Quillifer

But ships would not sail until the reivers were gone, and word had not yet come that they had sailed away.

I put the letter down, and looked at the two others I had penned that afternoon. One to Gribbins’s widow, informing her of her husband’s murder, and urging her not to pay any ransom that might be demanded of her. The other was to Lord Utterback’s father, the Count of Wenlock. Wenlock had not been seen at the coronation not because he had declared for Clayborne, but because the Queen had sent him north, to his wife’s native country, to be Lord Lieutenant of Blacksykes, and there raise forces to fight the bastard Clayborne.

I wrote Wenlock of the circumstances of Utterback’s capture, praised Utterback’s behavior before the ferocious outlaw Sir Basil, and said little about my own escape. I also informed Wenlock that I possessed Utterback’s signet, which I’d poured into my rucksack along with all the other rings and jewels, and not noticed until I’d taken it out, three days earlier, at the guild hall. I would keep it until his lordship advised me what to do with it.

I had also the signets of the Marquess of Stayne and his faction, but I cared less about these. Still, I supposed I could inquire of the duke where to write his marchioness.

These letters, I thought, I might freely address and send. Though whether anyone would carry Mrs. Gribbins’s letter to besieged Ethlebight was still unknown.

I folded and tucked the letter to Kevin in my doublet, and then folded and addressed the other two.

I carried them out of the cabinet and down a stair, and there found a page who told me that I was summoned for dinner.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

came into the great hall on its creaking herringbone floors, and found that the duke’s great company had dispersed but for a few clustered about the head of the table. This group was composed of the duke, his duchess, an engineer named Ransome, a playwright and actor called Blackwell, and an Abbot Ambrosius, a serene, white-bearded figure dressed in the robes of the finest, softest unbleached wool, and who was introduced as the late King’s Philosopher Transterrene. His tonsure, which shaved away all the hair on the front of his brow, made his head look like an egg. This small band formed the sort of heterogeneous company that was more usually to be found at the duke’s than the huge gathering that had arrived for the coronation.

The duke’s orchestra, in the loge above the hall, played pleasantly. The great hall featured pillars of some green stone and gilded acanthus capitals holding up a barrel-ceiling painted with mythological scenes, pink-skinned gods and goddesses roistering among the clouds. Between the pillars were statues of maidens bearing platters of fruit or skins of wine, the floor was different-colored hardwoods laid in a herringbone pattern, and above was a clerestory to let in the light. Below the clerestory was a frieze in which the coins of Roundsilver were interlinked with scenes of fantastic fish and animals, all romping along like a parade of demons holding a circle dance, and below the frieze were brilliant tapestries showing mythological scenes or Roundsilver ancestors either commanding armies or dying picturesquely in battle—it appears that war had claimed a surprising number of the duke’s forefathers.

A few days in the Roundsilver palace had made it possible for me to go several minutes without staring at some wonder or other. I was doing my best not to appear an awestruck rustic—though if I were, the others were too polite to tell me.

“I have found an apartment, your grace,” I told the duke as I sat. “With your leave, I’ll move tomorrow, and no longer be a burden to your steward.”

“You must let him know where you lodge,” said Roundsilver. “For you are the man who must bear witness to the court about Ethlebight’s tragedy—in fact you must testify tomorrow, for I have gained an interview with the Lord Chancellor, so perhaps you should not shift your lodgings till the day after.”

I had no objection to enjoying the duke’s hospitality for another day, and was pleased to say so.

“You should see Hulme while he remains Lord Chancellor,” Ambrosius advised. “Her majesty may yet choose to replace him.” He gave a deep, languid sigh. “For Hulme has made many enemies in exercising his office, as have so many of his late majesty’s loyal supporters.” Another sigh. “As had I, though I did not know it.”

By this I guessed that Queen Berlauda had appointed a philosopher more to her liking, and send Ambrosius off with his pension.

“Sir,” I said to him, “I am unfamiliar with your—your former office. Is there also a Philosopher Mundane?”

The abbot smiled, and nodded at Ransome. “I believe,” he said, “they are called engineers.”

Ransome laughed and brushed his mustaches with the back of his hand. They were well tended, along with his glossy shoulder-length hair and his immaculate white linen. He was tall and a little plump, and offered to the company a perfect air of self-satisfaction. He was so pleased with himself, and pleased so pleasantly, that it was difficult not to be pleased along with him.

“There is only one true philosophy, lord abbot,” he said. “The science that permits us to move from a state imperfect, diseased, and transient to one perfect, healthy, and everlasting. And that science exists on the earth, in metals, extracts, distillations, and essences, not in the sky, floating in your transterrene aethers.”

“I shall look forward to seeing you made perfect, healthy, and everlasting,” said the actor Blackwell. “But until then, I will retain a grain or two of doubt regarding the claims of your science. And to you, sir”—he bowed to the abbot—“I confess myself bewildered between the hominem and the homonym, your fortiori and your ficos, your priori and your priory. In either case, when you speak either of the Nurse of Caelum or the nature of Being, I find myself suspicious that the primary purpose of employing such grand language is not to better describe Nature, but to conceal ignorance.”

“And yet,” said Ambrosius, “you use such elevated language in your poetry.”

Blackwell smiled. “I have never made the claim that my poetry is anything but itself. It describes a moment in time—time imperfect and transient, if you will—but that moment exists only in my own mind. I do not assert that I describe reality, let alone Being, whatever that is.”

I was inclined to applaud Blackwell for this claim. He was about thirty and blade-thin, with blond hair and beard and eyes of startling deep ultramarine, and he wore a russet-colored suit along with a gold earring. His voice was a clear tenor.

Blackwell turned those deep blue eyes to me. “Like this man’s music. Music may be texture, melody, emotion, rhythm. But to claim that music describes the world is to debase music.”

I realized that he thought I was one of Roundsilver’s musicians. Which was not surprising, as I wore the uniform.

“Quillifer isn’t one of our orchestra,” the duchess clarified.

“His grace was kind enough to lend me this costume when I was in distress,” I said. “I am not a musician but an apprentice lawyer, and as such I possess a lexis more rarified and useless than all of yours put together.”

This amused them. If I had learned anything in my legal career, it was that everyone hated lawyers, or at least pretended to, and were inclined to applaud when I feigned to share their prejudice.

“To which Moot do you belong?” Ambrosius asked.

“No Moot at present,” I said. “I’ve just arrived in the city.”

“Goodman Quillifer has come from Ethlebight,” Roundsilver said. “The only member of the deputation to survive both pirates and the bandits that haunt the Toppings.”