The Poisons of Caux: The Hollow Bettle (Book I) (3 page)

s it was unlikely that Sorrel Flux saw to any of the business concerns of the tavern, and as Cecil Manx never bothered Ivy about the taxes, it was safe to say that for the entire year her uncle had been gone, not a minim had been sent to the king’s tax collectors.

There was a pile of correspondence behind the bar, and that was probably the best place to find the tax bills—but it’s hard to look for something you don’t know is missing. Besides, Sorrel Flux was often found warming his bony hands beside the fire—which, if it was not warm enough for his liking, he would ignite with a handful of paper nearby. It was in this way that the Notice of Default and Intent to Collect went up in smoke.

When it came to taxes, King Nightshade was ruthless and efficient.

His sentries, in fact, were waiting outside for first light
when they saw a candle flickering in the young girl’s room above the tavern before dawn. This was interesting to the group only insofar as it momentarily distracted them from their hunger. The men knew taverns to be occasionally a place of good food and drink, and they had been without either for the entire night. The glow vanished almost as soon as it appeared, and the sentries returned to the grumbling of their stomachs.

Ivy was executing her dangerous plan. If her uncle would not come to her, she would go to him. An entire year had passed—a miserable year, one filled only with the tedium of Flux’s company. She was now eleven, and Ivy had no plans on growing any older without her uncle’s company. Besides, the thrill of experimenting on her freeloading taster was gone, but as a parting gift, she had slipped some of her famous sleeping draught into his nightcap. A double dose.

Ivy was headed to the tavern with an audacious theft in mind. It was her intention to relieve the Hollow Bettle of the very jewel for which it was named. She paused in the low hall, straining to hear any sounds from the taster’s quarters.

Cecil Manx’s mill house was resplendent with little hidden passageways, and in the dim morning Ivy used one of them to bring her down a set of irregular stairs. She soon found herself just where she needed to be: at a small door behind the Bettle’s bar.

Ivy quietly opened the little door and discovered, to her complete surprise, that she was not the only thief in the room. Two other souls populated the tavern presently, and further to the young girl’s dismay, one of them was quite easily recognized (even at this early hour) as the unpleasant man who had been nothing but ill tempered and poor company to her for this past long year. Mr. Flux looked wide awake, she noticed, in defiance of her robust sleeping potion—a first, if ever there was.

The taster’s companion—for they seemed on quite familiar terms—was even more inexplicable.

He wore an objectionable amount of facial hair and towered over the taster. His eyes were deep-set and dark. And, most disconcerting, he seemed to speak—the few times he did—in guttural grunts that Ivy could make nothing of but somehow Mr. Flux comprehended with practiced ease.

Ivy was no stranger to madmen—especially drunken madmen—but something about this friend of the taster’s made her hesitate. The bettle, in its bottle of brandywine, was on a shelf right above her, but to get it would require her to climb on a nearby cask and stand for a moment in plain view. This was unacceptable, considering her company.

Fortunately, the two trespassers were embroiled in what seemed to be an argument and hadn’t noticed the girl in their midst. There was some pluck in the small taster. His diminutive stature brought him merely to the dark man’s collar, but
his contempt challenged even the mighty. Mr. Flux was uncharacteristically animated—Ivy was so accustomed to seeing him in his nightdress with nothing but a collection of chipped glassware as company. He was stamping his foot and repeating himself intently, slower now, as if discussing a lofty topic with a child.

“I don’t care what the orders were; I’m telling you we’ll do it my way—who’s been living in this dump until the word came down? I’ve been here for an entire year, waiting!”

The tall man uttered something menacing, and although Ivy could understand none of it, she felt a chill run down her spine. His voice and presence had none of the same effect on Sorrel Flux, who was by now so enraged his arms were flapping about his sides.

“I won’t waste my breath on you any further. Do as I say,” he snarled through gritted teeth, “or I’ll be forced to discuss this with the Director.”

But the argument would not soon see itself resolved—at least not today at the Hollow Bettle—since before another word could be exchanged, the tavern’s door was rudely separated from its hinges and made suddenly into not a door at all, but a welcome mat for twenty of King Nightshade’s most hungry sentries.

Ivy used this moment to procure the bottle of brandywine from the top shelf, slipping back down to her hiding spot just as quickly again to watch the newest arrivals.

“Good day,” declared the captain of the group as he stepped forward from among his men. He was an ambitious gentleman—at least for the next fifteen minutes—with an influential family made up mostly of tradesmen, influential enough to get him several dubious promotions to the level he now found himself at in the Nightshades’ army. His name was Turner Taxus.

“Can I help you?” Sorrel Flux demanded, successfully turning his outraged tone into something more akin to sweet cheer.

“Are you the proprietor?” Turner Taxus asked in his most official voice. “One”—he consulted a sentry next to him—
“Cecil Minx?”

The taster sensed in the situation perhaps a way to profit, and his pasty face, as if made of putty, expertly molded itself into a hospitable one.

“Welcome! Welcome,” he cried, gesturing about the bar. “I say. Can I perhaps get you gentlemen something to drink? You must be thirsty after breaking down that door—or at the very least hungry for something warming and restorative.” He stepped in front of his companion, who was trying, in any event, to keep to the shadows.

“Very well. Here you are.” Turner Taxus slapped a parchment roll into Mr. Flux’s hand with the precise air of a bored official.

“What’s this?” The taster recoiled. Things wrapped with
the king’s colors and sealed with his wax seal rarely contained good news.

“A copy of the Crown’s Notice to Collect; I trust you received the original. It says either you pay the taxes due to King Nightshade, with a generous amount of interest, or you surrender your establishment to him immediately. Wherein he installs a new tavern keeper.” Turner Taxus’s long face was stony. Repossessions such as these were completely beneath his status, he felt, and giving anything more to them than necessary was a waste of his valuable time.

“Ah—you have made the understandable mistake of assuming me to be a property owner. I admit, I betray an air above my station. I am merely a
servant
to the proprietor, my dear man. Of the
Guild
, I dare add. I hardly am qualified to accept such a document.” He tried to unhand the awful parchment and return it to the sentry. “Your scroll.”

Having no luck rescinding the decree, Flux relieved it onto the sawdust floor and with the tip of his boot pushed it at the man in uniform, taking a step backward.

“I’ll just leave you to your business. I’m sure the fellow’s around here somewhere—and if not, I know where his bony little girl is sleeping—”

While Flux was spitting out the directions to Ivy’s bedroom, his eyes wandered to behind the bar. Ivy was now completely within his sight—he need only glance down to spot her. But his eyes were looking to the top shelf, drawn to his prize.

“Mind your head at the top of the steps—although those helmets must be good for something. And do watch out for that bird; he’s been trained to go for the eyes….”

Then he froze, seeing only the dust shadow where the bettle once was. From where Ivy sat, Flux looked monstrous, and she pushed back further into the shadows. Towering over her, at last he lowered his yellowed eyes and found her easily. A particular smirk slid across his unpleasant face. As Mr. Flux turned back to the captain, Ivy braced to be turned over to the king’s soldiers.

“But wait! Where are my manners? You should really try the soup—it’s famous, you know—before you go on with the tedious details ahead of you.”

At the mention of food, the sentries perked up. Sorrel Flux stepped back by the fire and lavishly gestured at the large kettle filled with the hundred-year soup.

“It’s been cooking on this fire uninterrupted for over a century. Every day something is added to it—more potatoes, parsnips. A ham bone, an oxtail. Truly an adventure in both history and taste!”

Turner Taxus wasn’t as hungry as his men—he had prudently brought along a bagged supper for the trip and eaten it in a quiet moment with his taster in the wee hours of the morning. But he was aware that it smelled quite delicious: rich and hearty—a good morale booster. He remembered that a leader is only effective if he has the admiration of his men.

While Taxus mulled this over, Sorrel Flux signaled his dark friend with an almost imperceptible nod in the direction of Ivy’s hiding place. Keeping to the shadows, the man began creeping her way, breathing appallingly, with what could only be thick spittle stuck to the corners of his mouth.

Turner Taxus raised his gloved hand to his men and beckoned.

From behind the sentries, somewhat meekly, emerged a young man—barely old enough to be wearing tasters’ robes. They were, Ivy was happy to see, quite a better example of those worn by her own taster—the black cloth was new, crisply ironed, the collar (really, more like a bib) white and untainted. In their presence, Sorrel Flux somehow looked even more shabby and ill kempt.

“Taster,” Turner Taxus commanded, “taste, if you will, this soup.”

Sorrel Flux stirred the pot invitingly with a long wooden spoon.

“Please step away,” Taxus added, “and let my taster work.”

Flux did, with flourish.

The young man approached the hearth. He couldn’t have been much older than she, Ivy guessed, and although he was doing his best to maintain a demeanor of professionalism and scholarship, she noticed he seemed slightly unsure of himself.

He cleared his throat and ladled himself a serving into a plain earthenware bowl. He leaned in and sniffed. He sniffed
again—this time quite loudly—after which he looked upward, as if playing the odors about on his palate. Thoughtfully, he brought the bowl up to his mouth as Sorrel Flux eyed him with undisguised contempt from beneath heavy eyelids.

The young taster allowed a small drop, really no bigger than a child’s tear, to pass over his lips and onto the tip of his tongue.

All of his taster training, many long years of study at the impeccably credentialed Tasters’ Guild, came down to this. True, he hadn’t been the best of students. Nor had he graduated anywhere near the top of his class, making him almost unemployable. But he had somehow landed this impressive charge—for a first assignment it was a good one. He was unaware of the reputation of the Taxus family, which was one of immense thriftiness and militant frugality They were just as happy to hire him at a discounted wage as he was to accept the position. Unfortunately, you almost always get what you pay for.

Rowan Truax, for that was the young taster’s name, let the droplet play about all areas of his tongue—past the tip, onto both sides, and over to the back of his mouth. He played the complex flavors over his taste buds—hints of sweet and sour, salt, and even bitter (the flavor of many poisons). Tasting nothing untoward, he turned to his charge and pronounced the kettle of soup fit to eat.

“Fit to eat!” Turner Taxus repeated to his twenty hungry men, with an air of generosity—as if he’d cooked it himself.

The sentries could help themselves no longer and all surged forward to quell their hunger pains. Sorrel Flux bobbed and weaved through the group, exchanging syrupy pleasantries—all the while monitoring the back of the bar.

Ivy, bottle with bettle in hand, only just managed to retreat through a grate below a large crock of pickled eggs before the dark stranger was upon her. She would not likely soon forget the throaty splutter he made as she slipped away.