The Wicked and the Witless

by Hugh Cook

  —Voice was good. The same again would be more than enough.

  Yes. A quiet life, a steady routine and good pay. The soft years in Voice had been the best of his life. He had been furious when Lord Regan had ordered him north with Sarazin.

  —When Sarazin dies, what then? Rovac, maybe?

  No. Though Jarl oft toyed with notions of returning home to Rovac, far west in the Central Ocean's wastelands, he knew such thoughts were idle. In youth, he had made eighty-nine death-feud enemies amongst the Rovac, for his temper had been formidable even by the standards of those formidable mercenary killers. Plus he had known, all too well, how to hold a grudge.

  Some of those enemies would doubtless be dead by now; others, like the accursed oathbreaker Rolf Thelemite, would never dare show themselves in Rovac. But enough would remain. If Jarl went home, it would be killing for certain. Worse, amongst those who would go against him with sword, there would be some he longed to count as friends.

  —We quarrelled over nothing when we were young. But then, that is youth, isn't it? And I had no mentor to teach me better. I had to learn everything the hard way.

  Nearby, Elkin was complaining. His foot had been trodden on.

  'Why don't you get some boots?' said Jarl.

  'Because,' said Elkin, who had worn open-weave sandals throughout their journey, 'I hate the smell of dirty socks.'

  What was Elkin's mission in Selzirk? Had he truly come north at Lord Regan's command? If so, did the Rice Empire's ruler want him as just one more spy in the city? Or as what? Who would know? Not Sarazin, that was for certain. He knew nothing — not even that Jarl was coming north as a spy.

  —My lord perhaps plays a deep and subtle game. But what game? Logic may tell, for I know power by face and backside both. Perhaps Lord Regan reserves the truth to test my powers of divination. Mayhap the mystery is a test,

  'You'll love Selzirk,' said Lod. 'Why, its very brothels are grander than my father's palace in Shin.' 'Shin?' said Sarazin.

  'Chenameg's capital,' said Lod, with amusement. 'Have you not studied the world? I thought this Elkin lettered you.'

  "Many years have we spent in scholarship,' said Sarazin. 'We have studied languages, philosophy, botany and poetry.'

  'Ah,' said Lod, "but now you are out and about in the world, you must learn your geography.'

  And he launched into an impromptu disquisition on the Chenameg Kingdom. This Sarazin ignored, having found Lod to be a fanciful fellow, given to extravagant embroidery of any truth unfortunate enough to fall to his possession.

  'Here we are,' said Lod, as the ferry came alongside one of the wharves of Jone, the dockside quarter. 'What are you staring at?'

  There's a hole in the wall!' said Sarazin, outraged.

  True enough. A section a hundred paces long was missing from Ol Ilkeen, the outer battle-wall of Selzirk.

  That is no hole,' said Lod. That is but the river gate. In time of war the gate wardens will close it with heaps of horseshit and such.'

  'This is scandalous!' said Sarazin.

  'A military obscenity, perhaps,' agreed Lod, "but this is no time to be prudish. You've other things to think of. Soon you'll see your mother. Your brother Benthorn, too. How long since you saw him last?'

  'Pardon?' said Sarazin.

  'Benthorn,' said Lod. When did you see him last?'

  How embarrassing! Were Chenameg's sons entirely ignorant of etiquette? Knowledge of Benthorn had reached Sarazin even in Voice; he knew well enough the fellow was a hunchbacked moron who worked on a dung cart and was reputed to be both an atheist and a child molester.

  'Aren't three brothers enough?' said Sarazin, hinting to Lod that he should drop the subject.

  'Do you jest?' said Lod. 'Or do you mean to disown Benthorn?'

  'Oh, him,' said Sarazin, seeing Lod was not to be deterred. 'He's but a half-brother. In any case, how can I own or disown him when I know nothing of him? I was but four when I was taken from my mother's arms to be exiled as a hostage.'

  'Then I'll tell you what I know of him,' said Lod.

  But Sarazin was spared this further embarrassment, for the loading ramps of the ferry were in place, and conver- sation became impossible in the chaotic imbroglio as travellers, peasants, soldiers, horses, dogs, pigs, chickens and baggage were disembarked.

  Sarazin was scarcely off the ferry when he was separated from his brothers, his horse, his tutors. His brothers could fend for themselves — but his steed?

  'My horse!' he cried. 'It's gone!'

  'Relax,' said Lod. 'Celadon's got your horse. Let him worry it to the palace. We'll be there on foot before him. Come — the press will ease once we're clear of the wharves. But guard your purse!'

  Tvly purse? Ah — that's gone already! No matter. It held but a bent bronze triner.'

  True: the last of Sarazin's cash had been spent in Voice 30 buying favours from Jaluba, she of the passionate lips, the gauze-veiled (and sometimes unveiled) breasts.

  Already Lod was hustling Sarazin onward. Despite Lod's predictions, the crush grew no less once they cleared the wharves. Sarazin was shocked by the heat, stench and crowds of the city in summer, by the ill-mannered jostling, the hawkers bawling in Churl, the inordinate amount of dung on the streets.

  Tell me,' said he, pressing himself against a wall as three dozen muck-stained heifers shouldered past with a clatter of hooves, 'is there no law against herding cattle through Selzirk?'

  There are laws against all dung-dropping animals,' said Lod, 'not discounting our noble servant the horse. But none such can be enforced, for our rulers fear the wrath of those who love dogs. Those irrationals would rise in rage, if not in revolution — and who could tell where that would end?'

  Sarazin thought this nonsense, but had already learnt not to expect logic from Lod.

  'Are there laws against trees, too? And outdoor cafes? I see none such, though this is surely the weather for dining alfresco.'

  Trees?' said Lod, highly amused. Trees would go for firewood. As for tables and chairs! Outside? In daylight? They'd not last a morning. Taverns and theatres alike have bouncers at the door, not just to keep people out but to keep their furniture in. Come, friend Sarazin. Onward!'

  Soon they shouldered into the intolerable crush at Kesh, a gate-tower chokepoint at the junction of the Four Worlds of Selzirk. Here people poured into a courtyard from gates opening to the quarters of Jone, Santrim, Unkrana and Wake. Locked in by sweat and shoulders, Sarazin felt his feet leave the ground.

  'Lod?' he said. Then shouted: Lod? Lod, where are you?'

  The crowd convulsed, squeezing his ribs. He was being choked. Crushed. Cracked like a dove's egg in a black- smith's vice. Jarl had warned him of a thousand things. But never of this. He was going to die, strength helpless, weapons useless. He tried to scream, but could not. And he would not have been heard in the uproar.

  Then the crunch-crush crowd collapsed, broke up, eased out. He gained, gasping, the freedom to breathe. His feet touched the ground, he saw daylight, he blundered towards it. Then was pushed, shouldered, buffeted, sent staggering by the on-bustling crowd. Stepped in something soft which sklished beneath his boot. His dung-greased boots slipped, slid, almost sent him sprawling.

  He won his balance. And gained, at last, the freedom of a quiet sidestreet where he could breathe in peace. There was bright blood splashed on his swordhand's thumb- knuckle where skin had been backpeeled by collision. He put it to his lips. Kissed the red stuff. Sucked, and was comforted.

  'Sarazin!' said Lod, slapping him on the back. 'I thought I'd lost you. Welcome to Santrim. You know the city's layout? Your mother's palace is—'

  'I know all about that,' said Sarazin, cutting him off. 'Give me credit for something, at least.'

  'I do, I do,' said Lod, with a careless wave of his hand. 'For being the consort of clouds, the friend of dragons, the-'

  'Give it a rest!' said Sarazin, who was tired, disorien- tated, and fed up with the low-grade verbal pyrotechnics whi
ch Lod thought of as wit. Lod took no offence. He had already spotted his next source of excitement.

  'Look,' he said. There's a dung cart.'

  'We do have dung carts in Voice, you know,' said Sarazin. 'Even though dogs, pigs, sheep and oxen are banned from the streets of that city.'

  Nevertheless, Lod danced up alongside the horse-drawn dung cart to chat to the fellow who followed it, pitchfork in hand.

  'Sarazin!' cried Lod. 'Come here!' -Why?'

  'I want you to meet someone,' said Lod, grinning.

  Sarazin feared this must be his half-brother Ben thorn. Very shortly, as they were introduced, Sarazin realised he was right.

  'Pleased to meet you' said Sarazin, clenching his right fist: not to kill but to greet.

  This ancient rite, though still practised in Voice, had near fallen out of memory in Selzirk. But Benthorn had studied both past and present upper-class mores in detail, for he had an intense interest in power. So the brothers, to Lod's evident amusement, touched fists in the old manner. As skin grazed skin, Sarazin visioned his father Fox sweating over the woman Bizzie, shaft sunk to the hilt in her gash, his breathing harsh, summer's sweat beaded on his brow. The reek of an overloaded chamber pot hot around them.

  — That happened.

  When Sarazin had been eight months in the womb, something like that had definitely happened, causing the first rupture between Farfalla and Fox. While those two had gone on to produce another three sons, the breach between them had never been entirely mended: and they were now estranged.

  How had Bizzie gained her hold over Fox? Sarazin had no idea. But here was evidence of their liaison: passion's most unromantic child, the dung-smelling Benthorn with his fat, sweaty face. Sarazin tried to get his measure, but found himself struggling just to understand his Churl. Realising this, Benthorn took the lead and switched to Galish. It made no difference. Sarazin — tired, dizzy, faint — was incapable of character analysis.

  While Lod had rightly guessed that Sarazin was shamed by Benthorn's very existence, Sarazin was too well-bred to display his distaste for his half-brother and his work, the pestering flies, the heavy smell of high-heaped dung. He even commiserated with Benthorn when he learnt of the heavy taxes levied upon dung carts.

  'A foolish policy,' said Sarazin, 'when the city streets are knee-deep in excrement. I will talk to my mother about it.'

  'Farfalla would doubtless order change if she could,' said Benthorn, 'even though all levies on dung carts are hers by law. But change in this case is impossible.'

  'Why so?' said Sarazin.

  And was taken aback when Benthorn responded by shouting:

  'Get away, you!'

  But Sarazin's half-brother was merely scaring off some street urchins who were raiding his dung cart for ammuni- tion for gang warfare. Benthorn went on to explain:

  'Brother mine, the dung cart tax is enshrined in the Constitution. Before then, anyone with a mule and a pair of wheels could afford to enter the manure business. Carts in hundreds crowded the city. Their owners formed factions which warred with each other. The Framers thought high taxes might diminish a menace which threatened the very foundation of law and order.'

  'But the Constitution was written thousands of years ago,' protested Sarazin. Times have changed.'

  Yet the Constitution itself can never change,' said Benthorn, 'for it is the foundation of our world. To talk otherwise is treason.'

  'And to think otherwise?' said Sarazin. 'Is that treason?'

  That,' said Benthorn, 'is a subject worthy of discussion.'

  'But not now,' said Lod, who had lost interest in the conversation since the half-brothers had failed to amuse him by baiting each other. 'Come, let's be going. Sarazin has urgent business at the palace.'

  'I'll see you around, then,' said Benthorn, lapsing into Churl.

  'What?' said Sarazin.

  'He means,' said Lod, in Galish, 'that you'll meet again.'

  I'm sure we will,' said Sarazin.

  At least Benthorn was not — contrary to rumour! — a kyphotic imbecile. Maybe he was even innocent of child molesting. Still, Sarazin never wanted to see him again. Right now, he wanted to meet the mother he had not seen since the age of four. The kingmaker. A Power in the land: consecrated in sacred ceremony as one of the Favoured Blood, and therefore fit to rule.

  As Argan's peoples knew well, Argan's nations must forever be ruled by nobles of aristocratic lineage. Only those of the Favoured Blood could preserve the world from revolution, anarchy, war absolute, or, worse still, democracy (a bizarre political perversion practised by the Orfus pirates of the Greater Teeth). Sarazin, as the son of such a noble, thought power should come to him as of right.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Kingmaker: one selected for life by Regency bureaucrats to appoint regional governors ('kings'). The kingmaker derives great power from the Constitution — power only the Regency's unanimous vote can restrict. Such a vote came early in Farfalla's reign, leaving her as little more than a figurehead.

  Sarazin's letters had oft betrayed aristocratic pretensions suggestive of treasonable political ambition. Farfalla, shud- dering to imagine her first-begotten's fate if the Regency learnt of this, was dismayed to hear that Sarazin, inter- cepted at her palace gates by Plovey of the Regency, was coming to their reunion accompanied by that formidable bureaucrat.

  Tell Plovey I wish to see my son alone,' said Farfalla.

  Her servants went. Told. And returned to say Plovey would have none of it.

  T)elay them, then!' said Farfalla. 'On any excuse, delay!'

  A delay was contrived until Jarl, Elkin and Sarazin's brothers had arrived. By then, Farfalla had packed her throne room with guards and servants, hoping this crowd of strangers would inhibit Sarazin, making him wary of speaking his mind.

  —Gods! If he says too much to Plovey, he's dead.

  Fortunately Sarazin — weary, footsore, and tired of grappling with the complexities of Churl — had rebuffed that keen-minded bureaucrat's diligent efforts to initiate a conversation. And, once brought into Farfalla's presence, Sarazin behaved as noblesse oblige compelled him to: after exchanging formal greetings with his mother, he pleaded his case of his loyal retainers.

  Tvly lady,' said he, in Churl only fluent because this was a much-rehearsed speech, 'these are my tutors, constant companions of my captivity in Voice. This is Thodric Jarl, a Rovac warrior: my swordmaster.'

  'What mention is made of me?' said Jarl in curt, loud- voiced Galish.

  'Do you speak no Churl?' said Farfalla, in a Galish as good as his own.

  'None,' said Jarl, 'for till six days ago I had never set foot in the Harvest Plains.'

  Then my translator will render all which has gone before into a tongue you can understand,' said Farfalla. 'Also, he will translate what is spoken hereafter.'

  Jarl gave a low-sweeping courtly bow mastered years before in the city of Chi'ash-lan in the Cold West. As the translator set to work, Farfalla noted a tight smile on Plovey's lips.

  What did that smile mean? Fear? Quite possibly. And if Plovey feared friendship between a Rovac warleader and the kingmaker of the Harvest Plains he might act to end it. So Farfalla had best keep her distance from Jarl, lest her friendship prove his destruction. Only fools, slaves and criminals could safely befriend the kingmaker.

  Belatedly, she realised Sarazin had resumed his speech:

  '. . .is Epelthin Elkin, a scholar, who has tutored me most marvellously in the ways of words.'

  Sarazin was praising Elkin at length. And Jarl? Lemons without sugar! The Rovac warrior had no love for the scholar. And Plovey,? Fidgeting. Bored by Sarazin's rhetoric. Hands furtively scabbing at an itch at his crotch. Then eyes . . . shifting to Jarl.

  Yes, Jarl worried him. The Regency feared assassins by night, riot by day. Coup, revolution, civil war. Thus any blade in Farfalla's fee was a threat. But a scholar . . . ? No. So it was safe to grant Elkin whatever was in her boon. Giving much to Elkin and little to Jarl would
widen the gap between those two.

  —But that's not my problem. I want Jarl left alive. I might have use of him in future.

  Sarazin was concluding.

  '. . . therefore ask you to grant what you can to these two who have been so loyal for so long with so little reward.'

  Farfalla was decided, yet forced herself to make a show of hesitation. The less that Plovey saw of her ability the better. While she was thinking thus, Plovey caught her eye. Both, embarrassed, looked away. And Farfalla thought:

  —He's not fooled for a moment. He knows just how good I am!

  He must. Unless there was a fool behind his facade of razor-sharp intelligence and unlimited efficiency. As they customarily did business 'a step away from each other's steel', as the saying had it, she found it difficult to truly gauge his calibre.

  Sarazin, disconcerted by Farfalla's evident indecision, cleared his throat, as if to speak. But she held up her hand for silence, then delivered her judgment.

  The scholar Epelthin Elkin is welcome in the city of Selzirk the Fair. I, as kingmaker, chosen from the common people by the Regency, ruling in accordance with the Constitution, welcome him.'

  Thus Farfalla reminded her son of things he surely knew already: unless ambition had led him to discount what he had been taught. She continued:

  'Certain appointments lie within the gift of the See of the Sun. One such is the position of Archivist in—'

  Horrors! She had forgotten the name of the place!