In Dark Service Read online

  Jacob heard a train of horses pulling to a halt outside the inn and the pastor suspected his fortunes were about to take a turn for the worse. Confirming his premonition, one of the few men in town who could afford a private carriage with six horses on train came barrelling through the entrance. Benner Landor. The largest landowner in Northhaven. Probably the richest in the whole prefecture. With enough ambition to propel him even further.

  ‘Father Carnehan,’ said Benner, his eyes settling on the pastor next to the constable. ‘Where do you think your son’s at?’

  Jacob lifted the fob-watch on his tunic. ‘Well, I’m hoping he’s at work in the library by now.’

  ‘Try again,’ said the landowner. ‘There’s a duel being fought over at Rake’s Field this morning, and unless I’ve been misinformed, Carter and Duncan are both out there. Not—’ he sucked in his cheeks ‘—mark you, as seconds.’

  Jacob groaned out loud. ‘Pistols or sabres?’

  ‘Given there’re two cavalry swords usually crossed above my fireplace that are missing, I would say the latter.’ He looked at Wiggins, the constable’s wizened fingers floating over a second whisky. ‘And I think you’ll find that duelling is still listed on King Marcus’s statute books as an offence, even in a town as out of the way as Northhaven.’

  ‘Only if someone dies in the duel,’ sighed Wiggins. ‘If they live… well, there’s nothing the girls find half so attractive as a duelling scar or two to mark that puppy fat.’

  ‘Father,’ growled Landor. ‘Do you think Mary’s going to share this ex-battalion roughhouser’s view of one or both of our children ending up on the surgeon’s slab?’

  No. Jacob’s wife would surely give him a few scars of his own if he let a duel involving their son go ahead.

  ‘Make sure reparations are made,’ Wiggins called back to Jay.

  The constable hobbled after Jacob, looking to reach the coach. Wiggins sure wasn’t about to walk out to Rake’s Field at his age.

  It was crowded in the carriage, bouncing along towards the woodland at the edge of town, rocking like a cradle on the rough roads. As well as Jacob, Wiggins and Benner Landor, they had the company of the landowner’s daughter, Willow. Her warning about the duel, it seemed, was the spur behind their speedy departure to Northhaven’s outskirts. Willow’s long red hair swayed with the carriage’s bumpy passage over the dirt track, the woman flashing little daggers of anger towards her father when she wasn’t biting her lip in worry about her brother’s plight.

  ‘I should’ve packed the two of you off to an academy in the capital,’ complained Landor, his words momentarily lost under the crack of the driver’s whip and the clatter of hooves outside. The footman at the back of the carriage called out warnings to those on the road to leap aside. ‘The promise I gave your mother on her deathbed was a mistake. Honeyed words about learning the running of the business here and staying close to the family. This behaviour is all that Duncan’s learned at Northhaven. Brawling like a river-boatman over a spilled glass of rum.’

  ‘It’s a girl they’re fighting over,’ corrected Willow.

  ‘Then you should’ve told me earlier,’ said Landor.

  ‘I only discovered the news from one of the staff an hour ago when I couldn’t find my brother,’ said Willow. ‘You knew as soon as I did.’

  ‘Which one?’ asked Benner Landor. ‘I mean which girl is the duel over, not which member of staff told you about this foolery?’

  ‘Adella Cheyenne.’

  ‘The daughter of old Cheyenne who keeps the minutes of the town’s aldermen?’ said Landor, his temper not best improved by the news. ‘A clerk’s daughter. That’s who he’s quarrelling over?’

  Willow nodded.

  ‘Your brother,’ hissed Benner Landor, a finger poking the rich red upholstery of the carriage’s interior as if it was his boy’s ribs. ‘Your brother. And what does he think he’s going to do if he wins his duel? There’s a whole season’s worth of society beauties who’ll be throwing themselves at Duncan for just a sniff of our wealth. Earls, barons, counts – fancy titles, draughty baronial mansions down south that need their roofs repaired, and not two farthings to rub together. That’s the wife Duncan will be taking, not a clerk’s daughter.’

  ‘High hopes and great expectations,’ snorted the constable. ‘From a man that sweet-talked a timberman’s daughter into going down the aisle with him. You sure you been distilling your corn for fuel, Benner Landor, not drinking it raw?’

  ‘When I married Lorenn, we were starting out with nothing,’ said Landor throwing an angry glance at Wiggins. ‘We were equals and what we built, we built together. You think any nobleman’s daughter would have taken me when I was a farmhand? Swans swim with swans, ducks swim with ducks, that’s just the way it is.’

  The constable spat out of the open window. ‘You should’ve told me that’s the way it is. I would’ve got the radiomen to send a message to King Marcus to set a princess aside for you. You don’t want all the royal family married off before your boy gets to court.’

  Landor looked to Jacob. ‘What about you, pastor? You’ve not got an opinion?’

  ‘You know I travelled here after I married Mary.’ And it doesn’t matter how many years I’ve stayed. I’ll always be an outsider. ‘Families want what’s best for their children,’ added Jacob. ‘That’s a natural yearning. It’s not for me to pontificate to anyone else on what their best might be. I’ve got trouble enough convincing Carter of what constitutes a good path.’

  ‘You could try letting himself find his own way,’ suggested Willow, tartly.

  Jacob’s hand slipped down to a handgrip by the seat as the carriage twisted to one side. ‘When you know where the bends in the road are, it is an unkindness not to call a warning to someone driving too fast.’

  Benner Landor nodded. ‘That’s the way I’m thinking too. I wish there was some of your wisdom in our young men, pastor.’

  Jacob held his peace. It was exactly what the son had inherited from the father that had him worried.

  ‘And am I also expected to be married off to some earl’s drooling, halfwit heir?’ asked Willow. ‘Or is one coat of arms to hang above the fireplace enough to satisfy the family’s honour?’

  ‘We’ll see how that goes,’ growled Landor. ‘The Avisons of Grovebank have two sons who need to find matches, and the end of their land is only two hundred miles down the coast from the corner of our last farm.’

  ‘Of course, why go to the expense of sending me to court, when there’s a local idiot adjoining our corn fields?’

  ‘When you’ve got four fool-headed grandchildren arguing about whose gambling bills the sale of our estate is going to pay off first, you’ll be glad your long dead father had the sense to marry the Landors into a title they can’t trade away as easily as their land.’

  ‘You can always get your sons to marry a timberman’s girls,’ the constable winked at Willow. ‘At least that way they’ll always have wood for the fire as well as between their ears.’

  The creaking of the carriage lessened as the six horses slowed. They were arriving by the woods. Benner Landor was out before the coach had even stopped, leaping down into the meadows in front of the woodland, the traditional setting for local duels. Far enough outside town that a stray bullet wouldn’t catch a bystander; near enough that a wounded man could still be carried back to Northhaven’s surgeons without bleeding-out more than a pint’s worth of blood. Grass before breakfast, that was what the tradition was called. A polite euphemism for a brutal settling of so-called honour among dunces. And here were two of them, surrounded by a crowd of their jostling, jeering peers… cheering on the clash of swords as Carter Carnehan and Duncan Landor parried and thrust at each other. A corded duelling line across the field was all that separated the pair, a boundary neither combatant was meant to step over. Nominally, it was to ensure the duel was to the first blood and not the death. Although much good that did the gallants frequently pulled wounded from Rake’s Fi
eld.

  ‘Thought those two were meant to be friends,’ said Wiggins. ‘Leastwise, it was always that pair trying to sneak into taverns together on the wrong side of the age ban.’

  ‘They’ve moved on,’ noted Willow, the sarcasm dripping from her voice. ‘Now they’re finding trouble with women who should know better, rather than at the bottom of an ale glass.’

  Carter Carnehan and Duncan Landor might have been much the same in temper and temperament, but in looks they were poles apart – all they really shared was their height and frame – both tall and raised barn-strong by country living. Carter was dark-haired, his mane tending to unruly twists like his father, while Duncan possessed an untidy straw-coloured mop. Carter was dark-skinned and swarthy, a face all hard lines and as jutted as granite; Duncan’s features fairer, the angelic suggestion of his handsome countenance undermined by a slight curl of superiority that often crinkled around the edges of his lips. Duncan waiting for the whole world to be given to him on a plate, Carter with nothing but an ageing pastor’s hopes and worries. As dissimilar as they were, it had seemed natural to Jacob they had become fast friends growing up – two halves of a coin snapped apart and joined to make a whole. How had it come to this, their friendship spiked by the pressures of looming adulthood? Well, their friendship might be skewered, but damned if I’m going to let these two young fools do the same to each other with sabres.

  Jacob could see the young woman Willow had mentioned on the sidelines. From the flushed look on her face, her hands clasped together in anticipation as if she was praying, she seemed to think that it was terribly exciting to have two beaus crossing blades on her behalf. Willow had Adella Cheyenne pegged straight all right. At their age, men needed a good woman’s common-sense to stop them cracking antlers. A lady with as little insight as a man was as dangerous as a crowded inn on payday. Blockheads like Carter and Duncan needed civilising, not encouraging behind a duelling line.

  Benner Landor was ahead of Jacob, bellowing his way through the onlookers, his large farmer’s hands seizing members of the audience and shoving them out of his way. Not all of the onlookers were contemporaries of the two young men… new apprentices. There were gamblers and roughhousers aplenty; the kind of rascals who would’ve turned up to any duel, morning, afternoon or evening, just for a chance to view spilled blood. They sounded angry curses at the exertions of the barrel-chested estate owner cutting a passage through their ranks but the mob quietened down quick enough after they saw Constable Wiggins trailing in the landowner’s wake. If this combat took a fatal turn, the audience could be locked up for incitement to murder. It took Benner Landor getting to the front of the circle of jeering brutes before the two participants realised that unwelcome company had arrived at their duel.

  ‘You fool,’ bellowed Benner Landor striding out, ‘you damnable young fool. What are you doing here? Have the stealers got into you this morning?’

  Stealers. Benner had used the old formal name for the demons that could worm a way into a man’s soul and twist it to evil. Give Duncan Landor his due; he seemed willing to brazen it out. ‘It’s a matter of honour.’ Duncan said the last word as though it had been passed down to him on a scroll by an angel to protect him from his formidable father’s wrath.

  ‘Honour! Whose honour would that be, boy?’

  Duncan pointed toward Carter and then Adella. ‘This ruffian’s slighted Adella. Says he’s going to throw his post at the library and take passage on a ship at Redwater Harbour.’

  ‘So what?’ Benner Landor’s voice wavered angrily. ‘So this girl’s the harbourmaster of Redwater is she? Making sure every Northhaven man fresh out of schooling has valid papers of apprenticeship with the seaman’s guild? That’s her job?’

  ‘Carter said,’ Duncan went on, faltering under the intensity of the large man’s gaze, ‘that Adella didn’t matter to him as much as travelling.’

  ‘You draw your sabre every time some Northhaven man gets bitten by the bug to see what’s over the horizon and a girl takes hurt at it, I’d better build a log cabin here for you,’ said Landor. He jabbed a finger at Adella and the slowly dissipating crowd. ‘Because you’ll be cracking steel here for the rest of your dumb life. A town clerk’s daughter takes hurt; there are plenty of lamplighters and circuit riders around to pick up a sabre on her behalf. You want to fight duels for fun, you find a slighted countess from a good southern family to draw your blade out over.’

  From the crestfallen look descended upon Adella’s face, Jacob had a shrewd idea what game was playing out here. The pastor had spent enough afternoons drowning worms along the river with a rod and line to know that sometimes to snare the river’s big fish you had to use a minnow as bait. Carter Carnehan was being played, and Jacob’s young fool of a son was too full of fight to realise that he was the lure. The look of melancholy crossing Adella’s young face was the river’s big catch about to be yanked from her menu.

  ‘What have you got to say, pastor?’ demanded Benner Landor.

  ‘That I raised my boy better than this,’ said Jacob. ‘Any fool can fight and most fools usually do. Violence is the last refuge of the in­competent. It solves nothing and only ever comes back to cut the hand wielding the blade.’

  ‘Get into the coach,’ Benner Landor ordered his son. ‘Before I have the constable toss your tail in the gaol.’

  Wiggins rested his hands on his hips and called out to the dwindling number of onlookers. ‘Sabre practice is over… back to your homes, all of you!’

  Duncan reluctantly sloped off towards his father’s coach, sliding his sword back into its scabbard. Carter passed his blade to a man who had been acting as his second, trying to ignore Duncan’s sister who was fixing him with a stare strong enough to burn wood lacquer off a cabin’s walls. The second carried Carter’s borrowed weapon over to the carriage.

  ‘This wasn’t my doing,’ Carter protested to Willow. ‘Duncan challenged me. What was I to do, be known as the biggest coward in Northhaven?’

  ‘I don’t know who’s the biggest idiot out of you two,’ said Willow. ‘It takes some choosing.’ Willow shook her head wearily before following her brother to the family carriage.

  ‘I’d offer you a lift back to the town,’ Benner Landor told Jacob. ‘But I reckon these two should be kept apart for a while.’

  ‘We’ll walk,’ said Jacob, his gaze hardening on his son. Carter’s showing mighty little repentance for having come within a hair of running through a boy he used to call a friend. ‘And use the time to discuss this foolery.’

  Carter watched the carriage depart with nonchalance. ‘You mean you’ll talk, Father, and I’ll have to listen, same as it ever was.’

  ‘You got something to say, boy?’ said Jacob. ‘Maybe about why you’re out here brawling and not working at the library where you should be? About how you’re planning to ship out from Redwater? Your mother agreed to sign your papers for the seaman’s guild apprenticeship has she? Because I know I haven’t.’

  ‘You don’t need an apprenticeship to sign on with a skipper. There are plenty of ships that will sign you on without papers.’

  ‘Sure there are,’ said Jacob. ‘If you don’t mind lighting out on some tub loaded down with twice as much cargo as she can safely carry. There’re sheets on your bed more sturdy than the sails those seabed-scrapers venture out with. Use your head, boy. I want a son, a living son, not a collection of bones scattered on the bottom of an ocean.’

  ‘Standing in the river tickling trout twice a week doesn’t make you an expert on matters nautical,’ said Carter. He looked around, noticing they were almost the last people left in the clearing. ‘Where’s Adella?’

  ‘She got onto the Landor carriage. Old Benner might be tighter than bark on a tree but he’s got a gentleman’s manners to go with his self-made fortune.’

  Carter angrily lashed out at a sod of grass with his boot. ‘Damn!’

  ‘Nobody held a gun to her head to make her accept the ride,’ said Jacob. ‘You
think on that, boy. Then you think what your mother would have done to me, if I’d been the one out here.’

  ‘You? What have you ever fought for?’ said Duncan, bitterly.

  ‘Only that which counts,’ said Jacob. ‘This is the trick of getting through life. Only stand up for what counts. Give it a few years, maybe you’ll start to mull on what counts might be.’

  ‘Why does everyone believe they got the right to tell me what to think and how to act and who to be?’ spat Carter. ‘You, that rich little turd Duncan, Adella, Willow, the Master of the Codex at the library. Do I tell any of you how to behave? Do I wake you up to nag you every minute of the day with your shortcomings? No! I keep it to myself; because I figure how you act and live is your concern. I think it’s time I got some of the same courtesy!’

  ‘And I think it time you finish the day where you should’ve started it. Working at the library. And to make sure you get there, I’ll be walking with you every step of the way.’

  In the end, Jacob and his wayward son only had to walk half the ten-mile journey to the library. They hitched a lift with a cart coming out from the Radiomen’s Guild in town. Both men sat on the cart’s tail, behind a pile of wooden crates, each box holding dozens of message tubes. The sun grew hotter. Jacob rested under the shade of the cart’s tarpaulin cover – raised on four poles above the flatbed – while Carter swung his feet lazily in the bright light. Carter rode in silence. Content to hold his tongue, or just annoyed with me? As always, Jacob wondered about the contents of the messages. The colours of the wax seals indicated how far the messages had travelled to date. Most would have started their journey far beyond the Kingdom of Weyland’s borders. Some would have already travelled millions of miles… far further than any man could hope to travel in his lifetime. Distant librarians passing knowledge on to faraway guild brothers, slowly updating the universal indexes and ancient encyclopaedias of knowledge. A worthy and noble calling. Unfortunately, Carter Carnehan seemed unable to share Jacob’s enthusiasm for their mission.