Chapter 6
Black rain was still falling on Moulde Hall as Edmund walked briskly through the winding halls towards his room.
Once Tricknee had showed up, the evening had fallen remarkably quiet save for the loud slurping of soup. When the mansion finally tolled seven, everyone made weak excuses and left to return to their rooms or walk about the grounds, until it was just Tricknee and Edmund who sat at the table. Edmund didn’t remain long.
While Edmund’s life would, in time, spawn an entirely new branch of sociology that focused on the effects of children on adult situations, at the time all Edmund knew was that the meal had been unexpected. True, he wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, but he certainly hadn’t expected… whatever the meal had been.
In the orphanage, meals had been large and noisy affairs with children of all ages talking and laughing while Mrs. Mapleberry desperately tried to keep everyone properly segregated. This dinner had been the opposite; talking had been on sufferance, the laughter had been cruel, and everyone gladly segregated themselves.
Little did he know, Edmund had just grasped the fundamental social differences between the upper and lower classes. It would take a further twenty years before his insights were codified into the sociological community.
According to his new family, he was a pawn in an adult game that he couldn’t do anything about. He couldn’t fight, hide, or run. He was trapped. It didn’t seem right, really; he had only become a Moulde a day ago.
Moulde. It was his name now.
How did he feel about that? It was quite impressive, he noted, how many new feelings he was experiencing after spending only two days as a Moulde.
He should have felt proud; he had managed to hold a brief conversation with his cousins and finally receive an answer to the question that had bothered him for days. Instead, he felt a kind of simmering anger that bubbled high in his chest. It wasn’t directed outward, not that he was mad at himself, no, he was mad…/for/ himself? And not at anything current…but what had been done in the past?
Resentful, Edmund realized. I was wondering what that felt like.
It wasn’t fair. Matron had adopted him and only expected him to survive. True, a child’s survival wasn’t exactly inappropriate for a parental goal, but when it was held in such uncertainty…
On the one hand, knowing Matron simply expected him to stay alive was liberating. He knew now that she would never send him back to the orphanage, because all she needed from him was his presence. What he did didn’t matter.
On the other hand, as a properly raised English orphan, this liberty struck Edmund as incredibly irresponsible. It wasn’t his job to decide how to behave properly, he was supposed to be told how to behave. That was how the country worked. Machines worked because wheels and belts moved just so. Gears spun on axles, and steam blew through regulated valves. How could any machine work if a spring could decide when it sprung, or a lever chose where to catch?
For a brief and terrifying moment, Edmund realized that without expectations, any behavior at all was as proper as any other. He had to pause a moment to calm down.
It wasn’t right. This wasn’t the sort of thing that a parent should do to their child. Maybe she was a bad mother.
Edmund paused at the thought. Mrs. Mapleberry had been clear on a child’s loyalty to its mother, but she had also been clear on a mother’s duty to her child. If Matron wasn’t behaving properly, did Edmund have to as well? Did he have to like her? If he didn’t like Matron, did that make him a bad son? A bad Moulde? From the shape of things, it sounded like not liking Matron made him a very good Moulde, indeed.
Thunder rolled in the distance as Edmund turned the corner and stopped short. There, standing just in front of the door to his room, was Googoltha, wearing the same blood red dress from earlier. She stood perfectly still, like a porcelain doll, with her sharp-toothed grin frozen on her face.
They stared at each other for a few moments before Edmund began to walk slowly towards his door. She didn’t move an inch. He looked at her, while she looked at him.
Accounts differ on what was said at this first meeting with the girl who became one of the most important people in Edmund’s life, but the more reliable scholars agree it went something like this:
“You didn’t come to dinner with Tricknee,” Edmund reminded her. “Are you hungry?”
Googoltha didn’t answer. Edmund shifted his feet back and forth, sorting through the possible avenues of conversation that still lay ahead.
“Are you lost?” he asked after a minute. “I had trouble finding my way around my first night too.”
His second attempt proved as fruitless as the first.
“Ung can show you where to go. He’ll show up behind you, without warning. I’m tired now so I’ll be going to bed. Goodnight.”
With that, Edmund opened his door and slipped into his room while she watched him. Silently. Smiling.
When the door was closed, Edmund pressed his ear to the door. After a few seconds, the sound of hard shoes skipped away down the hall.
Edmund sat down on a nearby chair. As soon as his rear hit the dusty cushion, he realized he had never been so tired in his life. Not being an active sort, Edmund had never been physically exhausted before, but now he knew what it meant to be tired to the core. Though his eyelids weren’t drooping, his brain was a large lump of lead and he was struggling to form coherent thoughts.
Pulling himself up from his chair, he lay down on his bed.
It was less than half an hour before he stood up again. It was no use; as tired as he was, he couldn’t stop thinking about the looming guillotine of Damocles that hung over his head.
The mansion tolled eight. Edmund waited patiently while the deep vibrations passed through him, noticing with pride that it was easier to keep himself upright.
The flash of pride was enough to clear some of the cobwebs from his mind. He had learned how to find his way from his room to the foyer. He was learning how to keep steady when the mansion tolled the hour. He was seeing new things, and learning all the while. He could learn how to be a Moulde. After all, if Matron wasn’t willing to provide any expectations for him, he’d have to find them for himself.
He didn’t even need to wonder how. There was one obvious solution: there was a whole study full of books right in Moulde Hall. If he read what Mouldes read, he would know how to be a Moulde.
Without bothering to check the time, Edmund left his room and tried to remember how to get to the study.
Readers who have been fortunate enough to tour the reconstructed Moulde Museum will have a clear idea of how much there was to explore, and therefore be appropriately amazed that it took Edmund only an hour to find Matron’s study again.
The fading booms of the Mansion striking nine provided a disproportionately ostentatious overture to Edmund’s polite knock. There was no reply. He tried once more, in case Matron had fallen asleep with a book on her chest as Mrs. Mapleberry had been wont to do. Again, no reply.
Edmund carefully twisted the door-knob and pushed, peeking through the small but widening crack. The study was almost exactly as it was the day before, though Matron and Mr. Shobbinton were absent. The room was lit by a large gas table-lamp that spat and fizzled, causing the whole room to flicker. The large brown leather chair that dominated the far side was much shorter without Matron’s withered frame giving it gravitas.
Edmund slipped inside, his eyes locked on the shelves. They were only half full, stacked with thin volumes and bound stacks of paper. Several shelves held nothing except a strange plant or small clay shard under a glass dome. On one shelf, the books were all similar in size and shape: thick and heavy, with embossed titles like Juningwire’s Heraldistry or Lumbestro’s Unabridged, 1703 — 1847. Another shelf’s books had small leather covers with no lettering at all.
The first thing he looked for was a book on the Moulde’s family history. If he was ever going to learn how to be a Moulde, he would need to start at the same place the Moulde Family did.
Selecting a promising book, Edmund sat down, opened the cover, and began to read.
Moulde Hall had been built nearly twenty generations ago by Prince Ruger, a German heir to the throne of a minor kingdom who had been kicked out of the country for some political reason that Edmund didn’t understand. After he died in a second attempt to conquer his father’s kingdom, a string of accidents claimed his wife and seven of his lovers until his surviving mistress, Orpha Moulde, claimed ownership of the mansion and named it Moulde Hall.
Several generations later, an inquisitive and acrophobic Moulde found a massive vein of coal under the mansion. Coal had become a vital and valuable commodity, and since the Mouldes owned Haggard Hill and therefore the coal beneath it, they held the power; that is, until eight other veins were discovered, several miles in separate directions. Eight other families claimed the veins, and the Coal Rush began.
The nine families hired miners, blacksmiths, farmers, and tailors. They built flophouses, taverns, shops, and factories. Smelling money on the wind, the wealthy classes flocked to the region until the city of Brackenburg emerged as a diverse conglomeration of the nine families’ entrepreneurship.
Then, an even more enterprising Moulde made a bold claim; the eight other coal veins were tributaries of the Moulde’s vein. In a fit of economic egotism, the Moulde’s demanded the immediate closure of the other families mines at once, along with reparations of all coal mined and sold.
Obviously, to a family, the other eight declined. The Mouldes had no legal standing as there was no legal authority that all nine families would submit to. Ownership of the coal was little more than fiat, and so each family continued with their own mining operations.
For a century, Brackenburg was divided into nine sections. Feuds blossomed and prejudices ran high until the whole town was on the breaking point.
Edmund yawned and flipped to the end of the book. Luckily, the Nine Founding Families cared more about stability than their pride (at least, at the time) so treaties were signed, deeds were exchanged, and trades were made. Eventually the coal in the mines dried to a trickle, but the city of Brackenburg remained: a nine-piece orchestra playing along to the Families’ tune.
Things changed in the early seventeenth century, when a young Feddric Rotledge married an even younger Pollina Moulde against the express wishes of their parents. While neither had a strong claim to their family’s estates, neither family was willing to give the newlyweds their blessings lest legitimacy followed. As was customary at the time in such circumstances, Feddric and Pollina left the city and vanished into the west.
Then, in what scholars agree was a quintessential example of the scourge of “mysterious circumstances,” the Patron of the Moulde Family died.
Within the week, the Rotledges used the wedding to demand a share of the entire Moulde estate, including mining rights to the coal vein under Haggard Hill. Not half a week later, the head of the Rotledge family died under mysterious circumstances and the Mouldes made a similar claim of the Rotledge estate. This harsh despite resulted in a sixty year feud of duels, insults, legal battles, brawls in the Brackenburg streets, and at least three more tragically doomed love affairs.
When the feud began to spill over into the seven other Founding Families, enough was enough. The combined force of their peers was enough to stop even the Mouldes. Apologies were made, concessions and reparations were given, and hands were shaken. Of course, in reality, such technicalities mattered little to families of property. The feud continued unabated behind closed doors, with brawls and knives in the shadows replaced by snubs at parties and in letters.
So that was the Blood Feud that Mrs. Kippling had mentioned. Edmund didn’t quite understand all of it, but it was probably an adult thing. Closing the book and setting it aside, he looked for more material to read.
Of the rest of the books in the study, a good number weren’t even books; just binders and folders full of loose leafs of paper, full of rows and columns and numbers. The shelf of thick and oddly titled books was no better; while they weren’t handwritten, they were only full of names and lines and pictures of shields with strange words and symbols.
One interesting book was about something called finance. A quick glance told Edmund that finance was the natural evolution of Alchemy and the turning of lead into gold; a process that was quite simple if you used economics rather than vials of bubbling goo. Economics was like mathematics, but more refined and complex. He set the book on top of the history book to take back to his room.
Two books excited Edmund largely because of their size. They appeared to be books on the Law, and the text was so small he needed a magnifying glass from a desk-drawer to read it. When he did, it was full of such bizarre syntax and exotic words that it made Edmund dizzy.
The party of the first part will, in due time as befitting that which the party of the first part in due and reputable state of being in society claims their station, bestow or distribute as the party of the first part claims able and in concert with the demands or agreements signed and shaken in any previous claimant by the party of the second part, if and only if the party of the first part were the first part in said claimant…
It took Edmund a full minute to read one sentence, and a further ten to understand it. When he finally comprehended its meaning, it was usually something so obvious that it only became more confusing. If solicitors were as smart as everyone thought they were, why did they need so many words to say something like: when two people agree to do something, they should do it?
Perhaps that was what it meant to be a Moulde? To use more words than was necessary, and longer words when shorter ones would do? If Kolb was any indication, that hypothesis had merit.
Edmund set the two law books on top of the finance book, and hoisted the heavy pillar of literature into his arms as he staggered to the door. He had to walk almost bent double with his chin on the top book to keep the stack together, but he managed to open the door and exit the small study just the same.
As he closed the door behind him, he felt the books shift in his arms. Reflexively, he tried to catch the thick tomes, but they were too heavy and the entire stack toppled towards the ground with several loud bangs just as Edmund felt something whistle past his ear.
In the ringing silence that followed the books’ fall, he heard footsteps running away from the other end of the hallway. Edmund turned, but whoever it had been had vanished down another corridor already. When he looked back, he noticed a small hole that had appeared in the wall almost at his eye level. A faint smell of sulfur was drifting through the air. Curious, Edmund thought as he picked up his books. He didn’t remember seeing a hole there before.
“Is Young Master Edmund alright?”
Ung loomed from the shadows, black water dripping from his hair and fists as he slowly took in the scene.
“I dropped the books.” Edmund said.
Ung gave a loud sniff, and stared at the small hole in the wall while Edmund collected his burden, only to pluck the stack of books from Edmund’s arms.
“Matron does not wish any of these books to be removed from her study.”
“I was going to read them in my room,” Edmund explained. “Do you know if there are any books written by Mouldes?”
Ung paused a moment. “I do not believe there are any…surviving copies of any such literature.”
“Why are you wet?”
“I was working in the garden. If I may suggest, it might be wise for the Young Master to return to your room.”
“I’m trying to find out about being a Moulde,” Edmund reached for the books but Ung’s grip was like steel. “Why were you working in the garden when it’s raining?”
“The rain makes the ground loose,” Ung wiped his brow with a soaking sleeve, spreading a long black smudge under his gray hair. “It’s easier to turn the soil and get the water deep. Please, the Young Master must return to his room.”
“I can’t,” Edmund said. He wasn’t sure why Ung had been so insistent, but it was good, he supposed, to have a servant who was so dedicated to their work. “I have to learn how to be a Moulde.”
For a moment, Ung stood, as resolute as a statue. Then, with a heavy sigh, he pried the books from Edmund’s hands.
“If the Young Master wishes to know what it means to be a Moulde, might I suggest the garden?”
Edmund had never thought of a garden as a place to learn, but then, he had never seen a rich-person’s garden before. “Where is it?”
“Outside,” Ung pointed with his free hand, “at the back of the Hall. There is a hedge-maze at the bottom of the hill, and many of the Moulde family’s former Matrons and Patrons placed statues at the center. If the Young Master wishes to know what it means to be a Moulde, the walk will teach him much.”
“What about the books?” Edmund asked, looking once more at the pile.
“As the Young Master is undoubtedly resolute, I will take the books to his room,” Ung rumbled in tune with the thunder outside. “There, the Young Master may read them later, in safety.”
“Thank you,” Edmund said, giving the books a final glance. True, he was loathe to delay reading even longer, but as long as the books were in his room, he had the time. Besides, with the history books, law, and finance, he had learned quite a bit of the prose of being a Moulde already. What he needed to learn now was the poetry.
Edmund walked to the foyer. There were servants doors in the sides and rear of Moulde Hall, but Ung wouldn’t tell him where they were. Propriety was vital, Edmund knew, but sometimes it was not very efficient.
He paused at the large doors to consider if going out into the evening rain would get him sick. Mrs. Mapleberry had been insistent on children covering their mouths whenever it rained to ward off the Black Cough. Edmund had never been sick of anything before, so he suspected Mrs. Kippling was being overly cautious. If not, he had always been interested in experiencing sickness for himself, so he decided to push on.
The black rain was heavy and cold for summer. Edmund’s skin quickly became covered with a thin black coat from the soot-filled rain clouds. The dusty moisture in the air was casting a thick fog over the ground, almost to Edmund’s chin, and the large black drops obscured both the bright evening moonlight and Edmund’s vision. (This weather was common enough for it to be given its own term by the locals, to wit: a real napper of a day.) He could only see a few meters due to the sickly yellow glow of gas-light from the multitude of windows.
Edmund took a quick breath and walked out into the rain, slipping through the ashen-gray grass and stepping on thick bristly weeds as he began to circumnavigate the outside of Moulde Hall.
A soft sizzling caused Edmund to glance down. A small pale-blue sweet sat in the nearby grass. It practically glowed next to the gray ground and hissed with smoke when the rain hit it. The small circle of grass around it looked dead.
The rear flower garden of Moulde Hall was large, diverse, and dead. Giant willow trees hung their bare branches down to beds full of withered flower stalks. A path encircled a dried up fountain full of dead leaves and detritus before setting off towards the rear of the grounds.
A bright flash and loud thunderclap split the air. Edmund turned around to see one of the poles on the top of Moulde Hall’s two towers sizzling and smoking in the rain.
Lightning rods, Edmund realized, wiggling a finger in his ear to clear the ringing out of his head. They must be grounded through the mansion somehow.
Was that a person up on the roof? And what was that, getting closer?
Edmund stepped out of the way as a stone head, almost as big as his own, crashed to the ground where he had been standing only seconds before. The stone head shattered, spraying sharp stones across the garden.
Edmund looked up again. Nothing else was coming. The lightning must have broken a statue, which was impressive, considering that he hadn’t seen any statues on the roof.
He considered heading back inside but none of the stone shards had hit him, and he was as wet and sooty as he was going to be. Besides, if he was ever going to learn what it meant to be a Moulde, he couldn’t be turned away by little things like rainstorms or falling statues.
At the bottom of the steep hill lay what might once have been an old hedge-maze. Any challenge it may once have held had long since vanished; The hedges were scraggly and perforated through age and neglect. The entrance was flanked by two skeleton statues, one resting a flute against it’s marble teeth, the other leaning its head on a violin with bow poised to play. It would have been an imposing ingress had three other large holes into the maze not been visible less than a meter away. All in all, it was less a twisting hedge labyrinth than a poorly kept hedgerow.
The threat of being lost thus thwarted, Edmund plunged into the maze, looking for the statues placed there by Moulde’s long past.
In spite of the hole-filled hedges, the dark mist made Edmund’s way hard to find. Even walking in a straight line proved difficult with the mists and rain obscuring his way. Thankfully, Moulde Hall proved a compass point; when he could manage to peer through the mists, the mansion rose over the hedges and he could keep his bearings.
Before long, he found his way to a long wide-open garden in the middle of the maze. Stone statues rose out of the ground like gravestones in the mists. There were about thirty statues of various shape and size. The first was a large marble grandfather clock, covered with granite ravens. Nearby stood a soldier with his head in his hands. Behind him sat a snake coiled around a marble sword sticking straight into the ground like a cross. A porous sundial made entirely of stones shaped like human and animal bones stood on the other side. Strange and abstract geometric shapes piled on top of each other, creating impossible angles. A fat woman played chess against an empty chair. A small stone cat sat on a large stone pillow. A child screamed as she held a balloon, while across the path an old man grinned with a sinister rictus as he picked up a wheel from the ground.
Edmund studied each statue carefully as he walked from one end of the statuary garden to the other. So this is what it meant to be a Moulde, according to the Patrons and Matrons of years past. Granted, he didn’t quite understand what the statues meant, but he was confident that a little time spent interpreting them with his poetry book would reveal the answers he needed.
Edmund continued until he reached the last statue, a thin man holding an umbrella. Edmund thought it was a lackluster statue, compared to the others, except that it startled Edmund fiercely when the statue took a small step forward and spoke to him.
“Master Edmund,” Pinsnip smiled. “How…how nice to find you outside. Alone. What are you doing…here?” Pinsnip slowly circled Edmund like a wolf. “It’s a very wet and…foggy evening for summer; you would be much more…um…comfortable inside, I’m sure.”
“I’m exploring,” Edmund said.
Pinsnip gave a grunt. “I see. Looking for…for anything in particular, by chance?” He bent closer to Edmund, his black eyes narrowing.
Edmund took a step back, slipping on the wet earth. “I was looking for the statue garden. Ung said the old heads of the Moulde Family put them up.”
Pinsnip leaned closer still, the tip of his nose almost touching Edmund’s. “I can…tell if you’re lying, boy. I can read it…um…in your face. You wouldn’t be…hunting for anything, would you? Lost treasure, perhaps?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” It was hard to see Pinsnip’s hands under the dark shadows of his umbrella.
“Of course you don’t,” Pinsnip’s mouth spasmed into what might have been a small smile before settling back to the familiar scornful glower. “You had best…get along back inside. I’m sure…Matron wouldn’t want you to…um…catch the Black Chills.”
Edmund gave a small nod. “You should too.”
Pinsnip’s eyebrow shot upwards. “You’d like that, would you? No, I will not. I am…conducting my survey.”
“Of what?”
“The Moulde family holdings. It’s all here, you know. The whole…estate. All the money, the paintings, the ancient urns and old…talismans…deeds, that sort of thing.” He grimaced, looking around at the rain-soaked hedges. “It’s taken over a year and I’m almost done. The grounds are…um…they’re the last part I have to…well…I want to be finished, is all… and as soon as possible…rain or otherwise.”
“Over a year?” He had known it would take a long time to become familiar with Moulde Hall, but if it took a grown man a full year…“Is there really that much to see?”
“Mouldes seldom throw anything away,” Pinsnip shifted his weight, “and it’s a…a large house. I have been working as fast as I can.”
“Why?” Edmund asked. After reading his family’s history, it certainly seemed to him like Moulde Hall wasn’t going anywhere.
“So Matron doesn’t have the time to…pull any tricks. Hide the silverware…that sort of thing.”
Was that the sort of thing Mouldes did? “Why would she do that?”
Pinsnip’s mouth twitched, then his face softened. “Of course,” he muttered. “You are…an orphan. You wouldn’t know about…the Moulde family history, would you? I’m afraid that you have been adopted into…a quite disreputable family. The Mouldes have never been thought of very highly by the other founding families, and then there was the Great Agreement… Well, it would be far too troublesome to explain it all now, but…suffice it to say that the Mouldes are all a family of criminals.”
“Criminals?” Edmund repeated, horrified. He knew about criminals; they were kept in small rooms with barely anything to eat. It had sounded exactly like the orphanage. “I haven’t done anything wrong!”
“For some,” Pinsnip snorted, “being a…a Moulde is more than enough to be a criminal, no matter how honest or…law-abiding you actually are.”
“That’s not fair,” Edmund protested.
Pinsnip’s mouth twisted again, his face gnarling into a bizarre grin. “Of course not. Nor is it free from irony. Don’t worry, being…criminals hasn’t stopped the family’s…/modus vivendi/.” The smile faded. “Well…I suspect you’re too young to understand the humor of it.”
“So I’m not going to jail?”
“Not yet,” Pinsnip’s smirk returned. “The Moulde family is simply too important to be criminals in the…um…traditional sense,” he paused, “with some exceptions. Instead, they’re eccentrics, and have been for…well…of course, there was Plinkerton; he was the start of the worst of it. He was the fool who went and lost most of the family’s wealth. He fathered Rotchild, who fathered Isaybel, and then…well, you see what I mean, yes? If the family had still had enough money, than Rotchild wouldn’t have needed to fund all that…unpleasant business with the railroads…and then Isaybel could have spent more time on her own studies…perhaps avoided Lord Gumblepitch…”
Pinsnip’s hazy gaze turned to Edmund. “Funny thing. If the Moulde Family hadn’t been so dis-repudiated, Lady Illfiena would never have dained to marry Sir Humbly Sadwick so many years ago, and I’d not have a claim to the estate. I suppose I should thank Patron Plinkerton for that…”
“The Mouldes are poor?”
“What?” Pinsnip’s eyes snapped back into focus. “Oh no! No, they…well…that is now we have quite a lot of…that is, we regained…um…” he stopped, his lopsided grin slowly returning. “Forgive my rambling,” he said, wiping his face with his free hand. “Master Edmund, allow me to…accompany you back to the Hall. I am sorry to have wasted your time with…um…unimportant trivialities of your history.”
“I don’t mind,” Edmund said, starting to walk back through the maze. “I never had a history before.”
Edmund took a few more steps before he realized Pinsnip had not walked with him. He looked back to see the man staring at him, an odd look in his eyes. Was it pity, Edmund wondered? Or perhaps pride?
“We are much alike, you and I,” Pinsnip said, his harsh tone much softer. “The Sadwick’s are…new money. Very new money in fact. We are not as…as wealthy as some, but we earned our money working as…well…clerks and solicitors. Working like Mouldes never have to. The Moulde’s…handed their worth to their children, while you and I…”
Like a flash of lighting, something flickered to life in Pinsnip’s eyes. In one long stride he was at Edmund’s side, his free hand gripping Edmund’s shoulder. “We’re both looking for something…aren’t we?”
Edmund squirmed under Pinsnip’s painful grasp. He opened his mouth to ask to be released, when Pinsnip suddenly let go of his shoulder and spun about like a coiled spring, his free hand dipping into his coat. For a heartbeat the world was still.
Then a massive shape loomed out of the mists like an iceberg. Ung stood in front of them, gripping a large spade like a club.
Pinsnip relaxed only slightly, his arm moving from his coat. “Ung,” he stuttered, waving nervously. “Just…talking with…with Master Edmund here. Ah! No…no I wasn’t going to…that is, there’s no need for your…your help. Good…good initiative, though, bringing the…”
“Mister Sadwick,” Ung interrupted. “Young Mister Rotledge has extended invitations to the rest of Matron’s guests to meet in the eastern sitting Room at ten in the evening.”
“Wislydale? Has he?” Pinsnip nodded furiously. “I see, I see…a family meeting. Well…Master Edmund, I think you can go now…I don’t have anything else to say…”
Edmund watched him slowly fade into the black mist, his heart slowing again. He couldn’t help but wonder why Pinsnip had been outside in the maze. He didn’t know anything about surveying, but somehow pouring rain didn’t seem like proper weather for doing much of anything outside. Of course, he hadn’t thought it was proper for gardening either, so perhaps his views on the weather were too narrow.
He looked back at Ung, who was likewise staring into the mist. For all the world, his face was that of a man who had just stared down a raging lion and was watching it slink away in defeat.
“As Young Mister Rotledge’s meeting is intended for family,” Ung boomed, his voice like thunder, “the Young Master’s attendance would be prudent.” His dark eyes reflected a distant flash of lightning. “The lack of invitation on Mr. Wislydale’s part was obviously an oversight.”