'Oh, yes,' he said. 'We've got them all right. Lots.'
'And people don't do anything about them?' said the duchess.
The chamberlain blinked. 'I'm sorry?' he said.
'People tolerate them?'
'Oh, indeed,' said the chamberlain happily. 'It's considered good luck to have a witch living in your village. My word, yes.'
'Why?'
The chamberlain hesitated. The last time he had resorted to a witch it had been because certain rectal problems had turned the privy into a daily torture chamber, and the jar of ointment she had prepared had turned the world into a nicer place.
'They smooth out life's little humps and bumps,' he said.
'Where I come from, we don't allow witches,' said the duchess sternly. 'And we don't propose to allow them here. You will furnish us with their addresses.'
'Addresses, ladyship?'
'Where they live. I trust your tax gatherers know where to find them?'
'Ah,' said the chamberlain, miserably.
The duke leaned forward on his throne.
'I trust,' he said, 'that they do pay taxes?'
'Not, exactly pay taxes, my lord,' said the chamberlain.
There was silence. Finally the duke prompted, 'Go on, man.'
'Well, it's more that they don't pay, you see. We never felt, that is, the old king didn't think...
Well, they just don't.'
The duke laid a hand on his wife's arm.
'I see,' he said coldly. 'Very well. You may go.'
The chamberlain gave him a brief nod of relief and scuttled crabwise from the hall.
'Well!' said the duchess.
'Indeed.'
'That was how your family used to run a kingdom, was it? You had a positive duty to kill your cousin. It was clearly in the interests of the species,' said the duchess. 'The weak don't deserve to survive.'
The duke shivered. She would keep on reminding him. He didn't, on the whole, object to killing people, or at least ordering them to be killed and then watching it happen. But killing a kinsman rather stuck in the throat or – he recalled – the liver.
'Quite so,' he managed. 'Of course, there would appear to be many witches, and it might be difficult to find the three that were on the moor.'
'That doesn't matter.'
'Of course not.'
'Put matters in hand.'
'Yes, my love.'
Matters in hand. He'd put matters in hand all right. If he closed his eyes he could see the
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