Back | Next
Contents

Chapter IX
The God Farce

High Bashti: Autumn 1

I

Outside the garrison mess-hall, Jame ran into Dar, just come off night duty at the palace.

“Hello!” he said, cheerfully munching on a hot biscuit. “I’ve been looking all over for you. Ready for the god farce?”

“Dar. I’m cold, wet, and exhausted. Yesterday was long, followed by a night not without adventures of its own.”

He looked chagrined. “But this may be the most important performance of the year! And you promised.”

All Jame really wanted was to rest and to think about what she had just seen, which so far made no sense to her whatsoever.

“I’m surprised that King Mordaunt still employs you,” she said, to stall for time. “Yesterday, at the temple, he wasn’t best pleased.”

“Oh,” said Dar, with a nonchalant wave of his breakfast, scattering crumbs, “he knows that we Kencyr are the best he can get, whatever our momentary failings. Clearly, he doesn’t trust his own people. Even his son he keeps at a distance. And no one trusts that Hathiri queen of his. Now, about the farce . . .”

As tired as she was, it was hard to disappoint her former cadet who now reminded her more than ever of a bumbling, eager Molocar pup.

And he might have a point about the event’s importance.

“All right,” she said with a sigh. “It’s too early to go to bed—or maybe too late. First, though, I have to change into dry clothes, if Rue can find any.”

II

Soon afterward, the city awoke. Shops opened. People disgorged from doorways, yawning, into the street where neighbor met neighbor. A buzz of gossip arose, mostly distressed.

Snaggles skipped along between Jame and Dar—not, it seemed, to be shaken off.

“Suwaeton to perform?” he said, over and over, his gap-toothed grin spread from ear to ear. “Just try to stop me!”

“It may only be the General’s favorite actor, old Trepsis, speaking for him,” Dar warned both the boy and Jame. Now that he had more or less coerced his commandant’s attendance, he seemed to be having second thoughts.

Jame, on the other hand, was getting her second wind. After all, what was a single sleepless night when she had spent five of them consecutively in Tai-tastigon? That had proved interesting, when not purely terrifying. This might yet too, on both counts.

They passed through the covered market, setting up for the day. The betting booths, however, had already been smashed, fragments of white plaster busts strewn across the street, the agents nowhere in sight.

“Damn,” said Dar. “I bet on Suwaeton to survive and so he did. Where’s my pay-off now?”

Snaggles, on the other hand, looked almost gleeful as he eyed the more agitated of the citizenry. “Now they know what it’s like to lose someone they love, forever,”

“What do you mean?” asked Jame.

“You didn’t hear?” said Dar. “An entire year’s worth of saints were violated and went to the pyre last night in the Necropolis, already beginning to stink. The gamblers were not pleased, nor the faithful among the populace.”

Help Mother come home?”

So that desperate voice had pleaded from the shrubbery on the edge of a palatial estate.

For a gift? For a bribe?”

Now Mother would never come home again.

“Oh,” said Jame, taking this in. “It was unexpected?”

“Totally. Of course, families check the dearly departed before the Eve to be sure that all is well. No one wants a nasty surprise. On one hand, it’s embarrassing for a revered ancestor to go soft, but such things happen. On the other hand, think how terrible it would be to arrive for a festival meant to welcome them back only to find a feast for crows. To make it worse, the longer they’ve been dead, the faster they decay. Not so bad after a week. Awful after a month or more. I hear that some families just about went mad. I mean, to set a pyre in someone else’s crypt in the middle of the night to dispose of the evidence . . .”

“You think that was why they did it?”

He grimaced. “Well, maybe not that exactly, but there’s something obscene about a rotting corpse. Would we tolerate it?”

“No. Then too, this pyre was in Prestic’s mausoleum. Could they still be protesting his death?”

“That might be part of it. I hear that it was his daughter Pensa who tried to assassinate Mordaunt last night in Suwaeton’s temple. I shouldn’t say this, perhaps, but many people wish that she had succeeded.”

“Not popular,” Jame mused. “I wonder how he will shape up in death against his revered grandfather.”

Dar laughed.

“What will happen to Pensa now?”

“A council trial, presumably, with Mordaunt’s thumb heavy on the scales and his followers baying for blood. First, though, they have to catch her. Some families may hide her for her father’s sake. Her own certainly will. There are even rumors that they might propose her for her father’s place both as head of the Tigganis and as a rival to Mordaunt. Yes, a mortal queen instead of a mortal king. People really don’t like Mordaunt. For that matter, she was once engaged to Jurik and, some say, was in love with him. Maybe she still is. There’s no accounting for taste. I’ve heard that he snubbed her once in public as being too plain for his regal appetite. How’s that for a mess?”

III

The site of that year’s god farce turned out to be south of the Palace Mount, tucked into a bend of the River Thyme, in the first of a trio of apartment buildings largely patronized by the city’s theatrical community. They entered by the block’s northern door, into a corridor redolent with cooking, sweat, incense, and sewage, echoing with excited voices. A stream of people arrived with them, of all classes mixed indiscriminately, cheerfully jostling each other. If this place was supposed to be a secret, many shared it.

The central courtyard of the first building presented itself, a hundred-foot square.

On the western side was a wooden stage backed with second story apartments curtained off with blankets.

Rough-hewn ramps lifted benches against the other three walls, higher and higher. Most were already full.

Above, the courtyard opened into a shaft reaching up seven stories toward the morning sky. Windows lined it, also improvised balconies, also wash-lines extending from side to side, now festooned with bright scraps of cloth like so many ragged banners. The windows were full of eager faces, the balconies of bodies, leaning out over the groaning rails as struts creaked beneath them.

“Occupants rent them out to the upper class,” said Dar, following Jame’s apprehensive upward gaze. “A good box balcony can equal a year’s income.”

With difficulty and not a little shoving, he found them three seats together in the eastern stands, mid-way up, crammed together. Several tiers below were rows of somber figures, each with a wax tablet balanced on his knee.

“Look there,” said Dar, pointing. “Those are Suwaeton’s priests and some others. It must grate on them that they have to come to a lower town apartment to hear whatever their high god has to say. Most elder priests stay away altogether. These are the young sparks, avid for fresh words.”

“What happens today at Suwaeton’s own temple in the forum?”

“Oh, solemn recitations of his previous pronouncements, always at least a year out of date, sometimes twitched by the actors to suit current events. I don’t know what the other temples do. Sometimes their god appears. Mostly, they improvise.”

“How long do we have to wait?”

“For the main show here? Until after the prelude, which will go on until the actors are ready.”

By “the prelude,” he apparently meant a troop of bedraggled children who trotted out onto the stage and began to sing. Belatedly, instruments joined them from an upper balcony.


“Welcome, our king!

In life, in death, welcome!

We, your people, greet you!”


On they went, praising Suwaeton, lauding the current pantheon. Snaggles might scorn the latter for favoring the upper class, but here people cheered the gods, if with some not so subtle jibes. It seemed to Jame that while many Bashtiri took their pantheon without subtlety, without humor, those did not attend anything as frivolous as a farce. These, here, enjoyed themselves—yes, even the novice priests, who put down their styluses to applaud when the song ended.

Out came a fox-faced comic. His sharp jokes appeared to be based on his neighbors, who responded with more groans than laughter and with flung, over-ripe fruit.

“The host—that is, in this case, the apartment block—supplies the entertainment,” said Dar, aside. “Also the chorus. There they are now.”

Six figures edged self-consciously out from behind the blankets. They seemed to be wearing the finest robes they could assemble, even if several of these were merely dyed bed sheets. Some looked eager. Others were so stage-shy that it hurt to watch them. They began to sing in cracked voices:


“Our gods, our royal houses.

Whom do you praise?

We praise all!”


An actor emerged from the back-stage behind the blankets. By its stylized wooden mask and ornate gown, it was meant to be a middle-aged woman with pretentions of youth.

“Oh, woe,” she quavered, through a voice sufficiently magnified by the mask to project to the farthest rows. Jame thought that she sounded younger than indicated by the painted mask that she wore. “I have lost it!”

“Imagine us in a rich hall,” said the chorus in unison, aside. “The walls are draped with golden tapestries. The windows”—here, with a gesture to the audience above—“open on gardens full of the choicest flowers. Oh, Queen Tigganis, what have you lost?”

She beat her breasts, cruelly hard. Here was passion indeed. “If I knew, I could find it.”

“Hush,” said the chorus. “Here comes Lord Schola. Surely he will know.”

A second actor entered, wearing an old, peevish face. “Lady, what would you ask?”

“I have lost that which I fear most to lose. What would that be for you?”

Pursed lips worked within the mask. “Knowledge, of course. Dithos claims that the fourth stanza of the Ithica refers to Livacious when obviously the poet means Sedulous. How can we endure such ignorance?”

“Well, well,” said the chorus as Schola retreated, mumbling, beyond the curtain. “To each, his own. Here comes Lord Sanctor. What has our priest god to say?”

Out came a figure in hieratic robes. If there were only two actors, one of them was very quick at his trade.

“Orthodoxy!” he bellowed. “What is worse than to question the gods themselves? Our faith sustains them, does it not? If we fail to support them, though, what becomes of us?”

“What indeed?” murmured the audience, and Suwaeton’s priests assiduously took notes.

The judge Lexion came next, a-quake in linen robes embroidered with the words of legal briefs. “Must I depend on my own views alone? Oh no, oh no. Preserve to me the authority of the law!”

“Perish forbid,” intoned the chorus, “that you should have to think for yourself.”

“War!” proclaimed the next actor, nearly running the previous one over. Three performers on the stage now? The newcomer wore armor and stomped forward on wide-spread feet, belligerent. His mask was painted red. Behind it, blood-shot eyes bulged. Then he jumped.

“Eek! A mouse!”

“Courage,” murmured the chorus. “Or perhaps reputation. Ah, Belacose, what is a warrior without both?”

The courtesan Delectica emerged in her gilded wig and grotesquely padded bust to bewail the loss of her beauty; then the craftsman Artifax, of his skill; then the actor Thespar, of his inspiration.

. . . six, seven, eight . . .

Out shambled a fat man, his stuffed bulk in contrast to the actor’s skinny shanks revealed beneath a short robe. “Where am I? Who are you all?”

“Your gods,” roared Sanctor, who couldn’t seem to speak below that register. “New to our ranks, are you not? Well, learn your place and play our game.”

“I am . . . I was Lokus.”

“Now you are Mercanty, god of merchants. Get used to it. Tell us: what do you fear?”

It seemed to Jame that multiple gods now milled about the stage. They wore different caricature masks and were diversely dressed. When revealed, however, their spindly legs and knobby knees were all the same and each one appeared to be lame. Of them all, only Queen Tigganis remained herself, wringing her hands.

“What do you fear?” she echoed.

“To lose a deal, of course,” the merchant snarled, as if insulted by her ignorance. Some of the audience hissed at his disrespect.

“Profit, knowledge, religion, courage . . . but what have I lost?” wailed the queen, tearing straw out of her flaxen wig.

Someone came down the ramp from the east, and people rose in a wave to greet him. Jame also stood, trying to see over their heads. Gray hair, a furrowed brow, a ruddy face above a hoary beard, white touched with red . . . was that a real face or a particularly well-defined mask? Whichever, she recognized it from Suwaeton’s crystalline coffin and, less distinctly, from Floten’s wooden effigy.

Dar cheered. Snaggles jumped up and down. A blizzard of flowers rained from the balconies above, some enthusiastically thrown still in their pots which exploded on the boards.

Suwaeton mounted the stage, brushing petals off his simple white robe. Tap, tap, tap went his ebony staff on the steps. A breath of fresh air entered the courtyard with him. All the rest had been a prelude, Jame realized. This had now truly become sacred space where anything might happen.

Ahhh . . . breathed the audience, settling back.

The chorus held out their hands to the newcomer.

“Oh, our king, our arbiter, to our confusion bring judgment: What do you fear most to lose?”

He paused and stroked his beard. Its white tips snapped as if with muted lightning. “Well, I value honesty, and loyalty, and common-sense . . .”

The gods booed. They wore the same faces as before and had the same knobby knees, but now their features moved, as if the newcomer had brought a fresh level of reality to their improvised performance. If anything, though, by contrast with him they were all mere caricatures of themselves. Glaring warrior, pursed scholar, fearful judge, sanctimonious priest . . .

Again, Queen Tigganis remained the exception, wooden-masked but rendered human by her distress and her eloquent hands.

“All right,” said Suwaeton—or was it the actor Trepsis? Features shifted subtly, as if one personality over-lay another. This, at least, was no mask. “My queen, what ails you?”

“I . . . I . . .”

The curtains behind her bulged and flailed as a figure fought its way through them. Tattered dressing robe, flopping slippers, yapping voice—a buck-toothed boy, bare-faced except for smudged streaks of make-up, playing Mordaunt.

“Where am I? What sordid, stinking place is this? Who are these pathetic people?”

The audience jeered.

Suwaeton feigned surprise. “Did I hear something? It sounded like the whine of a pup.”

The actor playing Mordaunt drew himself up and wrapped his robe around himself, baring skinny shanks. “Who are you, old man?”

“Don’t you recognize me, boy? Oh, but I forgot: you may build that gaudy temple of yours, but you never pray to your gods.”

Mordaunt sneered. “Why should I? Who are these so-called gods but preserved corpses, that I should bow to them?”

“And who are these people, that you should serve them? Then again, if you do not, who are you?”

The crowd booed. The priests among them frantically took notes.

Dar nudged Jame. “This is why Mordaunt bans these plays. Where else can the gods speak their minds?”

Mordaunt sneered. “You, old man, to challenge me? I am twice the man that you ever were.”

He loosened his belt. Down from it tumbled a tube of sawdust to dangle between his scrawny knees.

“Huh,” said Suwaeton. His own sausage, twice as thick, thumped against the floor. “Don’t challenge your granddad to a pissing match, boy.”

A disturbance erupted by the door as men forced their way in, bedizened with fringe and silk scraps and cheap sequins. Jame recognized them from the palace. These were Mordaunt’s hired ruffians with citizen toadies huddled behind them wearing yellow scarves, nervously clutching torches.

“Well, well, well,” said the broadest of the thugs, filling the doorway with his bulk and sheer gaudy splendor. “What sedition have we here?”

Sacred space ruptured like a burst bubble.

Wooden visages and empty robes tumbled onto the stage, tenantless. Left behind were a boy with scarred, knobby knees, a masked woman, and a white-bearded old man.

“Who are you, to threaten my people?” quavered the latter, brandishing his black staff, which looked more like a lightning-struck tree branch than ebony and about as sturdy.

“Not so impressive now, are you?” the brigand leader said, chuckling. “Shall we see what your king makes of you?”

When he stepped into the square, however, the audience rose up against him with a roar. People threw themselves out of the bleachers and some off of the balconies. Suwaeton’s priests clung to the arms and legs of the broad ruffian who nonetheless continued to trudge forward, bellowing, dragging them with him. Over-ripe fruit rained down, also half-empty wine bottles, also more flower pots. The three actors cowered back against the blanket curtains, forgotten.

“We have to get them out of here,” Jame said to Dar, raising her voice to be heard over the tumult, “but where can we take them?”

Snaggles tugged her sleeve. “Trepsis knows. Let him show us.”

They fought their way onto the stage where the old man waved his branch in their faces.

“No closer!” he wailed.

“Fire!” someone shouted.

One of the yellow-scarved citizens had started a conflagration under the benches and smoke rolled out around the steps, licked by tongues of flame. Fire-traps, Mint had called these wooden apartment buildings. Few things could have terrified their inhabitants more. People fled in all directions, their cries spreading:

“Get the mats, get the vinegar, get the fire watch!”

Sparks smoldered in the folds of the back-stage curtains. Jame and Dar ripped them down before the spreading flames could cut off their retreat. Behind was an apartment turned into a theatrical dressing room, currently empty and in disarray. A back door opened on an internal corridor. Several turns later and down a flight of stairs, they emerged onto a street clear below but laced overhead with skeins of smoke. Behind them, bells, whistles, and pounding hooves announced the arrival of the watch, hopefully in time to save the building. Neighbors rushed past to help, dragging vinegar-soaked blankets and clay vessels containing acetic acid to fling as retardants into the blaze. Everyone knew that a fire in these close quarters could doom an entire district.

Unprompted, the elderly actor tottered off, followed by Jame. Behind her, Dar and the masked woman supported the young man whose legs seemed about to give out under him. Snaggles trailed hindmost, watching their back.

High Bashti was a maze of neighborhoods, crossed by major thoroughfares. Jame hadn’t been in this area before. They passed several looming structures that, by their ornate facades and dramatic statuary, suggested theaters. Yes, she had heard of at least half a dozen public play houses here, where the wealthy supported performances to honor their gods and to advance their own political pretentions.

Side streets twisted around them, some devoted to costumes or wigs or masks, others to huge sets on rollers stationed in yards—a temple here, a palace there, a hanging garden, a battlefield complete with dummy corpses. Off from these branched tangles of lesser streets with lodgings and a few private houses for the more successful actors.

Over all loomed the Thespar Hill, itself like a particularly sumptuous back-drop, misty with morning.

Trepsis led them to a quiet, close-set courtyard lined with shut doors.

“He lives here, sometimes,” Snaggles explained as the old man fumbled at the lock with shaking hands. “His friends open their houses to him when they’re on tour in the provinces. He moves around a lot.”

“And you know about this . . . how?”

He grinned at her. “I hang around theaters. I like mysteries. I listen.”

The door creaked open. They entered.

IV

The quarters within were modest. Three small, clean rooms, Jame reckoned—an entry way, a living space, and a bedroom. Food, presumably, was acquired from street vendors. Sanitary facilities must be held in common with the rest of the neighborhood. Furniture was sparse. The only ornaments were a frieze of dramatic masks painted around the upper edges of the rooms and, below that, alcoves which held what presumably were shrines interspersed with awards.

“I can offer you wine as thanks for our rescue,” the old actor said, rummaging about in a cabinet, looking embarrassed, “but it isn’t very good.”

“No matter,” said Jame, who didn’t much like wine anyway. “Excuse me. I thought that such loyal service to your god would have brought you greater rewards.”

He laughed ruefully. “Say, rather, that I am rich in friends. To gain other wealth, one must pander to the mighty. I could be rich, if I pretended to speak in my god’s name as the temple wants me to. Could I speak at all, though, if my lord god didn’t inspire me? He doesn’t like priests, even his own. Politics, always politics, even more so since Mordaunt became king.” He leaned toward her as if to share a secret. “Suwaeton hates his grandson.”

“I got that impression, and vice versa. Still, Mordaunt seems to be building his grandfather a magnificent temple.”

“We don’t understand that either. Much, over the last thirty years, has been a mystery.”

“Including Suwaeton’s death?”

The actor brushed his beard with nervous fingers, took a cup from an alcove, and poured himself some of the maligned wine. “We don’t talk about that at all,” he said, gulping down a mouthful. “Wasn’t what happened terrible enough as it was?”

“What did happen?”

“The general just dropped dead. Roaring fit one minute, slamming his staff on the floor, flat on his back the next. No one knows why. Some priests claimed that it was punishment for mortal hubris. Then, of course, he became the king of the gods, so what do they know?”

Snaggles and the masked woman had entered behind them, between them supporting the gangly young man.

“Did you see me? Did you see?” panted the latter. He looked both exhilarated and terrified, with wide, pale eyes and a mouth that drooped at one corner. Then he began to cough up blood. His companions helped him into the bedroom. Jame gestured Dar back to the outer door to keep watch on the courtyard. This didn’t strike her as a particularly safe haven.

“Oh,” said Trepsis in admiration. “That boy has such talent, enough to animate an entire stage-worth of characters at once, and mock gods at that. The effort is likely to kill him, though.”

“Can’t you make him stop?”

“And interfere with such genius? The gods will have their due.”

“Even in a farce?”

“Well, that’s a question, isn’t it? When do they speak and when do we? Sometimes I hear a true voice and repeat accordingly, as today. Often, we improvise.”

“Even you?”

He chuckled and drank some more. Rank and red, it stained his white beard like blood about the lips. “Not when I can help it. Understand, when I speak for myself, I do so with as much justice as I can muster, until I am possessed. Then he says what he will.”

He drank again, more deeply. Some of the tension eased from his taut shoulders and the lines of his face settled into resigned contours. Once, he must have been a handsome boy. In repose, he was still dignified.

“Really,” he said with a sigh, “I never wanted to be a farceur. I even changed my house and name to become a serious artist. I was born a Lexion.”

With that, he drew himself up and puffed out his cheeks.

“Can you see me as a judge?”

For a moment, he looked as pompous as one, truly an actor. Then his breath puffed out again in a sigh and he seemed to deflate.

“Or more likely as a clerk. I had no taste for the legal life, although my father tried to convince me that it had its dramatic side. The court was his stage. Oh, you should have seen him plead the case of the rankest criminal, so long as he was high enough born. Hypocrisy, I called it, and sneered. Was I a fool? Perhaps. But I was also idealistic and desperate. The Thespar adopted and trained me in the classical arts. Ah, those early days! So much hope. Such potential glory.”

He fingered the cup in his hands.

“I won an award like this in my junior year, playing Sedulous against Livacious. Controversial, that interpretation. But the judges chose me, and the General saw me act. He had just begun writing farces, on the sly. Like a fool, I played to please him, and succeeded all too well. He took me on in the farceur company that he secretly sponsored. That seemed like a blessing at first. I was young, my future and infinite possibilities ahead of me, or so I thought. After his death, though, he spoke only through me. I couldn’t gain any other role and be taken seriously, not even when I applied under a false name with a false nose.”

He sighed and filled his cup again. The bottle was nearly empty.

“I say all of this, but would I have ever really succeeded as a classical artist? Perhaps, rather, I have found my true calling. How many actors, after all, can claim a god as their patron? And the General is a great man, alive or dead, whatever one chooses to call him.”

A stocky young woman emerged from the back bedroom, dark-visaged with a heavy brow overhanging haunted eyes. It was Prestic’s daughter Pensa, stripped of her theatrical trappings, down to a white under shift. Jame was surprised to see her. She had wondered if the Lexion and the Thespar still supported their hapless son, in whatever meager form. Perhaps they did. Perhaps, so did the Tigganis. Was Trepsis now, in turn, sheltering their daughter?

“He sleeps,” Pensa said. “If he does this again, I think it will kill him.”

Trepsis spread his hands. “I know that, but what can I do?”

The girl sagged into a chair and covered her face. “What power have any of us, now? Mordaunt rules—over the Council, over all things. And I, what horror have I committed?”

“Err,” said Jame, not knowing what else to say.

Trepsis had turned his back. It seemed to broaden and the ebony staff again grew stout in his firm hand. Fresh air flooded the close room. The masks painted on the wall breathed deep.

“Answer your own question,” said Suwaeton, resonant, through the actor’s mouth. “What most do you fear to lose?”

She burst into tears. “You know, you know!”

He turned a kindlier regard on her than before. “You have lost much, have you not, all of your life, starting with a mother when you were only a child.”

She gave a cracked laugh. “Not so much lost as misplaced by death. She is queen of the gods now, reigning from her holy crypt—your queen, although you don’t seem especially fond of her. Nonetheless, she has gladly forgotten what it ever meant to be mortal.”

“Or how to be your mother, assuming that she ever knew. When that degree of abstraction happens to gods, we truly become caricatures of ourselves. Should I love such a painted, vacant face that appears so much younger than what lies beneath? Her mask is now permanent. Her power and godhood will fade as worshippers begin to sense the void at her core. Then you lost your beloved Prince Jurik when you were a girl, although I still say good riddance there.”

Pensa snuffled. “I told you about that, didn’t I?”

“Yes. I listen to such prayers.”

“I-I was going to a party at the palace where our betrothal was to be announced,” she said, perhaps to Jame, perhaps to herself, picking at the scab of memory. “Mordaunt had agreed, if only for political reasons. It was set. I wore the best clothes I had, stitched by all of my aunts, and felt oh, so happy. I had loved Jurik since I was a child. He seemed so noble, so romantic. If his courtship was perfunctory, I forgave him. He was an important man; he had much to do. That night I should have been conducted to his family hall. Instead, Jurik brought me into his personal quarters. All of his friends were there, snickering. He showed me Amalfia’s portrait. She was beautiful.”

“‘How can you compare to that?’ he said, and laughed. He was very drunk. ‘Dark, squat, ugly. Why should I settle for less than I deserve?’

“What did he mean? I still don’t know.

“Then his followers shoved me back and forth from hand to hand, tearing at my clothes, laughing. I fled. No one followed. The party roared on, so loud that it drowned my tears. I would have refused to talk of it afterward, but my father heard, of course, and was enraged that I had been so humiliated. That was why he pressed his claim to the kingdom. Now he is dead.”

“Thus you lost your father. Should you blame yourself for that? I see that you do. You should not. But all of this goes deeper. I ask again: what do you fear most to lose?”

“I . . . I . . . fear that I have lost my mind.”

“Humph. What you did next was extreme if . . . I suppose . . . understandable. I must ask, though: child, was it wise?”

She wrung her hands. “I don’t know! He lay in state in his mausoleum dressed in his finest robes. I visited him every day to set fresh flowers at his feet and he remained incorruptible. Vindictive Mordaunt had pressed the Council to nominate him as a saint instead of as a god. He could overcome that, I thought. Unconquered in life, unconquered in death. Then came the day when I found the chapel in ruins, his remains strewn about the floor, carrion fowl at the door.”

Jame began to understand. “Someone hacked your father’s body apart, denying him his immortality. You did . . . what?”

“Sewed him back together!” she wailed. “Each stitch was a curse against those who killed him, whomever they might be!”

“All right,” said Jame, considering this. “That’s potent.”

Suwaeton shot her a look over his shoulder. “Would you have had the courage to do as much?”

“Probably not, but then my relations with my own father weren’t that close and I never was much good with a needle. Lady, I think that I met your father last night in the Necropolis. At least, his clothes were stitched to his flesh and his hands were sewn on backwards.”

The girl stared at her, aghast. “Did I do even that wrong?”

Jame shrugged. “He didn’t speak, but he moved and seemed aware of what he did. He also saved me from the Shadow Guild.”

Suwaeton swung around on her. She had to brace herself against his concentrated attention. In sympathy, several tribute dishes fell off the wall and shattered. His hosts would not be pleased.

“Those filthy assassins, those eaters of carrion? What were they doing there?”

“That,” said Jame, “is a very good question.”

They had been outside the mausoleum where the Blessed had been laid on the pyre. Were they responsible for the mutilation of the would-be saints? If so, why? Prestic, also, had been torn apart. Was their hand in that too? If so, again, why?

Some of this she said to Suwaeton, thinking out-loud.

“What was the Guild to you?” she asked him. They had begun to pace back and forth before Pensa, who with admirable if quivering strength had pulled herself together to listen.

“Spies,” he growled, turning, pacing. “Invisible, they can go anywhere. Did I trust them? Not entirely. Most have been driven mad with their damn mere drug. But they hear things that no one else does except—heh—for me.”

“You mean . . . ?”

“I’m the king of the gods, dammit. My people pray to me. What better intelligence agents could there be than that? You do, Pensa, don’t you? How else would I know about your plight? But few of the Guild pray. Most take a vow, I think, not to. No one is supposed to supersede their grand master, gibbering madman that he has become. Do I trust them now? No.”

Jame thought about this. “When I first met Mordaunt in the palace, a Guild member was there too. Mordaunt was upset because Prestic’s remains hadn’t been destroyed, especially his head.”

“That would be the seat of intelligence,” muttered the god, still pacing. “You Kencyr have it right: fire is the only cure for mortality. Listen, girl: you know things, I know things. Will you pray to me?”

“You ask me, a Kencyr monotheist, for that?”

“All right. Will you report to me as an agent?”

“I might at that,” said Jame, considering. “If you share information in return. Neither of us have cause to love the Guild.”

“Done!” said Suwaeton.

The actor swayed, seeming to shrink. Pensa jumped up to steady him. As Jame, Dar, and Snaggles left, they heard Trepsis say, plaintively, “My sausage has lost its stuffing.”


Back | Next
Framed