He reached for the box behind him and drew out the credit slip for Miss Ellicott’s School. He wrote on it, and pushed it across for Bowser to sign.
“What?” said Bowser. “Fifteen dollars? For three eggs?”
“Is that a lot?” said Anna. Magical maidens didn’t handle money.
“It’s highway robbery!” said Bowser.
Japheth gave a wriggle on Chantel’s neck, perhaps in surprise at this lack of deportment. But Bowser, after all, was not a magical maiden.
“That,” said Mr. Whelk, in heavy, hollow tones, “is a matter of opinion. Prices”—he pushed the card forward again—“have risen.”
“Fine.” Bowser signed. It wasn’t his money, after all. “And we want to order a hundred pounds of potatoes.”
“Please,” Anna added.
Mr. Whelk blinked sorrowfully. “I doubt, young people, that there are a hundred pounds of potatoes in the entire city at this moment.”
“Why?” said Chantel.
“Some sort of trouble.” Mr. Whelk took the card back, and picked his teeth with the corner of it.
A woman came into the shop, balancing a baby on her hip.
“An ounce of butter, please,” she said. “And two eggs.”
Mr. Whelk took the card out of his mouth and regarded her sadly. “There is no butter,” he intoned. “There are no eggs.”
Without saying anything, Bowser took one of the eggs out of his basket and handed it to the woman. And without demur, she thanked him for it and left.
Because that was Lightning Pass, Chantel thought with a surge of pride. People relied on each other. They were usually kind and they expected kindness.
From each other, that is. Not from anyone outside the walls. But people outside the walls hardly counted. You never saw them.
They went back to the school, with two eggs and no hope of future potatoes.
“Do we have any potatoes now?” said Chantel.
“Nope,” said Bowser.
This was dismal news. It was bad enough to have strange things suddenly happening to your safe and comfortable world. But to have them happening without potatoes was worse. It was Chantel’s opinion that baked potatoes were one of the best things in the world. When you held a hot baked potato in your hands, grown in the Green Terraces under the sorceresses’ cultivation spells, you knew you were safe and you knew you were home.
And if there was butter, so much the better.
There wasn’t any butter now.
“Also, there’s no milk, and no cheese,” Bowser said, as they climbed the stairs of Fate’s Turning. “And no leeks, and—”
“I don’t like leeks,” said Chantel.
“And I don’t like cheese,” said Anna.
“I bet you’d rather eat them than nothing,” said Bowser. “We have enough food through lunchtime tomorrow, and that’s it.”
“Can’t you go somewhere else besides Mr. Whelk’s?” said Chantel.
“Not without money,” said Bowser. “And Frenetica asked Miss Flivvers for money, and Miss Flivvers burst into tears.”
Chantel didn’t know what to say. It was a horribly insecure feeling when grown ups burst into tears, because it more or less left you in charge.
“Where does the money come from?” said Chantel.
Anna knew this. “From the patriarchs.”
Chantel had seen the patriarchs. On important occasions they paraded in velvet robes. The king paraded too, but the patriarchs had nicer robes and people cheered more loudly for them.
Anna said that the patriarch in charge of the money for the school was named Sir Wolfgang. And Bowser said that they might try looking for him in the Hall of Patriarchs at the bottom of the city hill.
So they left the eggs in the kitchen, and went down the steep, uneven stairs of Fate’s Turning, and through the crooked, narrow alleys that wound back and forth, toward the sound of the sea. They climbed tortuous trails to bridges that spanned streets and squares, topped by tall towers upon which the dragon flag of Lightning Pass rippled in the wind. And they went down staircases, and up more staircases, and through arched alleys, and at last they reached the grand, imposing Hall of Patriarchs, in the shadow of the wall called Seven Buttons.
The Hall of Patriarchs was part cemetery, part government building, with a tower stuck onto the side. When you first entered, you were in the dank and windowless Hall of the Dead, where footsteps echoed like books dropped in silent libraries.
Chantel and her friends made their way among rows of sarcophogi. Some had carvings of dead patriarchs and kings, staring stonily at the vaulted ceiling.
Chantel felt the breath of cold, musty air as they passed the dark hole of a stairway that led down to the catacombs.
Beyond the Hall of the Dead was the sudden warmth of a sunlit office. A round-eyed clerk with a mustache waxed into two curlicues sat at a severely-sloped desk. He smiled—the kind of smile that welcomes any interruption to a dull day.
“Yes?” He drew the word out slowly.
“We want to see Sir Wolfgang, please,” said Bowser.
“Indeed? And yet I highly doubt Sir Wolfgang wants to see you,” said the clerk, still smiling.
“We could come back—” said Anna uncertainly.
“No need for that,” said the clerk. “Why shouldn’t Sir Wolfgang do things he doesn’t want? Third doorway on the left.”
He waved toward a high arched hallway. Chantel wasn’t at all sure they should go in. It was hardly good deportment to bother a patriarch who didn’t want to see you.
On the other hand, Miss Ellicott was missing and there was nothing for dinner tomorrow.
They walked down the passage, between fluted stone columns, past arches that led to chambers great and small. They found Sir Wolfgang sitting at a broad table, reading a scroll.
Sir Wolfgang was dressed in a long black coat, red velvet pantaloons and a waistcoat embroidered with golden lions.
The girls curtseyed perfectly, and Bowser bowed.
“What are you doing here?” Sir Wolfgang barked. Apparently no one had made him learn deportment.
“We’re from Miss Ellicott’s School,” said Chantel. “And I’m afraid it seems that . . .” She trailed off. Money was not a polite matter to discuss.
“We can’t buy food past lunchtime tomorrow,” said Anna bluntly.
The patriarch said nothing, but looked questioningly at Bowser.
“We can’t buy dinner,” Bowser said.
“Why should you need to?” said the patriarch. “Surely you are supplied with it on a quotidian basis.”
“Miss Ellicott’s gone,” said Anna. “And there’s no—” Chantel watched her swallow the unmentionable word. “There’s no way to buy any food.”
This elicited no response but a glare, which was directed not at Anna but at Bowser.
“She’s gone,” Bowser echoed.
“Who?” said Sir Wolfgang.
The girls and Bowser looked at each other in consternation. Could the patriarch actually not hear girls?
“Miss Ellicott,” said Bowser. “Miss Ellicott is gone from the school, and there’s no money for food.”
“What do you mean, gone?” said the patriarch. “She has no business to be gone. The school is her station in life, and there she must remain.”
Anna looked at Chantel, and Chantel looked at Bowser, and Bowser told the patriarch about the mysterious stranger.