The Shepherd of Weeds (24 page)

“Five hundred strong, sir.” She curtsied awkwardly, adding, “And five hundred more await me at the Lower Moors.”

Ivy hugged her uncle and Peps and pushed past them eagerly, leaving them to discuss further details with the well keeper.

Back at the Hollow Bettle, Ivy—when she was meant to be studying her apotheopathic texts—would find herself instead in happier pursuits: boiling, or distilling, or crushing some dried leaf into powder and pressing it into a pill and selling it to her ragtag group of regular clients. She would sift and bake and coax her herbs into greasy balms, or biting gargles, or
fine and noxious powders. The hours slipped away as she experimented with her particular alchemy.

With Shoo by her side, she had created a truly remarkable elixir, one that was capable of curing any illness—it had been recklessly lost, but not before both Shoo and Rowan had been helped by it.

The simple workshop was hidden behind the tavern’s blackboard menu, and she and her crow Shoo might spend the entire afternoon combining a strange, lumpy fungus with a few potent berries in hopes of inventing a new, terrible tonic—running back and forth from her small but dangerous garden for inspiration. But it was Ivy’s accidental abilities with elixirs of the curative sort that had brought her here, to Templar, and to this new—and much more impressive—workshop above the Apothecary.

Ivy now raced to this workshop, up the regal steps leading from the crowded square. She was elated by the day’s events and the reunion with her uncle, Rowan, and Peps, but she ached for a quiet moment with her old alembic vessels and little alcohol stove. Bursting into the wide and open room, she was greeted by her well-tended plant cuttings, all straining for the weak sunlight at the large windows, as well as that lovely smell, a twinge of burnt charcoal and a sharp note of distillate, that accompanied her experiments.

All of her most favorite things lay within this room—which is why the voice she heard next was so unpleasant. It had the tone of a rotted turnip, oozing and sulfurous.

“Ah, if it’s not the little poisoner,” it said.

Ivy reeled, looking about the room.

“Imagine my surprise! I guess my preparations for your funeral were premature.”

The voice was coming from an unfamiliar chaise in a far corner. There, her former taster and would-be executioner Sorrel Flux reclined, a smug look upon his face, his hands bound behind him, the large bettle boar Poppy guarding him vigilantly. With the exception of his polished shoes, he was quite an untidy spectacle. “And to think, I was assured of your untimely death.”

“Seems you can’t get that one right,” Ivy replied.

“Practice makes perfect, I’m sure you’ll agree.”

Ivy toyed with the idea of approaching—she ached to hug Poppy again—but she was already as close as she ever wanted to be to her former taster.

“How did you get here?” Ivy asked the reasonable question.

“Same as you—by way of your mother’s treachery.”

Ivy spied a small, waxy plant upon the windowsill. She considered administering the blisterbush to her former taster—just one small dose would do—and allowed herself a moment to imagine his face covered in painful boils. Her fingers twitched for her poison kit.

Flux continued. “Your mother and I had agreed to assist each other in our mutual pursuit of great power. She spent many years at the Guild with your father—she knows all its
crevices. But I lived there, too. And I know them better,” he bragged. “She’s gone off, in search of scourge bracken. Apparently, she’s not good at sharing.”

“And you are?” A more unlikely partnership Ivy couldn’t imagine.

“Well. That remained to be seen, didn’t it? But you’re right. She got to me first—with that silver hairpin of hers. Her only mistake was leaving me alive.”

“That can be remedied,” Ivy replied brightly.

Behind her the group from the square was arriving, and Cecil moved quickly to distract his niece from her former taster.

“Ivy,” Cecil called sternly. “A moment, please.” He held the scroll from Lumpen and moved to the table, unfurling it. “It seems Ms. Gorse’s parchment will tell us everything we need to know about those stones of yours.”

“Yes, do go!” Flux eyed her evilly. “Make haste with your battalion of wastrels before they molder in the rain or are beset by vermin. Men of weeds! A more fearsome army I cannot imagine. Why, they can’t even scare a crow!”

Ivy turned on her heel, but not before plucking a small flower from a cluster on her window seat.

“A boutonniere.” She smiled, presenting it to Flux. The taster’s eyes widened in recognition and his body grew stiff as he struggled. Ignoring his protests, Ivy pinned the showy bloom in his ragged buttonhole, scratching Poppy behind the ear and exchanging a loving hello when she was done.

“What was that?” Rowan whispered as she joined him and Rue beside her uncle with a satisfied look upon her face.

“Staunchweed.” Ivy smiled, exchanging a private look with her uncle.

“Wow, that’s powerful stuff.” Rowan nodded, understanding.

“It has an insatiable thirst. Dries up any moisture it encounters—it acts on the salivary glands. Even the scent of its bloom is enough to make your mouth dry as sand—making speech impossible.” She winked. “And the root, when pulverized, can make an entire lake congeal.”

The three watched as Flux’s face became pinched and his cheeks grew hollow, and although his mouth was open and he appeared to be speaking, not a sound came forth.

“I can’t believe I didn’t think of that,” Cecil muttered.

They turned back to the weathered paper and to the sound of Poppy, who had begun a loud drink from her water bowl.

t night, when the city slept, it did so to a lullaby of the dry winds. The people of Templar dreamed of parched lands and unquenchable thirst—and not because of staunchweed.

The scarecrows, their dry countenances and eerie rustling, made everyone think of dust. The citizens of Templar found them to be quiet, ominous guests. It seemed that the strawmen were profoundly shy of human contact. The majority of the flock kept to the frozen river, huddled in a pack beside Lumpen. But a fair few wandered into forgotten broom closets, for brooms, made of straw, comforted them greatly. Servants began refusing to sweep, as the fright of opening a broom closet with a scarecrow inside was too much to bear.

Lumpen made camp by the water, assuming guard, her corncob pipe glowing reds and oranges, while Cecil busied himself translating her scroll. The work was made more difficult by various interruptions in their war-making effort, as well as Flux’s irrepressible croaking.

Cecil was finding the work maddeningly elusive; the tiny script seemed to dim at the exact place he chose to inspect it, only to reconstitute after he moved on to a new passage. The whorls and flourishes of the lettering gathered themselves into impenetrable knots. After an entire evening, with river stones weighing down the four corners of the document and a huge gold-rimmed magnifying glass in hand, he had translated only one small cartouche—a caption beneath one of the images that appeared to be his niece.

He stood, pulling on his beard absently.

He tried the phrase out thoughtfully to himself several times, hoping to get at the obscure meaning. His days at the Good King’s side were long ago, but that sort of learning is never forgotten. Before the great fire—the wretched point in Caux’s history marking the end of the reign of the Good King Verdigris and the beginning of the new regime, that of the
Deadly Nightshades—there would have been cloistered scribes available to translate this very document. When Rocamadour was an academy for apotheopaths—before Vidal Verjouce distorted the King’s teachings and built the Tasters’ Guild on his corrupt ideals—Cecil had helped to amass the great collections that could be found in the Library at Rocamadour. A library that at one time contained nearly all of Caux’s valuable scrolls, a vast storehouse of ancient magical know-how available to anyone who so wanted it.

“And in his folly—let him be sure to see,” he said thoughtfully.

A strange sound from the other side of the workshop startled the apotheopath. A dry, raspy croak. Flux had been listening, Cecil realized. The parched man was laughing a staunched, choking laugh, the sound of a saw meeting dead timber.

t was not long after her reunion with Cecil that Ivy found herself whisked away to a quiet area of the Good King’s old palace and into a steaming bath filled with fragrant lavender and lemon balm. Rue, too, was being treated to a restorative soak, and after some time, the two girls—wrapped in thick robes and cheeks flushed with warmth—convened in Ivy’s room over Rue’s bloated copy of the
Field Guide
.

A plate of sugar-dusted cakes sat between them, but it was gone quite quickly, and the creams and jellies that filled each pastry dotted the girls’ chins, crumbs collected in the
Guide
’s sturdy binding.

With sugary fingers, Ivy pored over Axle’s masterwork.

“What are you thinking?” Rue asked.

“Well, while Cecil’s busy figuring out what to do with the
King’s stones, I reckon I’ll give some thought to our own plan of attack.”

“With the
Guide
?”

Ivy nodded, eyes alive. “With your specimens, Rue.”

Rue’s eyes grew wide. “Being with you, Ivy, is an adventure in botany,” she declared.

“Rue—you’re a complete genius! Without your meticulous collecting we’d be lost. Axle’s book has rescued me many times—and it’s full of surprises. But this time, it’s not what Axle wrote—it’s your contribution that’s saved the day!”

Ivy gathered a few cuttings of sunflower and thistle and ran to the tall window.

“What are you doing?” Rue wondered.

“The birds must be hungry,” she called over her shoulder to Rue.

Throwing open the mullioned windows, Ivy waited. Soon Shoo alighted upon the stone sill, and the pair shared a short moment of hushed conversation. Finally, after rubbing his sleek feathers, she held out her other hand, and the crow pecked at her open palm—and flew off noisily into the dark.

Turning back to her friend, she settled in to read a chapter on invasive weeds.

“There’s a whole footnote here on warring plants,” Ivy pointed out. “Would you help me take an inventory? I see you have a cutting of saberweed—good! I wonder how sharp it is. How about crampbark or slippery elm? Whipweed? Gagroot?
Ah—here’s some bearded tongue, an old favorite—although it would be useless against the Outriders.”

The girls worked intently, cataloging their defenses.

Outside, Shoo had spread her gift in a sparse field beside the quays as night settled in. The only light shining in the square was that of a small lantern, sheltered from the gusting wind by pasty fingers—creeping forward between the still figures of the scarecrows and roosting birds. The small light cast long shadows upon the shifting strawmen—and a strange sheen upon the bearer’s highly polished shoes.