Chapter Three
The Chalice
‘Not truly a stitch, but a combination of stitches that create a pleasing, goblet-like shape and can be easily replicated to create a border or tessellated pattern.’
—An Exhaustive Compendium of Stitches
Mother had placed wards and seeing stones around the Tower: minor ones, to keep predators away from our pigeons and insects away from her precious spellbooks; and larger ones, to protect us from thieves, which had clearly been ineffective.
Now, however, they were gone. I felt no tingle, no frisson of magic as I stepped beyond the Tower boundaries.
Did that mean Mother was dead? I had no way of knowing.
Quell was probably about two days’ walk from the Tower, if I was reading the map aright, which didn’t sound too intimidating.
I could follow the River Mirth most of the way.
What I would do when I got there, I had no idea, but it was the only clue I had as to where Mother might have been taken—and what did I have in this world without Mother?
That was a big and frightening question, and I was happy to put off answering it for a while longer.
I supposed I could find a bookseller who might have known her, or who knew of someone who might desire her great spellbook for themselves and stop at nothing to obtain it, but that was the only real idea I had.
Baldbeak and I followed the little creek that ran along the base of our hill.
Here it was barely more than a hundred feet across, and I had spent many afternoons foraging along its banks for duck and goose eggs.
In the summer, Mother would let me go outside to collect the feathers that fell from the swans and geese to make her quills.
This was one of my favorite times of the year, and I always took longer about it than I strictly needed to, claiming that it took time to select the best ones.
I sat on the riverbank to shape the pens, soaking the feather in the river water to soften it and make it easier to remove the lower barbs, then using my little knife to carve the end into a pointed nib and cut the slit ready to hold ink.
It had always been a peaceful place for me.
Now, however, I could see hoof marks in the mud on the bank where our intruders must have forded it earlier, and it no longer felt safe.
It took several hours of walking alongside the creek, but eventually Baldbeak and I reached the part where it joined the larger river.
This was the Mirth, which started in the mountains somewhere as a tinkling spring, then gradually widened as it made its winding path across Virelith, staggering to and fro like a drunkard until it collapsed into the sea at the harbor capital of Mirthwater.
Where Baldbeak and I stood now, our mild little creek became a rushing, great bully of a thing, shouldering its way between steep banks that were littered with fallen branches and edged with grimy foam.
There was no way to swim across safely and no bridge in sight—but I had to cross it.
“I wish you were large enough to carry me,” I said to Baldbeak. “That would solve all our problems.”
Humans are very poorly designed, he said. As if to taunt me, he flew across the river and perched on a dead tree on the opposite bank, then flew back to my shoulder. I sighed. Well, it was no use just standing there.
I followed the curve of the river, hoping to come to a bridge, but instead found a ramshackle wooden house and a stone jetty with a boat tied to a post at its end.
The threatened rain had not yet started to fall, thankfully, but there was a chill to the air.
Although it was not yet evening, the light was gray and thin as gruel.
I knocked at the door of the little house.
There was an incoherent shout from inside, then the sound of a chair scraping back and boots on a wooden floor.
I waited, shivering, until the door opened to reveal a thin man with dirty blond hair and a gold earring.
The shock of seeing another new face rendered me silent for a moment, and my eyes must practically have been bugging out of my head.
I had seen no men my whole life, and then in just one day I had seen three.
It is hard to describe now how utterly bizarre the squareness and hairiness of a man’s face seemed to me then.
The man took me in from toe to tip, visibly unimpressed, and then startled when Baldbeak fluffed out his feathers on my shoulder.
Up till that point, the raven had been so still that he could have been a stuffed bird, and I admit I took pleasure in seeing the man take an involuntary step back when Baldbeak clicked his powerful beak.
“Are you the ferryman?” I asked, my voice sounding hoarse and unpracticed. “I need to cross the river.”
“I am,” he said, rubbing the back of his hand violently against his nose.
I closed my eyes in relief, then rummaged in my pockets. “What is your price?”
He watched me as I searched for the little purse of coin and named a price that sounded excessive to me—but then, what did I know of money?
I counted the coins into my hand. I had enough, and a few to spare, but I had to find some way to make more on my journey if I was to find food and lodging once I got to Quell.
I was aware of the ferryman’s eyes still intent on me as I squirreled the purse away again and held out the coins.
“Traveling alone?” he said.
“Yes. Well, with my raven.” Baldbeak gave a loud raark, making the man jump again.
“Raven is extra,” he said.
“The raven can fly,” I said sharply. As if demonstrating, Baldbeak launched himself from my shoulder and flapped to the opposite bank again.
The man spat a brown globule of something viscous onto the ground and grinned.
I could see the boat behind him, knocking against the wooden dock with each surge of the river and making a hollow clock-clock.
It was flat-bottomed and rather small, but sturdy enough, containing two bench seats and a few sealed barrels, and looked well cared-for as far as I could tell.
Certainly better kept than the shack, or the man himself.
“Come on then,” he said.
I followed as he ambled out onto the jetty and stepped into the boat. He didn’t offer his hand, so I stumbled in awkwardly as he untied the knot around the wooden post and freed the craft. Instantly I felt the tug of the current beneath us, almost violent in its insistence.
He did not speak to me, simply grabbed the oars and started rowing. I sat very upright on the little bench, feeling uncomfortable. When we were halfway across, he suddenly stopped.
“Changed my mind,” he said, resting on the oars. “It’s double, now.”
“What?”
“Double to get to the other side from here.” He grinned. “I can wait here all day. No skin off my nose.”
We drifted in the current. I stared at him.
“That wasn’t our agreement!”
“Agreement’s whatever I say it is, when we’re on the water. Hand it over.”
“No!”
He clucked his tongue. “Come, now. I saw your shinies.”
I needed what money I had for the journey—and more than that, I hated the idea of giving in to this little man with his yellow skin and disgusting plug of whatever-it-was behind his teeth. I clutched my pack tighter. “No.”
He sat back ostentatiously slowly, leaning on the oars and letting the boat drift. “Then I suppose we’ll just sit here until you change your mind.”
I glared at him. He grinned back at me.
“I’m not giving you any more money,” I said, shoving my hand into my pocket to clutch my purse. “Take me across.”
He closed his eyes and leaned back against the side as if to take a nap. Then he started to whistle tunelessly. The boat continued to drift, moving inexorably downstream.
I thought for a moment, then stood, setting the boat to rocking. The water wasn’t as fast-flowing as I had thought, and I could swim.
I came to a decision—and jumped overboard.
The cold of the water was a shock, and the bank looked very far away.
Baldbeak flew to me, made as if to land on my shoulder, and then thought better of it.
Just as well, as his weight would have pushed me under.
I struck out towards the bank and had already gained a little distance from the boat when I remembered.
My pack. It was still on the boat.
Silly. Slow.
The ferryman brandished it at me, grinning.
“Forget something?” he said.
Everything was in it. My embroidery. The letters. The map.
“Baldbeak!” I gasped, taking in a mouthful of brackish water.
Baldbeak flew to the ferryman and beat his wings in the man’s face while trying to snatch the pack with his claws, but the man held firm to its straps.
I trod water, fuming and torn between abandoning my things or swimming shamefacedly back to the boat.
After a futile few moments, Baldbeak abandoned his attempts and settled on the limb of a dead tree on the bank to observe my struggles, his head cocked to one side.
And then: a voice from the bank, smooth and dry as silk thread.
“Good morrow, ferryman. And to you too, my lady. Pleasant weather for a dip.”
A male voice. Was it Mother’s kidnapper, come back for me?
The ferryman and I both strained to see who was speaking.
The owner of the voice stepped forward from the edge of the woods, and I saw with relief that he was not the man who had fled the Tower.
He was not a terribly intimidating figure, either: seemingly no taller than I, and slightly built, with short, dark hair and a close-cropped beard framing sharp features that were regular and pleasant enough, but somehow unremarkable.
I would have been hard-pressed to pick him out in a crowd—and yet he had a presence that I could feel even on the water, that seemed to bend the boughs of the forest about him.
It was an odd combination. Just beyond him, where the trees grew closer together, a stout gray horse cropped at the grass.
“Need a hand?” the man called out to me.