Magnificence lost. Never mind that Herimar had no idea it was Petry’s doing; he would be angry enough to make Petry’s life hell anyway.
“Get him away,” the serjeant muttered, over Petry’s head. “Get him away from that beast—”
“The shrew, sir?” Petry said. “He’s well ahead—”
“No, you fool! Away from Magnificence! It’s not good to be too close—”
Down the stretch they came now, with Arresting, on the rail, pulling slowly ahead…a handspan, an armspan. Magnificence’s jockey leaned forward, urging him on…when suddenly a glittering cloud lifted from Arresting and settled on Magnificence. The jockey on Magnificence waved his arms like a man threatened by a swarm of bees and nearly fell off.
“May all the devils in all the hells take him!” the serjeant said. “We warned him!”
“Warned who?” Petry said. “What happened?” But before the serjeant could speak, he knew. The cuttlemites, transferred to Arresting, had smelled their born-host nearby, his smell stronger for the race he’d been running and the accumulation of secretions, and transferred back. In an instant, they seemed to disappear, diving into the great beast’s crevices to groom him. Magnificence slowed and stopped as Arresting raced on and crossed the finish line; despite all his jockey could do, he crouched low to the track, antennae outspread. Petry imagined the relief the roach was feeling…all those itches scratched, expertly at once, as blissful comfort overrode fear. But now the Harbormaster’s roach, only slightly ahead of the shrew but far ahead of the two roaches the shrew had crippled, scuttled past Magnificence. Too late, the champion sensed the danger; too late it gathered its slender legs and tried to run…too late and too slow.
The crowd’s cheers for the winner died away as they watched the unthinkable…the Duke’s renowned racing roach losing leg after leg to the shrew; the jockey’s brave attempt to fight it off, until the shrew, annoyed, snapped at the man and bit off his leg. Though a dozen men with weapons ran out to save the jockey, he died before a healer could be found, and the great roach was eaten entire. The Duke’s Roachkeeper Extraordinary had flung his feathered hat on the ground and was jumping up and down on it, screaming; the roachifers huddled together, wailing.
“Well,” the serjeant said, loosening his grip at last. “As I said, boy, it’s time to cut your losses with Herimar and consider other opportunities. If you came to us, the work’s no harder and you might have that chance to become a watchman, when you’ve got some growth on you.”
And when he did not grow, they would begin to wonder why, and when they found out…
Petry fixed a bright smile on his face. “Could I really? But I need to pick up my things at Master Herimar’s, before—”
“Before he comes to himself and takes a billet to everyone,” the serjeant said. “Sure, then. Go on. I’m stuck here — no odds taken that Roachkeeper’s going to enter a formal protest, for all the good it’ll do him. He can’t prove anything. Come by the watch-house after sundown…and here’s a few coppers for you in earnest of the offer. No stealing purses, now…” He counted out five copper slugs.
“No, sir! I wouldn’t think of it.” Petry took the coppers then turned and elbowed his way through the crowd. Not enough for a stake, not enough for a pillow dance or even a good meal, but more than he’d had since Emeraldine ran off with his entire stash. And…neither Herimar nor the serjeant were in their usual places.
He might be able to diddle them both. It was time for him to leave the place anyway — one year without growing could happen to any young boy, but two was pushing it, and anyway he’d like to be someplace he didn’t depend on a magic depilatory to maintain his appearance.
Sure enough, all the watch were out on the streets, leaving the watch-house locked but unguarded. Locked, but not impregnable to a boy-sized man with the right experience. There in a drawer of the serjeant’s desk was the velvet purse and its jingling contents. Petry tucked that away in his vest pocket, scratched Herimar’s initials on one of the wooden house-tokens and dropped it on the floor, nudging it under the serjeant’s desk next to the lock-box. He scratched around the lock, as if trying to pick it, but left it locked. Then he relocked the watch house, and made his way to the Bilge & Belly.
The main room bustled with those returning from the race, downing jugs of ale as they told each other what they’d seen at the top of their lungs. Serving wenches rushed back and forth and half the professional ladies of pleasure from Aunt Meridel’s Treasure House were there, too, including Emeraldine, the cause of all his recent troubles.
Herimar, however, was missing. Arguing with the bookmakers about the extent of his losses, no doubt, for all the good it would do him. With any luck, he would quarrel with the Roachkeeper Extraordinary and be gone for hours.
Petry slipped into Herimar’s private apartment and left the purse, minus two of the gold coins, under his mattress. Then upstairs, to the Roachkeeper’s room, where he found, as expected, that the man had hidden a stash of coins in his chamberpot. And he’d marked them in the usual amateurish way, scratching his initials into the space between the Prince’s head and the motto. Easy enough to rub out, but Petry had a better idea. He took them all but one, tying half of them into a rag so they wouldn’t jingle, and put them down the back of his vest, under his shirt, with a string. That one, a silver, he held in his hand. The other half joined his earlier stash, inside his vest.
Downstairs again, with a chamberpot in each hand as if he were working, he looked to see if Herimar had returned. Not yet…very good. The rag with the Roachkeeper’s coins in it went under Herimar’s pillow; Petry came out of Herimar’s rooms with three chamberpots, just in case anyone noticed where he’d been, and out the back door to empty them in the pit. While appearing to scrub out the chamberpots, he scoured off the Roachkeeper’s initials from the coins he’d kept and then dirtied them in the quickest way, so they weren’t too shiny.
Still the Roachkeeper did not return; he imagined the man and his roachifers arguing with the serjeant, and smiled. Nor had Herimar returned. Petry’s smile widened. He didn’t need much more time…back inside, he slipped the Roachkeeper’s marked silver into Emeraldine’s sleeve-pocket while she had her tongue down some wormiger’s throat, then made his way to the stable and retrieved his pot of depilatory.
Now to the Duke’s, to apply for the job of fool. He sauntered through the town’s market square, stopping to buy himself a fruit pasty for the journey, trade the jar of depilatory for one guaranteed to speed hair growth, and fill the empty potion bottle from a dyer’s pot, then strolled out the unguarded west gate. When the thefts were discovered and he wasn’t around, someone might try to blame him — but the house-token should result in a search of Herimar’s — where the evidence he’d planted should point to Herimar — his greed and his need both being public knowledge. If not, Petry the boy would soon cease to exist anyway.
By the time the Roachkeeper Extraordinary and his roachifers dared return to the Duke’s court, only to be summarily dismissed, a very hairy dwarf known to that noble lord as Otokar Petrosky might be seen capering about the Duke’s hall each night in motley and a belled cap. With his hair dyed blue and done up in ribboned plaits, and his long braided beard dyed red with a bell on the end for the Duke to pull, he resembled in no way the beardless skinny orphan boy from the Bilge & Belly, and his short stature was in no wise a hindrance to his other ambitions…since not all of him was short.
I discovered Jack Vance while in high school, a few years into my attempt to read every scrap of science fiction I could find. Compared to my previous reading, Vance, like Sturgeon, was exotic — his imagined worlds as different from a small city in south Texas as a dreamer could wish. Later, other writers lured me away from Vance, but he was a bright-colored thread in the tapestry of writers whose work I read. I suspect, though, that he’s the reason I spent one whole summer writing (very bad) stories with purple ink.
Lucius Shepard
SYLGARMO’S PROCLAMATION
