The Winter Knights (22 page)

Still, that had actually worked out pretty well in the end, he remembered, with Vendix banished from the academy and he, Vilnix, becoming the favourite of Hax Vostillix …

But no, none of these things could explain the cold hatred for Quint that gripped his heart.

At the first landing, Vilnix paused. Down the corridor to his right was a gaggle of his fellow-squires, laughing at some joke or other. Phin, Tonsor, Quiltis … When they saw him, they stopped and moved away.

Well, the joke was on them, thought Vilnix, with a bitter little smile. While they cold-shouldered and ignored him, he had been paying each of them particular attention. The gaunt young squire had discovered that there were all manner of ingenious little potions on offer in the viaduct schools. You just had to know where to look.

Quiltis Wistelweb had never managed to work out why the notes he worked so hard on kept disappearing – but then why
should
he suspect the ink in his inkpot was to blame? And Belphinius Mendellix; why
would
he question the reason he kept oversleeping. Surely it couldn't be the little pouch stuffed into the lining of his pillow, could it? And as for Tonsor, no matter how many times he'd washed his robes they'd remained annoyingly itchy – but then the soap couldn't have anything to do with it, could it?

And then there was that very special vial he had, sealed with green wood-wasp wax and kept hidden away. The one that Vilnix was saving …

He reached the bottom of the dormitory ladder and smiled to himself. Cunning, malice, treachery and deceit – yes, that was what it took to get to the very top. Quickly, he climbed the rungs of the ladder, opened the doors to his sleeping closet and crawled inside. Then, having lit the lamp and made himself comfortable on the mattress, he pulled the barkscroll from his inside pocket and untied the ribbon – slowly, deliberately, and savouring every moment.

He'd thought long and hard about what he was going to do to Quint. Disappearing ink, drowsy-herb pouches and itching-soap were all very well for the others, but Quint deserved something better – something altogether nastier. Vilnix had even been toying with the idea of his special vial … But no, that was to be used only as a last resort.

And now this barkscroll letter had quite literally fallen into his hands. He felt sure it would be good. Just
how
good, he couldn't wait any longer to find out. With a soft cackle of amusement, he unrolled the barkscroll and held it to the light.

Dear Quint,
he read.
Thank you for the lovely long letter you sent. It was so good to get all your news. Your friend Stope gave all eight scrolls to me in the market square, hidden inside a beautifully wrought lullabee burner that he said he'd made himself. I told Dacia that I'd bought the burner in the marketplace, and she didn't think any more about it. So you see, your plan worked. How clever of you both!

I liked Stope as soon as I saw him, and I like him even more now that I have read your letter – and how beastly those furnace masters are to him. They sound like real woodhogs! Your other friends sound nice, too. Phin and Raffix … Oh, how I hope that one day I'll get to meet them all.

You won't forget me, will you, Quint, when you're a high and mighty knight academic up there in your beautiful floating city? I can hardly believe I've just written ‘your’
floating city, when once I thought of it as ‘my’ floating city. Yet it seems so far away now …

Still, it was lovely to hear how well you're doing. I'm sure you will be one of the squires sent up to the Upper Halls. But even if you're not, Quint, it is a great honour to be an academic-at-arms, so you mustn't be too disappointed.

I'm sorry the hall masters you liked are in disgrace – especially poor Philius Embertine. He was a great friend of Father's and I'm so sad that he is ill. Hax Vostillix always was too proud for his own good, at least that's what Father used to say. Which brings me to the point of this letter.

Vilnix glanced involuntarily towards the little door of his sleeping closet, just to make sure that no-one had followed him up the ladder and was, even now, peeking through the gap. Then, shifting round where he sat, he pulled the lamp a little closer.

You know I told you how Heft and Dacia, my so-called guardians, were always pestering Father for favours because he was the Most High Academe, and they were related? Well, it seems that a tilder doesn't change its stripes!

Heft's latest trick was to try and get the Professors of Light and Darkness to make him Master of the Treadmills on the East and West Landings. I know this, because he forced me to sign the barkscroll that he sent to them. You should have seen it, Quint! Heft went on about how they owed it to the guardian of Linius Pallitax's only child to make sure that he could look after her in the manner to which she was accustomed.

If they only knew that I'm locked up in an icy room all day, and hardly ever allowed out!

Well, of course, the professors were having none of it. They wrote back and told Heft politely that, while I had their express permission to visit Sanctaphrax any time I liked, no special favours could be accorded to my guardian. And what's more, that reports of Heft's cruelty to the hammelhorns he owned in Undertown showed he was not to be trusted with any creatures, especially the prowlgrins and giant fromps working on the treadmills.

That last bit really made Heft mad! He said that he'd get even with the twin Most High Academes if it was the last thing he did, and then he locked me in my room as if it was all my fault! Though not before muttering something about his good friend, Daxiel Xaxis, and how it was time to teach those high and mighty academics a lesson …

Isn't Daxiel Xaxis the Captain of the Gatekeepers? And doesn't he work for Hax Vostillix?

Heft is up to something, Quint, I'm sure of it. And whatever it is, it has something to do with that Knights Academy of yours.

Meanwhile, I'm stuck in this freezing room without even my little lemkin for company. I'll try to get this letter to Welma somehow. Please think of me, Quint, and write soon,

Your friend, Maris.

P.S. I think that squire, Vilnix Pompolnius, sounds horrible! But perhaps you're right, and he is just lonely and insecure and needs a friend. You try to see the best in everyone, Quint. That's what makes you such a good friend.

The colour drained from Vilnix's face. ‘Horrible?’ Lonely and insecure?’ he muttered. ‘Needs a friend?

At last, the exact reason why he hated Quintinius Verginix so much was beginning to dawn on him. It wasn't that he was such a goody-goody, or sucked up to the professors, or even that he was best friends with the snooty daughter of none other than Linius Pallitax himself.

No, what Vilnix really hated; what he loathed with a fury that even now was clenching his stomach into knots and made his heart thud sickeningly in his chest, was the fact that Quint felt sorry for him. That he returned his hatred with pity!

Pity!

The insolence! The nerve! How dare he?

Tears of fury sprang to Vilnix's eyes. He hadn't come this far to fall for the oldest trick in the book. Friendship was for failures and weaklings. Where there was friendship, there was betrayal …

Slowly, Vilnix began tearing the barkscroll into very small pieces. And with each rip, he felt a little better, until a broad grin was plastered across his face – and the barkscroll letter was little more than sawdust on the tilderwool blanket.

‘So, Quintinius Verginix,’ Vilnix said, his voice a rasping whisper. ‘You want to make friends, do you?’

•CHAPTER FOURTEEN•
THE FORGER

P
erule Gleet drew his grubby, paint-spattered robes of ‘viaduct’ blue tightly round his thin, angular body and shivered. It was freezing in the cluttered tower of the School of Colour and Light Studies, and had been for so long that the cold seemed to have seeped through his pores, chilling him to the marrow and making his joints stiff and painful.

But then, thought the old academic, he was no worse off than anyone else. It was freezing everywhere in Sanctaphrax these days.

It didn't help, of course, that several of the tiny diamond-shaped panes of glass in his leaded windows were cracked or missing completely, allowing the icy wind to whistle through the gaps; nor that the fire in his lufwood stove had gone out hours earlier. He'd run out of logs to burn, and given the exorbitant price of wood these days, it would be a while before he could afford to buy any more to light a new one.

He sighed, and rubbed his hands together, the finger-less gloves he was wearing rasping softly.

The trouble was, every last bit of timber was needed for those great burners which had been suspended from the East and West Landings. All that was left for the academics to keep themselves warm were chippings and splinters, and assorted fragments of bark that made more smoke than heat. Why, only the other day, Ferule had been so desperate he'd actually burned several wood panels that he'd prepared for portraits.

It was madness, he knew, for without wood panels to paint on, he'd lose his livelihood. But he was desperate. Then again, wasn't that exactly what they were doing with those huge log burners – desperately burning timber in order to buy time for the Knights Academic to find stormphrax?

Ferule crossed the studio to the window and rubbed the jagged patterns of frost from the glass. He put an eye to the small circle he'd made, like a spy at a keyhole, and peered out.

No stormchasing voyage today, he noted, as he surveyed the yellowy grey, snow-filled sky. It was far too cold. Mind you, he thought, that didn't always stop them. Sighing wearily, he sat back down at his easel and shook his head.

It had all seemed so promising when Screedius Tollinix had set off aboard the
Windcutter
. Now there was a
real
knight academic for you! The finest in the academy …

Yet that had been three long months ago and, despite the inevitable rumours of sightings and stories of what might or might not have happened, there had been no concrete news of his well-being or whereabouts since then. The great Screedius and his magnificent sky ship had simply vanished into the heart of the Great Storm, never to be seen again.

And he was just the first of many knights academic to depart. Every time the dark anvil clouds boiled up and the air filled with sourmist particles, another one of them had been selected to sail forth. All of the original thirteen knights academic-in-waiting had now gone, with Screedius Tollinix the only one of them who had got even close. As for the others -Hophix, Dantius, Queritis, Phlax, Willandis, Xallix, and all the rest - their sky ships had turned turvey within minutes of launching into the air.

It was the flight-rocks. They just couldn't be controlled in this awful cold. And after poor old Xallix Flint's sky ship, the
Misthazvk,
had shot straight up into Open Sky in front of the horrified crowds assembled on the Viaduct Steps, Ferule had stopped going to the launches altogether. They could ring that bell on the Great Hall all they liked, but he for one had lost his appetite for the spectacle.