Garth Nix - Newt’s Emerald

“I didn’t realise you’d had the shutters taken right off,” said Stephen. “Why on earth—”

“Oh, Father likes to have them repainted at least twice a year, each room in turn. So they have to come off,” interrupted Truthful hastily, with a warning glance to Stephen. “They’ve been drying in the coach-house.”

“Namby-pamby things anyway,” said the Admiral, waving to Hetherington to hurry up as the two men struggled to fit the first shutter on its heavy iron hinges. “Wouldn’t put them up at all if it weren’t for the women-folk. A few shards of glass never did anyone any lasting harm. I like to feel a good storm. Why, I remember off Cape Finisterre in ’08, I was in Defiant, and …

“Sir, you were going to show us the Emerald,” interrupted Stephen, earning him a stern glance from Edmund.

“Why, of course,” replied the Admiral, as if he‘d suddenly thought of it himself. “I’ve got it right here.”

He lumbered back to his chair, and gently lowered himself into it. Once secure, he felt in the pockets of his waistcoat, first the left, then the right. A look of consternation began to spread across his face, to be rapidly mirrored in the others.

The Admiral laughed, and pulled a package from inside his waistcoat.

“Thought I’d slipped my moorings, didn’t you?” he chuckled, pushing the bag over to Truthful. “Open it, my dear. But don’t put it on. You aren’t ready to wield it yet. Particularly not in a storm.”

Truthful leant forward eagerly, then deliberately slowed herself. Taking a little half-breath, half-gasp, she carefully untied the gold drawstring of the small velvet bag. That successfully done, she reached inside, and pulled out … the Emerald.

A huge, heart-shaped gem of the clearest green, it hung suspended from a silver necklace of filigreed leaves. The candle-light flickered on the silver, and small green fires danced from the many facets of the stone, hinting at the sorcerous powers that lurked within.

“It’s beautiful,” said Truthful. “Too beautiful for me. I can’t possibly wear it! Not even when I’m twenty-five.”

“You will,” said the Admiral fondly. “You have your mother’s looks, you know. A good thing too, I’d have disliked it excessively if you’d had mine.”

“Oh, father,” cried Truthful. “Don’t be silly! It must be worth too much to wear anyway.”

“At least thirty thousand pounds, I would say,” said Stephen. He held out his hand, adding, “Is it safe for me to hold?”

“Aye,” said the Admiral. “It don’t answer unless worn at the neck, and only to the family. The womenfolk. It has never answered to a man, so far as is known.”

Truthful reluctantly handed over the gem, the silver leaves trickling through her fingers as the stone dropped into Stephen’s palm. Truthful watched its slow fall, dazed at the beauty and size of the gem. Even from the brief moment in her hand she felt an affinity for it, and had to suppress an urge to ask for it back. Privately she was very sure it was far too beautiful for her to own. Let alone wear it or attempt to use its powers. Whatever those powers might be. The Admiral had never really talked to her about what the Emerald’s powers were exactly.

Stephen looked at the Emerald for several minutes, holding it close to his right eye, even dragging a candle to shine behind the gem.

“There is an ancient power in the stone,” he said. As so often, he seemed to know what Truthful was thinking and asked her question for her. “What precisely is its nature and how does it manifest?”

“Precisely never you mind,” retorted the Admiral. “Ain’t none of your business.”

Stephen smiled and passed the stone to Robert.

Robert looked at it, felt the weight, and said: “Sell it at once, and put the money into Mr Watt’s new steam donkeys.”

“Don’t be silly!” exclaimed Edmund, taking up the gem. “It’s an heirloom of the family, and besides must be a restricted item under the terms of the Sorcerous Trading Act. Besides, it will look very handsome indeed on Truthful.”

He put the gem down in the centre of the table, and pushed it a few inches towards Truthful.

“There, back to its rightful place …” he began, just as lightning struck the iron-framed windows.

Light flooded the entire room. Simultaneously, someone outside cried in pain, glass shattered, and thunder clapped. The wind and rain rushed in, quenching the candles and plunging the room into total darkness.

Truthful leapt to her feet, knocking her chair backwards. The men shouted, and crashing and splintering noises attested to their efforts to get up, knocking chairs over and sending the table sliding on its castors as they struggled to get free of the debris from the broken windows.

Lightning flashed again, further away, the instant of light showing wild figures leaping around the table, and the shapes of men grappling together outside. Then all was dark again, and thunder resounded through the room, quickly followed by the bull-roar of the Admiral’s sea-going voice of command, infused with the full strength of his native sorcery.

“Be still!”

Quiet came after his shout, the elements also bound by his command. The lightning and thunder retreated, the storm rolling out across the cliffs towards the sea. A few seconds later, a dull roar announced its departing cry. At the same time, the double doors opened, revealing Agatha holding a storm lantern, its wick turned high. Behind her stood one of the kitchen maids, with a fire bucket full of sand.

The flickering light of the lantern lit a scene of destruction. One of the unfixed shutters had blown clear through the windows, showering both glass and bits of frame throughout the room. Outside, Hetherington and three footmen slowly let each other go and stood back, scratching their heads.

“There was someone ran past us,” said Hetherington, disbelieving. “Come in with the storm, like.”

“Aye, like a cloud or smoke,” said a footman. “I thought I had ’im, but it was Jukes here.”

“I thought you was him,” said Jukes.

“Sorcery,” said Stephen. “Perhaps an adjunct of the storm . . .”

He and his brothers stood close together by the shifted table. There were glasses and dishes distributed widely among overturned chairs, several of which were smashed beyond repair. Everyone was drenched with rain, and Edmund had a small cut on his forehead, which was slowly bleeding into his right eyebrow.

Truthful looked at the wreckage, and held her hands to her face as the shock of the sudden transition from happy party to disaster took hold. In a second, Agatha was at her side, pausing only to thrust the lantern into the maid’s hands.

“You sit down, my lady,” she said, kneeling to right a chair, her voluminous skirts billowing up as she crouched down.

“Thank you,” said Truthful. She didn’t particularly feel the need to sit, but did so obediently until Agatha started to fuss about with her smelling salts.

“I don’t need smelling salts, Agatha!” protested Truthful. “I never do faint, you know that. I was momentarily shocked, but all seems to be well.”

“Hmmph,” said the Admiral, who had stepped through the broken window to investigate the damage to both building and servants. “I don’t know about this smoky character you reckon to have seen, Hetherington, but the storm has done its work. A nine-pound ball could do as much, yet I’ve seen a storm do a great deal more. Let’s straighten the table, gentlemen. We’ll adjourn to the card room. I’ll have the builders in tomorrow.”

He bent to one corner of the table, and the three brothers distributed themselves accordingly, gingerly picking their way through the debris.

“One — two — three — heave!” cried the Admiral, and the table was slid back in place. He gazed down on its polished surface happily, observed there wasn’t a single irreparable scratch, and then his smile faded like a powder dissolving in a glass. A red flush spread up his neck and across his face, and he swayed on his feet as he tried to speak.

“The Emerald! Where is the—”

This was all he got out before he pitched headfirst on to the table, his great bulk making it resound like an enormous drum.

The Admiral lay senseless for two whole days, while every inch of the dining room was searched for the Emerald, to no avail. Even the floorboards were taken up, but they revealed only several rat right of ways, a tinware spoon, and a clipped silver penny of Elizabeth’s reign.

On the morning of the third day, the Admiral awoke, and called for a hot rum punch, well-spiced with cinnamon. Truthful brought it up immediately, and was pleased to see his normal colour returning as he drank it.

“Thank you, my dear,” he said, handing the glass back to her. “A proper cast-up mackerel I must look! I hear those rapscallions have come to visit. Has one of them handed back the Emerald?”

“Rapscallions?” cried Truthful. “Oh, no, father! You can’t mean the Newington-Lacys!”

“You mean to say the Emerald ain’t back?” expostulated the Admiral, raising himself angrily up on one elbow. “Yes, I do mean the Newington-Lacys. No-one else could have taken it! I don’t hold that a smoke-devil or cloud-catcher could have done so, no matter what Hetherington thinks he saw!”

He looked fiercely at Truthful, but his eyes were focused somewhere beyond her shocked face.

“You don’t understand, Truthful,” continued the Admiral fretfully. “The Emerald isn’t just a great jewel, nor merely some sorcerous piece for working the wind and sea. It’s also the luck of the Newingtons! The last time it went missing, a hundred and twenty years ago, the whole family damn near came to an end. Two brothers killed at Marston Moor, another at Naseby … a sister dead of the smallpox … all the plate confiscated—”