with the multiplicity of layers of intent and design at work here. ‘I begin to see the path she takes,’ he said after a time, and the bleak despair in his voice was so raw that she looked away, blinking.
He went on, ‘This is the curse, then, that we are so inclined to look ahead, ever ahead. As if the path before us should be any different from the one behind us.’
‘Five wings will buy you a grovel,’ Tehol Beddict muttered from his bed. ‘Haven’t you ever wondered how odd it is? Of course, every god should have a throne, but shouldn’t it also follow that every throne built for a god is actually occupied? And if it isn’t, who in their right mind decided that it was worthwhile to worship an empty throne?’
Seated on a low three-legged stool at the foot of the bed, Bugg paused in his knitting. He held out and examined the coarse wool shirt he was working on, one eye squeezing into a critical squint.
Tehol’s gaze flicked down at his servant. ‘I’m fairly certain my left arm is of a length close to, if not identical with, that of my right. Why do you persist in this conceit? You’ve no talent to speak of, in much of anything, come to think of it. Probably why I love you so dearly, Bugg.’
‘Not half as much as you love yourself,’ the old man replied, resuming his knitting.
‘Well, I see no point in arguing that.’ He sighed, wiggling his toes beneath the threadbare sheet. The wind was freshening, blessedly cool and only faintly reeking of the south shore’s Stink Flats. Bed and stool were the only furniture on the roof of Tehol’s house. Bugg still slept below, despite the sweltering heat, and only came up when his work demanded light enough to see. Saved on lamp oil, Tehol told himself, since oil was getting dreadfully expensive now that the whales were getting scarce.
He reached down to the half-dozen dried figs on the tarnished plate Bugg had set down beside him. ‘Ah, more figs. Another humiliating trip to the public privies awaits me, then.’ He chewed desultorily, watching the monkey-like clambering of the workers on the dome of the Eternal Domicile. Purely accidental, this exquisitely unobstructed view of the distant palace rising from the heart of Letheras, and all the more satisfying for that, particularly the way the nearby towers and Third Height bridges so neatly framed King Ezgara Diskanar’s conceit. ‘Eternal Domicile indeed. Eternally unfinished.’
The dome had proved so challenging to the royal architects that four of them had committed suicide in the course of its construction, and one had died tragically – if somewhat mysteriously – trapped inside a drainage pipe. ‘Seventeen years and counting. Looks like they’ve given up entirely on that fifth wing. What do you think, Bugg? I value your expert opinion.’
Bugg’s expertise amounted to rebuilding the hearth in the kitchen below. Twenty-two fired bricks stacked into a shape very nearly cubic, and indeed it would have been if three of the bricks had not come from a toppled mausoleum at the local cemetery. Grave masons held to peculiar notions of what a brick’s dimensions should be, pious bastards that they were.
In response to Tehol’s query, Bugg glanced up, squinting with both eyes.
Five wings to the palace, the dome rising from the centre. Four tiers to those wings, except for the shoreside one, where only two tiers had been built. Work had been suspended when it was discovered that the clay beneath the foundations tended to squeeze out to the sides, like closing a fist on a block of butter. The fifth wing was sinking.
‘Gravel,’ Bugg said, returning to his knitting.
‘What?’
‘Gravel,’ the old man repeated. ‘Drill deep wells down into the clay, every few paces or so, and fill ’em with gravel, packed down with drivers. Cap ‘em and build your foundation pillars on top. No weight on the clay means it’s got no reason to squirm.’
Tehol stared down at his servant. ‘All right. Where in the Errant’s name did you come by that? And don’t tell me you stumbled onto it trying to keep our hearth from wandering.’
Bugg shook his head. ‘No, it’s not that heavy. But if it was, that’s what I would’ve done.’
‘Bore a hole? How far down?’
‘Bedrock, of course. Won’t work otherwise.’
‘And fill it with gravel.’
‘Pounded down tight, aye.’
Tehol plucked another fig from the plate, brushed dust from it – Bugg had been harvesting from the market leavings again. Outwitting the rats and dogs. ‘That’d make for an impressive cook hearth.’
‘It would at that.’
‘You could cook secure and content in the knowledge that the flatstone will never move, barring an earthquake-’
‘Oh no, it’ll handle an earthquake too. Gravel, right? Flexible, you see.’
‘Extraordinary.’ He spat out a seed. ‘What do you think? Should I get out of bed today, Bugg?’
‘Got no reason to-’ The servant stopped short, then cocked his head, thinking. ‘Mind you, maybe you have.’
‘Oh? And you’d better not be wasting my time with this.’
‘Three women visited this morning.’
‘Three women.’ Tehol glanced up at the nearest Third Height bridge, watched people and carts moving across it. ‘I don’t know three women, Bugg. And if I did, all of them arriving simultaneously would be cause for terror, rather than an incidental “oh by the way”.’
‘Aye, but you don’t know them. Not even one of them. I don’t think. New faces to me, anyway.’
‘New? You’ve never seen them before? Not even in the market? The riverfront?’
‘No. Might be from one of the other cities, or maybe a village. Odd accents.’
‘And they asked for me by name?’
‘Well, not precisely. They wanted to know if this was the house of the man who sleeps on his roof.’
‘If they needed to ask that, they
‘Not that I noticed. Handsome women, as I recall. Young and meaty. Sounds as though you’re not interested, though.’
‘Servants shouldn’t presume. Handsome. Young and meaty. Are you sure they were women?’
‘Oh yes, quite certain. Even eunuchs don’t have breasts so large, or perfect, or, indeed, lifted so high the lasses could rest their chins-’
Tehol found himself standing beside the bed. He wasn’t sure how he got there, but it felt right. ‘You finished that shirt, Bugg?’
The servant held it out once more. ‘Just roll up the sleeve, I think.’
‘Finally, I can go out in public once more. Tie those ends off or whatever it is you do to them and give it here.’
‘But I haven’t started yet on the trousers-’
‘Never mind that,’ Tehol cut in, wrapping the bed sheet about his waist, once, twice, thrice, then tucking it in at one hip. He then paused, a strange look stealing across his features. ‘Bugg, for Errant’s sake, no more figs for a while, all right? Where are these mountainously endowed sisters, then?’
‘Red Lane. Huldo’s.’
‘The pits or on the courtyard?’
‘Courtyard.’
‘That’s something, at least. Do you think Huldo might have forgotten?’
‘No. But he’s been spending a lot of time down at the Drownings.’
Tehol smiled, then began rubbing a finger along his teeth. ‘Winnin’ or roosin’?’
‘Loosing.’
‘Hah!’ He ran a hand through his hair and struck a casual pose. ‘How do I look?’
Bugg handed him the shirt. ‘How you manage to keep those muscles when you do nothing baffles me,’ he said.
‘A Beddict trait, dear sad minion of mine. You should see Brys, under all that armour. But even he looks
