“No! Nothing like that. Only, well, there was Mother… I mean, I loved her dearly, of course. But, still…”
“Not charmed with the idea of seeing her again?” Elas gave him a particularly nasty smile, then snorted. “Well, you think you’ve got problems. I pushed my husband down the stairs.”
Imid stared at her.
She laughed. “Aren’t we the perfect saints!”
He looked out into the plaza. “Do you think-do you think he’s out there?”
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
“Why did you kill him?”
“He peed standing up.”
“What?”
She glared. “It’s messy, isn’t it? I kept telling him to wipe the chute rim after. But did he? Never! Not once! Finally, well, I’d just had enough! Why are you looking at me like that? It was justifiable, a mercy killing, in fact. Imagine, being a man who can’t aim! It must have been humiliating!”
“What, not peeing straight or never wiping up?”
“I had multiple arguments prepared, all sufficiently valid. Just in case the Guard got suspicious. But they weren’t interested, not after I bribed them. This was in Necrotus’s time, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Look, the way is clear. Let’s go.”
They rose from their hiding place and scurried out onto the concourse.
Ineb Cough hopped from one leg to the other, eyes on the fires bathing the underside of smoke over the city. He shot Bauchelain a glance. “I’m sensing hunger in there. The desire to… indulge!”
The sorceror nodded, his arms folded, and said, “That would be the un healthy dead.”
Storkul Purge looked up with drunken suddenness. “But there is no alcohol in Quaint! Not a drop! And no rustleaf or durhang! No whores, no gambling establishments!”
Bauchelain smiled his half-smile. “My dear Knight, your naivete is charming. How many floorboards are being pried up right now, I wonder? How many long-locked cellar doors are squealing open? And when the living see what their dead visitors have uncovered, all those well-hidden hoards, well, even a saint such as you will make the correct conclusions.”
Ineb Cough capered over to squat beside Storkul Purge. “More wine?” he asked.
She held out her cup and Vice poured, careful not to spill a drop despite his burgeoning eagerness to return to Quaint’s now or soon-to-be-delirious streets. When he was done he scampered away again, and noticed that Korbal Broach was nowhere to be seen, and indeed, Bauchelain was adjusting his cloak and examining the polish of his boots. “Blessed sorceror,” Ineb said, “are you going somewhere?”
The man regarded him a moment, then nodded. “Oh yes. The time has come to enter your beloved city.”
Ineb jumped up and down. “Excellent! Oh, it shall be such a fete! The living, the dead, everyone will be there!”
“Korbal Broach’s work is done,” Bauchelain murmured. “Now, mine begins…”
Ineb Cough leapt to the man’s side. He did not want to miss this.
Storkul Purge tottered to her feet and stood, wobbling. “Hurla’s Brothel. It’ll be reopening for business. Hurla’s dead, but that shouldn’t matter. Much. Her clients won’t know the difference. My room’s still there-they’ll be waiting for me. Oh, let’s hurry!”
Clearly, Emancipor observed, the veil of civil isation was thin indeed, so easily torn away to reveal depravity waiting beneath, waiting, as such things always did, for the first hint of turbulence. Even so, the burgeoning of anarchy was something to behold. The vast concourse fronting the palace was filled with figures, most of them dreadfully dead and in terrible states of decay. Which seemed little more than a minor inconvenience as they staggered about, waving dusty bottles in their bony hands, fluids leaking down their legs. One woman was sprawled on the palace steps, drawing rustleaf smoke in from a hookah, the smoke then swirling out through various rotted holes in her chest. A long-deceased prostitute chased an all-too-alive man through the crowds, demanding long overdue monies from some past transaction. His shrieks of remorse filled the air.
Citizens fought with dead relatives over possession of various indulgences, and in these cases the corpses usually fared worse, since the living were able to tear arms off and break brittle shins, which seemed an egregious thing to do to relatives, whether they deserved it or not. But now that the locks had been let loose on all manner of desires, the ensuing war was entirely understandable.
Still, Emancipor wondered as he stood at the top of the palace steps, it was all rather… sudden. The raising of the dead, healthy and unhealthy, should not have so easily triggered such a hedonistic conflagration. Had Bauchelain done something to add spice to the mix? Probably.
More buildings had caught fire, and the air was bitter with smoke and drifting ashes. He considered what to do next, then sat down on the rough stone. To stare out, bemused, on the macabre frenzy in the square.
Ineb Cough, Bauchelain and Storkul Purge stood on the road before the city gates, staring up at the row of impaled figures on the wall. Animated yet spiked in place, their legs jerked and kicked about, heels cracking against the battered stone.
“I have seen,” Bauchelain said, “a dance, in a far land, much like this.”
“And are those dancers spiked to a wall, too?” Ineb asked.
“No, but they might as well have been. And indeed, as my manservant might concur, they should have been.”
Ineb stared up at the row of kicking figures. Some had their hands on their hips. “I see his point,” the demon said.
“Well,” Bauchelain sighed, “there are no guards visible at the gate, suggesting that our entrance will not be challenged.” The necromancer set off towards the rubbish-strewn passage. Then halted. “But first, I must fulfill a promise.” He looked up at the wall again. “Ah, there he is.” A gesture, and Ineb Cough watched as one of the dancing corpses lifted clear of its impaling spike, then slowly drifted down, still kicking and with its hands on its hips.
The corpse’s mouth opened wide. “I can’t stop!” it shrieked. “Oh, help me stop this infernal dancing!”
The demon stared as what had once been King Necrotus finally settled on the road, and promptly pranced sideways into the ditch. There was a thump and a flailing of limbs, then the deathly head rose into view, wobbling on its scrawny neck.
“Dear King,” Bauchelain said, “you are free, and so I invite you to join us. We march into Quaint.”
The corpse scrambled upright and stood wavering. “Good! Yes. I want that bastard’s head! I want to rip it free and fling it into the air, then kick it down the street. Oh, let’s visit my dear brother, yes, let’s hurry!”
“It would seem,” Bauchelain said as he led the others through the gateway, “that much of the present fabric of comportment has frayed in your city, King Necrotus, nay, torn asunder, and none of it through my doing. I am pleased to discover said evidence of my own cherished beliefs.”
“What?” Storkul Purge demanded drunkenly, “are you talking ’bout?”
“Why, to transform the metaphor, that piety is but the thinnest patina, fashioned sufficiently opaque to disguise the true nature of our kind, yet brittle thin nonetheless.”
“Who cares about all that?” Necrotus demanded. “I just want my throne back!”
“Ah, but will the citizens of your city accept the rule of an undead king?”
“They accept inbred brain-dead ones easily enough, sorceror,” Necrotus said in a rasping growl, “so why not?”
“Well,” Bauchelain said, “it is true enough that the common people delight in scandal when it comes to royalty. I suppose this could well qualify.”
They paused in the street just inside the gate. The citizens were out tonight, both breathing and breathless, trim and vigorous and decrepit and disintegrating. Hoarse shouts and ragged, pealing screams, wild laughter and the shattering of empty bottles. Fires raging against the night sky, smoke tumbling and billowing. And, Ineb Cough saw, all manner of dramas being played out before their eyes.
