The Chestnut King

As the sky pinked with the dawn, Henry dreamed. Ten gray threads ran out of the scar in his face, and ten men in black held the ends, tracking Henry wherever he ran, wherever he hid.

  And then his grandmother snipped the threads with sewing scissors and wound them into a braid.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Henry jerked in his bed and opened his eyes. The room was blurry. He blinked hard, and the world slowly came into focus. His curtains had been pulled back, and gray daylight crawled sideways into his room. The sun wasn’t high.

  He yawned, stretching. It was too early to be awake.

  “Henry. Get up. Something’s going on.” Henrietta poked him.

  Henry blinked again and looked down over his blankets. His room was crowded. Richard stood by the doorway in some kind of nightshirt, bare-legged and wide-eyed. Isa and Penelope, the two oldest, stood next to each other, both dressed, both clearly worried. Penelope was pulling nervously at her hair. Una was leaning against her sister and chewing on her lip. Anastasia was bouncing, and her hair, undone, straggled in every direction. Henrietta jerked back Henry’s blankets, and he was grateful for the linen pants his mother had given him, even if they were too big. With Henrietta and Anastasia around, it never paid to sleep in your underwear. He only wished that he was wearing a shirt.

  Henry levered his elbows against the mattress and sat up. “What is it?”

  Isa’s hair was more red than auburn in the morning light. She stepped forward, and the other girls all turned toward her. “Father and Uncle Caleb left in the night.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Henry swung his legs off the bed. “They’re witch-hunting. I don’t know where.”

  “I do,” Una said. “Father told me they were going to Endor.”

  Henry coughed. He’d never thought they might do that. But where had he expected them to search? They weren’t vacationing. Had they gone through the little black door in the old farmhouse? Was there a way through the old wizard doors in the hills? A familiar sickness crept into his gut. He tried to push it away. “What happened to them?” he asked.

  “It’s not about them,” Henrietta said. “It’s just they’re not here to help. We’re the ones with the problem.”

  “We shouldn’t rush to conclusions,” Richard said.

  Anastasia stamped her foot. “Yes, we should. They took Dad and Aunt Hyacinth, and Monmouth called them names, so they took him, too. And Mom is on the roof crying.”

  Henry stood up, holding his pants with one hand. The girls’ eyes all went to his stomach, where the glyph of a tree stood out in pink scars against his skin. “Will someone just tell me what happened?” He looked back to Isa, but Henrietta was the one who answered.

  “Two more ships were in the harbor this morning. They were both galleys like the first one, but not as big. All three unloaded soldiers on the dock, and one of the captains marched them up here and banged on the front door—that’s when I woke up—and then they asked for your dad. When your mom said that he’d gone, they took her away, and our dad, too. From the roof you can see a bunch of soldiers in the square and on the walls and patrolling all over. We don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  Henry looked around at all the worried faces. Henrietta popped her thumbnail between her teeth. They’d come to him. All of them. His sisters, cousins, and Richard. What could he do?

  “Where’s the faerie?” Henry asked.

  Isa answered. “He was in Mother’s room a few minutes ago.”

  “He won’t talk to us,” Henrietta said.

  “You were rude,” said Anastasia. “I wouldn’t talk to you, either.”

  Henrietta rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t rude. I was in a hurry.”

  Anastasia put her hands on her hips. “Penny?” she asked.

  Penelope sighed. “Anastasia, you’re not being helpful.”

  “Listen,” Henry said. “It doesn’t matter. Everybody out. I need to get dressed. If you see Fat Frank, ask him to come here.” He looked at Henrietta. “Ask him nicely.”

  “What are you going to do?” Una asked.

  Henry snorted. “I don’t know. But I’ll start by trying to figure out what’s going on.”

  * * *

  Henry stepped into the street, shrugging on a brown oilskin cloak. Fat Frank stood beside him. The day was cold and overcast. Occasional drops shattered in dust on the cobbles, but the clouds seemed halfhearted. He hadn’t known what to bring, if anything, and so he had only a small knife and his baseball tucked into an oversize pocket for good luck. It was hard to know what to bring when you didn’t know what you were doing. For now, they would try to find his uncle and his mother. He didn’t want to think about what might come next. Hopefully, nothing. The adults were just answering some questions and would be home by lunch. Easy enough. Somehow, he didn’t believe that.

  Henry turned and looked at Henrietta, standing in the doorway with her arms crossed.

  “Don’t let anyone leave the house,” Henry said. “And don’t let anyone in.”

  “Not that she could stop them,” the faerie muttered.

  “Why are you visible?” Henry asked.

  The faerie seemed surprised. “Your uncle Caleb made a rule.”

  “I don’t care,” Henry said. “And neither would he.”

  “Well—” The faerie huffed up his belly and held his breath. Henry watched his cheeks turn red and then purple. The faerie gasped for air and then grinned. His edges shimmered in the sunlight.

  “Are you invisible?” Henry asked.

  Frank sniffed. “Yes, I’m invisible, and you can stop being so smug about yourself.” The faerie began walking quickly down the cobbled hill, toward the river and the bridge, toward the square and whatever was in it.

  “Fine,” Henry said, and he hurried to catch up.

  “No one listens to Fat Frank,” he heard the faerie say. “‘Guard the house!’ says Mordecai. What good is a guard when no one listens? Don’t answer the door. Don’t go with the troopers. Oh, never you mind. Do what you like. Fat Frank doesn’t have any worries of his own. He’ll mop yer mess.”

  Henrietta blinked when the faerie disappeared. She watched her cousin turn and jog down the street, and then she shut and bolted the door.

  In the front room, Grandmother Anastasia was feeling her way carefully toward her chair with a blanket over her arm. Her blind eyes were open, but there was no smile on her face. Henrietta kissed her cheek, smelling human age, fermenting life.

  Her grandmother squeezed her arm and winked. “Her memory is long,” she said. “She has made fingerlings.” She extended her hand, fingers spread, and fluttered them. “Little daughter, grow wings and fly away.” She shuffled to her chair and collapsed into it. Henrietta spread the blanket over her legs, but her grandmother was asleep before she’d finished.

  Fingerlings? She hurried to the stairs and climbed them two at a time. The others would be on the roof, clustered around her mother. Except for the raggant. Henry had shut the raggant in his closet before he left. Henrietta could hear its muffled bellowing on the second-story landing. She hesitated but then moved quickly on. She couldn’t risk letting it out. The little barrel-shaped creature would bite and butt its way free of her arms for sure. And then Henry would be all pompous about her mistake. She climbed to the third floor, twisted down a narrow hall, and found the stairs to the roof.

  The few townspeople in the street quietly hurried past Henry, though one or two glanced at the muttering patch of air beside him. They passed three small groups of soldiers on their way to the bridge, and another on the bridge itself. All wore red tunics marked with the same symbol that flew over the galleys—three serpents braided into one, sharing a single head—and white trousers tucked into boots. Most carried crossbows; some pikes, double-headed with curved blades; and others wore short swords, always sheathed. All seemed nervous, chewing lips or nails, watching doorways and alleys with their backs against windowless walls.

  “Are they afraid of the people?” Henry whispered.
br />   “More likely they’re afraid of your father,” the faerie answered. “Or didn’t you know that he’s a demon what could suck your soul straight out your nose?”

  Henry tried to watch the soldiers’ faces without catching any eyes, but he didn’t do well. They all seemed to look at him right when he took his glance. Each time, he put his head down and hurried on, but he knew they were watching his back, and that made his skin tingle.

  As they reached the square, Fat Frank stopped. Two soldiers were standing on a corner with their backs to the wall just beneath a stone ledge. Frank looked them over, sniffed, and then grinned at Henry.

  “Pretty little popinjays. So handsome in red.”

  Before Henry could say anything, the faerie skipped toward the two men, and then, in an explosion of balance and speed, he ran up the wall and perched on the stone ledge between their heads.

  Henry stood motionless, slack-jawed, staring. Both soldiers slowly turned toward him, staring back. One lowered his brows and opened his mouth to speak, but Fat Frank had already swabbed thick forefingers through the insides of his cheeks. He crouched down and poked his findings into the soldiers’ ears.

  Both men jumped and yelped and slapped at their faces, spinning, looking behind them, above them, looking for any culprit. And then they both, each still with one hand over an ear, turned and looked at Henry.

  Suddenly, he was very aware that his eyebrows were up, and that he was grinning.

  “Come here, boy,” one of them said, and he reached for his sword. Henry erased his smile and took a step backward. Fat Frank rolled his eyes and shook his head. Then he pushed up his sleeves, leaned over, winked at Henry, and hooked both soldiers by the nostrils.

  Henry saw the pulse of magic flick out of the faerie, too fast for him to understand, and he saw the faerie jerk both men’s heads back into the stone wall. For a moment, they were scrambling on their toes, trying to ease the pressure of the faerie’s pulling, and then they went limp and tumbled to the street, limbs entwined, eyes shut in total sleep. White liquid, lots of white liquid, streamed out of their noses and pooled beneath them.

  Frank jumped down beside Henry. “You ever have milk come out your nose?” he asked, wiping his hands on his trousers.

  “Once actually,” Henry said.

  “Ah,” said Frank. “But not that much.”

  “Hoy!” Three soldiers at the top of the street were running toward them.

  “Right, then,” Frank said. “They’ll blame that one on your father. Let them think he’s lurking on every ledge. We’re off.” Laughing, he grabbed Henry’s sleeve and dragged him around the corner and into the square. “Violation,” he said. “Unnecessary Human Engagement and/or Conflict. Book of Faeren, II.ii. Let’s see the committee call up Fat Franklin now, hey? Petty gavel-bangers.”

  At one end of the square hulked the cathedral. On the other side, beyond a simple fountain, a building with round roofs heaped up in three tiers squatted symmetrically. The Hall of Governance. A white flag with the red serpent emblem flew at its crown, and soldiers blocked the steps in even lines. Perpendicular to them, arranged in three squares, stood the usual city guard. Not one of them was armed. The weapons that had been theirs were in a large pile beside the fountain. Townspeople milled around the group and chattered. Men stood in circles with arms crossed, and one or two occasionally cupped their hands and shouted some insult or other at the men in red.

  “Lovely,” Frank said. He jerked Henry into the next small side alley, hurried to a mound of trash, and shoved him behind a stack of crates brimful of rotting vegetables. He sat down next to him, rubbed his belly, and chuckled. “And Overt Bovinization. I’d forgotten that one. B.O.F. Appendix XII. Oh, this is a holiday.”

  “Bovinization?” Henry asked.

  “That’s right,” Frank said. “Cattle spells, human use. Sometimes irreversible. Sometimes fatal.”

  “Frank!” Henry said.

  Fat Frank jumped to his feet. “Oh, it’s just milk. They’ll have headaches and the odd gush for a moon or two and nothing more.” He moved back toward the alley mouth. “Wait here, Henry York Maccabee. Snack if you like.”

  The rogue faerie disappeared around the corner, and Henry climbed to his feet. He walked slowly forward until he could see out into the square, and then more. He could see the soldiers in formation in front of the hall. A small shape ran toward them, twisted through the lines, and reached the stairs.

  Henry sighed. He shouldn’t have come at all. The faerie didn’t need him. Fat Frank could find everyone alone. He reached up and scratched his jaw. His burn was prickling. The skin around it was cold, almost numb. Shivering, he turned, and a yell froze in his throat.

  Not ten feet behind him, a man stood. Tall, cloakless, dressed in black. His unnaturally dark hair was pulled into a tight knot at the back of his head. At the top of his left ear, there were three deep notches.

  The man lifted a long arm and pointed at Henry’s face, at the burn. “You and I share the same blood.” His voice was strained, as if speaking were difficult. Henry couldn’t look away from the pale face and its hollow eyes. “In a way,” the man said slowly, “we are brothers.”

  He smiled.

  Henry stepped backward.

  “I am Coradin,” the man said. He held out his hand. “Come. I will take you to our mother.”

  Henry turned and ran into the square. In an instant, the man was on him. A strong hand gripped the back of his neck, and a heavy body drove him down into the cobbles. Henry didn’t notice the pain. He twisted onto his right side and kicked hard while the man’s hand shifted to his throat. Henry’s teeth found a wrist, salty skin, and the grip loosened. Yelling as loud and as long as he could, Henry rolled onto his back, freeing his right arm. His dandelion was burning. His blood was burning. His bones crackled inside him. His eyes went black. This man had killed Uncle Frank, even if only in a dream. In someplace deeper than Henry’s mind, deeper than any logic, he wanted this fight. He wanted to finish it.

  Henry forced his dandelion hand into the cold face, searing icy skin. Yelling, the big man rolled off and scrambled to his feet. Henry jumped up and glanced around the square. To his eyes, it was slow with twisting stone and crawling wind. The men in red were running toward him.

  The city guard had broken ranks and were racing to their piled weapons.

  “Henry Maccabee!” someone was yelling. “They attack Mordecai’s son!”

  Henry looked back to his enemy. The man stood still with his head tipped slightly down. He expected to see strength, angry strength winding its way out of the man, but he was nothing but coldness, and the life inside him, the soul’s spark, was tiny and slow. Something else, a great gray serpentine mass swirled behind his head. He looked up.

  “Pauper son,” he said, but the voice was another’s. “Pauper son,” he said again. “My blood is in you. You cannot run.”

  Henry reached into his pocket and gripped his small knife. His mind reached into the ground and gripped the earth’s breathing. He grabbed at the cobbles and the sky, and with the yelling of guards approaching and the bright shirts of the emperor’s men blurring in the background, his tongue shaped words he did not know, and he ran at his enemy.

  Frank Willis sat by the window. Technically, this was his office, though it hadn’t felt like it. It felt even less like it now. His sister-in-law, Hyacinth, sat beside him, and James was beside her. Monmouth was in the corner. None of them had been tied up, but clearly, they would be the instant they caused trouble.

  The room was big. Five soldiers stood with backs against the wall on the far side. Closer, seated, rubbing his head and leaning over, clearly not enjoying himself, sat the captain of the great galley in the harbor. Beside him sat a character that was far more unnerving. At least to Frank. He was large and dressed in black. Both his cheeks were scarred, and his hair, oiled darker than it already was, had been pulled into a tight knot at the back of his head.

  His eyes, deep and empty, stud
ied each of the pseudo-captives in turn. He hadn’t spoken.

  The captain looked up. “I am sorry,” he said. “But you have no choice. You and all of yours must come aboard.” He looked at Hyacinth. “Unless your husband comes alone.”

  “My husband is away.” Her voice was crisp.

  “So you’ve said.” The captain straightened. “You have no choice. I have no choice. You’re to be brought aboard. Those are the orders.”

  Frank licked his lips. “Can’t say yes.” He wished he knew how to be diplomatic. Was there a special smile? “And I’d like to see the orders. If our emperor stuck his seal on something special for you, there’s no reason to be shy. Show it around.”

  “My orders are verbal,” the captain said. “And the emperor did set his seal to something. He summoned your brother, and your brother ignored the summons. These are the consequences.”

  “Right,” said Frank. “I did see that. He requested that my brother head on down as he had particular expertise in a current rumored situation or somesuch. And my brother sealed up a reply—and I don’t mean to be rude, but it seems that someone up and read the emperor’s mail—saying that he would come as soon as he could. And—here’s the kicker—he will.”

  The big man in black drew in a slow breath, and then he spoke. “The witch-queen rises. The emperor commands your brother’s presence. He must answer charges about his family’s involvement in loosing that curse on the empire. He must suffer justice. He will come, and quickly. He will come for his family.”

  “There was nothing about any charges,” James said suddenly.

  “Then why did he run, James?” the captain asked.

  James flushed. “He did not run. He’s hunting the witch now. He and my uncle are traveling into Endor itself in search of her. Is that running?”

  “James,” Hyacinth said, and she shut her eyes.

  “Oh, stop,” Monmouth said from the corner. The young man stretched his legs and sat up straight in his chair. His pale eyes sparked in irritation, and he ran his hands through his dark hair. His recovery after the siege of Hylfing had been slow, and his strength still was not what it had been when he had first met Henry. “The way of all kings,” he continued. “Lie and connive and order and seal and complain of dishonor and disrespect and treason. Rule by designs and plots, never by honesty.” He looked from Frank to Hyacinth. “Can’t you see that they’ll have us one way or another? They have their designs to look after. Do not reason with them. They will lay a snare for the great Mordecai, and they cannot be dissuaded. Invite him politely or charge him with treason or kidnap his blood and bone. Mordecai will stand before the emperor, oh, and he will slip, for the floor will be greased with lies.”