‘Master, it’s already dead.’
‘Is it? Oh. Well, I guess we now have supper.’
‘More like fifteen suppers.’
‘In any case, I have an appointment, so I will see you and the fish at home.’
‘Why, thank you, Master.’
‘Didn’t I tell you this morning walk would prove beneficial?’
‘Not for the capabara, alas.’
‘Granted. Oh, by the way, I need you to make me a list.’
‘Of what?’
‘Ah, I will have to tell you that later. As I said, I am late for an appointment. It just occurred to me: is this fish too big for you to carry by yourself?’
‘Well,’ Bugg said, eyeing the carcass, ‘it’s small as far as capabara go-remember the one that tried to mate with a galley?’
‘The betting on that outcome overwhelmed the Drownings. I lost everything I had that day.’
‘Everything?’
‘Three copper docks, yes.’
‘What outcome did you anticipate?’
‘Why, small rowboats that could row themselves with big flippery paddles.’
‘You’re late for your appointment, Master.’
‘Wait! Don’t look! I need to do something unseemly right now.’
‘Oh, Master, really.’
Spies stood on street corners. Small squads of grey rain-caped Patriotists moved through the throngs that parted to give them wide berth as they swaggered with gloved hands resting on their belted truncheons, and on their faces the bludgeon arrogance of thugs. Tehol Beddict, wearing his] blanket like a sarong, walked with the benign grace of an ascetic from some obscure but harmless cult. Or at least he hoped so. To venture onto the streets of Letheras these days involved a certain measure of risk that had not existed in King Ezgara Diskanar’s days of pleasant neglect. While on the one hand this lent an air of intrigue and danger to every journey-including shopping for overripe root crops-t here were also the taut nerves that one could not quell, no matter how many mouldy turnips one happened to be carrying.
Compounding matters, in this instance, was the fact that he was indeed intent on subversion. One of the first victims in this new regime had been the Rat Catchers’ Guild. Karos Invictad, the Invigilator of the Patriotists, had acted on his first day of officialdom, despatching fully a hundred agents to Scale House, the modest Guild headquarters, whereupon they effected arrests on scores of Rat Catchers, all of whom, it later turned out, were illusions-a detail unadvertised, of course, lest the dread Patriotists announce their arrival to cries of ridicule. Which would not do.
After all, tyranny has no sense of humour. Too thin-skinned, too thoroughly fuR of its own self-importance. Accordingly, it presents an almost overwhelming temptation-how can I not be excused the occasional mockery? Alas, the Patriotists lacked flexibility in such matters-the deadliest weapon against them was derisive laughter, and they knew it.
He crossed Quillas Canal at a lesser bridge, made his way into the less ostentatious north district, and eventually sauntered into a twisting, shadow-filled alley that had once been a dirt street, before the invention of four-wheeled wagons and side-by-side horse collars. Instead of the usual hovels and back doors that one might expect to find in such an alley, lining this one were shops that had not changed in any substantial way in the past seven hundred Or so years. There, first to the right, the Half-Axe Temple of Herbs, smelling like a swamp’s sinkhole, wherein one could find a prune-faced witch who lived in a mudpit, with all her precious plants crowding the banks, or growing in the insect-flecked pool itself. It was said she had been born in that slime and was only half human; and that her mother had been born there too, and her mother and so on. That such conceptions were immaculate went without saying, since Tehol could hardly imagine any reasonable or even unreasonable man taking that particular plunge.
Opposite the Half-Axe was the narrow-fronted entrance to a shop devoted to short lengths of rope and wooden poles a man and a half high. Tehol had no idea how such a specialized enterprise could survive, especially in this unravelled, truncated market, yet its door had remained open for almost six centuries, locked up each night by a short length of rope and a wooden pole.
The assortment proceeding down the alley was similar only in its peculiarity. Wooden stakes and pegs in one, sandal thongs in another-not the sandals, just the thongs. A shop selling leaky pottery-not an indication of incompetence: rather, the pots were deliberately made to leak at various, precise rates of loss; a place selling unopenable boxes, another toxic dyes. Ceramic teeth, bottles filled with the urine of pregnant women, enormous amphorae containing dead pregnant women; the excreta of obese hogs; and miniature pets-dogs, cats, birds and rodents of all sorts, each one reduced in size through generation after generation of selective breeding-Tehol had seen guard dogs standing no higher than his ankle, and while cute and appropriately yappy, he had doubts as to their efficacy, although they were probably a terror for the thumbnail-sized mice and the cats that could ride an old woman’s big toe, secured there by an ingenious loop in the sandal’s thong.
Since the outlawing of the Rat Catchers’ Guild, Adventure Alley had acquired a new function, to which Tehol now set about applying himself with the insouciance of the initiated. First, into the Half-Axe, clawing his way through the vines immediately beyond the entrance, then drawing up one step short of pitching head-first into the muddy pool.
Splashing, thick slopping sounds, then a dark-skinned wrinkled face appeared amidst the high grasses fringing the, pit. ‘It’s you,’ the witch said, grimacing then slithering out her overlong tongue to display all the leeches attached to it.
‘And it’s you,’ Tehol replied.
The red protuberance with all its friends went back inside. ‘Come in for a swim, you odious man.’
‘Come out and let your skin recover, Munuga. I happen to know you’re barely three decades old.’
‘I am a map of wisdom.’
‘As a warning against the perils of overbathing, perhaps. Where’s the fat root this time?’
‘What have you got for me first?’
‘What I always have. The only thing you ever want from me, Munuga.’
‘The only thing you’ll never give, you mean!’
Sighing, Tehol drew out from under his makeshift sarong a small vial. He held it up for her to see.
She licked her lips, which proved alarmingly complicated. ‘What kind?’’
‘Capabara roe.’
‘Rut I want yours.’
‘I don’t produce roe.’
‘You know what I mean, Tehol Beddict.’
Alas, poverty is more than skin deep. Also, I have lost all incentive to be productive, in any sense of the word. After all, what kind of a world is this that I’d even contemplate delivering a child into?’
‘Tehol Beddict, you cannot deliver a child. You’re a man. Leave the delivering to me.’
‘Tell you what, climb out of that soup, dry out and let me see what you’re supposed to look like, and who knows? Extraordinary things might happen.’
Scowling, she held out an object. ‘Here’s your fat root. Give me that vial, then go away.’
‘ 1 so look forward to next time-’
‘Tehol Beddict, do you know what fat root is used for?’
Her eyes had sharpened with suspicion, and Tehol realized that, were she indeed to dry out, she might be rather handsome after all, in a vaguely amphibian way. ‘No, why?’
‘Are you required to partake of it in some bizarre fashion?’
He shook his head.
‘Are you certain? No unusual tea smelling yellow?’
‘Smelling yellow? What does that mean?’
‘If you smelled it, you’d know. Clearly, you haven’t. Good. Get out, I’m puckering.’
A hasty departure, then, from the Half-Axe. Onward, to the entrance to Grool’s Immeasurable Pots.
