hand, hoping to make her feel better, but Ivy refused it.

She turned her attention back to the bridge. There were so many doors, some in the most surprising of places—every last inch of space was being used in a marvelous tribute to commerce. The little storefronts and their upstairs apartments existed in borrowed space and jutted out precariously. Laundry waved like flags, drying in the open windows.

They were standing nearest to a tavern, the Mortar and Pestle, and from inside came the notes of a lively drinking song.

Rowan was enthralled—although he knew the bridge, he had spent his previous time in Templar avoiding it (at the urging of his charge, Turner Taxus, who believed himself respectable and wanted his taster to be so, too). He had to admit he felt happy to be back in society. Not quite polite society, but it would do.

“Didn’t Axle say that the Knox was ‘an ancient place for honest trade and exchange of conventional ideas’?” Ivy asked, looking around her.

“I guess he doesn’t get out much.”

“Where do you suppose his brother lives?” Ivy wondered. There were so many places to look, and she had no idea where to begin.

“He didn’t say,” Rowan recalled. He paged through Axle’s
Field Guide
in hopes of finding a clue to the topography of the Knox. “Something strange is going on—” He frowned, perplexed. “I can’t seem to find anything. It’s all muddled. The pages are out of order in places, and look—this one’s upside down!”