Greenglass House (35 page)

“Young man,” Mrs. Hereward said, smiling at Owen as they took their places in line, “you may be called upon to tell a story this evening. I do believe it may be you and Mr. Vinge.”

Owen smiled. “It's the least I can do, ma'am. Everyone's been so hospitable.”

“I believe I can manage one as well,” Mr. Vinge added. He sat at one of the little tables by the bow window, waiting for the others to finish filling their plates. “I've been considering and I believe I have just the one.”

“I think we'd all love to hear it, Mr. Vinge,” said Milo's mother.

“That's right,” Brandon agreed, reaching for the bowl of potatoes. He sounded casual, but there was a hard edge to his words. “Give us a tale, Mr. V. In fact, I'll help wash up after supper so we can hear it sooner.”

Mr. Vinge smiled, and Milo wondered if the smile was really as cold as it seemed, or if he was imagining it. “I'll do you one better, Mr. Levi. How about I tell it right now?”

“Er. All right, spectacular,” Brandon said warily.

“It's very interesting that we've already heard two tales about Doc Holystone this week.” Mr. Vinge leaned his elbows on the table in front of him, steepling his fingers together so they came to a point under his chin. “Holystone was one of the great smugglers of my youth, of course, and one of the most famous for leading Deacon and Morvengarde—and the city customs agents, of course—on a merry chase.”

Fenster looked up sharply from filling his own plate. “What other story?” he asked. “There was the one about the window maker yesternight, I remember.”

“Why, the one about you, Mr. Fenster,” Mr. Vinge said, surprised. “Did Mrs. Pine not mention she'd told the story of you seeing the ghosts of Doc Holystone and his son?”

Fenster relaxed. “Oh, right. She told me, I just forgot. Only you got it wrong,” he added, speaking to Mrs. Pine. “But I guess that doesn't signify. Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Vinge. Carry on.”

Mr. Vinge looked at him through narrowed eyes for a moment. Then he continued. “It was said that Deacon and Morvengarde had made Holystone their top priority; this, in a city in which they already had more agents than any other.”

“You can say that again,” Fenster muttered. Brandon, who was standing next to him, moved one long leg in what looked like a perfectly innocent motion. Fenster yelped. Brandon must've kicked him under the table.

“Sorry,” Fenster mumbled. “They did say that, though. Everybody knew it,” he added a bit defensively. “Not just . . . well, you know. Not just the runners.”

Milo cringed inwardly, and he suspected the rest of the Greenglass House regulars—Milo's parents, Lizzie, Mrs. Caraway, and Brandon—were doing the same. Only the smugglers themselves called one another
runners.

“Shut up,” Brandon said through gritted teeth. Then he nodded at Mr. Vinge. “Carry on, mate.”

Since no one so far had left the dining room, Milo took his plate to the bar, where Meddy was sitting rigidly, waiting to be last to the buffet. “He's going to give himself away,” Milo muttered. “It's just a matter of when.” Meddy nodded tightly but said nothing. Her face was stony.

Meanwhile, at his little table by the window, Mr. Vinge smiled an odd half smile. It was hard to tell whether he'd noticed Fenster's slip. He cleared his throat and continued. “So. Doc Holystone, as I'm sure everyone knows, managed to hide his identity for many, many years. It wasn't until the very week he was killed that anyone knew for certain who he was.”

Fenster frowned, and Milo could tell he was about to say something stupid. He thought maybe he knew what it was too, so he cleared his own throat and spoke up first. “Lots of people must've known,” he interrupted. “His crew, for one thing. Plus all the people he did business with. Just, they would never have informed on him. You mean none of the customs people or catalog agents knew.” Fenster gave a satisfied nod.

“Yes, of course,” Mr. Vinge said, a bit tightly. “None among the law-abiding citizens of the city knew his name, I should've said. Criminals, I'm sure, will protect their own. Yes, there were plenty who knew. They did not come forward.”

Now everyone stiffened, serving utensils momentarily stilled. Even the unflappable Clem and the lofty Mrs. Hereward looked unsettled at the harsh way Mr. Vinge pronounced the word
criminals.
Brandon caught Fenster's eye and shook his head slightly, warningly. And Milo's parents were looking very, very uncomfortable.
Criminals will protect their own.
Did letting smugglers stay at your inn count as protecting criminals?

From the hard look on Mr. Vinge's face, Milo was pretty sure
he
would say it counted.

It had always seemed to Milo that most folks in Nagspeake, if you asked them and they answered honestly, were more on the side of the smugglers than the customs agents or Deacon and Morvengarde. But Mr. Vinge, perhaps, wasn't most folks.

“The agent in charge of Deacon and Morvengarde's investigation,” he continued, “discovered the truth not long after he finally found a member of Holystone's crew willing, at risk to his own life, to give evidence.”

“To give evidence after being beaten to within an inch of his life, you mean.” This time it wasn't Fenster but Dr. Gowervine who spoke up. When Mr. Vinge looked sharply at him, the professor stared defiantly back. “Oh, please. I've studied the case of Doc Holystone for fifteen years. I've seen pictures of that crewman after Deacon and Morvengarde got through with him. The smuggling community itself raised the money to pay the costs of all the medical bills the poor man racked up after his run-in with the Deacon agents. That, in itself, is evidence that he was tortured for his information.”

“You know an awful lot about it, do you?” Mr. Vinge asked casually. Dangerously, Milo realized.
Something's happening here.

“Meddy?” he whispered, but she was still staring at Mr. Vinge, as unmoving as if she were made of stone.

“I want to hear what he has to say,” she said grimly. Something about her words made him jump. Everyone else in the room jumped too; maybe because Meddy had never spoken that loudly or that authoritatively to anyone but Milo. Even Mr. Vinge looked up momentarily with a strange expression on his face. Or maybe it wasn't Meddy's words at all but the sudden chill that cut through the dining room that made everyone pause. It was as if there were a window open somewhere that had let in a sharp gust of wind. But there was no open window, and the front door was shut tight.

“Tell them,” Meddy said to Milo, more quietly. “Tell them you want to hear too.”

Confused, he did as he was told. “I want to hear what he has to say. Finish the story.” Mr. Vinge eyed Milo for a long moment. He stared back, a little defiantly. “Go on.”

“The smuggler showed the agent a map,” Mr. Vinge said slowly, holding Milo's gaze. Milo swallowed, suddenly certain he knew what was coming next. “A map,” Mr. Vinge continued, “on which the details of Doc Holystone's next shipment were hidden, encoded in groups of dots meant to look like soundings.” He smiled, and the smile was cruel. “A shipment of weapons that would be arriving aboard Doc Holystone's ship, the
Albatross,
in a week's time.”

Meddy's fingers dug into his arm. “That's a lie,” Fenster protested. “Everybody knows Doc Holystone never ran weapons!”

“Every smuggler runs weapons at some point or another,” Mr. Vinge said, his eyes still on Milo. “Every. Single. One. Doc Holystone especially.”

“You're a liar!” Fenster snarled.

Mr. Vinge grinned. “Why do you think everyone was after him? Because he smuggled books, because he ran black iris bulbs, because he brought the city meaningless trinkets and antigravity pens? Don't be absurd. Nobody cared about that.”

This time Georgie snorted. “Deacon and Morvengarde did. They care about anything they don't get a piece of the profit on.”

“That's right! Quit hitting me,” Fenster snapped at Brandon, who was still trying to get him to shut up. “The man's a liar who says Doc Holystone ever ran weapons. He never did, not once.”

Another hard slice of cold stabbed through the room.
“I want to hear what he has to say!”
Meddy snarled. “Say it,” she hissed to Milo. The fury in her voice was frightening.

“I want to hear what he has to say,” Milo repeated, shaken.

Mr. Vinge took a sip from his cup and spoke deliberately. “Despite all their efforts, the investigating agents were thwarted. Someone had tipped Holystone off, and the man wouldn't be the legend he is if he weren't capable of pulling off some fairly miraculous getaways. This was one of those escapes. It was . . .” He shook his head and made a noise of disgust. “Well, it was something. So the smugglers escaped with their cargo—”

“Which it was copper pipes,” Fenster snarled, ignoring warning noises from Brandon and both of Milo's parents, “because there was a shortage thanks to price hikes in that infernal catalog, and none of the Quayside contractors could afford—”

“—running away like the little mice they were—”

“Now you're just being a—
Stop hitting me, Brandon!
”

“And that might have been the end of that episode if not for one thing,” Mr. Vinge went on, taking another calm sip from his mug. “The mice were gone, but there was still a chance to capture the rat who led them. The agent in charge was certain that Doc Holystone must have avoided the act of putting things on paper like the plague. He guessed that when Holystone had to resort to pen and paper, there must have been some signal to prove that those very rare written messages came from him. So while his colleagues had been busy setting up the raid on the weapons drop, the agent had turned his attention to the map. He discovered a watermark. The age of the paper led him to an equally old and venerable papermaker, and from there to a house that now, two hundred years later, belonged to a man called Michael Whitcher, who had found the old paper stock in his attic.”

According to Georgie, this was very nearly the same way Clem had tracked the Lansdegown name to Greenglass House. Milo glanced at the red-haired thief. Her face was dead pale. Meanwhile, Mr. Vinge took a folded brown sheet from his pocket and unfolded it. Milo wilted. It was the wrapping from Lucksmith Paper Merchants that Negret and Sirin had found in the Emporium along with the scrap of watermarked paper.

And I showed him Georgie's chart.
If Mr. Vinge was right, then Doc Holystone himself might have made it. Milo was acutely aware of the bag that still hung across his chest. He'd taken it from behind the tree so he'd have it wherever he sat to observe the guests during dinner, but now he wished he'd actually gone to hide it.

“Now, back to the raid. As far as Holystone probably knew, this was just another failed attempt on the part of customs. The fact that one of his crewmen had come forward was still a closely kept secret. The agent who'd found the watermark guessed that, having come so close to capture, Doc Holystone would go to ground once he'd shaken his pursuers. And there was no reason for him to suspect his identity had been compromised. So the agent left the rest to the raid and waited for the great smuggler to return to his true sanctuary.” Mr. Vinge paused and looked around the room dramatically. “A house full of stained glass that stood high on a hill overlooking the river.”

Beside Milo, Meddy was holding her breath. Her fingers were still digging into his arm.

“And this is where he hid the most important piece of the cargo he'd nearly been captured bringing into Nagspeake. A weapon, like the rest of the cargo, but a legendary, deadly, and unbelievable weapon. Something the city of Nagspeake could not permit to remain in the smuggler's hands. Something the city had been seeking for more than a century.”

“Doc Holystone never ran weapons,” Fenster howled. “Never!”

“Fenster!”
Brandon looked as though he was trying to figure out whether he should just wrestle Fenster to the ground and choke him out or knock him unconscious for a while, for his own good. He glanced at Milo's father. But before Mr. Pine could say a word, Fenster had stumbled around the table. He pointed a finger at Mr. Vinge's impassive face and blurted, “The customs spooks have always used some mysterious deadly weapon as the reason for their raids, and it's never been real. It's always been a lie! It's
always
been an excuse for coming down on the runners. The weapon you're talking about—it never existed. And even if it did, Doc Holystone would never have touched it with a ten-foot pole, do you hear me? Never! He was a
patriot.
He believed in changing things, but he didn't think weapons were the answer. Good God!”

Fenster shoved his quaking hands in his pockets and swallowed hard. When he spoke again, his voice shook. “Do you know how much money he could've made if he'd agreed to run weapons? Do you think nobody ever asked him to? People tried to hire him to run guns and explosives and war engines
all the time!
And all the time, every time, he said no.”

Mrs. Pine stepped up to the quivering smuggler and put an arm around his shoulders. “Fenster—Fenster, come with me.”

He tried to shake off Milo's mother, but Brandon stood with her now and Mr. Pine, too, and between the three of them they managed to haul him away from Mr. Vinge and out the side door onto the screened porch. Milo could just make out Fenster's dark shape through the stained-glass window in the living room as he squatted on his haunches and dropped his head in his hands. Mrs. Pine crouched next to him and put an arm around his shoulder.

Meddy squeezed Milo's arm even harder, and he felt her nails cut his skin. He was just about to repeat her words again when Georgie Moselle spoke up.

“Well, Mr. Vinge, you're some kind of good storyteller,” she said angrily. “Are you just trying to wind that poor fellow up?”