Miss Ellicott's School for the Magically Minded Page 7

  The look in his eye said he meant it. Chantel had to admit she’d assumed he hadn’t. But she found she still wasn’t frightened.

  “Fine,” she said. “I won’t move. So now that you’ve captured us, what are you going to do with us? We don’t have any money. We don’t have anything worth stealing.”

  Franklin looked nonplussed.

  “And you’re all alone,” she went on. “How long can you keep that crossbow pointed at us?”

  “Chantel—” said Anna.

  “Look.” The crossbow wavered. “You can’t go around telling people you’re a sorceress. There are people who would kill you for it.”

  “Is sorcery illegal in the Roughlands?”

  “The what?” said Franklin.

  “The Roughlands.” Chantel gestured broadly. “This place.”

  Franklin looked amused. “‘This place’? What exactly do you mean by ‘this place’? You’re in the kingdom of West Pharsalia, near the southern border of the United Chieftancies.”

  “I’ve heard of those,” said Anna.

  “I’d think so,” said Franklin. “Since you can’t possibly live more than a few miles from them. Wow, you people are really shut off from the world, aren’t you?”

  “I read a book about the Chieftancies, for your information,” said Chantel.

  “That’s nice,” said Franklin. “Stay out of them. They’d probably eat you for breakfast.”

  He lowered the crossbow, and Chantel felt rather insulted by this. Apparently he no longer considered her a threat.

  “The worst chieftain is the warrior Karl the Bloody,” Franklin added. “They say he lines the road to his fort with the heads of his enemies, and when he captures you, he lets you choose the stake he’s going to impale you on.”

  Chantel shrugged. Everyone in the Roughlands was more or less a barbarian. She’d learned that in school.

  “I only mention this because he’s looking for me,” Franklin added. “If you can hide me with your magic, I might show you the way to the gate.”

  Franklin lived in a cave. It wasn’t a very big cave, and the floor was rocky and not at all comfortable, but at least he had food. He gave them soup made from eggs and green stuff. He told them the green stuff was nettles. It tasted pleasantly salty. He baked some potatoes, too, in the embers of the fire. He said he’d scavenged them from a farm.

  The snake in Chantel’s head wanted her to say, “You mean you stole them.” But she wanted a baked potato very much, so she resisted.

  “Is there a street that goes to the port?” Anna asked.

  “A street? There’s a road,” said Franklin.

  “What’d you do to get a guy called Karl the Bloody chasing you?” Bowser sounded slightly jealous.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Franklin. “What can you do to hide me from him?”

  Chantel thought it did matter. “Nothing,” she said, at the same moment that Anna said, “We can do an abnegation.”

  “A what?” said Franklin.

  “It’s a thing where you make people think you’re not important enough to notice,” said Anna.

  Franklin huffed impatiently. “I can do that myself.”

  “You can do magic?” Bowser looked even more jealous.

  “No, but making people not notice you—that’s basic.” He turned back to Anna. “You can’t make me invisible?”

  “No,” said Anna. Then she went on, despite Chantel’s frantic gestures: “We need a lot of supplies and things to do most of our spells.”

  “So get supplies and things! What kinds of things?”

  “Magical ingredients,” said Anna. “Water from certain wells, blood shed in certain ways. And then for wards—”

  “Wards? What do those do?”

  “Strengthen walls,” said Anna. “They can be used to seal doors and windows, too. Chantel’s really good at them. But we couldn’t do anything here, because there’s nothing to seal.”

  They were sitting in the open mouth of the cave, around a crackling campfire. The soup pot was balanced on rocks over the fire, and the baked potatoes were beginning to smell nearly done.

  “It’s the sorceresses that strengthen Seven Buttons,” said Bowser. He’d been watching the stranger in silence, summing him up, Chantel thought.

  “Seven what?”

  “The wall around the city,” said Bowser. “But now that—”

  Chantel made a shut-up gesture at Bowser, and to her relief, he trailed off. The Marauders had kidnapped Miss Ellicott and the other sorceresses. Lord Rudolph had said so. The Marauders mustn’t find out how much the sorceresses’ absence endangered the city.

  “The wall is impenetrable,” said Chantel firmly.

  “I’d think it would be that even without magic.” Franklin poked a baked potato with his knife, nodded, and flipped it to Bowser.

  Bowser caught it, winced, and dropped it. Franklin set potatoes down more gently in front of the girls, and for a while there was silence as they ate. The potatoes were hot and crumbly, and the best thing Chantel had tasted in a long time.

  “Right, I’ve decided,” he said when they’d finished. “I’ll guide you to the port, and then I want you to take me into the city with you. It’s the one place Karl the Bloody will never think of looking for me.”

  “I think that would be treason,” said Anna uncertainly. “I mean, no offense, but you’re a Marauder, right?”

  She looked to Chantel for support.

  “Everyone outside the walls is a Marauder,” Chantel explained.

  “Take it or leave it,” said Franklin. He leaned back against a rock, hands behind his head, and looked like he didn’t care.

  “We’ll discuss it,” said Chantel.

  They stepped out of the cave. The night sky was a dome of stars, with no walls or towers to block them out. A breeze brushed the land, bringing a smell of green growing things. It suddenly came to Chantel that she might like it out here, once she got used to it.

  Of course, that would be only if the place weren’t full of Marauders with names like Karl the Bloody.

  “We can’t take him into the city with us, can we?” said Anna. “It would be treason.”

  “He’s only one Marauder,” said Chantel. “And he’s just a kid. What could he do?”

  “Open the Seven Buttons?” said Anna.

  “How, without magic?” said Chantel.

  “He could open the gates to the Marauders,” said Bowser.

  “The guards would stop him,” said Anna.

  “They probably won’t even let him inside,” said Chantel. “He’s got a crossbow. And a horrible Marauder accent. And at least he’ll help us find the gate.”

  They walked back to the cave. Franklin was still lying with his head against the rock. He sat up. “So what did you decide?”

  “We decided we’ll take you to Lightning Pass,” Chantel lied.

  9

  THE HARBOR

  Franklin said they should wait until the moon rose. So they lay down to rest for a few hours. Chantel couldn’t sleep. She was too worried about the little girls. What if Mrs. Warthall had sold them already?

  The moon crept over the distant mountains. Franklin jolted awake and said it was time to go. White mist hung heavy over the land, weaving around the tall weeds and reminding Chantel uncomfortably of ghosts and fiends.

  Chantel made a light-globe (which impressed Franklin) and they picked their way along a path through bushes and thorns. After an hour or so they stumbled out onto a road.

  “Put the light out now,” Franklin murmured. “Someone might see it.”

  “Who?” said Chantel.

  “He means Karl the Bloody,” Bowser said. “Just put it out.”

  Chantel did. “I don’t see why Karl the Bloody would come all the way down here from the United Chieftancies, looking for you.”

  “He might send someone,” said Franklin, as they made their way by moonlight along the road.

  “What’s so important about you any
way?” Chantel demanded.

  “Chantel’s usually very polite,” said Anna. “It’s just that she has a snake in her head.”

  “Is that an expression?” said Franklin.

  “Never mind my snake,” said Chantel. “What did you do?”

  “Keep your voice down,” said Franklin.

  “I guess he’s, um, probably a deserter,” said Bowser.

  Franklin looked at Bowser through narrowed eyes. “Yeah. I’m a deserter.”

  But Chantel had a feeling he was lying.

  “You mean you’re a soldier?” she asked. “Aren’t you too young?”

  “He’s not,” said Bowser. “Our soldiers enlist when they’re thirteen.”

  “Can you all just keep your voices down?” said Franklin nervously.

  Now and then they saw dark farmhouses, surrounded by fields. Twice they passed through sleeping villages. There were no lights. Somehow Chantel would have expected these village-dwelling Marauders to be prowling about at night, like cats. But it seemed they preferred to stay in.

  “It’s not just that he’s chasing me,” said Franklin. “He’s coming this way anyway. The king’s given him permission to march through West Pharsalia.”

  “You mean the king of West Pharsalia?” said Anna.

  The snake in Chantel’s head gave an unhappy twitch. “Why is he marching?”

  “To break the tollgates,” said Franklin. “Can’t you keep your voice down?”

  “I was keeping my voice down,” said Chantel. “What tollgates?”

  “The ones you people use to control the road to the mountains,” said Franklin. “Don’t you even know that?”

  “Why would I?” said Chantel. “I’ve never been in the mountains. Anyway, if they’re ours, why—”

  “Because everyone is sick of you people controlling the only pass through the mountains and the only decent harbor for three hundred miles,” said Franklin. “Shh!”

  He froze abruptly, then grabbed Chantel’s arm and pulled her off the road. Chantel only struggled for a second, then she heard it too.

  They all ducked down in a damp ditch. A trio of men appeared on the road, barely visible in the moonlight.

  “Didn’t you see something up here?” The speaker had the same twangy accent as Franklin.

  “Just some peasant,” twanged another man.

  “That farmer said he saw a red-haired boy, though . . .”

  Chantel and the others stayed still and silent for a long time after the men tromped past.

  “Red-haired boy? Did they mean you?” Anna asked at last.

  “Those were scouts,” said Franklin. “Karl’s men. He always sends three, because he thinks one or two might betray him.”

  Chantel wondered if having Franklin as a guide was such a good idea after all.

  “It’s a good thing it’s so dark,” said Franklin. “You all left a track in the grass like a herd of elephants.”

  They walked on. It was morning when they reached the port.

  Chantel had not known there was a wall around the port as well.

  This wall was less formidable than Seven Buttons. It was only twice as tall as a man. There was a wide-open gate, with a sign over it that read

  HARBOR DISTRICT

  KINGDOM OF LIGHTNING PASS

  PERMITS REQUIRED

  A seagull perched atop the sign.

  There were guards checking papers. But there was some advantage to being young, after all—nobody paid any attention to Chantel and her companions. Adults had to show permits, and argue, and pay. A woman driving an empty oxcart had been pulled off to the side, and her cart was being carefully measured inside and out. She looked frightened.

  “What’s going to happen to her?” said Anna as they slipped past.

  “How should I know?” said Franklin. “They probably think she has a false bottom.”

  Bowser looked confused, then said “Oh, you mean in the cart. Why?”

  “To carry stuff you guys don’t let out into the kingdoms and chieftaincies,” said Franklin.

  “Contraband, you mean?” said Chantel.

  Franklin shrugged. “If that’s what you want to call it. Spices, silver. Medicine for spotted swamp fever. We can never get as much as we need of that, because you guys control it.”

  “What’s spotted swamp fever?”

  “What killed my mother,” said Franklin.

  Chantel felt a little twist of horror in her stomach. She did not, herself, have a mother. But she understood that those who did were often very attached to them.

  “I’m sorry your mother died,” she said.

  “You might be sorry,” said Franklin. “I mean you yourself. But it was your wretched city’s fault, so don’t tell me you’re sorry.”

  Chantel turned away angrily, fighting the retort that the snake in her head wanted her to make. After all, Franklin (whose twangy drawl was not getting any less annoying) was talking about something that upset him. And he wanted to blame someone for it. Chantel could understand that. So he was blaming the Kingdom, which meant the patriarchs. Nothing to do with her.

  Chantel had been taught in school that there were two sides to every issue, and that one of these sides was wrong.

  “We’re really very sorry to hear about your mother, Franklin,” said Anna.

  “Yeah, ’cause she’s the one you did hear about,” said Franklin.

  Chantel and Anna exchanged a look. Franklin was difficult. But anyway, they would soon be rid of him.

  They had reached the harborside. They stopped and stared. Broad wooden docks edged the cobbled street. Wharfs reached out into the sea. Ships bobbed and thumped beside them. The air smelled of salt and fish.

  The ships’ masts rocked. Looking up at them made Chantel dizzy. Seagulls screeched, coasted down the sky, and landed on the decks. A sailor sent them flapping away with a snap of a rope.

  Men and boys were everywhere, shouting, cursing, singing. They rolled barrels that rumbled along the docks. Chantel saw a boy her own age climbing a ship’s rigging. He stepped into the crow’s nest and trained a spyglass, not out to sea, but into Lightning Pass.

  “He’s spying on us!” said Chantel, incensed.

  “’Course he is,” Franklin twanged. “You put up a high wall and don’t let anybody in. What do you expect?”

  “I didn’t put up a high wall,” said Chantel.

  “Look.” He took Chantel by the shoulders and turned her around. “Do you see your city? Do you see what it looks like?”

  Chantel shrugged away angrily. But she looked. She saw Seven Buttons, and the buildings rising behind it, climbing to the castle at the top.

  “It’s a fortress,” said Franklin. “You see those towers, ready to fight the world? You see the wall?”

  They would be rid of him soon, she told the snake in her head. They were leaving him at the gates. “The wall’s always been there. It’s to protect us.”

  “Nah. It’s been there a couple hundred years, sure,” said Franklin. “But you didn’t always need ‘protecting.’”

  “It’s been there more than five hundred years,” Chantel informed him. “Because it was five hundred years ago that Queen Haywith caused a breach in the wall, and the Marauders got in, and the city was nearly lost.”

  “It’s been there time out of mind,” said Anna, trying to make peace.

  “Okay.” Franklin exchanged a glance with Bowser and made a whatever shrug.

  Chantel looked at the ships, and at the open sea beyond. The smells of the harbor were familiar to her—fish and seaweed and salt. They blew into the city when the wind was from the south.

  But she’d never seen the ocean up close, rolling in glass-green waves toward the shore, crests of white water breaking slowly, crashing against the stone pier.

  And the ships! They could go anywhere. They could sail forever. Across a world without walls. The thought was at once thrilling and frightening.

  “There are so many ships,” said Anna.
<
br />   “Not really,” said Franklin. “About three-fourths of the berths are empty. Berths means places for the ships to dock,” he added.

  “We knew that,” said Chantel.

  “I didn’t,” said Bowser.

  The snake in Chantel’s head twitched. “Do you have to take his side?”

  Bowser looked hurt.

  “Ships only come to you if they can’t sell their goods anywhere else,” said Franklin. “The merchants don’t like the way they’re treated, so they bring their worst goods and charge high prices. To all of us.”

  “Well, anyway,” said Bowser, “we need to get through the gate.”

  Franklin looked around at all of them. “If you tell the guards at the gates that I’m not one of you, that I’m a—Marauder, is it?—then I’ll say that you’re the same.”

  “We weren’t going to do that!” said Anna, but Bowser ruined everything by looking embarrassed.

  “They’ll know as soon as you open your mouth,” said Chantel.

  “So I won’t open it,” said Franklin. “You’ll do the talking.”

  There was a whole neighborhood between the harbor and the gates. It had warehouses and markets, inns for the sailors and houses. People lived out here, whole families. They must be Marauders, Chantel thought. She couldn’t imagine anyone from Lightning Pass wanting to live among the noise and the smells and the loud, rough sailors.

  Or being allowed to, she thought with a pang.

  “Anyway,” said Chantel, “they’re not going to let you in with that cross . . .”

  She trailed off. Franklin was unarmed.

  “With what?” said Franklin.

  “Where’s your crossbow?” said Bowser.

  Franklin shrugged. “They wouldn’t have let me in the first gate with it, you know. Let’s go.”

  Chantel frowned. She was sure he’d had the crossbow recently.

  The city gates were, in fact, two iron-clad doors in Seven Buttons. They were shut fast. Towers rose on either side of them, bristling with guards. Two ranks of guards stood before them, heavily armed.

  Their purple uniforms meant Home. The place where Chantel belonged, and Marauders didn’t. Inside the wall, safe from the Roughlands.

  She started toward the doors. A guard stepped in front of her, blocking her path.