The Tides of Avarice (62 page)

“Your faith too weak?” said Rustbane in an ugly voice.

“Have mercy!” the priest wailed.

“How many hundreds of lemmings did you send to their deaths over the years?” said Mr. Snowbanks, prodding Spurge in the chest with his clenched paw. “Did you have mercy on any of them, you old fraud?”

“I, I—”

Already half a dozen younger and fitter lemmings had picked up Mayor Hairbell from the turf and were bearing him toward the cliff edge. The mayor seemed too groggy from Mrs. Pickleberry's cruel blow to protest, let alone put up a fight.

“I can't swim,” wept Spurge.

“Did that ever stop you from sending anyone else over the cliff?” demanded Doctor Nettletree. The physician held the priest's gaze for a long moment before speaking again. “No, I thought not. I think you've just booked yourself a passage to your very own Land of Destiny, Spurge.”

“Let me,” said Rustbane, reaching forward.

The gray fox picked up the high priest as if Spurge were hardly more than a feather. Almost at once, the lemming began to struggle, but the fox was easily able to wrap his claws around Spurge, imprisoning the priest as if in a cage.

“It's been a long time,” said Rustbane urbanely out of the side of his mouth to Sylvester as they strode toward the precipice, “since I've thrown someone over a cliff. I wonder if I can remember how to do it right.”

“I should think you will,” said Sylvester, grinning. “I don't imagine it's one of those skills people forget too readily.”

“I do hope you're right. I'd feel such a nincompoop if I got it wrong and Spurge here just landed kersplatt on the rocks.”

“That is,” Sylvester assured him with ponderous sobriety, “one of those eventualities it's horrible to even muse on.”

High Priest Spurge just whimpered.

At the edge of the cliff, Rustbane paused. “Nice day for a swim,” he observed.

Spurge said nothing. The priest appeared to have lost consciousness.

Secure in the grip of a bunch of Foxglovians, Mayor Hairbell just groaned.

“Would you like me to attend to this one as well?” Rustbane politely asked Hairbell's captors.

They muttered something which Rustbane clearly took to be assent.

Standing on the lip of the cliff with a lemming in each paw, Rustbane looked out over the sun-drenched ocean and guffawed.

At last his laughter died down.

“You'll never know,” he said in a low voice to the two captive lemmings, “the kindness I'm about to perform for you.”

With that he pulled his right arm back over his shoulder and, with a grunt of exertion, hurled the High Priest Spurge as far out to sea as he could. The priest's scream was lost in the distance. There was a noiseless splash as he hit the water.

Rustbane swapped Hairbell from his left paw to his right and again hurled his victim powerfully out into the waves.

“That was indeed kind of you,” said Sylvester to the gray fox. “If we lemmings had chucked them over the side, chances were the two rogues would have landed on the rocks.”

“Kersplatt,” agreed the fox.

“As you say, kersplatt. As it is, though, they might very well be able to make it to the longboat and survive, mightn't they?”

“Not if they row out to the Shadeblaze they won't,” said the fox. “I can't imagine Cheesefang would give our friends a hospitable welcome, can you?”

“No,” said Sylvester.

“Now, I think, we have the other half of the bargain to attend to, no?”

“You want me to tell you where the treasure of the Zindars is hidden, do you?”

Rustbane clapped his paws. “Being aboard the Zindar ship really did hone your intellect, didn't it? You got the correct answer straight away, without having to use up your second and third guesses.”

“It's here.”

“Here?” Rustbane looked around him as if expecting to see the corner of a buried chest sticking up out of the turf.

“Not precisely here,” said Sylvester, “but close by.”

“Just how close?”

“Very.”

“How very?”

Sylvester gestured toward the dark line of trees a few tens of yards away.

“Just over there,” he said, “in Mugwort Forest.”

“Oh,” said the gray fox, gaping. “That's rather a lot of forest, don't you think?”

✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿.

Sylvester hadn't given too much thought to what was going to happen after they'd returned to Foxglove and Rustbane demanded guidance to the hidden treasure. It was a problem he'd all too willingly pushed to one side of his mind, focusing instead on all the more immediate problems that came his way. Now, he wished he'd paid it more attention.

He'd often noticed before that the gray fox's smile seemed to contain far too many teeth.

Now there seemed to be more teeth than ever.

“I'm sure I'll think of something,” he mumbled.

“Good, good,” said the pirate. “Only don't be too long about it, will you, there's a good chap?”

Jasper, overhearing, pushed through a knot of lemmings who were trying yo congratulate him on his return and on his pluck in standing up to Mayor Hairbell and High Priest Spurge.

“Oh, we'll find your treasure for you,” he said airily to Rustbane. “No problem.”

“Really?” said the pirate, raising an eyebrow. “As I've been telling your scion, it's a very big forest to go looking in.”

“It is,” Jasper conceded, “but I learned a thing or three during my time in the Zindar ship, and one those talents is a sense for stuff that was made by the Zindars, or that they were closely associated with.”

“The great spirit Lhaeminguas wouldn't play a part in this, would he?” said the fox skeptically.

Jasper curled his lip. “That he wouldn't. This isn't magic we're talking about, or maybe it is. Who's to know any longer where the borderline should be drawn? But it's something I can do and I don't need any help from spirits in the sky to do it.”

Rustbane gestured with a loose-wristed paw toward the forest. “Shall we go there now?”

“No, not tonight,” Jasper replied.

“But I might choose to insist.”

“You might choose to do whatever you want, but tonight you'll be doing it without me. This evening I have a reunion I want to go to.”

“A reunion?”

“With my wife.”

“Ah.” Rustbane paused. “Yes,” he said after what seemed a very long time, “I can understand that. I must keep my patience in check until the morning then.”

“Do that.”

✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿.

When Hortensia Lemmington opened the door of her cottage and saw Jasper standing there on the doorstep, the first thing she did was slap his face.

Hard.

The sound was like a thundercrack.

Sylvester, who'd hung back to allow Mom and Dad a little privacy, was appalled. He expected Jasper to turn on his heel and go straight back to the Mighty Enormous Cliff and take the leap that'd release him back into the wide, adventure-laden world of Sagaria.

The second thing Hortensia Lemmington did was throw her arms around Jasper's neck and burst into loud, racking tears.

Sylvester was pretty appalled by this too.

Parents weren't supposed to show this kind of emotion towards each other, especially in front of their offspring.

When the two began kissing each other passionately, he felt his stomach roil. He also felt a mite resentful. After all, even though he hadn't been missing, presumed dead, for nearly as long as his father had, he still reckoned his mother might show him some sign she was glad he too was back, that he'd survived.

The kissing went on and on and, what was worse, it was getting noisier.

“I can tell what you're thinking,” said a voice.

Sylvester looked up, startled. He'd thought he was alone, standing there by the garden gate. “Celadon!”

The elderly archivist smiled, stroking his whiskers. “None other, my boy.”

Before he really knew what was happening, Sylvester found himself embracing his mentor.

“Careful there, young fellow-me-lad,” cried Celadon, laughing. “These old bones are liable to break if you crush them too hard.”

Sylvester was laughing too. “I didn't know whether you were alive or dead. The last time I saw you—”

“I could say exactly the same about you, Sylvester. I didn't know – none of us here in Foxglove knew – if we'd ever see you and the Pickleberries alive again. Once Doctor Nettletree had seen me back to my health again and I felt well enough to do a bit of work, I read every text in the library relating to pirates and freebooters and various criminals of the high seas, and what I read did nothing to reassure me, I can tell you. Pirates seem to be universally a bad lot.”

“Of course they're a bad lot,” exclaimed Sylvester, standing back to get a better look at this old scholar whom he loved so much. “That's the whole principle.”

“I suppose you're perfectly right, dear boy. If they didn't have hearts blacker than the deepest night they wouldn't be pirates, would they? But even so” – Celadon shuddered as if a chilly draft had blown from one end of his spine to the other – “what I read of their cruelties and bloodthirstiness made me wake up screaming from my dreams more times than I like to remember. Let me tell you, there was one of them I encountered in my reading called Cap'n Josiah ‘Throatsplitter' Adamite and, of all the bottom-feeding knaves who ever plagued the oceans, he was the one who—”

“But I know all about Cap'n Adamite!” cried Sylvester. “Why, to Viola and me and Mrs. Pickleberry, he's practically a friend of the family.”

Sylvester proceeded to tell the tale of Cap'n Adamite's manuscript, the search for the treasure chest of the Zindars and much more than he'd ever intended to tell Celadon. For his part, the old librarian listened patiently, a twinkle in his eye.

When Sylvester finally ran out of words he realized his parents had gone inside, leaving Celadon and himself out in the deepening twilight.

“I'd leave them be for a while,” said Celadon, putting a friendly arm across Sylvester's shoulders. The two began to amble along the lane. “They'll have a lot of talking to do. Time enough for them to celebrate their only son later, I'd say.”

“Do you think they're—”

“Quite probably that too.”

“Well,” said Sylvester dubiously, “I suppose I could go round to the Pickleberries' place and spend the evening with Viola.”

“Um, I wouldn't do that either.”

“Oh?”

“I passed the Pickleberry establishment on the way here and I think, ahem, I think Daphne Pickleberry is having something of an argument with her husband. There was a considerable sound of crockery being smashed. A quite considerable sound. It almost masked the sound of their voices. But not quite.”

“Oh.” Sylvester and Celadon took a few more steps in silence before Sylvester spoke again. “What about Viola?”

“She and her brother seem to have decided that they should take a little excursion. There was every chance a frying pan or other kitchen utensil might hit them by mistake if they stayed at home where Mr. and Mrs. Pickleberry are, ah, having their discussion. I saw them out walking in the general direction of the Snowbanks Inn.”

“You did?”

The old archivist smiled genially. “I should say that's where they were heading. Viola was talking about how she hadn't had a decent sit-down six-course meal for longer than she could rightly recall, and her brother was saying the same even though the little horror—er, cute little fellow, I mean, is renowned for packing away his tucker like he'd never be allowed to eat again. Interesting thing, though, my boy. Viola and Bullrich seemed to be getting on quite well, for once.”

Celadon dug around in his jacket for his pipe. Once he'd managed to free it from a pocket that seemed reluctant to give it up, he discovered Sylvester was no longer by his side but was instead trotting up the dusty lane ahead of him.

Ah, well, thought Celadon with a wistful sigh. When you're that age I suppose the vigor of spring flows in your veins all the year round. I'll warrant the young fellow hasn't even thought to leave his parents a note telling them where he's gone. I'd better do it for him. Now, where in tarnation did I put that pencil?

✿ ✿ ✿ ✿ ✿.

For once, the Snowbanks Inn was fairly empty. The first person Sylvester saw when he burst in through the door was Mr. Snowbanks himself, who was wiping off the surface of a table with an apron that had seen not just better days but better weeks and maybe months. About a year ago, Mrs. Snowbanks had decided that her true purpose in life was not innkeeping but poetry. This meant Mr. Snowbanks had twice as much work to do, while his wife swanned around the countryside in the company of unsuitable male lemmings half her age declaiming sonnets in loud voices to various resentful flowering plants. Clouds came in for a bit of imposed declamation too. The joke around town was that this explained why the skies above Foxglove were so often a clear and untrammeled blue.

It also explained why the Snowbanks Inn, and Mr. Snowbanks, looked so down-at-heel these days. Although, Sylvester reminded himself, by comparison with some of the places he'd been in during his travels, like The Monkey's Curse, the Snowbanks Inn was a model of pristine hygiene.

The second and third people Sylvester saw as he entered the inn were Viola and Bullrich, who were sitting on either side of a long oak bench in the Snowbanks Inn's dining room and looking as if it was only by mutual negotiation and colossal effort of will that they weren't having an argument.

Both of them looked pleased to see him.

“We thought you'd want to be with your parents,” said Viola, rising from the table to give him a peck on the cheek.

“So did I,” he admitted, “but, well, you know how it is.”