Spring (49 page)

It was a decade since Brunte, then only nineteen years old, had witnessed the car crash that destroyed the Shore family and nearly killed Jack, driving Brunte to murder a junior member of the Sinistral dynasty and the Fyrd officer accompanying him. He had done this to keep to himself – and for his future use – the secrets of that night.

Ten years on he was broader, his face fleshier, his bright intelligent eyes always jovial as a convenient cover to his inner thoughts, his brows bushier, the fingers of his hands hairier, his forearms stronger, and his presence powerful and capable of being menacing in one still so young.

On his arrival in Brum, Brunte had quickly spotted that the best opportunities for a Fyrd with no connections, and therefore little prospect of fair promotion, were in the service of the Sub-Quentor.

It was a lucrative post, open to bribery and corruption, and Brunte watched how those serving in it acquired both wealth and power. But it was also a dangerous post, and most occupied it for only a year or two before they were sidelined, killed or exiled on ever-justifiable charges of corruption.

Brunte himself had gained his position a year before in the time-honoured way, by eliminating his predecessor, one Finial Fane. In Brunte’s case he had done this in collusion with General Elon, to whom he had passed over considerable income from various of Fane’s more profitable activities.

His position being at least temporarily secure with the hierarchy, Brunte moved quickly to eliminate any potential rivals in positions under him, and put in their places a team of people who combined brains with brawn and on whom he knew he could rely. Elon could not have imagined his underling’s ambitions went higher, but then nor could most Fyrd who had encountered the seemingly friendly and sociable Brunte.

‘Sub-Quentor,’ said Elon haughtily, ‘is there really an issue of law and order with respect to effecting a Seal, or is this mere bureaucracy?’

‘It is not, General, at least not in the sense you mean. Dissent in Deritend is always mostly hot air, for the place is now in the hands of the Bilgesnipe, and you know their strong loyalty to the Fyrd who have given them sanctuary here for so many years.

‘As for Digbeth High, you have my personal word on it that any dissent can be contained. I would add only this: there is a certain advantage in organizing a Seal, for it will certainly bring out the disaffected and, particularly if there are deaths, then there will be a mood of rebellion and, even better, public talk of it.’

‘“Even better” – why do you say that?’

Brunte squared himself to the table and to the Ten, giving a small glimpse of his real power. He chuckled. ‘If we apply emergency powers, it will give us the opportunity to stamp out any rebellion for another generation. Which, with the Ten’s permission, we will do . . . thoroughly and in a way that will not easily be forgotten.’

No one doubted it.

‘In short, Councillors, I believe that the situation gives us a rare opportunity to impose ourselves anew, and if there are a few dozen drownings of the lower orders in the process, it will serve to remove from Brum some of its more troublesome elements.’

It was enough for them.

The Seal was agreed and, immediately after, a state of emergency declared. The Sub-Quentor was instructed to see that both were enforced, and the three Quentors charged to be ready for summary hearings.

‘Leave it until after the High Ealdor’s feste,’ said Elon drolly. ‘We wouldn’t wish to spoil things . . .’

The Council broke up minutes later, Elon giving a nod of approval in Brunte’s direction as he left.

The Sub-Quentor gathered up his papers and headed back to his chambers, where his brutish minions awaited him, despite the late hour.

‘We have a decision,’ he announced triumphantly. ‘It’s to be a Seal. Be back here tomorrow afternoon at half past two. Be armed and ready, for finally we have work to do.’

Left to his own devices, Brunte was not idle. He sat thinking through his plans for the next day and when he was satisfied summoned Feld.

‘You found the girl, and the boy followed?’ asked Brunte brusquely.

Feld smiled grimly.

‘The “girl” Katherine is now fully adult, Sub-Quentor. As for the “boy” Jack, he’s already a formidable fighter and had the courage to hold us at bay in the henge for long enough to get back-up in the form of Master Brief and Mister Pike. So we took Katherine and she is safely lodged with the Sisters.’

‘And the boy?’

‘As we planned, well on his way to Brum in pursuit of her according to my information. One of our patrols made an abortive attempt to capture him and were left trussed up for their pains. Since then we have left well alone and waited for Jack to deliver himself to us, which inevitably he will do.’

Brunte considered this, and then glanced at his chronometer.

‘Well, well, you have done your job. In other circumstances I would have gone at once to talk with this . . . Katherine, but events here have been brought forward by the threat of flooding. We cannot afford to give the Fyrd hierarchy time or opportunity to counterattack. Now is the hour and I intend to grasp it.’

Feld eyed him and smiled both conspiratorially and with respect.

He might in theory be Brunte’s senior but he knew he lagged a long way behind him in his ruthless ability to take the right action to seize the moment.

There was something Brunte did not know about him, and it had changed everything. Feld had seen the reports about Lavin Sinistral’s shocking death in Englalond ten years before. Reviewing the evidence he had little doubt that Brunte, then only nineteen, had had the nerve and skill to kill the junior Sinistral and the senior Fyrd officer with him.

Nor did Feld doubt that Brunte had killed his predecessor to gain the post of Sub-Quentor – one which most senior Fyrd would never believe might offer any useful base from which to gain power.

Feld had been sent to investigate Brunte, and possibly arrest him as a danger to the state. What had happened was almost the opposite: Brunte’s charm, strength of purpose and ambition against the power of the Sinistral dynasty had found an echo in Feld’s own thinking. Now he was his ally in revolt.

‘Meyor Feld,’ said Brunte, ‘you have done well.
We
have done well. But on this day of days there is much more to do –
much
more – and I shall defer my meeting with Katherine until our primary work is done. Stay close, keep me informed when you learn the whereabouts of Jack, be here at half past two tomorrow, and be ready.’

Feld nodded grimly.

‘If I understand you right, Sub-Quentor . . .’

Brunte spoke plainly.

‘What we are about to do will be the first clear and public challenge to the Sinistral for many years, since some of my own people in Poland, including my family, revolted and were crushed with a cruelty beyond reason. If I succeed here it will offer the potential of changing the course of the history of the Hyddenworld – and succeed is what I intend to do.’

Feld dared to look doubtful.

‘I still think – and fear – that the first thing the Sinistral will do is to send a Fyrd force to crush you as they crushed your people in Poland.’

Brunte shrugged coolly.

‘I think they will not because they have overextended themselves elsewhere in the Hyddenworld. Either way, Meyor Feld, I shall expect your continuing loyalty.’

Feld smiled.

‘Either way, Sub-Quentor Brunte, you have it.’

I
mbolc was having a busy time of it and the time of day, or rather night, made no difference.

Having visited the sleeping Stort on the shore of the lake near the Devil’s Quoits two days before, and then sent her horse to guide Katherine through the tunnels to safety, of a kind, she had paid a call on old friends in Thüringia, Germany.

This was the Modor or Wise Woman and her consort the Wita. Imbolc persuaded the Modor that she was needed and had to travel.

There are some who say that Peace-Weavers hold special sway with the Modor because she herself was once a Shield Maiden and so is one of the Peace-Weaver’s previous sisters. Be that as it may, much though the Modor hated travel she agreed to go with Imbolc.

‘Where’s the Wita gone?’ Imbolc asked, curious.

She knew the two to be not unlike a long-married couple whose grouses and grumbles about each other hid abiding love.

‘Not here, that much is certain,’ came the ambiguous reply.

A comment, thought Imbolc, which like most of those made by the Modor appeared vague but probably got straight to the heart of things if only she could work out what those things were.

‘I would have liked him to accompany us, Modor.’

‘So would I but, for now, as for some time past, and perhaps some time to come, that will not be possible.’

It seemed to Imbolc that the Modor looked troubled and that was a matter of concern to her, for it was of concern to the whole world. A troubled Modor meant a troubled world.

The Modor smiled wanly. ‘Sometimes, Imbolc, we must dare lose hope – all hope – if we are to find what we need. You, who have waited so long to see your beloved Beornamund again, know that better than most.’

Imbolc stared at her with alarm and compassion. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me.’

‘There is, my dear, because I do not know it myself. Now, you want me to travel. Where to?’

‘Brum,’ announced Imbolc.

The Modor’s face lightened and her eyes seemed brighter. ‘Now that,’ she said, ‘is music to my ears.’

Then, like two old witches, they mounted the White Horse and were gone.

It was well past midnight before Arnold finally led Jack and the others to their accommodation for the night. It was, he explained, his grandfather’s establishment, an ancient looking waterside tavern.

It overlooked a dry dock which ran back from another that fronted the river. It was so far lower than the street level of the human city, and so hidden by juts and overhangs of buildings, or inaccessible across fenced-off ground, that its comings and goings and the lights on at that dark hour were a long way lost to view to humans.

As for the hydden, all they could see toppermost were the occasional lights of cars reflected from one angled tower-block window across an open space to another like silent faded ghosts, red and white and sometimes flashing blue. Of the humans themselves, there was no sign at all.

Jack now had the opportunity to examine his first hydden hostelry. It had a long, rotting black-painted board that stretched from one side of it to another above two doors and three windows. On it, in dirty white lettering, was written its name,
The Muggy Duck
. The origin of this hung vertically from one corner of the building. It was a sign on a rusting wrought-iron bracket on which was painted an image of a pure white swan gliding on the blue waters of a clean river, a vestigial memory of what Brum’s River Rea might once have been before the human city, and the hydden one within it, buried it so deep.

The hostelry’s windows were ablaze with welcoming light. When they entered, Old Mallarkhi himself was nowhere to be seen, but no matter, the Duck, which was full to overflowing with customers, was under the iron command of his daughter, Arnold’s mother, Ma’Shuqa, the best-known and best-loved Bilgesnipe in Brum.

She took her son warmly to her ample bosom and smothered him with kisses, from which he emerged gasping for air. Then she welcomed the others, who she evidently knew very well. She surveyed Jack with interest and delight, holding him with a strong hand on either shoulder as she did so, before taking him to herself as she had her son but stopping short of the kisses.

‘Welcome one and all,’ she said, ‘but my, you’re sopping! Arnold, take ’em to be steamed and soothed afore they’re fed and tell Jellybee it’s two for the price of one for these important customers, massage thrown in!’

She turned to Brief and said, ‘That’ll keep you all occupied until things ease up in our kitchens, this being a busy night as you can see, what with the birthday parade outside tomorrow and folk sheltering in from the rain.’

She moved off to deal with other things but turned back again to call out, ‘. . . and don’t forget to give up your staves and other weaponry for safety’s sake to Mister Klim in the armoury.’

Jack handed in his stave through the bars of a window behind which sat a very thin gentleman upon whose forehead, disconcertingly, was tattooed in Gothic lettering the word ‘KLIM’. He took it without expression and asked for Jack’s name, which he mouthed silently to memorize it, hopefully correctly since he gave no token or receipt in return.

Jack watched his stave disappear into an elongated pigeonhole which had no numbering or lettering that he could see and which was one of hundreds, some empty, many filled, and some so full of dust and cobwebs it looked like their owners had never reclaimed them.

While he waited for the others to hand over their weapons he glanced about the great, beamy place, at either end of which there was an inglenook in which great logs blazed.