by Max Anthony
“Good morning, Lady Grumps,” said Skulks.
Though her face would never have shown it, Grumps liked Skulks, thinking him a polite gentleman. Secretly, she enjoyed being referred to as Lady Grumps, which made a change from the usual whispers of “bugger it, it’s her” which greeted her arrival. Even after Skulks’ polite greeting, Doris Grumps wore an expression that suggested she’d been chewing the rough end of a brick, though her daughter would have recognized a certain softening of the dockmaster’s features.
“Good morning, Captain Skulks,” she said. “I hear you are fully recovered from the loss of your hand.”
“Everything is hunky-dory Lady Grumps, though my new hand itches mercilessly.” Even as he said it, he absent-mindedly gave the hand a vigorous going-over with his fingernails.
“Ertle mulch is what you need,” she said immediately. “That’ll get rid of the itch.”
“Ertle mulch? Why didn’t I think of that?” he replied, for Skulks was clued-up on flora and their benefits. “Here I am paying twenty-five Slivers for a pot of baboon excrement!” He showed Dockmaster Grumps the tiny jar of cream he’d bought. She took it from his fingers and studied it. Then she opened the pot, sniffed and wrinkled her nose.
“You’ve been had,” she said. Then she chuckled, catching Skulks unawares. “Twenty-five Slivers for a pot of baboon shit! Maybe I’m in the wrong job. Anyway, I’m certain you’ve not come to discuss your itchy hand and it hasn’t escaped my attention that you’ve deposited an unconscious man in the corner of my clean office.”
“You are quite correct,” said Skulks. “There is something of a story to tell you regarding thirsty dead men and vicious pets.”
“Oh, I’ve heard some things,” said Grumps, for her daughter kept her informed of interesting happenings.
“I have tracked down the source to a demon, lying perished beneath a jetty nearby. Its noxious excretions have infiltrated the river water and are sending Hardened’s faithful pets doolally. These same excretions have been incorporated into a local ale and distributed to the nearby taverns, wherein they have been quaffed by some of our upstanding citizens!”
“What is it you require of me, Captain Skulks?”
“I hope you will assist by arranging for this demon to be hauled from the river and carted away or burned.”
While this wasn’t demonstrably a problem for the dockmaster to deal with, Grumps was a dutiful person and besides, enjoyed a bit of variety in her job.
“Fine,” she said. “I will do this task. And what about this dishevelled gentleman on my floor?” She stood next to Skulks as they looked down at Bloot, who stirred and grunted.
“He attempted to drink some of the polluted ale from the pavement. I don’t know if he has consumed enough to result in his death, but I would be grateful if you could see to his incarceration for a few days until his fate becomes clear.”
“I’ll get him hauled off to the dockside prison,” said Grumps readily enough. The docks were rough enough to demand on-site cells.
“And I need someone to ensure the Tradis Brewery’s remaining stocks of ale are disposed of.”
“I am meeting my daughter for lunch in less than an hour. I will see to it that the message is passed on,” Grumps told him.
“Ale,” muttered Bloot from the floor. Though Grumps was not to know it, the tramp was only dreaming about the golden-brown liquid and in a few days would be back on the street begging outside his favourite seedy tavern. Not fond of risks, Grumps stepped forward and chopped Bloot firmly on the side of the head, rendering him more deeply asleep. As she stood, she heard Skulks suppress an eructation, leaving Grumps coughing at the smell of flowers and cheese resulting therefrom.
“I hope you don’t do that in my daughter’s company,” she admonished him.
“Do what?” asked Skulks innocently.
Five
By the time Skulks got back to the Chamber Building, it was mid-afternoon. Proud that he had accomplished the dismissal of two flying mammals with one hurled rock, he marched straight to the office of Heathen Spout, confident of receiving her admirations at his quick-thinking resolution of the city’s problems. Forgoing his preferred entry by window, he made his way to Spout’s office door, all-the-better to receive her thanks without distracting talk of his non-standard mode of entry. The guards stationed at her door didn’t question him, nor did they bat an eye when he entered without knocking.
“Good Lady Spout,” Skulks began, wishing to launch into a self-congratulatory explanation of his excellence. Good Lady Spout was certainly in her office, sitting at her work desk, but her head wasn’t in its usual position of alertness, scanning documents pertaining to the running of the city. No, today her head was slumped forehead-down upon a sheaf of papers.
In alarm, Skulks rushed forward, thinking the worst. As he came to her desk side, he could already hear a very faint snoring coming from her mouth and nose. Skulks looked closely, faintly hoping to see some drool on the papers, but all was dry.
“This is most unusual,” he told himself. “Sleeping at one’s desk falls dangerously close to dereliction of duty.” Skulks knew that Spout, along with all of the Chamber Council members were exceptionally motivated when it came to serving the people of Hardened.
“Perhaps she had a poor night’s sleep, prompting her to fall into an undesired doze now,” he reasoned with himself. “Certainly she would be mortified if the guards were to see her in slumber at her desk, so I must awaken her.”
Skulks wasn’t sure how to wake up a lady asleep. Had it been his friend Jake the Headcracker, he’d have just shouted “Bang!” at the top of his voice, while striking two hollow metal objects together. Somehow this didn’t seem like the best way to wake Spout. He lifted her head gently up from the desk.
“Lady Spout,” he whispered. When there was no response he pinched her cheek gently and whispered her name again. With the subtlest methods resulting in failure, he increased the volume of his whispering and nudged her a few times.
“Hmmm,” said Skulks. “Lady Spout appears to be a deep sleeper indeed. Perhaps I need some smelling salts to rouse her.”
As he lacked access to smelling salts, he reached into a pocket and drew forth his hand cream. After taking the lid off, he wafted it under her nose. Spout remained deep in her slumber. Skulks was starting to become concerned now - he didn’t think it normal for anyone to be capable of sleep whilst the scent of baboon droppings accosted their nostrils.
“Lady Spout,” he called, shaking her firmly and slapping her face gently. His ministrations were not successful in rousing her.
Ten minutes later, Chamber Members Harman Granulis and Glady Fulup were in Spout’s office, with the former pacing up and down muttering imprecations.
“How could this have happened?” Granulis asked nobody in particular, somehow making it clear he felt Skulks was to blame for the situation.
“She was like this when I arrived!” Skulks protested, though he failed to see why he should be protesting.
“We must send for an apothecary at once!” said Fulup, less prone to melodrama than Granulis. She leaned out of the office door and directed one of the guards to summon assistance forthwith. Assistance did arrive, only twenty minutes later, in the form of the gentleman who had sold Skulks the droppings-laced itch cream for his hand. This man blustered and flustered his way in, carrying a wooden box with a handle and a velvet bag.
“What seems to be the problem?” he asked those present in the room.
Granulis pointed to the sleeping Heathen Spout. “It’s her,” he said. “She won’t wake up.”
“Oh dear,” said the man, laying his baggage upon her desk. “A sleeping illness perhaps. I am sure I can assist.” He tilted Spout’s head back and lifted first one eyelid and then the other. He felt the glands on her neck and pressed his fingers to her wrist, while making affirmative noises to himself and nodding occasionally. It wasn’t long until he was rummaging around in his wooden box, fro
m which he produced two small wooden pots and a bag of herbs. He held the first pot aloft as if he were a king-in-waiting, about to lower a crown onto his own head.
“This,” he exclaimed proudly, “contains…”
“…the droppings of a baboon,” completed Skulks before the man could finish his sentence. The apothecary looked miffed that the glorious conclusion to his sentence had been snatched away from him.
“Yes it does. How did you know?” he asked.
“A lucky guess,” Skulks told him, waving the man forward to demonstrate his product. The apothecary smeared a dark green cream liberally under Spout’s chin, on her forehead and across her neck. Even from his position ten feet away, Skulks quickly discovered how badly it smelled.
After a few moments, the apothecary looked downcast. “This ointment normally snaps them out of it in a flash,” he said in disappointment. Undaunted, he asked for a cup of water, into which he stirred a dollop of the second cream and some of the herbs from his bag. He tipped Spout’s head back and used a finger to pry open her mouth. He allowed a modicum of the fluid to dribble into her mouth.
“There!” he said confidently. “That should do the trick. This stuff will wake a sleeping war elephant.”
Minutes passed, during which it became clear that Heathen Spout was more resistant to his expertise than the sleeping war elephant he’d used as an example.
“How long is it meant to take?” asked an impatient Granulis.
“She should be awake by now,” the apothecary admitted. “I’ve never seen Spankwort fail,” he told them. “Might I ask what has caused this?”
“We don’t know,” responded Fulup.
“If you find out, please call for me immediately! If I can study the cause I can surely find the cure!”
With the apothecary’s capabilities exhausted, Harman Granulis dismissed him from the room. After a few minutes during which they all milled about in contemplation of the next course of action, Captain Honey entered the office. It was the first time Skulks could remember her looking upset. Following behind her was Adept-Wizard Frieda Berry.
“Tan,” Captain Honey said, heading straight over to him, “it’s my mother. She won’t wake up!”
“What has happened?” Skulks asked her. “We are having the same problem with Lady Spout.”
Captain Honey looked at the blissfully dozing member of the Chamber Council. “My mother looks just like that,” she said. “We were having lunch and she said she felt tired. Then she just fell asleep in front of me and I couldn’t wake her up! I thought it might be magic, so I dragged her to Adept Berry, who has examined my mother and assures me that if magic is responsible, it is no magic she recognizes.”
Skulks had some respect for Adept Berry’s opinion, having fought at her side in their recent foray to Rhult.
“It is very peculiar,” said Berry. “It’s nothing I’ve ever seen before. There are traces of something about Doris Grumps, but I am not sure if it’s magical or mundane. I have asked my colleagues and they are similarly baffled.”
“What is going on?” demanded Granulis. Though he was a good man, in a crisis he was known for asking pointless questions.
“The Office of Covert Operations will discover the cause of this!” said Skulks taking charge of the situation. “Please see to the wellbeing of Ladies Spout and Grumps while I get to the bottom of these events!”
He turned to Captain Honey. “Be assured that I will do my utmost to resolve this quickly.” She nodded her understanding.
With these words Skulks strode back to his office, wherein he planned to indulge in some quiet contemplation. If his office didn’t provide the correct environment to nurture his creative thought processes, then he knew a quiet privy which certainly would.
With little information, Skulks paced his office for a few minutes, deep in thought. When the pacing failed to deliver the hoped-for flash of enlightenment, he took to watering his plants. His leafy assistants were steadfast in their refusal to jolly his brain along, so he sat at his desk, where he planned to flip through his to-do tray in the hope of double-bluffing his mind by distracting it until it told him what he wanted to know. And there it was, bold as brass on the top sheet. ‘Sleeping sickness strikes at Trammelled Sausage’, said the sheet.
“Truly the clerks of this building are worth their weight in gold,” said Skulks to himself. “They are never slow in providing me with useful information from the streets of the city.” He lifted up the first sheet and read the second. ‘Staff suffer sleeping illness in South District baker shop’.
“So, what is in common with all of these sleeping incidents?” he asked himself as he worked it through in his head. Reaching the only possible conclusion, he stood up from his chair.
“Balls!” he shouted.
When he had calmed down sufficiently, he plonked himself back into his chair and put his head in his hands. This wasn’t because he was weakened by his dismay, simply because he was trying to squeeze some answers out of himself by kneading his scalp as he thought.
“It appears that everywhere I have visited, people have succumbed to this sleeping illness. Almost as if I am cursed in some way. Could it be wizards?” he asked himself. “Did Tiopan Lunder cast something upon me with his dying breath?” Skulks recalled the moment that Lunder had died, with a dagger-sword in his chest. There had been no croaked out final words of “I curse you Wielder! You and yours!” Lunder had died most speedily, leaving the wizard with no time to visit curses upon Skulks’ good self.
Skulks had also heard tales of severed hands getting up to mischief at the behest of their former owners. Could Lunder’s hand have scampered off somewhere and was even now cursing him from a hidden corner of his office? Knowing it to be nonsense, Skulks whirled around, hoping to catch the hypothesised hand in the act of casting some mumbo jumbo. There was no sign of an animated hand hiding in the shadows awaiting its opportunity to pounce.
Then his eyes caught sight of the forgotten chest of stolen items. “The monocle!” he thought incorrectly. “Perhaps it is this item which is cursed!” He went to the chest and took the monocle out and put it to his eye. It gave every sign of being just a plain monocle, with a small magnification to the lens. Putting it to the other eye he peered closely at various objects and found no difference. He put it back into the chest just as Captain Honey walked in.
“Captain Honey,” he greeted her. “I am sorry about your mother, but I am sure I will be able to find out what has happened to her.”
She smiled wanly at him. “Yes I’m sure you will be able to. I have come to hear your thoughts.”
Skulks looked downcast. “I am sorry to confess that I believe I am the culprit in all of this, Lady Honey. Everyone who has suffered from this sleeping illness has been in recent contact with me.” He pointed at his to-do tray. “Including several people mentioned in these pages on my desk.”
Taking Skulks at his word for now, Captain Honey looked at him. “What could have caused this to happen, Tan?” He didn’t know when she’d taken to calling him Tan, but he felt better for it. He felt even better that she’d not so far blamed him for afflicting her mother with an unrecognised ailment.
“I get hunches about things and these hunches are usually correct. I feel that this monocle is cursed.” He stooped and picked it up from the chest again.
“No, I don’t think it’s the monocle,” said Captain Honey quickly.
Skulks was puzzled. “Why are you so certain?” he asked.
“I just am,” she said, developing yet more pinkness on her cheeks. “What else could it be?”
Skulks put the monocle back and had another look inside the chest. “I opened this vial,” he said, lifting out the stoppered crystal container of green liquid. “It smelled a bit funny so I put it back.”
“What is that green stuff in there?” asked Honey. “Could it be to blame?”
“I am not asleep,” said Skulks in response. “In fact I feel quite happily awake.”
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“But you are a Wielder,” said Honey. “With a Wielder’s constitution. Could you carry something which does not affect you, but which is capable of affecting others? A disease or a curse, perhaps?”
Skulks was silent as he thought about it. He remembered that he’d been burping rather more than normal and each time he’d been able to taste the contents of the vial. While he’d noticed it happening, he hadn’t given the matter much thought because it hadn’t seemed like an issue of any importance. Even thinking about it made him want to burp suddenly, but he managed to suppress it in time, not wishing to afflict Captain Honey with irresistible sleep.
“I think you are correct,” said he, his admiration for Captain Honey’s incisive mind renewed. “I shall need to give this matter further thought, for I have no idea who this vial belongs to.”
Impressing him even further, Honey said, “Didn’t you mention a clockwork monkey before? The one that stole your daggers and your trousers. Would that be able to tell you who it stole the vial from?”
“The monkey is broken,” said Skulks with disappointment. “It fell apart when I asked it to steal itself.”
“Can you fix it?” asked Honey.
“I am no mage,” he responded, before remembering that he did now have some minor magical talents to call his own. “I don’t think so. Maybe I could give it a go. How hard can it be?” Not wanting to see Captain Honey upset, Skulks had managed to turn the answer from a definite no to an almost certain yes.
“I must get back to my mother,” said Honey. “I will leave the monkey in your capable hands.” She looked awkward. “I will leave the repair of the broken clockwork monkey in your capable hands,” she elaborated, before leaving the office.
Alone again, Skulks went to the cupboard in his office. He opened it and pieces of clockwork monkey spilled out onto the floor. They’d been shoved carelessly inside and the door closed to hide the pieces. The monkey had seemed too important to just throw away, but he hadn’t known what to do with it.
“Like all that stuff in the Chamber Building basement,” he told himself, remembering the countless rooms stacked high with boxes. “It’s too important to throw away, but no one knows what to do with it so it all gets shoved in a box and put in a room.”
