The Winter Knights (23 page)

These days, it seemed, all it took was a whiff of sour-mist for that crazy hall master, Hax Vostillix, to order another stormchasing voyage. Why, those they were now sending were little more than squires, newly-knighted and still wet behind the ears. But then the Knights Academy was desperate – and it was a desperation shared by every single inhabitant of the great floating city, from the twin Most High Academes down to the lowliest minor-school servant.

And with lufwood logs at eight gold pieces a bundle, thought Ferule, rubbing a bony hand thoughtfully over his jutting jaw, who could blame them?

Just then, a thin tinkling sound broke the silence and Ferule's pale yellow eyes looked up at the small silver bell on the wall above him. It twitched as the bell-pull was yanked again and, with a weary sigh, Ferule climbed to his feet and made for the tower's spiral staircase.

‘Who in Sky's name can
that
be?’ he grumbled as he descended the stone stairs, made slippery by a layer of frost.

Ferule had no portrait sitters arranged for this late in the day, and he was certain there were no ‘special’ commissions due just at the moment. The bell tinkled a third time.

‘Yes, yes, I'm coming,’ he grumbled. ‘Hold your prowlgrins!’

Reaching the front door, he pulled back the heavy bolts, top and bottom, and drew it open an inch, before pressing one yellow eye to the gap. A thin, sallow-faced youth dressed in the white cloak of a Knights Academy squire stood glaring back at him through a pair of tinted snow-goggles.

‘Yes? Can I help you?’ asked Ferule suspiciously. ‘There's no fuel here, if that's what you're after.’

‘Do I look like a timber scrounger?’ said the youth, fixing the academic with a contemptuous look. ‘I'm here on behalf of a good friend of mine. I believe you're amending his sword miniature …’

‘You'd better come in,’ said Ferule, opening the door a little further, and ushering the squire impatiently inside. ‘Scrape that snow off your boots before you come up, there's a good squire,’ he said. ‘Oh, and you can keep your cloak on. The stove's not lit today.’

The squire did as he was told, stamping his feet, before following the painter up the stairs to the studio. As he emerged at the top, he took a sharp intake of breath. The room was crammed so full, there was scarcely room to turn round.

There were cupboards, cabinets and chests of drawers, and rows of shelves lining the walls, each one bowing in the middle under the weight of the countless objects crammed onto them.

Hundreds of jars, half-filled with heady solvents and viscous oils, and with brushes sticking out of the top, stood in rows. There were bottles and boxes, each one containing powders and pastes, and the vast array of ingredients in labelled jars that the painter used to create his range of pigments – as well as the stone mortars he mixed them in, and the heavy pestles to grind them.

Blood-beetles. Yellowbait. Emerald tics. Ambersap. The dried purple and magenta petals of swirewort and wintleweed, and the lesser spangleshrub's indigo roots. There were drawerfuls of crumbly rocks, excavated from marshy areas in the Deepwoods, that produced innumerable subtle shades of ochre and orange. And lullabee embers, that yielded the blackest of blacks.

Then there were the tools of his trade. The brushes and spatulas, the scrapers and scratchers, the sticks of charcoal and lumps of chalk. Pastels, crayons, inks and dyes; stacks of sketchbooks and heaps of canvas nailed to their frames. And, filling up the centre of the room, the props and backcloths the artist used to compose his portraits, as well as the tall rickety easels, with paintings in various states of completion balanced upon them.

‘Now, this friend of yours,’ said Ferule, as he picked his way across the cluttered room to his even more cluttered workbench, ‘does he have a name?’

‘Here,’ said the squire, thrusting a scrap of barkscroll at him. Ferule took the scroll and scrutinized the clear, beautifully-formed handwriting on its smooth surface.

Quintinius Verginix
, he read, as the sallow-faced squire continued to look round,
Lower Hall squire of the Knights Academy, requests the return of his sword miniature furnished to Professor Ferule Gleet of the School of Colour and Light Studies for amendment – namely the addition to the background of the tower of the Loftus Observatory, symbol of the
squire's mentor, the twin Most High Academe, the Professor of Light, payment of three gold pieces having been supplied.

‘Ah, yes,’ said Ferule at last, his pale yellow eyes looking the squire up and down. ‘I remember the lad. Friend of yours, you say …’

‘That's right,’ said the youth, making no move to take off either the tinted snow-goggles or the thick scarf that covered half his face.

‘And you are?’ asked Ferule quietly, as he bent over to examine the miniatures spread out on the workbench before him.

‘Just a good friend,’ replied the squire. ‘Quintinius Verginix has been chosen to ascend to the Upper Halls of the Knights Academy,’ he went on, ‘and I'm sure you know what
that
means …’

Ferule gave a low chuckle, picked up a miniature from the workbench and examined it carefully.

‘Indeed I do, young squire. Indeed I do. This noble-looking young friend of yours, so splendid in his shining armour, will one day become a knight academic …’

He held the miniature of Quint up to the light, between a thumb and a forefinger.

‘First time I clapped eyes on him, I knew,’ he said. ‘It was something to do with the way he held himself – and the questing expression in those deep indigo eyes of his, as dark as the stormclouds rolling in from beyond the Edge themselves …’

The squire watched impatiently as Ferule's own pale eyes glazed over thoughtfully.

‘I can just see him now, passing up from the Lower to the Upper Halls,’ he said, the trace of a smile on his lips. ‘Bowing to the hall masters at the foot of the staircase, saying goodbye to the other squires who have just become academics-at-arms – and are all trying to hide their disappointment … Then climbing the great Central Staircase to present his sword, hilt first, to the High Professors of the Upper Halls.’ He paused. ‘When
is
the Elevation Ceremony?’

‘Soon,’ said the squire smoothly. ‘Very soon.’ He held out a gloved hand, and Ferule carefully placed the miniature of Quint in it. The squire's fingers closed around it. ‘… Which brings me,’ he continued, ‘to the second, and rather more delicate, part of my errand.’

‘Delicate?’ said Ferule suspiciously.

The squire smiled as he placed the miniature in an inside pocket of his cloak and drew out a small leather pouch.

‘Quintinius Verginix is extremely busy preparing for his elevation, as I'm sure you'll understand …’

He untied the drawstring that fastened the pouch, and allowed its contents to fall open on the painter's workbench. A cluster of marsh-gems twinkled up at Ferule. There were) jewels there for enough logs to keep his stove blazing for many, many months.

Tell me more,’ the painter said with a smile. ‘He has a very close friend in Undertown who is desperate to hear from him,’ the young squire went on, ‘but he simply hasn't the time to write to her. Of course,
I
could write on his behalf, but just think how cold and impersonal that would seem to her …’

‘Her?’ said Ferule, counting the marsh-gems greedily with his yellow eyes.

‘It would be a little deception, but I don't suppose, if I gave you a few scribbled words …’ The squire pulled a second barkscroll from his cloak.

‘… That
I
could supply that personal touch?’ said Ferule with a smile.

The squire nodded. ‘You read my mind,’ he said, handing Ferule the scroll.

The painter looked from Quint's beautifully lettered barkscroll to the second barkscroll, which was covered in a thin, spidery scrawl – and then at the squire.

‘Come back tomorrow night,’ he said. ‘I'll have it ready for you then.’

‘It must be convincing,’ the squire said, turning to go. ‘She must believe it came from Quintinius …’

‘Leave it with me,’ smiled Ferule, scooping up the marsh-gems. ‘When I'm finished, not even Quintinius himself will be able to swear that it's not his own handwriting.’

The painter followed the squire down the stone staircase and opened the door. The squire pulled his cloak around him and stepped into the numbing blizzard outside. Behind him, Ferule closed and bolted the door, before climbing the stairs once more. He had a long night's work ahead of him. After all, the young squire had paid for his very best work.

‘How fortunate young Quintinius is,’ he cackled sarcastically to himself, ‘to have such a
very
good friend.’

•CHAPTER FIFTEEN•
THE SWORD
MINIATURE

Q
uint took a deep breath and began to climb the great blackwood staircase. Beside him, he could hear Vilnix, his breath coming in short rasping gasps.

Beneath Quint's hand, the ornately carved banister felt smooth and cold to the touch. Even in the gloomy light, he could pick out extraordinary details in the bulbous black spindles and the carved treads and risers of the steps. Writhing hover worms bared their curling suckers, ornate quarms peered from behind carved clusters of del-berries, while intricately coiling tarry-vines – their life-like tendrils seemingly searching for warm-blooded prey – snaked their way from tread to tread beneath his feet.

Quint desperately wanted to look back, but he knew he must fight the temptation. Squires who were elevated to the Upper Halls didn't look back. They kept their backs straight, their heads up and their eyes focused on the black-wood staircase winding its way up to the halls above.

Below him on the Central Landing, halfway between the Upper and Lower Halls, were all the other squires – Tonsor, Quiltis, and of course his best friend, Phin. A heavy lump rose in Quint's throat. After all the time they'd spent together in the Lower Halls, the laughs they'd had and adventures they'd shared, their parting had seemed so abrupt. Quint sighed. He could hear the sound of his friends’ heavy boots retreating as they descended the staircase to begin their careers as academics-at-arms in the Academy Barracks below.