The first part of a new short story following the adventures of the Machine-hunter’s Apprentice, Sendak. Part II forthcoming.
Sendak and the Tutore Copertino debarked from the cruiser Lionhearted along the wide quays of Lamp-town in the mid-morning.
Before them, a large town stretched out up and away from the foreshore, hemmed in by a high storm-wall and overcrowded with docks, warehouses, and fisheries. Rising up behind the shore district, the many-splendored towers of Lamp-town rose up twenty or thirty stories into the sky until they looked, to Sendak, like they were touching the low, gray clouds. Below them, more humble red and gray brick structures poked out above the masts of the ships, invariably with roof ornamentations of crystalline glass. Though it was morning, the city seemed to give off a feint luminescence as a candle which has burned down the wick and hidden the flame within the vessel that contains it, yet still glows and flickers. Girded about the city was an ancient wall made of a material that was not stone, and rose at least a hundred feet into the air.
Sendak raised his brows significantly. “So this is Lamp-town,” he said wistfully, “city of electric marvels.”
The Tutore raised one eye inquisitively. “It is not very remarkable compared to the capital of Lux,” he explained, “all of the cities of this nation are electrified, but Lux to a greater theatrical effect we might say.”
Sendak shook his head. “No, Lamp-town is great not just because of the lights but because here is where the craftsmen work that shape the lights.”
“Ah,” the Tutore admitted, “there is some spectacle in this, which is precisely why they do not allow outsiders into the manufactories. It is a closely guarded trade secret, as you may imagine.” The priest drew forth a silver pocket watch and, seeing a clock nearby, conveniently synced his timepiece to the local hour.
“Now, Mr. Protigeo,” he said, businesslike, “I suppose you would like to head on your way north, to the steppe that borders the wide lands of Lux?”
“Actually, I would like to spend a few days here. I have never seen so many electric lights in one city.” Sendak’s hands idly felt into the many pockets of his cloak. He became suddenly crestfallen. “Although,” he added, “I am somewhat bereft of funds.”
He took from his cloak two crumpled treasury notes of the Port of Towers. They were handsome moneys, festooned with prints of towers and trees in red and black ink, but they were next to worthless. The Tutore, noticing the extent of the young man’s purse, frowned and became thoughtful.
“I know a Factolect in this city who runs a stabularium of the Order Benefis. They do not charge a fee to lodge but, you, being a young man of sturdy build, should consider giving the Factolect a hand about the place while you are here in the city.”
Sendak bowed his head slightly in appreciation. “Your kindness knows no bounds, Tutore Copertino. You know, despite your disposition, you are really an agreeable man.”
The Tutore gave only a small smile at the corner of his mouth.
The first difficulty Sendak encountered was at customs. At the end of the pier, he and the Tutore came upon an old, bent man with tufts of gray hair that jutted out from the sides of his head. He and his confederate, a tall, lanky man of soldierly disposition with a narrow mouth stained with the juices of some pungent herb, wore the light blue uniforms common to all Luxite officials, with red trim and little shoulder capes of scarlet. The tall man, for all that, carried an iron cudgel which, in its primitive brutality, made an odd but somehow fitting weapon for him.
“Do you have anything declare?” The older man said in a cracked voice.
Sendak looked down at him, then up at the taller customs officer. “I suppose just my crossbow.” He let his cloak gather on one shoulder and unstrapped the weapon, holding it up for their inspection.
The taller man took it, while the older man tutted over a small book he carried in bound, black leather. “I’m afraid we’ll have to confiscate this. Are you planning to stay long in Lamp-town?”
“Only a few days.”
The old man nodded. “Well, for six krina, you can have it back when you depart the city.”
“What if I plan to depart by land? And why should I pay if you are detaining my weapon?” Sendak asked this, not in a voice of anger or concern, but rather more matter-of-factly.
“In that case, it is permitted for you to carry it from the customs house out the north gate, on the hour you leave the city,” replied the officer, “and the six krina are a service fee. The customs office needs be financed and this rule is applied without prejudice.” The older man looked up from his book. “Otherwise, you may remain here on the pier.”
“Very well, but I want assurances that it will be handled with care. It was hand-made, by my father.”
The tall customs officer had been holding the crossbow lengthwise, studying the intricate filigree with an obvious covetousness. His senior elbowed him harshly. “Teru, please log the man’s weapon in the official record at once, and lock it behind my desk.”
At once, the tall man went off to comply, surprisingly somewhat cowed by the harshness of his presumed superior. Sendak spent another fifteen minutes with the customs officer, giving him his name and answering as best as he could about his business and how long he planned to stay there. Notably, he concealed the true fact of his profession and explained his crossbow as an heirloom he carried for safety on the road. The brief battery of questions discharged, he allowed Sendak and the Tutore on his way.
Sendak noticed that the Tutore had not been questioned by the customs officer and commented upon this fact, at which the Tutore straightened his hat on his head and smiled somewhat devilishly.
“The members of my Order are always exempt from customs enforcement. It is an ancient right that the Church has exercised over the councils and kings of this Wide-World for more than a millennium.”
“You mean all the of them? Throughout the whole world?” Sendak asked with clear incredulity.
“All those who claim the banner of faith, anyways,” he said, “and I am glad to see that Lux still affords that privilege as, under ordinary circumstances, they would not permit a person to carry a loaded pneumo-gun about town.”
Sendak became reflective. “Are all Churchmen so treated?”
The Tutore cracked a wry grin. “No, certainly not. Tutoreii are never in one place long enough to upset the delicate balance of power between the sword of the state and the scepter of the Transpostulator. Other orders, like the Benefis, are frequently, as you might say, at loggerheads with the powers that be. That being the case,” he reappraised Sendak, “I would recommend keeping your head down in the city. It would be doubly bad for you if you were outed as both a Mechvenor and a friend of the Order Benefis.”
Sendak gave pause at this. “Why is that, and why do you call me Mechvenor?”
“That is what your profession is called, in the Liturgical Tongue,” said the Tutore, “although, since your guild has long ceased having a religious function it has fallen out of use. As to your allegiance to that guild, even if just by blood, it is dangerous for you. The King of Lux would, no doubt, have you brought up to deliver secrets you do not possess and, seeing this, likely press you into service as a spy for Lux.”
All of this made Sendak thoughtful and he said little for the rest of the walk towards the stabularium.
As they walked into the interior of Lamp-town, the midmorning sun came over the towers and walls that hedged the lower city in to the east, illuminating the densely-paved streets by the waterfronts. The shops and restaurants along the water were already open, with electric lights humming yellow in their large windows. Lettering composed of diodes of differing colors spelled out the names of a hundred eateries, fishing-supply and hardware stores. The stores, and the apartments above them, were packed close and cast shadows on the street that would have swallowed the tangled avenues had it not been for the lights of the shops and the soft yellow lights of the streetlamps that gave the entire street a strange, indescribable warmth. It was as if, Sendak thought, he was walking through a large and well-stocked study with a blazing fire in the hearth and brilliant candles shining forth on the shelves. As the sun rose, as well, it dispelled the chill breeze climbing off the Winemaker’s Sea, as it was one of those winter-summer days where, though the air itself is chill, the radiance of the sun prompts one to bask in its glow like a lizard.
Although it hadn’t appeared this way to Sendak from the shore, Lamp-town was built slightly up on a wide hill, with its apex at the top, such that in shape it resembled a triangle with a concave bottom where the harbor came into the city. They climbed the gently sloping streets until midmorning had slipped away to noon. Finally, they found themselves in a wide, flat plaza trafficked by many pedestrians, the men dressed in the gaudy fashion of Lux in waistcoats of gold and silver embroidery and suits of pastel colors, the women in gowns of noisy, sensuous colors: scarlet and blacks blacker than black. Sendak felt instantly out of place in his gray, plain, Arabatesian suit. Alongside them, members of the local gentry rode in electric carriages shaped vaguely like a bird with its wings folded behind its back, and policemen in flamboyant uniforms of royal blue patrolled with lances from horseback. All about them, the noon-day sun was almost outshone by the radiance of the gigantic lamps that stood at the four corners of the plaza, each with a clockface before the diodes which showed the hour.
As the noon hour came, a bell tolled somewhere nearby. This, apparently, was how the Tutore finally located the stabularium. It was not far off the plaza, on a side street, but was obscured by a row of tall, colorful rowhouses. Sendak was struck by the difference of effect this area generated, obscured by all the nearby electric lighting. It was a small square of ungilded city amidst so much radiance.
The stabularium was a U-shaped building roughly as large as a city block. No other houses had their doors facing towards it, but it appeared that it was entirely hemmed in by the rows of townhouses, like an impenetrable wall. In contrast to their brown and red brick, the stabularium was made of hewn stones fitted one on the other with such precision so as to necessitate no cement between them. The two large wings of the building jutted out towards the junction where the adjoining street joined the dirt avenue that circled it, and at the far end was a two-story building, made of the same stone, with a roof of polymer-burnished brass which had, in several places, worn through and oxidized. The windows were, Sendak saw, simple gaps framed with iron grates with no window panes. The dull yellow of candles and hearthfires could be seen moving in them, but no steady radiance like an electric lamp.
At the junction, the Tutore halted.
“Well, Mister Sendak Protigeo,” the Tutore Copertino announced with an air of finality, “this is where we part ways.” He handed Sendak a small piece of paper which, when the latter examined it, proved to be a card. It had the simple name “Brother Copertino” printed on it, and beside it, although Sendak was barely able to make it out, the impression left on it by a stamping tool. He made out the Book, Sword, and Key that were the symbols the seal of the Order Tutore.
Sendak put the card in one of the pockets of his cloak and drew its fine, gray fabric about him like a mantle. He saluted the Tutore in the way he had seen religious brothers sign to themselves, and smiled tiredly.
“It was an honor to travel with you, Tutore Copertino,” he said, “and you have saved my life. The House Protigeo, of whom I am the only male scion, now stands at your service.”
The Tutore grinned smugly. “I have no need of your House, sir,” he said laughingly, “and so any service you tender to me, tender instead to our Distant God.”
With that, the Tutore put his hat back upon his head with an automatic motion, flourished his travel case about him, and walked away at a brisk pace. Sendak watched him go, briefly, before turning back to the stabularium.
Sendak strode the two hundred yards or so between the street and the front door of the large, central building, passing between the two parallel wings that came out from it. In this part of the world, stabulariums were places of refuge to which the poor or crippled could get the bare necessities of living: a bed of straw, a cup of water for drinking and a bowl for washing, and a meal, although infrequently hot. They served a dual and often, Sendak thought, a perfidious purpose. Although, yes, they cared for those who had no prospects, they also served as a warehouse for the poor, such that those who imposed rackrents or heavy taxes on them would never see the true consequences of callousness. They were also, frequently, warrens for crime, owing to the fact that the police very seldom were permitted to search for fugitives within them.
This specimen was worse than most. A rock-path traced the line from the road to the door, and all up around it the grass had grown taller than ankle-high and now, in early winter, it was gray and wet with the melted frost. Ancient, rain-eaten statuary stood at irregular intervals, generally the pictures of holy men and women with their hands clasped in prayer. Infrequently, there were statues of crusader knights with gauntleted hands clasping the guards of their longswords. Through the paneless windows of the wings, he could hear inarticulate talking and the sounds of sick people, coughing and retching. At last he reached a low stone porch of more recent construction than the undoubtedly ancient main wing of the stabularium which it adjoined. He mounted the short stair and, taking up the thoroughly corroded brass knocker, inquired at the door.
The door, which was made of dry, pale gray ironwood, thudded deeply and the knock reverberated across the house. No sound reached Sendak from the other side of the door, and he was about to take up the striker and knock again, when the doorknob turned and creaked inward on its hinges.
In the doorway, a shorter woman stood dressed in a habit of some color that was not-quite white. Across her shoulders, a pelerine of black velvet distinguished her neck from the place where her habit’s collar went up nearly to the chin. She wore a veil without a coif, such that Sendak could distinguish, in addition to her ice-colored eyes, strands of blonde hair mixed with silver-gray. Yet, she did not have the face of an older woman, but a younger one. Though the cheeks were more sallow, and the lines of the face deeper, he could not help but think that, despite all this, she could not have been more than 40. The woman’s bright eyes fell upon him, and instantly he found himself pinned in place by the gleam of her gaze, as if he had been shot through with a lance upon the porch.
“Good afternoon, messir,” she said in that lilting accent that is characteristic of the Luxites, “what can I do for you?”
Sendak stirred suddenly and, remembering himself, fished the Tutore’s card from his cloak.
“A friend of mine, one Tutore Copertino, said this was the place for a poor man to receive lodging in the city.” Sendak explained. “Is there a vacancy in your stabularium?”
She frowned, although he could tell this was more for effect then out of real consternation. “I must admit, messir, we have some vacancies, but not as many as I would like to have.” She smiled brightly. “Come in, messir, and I will take your cloak.”
Sendak slowly stepped inside but was very reluctant to part with his cloak. The woman, who he presumed a vestan, gave him a sympathetic look which, finally, eased his concerns and prompted him to release it into her custody.
“Those are very fine clothes, messir,” she said, “from whereabouts are you traveled?”
Sendak looked down at his plain gray suit and dark, unpolished boots. “Thank you, I have found that the people of Lux dress much more extravagantly than I had reckoned. As to your question, I am from a place of no consequence, and I doubt you will be familiar with it, but if you must know, I am from Out-of-the-Way, beyond the continents of Searsan and Karajul and not far from the coast of the Westerly Sea.”
He could tell she hadn’t the foggiest idea where that was, and she could tell he knew. Stifling a laugh, she said, “Well, you are right, messir, I don’t know of any such place. I have never left Lux and rarely study far lands.”
“Yet you speak the Anglanic Tongue,” Sendak said inquiringly, “which means our two lands are, no doubt, in some infrequent communication.”
“That is well enough true, messir,” she allowed. She glanced up at a clock on the wall which read fifteen before 1 o’clock and suddenly became businesslike. “If you will excuse me, messir, I have to take up the dishes in the refectory. If you would like, I can summon the Factolect here and, when I am through with my usual duties, I will bring you a late lunch.”
Sendak was about to protest but, becoming keenly aware of a cavernous hunger, he meekly nodded and thanked the young woman. Before allowing her to leave, however, he took one of her hands, as was custom in his own country, and bowing to her, not-quite pressed his lips to it. In doing so he noticed, for the first time, the golden gleam of a wedding ring on her left hand. He said, “I am a gentleman called Sendak of the House Protigeo.” He paused. “What is your name? And, who esteems you his husband?”
“I am Penelope,” she said in a tone of propriety, “Penelope Olanie, and I am a lay devotess of the Order Benefis.” She added shortly, by way of explanation: “My husband was one Captain Olanie of the 4th Hussars.”
“Was?”
She nodded once. “Was. I will fetch the Factolect for you, Master Protigeo. Wait a moment here, if it please you.”
He thought to detect a small glister of tears in her blue-white eyes as she departed by the western doorway.
Alone in the foyer of the stabularium, Sendak finally took the time to examine the room. It was a large, furnished chamber arranged parlor-style. Opposite the door, about fifteen feet away, was a log fire burning in the hearth. Between the door and the fire were couches and, against the walls on either side, a pair of low divans. Assorted small tables were arranged about the room, on which stood stone vases of exquisite age and decoration, holding flowers. Large carpets covered the flagstone floor. To left side of the room, where the doorway to the kitchen stood, a small cubicle had been formed by the placement of a paper screen and a stack of large paintings and prints which were laid against the nearby wall. The whole of the room was of an indistinct color; the furniture was not of a uniform hue or design but all was lent a reddish glow by the fire tempered only slightly by the sunlight that filtered in from two small windows near the ceiling.
At first, Sendak sat himself down on one of the couches where he sat, patiently, warming himself by the fire. When ten or twenty minutes had elapsed silently, he rose from the sofa and made a more thorough inspection of the room—starting with the obscure cubicle in the northwest corner of the chamber. He began to remove some of the paintings that formed, with the screen, an opaque wall concealing whatever lay behind. They were, exclusively, reproductions of famous paintings he had seen in other religious or even civic buildings, oftentimes with the frames cracked and the image itself distorted by age or rot. With a few of the frames set aside, Sendak could peer past them into the cubicle behind.
Inside of the cubicle, a humanoid shape reclined in an ancient upholstered chair, surrounded by nondescript clutter: books, religious icons, cups, vases, figurines, and other household objects were stacked about the chair in irregular piles. In short, the surroundings of the figure were different in every conceivable sense from the man-shaped thing itself.
The automaton, for such Sendak thought it was, was made wholly of metal. The majority of the skin which overspread its face and hands was of a silver color, although tarnished by long lack of care. Across its face and hands, certain bands and lines traced the major ligaments of the face and hands in a type of golden bronze or brass that, despite the apparent long years of disrepair, still caught the gleam of the small amount of sunlight that filtered into the room. His gaze, in tracing the face, fell upon the eyes—which were closed tight with metallic lids—and then the neck which was, like the rest of the body, clothed in a cassock made of threadbare, gray homespun.
Sendak, surprising even himself, did not recoil from the automaton, but stood stock still, observing it. Something about the machine, whether its context or its peaceful seeming-sleep, calmed him, unlike the very real-seeming Dissimulators who had tried to take his life, and had succeeded in massacring almost the entirety of those on The Refulgent. Gracietta had been attempting to deceive him into believing that she was a real woman; this creature, if it had ever been animate, had been made by a craftsman that had carved honesty into its metallic face. He doubted if it had ever known duplicity.
“Young master?”
Sendak wheeled about and found himself looking into the face, or rather into the air above the face, of an ancient and crabbed man, such as he had always associated with stabulariums. The Factolect of Lamp-town Stabularium was a full head shorter than Sendak, and much shorter still on account of a pronounced slouch in his posture. His head was bald, with only a few strands of wispy white clinging in a halo about the equatorial band of his temples. He possessed a crooked nose, a well-lined face that reminded Sendak of an apple, being tall and round in the forehead and narrow at the chin. Most notably, he had a pair of warm, amber eyes the color of whiskey that, much like the spirit, imparted a warm, pleasantly burning sensation in the chest.
“Factolect,” Sendak stammered. Remembering himself, he signed a pious salute to the old cleric and said, “Peace of the Interdeo keep you this day.”
“And yourself,” the Factolect said, in a voice that creaked like an unoiled door hinge. He looked meaningfully at the cubicle and the figure within. Sendak decided that his best course of action was to pretend that he had seen nothing.
“I apologize to intrude upon your business, Factolect, but I am a young man of little means recently arrived in the city. Sendak, as I am known, of the House Protigeo. A man, who I believe is our mutual friend, told me to call on you and make myself available in any way you see fit.”
Sendak produced the Tutore’s card and gave it to the Factolect, who turned it over, scratched his chin, then nodded once and handed it back. “A friend of Brother Copertino can stay anywhere in my precinct. I am the Factolect Irakay, though you may address me as ‘Factolect’ or ‘Father Irakay.’ You will be accommodated in the furnished upper chamber next to my own rooms.”
While they were talking, Sendak allowed them to float from the cubicle over to the center of the room. So many questions swam in his head, but at the present time all he could concentrate on with a wholeness of mind was lodging, food, and the particulars of the arrangement.
“As for work,” the Factolect continued, “I have a great deal of improvements that I would like to make around here that require the a man of sturdy construction and youth. The clients of the stabularium, you see, are customarily served by us and only by request do we allow them to serve us in return.”
“That is,” Sendak blinked, “not the custom in other parts of the Northwest Sealands.”
“True,” said the Factolect with a shrug, “but I find this is a good arrangement, especially given the way things stand between Church and throne in Lux.”
The aged cleric furrowed his brows in seeming vexation, but something in his tone suggested that Sendak should not pry further into the matter. Presently, there came the clinking of china on a tray from the hallway beyond the open corridor.
“Ah, that must be Penelope with the repast.” Explained the Factolect Irakay. “I am sure your wayfaring has given you a strong appetite.”
The three sat at a low table in the foyer and spoke little during the meal which was, owing to the liturgical season, a plate of fish grilled, spiced, and wrapped in cabbage. For drink, the Factolect fetched a stone jar filled with the coldest, clearest water that Sendak had ever tasted.
“It is good, isn’t it?” The Factolect remarked, seeing that the fish had long since disappeared but that Sendak was pouring himself a third glass.
“Yes, Factolect,” said Sendak with a sheepish smile, “I am just landed from a long sea voyage. Steamships mostly use purified sea-water for drinking, and while passable it tastes strongly of desalinizing agents.”
The Factolect nodded in understanding. “In the old days, the voyages by ship were so brief that the mariners of Old Earth could carry their water with them in the skins of animals.” He turned to look at Penelope, raising a stoneware cup to his lips. “Did you know that?”
“I did not, Father Irakay,” she said, in a studied tone that communicated the fact they had shared conversations like this many times. Father Irakay was talkative and, though a bit formal, fundamentally pleasant company.
After the meal, Penelope was asked to escort Sendak up to his rooms on the second floor. There, he found a small but serviceable chamber made of stone with sagging timbers on the ceiling. The floors were covered in thick, luxurious rugs of considerable age and the mattress, which was filled with salt-water cotton, lay upon a canopied bed. The window had iron bars on the outside, but wooden shutters that closed against the draft. A hearth and a low couch stood in another corner of the room, and a washing closet adjoined through a door of aged timbers with peeling red paint that hung ajar.
“Well, here you are,” Penelope said, opening the door and allowing him to step inside. “I have just changed the sheets.”
Sendak examined the room and found, though it was not opulent, it was far more luxuriant than he had anticipated. He stopped in the middle of the room and turned, a thoughtful look crossed his face. “When shall I begin my service for the Factolect? And do you know what tasks he has in mind?”
Penelope paused, allowing her hands to fold neatly behind her in what was, no doubt, a habitual motion. “Frankly, the grounds have gone to ruin and Father Irakay is too old to continue to maintain them. I suspect there will be much to be done: gardening and landscaping, some light masonry work.”
Sendak nodded. “When will this stabularium receive its new Factolect?”
She blinked, uncomprehending.
“I say this,” Sendak hurriedly clarified, “because Father Irakay is too old now to perform many of his duties. When will the local ecclesiarchs send a replacement?”
“I know of no replacement waiting for Father Irakay.” She said, matter-of-factly.
Sendak frowned. “What if he was to take ill…or, be otherwise unable to fulfill his post? Would all that work fall to you?”
Penelope, seeing there was much Sendak did not understand about the stabularium, Father Irakay, or the region, came and sat down on the divan beside the cold hearth.
“Listen, Master Protigeo, it has been told to you that the situation between Church and Throne in Lux is…irregular, and that is so. Ten years ago, when King Urdlo took the crown from his father’s senility, he made fast to accomplish himself. His father had set the realm in peace and there was prosperity and contentment everywhere…” Her speech slowed somewhat. “I say this only as an outside observer, because I do not know the King’s counsels or his heart, but I think that he wanted more than anything to make a name for himself in the lands and to be, himself, great among kings. This is why he prosecuted the war against the Hippadamians of the Steppe, and sought to bring that wild culture under dominion and their land under the plow. Our former Ecclesiarch, one Reverend Gurwen, exercised the traditional power of the Luxite church to object to these schemes, on the grounds that the war was unjust. For this, he was forced to resign, under duress. When he was safe in the Court of the Transpostulator, however, he recanted his resignation and charged King Urdlo as a schismatic. He had, since, appointed a new ecclesiarch who would consent to the war. Factionalism broke out among the Luxite clergy, the greater number of which held with Urdlo because of his control over sinecures and church positions. Father Irakay is one of the last holdouts, as is fitting, seeing as the new church does not wish to see the stabularium continue. Besides all this, the Order Benefis, who founded this stabularium, forbids us to hand it into the care of schismatics, though they have also declined to send a replacement.”
Sendak sat upon the bed and listened, nodding attentively as he did so and absorbing every detail. News of Lux in the far countries was very rarely more substantial than legend, and certainly nothing had reached them of such a schism.
Sendak, perhaps unwisely, opened a new line of inquiry. “Your husband, then, he died fighting the Hippadamians?”
He saw her face, which had started to gain redness as she recalled all the harrowing facts of recent politics, turn white again.
“According to the Army, he is missing,” she said in a low tone of voice, “but he has been missing for a spring and a summer.” Sendak made the mental calculation—eight years of the Old Calendar.
Sendak looked into her face and thought of what to say. They shared a gleam, as their hearts alone beat together with the pain of loss, Sendak his father and she her husband. Yet, his wound was fresher and he could not help but allow a few tears to fall from his eyes. Finally, thinking of nothing else to say, he croaked, “I am very sorry.”
“As am I,” she said, rising to her feet. Though she could not have known precisely what had stricken him to the heart, she saw a kindred pain in his eyes and did not need to say anything else. She crossed to the door.
“Dinner is served at six. The Factolect would like you to take dinner with him, in his chambers.”
And she passed, with a silence only woman’s grace allows, out of the door.
With Penelope gone, he made a few circuits of the room before, finally, settling himself down on the divan. All Sendak could think of, at first, was the strange metal man that had laid in repose in the foyer of the stabularium, and how he might discreetly inquire about it. Yet, time and again his thoughts turned to other things besides and, after a while, thought overwhelmed him and he fell into a hard sleep, like a stone.
The work which the Factolect placed on Sendak’s shoulders was more strenuous than he was accustomed to, although the sweat and tired feeling in his bones when he put down his labor gave him a newly robust mental constitution, and he thought little of the travails of the road or of home.
First, he was tasked with taking the scythe to the lawn although, in an enterprising spirit, he asked that he might not instead go out and purchase a few goats for the stabularium. His request being granted, he went out into the city with a small purse of coins and brought back three young goats that immediately assailed the front lawn with gusto, thus leaving Sendak only with the task to fence them. For this purpose, he quarried stone from a disused part of one of the wings and built a stone fence at waist level and repurposed half of a decrepit door into a gate. He was at work long into the evening of the first day finishing the task and establishing the goats’ sleeping quarters in one of the disused cells.
A stabularium gets its name, naturally, from a stable. Many were former stables, reconverted into houses for the poor. As such, each wing was composed of a row of many rooms whose doors opened into a covered ambulatory. The cells inside were equipped with a bed, a table and some low chairs, and lit with candles which were meagerly rationed. Clients would sleep in these cells and would take their meals and wash in the main wing at the refectory and communal bath respectively. From there, they were impelled to look for work, but clients were very rarely if ever thrown out upon the streets. While in other days, the Factolect would have been more vigilant in keeping after his clients to find gainful employment, Father Irakay would have been overtaxed to keep up a similar routine. All in all, there were six hundred clients, most of which older men but a considerable amount were young women—war widows, Sendak thought—and their children.
On the second day, Sendak became acquainted with three of the clients who he later pressed into service for him, which they consented to by reason of boredom. They were named Uladee, Kandir, and Pyter, all retired military men whose pensions were no longer regularly funded. Uladee was sable-haired and raven-faced with the keen eyesight and deft agility, even in his old age, of a skirmisher. His friend, Kandir, had been in the horse-troops and, although he was not an aristocrat, carried himself with a high bearing and aspired to a kind of storybook chivalry—his white, quivery mustache often flapped behind his face as the standard of a cavalry officer. Pyter was unlike the rest and only begrudgingly associated with them. A former artilleryman, he had lost his left hand (although he would not say how) and from the useless stump protruded a curious metal prong that he used to steady things that he gripped in his right hand. He had said he had been left-handed once, but that necessity forced him to “think more fluidly” of his handedness. Unlike the other two, Pyter was short, bald, and portly. He was also, almost always, of bad temper.
This motley crew assembled every morning for Sendak when he took up the day’s errands, and they executed the most mundane weed-pulling, goat-tending, and chimney scrubbing with the alacrity of green soldiers. Though Sendak did not think of himself as a leader of men, the pensioners, bereft of the structure that military discipline had imposed on their lives, immediately translocated their respect and reverence for their former commandants onto him. Thus, the rest of the stabularium’s clients looked on in awe at the “troop of Sendak,” going off to “vanquish the weeds.” And thus he passed three weeks in Lamp-town, knowing not when he would finally depart. Every time he thought he had found an acceptable stopping place in his work, he would discover more projects for himself and, truth be told, there was the allure of another kind to maintain him.
In the weeks of his employ in Lamp-town, Sendak had, in many subtle and not-very-subtle ways, made clear his affections for the lay devotess of the Order Benefis, and though the widow was at least ten years his senior, it was clear to both that their hearts beat in the same direction.
One evening, she consented to join Sendak in a walk among the crumbled statuary and grass-strewn paths of the stabularium’s rear garden, encircled all around with ancient hedges freshly trimmed. In the western corner of the garden, a tumbledown greenhouse stood alongside a weather-worn statue of a holy man who held in his right hand a dove. Beneath the statue, they sat down on a stone bench and cast their eyes up at the golden moon of Aurum as it passed by low and bright in the western sky, the stars elsewhere outshone by its radiance and choked out by the lights of the town.
In the silence of the night, punctuated only by the intermittent sounds of the city, Sendak attempted to make himself speak, but he could produce no sound. He was wholly ignorant of women and, what was more, completely besotted, though he knew not what the feeling was, for it was a kind of infatuation like the sweetness of wine, but his senses tasted a deeper flavor in the glances, the gestures, and the sighs. Penelope, he thought as well, was very much changed since he had first seen her. Her blonde hair seemed to shimmer and strands of gray turn more shining silver or eggshell. The lines of her face were less pronounced, the shadows of her eyes no longer stood out against the cream of her skin, and her white eyes did not bear the tell-tale rings of red that signify a regular flow of tears. And yet, just as she was much transformed, she was much the same—and a shadow ever hung over her head.
Seeing his intention to make words, Penelope spared him the anguish and laid a kiss upon his lips, which, though it did not restore him to speech, at least returned color to his face. His eyes went wide, then closed, and in the silence of the garden two spirits issued as from the same mouth.
“I believe you were going to tell me you fancied me, Master Sendak,” she said, and the slightest hint of a smile played across her face. Yet even still, there was something behind her eyes, a weight she carried concealed, like a shackled ankle hidden under the folds of her habit.
“I… Yes,” Sendak said, and grinned dumbly. “Yes, but…”
A frown. “Yes, but?”
He raised his hands to his lips and felt them, warm and soft. “I know that something is not right with you, Penelope, and it has to do with me.”
He saw the weight in her eyes then, pressing down the lids, pulling down the heart. He realized that, in all the amorous glances they had ever exchanged, that shadow had always hovered behind her eyes.
“It’s your husband, isn’t it?”
A slow silence and then, as if her head could no longer bear the load, she pitched her head forward and nodded once.
They sat there in that silence that freezes the blood, for Sendak thought then that future happiness might depend upon what he said right then, so deeply, he realized, had he fallen in love.
“Penelope, I do not mean to denigrate your husband with my love, nor sully his memory, nor ask you to forsake his love.”
“I know, Master Protigeo.” She turned her head to face him, her eyes were wet with tears but none had yet fallen. “I know, and that is why my heart is heavy—because you are an honorable man, and just, and compassionate towards me, a widow of the cruel wars and yet…” She pitched her head back and a kind of groan escaped her lips. “I cannot bear it. I cannot bear to take up another love, even as my husband may still live, for no body was ever found.”
Sendak nodded slowly. “Eight years is a long time, but the Steppe is vast and the armies of Lux, so I am told, range all over. There is prudence in what you say.”
Her eyes, glistening, turned on him and she proceeded to let the tears fall. “I would accept your love, Master Protigeo, but I realize now that I cannot. I cannot, while I do not yet know whether the Captain Ulric Olanie is alive or no.”
Sendak, then, taking her hand, stooped to one knee before her and looked up into her face with love. “Penelope, though you cannot love me, I promise ever and anon to be your servant, in the love of friendship if nothing else.” He paused, and swallowed. “And when I go to the Steppe of the Hippadamians, I will seek out news of your husband and, if possible, I will deliver him from them.”
Her eyes suddenly became wide, with fear or surprise he could not say.
“Say you will not, Sendak.” She said, less pleading than perhaps she meant. “Say you will not brave death from the horsemen of the north on my account.”
“I will brave it anyway,” he said with a small grin tugging at the right side of his mouth, “and I might as well have a good reason.”
Smiling somewhat, Penelope allowed herself to be mollified. “If it is not possible to bring the Captain back, alive or dead, as I suspect is the case, at the very least I would ask you to bring me some token of him.” She smiled weakly. “His ring, a button from his coat, or…” She thought for a moment. “If it were possible, bring me the locket which he keeps in his sabretash. It will have a painted picture of me, in an old-fashioned style. But…” she became downcast again, “Master Protigeo, please don’t go out of your way on this little fetch quest of mine, I could not bear it if you…”
He squeezed her hand, shook his head, and she stopped speaking. “Let us enjoy one another’s company, while we can, for I will depart tomorrow and where I go, I doubt I will return to Lamp-town before another turning of the seasons.” Then they embraced, and they smiled, and they loved, fencing their hearts in though, like Pyramus and Thisbe, they heard the cry of the other often as through a crack in the wall.