Bee Sting Cake Read online

  “I would suggest that you take off your ring before you start doing the dishes next time,” Mr. Dart said.

  “Or just don’t do them in a witch’s cottage,” Hal added.

  “Where did you come from, Mrs. Etaris?” I asked, trying not to shiver too obviously.

  She gestured us to seats at the table. Mr. Dart and I sat down, but Hal moved to help her mend the fire. “The Magistra decided it would be prudent to visit her aunt in north Fiellan while things calm down here. She asked me to look in on her cottage, as she left quite hastily after last week’s events.—She’s our only open local witch,” she added to Hal, “and although she had very little to do with it, there was a fair amount of magic flying about last week.”

  Mr. Dart and I both looked at his stone arm. I twisted the ring, the little garnets sparkling in a stray shaft of light coming in the window. I felt trembly and strange after the fight.

  “Too bad there’s no training salle in Ragnor Bella,” Mr. Dart murmured. “It seems a waste of talent. Perhaps you’ll be able to take lessons at Inveragory. There’s a naval academy in Isternes, isn’t there?”

  Hal looked up sharply from the arrow, which I’d set on the table once I was able to pry my fingers open. “Are you planning another degree, Jemis? I hadn’t thought you wanted—not to mention the end of things at Morrowlea—that is—”

  That is, failing out of Morrowlea would require more than a small fortune to make Inveragory accept me for a second degree.

  Mr. Dart raised his eyebrows. “I’ll tell him, shall I? Since you had yet to write with your news. Mr. Greenwing has received a letter from Morrowlea informing him that as a result of his courageous defence of the truth and other scholarly virtues, he was awarded first place.”

  “Oh, well done! The least they could do after letting Lark work everyone into such a froth. Inveragory for Law, is it?”

  “Seems the thing to do,” I agreed unenthusiastically, then turned abruptly to Mrs. Etaris. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Etaris, but I simply cannot believe you had a male friend who sang songs into battle at Madame Clancette’s Finishing School for Girls in Fiella-by-the-Sea. Even before the Fall. Tying people up—perhaps. Creeping around houses—all right—espionage—quite likely—even tossing daggers—but battle?”

  Mrs. Etaris smiled serenely as she set a large pot of peppermint tea on the table. “No, I suppose that was during my university years.”

  “Where did you go?” asked Hal curiously.

  “Galderon over in East Oriole.”

  “Of course,” he said, eyes glinting.

  “Ragnor Bella must seem very quiet,” Mr. Dart said. “Well, apart from the various affairs of the Greenwings. And the cult.”

  Hal chuckled. “Not to mention this harvest fair. I am eager to participate in such a notable event.”

  Mrs. Etaris poured the tea, expression quietly amused. “Oh, there is always much more going on under the surface of a quiet country village than the uninitiated anticipate. Which is why I’m glad you’re here, gentlemen. The Embroidery Circle needs your assistance.”

  “Oh?” said Mr. Dart, eyebrows rising again.

  “Yes: we need you to spike a gambling ring.”

  Chapter Seven

  The Dragon has an Idea

  “I CAN JUST SEE YOUR Mrs. Etaris manning the barricades of Galderon,” Hal said once we were on our way at last to the Old Arrow. “You must be enjoying working for her.”

  “I am, as it—wait, barricades?”

  “The barricades of Galderon! Surely you know about the Scholars’ Revolt?”

  I poked at some herbage with the ruffian’s arrow, which I found even more puzzling than the fact that when we’d gone back to check on our captive, he’d disappeared. Mrs. Etaris had merely said, “Of course, he did have a collaborator,” and suggested we go on with our day. She said she’d make what representations were necessary to the authorities. Since I was not in any good odour with said authorities, I’d agreed with alacrity. But the fact that the highwayman had been using a longbow puzzled me.

  Mr. Dart frowned. “That was back in Eritanyr’s day, wasn’t it? Decades before the Fall, even.”

  “Mrs. Etaris is the right age to have been at university then. And if she had a wild youth that involved friends who sang going into battle ...”

  “What on earth happened in Galderon?” I asked. “What Scholars’ Revolt?”

  “The university tried to secede from the province,” Mr. Dart said, taking the arrow from me so he could swipe dramatically at innocuous seed heads of wild carrot and cow parsley.

  “Not tried to; did,” said Hal. “It went all the way up to the Emperor eventually—the Last Emperor, that was, after more than a decade of riots and revolutions and counter-revolutions and all sorts of excitement. The university made the argument that the provincial governor of East Oriole was abusing her position, unfairly taxing the town—it had a press so she was triple-dipping, I think was the complaint—and was also interfering with academic standards and the governance of the university.”

  “Still, to turn to violence?” I said skeptically.

  “The governor forced them to make her nephew their chancellor, I believe. He promptly threw out one of their most important Scholars in a show of blatant bigotry. The faculty and students revolted, overthrew the Chancellor and upper senate, and persuaded the townspeople to form the Free and Independent Republic of Galderon with them.”

  “I can’t imagine the governor was very happy about that.”

  “No, the more she wasn’t. She sent in the Army against them, but the university held out against a multi-year siege before they finally got an embassy to Astandalas. The Last Emperor instigated an independent investigation, which revealed gross negligence and misconduct on the part of the governor. He awarded Galderon the status of a client state.”

  “Huh,” I said, wondering at what point in my studies I ought to have learned this.

  “I’d feel your education was lacking in local history, except that East Oriole is about a thousand miles away from here. I only know so much about it because my housemaster at Odlington was a student at Galderon during the revolution. I believe he ended up as a general of some fashion before the siege ended.”

  “Mrs. Etaris was probably the spymaster,” I said, and made them all laugh.

  “She’s certainly got us hopping on behalf of this Embroidery Circle. Do you reckon they secretly run the town?” Hal asked.

  “You’ve read too many of Jemis’ romances,” Mr. Dart said severely. “The Embroidery Circle consists primarily of the wives of the most thoroughly respectable middle-class men of the town.”

  Hal whooped. “In short, the answer is yes. Come now, Mr. Dart, I am an imperial duke, I know very well who really runs things. Gossip and business are the two real engines of society.”

  “That perhaps explains Mr. Greenwing’s activities—is revolution coming, Jemis? Shall we enter that in the betting-books for the fair?”

  I decided to ignore the worrisome fixation everyone was displaying on my role in the upcoming fair events. I’d fallen into the pond on a dare to swing across on the rope of bunting once, and—

  And that wasn’t at all the reason why people were so intrigued at what might happen this autumn.

  “People have such stories,” I said after a few moments of ignoring their banter but appreciating the fact that my two closest friends were enjoying each other’s acquaintance.

  “What do you mean?” Mr. Dart asked.

  I took the arrow back from him so I could trail its tip in the running water of the ditch beside the road. Hal would know all the roadside weeds’ names, I thought. I tried to recapture my initial idea. “I mean ... you look at Mrs. Etaris and think how ordinary and quiet a life she must have had. Wife of a tiny market town’s chief constable, owner of the only bookstore, she embroiders and cooks and rescues the odd lost soul out of pity and compassion. Then you find out she had a wild youth and that doesn’t just mean she went a
nd gambled away a fortune in Orio City, but was probably a major actor in a successful revolution.”

  Hal was looking at me. “Do you consider yourself a lost soul, Jemis?”

  “More of an errant one,” I replied lightly as we climbed over another stile and onto the back lane leading to the Old Arrow.

  Hal suddenly stopped so he could examine some pincushion-effect flowers in a soft lavender. “Hold up, Mr. Dart,” I said, “Hal’s found something.”

  “Lesser devil’s-bit scabious,” he said, then turned his head to smile up at Mr. Dart. “Why are you the only one we’re still calling Mister? Am I scandalizing you with my informality?”

  “Oh, no,” said Mr. Dart, going rather pink. “If you must know, I don’t like my given name! And Perry’s almost as bad.”

  “What, you have a name other than Perry?” I asked, surprised at this confession. “I don’t think I knew that. Your brother’s never called you anything but Perry.”

  “No one ever has, and no one ever will. Hamish and Tor know better. And I like how Mr. Dart sounds.”

  “Well, if that’s the case ...” Hal got up, with a specimen carefully uprooted to be put, even more carefully, between the pages of the notebook he always carried in his waistcoat pocket. “Why don’t you go by a nickname, Jemis?”

  “I don’t always mind my name,” I said, and they laughed, so I didn’t go on to say that my father had called me Jimmy, though I was about to when we came to the back side of the pub, and with one accord stopped.

  “Any inexplicable tendency towards heroics?” Mr. Dart said, lightly.

  The dragon was coiled into the space between malthouse and garden hedge. An incongruous line of washing flapped above it, adding a festive air. The air was warm down here, though above us the wind was rushing white clouds against blue skies.

  The dragon was the colour of the green jade crock my mother used to keep honey in. For a moment the memory of the jar was so strong that I thought I could smell that honey, the honey of the wild woods, thick, heavy, perfumed with flowers perhaps even Hal could not name.

  The dragon was scratching the edge of its head against the wall of the step, but its brilliant blue eyes were focused on me. Tiny flakes of scale and stone were rising up like dust, glinting brilliantly in the sunlight.

  I walked unhurriedly up to it. I felt as I had when facing the ruffians: as if the world had ceased suddenly to be confusing. It was no longer confusing. It was—it was opened up to me—

  I had a sudden thought of dancing lessons with Violet, that first autumn at Morrowlea, before the Winterturn Ball when Lark had caught me neatly as a tame pigeon.

  And then back another handful of years, or longer—for no one knew how long, exactly, the Interim had occupied—to my mother and me in the dower cottage on the Arguty estate, on one splendid spring morning when the world felt alive with the promise of life and coming sanity, and my mother had said it was time to dance the Green Lady in.

  Danced we had, in the garden when the flowers of the ancient hawthorn tree fell down on us white as the White Lady’s snow, when the sky was opalescent as the Kingdom Between Worlds, when the bees rose around us like in the stories of Paradise, and my mother took my hands and we sang the hymns of coming summer.

  In some way the world was holding its hand out to me to partner in the dance, and I—how I wanted to take it—

  The dragon finished scratching and rattled its wings to resettle them, like Mr. Dart with his sling. In the sunlight its eyes were blue diamonds.

  I bowed formally, hat in hand.

  The dragon had a crown of golden horns, each a foot long, pointed sharp as a hawthorn spur. Its tongue was gold. It uncoiled what seemed an endless length towards me before stopping at just the point where I could have reached my hand out to touch the tiny beaded scales of its nose. Its breath was warm and heady, even more honeyed than the air, with the faintest and strangely pleasant bitter undertone to it.

  I felt perfectly aware of everything around me, the glittering raindrops on holly and hawthorn hedges, the wind rushing importantly through the canopy of the woods behind the pub, the faint scrape of scales against stone, the yet fainter calls of distant birds, the buzz of late insects, the still astonishment of my friends.

  The dragon appeared to be able to regard me face-on, both eyes boring into mine.

  Some part of me said:

  There is a stone by my right foot.

  Another part answered:

  Drop right knee, weight balanced. Left hand to hat: right hand to stone. As its head follows movement, raise left hand—hat over its eye—explode upward. Left hand carry past hat to left-central horn, right hand bring up stone to right-central. All weight forward following stone: somersault over horns, full weight on right-central, cracking it at weak joint. As dragon lifts its head to throw you off, land on pub steps. Spin, right hand stone to box ear-hole, left hand carry broken horn around into soft skin at base of jaw.

  We had had four weeks on dragons in Self-Defense. But the dragon made no move to attack, and my father had taught me not to pick fights without good purpose.

  It said: “Your ring. It is of interest to me.”

  I closed my right hand so that I could feel the smooth cold metal with my thumb. “It is not mine to give away.”

  The dragon withdrew its head a fraction so that it could look more intently at me. I saw a better rock a foot over and shifted position.

  “Then,” said the dragon, “it appears I must ask you for something that is yours.”

  Its voice was clear and ironic and tremendously intimidating.

  I drew a deep breath. “What do I have that you could possibly want?”

  The dragon drew back its thin reptile lips into what was almost certainly a smile. “Between the green and the white is the door. Between the race and the runner is the lock. Between the sun and the shadow is the key. In the bright heart of the dark house is the dark heart of the bright house. And therewithin, if the sap of the tree runs true, is the golden treasure of the dark woods. Bring that to me ere the Sun and the Moon are at their furthest remove.”

  “And if I do not?”

  The dragon snorted a pouffe of white smoke that filled the air between us. “Then, sir, you will have only the dark treasure of the golden woods to comfort you.” =

  Chapter Eight

  Hal has an Idea

  “BUT YOU like riddles, Jemis. You wrote your final paper on how all the most obscure parts of that unbelievably long poem were a riddle about the size of rooms in some prison.”

  “It was a puzzle poem giving the solution to the architecture—” I stopped as Hal and Mr. Dart both laughed at me. “Can we have a drink now, please?”

  “You were the one provoking dragons into giving you riddles,” Mr. Dart said.

  “It was only one dragon.”

  “And only one riddle?”

  He laughed. as he led the way past a deeply affronted cat, which had appeared, hissing, when the dragon flung itself up into the sky in a kite-tail of laundry and whirling dust. We entered the pub to find a tall saturnine man lounging before the fire with a tankard of beer in his hand.

  “What ho,” he said amiably to Mr. Dart, before faltering on seeing me coming along behind. After a moment he nodded. “Mr. Greenwing.”

  I bowed silently.

  Sir Hamish Lorkin was my father’s cousin, given a knighthood by the King of Rondé in honour of his splendid portraits. He was in his forties now, a thin muscular man, balding a bit and unfashionably dressed in country clothes.

  Abruptly he smiled. “What a pleasure to see you!” He gestured to a table towards the back of the room, away from the only other patrons, who were huddled near the fire. As we moved towards it he added to Mr. Dart, “Your brother will be along, he was talking to Linkett about the lower fields. Mr. Greenwing, you are a stranger.”

  “Mm,” I replied, not at all sure how I was supposed to take that.

  “You’ve learned to guard your tongu
e. A good habit, if not one I ever bothered to learn. Fortunately I don’t have half the barony baying for my blood. Whatever did you do to Sir Vorel to excite him so? He was swearing about you over his port yester-eve. It can’t all be on account of everyone betting on whether you’ll fall into the pond again this year.”

  I flushed. “That was only once.”

  “And only one dragon,” Mr. Dart murmured. “Oh, hullo, Tor.”

  “Perry, Hamish—Mr. Greenwing.”

  I rose again to bow to Master Torquin Dart. Shorter than Mr. Dart and stockier, as well as twenty-odd years older, he had the same auburn hair (made somewhat roan by age) and freckled pale skin. He was dressed as practically as Hamish in high-quality Rondelan tweed. Indeed its cut suggested decades of use lay behind the single leather patch on each elbow.

  “Master Dart.”

  He gave a thoughtful grunt. “Perry’s been glad to see you.”

  I was suddenly deeply curious what Mr. Dart’s given name was, if not Perry. He gave me a look I interpreted as don’t you dare ask, so (although tempted) I didn’t. Sir Hamish said, “Hear any new gossip, Tor?”

  “Don’t be absurd,” Master Dart replied, which I interpreted as plenty, especially as he then added, “What’s this I hear about you wanting to run in the three-mile race, Mr. Greenwing?”

  “No!” cried Sir Hamish, loudly enough that several of the farmers looked over from where they were solemnly discussing scrapie and hardware disease and other improbable-sounding ailments. “What, you think you can take Tad Finknottle?”

  I was fairly certain I could handily beat the barony champion, but a snippet of conversation about poachers emerged out of the background noise in the pub, and I remembered that the game was not just the race. I grinned sheepishly and shrugged. “Better than falling into the pond.”

  “Roald was baiting him,” Mr. Dart said, which was obviously an understandable motivation, for Sir Hamish hastily swallowed a laugh and Master Dart snorted with magnificent unconcern. I was grateful for the interruption offered by the belated arrival of Hal, his hands full of plants.