Songs of the Dying Earth

wore a pleated gown of gray velvet, with a long strand of white corals about her neck. Her face was severely clean, innocent of powder or mascara; but if it had not been, and if the aquiline bones of her face had been well-padded with fat, rather than protruding as shoal rock protrudes from sand at low tide, Cugel might have been able to discern some resemblance to her sister.

“What am I doing here? What are you doing here? Why aren’t you in your boudoir, sleeping off another night of disgusting excess, as you customarily are at this hour of the day? I am the one who sees to it that darling Pippy gets his little breakfast. If it was left to you, he’d starve! And who is this? Have you started bringing your entertainments home again? I wonder you aren’t ashamed, at your age!”

“You cold-hearted old stick!” Dame Vaissa gripped the tiller of her flying platform in a passion of rage. “You haven’t an ounce of feeling, you haven’t indeed! For your information, I was set upon by murderers and rapists last night on my way home, and had it not been for the timely appearance of this noble virtuous gentleman, anything might have happened! And how dare you imply that I neglect my little Pippy!”

“It’s true!” Dame Trunadora addressed Cugel. “She never remembers to change the water in his drinking- cup!”

“You foul old liar!”

“And look here!” Dame Trunadora gestured at a green and calcined stalagmite of droppings directly under the bird’s hanging ring, rising from the floor to a height of seven or eight inches. “This is her responsibility! I’ve waited for days to see if she even noticed it hadn’t been cleaned. You never did it yourself, did you, you lazy sybarite? You had that manservant doing it, didn’t you? The one I caught stealing the spoons.”

Dame Vaissa opened and shut her mouth, words temporarily choked by outrage. Cugel, noting that Meternales had not understated matters, wondered how he might play the sisters against each other.

“She’s been this way her whole life,” Dame Trunadora told Cugel. “Always careless, always shirking her duties. She doesn’t love our little sweeting the way I do.”

“I do so!” Dame Vaissa’s voice bellowed forth at last. “Is it my fault that my health is too delicate to get down on my poor hands and knees and scrub the tiles? And if you truly loved dearest Pippy, you’d have cleaned up the mess yourself, rather than let it mount on a matter of principle. Look! His poor little eyes are watering from the fumes! And poor Leodopoif never stole the spoons. You only dismissed him because you were jealous of his affection for me! But as it happens, dear Cugel of Kauchique has graciously accepted a position in my service. His delight it shall be, hereafter, to keep the floor beneath Pippy as spotless as new- loomed samite.”

“Indeed, dear lady, I am eagerly anticipating the duty,” said Cugel, happy to have a chance to speak for himself at last. “There was a great aviary on my father’s estate, and many a time I assisted the keeper in caring for our dear feathered companions.” He bowed to Dame Trunadora, in a close imitation of the elaborate reverences of the courtiers of Prince Kandive. Dame Trunadora regarded him with a chilly lemon-colored stare. She sniffed.

“Very likely,” she said. “But if it is so, then you may as well begin at once. See the cabinet yonder, under the flowering sispitola? You’ll find there a steel brush and a dustpan. Clean away the guano, and make certain you carry it over to the compost-pile afterward. Then wash down the floor with perfumed water, and dry it with chamois cloth.”

“At once,” said Cugel, bowing once again. “Please, concern yourselves no further! Only leave me here, to improve my acquaintance with little Pippy as I work.”

“I should say not!” Dame Trunadora extended an arm thin as a broom-handle within its velvet sleeve. The green bird leaned down, and, steadying itself with its formidable beak, clambered onto her wrist. “Leave our adorable baby alone with a stranger? Really, Vaissa, what can you have been thinking?”

Dame Vaissa twisted her red mouth in a moue of disgust. “Look at his poor little claws! You haven’t bothered to trim them in a month, obviously. Never mind, Pippy darling! You shall come with me now, and I shall show dear Cugel how we trim your little toenails.”

She thrust out her arm and the green bird stepped readily across, flexing its gray and scaled feet for pleasure at the well-padded surface. Grimacing, she swung her arm around to Cugel. “Put out your arm, sir. Step up, Pippy! There now! You see, Trunadora? Pippy knows a gentleman when he sees one.”

“You are too kind, madam,” said Cugel, barely managing not to gasp as the needle-pricking talons punched through his sleeve and into his wrist. The green bird sidled up Cugel’s arm to his shoulder, where he had an excellent view of its hooked, sharp-edged beak.

Cugel had further occasion to note the beak when it bit him, some three or four times during the process of learning to trim avian toenails. There were special silver clippers to be used, and a special diamond-dust file, and a special ointment to be painted on the creature’s feet afterward. Dame Vaissa sat with her hands well within her sleeves, patiently instructing Cugel in the painful process, though he could barely hear her over the creature’s deafening screams. Now and then, she remonstrated gently with Pippy, in the fond language mothers use to infants, when he removed yet another half-moon divot of Cugel’s flesh from knuckle or fingertip or ear.

“Perhaps it has been awhile since you handled birds,” Dame Vaissa remarked, extending a forefinger. She made kissing noises and Pippy leaped from Cugel’s shoulder, leaving a mound of chrysoprase excrement there as it came and buffeting his head soundly with wingbeats. The green bird lighted on Dame Vaissa’s hand and proceeded to preen itself, as Cugel, fingering the bleeding notch in his left ear, smiled through clenched teeth.

“Some few years, madam. And, of course, he isn’t used to me yet. I trust we shall become great friends, if I am allowed to spend a little time alone with him.”

“No doubt,” said Dame Vaissa, with a yawn. “Well. We mustn’t idle! Do please clean up the mess under the dear baby’s perch, won’t you? And, when you’ve finished, you might just step out to the porters’ agency and fetch me a new set of chair-bearers. Tell them I wish for strapping fellows of matched height, preferably with chestnut hair. Protective greaves wouldn’t be a bad idea, either. And I expect you’ll want to bring your things here — were you staying at a lodging-house? You can have Leodopoif’s old room, it’s quite nicely appointed. Oh, and could you stop by Madame Vitronella’s shop and ask her to make up five bottles of my personal cologne? Have her deliver it. And then, of course, I’ll require you to attend me when I go out this evening. The dear Prince has appointed me principal judge in a contest of amateur efforts at love-poetry! So amusing!”

“Tiresome old baggage!” Cugel grumbled, throwing himself down on the narrow bed that had been furnished him. He stretched out his long legs and folded his hands behind his head. It was past the hour of midnight, and he had spent most of the long day on his feet in the service of Dame Vaissa. Firstly, running the thousand little errands she had found for him, each one of which took him a substantial distance from the house and the green bird, and though he strained his ears to hear the incantation with which Dame Vaissa enabled him to get past the gogmagog, yet he was unable to make out so much as one clear syllable. His second annoyance lay in accompanying her to the court of Prince Kandive the Golden.

While this latter also kept Cugel far from the object of his design, nevertheless he had looked forward to swaggering and cutting a fine figure before the ladies at court. He had been disappointed to learn, therefore, that while at Prince Kandive’s palace, he was expected to remain in the forecourt with the flunkeys and footmen of other nobles, partaking of orange-flower-water and small biscuits and listening to below-stairs gossip.

“Regardless,” he told himself, “I am still Cugel the Clever! Already I have progressed farther than Meternales, whose wisdom was undoubted. He never got so far as I. Have I not already penetrated the house, and won the sisters’ trust? I know where the bird is kept. All I require now is a chance to be alone with him, and a means by which to quiet him while I spirit him out of the house, and to learn the egression spell with which to pass the door-warden.”

He considered the first requirement, scowling to himself. There was no hope of managing the theft during the hours in which he was expected to dance attendance on Dame Vaissa; for that was every hour in which she was awake. She generally rose sometime in the early afternoon. In the hours beforehand, Dame Trunadora kept close watch over the green bird.

Cugel’s scowl darkened as he considered the vinegary charms of Dame Trunadora. At last, he shrugged. “What though, Cugel! Have you not an unfailing way with the female sex? If you cannot ingratiate yourself with the old witch, you are not your father’s child.”

So, on scant hours’ sleep, Cugel made his way to the solarium. As he neared the door, he spotted a kitchen