A shy and handsome smile graced Shrike’s lips.
~
Chapter Thirty
“Hail and well met, my lords!”
Wren jerked his head up from the sketch-book page he’d scrawled on for the past hour or so. Sunday had dawned early over Blackthorn Briar with all the splendid refulgence of spring on the cusp of summer. Wren could have hardly resisted the temptation to spend the morning amidst the green. And so he followed Shrike out of doors, first to tend the hens and goats, and then to sit on the flat rock by the stream and draw whilst Shrike moved on to weeding the garden. Wren had intended to sketch Shrike, or the goats, or the surrounding forest, but he found his pencil drifting aimless across the page to form small and simple images from his own mind—swords and skeletons and moths like those which had filled the margins of his Latin grammar at Eton.
The cry which broke him from his inane stupor echoed across the garden from the far side of the cottage. Its bright and ebullient tone left little doubt as to who had spoken.
Still, Wren turned to Shrike and asked, “The ambassador?”
“Aye,” said Shrike, rising and dusting the soil from his palms on his hose.
At the same moment, a spiderweb mask peeked out from around the corner of the cottage, the angle suggesting the ambassador had folded almost in half to achieve the view. Cat-slit eyes darted from Wren to Shrike and back again. A smile curled beneath the mask. The ambassador drew himself up as nimble as a bent green branch springing back into shape, and as the rest of him emerged into the back garden, Wren beheld a rapier cradled in the crook of his arm like a bouquet of roses.
“Hail,” Shrike offered in reply to the ambassador’s extravagant bow.
Wren took the opportunity to rise and set his sketch-book aside to approach the ambassador. As the ambassador held out the rapier to him, Wren held out a leather scroll-case to the ambassador in turn.
The rapier Wren received was no mere fencing foil. A delicate spiderweb of gossamer silver strands formed the guard of the hilt, complete with glistening beads of once-molten metal scattered across the threads like dew-drops. Wren glanced at the rapier hanging from the ambassador’s belt, assuming they made a pair, but found the ambassador’s of far plainer make. Despite its beauty, one could never mistake the spiderweb rapier for a purely decorative piece. Its slender blade’s doubled edge came to a wicked point. And even a novice like Wren could feel its perfect balance in his palms.
The ambassador, meanwhile, received Wren’s offering with evident interest. He uncapped the scroll-case and unfurled the alphabet. His cat-slit pupils changed from merest slivers to enormous round ink-blots as his eyes traced the letters and illustrations. As his gaze fell to the zodiac Wren had drawn for Z, he gave an approving nod. “The beasts that stand by the naked man in the book of moons, defend ye.”
Wren, having no idea how to reply to this assertion, instead explained, “This chart is the key to letters—a map, if you will. Begin by studying it and copying out its symbols. When next you return, I’ll have slate and chalk for you to practice on.”
It felt odd to give instruction to one certainly far older and more powerful than himself. Yet the ambassador appeared in no way offended—on the contrary, his smile bespoke gratification. He rolled the alphabet up once more and tucked it back into the scroll-case with more reverence than most schoolboys regarded their textbooks.
Wren glanced around the garden and came to the belated realization that, between the abundant flora and fauna, it might prove too crowded to practise swordplay. He certainly wouldn’t like to strike the bee baskets by accident. “Er…”
The ambassador likewise glanced ‘round, though with a far more approving air. “Perchance, my lords, is there a staircase at all convenient to your holdings?”
Wren looked to the cottage—the single-storey cottage, which had remained so since the ambassador’s arrival and could not have escaped his notice. He didn’t dare look at the ambassador again, lest his expression reveal something that might give offence, and so instead he turned to Shrike.
Shrike didn’t appear anywhere near so puzzled as Wren felt. He stepped forward. “Follow me.”
Much astonished, Wren did so, and the ambassador likewise seemed to have no objection.
Shrike led the queer coterie past the hen-house and bee baskets, across the babbling brook and then, to Wren’s surprise, into the briar, the thorns parting before him.
It had never occurred to Wren that the briars enclosed anything more than the cottage and its humble garden. Now, however, as Shrike forged their path through ever-unfurling thorns, he recalled how the entry to Blackthorn had always formed a tunnel of briars supported by pillars of living trees rather than a mere archway. And how the road to Blackthorn itself could prove miles and miles long to those who did not know it.
Then, just when his wonder had grown fit to burst from his throat in enquiry, the wall of thorns parted like a curtain to reveal a meadow of clover and heather limned in briars and verdant forest. In the midst of the meadow stood a squat tower of dark stone. Arrow-slits dotted its rounded walls in a pattern that spiralled all the way up to the crenelated parapet some three storeys above.
“The old warren watch-tower,” Shrike explained in response to Wren’s incredulous look.
The ambassador clapped his hands. “Splendid! And the staircases all intact?”
“You may see for yourself,” Shrike said as he led the way to the open Gothic arch of the entrance.
The warm spring air in the meadow didn’t quite penetrate the cool dark interior of the tower. As Shrike had promised, a stone staircase spiralled upward against its curved wall. Shafts of sunlight shone through the arrow-slits to cross the tower like luminescent strands of spider-silk. More extraordinary still, the staircase had a living banister. A lilac bush grew in the centre of the tower, sprouting from where the flagstone floor had sunken into dirt, and its branches curved upward alongside the stone steps, weaving themselves together into a braided rail at a height a little above Wren’s waist. Heart-shaped leaves of vibrant green and fragrant blooms in royal purple appeared all the brighter against the cold dark stone of the tower interior. Whatever trellis had guised the branches had long since rotted away; or perhaps, Wren thought as he studied it, some arcane rite had coaxed them into proper shape.
“Perfection!” the ambassador declared. He skipped three steps up the stair before turning to face Wren again. “We shall begin by acquiring speed. The rapier is not required for this, strictly speaking, though you may wish to wear it to grow accustomed to its weight, however slender it may seem.”
Wren, who’d wondered for some minutes now what staircases had to do with fencing, thought he’d found the solution. “You want me to run up the stairs?”
“Precisely. I cannot make you as quick as myself,” the ambassador explained with what sounded like sincere regret. “But I can make you far quicker than most will expect of a mortal. Which will grant you the element of surprise. And within the span of surprise, one may often find room enough to slide a blade beneath the skin.”
