The Good, the Bad and the Smug

by Tom Holt

  All the while they were talking, Mr Winckler’s hand had been creeping, glacier-slow and glacier-steady, towards the secret pocket sewn into the lining of his cape. It was, he’d told himself over and over again, the very last resort, because he didn’t properly understand this technology, anything could happen, he didn’t know the rules and there was absolutely no way of being sure where or even as what he’d end up. On the other hand, he was descended from a subsection of humanity who’d learned the hard way that once those around you start discussing what to do with the prisoners, any way out has got to be better than staying put. His fingers, fingertiptoeing along like little mice, found the hem of the pocket. He reached inside and grabbed.

  “Excuse me,” he said.

  Mordak and the Elf looked up at him. They saw him holding—Well, they probably didn’t recognise it for what it was; a very old, stale doughnut he’d bought from a stall at Grand Central just before his first Great Escape, but they were bright enough to realise that it was important. Mr Winckler positioned the doughnut so that it was pressed flat against his forehead; just a tiny movement needed to deploy it to maximum effect.

  “A few home truths,” he said. “First, you’re a joke, both of you. Don’t think for a moment that the Elf’s changed, she hasn’t. Given half a chance, she’ll wheedle you, manipulate you, wind you round her little finger. As for you, Your Majesty, you’re about as evil as my old mother’s cat. In fact, considerably less. It’s not just that you’ve let her corrupt you, you were as wet as a watercress farm long before you even met her. Face it, you’re just not cut out for it; though,” he added with a grin, “that might well change once your goblins lose patience with you.” He paused briefly for breath, then went on, “One thing I’ve learned, one simple fact. There’s no capital-E Evil and no capital-G Good, there’s just a load of confused and misguided intentions and a load of consequences, mostly unintended, a lot of them pretty bad. Everything else—” He grinned. “You know what everything else is? It’s fashion. Like hemlines. Last year, homosexuality was out and racism was in, this year it’s the other way around. Next year it’ll probably be wide ties, flares and platform heels, even though we all made a solemn vow before everything we hold sacred, never again.” He did a wide, melodramatic shrug, just in case God up in the peanut gallery might have difficulty seeing. “There is no evil,” he said, “there is no good. There’s just the best you can, and pray like crazy not too many people get hurt. Right, then. I go I know not where. So long, idiots.”

  Mordak tried a frantic lunge, but he was too late. With a tiny adjustment of his fingers, Mr Winckler let the doughnut slip a little until it was over his left eye. Then he vanished.

  There was a long silence. Then Efluviel said, “Was that some sort of cake?”

  “I don’t know. I think so.”

  “I’m starving. Let’s go eat.”

  “You just ate.”

  “That was goblin food,” Efluviel pointed out. “What’s called for right now is extreme patisserie.”

  Mordak thought–about that, and other things–for about four seconds. Then he nodded. “Is there anywhere round here?”

  “There’s a little treetop café I know the other side of the big wood that does really wicked cupcakes.”

  “Wicked,” Mordak repeated gravely. “A meaningless term, as we now know. Just cupcakes, or other things as well?”

  She frowned at him. “About this food business,” she said. “Now, you know me, I do my very best not to be judgemental—”

  “How true.”

  “But this whole goblin eating-people thing. I have to say, I’ve got very serious reservations about that. Why are you smirking?”

  Mordak looked round, then underneath, to make sure the goblin was still fast asleep. Then he beckoned her to come closer. “You’ve got to promise,” he said. “Not one word, all right?”

  It was a struggle, but Efluviel nodded.

  “If this was to get out, there’d be so much trouble—”

  “I promise.”

  “Your word of honour as a journalist?”

  “You think that’s one of those oxywhatsit things, don’t you?”

  “Moron,” he said kindly. “Oxymoron. And yes, I do. But it’s all right, I know I can trust you, because I’ve never told anyone else about this, so if word ever does get out, I shall know precisely who to kill. Goblin food,” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “Well.” He took a deep breath. “In theory, we eat only what we kill. The flesh of our enemies makes us stronger, their hearts make us braver, their brains make us wiser and so on.”

  “Got you. And what do their arms and legs make you?”

  “Sausages. Anyway, that’s the theory. Nothing goes into goblin cuisine other than freshly sourced, inhumanely slaughtered, traceable organic prime cuts of enemy.” He paused. “In theory.”

  “Right. And in practice?”

  He sighed. “Mostly it’s horse,” he said. “And cow and pig, and occasionally a bit of bird. Well, it’s the cost,” he said, “not to mention continuity of supply and transport issues. And if you bung in enough colourings and flavourings and riboflavin and monosodium glutamate, nobody’s ever going to know the difference, so what the hell?”

  Efluviel was actually shocked. “And they all think—”

  “It says on the label, made with real Elf, but that’s a whatsit, a term of art. Why do you think Goblin Foods Inc. buys up the clippings from every hairdressing salon in Elfhome? Perfectly legitimate and a hundred per cent compliant, and everybody’s happy.” He looked round again. “Now, you did promise. Not one word, got that?”

  “That’s disgusting,” Efluviel said. “Food with little bits of hair in it.”

  “Got that?”

  She looked at him. It would make one hell of a story. Or, it would have made one hell of a story. “Got it,” she said sadly. “So, you lot aren’t really monstrous bloodthirsty cannibals at all?”

  Mordak shook his head. “But we think we are,” he said, “and that’s what matters.”

  The goblin made a faint muttering noise. “He’s waking up,” Efluviel said. “What are we going to do with him?”

  “Nothing,” Mordak replied. “He acted with the best of intentions, motivated by honour and duty. Fortunately, nothing too bad happened. I suggest we walk away and leave him with his straw. I’d say he’s earned it.”

  They tiptoed outside and closed the barn door quietly after them. It was a beautiful evening. The clearing was bathed in soft late-summer sunshine, and all around them small birds sang. “I’ve gone off the thought of cake,” Efluviel said. “What I really need is a drink.”

  Mordak nodded. “Back to the Head?”

  “Well, it’s closest.”

  “Actually, the Old Trolls’ Arms is closer, but I’m not sure you’d like it. Basically, the walls—”

  “Back to the Head. Definitely.”

  They’d only gone a few hundred yards when Mordak stopped dead in his tracks and started sniffing.

  “What are you doing?” Efluviel demanded. “Stop it, it’s embarrassing.”

  “Can’t you smell it too?”

  “No. What?”

  “You can’t smell that? Oh, of course, I forgot, you’re an Elf.”

  “You forgot I’m an Elf. Oh boy.”

  “Quiet.” He looked up at the sky, and she noted that he was as tense as a fiddle-string. “We’re about to have company.”

  “Friends of yours?”

  “Business associates.”

  “Are they nice?”

  “They’re business associates.”

  “Ah,” Efluviel said. She too was looking up, and she could just see four very fast-moving black dots rushing down at them out of the sun. “Shouldn’t we be running away and hiding?”

  “Don’t be silly. They’re business associates.”

  Ten seconds later, black-robed wraiths mounted on pterodactyls snatched them off their feet and swept them away.

/>   “So.” The Margrave finished his long, convulsive shudder. “You see the problem.”

  Mordak had been sitting very still, and his face was a complete blank. “Yup.”

  “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

  “Yup.”

  The members of the Dark Council looked at each other. “Well?” said a senior necromancer. “What do we do?”

  Mordak steepled his claws. “What indeed?” he said. “Here we are, the senior representatives of Evil, forced to the inescapable conclusion that the Dark Lord, who epitomises Evil so completely that it’s practically impossible to define it without reference to him, has gone potty. Someone or something—” A flicker at the corner of Mordak’s mouth didn’t go unnoticed. “Someone or something,” he repeated, “has got to him, messed with his head, and as a result we’ve got to get rid of him before he utterly screws up everything we believe in or stand for. Is that about the shape of it?”

  The troll-wrangler nodded. “Pretty much.”

  “But we can’t get rid of him,” Mordak went on. “Can’t kill him, we all know why. Can’t lock him up somewhere, because he’ll only get out again, he always does. And whatever it is we do, we’ve got to do it very, very soon, because whatever we may think of Internal Affairs, they do a very thorough job, specially when it comes to finding out about conspiracies, so ‘living on borrowed time’ is a pertinent concept here.” He paused, frowned, and went on. “If it’s all right with you, I think I’d like to consult with my special adviser.”

  Sharp intakes of breath. “You mean her,” said the Margrave. “That—”

  “Yes,” Mordak said. “Now, if you don’t mind.”

  So they had her brought in and took the bag off her head (it had two holes pre-cut in it, for the ear-tips) and Mordak quickly summarised what he’d just been told, and immediately added, “It’s not funny,” before she could open her mouth, which was probably just as well. She made a very faint squeaking noise, but that was all.

  “So,” Mordak continued, “I was thinking. We’ve got an embodiment of evil to get rid of, right?”

  Efluviel looked at him. “Only you can’t.”

  “Quite so. But it’s got to be done. And I was thinking—”

  Suddenly she grinned. “You were thinking of a place where they’re down one embodiment of evil, in consequence of which they’re in grave danger of blowing up.”

  The Council started muttering, but Mordak silenced them with a look. “Quite,” he said. “And since we can’t send them back their embodiment, because we carelessly lost him—”

  “Why not send them ours?” Efluviel nodded, so briskly she nearly stabbed herself to death. “Nice idea. Will it work?”

  Mordak shrugged. “Search me. What do you think?”

  “You need to ask someone.”

  “Yes.”

  “That Curator person.”

  “He’d know, if anyone would.”

  “Just a minute—” objected the Margrave; and then Mordak looked at him and all power of speech and thought deserted him for a moment; and when he’d recovered, he knew without having to think about it any further that the Principle of Evil had just found itself a new Dark Lord. “Sorry,” he mumbled, but Mordak wasn’t listening.

  A few minutes later, the Dark Council shuffled quietly out, leaving the king to finalise the details of his plan of action with his senior adviser. Outside in the courtyard, the Margrave said, “So that’s all right, then.”

  “Yes,” objected the troll-wrangler, “but she’s an—”

  The Margrave shrugged; or at least, his empty black robe billowed in a certain sequence. “Things change,” he said. “Don’t be an old stick-in-the-mud. Get with the programme.”

  “Yes, but she’s an—”

  “Listen,” the Margrave said; nothing so melodramatic as a hiss, he just spelled it with nine S’s. “He’s the boss now, and what the boss says, goes. Like I said, things change. We evolve. It’s time to put the evil back into evolution. Capisce?”

  “Yes,” the troll-wrangler said. “But she’s an—”

  “Oh be quiet.”

  The Curator looked up from his screen and stared. “Archie?” he said.

  How he knew was anyone’s guess, since the last time they’d met, Archie had been human, and the creature who jumped through the doughnut portal on to the workbench was anything but. Nor was he alone. “And you’ve brought a friend,” the Curator added. “How nice.”

  The sharp-faced young woman made a furious tutting noise, deleted the file she’d been working on and started again. The goblin who wasn’t Archie nudged the goblin who was, and whispered, “Is that him?”

  Archie nodded. The other goblin jumped down off the table and looked round, presumably for weapons and ambushes. Most of the people working in the lab didn’t appear to have noticed him.

  “This is Mordak,” Archie said. “King of the goblins. My boss,” he explained.

  “Good Lord,” the Curator said. “We’re honoured. Somebody get His Majesty a chair.”

  “He wants to ask you a question.”

  “Fine. Only we’re a bit busy right now. We have twenty-one seconds before this universe explodes, so if you wouldn’t mind taking a seat, we’ll be with you shortly.”

  “It’s about that.”

  The Curator raised his hand, and everything stopped dead. “Fire away,” he said.

  Mordak, talking fast, explained about Mr Winckler’s disappearance and his planned coup d’état against the Dark Lord. “We can’t get rid of him in our universe,” he said, “so we were wondering. Do you think we could send him here?”

  The Curator thought for a moment. “Is he evil?”

  “He’s the Dark Lord.”

  “Please answer the question.”

  So Mordak told the Curator some of the things the Dark Lord had done; the civilisations he’d overthrown, the great cities he’d laid waste, the derelict homes and abandoned farms and workshops in every region of his empire, the chaos and misery he’d inflicted on countless millions, the generations for whom there could be no hope, only despair. The Curator listened carefully. Then he said, “So basically you’re suggesting we accept your Dark Lord as a replacement for our rogue investment banker.”

  “Yes. Will he do?”

  “Well,” the Curator said, “it’s a start.”

  Mordak was reading the paper. He lifted his head. “Show her in,” he said. Efluviel looked tired. She sat down on the visitor’s chair, carved with horribly disturbing bas-reliefs from a single block of black marble, without even dusting it first. “Well?” she said. “What do you think?”

  Mordak hesitated. “Well,” he said. “The cover story.” The headline, in huge letters just under the newly restored Beautiful Golden Face masthead, read:

  EFLUVIEL TAKES OVER

  (continued on pages 2–46, editorial on page 12, profile feature on page 6).

  “It’s a bit—”

  “It’s what’s of most interest to our readers,” Efluviel said firmly. “What?”

  “Yes, all right,” Mordak conceded. “And I liked some of the stuff in the editorial, about rapprochements and working more closely together and so on. Very nicely put. Even so.”

  “What?”

  Mordak turned to page 52. On the right, near the bottom, was a two-inch column headed Mardik Usurps Black Throne In Blodless Coup. “It’s not the personal glory or anything,” he said, “I couldn’t give a stuff, naturally. But it’s a legitimate news story, of considerable importance to the lives of everyone in the Realms. I think you might have found a way to squeeze it in ahead of the opera reviews.”

  She gave him one of her how-could-you-be-so-ignorant? looks. “I wouldn’t worry about it,” she said. “After all, everyone knows.”

  “Only if they do the crossword. Who else reads past page 50?”

  “The grapevine,” Efluviel said patiently. “Word of mouth, the rumour mill. Of course everyone knows you’ve taken over.”

  “E
veryone knew you’d taken over,” Mordak replied gently. “But you’ve got banner headlines.”

  “Well, of course. That’s news. That’s what people read the papers for.” She tweaked the paper out of his hands, folded it and threw it on the desk. “That’s enough about that,” she said. “How’s life in the big chair?”

  “Uncomfortable. My feet don’t reach the floor.” He scowled at her. “Don’t print that.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Is that an order?” she said. “Because if it is—”

  “No. It’s a request. I’m asking you nicely.”

  “Oh, in that case, fine. Besides, who’d be interested?” She reached for the bowl of candied fingers and helped herself, then hesitated.

  “Orange peel,” Mordak whispered. “But for crying out loud don’t tell anyone.”

  “All these restrictions on the freedom of the press. Though in this case, they wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Good.”

  “Actually, they’re quite yummy. I never knew goblins had a sweet tooth.”

  “Oh, we do, we do. Though really they’re just sugar and condensed milk.”

  She laughed. “Evil’s not going to be the same from now on, is it?”

  He pursed his lips. “It’s an approach,” he said guardedly. “One that’s going to work, I do believe.”

  “Condensed milk, sugar and orange peel?”

  He shrugged. “So long as people think what we do is evil, does it really matter if it isn’t? I’ve been thinking, about what Mr Winckler said. Suppose it really is just fashion. And suppose that the definition of evil is what the Evil One does.”

  She looked at him. “Go on.”

  “Well, it’s pretty straightforward, actually. If I do it, it’s evil per se. So, if I hatch a diabolical conspiracy to feed the poor and make sure all goblin homes have indoor toilets—”

  “From the worst of all possible motives, naturally.”

  “Oh, of course. It’s all part of a conspiracy.”