‘No. You shouldn’t know. Don’t you see? That would ruin the effect. They have to see the fear in your eyes to know it’s real, right?’
Picker waved him away. ‘Aw, shove it.’
‘Now is the time to gird one’s loins for the labour ahead,’ the diminutive fat man murmured as he walked the mud lane between leaning shacks of waste-wood, felt and cloth. He wiped his gleaming mournful face with a sodden handkerchief. ‘Yes indeed … the time has come to hitch up one’s trousers and be a man! Or is it to pull them down and be a man? I never could get that straight … Oh dear, I really should stop right there!’
He paused at an intersection of two lanes where a dog eyed him, growling. No hordes of unreasonably angry washerwomen armed with dirty laundry! Excellent. And the Maiten in sight where come curling currents from the plain where fates move as they do — forward, misplacing things as they go.
Seven dogs now surrounded him, muzzles down between forelimbs, lips pulled back from broken teeth.
Hoary old ones! Washerwomen preferable to this.
He drew a bone from one loose sleeve. ‘Good doggies!’ He threw. Though not nearly so far as he would have wished. He turned and ran, or jogged, puffing, in the opposite direction.
The next two corners brought him to the hut on the extreme western edge of the shanty town where he stopped, short of breath, and wiped his face.
‘And here he is panting in anticipation,’ the old woman sitting on the threshold observed around the pipe in her mouth.
‘Indeed. Here I am yet again. Your ever hopeful suitor. Slave to your whim. Prostrate in inspiration.’
‘I can smell your inspiration from here,’ she observed, grimacing. ‘You brought offering?’
‘But of course!’ From a sleeve he produced a cloth-wrapped wedge the size of a quarter brick.
The old woman raised her tangled brows, impressed, as she took it. ‘Things are progressing nicely, aren’t they, love?’ She tore a piece and moulded it in one grimed fist, warming and softening it. ‘The circle complete, yes?’ and she eyed him, smirking.
He ducked his head. ‘Ah — yes. Spoke too quickly, Kruppe did. Yet, is it not so? Was Kruppe not quite correct? There! Yes, god-like perspicacity, that.’
‘Back to anticipation, are we?’ the old woman murmured, and she drew long and hard on the pipe. ‘Suggesting … perspiration.’
‘Yes. Well. I am dancing as fast as I can, dearest.’
‘Hmm, dancing,’ she purred, exhaling a great stream of smoke. ‘That’s what I want to see. Won’t you come in?’
‘Gladly. Dogs and washerwomen and whatnot. But before … you have them, yes? Ready?’
She pressed her hands to her wide chest. ‘All hot and ready for you, love.’
The man passed a hand over his eyes. ‘Kruppe is speechless.’
‘For once. Now, come in — and think of Darujhistan.’ And she disappeared within.
Kruppe wiped his slick forehead. ‘Oh, fair city. Dreaming city. The things I do for you!’
Shall we draw a curtain across such a commonplace domestic scene? Modesty would insist. Yet Kruppe found the witch athwart her tattered blankets snoring to beat a storm. Well. Shall vanity be stung to no end? Shall the Eel skulk away, tail between its … whatever? Never! The prize awaits! And he knelt over the insensate woman, reaching for her layered shirts.
To feel eyes upon him. Beady eyes, low to the ground.
He turned to find the dogs watching from the doorway, eager, tongues lolling.
Aiya! Kruppe cannot perform like this! He flapped his hands. ‘Begone! Have you no decency?’
Liquid eyes begged, muzzles nudged forepaws.
Defeated, Kruppe drew yet another bone from within his voluminous sleeve and threw. The dogs spun away, claws kicking up dirt.
‘Now, where were we, my love?’ He wriggled his fingers above her and there from a fold of the shirts peeped the weave of a dirty linen sack.
Aha! And now to pluck this blushing blossom …
Kruppe walked the trash-strewn mud ways of Maiten town, and all was well. He inhaled the scent of the open sewer, the steaming waste, and sighed. He patted his chest where a bag rested still warm from another, far greater and more bountiful nook. All was music to his ears: the fighting dogs, the laundry slapped with alarming force upon the rocks, the fond taunting and rock-throwing of the playful local urchins.
And now for the city! Fair Darujhistan. Ringed round and enclosed. Yet are there not ways around all walls and gates for such as the slippery perspiry Eel!
CHAPTER XIV
It is said that once a ruler in far off Tulips hosted a great and rich banquet (Tulips then being a prosperous city, unlike now) at the end of which he invited the guests to stand and give their definition of a full and happy life — the best version of which he would reward with a heavy torc of gold. One after another the guests stood to assure the ruler that his was in fact that best exemplar of a full and happy life. A Seguleh traveller chanced to be attending the celebration and she did not rise to participate in the competition. Irked, the king bade the woman stand and deliver her, all too secretive, version of a full and happy life.
The woman dipped her mask in compliance and stood. ‘Of a full and happy life I can give no accounting,’ she replied. ‘But we Seguleh believe that the gods give men and women glimpses of happiness only to reach again to take them away. Therefore, it seems to us that it is only at the very end, at one’s death, that any such measure can be made.’
And the king bade the woman depart without any largesse or honour, for he thought it utter foolishness to withhold measure until the end. Yet it is said that afterwards all peace of mind fled the ruler as he fretted without cease over when his many advantages might slip from him and in the end he died tormented and mad.
Jan had grown up knowing an old saying among the seguleh: certainty is the spine of the blade. And he accepted this, making it part of his own bones. For were they not the sword of truth? The anvil of its testing? Yet nothing since the Call was as he thought it would be. Nothing in the shining glory of service to the First in their songs and stories had prepared him for the truth to be found here, in their original home, Darujhistan.
Doubts assailed the others. That much was obvious. Therefore the duty was upon him to shoulder the weight of those doubts. To take them all upon himself and show there need be no concern. For was he not the Second? Did not all their eyes turn to him for guidance, for assurance? Let the purity of the cut lie in the steadiness of the blade.
So shall it be. Let it not be said that the Second bent from his responsibilities.
Only the First can call. And they answered. What need be complicated in that? And what do they find but the ancient mask that is a circle of gold? As storied and as fearsome as in their legends of old. What can he do but obey?
Perhaps because they were warriors. Not guards. Not warders of people or of the peace. The transition was easily accomplished; these local authorities, these Wardens, acquiesced immediately. Challenges were minimal. Only two deaths. One, a local simpleton, the other far too stubborn to pass by unanswered.
Now, perhaps now, began the truly difficult part as mundane daily trivia intruded upon their purpose.
Such as now, confronted by these two shabby would-be guards in the hands of Palla, Sixth, here in the court. Jan signed to Ira, Twentieth, who demanded: ‘Why have you returned? The hired guards have all been dismissed.’
One knuckled his dirty sweaty brow. ‘Your pardons, sirs and madams. We’ve not been let go that we know
