The Cup and the Crown (21 page)

But her wings weren’t responding anymore; she couldn’t move her primary feathers. They’d become nothing but outstretched arms again, she realized; and her hands were gripping something. Her chest and hips were cradled by strong bands. And above her, holding her aloft, was a great canopy of silk—the color of garnet, embroidered all over with sunbursts in thread-of-gold. New wings of her own design, the wings of a Magus Mästare. But they weren’t as clever as her bird-wings had been. All they could do was soar, floating gently down, always down. . . .

Molly opened her eyes. A stack of books lay on the desk, and beside it a basket of materials for building a kite. Someone must have come into the room, probably knocking first, and put those things down on the table. Then whoever it was had gone out again and shut the door. Yet she’d heard none of it.

“How do you feel?” Soren asked.

“Fresh as springtime.” She looked out the window and was startled. “It’s almost dark!”

“Yes. You held on for a very long time.”

“It didn’t seem long.”

“It never does.”

She nodded. She’d spent a whole day flying.

“So, tell me,” he said, leaning forward on the desk, wearing a friendly smile, “what did you see?”

Molly felt the hair rise up on her arms. Then, quick as lightning, the armor was back on again.

“I was in a barn,” she said, “very big and very dark. And there were all these cows. . . .”

30
The Silversmith’s Shop

RICHARD STOOD AT
the entrance to a silversmith’s shop, his hat in his hand. He’d been directed to go there by Molly, who’d sent another message by her raven.

He’d never been to this particular workshop before. He’d bought his own little treasures—the tray, the cups—in the Neargate District, where they didn’t stare at foreigners or ignore them altogether as they did in the city establishments. So this visit made Richard uncomfortable. He’d had to nerve himself just to walk through the doorway.

“You the ratcatcher?” asked a very young apprentice, noting Richard’s cape and badge.

“Yes, I am.”

“Well, you’ve got the wrong place, then. Nobody called you here.”

“I’m not on official business,” Richard said, feeling once again a boy of eight years, a lowly servant expected to bow and doff his cap to his betters.

“Then why have you come?”

“To spend my gold, lad—which I earned by honest labor in the service of Harrowsgode. I believe it’s as good as any other man’s.”

The boy was taken aback by Richard’s boldness. “Shall I call the master?” he asked.

“No. We won’t bother him. I just want a few brief words with one of your fellows, Jakob Magnusson.”

“Oh,” said the boy. “He’s over there.”

“Jakob,” Richard said, pulling up a stool and settling himself on it, “I have come at the request of a lady whose name I shall not mention.” He kept his voice very low so only Jakob could hear. “She is related to you—a cousin, I believe.”

“That lady is in no position to request anything, or send anyone anywhere.”

“So one would naturally assume. All the same, she has found a way to get messages out of . . . the place where she is.”

“Yet I still don’t believe you.”

“And why not?”

“Because she’s just as incapable of writing a letter as she is of sending one.”

“Well, see, that’s changed. They’ve got teachers up there at . . . the place where she is, and she’s rather a quick study. Now why don’t we just move on to the point, which is this: the lady wishes me to ask you about a certain cup. How soon will it be ready?”

Jakob put his hand over his mouth, a small gesture of astonishment, then disguised it by rubbing his jaw. Richard had his attention now.

“I worked on it for a while after she left—or to be more precise, after my father arranged for her to be taken. After that there seemed no point. So I stopped.” He gave a little snort and shook his head. “She wanted it for the king of Westria, you know.”

“I was aware of that, actually.”

“Well, the king won’t be getting his cup, alas. My cousin isn’t going anywhere.”

Richard allowed a smile to creep onto his lips. He leaned forward and lowered his voice even further. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly what you think.”

“There’s a plan?”

“Two.”

Jakob started. “Two plans?”

“Think about it.”

He did. It took a minute.

“One to get her out of . . . her current location, and one to get . . . away?”

Richard smiled and gave the slightest nod.

“Can you tell me what they are exactly?”

“No.”

“Is time important?”

“You mean the cup? The answer is yes. The sooner, the better.”

Jakob sighed, more in resolve than despair. “I still have the gilding to do on the base, and the last of the trim. Then there’s all the enamel work—very precious business; it can’t be rushed.”

“How long?”

“A week, maybe more. I’ll have to come in early and stay late. It’s my own personal project and must be done on my own time.” He smiled now. “Tell her I’ll try to finish it in a week, and it will be
everything
she expects. Make sure you tell her that part.”

“I will, and she’ll be right glad to hear it. Now, there’s one other thing. The lady has no access to her money at present—”

“I know,” he said bitterly. “It’s in her bag, with her things, in my house
.
”

“Yes, well, the point is that she has asked me to pay you myself, and she’ll reimburse me later. I’ve brought—”

“Don’t!” he snapped. “I owe her—
my whole family
owes her—far more than the price of a chalice, considering how she was betrayed. It disgusts me to live there. It’ll be a pleasure to come to the workshop early and stay late.”

“All right, then. I’ll be back in a week to pick up the cup. In the meantime, if you should happen to be accosted by a raven—”

“Excuse me?”

“A raven, with a slip of paper wrapped around its leg—?”

“Of course!” he said, rather too loud. Then he dropped back to a whisper. “I understand now, about the messages. Very clever.”

“She is, apparently—clever. Tobias keeps mentioning it.”

“I’ll be especially friendly to ravens from this moment on, though how this particular bird will know who I am and where I am to be found—”

“I’m sure it already does. This particular raven is also quite clever. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a human living under an enchantment. Most certainly it serves the lady with impressive devotion. Now, I’d better go. You can frown when I leave, as though I forced my conversation upon you.” Richard made to rise.

“Wait.”

He sat down again.

“One last question. This plan . . .”

“Yes.”

“Is it . . . limited? To the number of persons who can . . . you understand me?”

“I do. And no. It is not like . . . a boat, say, where there are only so many seats.” He knew what Jakob was asking, but he’d let the boy do it himself.

“In that case, would you ask the lady if I might go with her?”

“I will, and I’m sure she’ll say yes.” Then, after weighing it in his mind for a moment, he added, “I’ll be going, too.”

31
The Tunnel

CONSTANCE ALWAYS SEEMED
to know when morning had arrived, though the shed in which they slept was as dark as a cave, having no windows whatsoever. Perhaps she possessed some secret dog-knowledge to which he was not privy. Or maybe she just had better ears and could hear the cocks crowing in the village. However it was, Tobias could depend on her to wake him early by walking across his chest and nuzzling his cheek with her warm, wet nose.

He gave the dog a friendly squeeze and a scratch behind the ears, then sat up and felt in the darkness for the lantern and flint.

Richard was very particular when it came to his equipment, and he insisted that light-stones, while an admirable invention, weren’t nearly bright enough for ratting at night. Nor could you adjust the degree of their light by turning a flame up or down as you could with a lantern. So he’d petitioned the Council for a special dispensation to continue using oil lamps, and his request had been granted.

When the room was lit, Tobias opened the rat-proof iron box and took out some bread and cheese. Richard always brought him the best his neighborhood cookshop had to offer: juicy meat pies, ripe cheeses, fresh fruit, plump sausages, and bread that was whiter than white—all a complete waste of money. It might have been cakes made of sawdust for all Tobias cared. Food was just fuel for his body, giving him strength for the labor ahead.

Having fed himself and the dog, Tobias dressed, rolled up his pallet, and stashed it in the corner along with the rat-proof box. Then he slipped on Richard’s heavy leather gloves and went to work removing the boards that covered the entrance to the tunnel. Constance stood, her senses primed, her muscles quivering with desire. As soon as the first board was off, she shot through the opening like an arrow, scrabbling down the stairs and into the long, dark, wonderful hole where the rats lived.

When he had the entrance completely uncovered for the day, Tobias followed with the lantern, hunching over since the ceiling was low. His back ached constantly from working in that unnatural position. But Tobias didn’t care about that, either. He just thought about the work.

When he and Richard had first started clearing the entrance, they’d noted with growing excitement that the walls and ceiling were sturdily constructed of stone blocks, most of them still intact. But breaking up the hard-packed dirt and rubble that filled the tunnel, then carrying it all out bag after bag, was slow, tedious work. And Tobias did most of it alone, since Richard had his two ratting jobs to attend to, plus disposing of the bags of rubble and running back and forth across town to get food and other supplies. If the tunnel was like this all the way through, the job could take a year or more—and even Richard couldn’t explain
that
to the owner of the house.

Then one evening when Tobias was in the tunnel, working late, swinging his pick for the thousandth time that day, he felt the barrier give way. After that, he went at the little hole like one possessed until the opening was wide enough to reach his lantern through. Only then did he know for sure that they wouldn’t have to dig the whole way out. As far as he could see by the lantern’s light, the passageway was clear, if you didn’t count the mess carried in by countless generations of rats, and their desiccated corpses, and the droppings they’d left behind.

“From now on,” Richard had said when he’d arrived later that night, “we go at it quick and dirty. No need to clear out the muck. I seriously doubt your lady cares what she walks through so long as she comes out beyond the walls at the other end. We can finish the last bit tonight, you and me together—just enough to get through, that’s all we really need. Then we go to work like demons on the far end.”

Left hanging in the air, unspoken, had been the Great Uncertainty: what they would find on the other side. Tobias had tried not to think about it as he slammed his pick into the slowly receding back wall day after day. Yet think about it he had, asking himself how
he
would have gone about hiding the egress from a tunnel. He’d have rolled in enormous boulders to cover the fill, that’s what; and the thought of that was horribly depressing: to work so hard and get so far only to run into solid rock.

Well, he told himself, they’d cross that bridge when they came to it. For now his mission was simple and clear: to break down the wall at the end of the tunnel, shovel the dirt and rocks into canvas bags, and haul them up to the storeroom for Richard to dispose of later. Then, after stretching out his back for just a moment, he’d go back in and do it all over again.

Constance helped break the tedium, trotting along beside him with her boundless energy, always on the lookout for anything ratlike, eager to show Tobias how beautifully she did the disgusting thing she’d been bred to do. (In addition to the bags of rubble upstairs, there was also a smaller one filled with the lifeless bodies of her vanquished prey.)

The “rat-muck” Richard had mentioned so lightly was more plentiful and revolting than Tobias could have imagined. The tunnel stank of it; so did Constance and Tobias. For all his care—leaving his boots and tools inside the tunnel at night, boarding it up, washing himself and the dog as well as he could with what water he had—the smell of rat urine was in his nostrils day and night.

And then there was that other thing, which was worse.

Richard had told him that the Harrowsgode folk thought plague was carried by vermin. Since then, the very sight, sound, and stink of rats became forever linked in his mind with a single terrible image: his parents laid out on their marriage bed, the baby placed between them, their spirits gone, their bodies ruined—and his little sister, Mary, not yet showing any symptoms, looking up at him and asking why Mama wouldn’t get up and make her porridge.

But none of that erased the fact that unless they finished clearing the tunnel, they would never get out. Tobias would die, probably soon, and Molly would be a captive all her life. So he offered up his suffering as a sacrifice, knowing it to be superstitious nonsense, knowing that all the rat-stink in the world couldn’t buy Molly’s freedom. But it helped to play tricks with his mind, so he chose to think that way.

Around midday Richard arrived, more than usually jolly. He’d brought some pork pies for Tobias and a pig’s knuckle for Constance.

“Sit down and have a rest,” Richard said. “And have yourself something to eat. You’ll be no use to anyone whatsoever if you pitch over dead from overwork. And you’ll be in the way, too. We’ll have to climb over your body on our way out.”

Tobias laughed, feeling the tension drain out of him. He sat and ate as he’d been instructed—though not before washing his hands—and was quite miraculously restored.