The Chestnut King: Book 3 of the 100 Cupboards Read online

  “Delivery and introduction,” James said. “The stories were not only about my father’s return. There were dark stories about Endor and a new life for it as well—the return of the deathless queen. I have a parchment with the emperor’s seal to give to my father. And I was to introduce him to an imperial liaison, but the man was not on our ship. He may arrive within the week.”

  Caleb said nothing. Uncle Frank smacked his lips. “Hard to imagine anything that needs a warship to deliver it being good news. How many slaves are chained to oars out in the harbor right now?”

  James had been cheerful throughout the conversation. Now his smile faded. “I know,” he said. “I’ve only ever served on free ships. I’d hoped to be given leave to sleep ashore, but the captain won’t grant it.”

  Hyacinth stepped over to her son and wrapped her arms around him. “The harbor is still the closest you’ve been this year.”

  Outside, bells began ringing. Uncle Frank set down his glass and plate and yawned slowly. Aunt Dotty bustled out of the kitchen and began fussing with Frank’s shirt, fiddling with the collar and the chain on his shoulders.

  “I don’t suppose I can get out of this?” Frank asked. The room laughed. Dotty pretended to be offended.

  Caleb slapped his shoulder. “Not a chance, Francis. You’re the oldest.”

  Uncle Frank looked across the table at Henry and grimaced, contorting his lips.

  “Frank,” Dotty said sharply, but her voice didn’t match the smile on her face. “If you want to be taken seriously as mayor, you can’t act like a child.”

  Frank snorted. “Lord Mayor to you. And if you think I want to be taken serious, then you haven’t been paying much mind to your husband all these years.”

  The bells rang on, and the leaded-glass windows shivered with each peal. Dotty finished with her husband and stepped back to admire her work. As she did, the front door opened, and Henry’s father, Mordecai, stepped in. Franklin Fat-Faerie, knob-nosed and bleary-eyed, squeezed in beside him. Henry tried to catch his eye, but the faerie hurried straight through the room and into the kitchen without looking up. Mordecai grinned at Uncle Frank and gave the chain a little tug.

  “You like the city collar?” he asked.

  Frank snorted. “You want it? We might be able to melt it down and make something useful—a bookend maybe. Or a shoehorn.”

  “Mordecai,” Hyacinth said. She walked to her husband. “James is here.”

  The last peal of the bells faded slowly. Mordecai turned, and Henry watched him take in his son. He stepped around the table and wrapped James up in his arms, and James seemed small beside him. Then he held James away, with a hand on each shoulder, and stared into his son’s eyes. The moment was frozen. The room was silent. Hyacinth wiped her eyes, and Henry felt his own growing hot, his throat tightening. He looked down at his hands, at his arms. He seemed so weak, next to his father and his brother, next to his uncles.

  Mordecai reached out and pulled Henry to his side. “You and I should get to know this James of ours.” He turned back to the door and gestured to Frank.

  “Lead us, brother. The streets are full and waiting.”

  Henry watched Uncle Frank take Aunt Dotty’s arm, and the two of them faced the door. Frank leaned over and gave his wife a quick kiss on the head. Dotty panicked, struggled out of her apron, and threw it into a corner. And then they stepped into the street. While the crowd in the room began to funnel after them, Henry ducked away from his father and brother and slipped into the kitchen.

  It was a big kitchen, with stone chimneys and grates, a jungle of pots hanging from the beamed ceiling, and firewood stacked in a corner. In the center of the room, a square table of rough planks squatted on ship-timber legs. One end of it was occupied with knives and vegetable ends and apple peels, bowls and pots and an oversize rolling pin. At the other end, on a tall stool, with his head down and his hands around a towering mug, sat Franklin, the fat faerie.

  He sniffed loudly when Henry walked in. “Begone, boy,” he said, and lifted his mug. “Leave me to my brew.”

  “Frank?” Henry moved over to the faerie, lifted a hand to set on his shoulder, and then thought better of it, letting it drop on the table. “What’s wrong? Aren’t you coming? You love ceremonies.”

  Frank looked up. His eyes were bloodshot. His nose was running and tear tracks glimmered on his cheeks. He pulled at a thick earlobe “Do I? I don’t know what I love or what I’m allowed to love. I don’t know what I am, is, or will be.” He pulled at his mug. “All I know is was. I know what I was. Your father was there with me. That’s all I could ask.”

  Henry licked his lips. He didn’t understand what was going on, but he didn’t think the faerie was drunk. He wasn’t sure if it was possible for Frank to get drunk.

  “I need to hurry,” Henry said. “But can you just tell me what happened?”

  Fat Frank moaned and shifted his short legs on the stool. “What happened is the committee. That’s what happened. Had a hearing today. All proper. All duly called and treble notarized. I thought it would be motions and tablings just to get to my exception. But no. No exception for Franklin of Badon Hill, who saved your life more than just once, who saw the faeren brought about straight, who dragged you safe to a christening and saw Mordecai, God green him, walk through that door, and a blade thrown and the mound magic of the faeren broken. No exception for me.”

  “What did you do?” Henry asked.

  The faerie slid off his stool and walked to a cask against the wall. He refilled his mug, braced his belly with one arm, threw his head back, and drank deeply. Then he turned and threw it into the kitchen fireplace, sending shards out the grate and across the kitchen floor.

  “I told,” Frank said. “I broke the first article in the Book of Faeren. I told a human.” He looked into Henry’s eyes and pointed up into his face. “I told you how to break a faeren spell. I told you to throw the knife that freed your father.”

  “So what?” Henry said. “The committee had betrayed my father. They were trying to kill me.”

  Frank shrugged. “Rules is rules, or so they say, the new shiny-faced cud-chewers on the committee. There was a time I’d have been killed outright, jellied and fed to foxes or something like. Might have liked that. Would have known where I was.”

  Henry blinked. The faerie had begun sobbing. “I’m not faeren, Henry York. Not anymore. They unselfed me. Right then, banging the gavel and in front of a crowd, they said the words not said in a lifetime. I’m unpeopled. Franklin Fat Nothin’.”

  “Come on, Frank,” Henry said. “You’re still a faerie, and I don’t care what they said. They can’t change that.”

  Frank’s eyebrows shot up. “Can’t they? You should know better than to doubt the mound magic, Henry. Should know better.” He sighed. “The frost’s coming to Fat Frank. My blood’s chilled, and the green will die. Have a look. Trust your pauper eyes if you can’t trust me.”

  The round faerie hopped back up onto his stool and thumped his round head into his hands, tugging at his crazy mop of faeren hair.

  Henry’s eyes relaxed, and the world began to spin. He focused in on his friend, on the green vines of strength that always surrounded him.

  At first nothing seemed to have changed beyond the faerie’s mood. And then Henry caught his breath. He could still vividly remember the first time he had seen Fat Frank with his second sight—tumbling around the bottom of a boat, fighting a wizard to the death. His green strands had been wild and strong then, and they could snap and lash around like lightning when he was angry. Now, in his sadness, they wove slowly, tangling and disappearing in the air. But at the end of each strand the color had changed. Green was now tipped with yellow.

  Henry shook his head and blinked it away. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what it meant.

  “Am I brown and twisted?” Fat Frank asked. His voice was sullen. “My autumn is here. Every faerie’s magic grows out from the mound where he was born, and I’ve b
een root-lopped. Frank the faerie husk. Frank the magickless dwarf. I’m a waned faerie, doomed to end as a bit of dead, chalky nothing.”

  “It’s only a little yellow at the tips,” Henry said. He wanted to sound confident, but he couldn’t. “That can’t mean anything. It can’t. Can it? What does it mean? What will happen?”

  Frank sighed and hopped off the stool. “Couldn’t say. Haven’t rotted before. Ask a dying tree.”

  “Can’t you appeal?” Henry asked. “Who’s above the district committee? Can’t my dad overturn them?”

  Frank laughed. “Not even your dad can rewrite the Book of Faeren or stand the mound magic on its head. Above the committees, there’s only the queene, and she’s just a pretty idea that couldn’t be shed. It’s all decentered and parliamental. She doesn’t do, she just is. Nothing but a mascot.”

  Suddenly, the faerie puffed out his chest and cheeks and knuckled his eyes. When he’d pulled himself together, he poked Henry in the stomach and glared.

  “Not a word, Henry York. Not a word. Not to no one but your father.” And then he turned on his heel, pushed through a swinging door, and disappeared into the back of the house.

  Henry watched the door swing to a stop. He looked at the mug shards on the floor, and he thought about sweeping. But he knew he was already desperately late. His mother would be wondering where he was. He might have already missed the entire processional.

  Biting his lip, Henry ran into the front room, threw open the door, and staggered onto the cobbled street. He’d run this city before, and in the night. He found the center of the street, filled his lungs with the cool air crawling in from the sea, and felt his legs accelerate down the hill, down toward the old stone bridge, and then to the square and the cathedral.

  Old Grandmother Anastasia opened her blind eyes. The front room was empty, and the heavy door creaked on its hinges, pushed with breeze breath.

  “Henry York Maccabee,” she said quietly. “Ten fingers will find you. Two are tapping at the gate.”

  Shivering, the old woman pulled up her blanket and shut her eyes tight.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Henry sprawled on his bed, staring at his shadowed ceiling. A lantern flicked light on a small table beside him. It had been a long day, his head was hurting again, and he was hungry. Massaging his eyebrows, he tried to remember if he had eaten anything before or after Uncle Frank’s ceremony. He didn’t think so. He’d been too distracted before, too tired after.

  Henry’s eyes fluttered, and he fought them. He didn’t want to sleep. He didn’t want to dream. But sleep came, as inevitable as the sunset, and like a slow wave it pounded him down. His body relaxed, his joints loosened, his quaking eyelids stilled. Beneath them, Henry’s eyes darkened, ready to see.

  Again, Henry was in the city square, catching up to the back of the crowd. Men and women sang, swaying and swinging lanterns with colored panes—red, green, orange, yellow, blue—while young girls danced and spun in the stained-glass light.

  Henry pushed through to the cathedral doors and walked between the city guards.

  The cathedral was tightly packed with bodies, shoulder to shoulder, all shifting and leaning, trying to get a view of the front, some with children perched high, others bouncing infants and humming quietly.

  Henry reached the long pews, loaded with people. He wouldn’t be sitting with his family.

  He could make out his mother in the front, and his father and Caleb. But his sisters and cousins had been swallowed by the sea of heads.

  Uncle Frank was standing in front, facing the crowd. Behind him three men and two women were seated, all wearing silver chains. Frank looked up and nodded at Henry. That hadn’t happened. Henry’s mind jarred as it slipped away from memory and into something new. He knew he was dreaming now. Beside Uncle Frank there stood a bishop in a bulbous hat and a blue robe. With one hand on Frank’s shoulder, he was chanting unintelligibly in some ancient language. And then he changed. The robe and hat disappeared. He grew taller. His shoulders broadened. His skin, pale as sea foam, glistened in the cathedral’s candlelight; his hair, oiled black, was pulled into a tight knot at the back of his head. Three notches stood out in the top of his left ear.

  “Down,” he said to Frank, and his voice was the voice of a woman. Frank knelt in front of him and dropped his chin to his chest. The man drew a silver knife from his belt and set the point on Frank’s neck, at the base of his skull. Henry’s head throbbed. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t interfere. He couldn’t change the vision. Holding the knife in place with his left hand, the man raised his right, palm flat, poised above the hilt. He looked up. He looked into Henry’s eyes. Without expression, he drove his hand down.

  Henry tried to scream, but his throat wouldn’t open. He tried to push forward, clawing through the image fog even as it faded.

  The world became bright. He was back in memory, sitting on a warm balcony overlooking the fume-trapped city of Byzanthamum. An old man and his wife sat next to each other, smiling at him. Ron and Nella. The woman, white-haired with beautiful eyes and dark, lined skin, leaned forward and gazed into Henry’s face.

  “Are you here?” Henry asked. “You’re a dream-walker. Are you here?”

  “Believe your dreams, Henry,” the woman said. “Yours tell you no lies.”

  “No,” Henry said. “I won’t. No one is going to kill Uncle Frank. The ceremony already happened. No one stabbed him.”

  But Nella was gone. Byzanthamum was gone.

  Henry was barefoot, standing in a black pool in the center of a walled garden. He was facing a white statue, a man tangled in vines, frozen in his struggle to break free. Water poured out of his stone, yell-widened mouth. Henry turned, slowly, shifting his feet on the slick bottom. The tall walls were shaped from a reddish stone, and outside of them Henry could see the spires and towers of a great city. The garden was full of vined arbors and slender, silver-leaved trees. Between the trees and in the arbors, there were set brightly colored rugs and chairs and backless couches.

  Somewhere, a man was sobbing.

  Henry walked forward, and his splashing made no noise. He stepped out of the water and onto the grass. The lawns were wrong. They were weedless, uniformly green, uniformly shorn. Too perfect. Vibrantly dead. The trees as well. Branches were overbalanced, symmetrical to the last leaf. There were no insects, no birds, nothing to live in and love the garden.

  The sobbing grew louder. Henry pushed through trees and stepped into an oval clearing.

  The sobbing stopped.

  Ten men lay facedown on the ground, evenly spaced around the clearing, arms stretched to the center. Some were taller than others, some broader. All lay perfectly still. All wore black. All, though they had different tints of skin, had long hair, oiled blackness spread loose on the grass. All had a small circle shorn bald on the back of the scalp, and in the circle, a small drop of blood, steaming. The man closest to Henry had three notches in his left ear.

  Henry wanted to run. He wanted to jump in the pool, splash water on his face, and wake up. But he couldn’t. His eyes kept seeing, and his body followed them.

  On the other side of the clearing, there were four trees, planted in a square. They were the only real-looking trees Henry had seen, tall, with trunk scars and thick overhead branches. Between the two closest, there stood an eleventh man. His hair was blond, his cheeks were wet. His head lolled on his shoulders. Henry stepped closer. Both of the man’s arms were outstretched, and his hands were on the tree trunks on either side of him. Henry blinked. The man had no hands, or at least no fingers. Just after the wrists, his arms had grown into the trees. His feet were missing as well. They’d been buried. Grass surrounded his shins.

  Behind the man, centered between the four trees, there was a red couch. On it, Henry could see the shape of a woman, a tall woman with smooth olive skin.

  “Welcome, pauper son,” the woman said. “There is space for another between my trees.”

  He had to run. He had to
run now. Behind him, ten men rose slowly to their feet.

  The man between the trees looked up. “I have a problem, Henry.” It was Richard’s voice. “I’m quite deeply in love with both. I need you to pick.”

  Henry’s legs pushed and bent in place. He was rooted to the spot.

  “Henry?” The man even cocked his head the way Richard did.

  Panicking, Henry crouched, dug his toes into the turf, and jumped.

  This time, he moved.

  Henry opened his eyes as he flew off the bed. His toes, finally gripping sheets, propelled him into Richard where he sat beside the lantern, and propelled Richard and his chair into the bedroom wall. The chair splintered as the two boys slammed off the plaster and onto the floor. And then they were still, breathing hard, gasping.

  “Ow,” Henry said. He was facedown, and bits of grit on the plank floor were grinding into his cheek. His right arm was tangled in Richard’s chair.

  “I apologize,” Richard said from somewhere beneath and behind him. “I had not anticipated your response.”

  Henry rolled onto his back. He hated dreams. “What are you talking about, Richard?”

  Richard sat up. His face loomed into view. Narrow, thick-lipped, and usually friendly, it looked more offended now. His eyebrows had climbed high above his large eyes.

  “Your sister. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed?”

  “My sister?”

  “Una. I love her. And your cousin. Anastasia. I love them both.”

  Henry shut his eyes and slapped his hands over them. “Richard—” So much was built up inside him, so much that he was trying to understand and avoid understanding. And then this. Suddenly, Henry was laughing, rib-quaking, stomach-cramping laughter. The oppressiveness of the dream, the fear, came burbling out as he shook; it ran down his cheeks in hot tears. Henry propped himself to sitting, breathing slowly, trying to control his jaw and the spasms in his diaphragm. “Richard,” he said again, wiping his eyes on the backs of his hands. “You can’t marry them both. And you’re barely eleven.”