The Tasters Guild Page 13

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Professor Breaux’s Moonlit Garden

  Their murky tea was drunk and the group said their quiet goodbyes. Through another brief tunnel, just as Malapert had promised, they soon came to an iron-rung ladder—not unusual in the sewers, but this one was different. It was splashed with a weak shaft of silvery light.

  Rowan was still feeling quite bruised and battered, and a sharp, searing pain was now stabbing at his ribs where the splinter was. As he peered up the hole, it seemed the passage went on forever. This climb would be a challenge, he thought miserably, and he dreaded where it would take them. Suddenly his apprentice robes made him feel wretched and heavy, and he was struck by a memory. It was of the very day it became clear to him that, as a taster, he would never amount to much.

  This daunting realization came to him in a theoretical class on taste, taught by an elderly subrector named Professor Breaux. The class, Advanced Taste Theory, was meant for much more adept students—or at least those with better grades—but somehow Rowan’s application had been approved. Breaux was quite old and stooped, but his voice could reach to the very end of the lecture hall and sound more vigorous than it did in the front row.

  The course over the years had not deviated from its curriculum and had thus fallen out of favor with the newer tasters—who dismissed it as old-fashioned and difficult. For this reason, Rowan sat almost alone—his only companion in the back row was a petulant girl named Rue. Rowan knew her as having a reputation for being somewhat thorny, and since she was a year behind him, their paths at first crossed only at Breaux’s lectures.

  Rue took no notes that he could see, while Professor Breaux expounded upon the subtler sides of taste and appetite. Rowan, however, knowing quite rightly that he was no natural-born scholar, attempted to fill sheaths and sheaths with scribbled notes, but somehow his talent at note taking never translated into deep knowledge. It seemed more often than not, later, when he was reviewing his work, that the words on the page were not at all right, that he had somehow failed to capture the essence of the lecture entirely. Still he persevered, oftentimes more to prove to Rue that he could succeed—for in his own mind he had invented a competition with a girl who barely seemed to notice him.

  While it was the rest of the subrectors’ duties to teach taste in terms of various combinations of sweet, sour, salt, and bitter—the flavors the tongue is capable of detecting—it was Professor Breaux’s idea to teach taste in a very different way. Breaux added to the list savory—a fifth and controversial taste—and from there, things got even more confusing. Rowan struggled to learn taste as an entire experience, as a whole, and this class in particular put him at odds with the rest of the Guild’s teachings. It was as if he were trying to learn two separate but confusingly similar languages at the same time, and the result was a particularly bad mess.

  And so Rowan could pinpoint where in his training he knew he would never amount to much of a taster, and it was here, in Breaux’s worn lecture hall, with the afternoon sun catching dust motes in its muted rays. In one way, Breaux’s class planted the seed in Rowan that made him a good companion for Ivy, and an enemy of the Tasters’ Guild. But in another, more practical way, it muddled him up so that he was a danger to himself and anyone he tasted for—and that, of course, had proved fatal to Turner Taxus.

  It was well known that Professor Breaux grew a garden of which he was quite proud. It was a moonlit garden, an uninteresting garden in the daytime, but as darkness descended, it came alive with pale blooms, delicate, sweet scents, and glittery surprises. He would host gatherings here in the evening, and when Rowan was invited to attend one—quite an honor—he was surprised to see Rue at home there.

  Rowan sat shyly beside the stone fountain and watched as the older students offered up discourse on taste. He hoped he would not be asked his opinion on anything and fretted the entire evening. And, to his great dismay, as his senses wandered to the moonflower and night phlox beside him, he realized his name had been called. Turning, he saw Rue there, holding out her arm.

  “More dandelion wine?” she asked again.

  “Huh? Oh, yes, please,” Rowan answered, and smiled sheepishly.

  “Your first time here?” Rue asked, and Rowan nodded. “I love his class. Don’t you?”

  Rowan said that he did.

  “I never see you taking any notes,” Rowan mentioned, curious.

  “Yeah.” Rue nodded. “I get enough of it at home.”

  “At home?”

  “He’s my grandfather.” She indicated the Professor. “Didn’t you know?”

  “No!”

  Rue shrugged.

  Rowan looked at her now, her brown hair tied back carelessly with a ribbon.

  “I’m glad you came,” she added. “I’ve been working up the courage to invite you for some time.”

  Chapter Forty-eight

  The Ladder

  It was the memory of Rue and her grandfather that finally gave Rowan the strength to begin climbing. For the ascent was to be indeed a long one—Malapert had chosen for himself the very depths of the city as his penance—but all in the group were bolstered by the wedge of moonlight that fell upon their worn and dirty backs. Periodically, Six—strung in a canvas sack, a matted clump of angry fur poking out—would yowl an eerie complaint that echoed down the passage endlessly, as if a thousand forlorn and imprisoned cats had formed a cruel symphony.

  The ladder was of an impossible length, uneven rungs that twisted about the tunnel in a maddening way. Still, they noticed a gradual shift—the silvery light grew stronger, until, after many long steps, it shone itself through a long horizontal slit where the tunnel terminated.

  “Not long now,” Axle called down to the rest.

  After several grunts, he succeeded in moving the heavy grate at the ladder’s end. He climbed out, and then there was nothing.

  The nothing was excruciating, but not nearly as excruciating as what came next. There was a shout—followed by several muffled comments, and then again they were left with the sound of the slow seepage of water upon the clammy wall.

  Ivy clung to the cold rung in horror.

  But Rowan was next up the ladder, and he went freely, without time to contemplate what dangers might possibly await him. In this recklessness, too, was a slight glimmer of a homecoming—Rowan found a rush of emotion at seeing his old campus. He was followed by Ivy and Peps. But what greeted them was not the sinister visage of an Outrider—or Vidal Verjouce himself—but a calm, midnight, moonlit garden, one filled with silver blossoms and nocturnal scents, with twittering nightjars calling in throaty delight.

  And, having emerged from beneath a drainage grate beside a tumbling fountain, Peps—small fists swinging and ready for a fight—was completely startled by the sight of his brother and a strangely cloaked man clapping each other on the back like old friends.

  Rowan knew at once exactly where he was. He felt an odd surge of happiness—odd, because he was here at the dreaded Tasters’ Guild, but they had somehow emerged within the delicate confines of Professor Breaux’s moonlit garden. There stood the Professor—and beside him, Rue.

  “Rowan!” Rue cried, and rushed to give him a welcoming hug—only to be stopped in her tracks by his smell. “How did you ever get here?”

  Ivy, who thought it was quite evident how they had arrived, and that anyone who would ask such a question was either foolish or blind, scowled at the girl.

  Rue was clad, like them, in the drab robes of an apprentice—she was a student still, having not yet undergone her Epistle ceremony, during which, among other things, she would receive her taster’s robes. But something was different about her, Rowan noticed at once. Her hair—it was chopped short in the brutally cropped fashion of the subrectors at the Guild. And it was shaved in a receding arc, making her forehead more pronounced and broadening her face into a full moon in an off-putting demonstration of devotion.

  Rowan’s eyes widened, and he took a step back.
/>   “Y-you’re tonsured!” he stammered.

  A frown flitted across Rue’s brow and was gone.

  “Yes!” She laughed. “I always planned on continuing my studies after commencement.”

  “You—You want to be a subrector?” Since meeting Ivy, his opinion of the Tasters’ Guild had changed drastically, but even he would never have considered becoming a Guild scholar.

  “And why not? Can you think of any greater honor?”

  Rowan was silent.

  “Who’s this, Rowan?” Peps asked, looking between the two.

  Rowan, remembering his manners, turned to make introductions.

  “Ivy, Peps, this is my friend Rue. Rue, this is Ivy Manx and Peps D. Roux. Oh, and over there is—”

  “Axlerod D. Roux!” Rue nodded enthusiastically. Like most of Caux, Rue possessed a great respect for the Field Guide, and its author, who was currently filling in his old friend on news of Cecil and Templar. Rue turned again to Ivy, who had so far failed at any attempt to make herself appear more friendly.

  “I am named after him,” she confided with a wink.

  Ivy scoffed. “After Axle?”

  “Yes—my parents were great fans of his work.”

  Ivy narrowed her eyes. She suddenly felt proprietary of her lifelong friend.

  “Really. How nice.” She glared unpleasantly at the strange girl and found a spark of her old self return—wouldn’t it be nice to test Rue’s tasting abilities? Ivy was certain she could easily get the better of the would-be scholar with a few drops of her famous toadstool tonic. Six’s yellow eyes gleamed encouragingly.

  Rowan, glancing anxiously from one girl to the other, interrupted the stalemate.

  “Ivy grew up beside Axle’s trestle. They are old friends,” he revealed. His words relaxed Ivy some, and she found herself smiling in satisfaction. Rowan, quick to change the subject, demanded news from inside the Tasters’ Guild and soon found Rue was quite happy to oblige.

  As the two classmates caught up, Ivy’s attention drifted.

  “Ivy Manx,” came a low baritone, a voice that made children learn complicated theories easily by the mere melody of its rich tones. “What errand brings the Child of the Prophecy, the Noble Child, here, to the Tasters’ Guild? In this uneasy realm, surely this can be no social visit.”

  She was joined then by Axle and the Professor—his silver hair gleaming a rich hue against his black robes in the low light. The old friends looked serious, and the Professor bent down to inspect her.

  “Um—” Ivy found herself suddenly unable to answer. But, as it turned out, this was a question more directed at Axle, for, indeed, Professor Breaux knew that Axle was the one to answer it.

  Axle looked around the dark night, and Breaux at once understood.

  “We are safe here, in my garden, for the time being,” the Professor said. “Verjouce has not seen fit to bother an old, doddering lecturer. Yet.”

  “But …” Axle grew quiet as he studied Rowan and Rue from afar.

  “Oh, yes. Rue,” sighed the professor. “She is young. This is the only life she’s known, within the Guild’s walls. But she can be trusted—she is my granddaughter, my blood.”

  “Yes, of course,” Axle said quickly. For a moment it seemed as if there was something more, but the trestleman shook his head and was quiet.

  They gathered at the fountainside, where Peps was happy for the chance to dip his kerchief in the water and begin the impossible process of becoming presentable.

  “Surely, old friend, it must not surprise you that we are here?” Axle asked.

  Breaux’s eyes twinkled a moment, and then a stillness settled into them, a sadness. He shook his head. “I only wish it was not necessary.”

  “We search for the Doorway here at Rocamadour. The Doorway to Pimcaux.”

  Breaux was silent for a moment. “Of course,” he said finally. “I am at your disposal.”

  “Have you any news?”

  “So I do. None of it good.”

  Chapter Forty-nine

  The Plan

  Professor Breaux sat, with the help of his granddaughter, upon a smooth stone bench. He was assisted in this chore by a gnarled walking stick, but all the same a look of pain swept across his face, and Rowan was stricken to behold just how old he had become in the few short years since he’d last seen him. Settled now, the Professor took a deep breath.

  “You say you have seen the Librarian, Malapert?”

  “Indeed,” Axle replied. “I have seen him.”

  “Well, that is something.” The Professor looked around, his eyes settling on Ivy. “I must pay my old friend a visit.”

  “Malapert hid some Verdigris books in a crypt beneath the city,” Axle said excitedly. “Maybe the Doorway to Pimcaux is there?”

  Ivy thought of the time—it seemed so long ago—in Axle’s study, when she and Rowan had together seen such a doorway in a book. She knew the power of the great and ancient magic, and at the memory of the strange vision there in the trestle, her stomach leapt.

  But the old man shook his head sadly.

  “Perhaps it was at some point. But the page was torn from its binding long before Malapert could salvage it, and is now the subject of much speculation.”

  “Then it might still be here!” Rowan said.

  “I am afraid not,” Breaux said sadly. “It was thought the paper found its way to Vidal Verjouce, who hid it well.”

  Rowan cast a dark look about him. It would be impossible to breach the Director’s chambers.

  “And now there are whispers it is gone again.” Breaux sighed.

  “What did this parchment look like?” Ivy suddenly asked. Valuable missing scrolls reminded her of someone, and a realization was dawning on her.

  “It was said to be a door, drawn simply, but one adorned with the ancient symbol of regeneration, of healing. The ouroboros.”

  “The ouroboros!” the travelers said in unison. The golden serpent from Dumbcane’s shop.

  “What is never hungry but always eating?” Ivy cried.

  “Verjouce has apprehended the thief,” Breaux continued. “He is a scribe. But he is also a forger and has apparently been stealing valuable papers from the Guild for many years.”

  “He is called Hemsen Dumbcane,” Axle announced, to the surprise of his host.

  “You know of him?”

  Axle nodded. “A neighbor of sorts.”

  Peps scowled at the thought.

  “He awaits his sentence, a prisoner in the catacombs.” Rue now spoke.

  “Sentence? What sort of sentence?” Axle demanded.

  “Conium maculatum.”

  “Poison hemlock,” Ivy whispered. As a poison, it was perfection. Swift and deadly.

  Breaux turned his wise face to Ivy again.

  “Ivy, I knew your uncle Cecil at a gentler time. How is he? He must be quite proud of you.”

  Ivy mumbled that Cecil was well.

  “Do you like my garden?” he asked. “I hear you are quite a gardener yourself.”

  “Yes, I’d love to look around,” she replied shyly.

  “Nothing would make me happier.” He gestured. “Be sure to smell the elderberry,” he said casually.

  Ivy nodded.

  “Elderberry and, of course, arrowroot.”

  Odd requests, she thought, since neither had a particularly pleasing scent, but she nodded again politely.

  “Elderberry, arrowroot—and sourbush.”

  Ivy peeked at Axle, who wore a look of amusement.

  “I will be sure to, Professor.”

  “How do the forkedtongue and spittlesap grow here?” Axle asked casually.

  Sourbush, she thought quickly, in its most general sense meant captive, a prisoner. And forkedtongue, a spiky reed with seed pods filled with fluffy thistledown and gooey sap, meant to decipher. The Professor and Axle were speaking in Flower Code! She was realizing how instantly fond she was of this old man, Rowan’s favorite teacher. She listened gleefully as
Professor Breaux and Axle suggested that a visit to the catacombs was necessary, to find Dumbcane.

  It was too dangerous, Axle continued in Code, for Ivy to leave the Professor’s compound. She wasn’t instantly recognizable, but still, there was too much at stake. The Professor agreed, and it was decided that Rowan as well was to stay within the moonlit walls. He was known here, as a former student, and known to be uncollared, an Oath breaker. If Verjouce found Rowan … Ivy knew what future awaited him and did not need the Professor to continue.

  Ivy reached for a dry inner pocket in her borrowed robe and, fishing out her beloved copy of Axle’s book, quickly turned to a dog-eared page.

  “Stinkhorn?” she asked, after finding the plant she was looking for. “Because crimped gill and thick-footed saddle weed.”

  The Professor laughed.

  “Yes, of course! The sewers of Rocamadour are as dismal a place as I can think of. Let’s see what we can do about getting you cleaned up!”

  Chapter Fifty

  Something That Grows

  It was not long before the travelers were reunited again before the fountain, this time bearing the more pleasant scents of bath salts and fresh soap along with new robes. Ivy smiled at the sight of Peps, who was so relieved to be done with the sewers, he cared not at all about his borrowed, ill-fitting clothes. His gold tooth flashed as he grinned at her. Axle and Professor Breaux were still conferring in low voices, and Ivy waited for Rowan to appear.

  There was a table set in the garden, and Rue was seeing to various delicacies and small dishes. Ivy’s appetite was still absent—the smell of a sewer is one that does not diminish easily—but she looked on with a vague sense of happiness, tempered by the very real fact that she was now an uninvited guest of Rocamadour. She must somehow navigate this terrible city and find her way to Pimcaux. But for now, the garden around her was magnificent, and its delights beckoned.

  She walked, grateful for the time alone—quickly, the low conversations about her faded into the background of insect trills and toad calls, and the ever-present bubbling of the fountain. The living, growing things around her rejoiced at her presence—as they had done since she was born—and as she followed a pebbled pathway, flowers upon stalks upon root-stems strained to be nearer to her. Yet, no matter where she went in the oasis of Breaux’s garden, there was no escaping the steep black spire of the Guild’s tower blotting out the peaceful night sky, and when she looked upon it, a palpable shadow crossed her heart.