The Shepherd of Weeds (7 page)

Ivy froze.

The bird was a Rocamadour vulture. They were the Director’s messengers, his spies. She fell quickly into the relative safety of a thicket, the rough growth scratching her skin through the threadbare cloth of Mrs. Mulk’s orphan uniform.

From Ivy’s vantage point, she could see the valley beneath her, the small puffs of hills topped with the prickly remains of a grain harvest poking through the anemic snow. Below, where the valley leveled out, there was a pile of round gray stones. Normally, it would be here that the well keeper would begin her assessment of the oncoming visitor, wearing her trademark scowl and her corncob pipe.

But Lumpen Gorse was otherwise occupied.

And Ivy only needed to see the scarlet cloaks and deep hoods of the Watchmen to know that no matter how thirsty she was, she would have to wait to drink.

nly after several quiet minutes did Ivy dare to peek out, slowly. Her breath was coming quickly—after her deep sleep, her heart beat uncomfortably in her chest. She had not been spotted.

At the well, there were half a dozen of Snaith’s henchmen, or Watchmen—the newest and most brutal sort of subrector at the Tasters’ Guild, all dressed in blood-red robes. The sight of them sent a surge of cold fear through her. These figures surrounded an irregular fellow, somewhat slight and bent, whose skin was oddly mottled and splotchy. From the distance, Ivy couldn’t place him. They appeared to be in discussions with by far the oddest-looking person of the group—a woman seemingly made of straw and dressed in patchwork.

Ivy had no choice but to watch and wait, for there was
nothing—not the slightest wisp of a word—that might be heard from high on the hill.

Down below, Dumbcane was finding his negotiations were not going as planned. After Lumpen Gorse’s initial greeting, her face had turned more dour (if that were possible) and her substantial arms were now crossed upon her broad chest. She shook her head fiercely, demonstrating a remarkable fearlessness around the Guild’s infamous servants.

Hemsen Dumbcane inhaled sharply, and again attempted to explain his errand to the well keeper. He needed her water for his ink—and he was prepared to bargain. Only her water would do. After several disastrous attempts at re-creating his scourge bracken ink for Vidal Verjouce, he came to realize his error—and just in time. His original inks from his private stock in his shop upon the Knox were successful because they were produced with the waters of Miss Gorse’s well, and of this he now reminded the well keeper. Without the water, there would be no ink.

Without the ink, there would be no Dumbcane.

“Not again, Dumbkin.” Lumpen took a stab at his name. “That’s the last time you swindle me. You’re cut off. Besides, I got no use for yer faded papers—the last one you gave me was nothing but gobby-glook.”

Dumbcane opened his palms outward to signify he was empty-handed. His hands—even the bony wrists and slight
peek of a hairy forearm—were splattered with ink. “All I have to trade—all I’ve ever had, my dear, dear Miss Gorse—were papers and books and the occasional chart—which, I assure you, are all of inestimable value.”

“Not to me.”

She glared at the group. She experienced a moment of regret for eating the hummingbird, for her throat was now as prickly as a whisker, and she wanted to tell them all to leave. As she attempted to clear it and continue, Hemsen Dumbcane glided forward, an inky arm extended before him. It was an odd gesture to Lumpen—admittedly not a woman of the world. The scribe approached, his outstretched thumb aimed at her head. His inky, black-stained digit bobbed at her, eye level, while Lumpen Gorse felt her arms roughly pinned behind her and a red sleeve snaked about her neck, pulling her back.

“Sadly, Miss Gorse, it has come to this.”

“Dumbkin?” Lumpen croaked.

Hemsen Dumbcane held his soiled thumb to her forehead, and in the spot just between her eyes where her weathered brow was fretting, the calligrapher anointed her with a sticky, inky thumbprint. There was a singeing sound, as if a hot coal had been extinguished in a bucket of water. The swirls of the tip of the scribe’s thumb were remarkably clear upon her skin, the idiosyncrasies of its unique design visible as a raised black blot on her forehead. A wisp of smoke dispersed.

Lumpen gasped—nearly inhaling her corncob pipe—and collapsed.

“Thief!” she squawked. “Scoundrel!”

An eerie ripple coursed through the tall, dry grasses in the stark snowfields around them, catching the Watchmen off balance. The waves finally settled at Lumpen’s feet, where they took a moment to dissipate. A few of the Guild’s assassins surveyed the hills tensely, but seeing nothing further, they resumed their guard.

“Dumbkin, I will hunt you down—” Lumpen attempted to raise her head, but it would not cooperate. And then her words came no longer. The Watchmen relaxed. Stepping back, they were indifferent to her curse.

They were now tasked to collect her water.

vy waited a long time after the Watchmen had stolen Lumpen’s water—filling large, squat skins and dozens of barrels and stacking them on a cart. She had observed as they turned away from the still figure of the well keeper and busied themselves with the chore of moving the water back to the Tasters’ Guild and Rocamadour, to where Dumbcane had set up shop. The large beast responsible for the transport was tethered to the cart, and until this time had been enjoying a lunch of what remained of the hay underfoot.

At one time, this beast was not one of burden; rather, he was an impressive steed in the long regiment of horses kept in the once-stunning stables of Rocamadour. His bloodline was celebrated, and he was amazingly long-lived. His father, and his father before him, were said to ride with the crest of the
cinquefoil upon their foreheads—that is, they were descended from the Good King’s own steeds. King Verdigris’s horses were a rare breed—possessing brutal war instincts and amazing strength and intellect.

This particular horse, while once standing regal and tall, was now old and tired. At one time in his life, he had worn a bridle and saddle of the most supple leather, the color of the evening sky; draped in the finest of jewels, he rode out of the night carrying the very stars upon his back. Now he was the last of the great horses to inhabit the Tasters’ Guild. But his name remained, a relic of his respectable past—although his beloved master had long abandoned him. He was called Calyx. And indeed, if you looked close enough, you would still spot dignity in Calyx’s eyes.

Calyx’s lunch was over when his head was rudely jerked upward from the ground cover. He shook his shabby mane in protest and fussed. Before the whips came down on him, though, he knew to move forward, pulling the heavy load of water from Lumpen Gorse’s well. Pulling a cart—pulling anything other than a chariot of the finest silver—was beneath him. But he had long been broken.

Ivy debated returning to Rue, but the extensive trip and her own parched tongue kept her there above the dangerous scene. She knew she herself was wanted—more, even, than Lumpen’s water. And she had returned to Caux, tasked with a
command from the Good King himself to plant the strange stones. She could not be captured.

The Director’s henchmen were efficient, and quite soon they were advancing up the only path—the very one by which Ivy now crouched.

Calyx came first. His war instincts still very much alive, he sensed her there, and even chanced to turn his head before remembering the debilitating blinders he wore.

So there lurks a child
, he thought as he plodded uphill, a froth beginning in the corners of his bridled mouth. His senses were still keen, and, like Ivy, he was royalty. He knew her at once as noble, and in a swell of pride he lifted his bony profile.
Let her be safe from this bunch
.

The scarlet-clad men walked in step behind the cart, silent, ominous.

It was the last in the fearsome parade that nearly made Ivy gasp.

His skin was splotchy from the caustic scourge bracken ink he concocted from a secret recipe, a recipe he had chanced upon in the margins of one of his stolen manuscripts. But Ivy recognized him. He was Dumbcane, the forger from the Knox, and she now knew his presence here could mean only one thing. This water would be used to make his ink.

he prone figure of Lumpen Gorse lay quite still beside her beloved pile of stones as Ivy approached. The wind played about the straw padding that emerged in clumps from her wrists and old-fashioned pantaloons. Still, Ivy was guarded and, with narrowed eyes, approached cautiously. The sun was behind the hill, lighting her golden hair aflame, and in the valley all shadows were long and arched.

Lumpen’s poor, bloodshot eyes were open, and her tongue was swollen and discolored and lolled about awfully. The black thumbprint in the center of her forehead was now depressed into the flesh, wrinkled and cracked. It was for this reason that Ivy missed a sudden dilation of the well keeper’s pupils—for Lumpen’s body remained completely motionless. But her eyes shifted ever so, and took on an
awareness. Her fingers tensed into balls, her arms like clubs beneath her. She watched Ivy, who, with the sun at her back, looked, Lumpen would later remark, like a burning, flickering flame.

The very one she had been waiting for.

Quietly, Ivy approached the well. With a final look over her shoulder at the still well keeper, she peeked down the deep hole. The smell was nothing like Mrs. Mulk’s, or the awful sewers of Rocamadour. It was of the earth, of fresh, damp wholesomeness and infinite pleasures.

Falling to her knees, she began pulling the long rope upward to her, and when the pail finally arrived, she drank directly from it, letting the clear, pure water that escaped fall down her front and pool in her lap.

This was some thirst. Whatever potion she had been given had now worn off, and with Lumpen Gorse’s delightful water, she felt her strength and purpose return to her. The world seemed at once bright and alive; the fields in the valley coursed and sparkled with sun and ice.

A vague rustling now sounded from behind her, tiny feet atop a pile of dried leaves.

“Hullo.” Lumpen’s rough-edged voice had taken on a shyness.

As Ivy spun around, Lumpen reached into her waistcoat, fishing about in her ample padding, and produced a worn and flattened parchment.

“You’re the angel,” the well keeper said, pointing to the crushed scroll. “The garden angel!”

“Er.” Ivy frowned. “Hardly.”

Lumpen grew more insistent, tapping the page. “Only—where are your stones?”

Peering at the paper, Ivy felt her heart skip a beat.

t’s you, all right,” Lumpen decided. “Even down to that old pillowcase you’re wearing.”