Mort

Harga's House of Ribs down by the docks is probably not numbered among the city's leading eateries, catering as it does for the type of beefy clientele that prefers quantity and breaks up the tables if it doesn't get it. They don't go in for the fancy or exotic, but stick to conventional food like flightless bird embryos, minced organs in intestine skins, slices of hog flesh and burnt ground grass seeds dipped in animal fats; or, as it is known in their patois, egg, soss and bacon and a fried slice.

It was the kind of eating house that didn't need a menu. You just looked at Harga's vest.

Still, he had to admit, this new cook seemed to be the business. Harga, an expansive advert for his own high carbohydrate merchandise, beamed at a room full of satisfied customers. And a fast worker, too! In fact, disconcertingly fast.

He rapped on the hatch.

'Double egg, chips, beans, and a trollburger, hold the onions,' he rasped.

RIGHT.

The hatch slid up a few seconds later and two plates were pushed through. Harga shook his head in gratified amazement.

It had been like that all evening. The eggs were bright and shiny, the beans glistened like rubies, and the chips were the crisp golden brown of sunburned bodies on expensive beaches. Harga's last cook had turned out chips like little paper bags full of pus.

Harga looked around the steamy cafe. No one was watching him. He was going to get to the bottom of this. He rapped on the hatch again.

'Alligator sandwich,' he said. 'And make it sna —'

The hatch shot up. After a few seconds to pluck up enough courage, Harga peered under the top slice of the long saur in front of him. He wasn't saying that it was alligator, and he wasn't saying it wasn't. He knuckled the hatch again.

'Okay,' he said, I'm not complaining, I just want to know how you did it so fast.'

TIME IS NOT IMPORTANT.

'You say?'

RIGHT.

Harga decided not to argue.

'Well, you're doing a damn fine job in there, boy,' he said.

WHAT IS IT CALLED WHEN YOU FEEL WARM AND CONTENT AND WISH THINGS WOULD STAY THAT WAY?

'I guess you'd call it happiness,' said Harga.

Inside the tiny, cramped kitchen, strata'd with the grease of decades, Death spun and whirled, chopping, slicing and flying. His skillet flashed through the fetid steam.

He'd opened the door to the cold night air, and a dozen neighbourhood cats had strolled in, attracted by the bowls of milk and meat — some of Harga's best, if he'd known — that had been strategically placed around the floor. Occassionally Death would pause in his work and scratch one of them behind the ears.

'Happiness,' he said, and puzzled at the sound of his own voice.

Cutwell, the wizard and Royal Recognizer by appointment, pulled himself up the last of the tower steps and leaned against the wall, waiting for his heart to stop thumping.

Actually it wasn't particularly high, this tower, just high for Sto Lat. In general design and outline it looked the standard sort of tower for imprisoning princesses in; it was mainly used to store old furniture.

However, it offered unsurpassed views of the city and the Sto plain, which is to say, you could see an awful lot of cabbages.

Cutwell made it as far as the crumbling crenellations atop the wall and looked out at the morning haze. It was, maybe, a little hazier than usual. If he tried hard he could imagine a flicker in the sky. If he