competing even here in their expressions of Illiterate extravagance, with the first devising a most elaborate sigil of self that might lend one to imagine his name’s being Smear of Snail in Ecstasy, whilst the other, upon seeing this, set to with brush, scrivener’s dust and fingernails to fashion a scrawl reminiscent of a serpent trying to cross a dance floor whilst a tribe importuned the fickle gods of rain. Both men then stood, beaming with pride in between mutual baring of teeth, while their love sauntered off to find a nearby stall where an old woman wearing seaweed on her head was cooking stuffed voles over a brazier of coals.
The two men hastened after her, both desperate to pay for her breakfast, or beat the old woman senseless, whichever their darling preferred.
Thus it was that High Marshal Jula Bole and High Marshal Amby Bole, along with the swamp witch named Precious Thimble, all late of the Mott Irregulars, were close at hand and, indeed, ready and willing newfound shareholders when Master Quell and Faint arrived at the office of the Trygalle Trade Guild. And while three was not quite the number Quell sought by way of replacements, they would just have to do, given Mappo Runt’s terrible need.
So they would not have to wait until the morrow after all. Most
Happy days!
Conspiracies are the way of the civilized world, both those real and those imag-ined, and in all the perambulations of move and countermove, why, the veracity of such schemes are irrelevant. In a subterranean, most private chamber in the estate of Councilman Gorlas Vidikas sat fellow Council members Shardan Lim and Hanut Orr in the company of their worthy host, and the wine had flowed like the fount of the Queen of Dreams-or if not dreams then at least irresponsible aspirations-throughout the course of the night just past.
Still somewhat inebriated and perhaps exhausted unto satiation by self-satisfaction, they were comfortably silent, each feeling wiser than their years, each feeling that wellspring of power against which reason was helpless. In their half-lidded eyes something was swollen and nothing in the world was unattain-able. Not for these three.
‘Coll will be a problem,’ Hanut said.
‘Nothing new there,’ Shardan muttered, and the other two granted him soft, muted laughter. ‘Although,’ he added as he played with a silver candle snuffer, ‘unless we give him cause for suspicion, there is no real objection he can legiti-mately make. Our nominee is well enough respected, not to mention harmless, at least physically.’
‘It’s just that,’ Hanut said, shaking his head, ‘by virtue of us as nominators, Coll will be made suspicious.’
‘We play it as we discussed, then,’ Shardan responded, taunting with death the nearest candle’s flame. ‘Bright-eyed and full of ourselves and brazenly awkward, eager to express our newly acquired privilege to propose new Council members. We’d hardly be the first to be so clumsy and silly, would we?’
Gorlas Vidikas found his attention wandering-they’d gone through all this be-fore, he seemed to recall. Again and again, in fact, through the course of the night, and now a new day had come, and still they chewed the same tasteless grist. Oh, these two companions of his liked the sound of their own voices all too well. Con-verting dialogue into an argument even when both were in agreement, and all that distinguished the two was the word choices concocted in each reiteration.
Well, they had their uses none the less. And this thing he had fashioned here was proof enough of that.
And now, of course, Hanut once more fixed eyes upon him and asked yet again the same question, ‘Is this fool of yours worth it, Gorlas? Why him? It’s not as if we aren’t approached almost every week by some new prospect wanting to buy our votes on to the Council. Naturally, it serves, us better to string the fools along, gaining favour upon favour, and maybe one day deciding we own so much of them that it will be worth our while to bring them forward. In the meantime, of course, we just get richer and more influential outside the Council. The gods know, we can get pretty damned rich with this one.’
‘He is not the type who will play the whore to our pimp, Hanut.’
A frown of distaste. ‘Hardly a suitable analogy, Gorlas. You forget that you are the junior among us here.’
Shardan grunted. ‘Seems a reasonable arrangement, Hanut. I’m tired, I need some sleep.’ And he doused the candle before him as he rose. ‘Hanut, I know a new place for breakfast.’ He smiled at Gorlas. ‘I am not being rude in not inviting you, friend. Rather, I imagine your wife will wish to greet you this morning, with a breakfast you can share. The Council does not meet until mid-afternoon, after all. Take your leisure, Gorlas, when you can.’
‘I will walk you both out,’ he replied, a smile fixed upon his face.
Most of the magic Lady Challice Vidikas was familiar with was of the useless sort. As a child she had heard tales of great and terrible sorcery, of course, and had she not seen for herself Moon’s Spawn? On the night when it sank so low its raw underside very nearby brushed the highest rooftops, and there had been dragons in the sky then, and a storm to the east that was said to have been fierce magic born of some demonic war out in the Gadrobi Hills, and then the confused mad-ness behind Lady Simtal’s estate. But none of this had actually affected her di- rectly. Her life had slipped through the world so far as most people’s did, rarely touched by anything beyond the occasional ministrations of a healer. All she had in her possession was a scattering of ensorcelled items intended to do little more than entrance and amuse.
One such object was before her now, on her dresser, a hemisphere of near perfect glass in which floated a semblance of the moon, shining as bright as it would in the night sky. The details on its face were exact, at least from the time when the real moon’s visage had been visible, instead of blurred and uncertain as it was now.
A wedding gift, she recalled, although she’d forgotten from whom it had come. One of the less obnoxious guests, she suspected, someone with an eye to romance in the old-fashioned sense, perhaps. A dreamer, a genuine well-wisher. At night, if she desired darkness in the room, the half-globe needed covering, for its reful-gent glow was bright enough to read by. Despite this inconvenience, Challice kept the gift, and indeed kept it close.
Was it because Gorlas despised it? Was it because, while it had once seemed to offer her a kind of promise, it had, over time, transformed into a symbol of some-thing entirely different? A tiny moon, yes, shining ever so bright, yet there it re-mained, trapped with nowhere to go. Blazing its beacon like a cry for help, with an optimism that never waned, a hope that never died.
Now, when she looked upon the object, she found herself feeling claustropho-bic, as if she was somehow sharing its fate. But she could not shine for ever, could she? No, her glow would fade, was fading even now. And so, although she pos-sessed this symbol of what might be, her sense of it had grown into a kind of fas-cinated resentment, and even to look upon it, as she was doing now, was to feel its burning touch, searing her mind with a pain that was almost delicious.
All because it had begun feeding a desire, and perhaps this was a far more pow-erful sorcery than she had first imagined; indeed, an enchantment tottering on the edge of a curse. The burnished light breathed into her, filled her mind with strange thoughts and hungers growing ever more desperate for appeasement. She was being enticed into a darker world, a place of hedonistic indulgences, a place unmindful of the future and dismissive of the past.
It beckoned to her, promising the bliss of the ever-present moment, and it was to be found, she knew,
She could hear her husband on the stairs, finally deigning to honour her with his company, although after a night’s worth of drinking and all the manly mutual rais-ing of hackles, verbal strutting and preening, he would be unbearable. She had not slept well and was, truth be told, in no mood for him (but then, she realized, she had been in no mood for him for some time, now-shock!), so she swiftly rose and went to her private changing room. A journey out into the city would suit her rest-lessness. Yes, to walk without purpose and gaze upon the detritus of the night’s fes-tivities, to be amused by the bleary eyes and unshaven faces and the last snarl of exhausted arguments.
And she would take her breakfast upon a terrace balcony in one of the more el-egant restaurants, perhaps Kathada’s or the Oblong Pearl, permitting her a view of the square and Borthen Park where servants walked watchdogs and nannies pushed two-wheeled prams in which huddled a new generation of the privileged, tucked inside nests of fine cotton and silk.
