To this bellow King Macrotus paid no visible attention, arms rising in turn, legs pumping in counterpoint-the man looked frighteningly thin, yet strangely flaccid, as if his skin had lost all elasticity.
Emancipor clambered upright. “Paladin of Purity, it was an accident!”
“Accidents are signs of weakness!”
Invett Loath, the manservant could see, was in a hot, blinding rage. “ ’Ware your words!” Emancipor snapped.
The huge man wheeled on him, red jaw dropping.
Heart pounding, Emancipor stabbed out an accusing finger. “Do you condemn this city’s Saints of Glorious Labour, Paladin? One and all? Victims of accidents, are they not? Dare you adjudicate in defiance of my people? Before our beloved king himself?”
Invett Loath stepped back. “Of course not!” Eyes flicked to Macrotus in his harness, then back to Emancipor. “But she is little more than a wench-”
“Serving the king himself!” Emancipor said. “Moreover, she has been injured… whilst,” he added with sudden inspiration, “conducting glorious labour!” The manservant reached down to settle his hand on the trembling woman’s head. “She is now a Saint!”
“Such proclamation,” the Paladin said, “must be sanctioned by a Well Knight…”
“Indeed, by none other than you, Invett Loath. Is King Macrotus to witness hesitation?”
“No! I do hereby sanctify this woman as a Saint of Glorious Labour!”
Emancipor helped the woman to her feet. Close to her ear, he whispered, “Get out of here, lass. Quick!”
She bowed, collected her bowl, then scurried away.
Emancipor found a handkerchief in a pocket and handed it up to the Paladin, watched as Invett cleaned up his face, wiping the cloth back and forth, then again, back and forth. And again, back and forth beneath the suddenly glittering, suddenly wide eyes. Slowly, shock filled the manservant.
That handkerchief… D’bayang poppy spores… oh dear… “Paladin, the King seems indisposed at the moment…”
“As always,” Invett Loath said in an odd, jumpy voice. “But yes. Too busy. Exercising. Exercising. Up down up down down up down exercise! We’ve tallied too long. Lethargy is a sin. Let us get going.” He held the cloth to his nose again. “Exercise. I need to patrol the streets. All of them, yes, by dusk. I can do that. You don’t believe me? I’ll show you!”
The Paladin charged out of the chamber.
And Emancipor found himself alone.
With King Macrotus. Who exercised on, and on.
“These clothes are too tight,” Ineb Cough complained.
“You have burgeoned some,” Bauchelain observed. “Here, have more wine, my friend.”
“Yes, very good. I will. But I’m feeling… constricted.”
Nearby, Storkul Purge paced, a woman at war with herself. Ineb was disappointed that she still resisted the delicious lure of all these wondrous condiments. Taking another mouthful from the bottle, the demon edged closer to Bauchelain. “Sorceror,” he whispered, then smiled, “Oh yes, I know you for what you are. You and that crow circling overhead. Necromancers! Tell me, what are you doing here?”
Bauchelain glanced over at the Well Knight, then fixed his regard on the demon. He stroked his bearded chin. “Ah, now, that is something of a mystery, isn’t it?”
“That manservant you mentioned. He’s in the city, isn’t he? Purchasing supplies for your journey? Perhaps, but more than that, I suspect.” Ineb smiled again. “I can smell conspiracies, oh yes.”
“Can you now? I would ask you, where are your fellow demons?”
“In some alley, I expect. Except for Agin Again-she’s disappeared.”
“Agin Again?”
“The Demoness of Lust.”
“Disappeared? For how long, Ineb Cough?”
“Around the time of Necrotus’s sudden demise.”
“And how soon, upon taking the crown, did Macrotus announce the prohibitions?”
“These clothes are strangling me!”
Bauchelain reached down. “Allow me to undo those buttons-oh, they’re just for show. I see. Well, shall I cut you free?”
“No. Another drink would be better. Yes. Excellent. The prohibitions? About a week, during which he’d already begun… preparing the way. Elevating the Lady of Beneficence to the official religion. If you think on it, that act foreshadowed all that followed. A newly recruited army of piety, sanctioned to police the behaviour of every citizen in Quaint. By the Abyss, we should have seen it coming!” Yanking at his collar, Ineb stole another glance over at Storkul Purge, then leaned even closer to the sorceror. “You’re planning something, yes? What? Tell me!”
“I was considering removing, from your companion, a certain quantity of blood.”
The demon stared at the sorceror, then licked his lips. “Oh. How… how much blood did you have in mind?”
Bauchelain had picked up the bottle of whale sperm and was studying it. “Well, that depends on its purity.”
“Ah, I see. It must needs be pure. I think, Bauchelain, that her blood is very pure indeed. Given that… are we talking a fatal amount?”
The sorceror’s brows rose. He raised the bottle and peered at the thick sediments at the base, then gave it a shake. “Difficult to say, alas. Oh look, they’re still alive-how can that be? I am no longer convinced this sperm belonged to a whale. No, not at all. Curious.”
“Were you planning on asking her for it?”
Surprise flitted across the sorceror’s ascetic features. “Ask? I admit I had not thought of that.”
“And this blood,” Ineb said, pulling himself into a tightly bound crouch, “what do you intend on doing with it?”
“Me? Nothing. My traveling companion, however, shall employ it in a ritual of resurrection.”
The demon scanned the sky, seeking sight of the crow. It wasn’t around at the moment. He shifted uneasily. “Resurrection. Of course, why didn’t I think of that? I can answer that question. I couldn’t because you won’t tell me what you’re planning.”
“Nothing dramatic, I assure you. The overthrow of King Macrotus. We shall endeavour to preserve as much of the city’s population as possible.”
“You want Quaint’s throne?”
“For ourselves? Hardly. What would we do with it? No, consider it a favour.”
“A favour?”
“Very well, we are being paid to achieve the swift extinction of this deadly trend toward healthiness. Although, truth be said, I am not much interested in material wealth. Rather, it is the challenge that intrigues me.” Bauchelain straightened and faced Storkul Purge. After a moment, the sorceror drew out a knife.
Imid Factallo’s life had never amounted to much, thus far. Such was his considered opinion in any case. No wife, no children, and he not a man women would chase, unless he’d stolen something from them. And so he’d known loneliness, as familiar as an old friend, in fact. Although, presumably, to have a friend was to be other than lonely. Thinking on that, he was forced to conclude that loneliness was not anything like an old friend. Indeed, had he a friend, he would have been able to discuss his thoughts, since that’s what friends did, and clearly the conversation would have been scintillating.
He sat on the front step of his modest, friendless abode, watching a squirrel twitch confusedly at the base of a tree. It had been busy for weeks storing various things in anticipation of the winter to come. Curiously, it seemed such rodents despised company. Loneliness was their desired state. This is what came, he concluded morosely, of eating nuts and seeds.
The creature’s present confusion had no outwardly apparent cause, suggesting to Imid that the source of its troubles came from within, a particular cavort of agitation in its tiny brain. Perhaps it was experiencing an ethical
