by Jon Hollins
“Listen, you poorly educated child,” she said and ignored his hurt expression. It was time to viciously assault Will with some knowledge. “We don’t need a plan. Batarra is a meritocracy—”
“It is?” Will looked genuinely shocked.
Balur shook his head. “How long were you living here?”
Will shrugged. “I’m from Kondorra. I’m used to a government that takes ninety percent of everything I own every winter. Being able to ignore them here has been a luxury.”
“Be quiet and listen,” said Lette. “I’m educating. Meritocracy sounds like it means some sort of egalitarian paradise, but what it actually is, is another word for horrendously corrupt haven of bribe-mongers. So if you want into the corridors of power, you just need to have passed one of the entrance exams.”
“But—” Will started, pointing at the guards.
“And if you want to pass one of the entrance exams,” she went on, “you just have to pay the entrance fee.”
Will’s eyes suddenly narrowed. “What’s the entrance fee?”
Lette smiled. Now he was catching up. “A thousand golden bulls minimum.”
Will’s jaw dropped. “A … a thousand … That’s outrageous. That’s utter hogshit. Who can afford that?”
Even naïveté, Lette reflected, could lose its appeal over time. She reached out and slapped Will full in the face. “We can, you ignorant arse!” She threw up her hands. “We robbed the dragons of Kondorra. We are obscenely rich. And we are in the heart of a country that is outrageously and preposterously corrupt. This is our fucking playground. We don’t need a plan.”
She turned to the guards at the gate. “A golden bull to whoever opens the gate for me first.”
The guards fell over each other in their rush.
They spent another five hundred golden bulls between the front gate and the doors to High Council’s chambers.
Will tried very hard to hide his disappointment, but in the end he just wasn’t up to it. And there had been a time when she found his wide-eyed hope regarding Batarra so charming. After Kondorra, she knew, he had seen this as a place of hope and opportunity. He had told her about how free from persecution and crushing poverty it seemed.
And she hadn’t had the heart to tell him.
Now … Now she still felt bad. But maybe it was what he needed. Maybe a few short, sharp shocks to his hopes and dreams would wake him up a little.
The particular official they were bribing at the moment finished counting his coins. He leered at them and pulled a vast ledger from a drawer in the desk where he sat. He was the last gatekeeper. He wore a blue velvet suit, buttoned tightly over a white shirt that seemed to consist entirely of ruffles. Behind him a pair of double oaken doors led into the High Council’s chambers.
“All right,” he said in a voice that Lette couldn’t help but equate to that of a weasel, “let’s see when I can pencil you in for.”
From what Lette knew of Batarran power structures, this pompous plutocrat had paid in excess of ten thousand gold coins for the privilege of writing things in this particular ledger. It was one of the worst obscenities she knew. Apart from possibly the one involving a goat, two pigs, and a saltshaker.
“All right,” said the man again, licking the nib of his quill. “I should be able to get you some time with the council for a month from now.”
And that, Lette decided, was the point at which she was pretty much done with bribery.
But then, before she could get the blade into her hand, Will was stepping forward, face red, cords standing out in his neck. “A month?” he bellowed. “A fucking month?”
The man looked at them like he was regarding a trio of turds he had just found in his sandwich. “If you have an urgent matter,” he said, “then you could always pay the expediting fee, though I hear that it has just gone up”—he glared at Will—“substantially.”
Lette almost heard Will’s patience snap.
He stepped forward, seized the man by the back of the head, and bounced his forehead off the surface of his absurd, ostentatious desk. He let go, and the man slumped to the floor. Without looking up, Will took the man’s quill, found the date in the calendar, and wrote them down on the entirely empty page.
He straightened and shrugged. “Looks like we’re in.”
And there it was. Something of the old Will that she recognized. The purity of his outrage plucking at some deep resonance in her chest.
Balur clapped Will on the shoulder, making him stagger. “It is being good to have you back,” he said.
Even as she strode toward the Council Chambers’ double doors, Lette found she suddenly wished she had a mirror to check her reflection in.
8
Yes, Minister
As one, the Batarran High Council fell silent as Will, Lette, and Balur pushed into the room. They were, as far as Will could tell, in the middle of a card game. Most of the chairs on the chamber floor—usually reserved for plaintiffs and witnesses—had been pushed aside to make room for a large circular table topped with green felt, gold coins, and strong alcohol. The High Council sat around it holding fistfuls of cards. The stakes of the game, it seemed, were the councilors’ clothes.
A large woman in her fifties, hair piled lopsided above her head, and with her unbuttoned dress half falling off her shoulder, looked about in confusion.
“Did we have any appointments today?” she said, slurring slightly. “I didn’t think we had appointments.”
A man, naked except for his underbritches and a cravat still knotted around his neck, leaned forward, attempted to prop himself up on his elbow, failed, fought not to collapse, and managed to thrust a finger at the woman. “Don’t think this gets you out of it, Jocasta. You lost that hand fair and square.”
The woman—Jocasta, Will supposed—looked from the half-naked man, to Will, to the other councilors. Then she shrugged, and started tugging the dress off her other shoulder.
If Will really thought about it, he supposed the only truly surprising thing was that she didn’t have someone to help her do it.
“Sod off, would you?” said another man, wearing a mustard shirt, who had managed to retain at least one of his shoes.
Balur rolled his shoulders. Inhuman anatomy cracked audibly.
“Or,” said another councilor who had a better view of Balur, “you know, you could stay.”
“Deal the redhead in,” said a man who had to be in his eighties. “She looks like she’s got spunk.”
“If she’s in, then he’s in.” The woman who had taken off her dress, Jocasta, was pointing at Will.
Batarra, when Will had come here with Lette, had felt almost magical. The sun had felt different on his skin. The wind had sung a different tune between the trees. No dragon rode on its currents. No soldiers came and beat up his farmhands to remind him what would happen come tax season. There were no screams of livestock as savage claws lifted them to the heavens.
This had been his escape, his happily ever after. And then his love had left him. Dragons had come here to wreak their savagery upon everyone. And now all his hopes for good and just rulership were being savagely torn out from beneath his feet. Dispiriting did not do the experience justice.
And quite frankly, Will had had it with useless, overprivileged arseholes.
“Shut up!” he bellowed. “Shut up, all of you! Don’t you know what’s happening?”
This approach seemed to catch the High Council off guard. They blinked at him owlishly.
Behind him, Will felt Balur shifting his weight. “Maybe be taking it down a notch,” the lizard man said in as much of a whisper as he could manage. “I am thinking that I am in there.” He thumbed at a painfully thin woman, with hair stacked a foot high above her head. She was looking cross-eyed in their direction.
Will took a calming breath. It didn’t really help.
“Dragons are going to steal this nation from you!” Will shouted. Though now that he saw who was in charge, it was a little harder t
o get worked up about it. He took firmer hold of his hatred of dragons. “Theerax has preachers in every corner of this city talking about the ills of the gods, and slowly convincing people they should be worshipping him.”
Still the only response from the council was blinking. Will resisted the urge to tear out great chunks of his hair, so he could stuff them down their throats and choke them all. Finally one turned to another and said, “Is he talking about permits? Preachers without permits?”
Will advanced on the man, who was in his thirties and, if his chin was anything to go by, the product of several generations of inbreeding. “All this,” he said, sweeping his hand at the table, and the alcohol, and the cards, and the coins, “is going to be taken away from you.”
The man looked at him dubiously. “By priests? Don’t be silly. You can’t fit this table out the door. They had to build it in here. No knowledge of woodwork, priests. It’s all chanting and writing with them. Obsessed with it, they are. Funny buggers, if you ask me.”
“By a fucking dragon!” Will roared into the man’s face.
“Don’t we have guards for this sort of thing?” said someone else.
“Oh don’t make them go yet,” said another. “I think this is rather fun. I mean, look at how angry he is.”
“I think he’s an actor,” said the woman who had been giving Balur the eye. “I think I saw him in a performance of The Rape of Themalee.”
“Oh I haven’t seen that yet,” said a third. “Is it any good?”
“He was quite good in it,” said the cross-eyed woman, thumbing at Will. “The rest of them were a bit amateur.”
“I wasn’t,” Will said through gritted teeth, “in any gods-hexed play.”
“Are you sure?” a fourth councilor chipped in.
Will looked to Lette. “I thought you said they had to pass exams to get here.”
Lette shrugged. “I don’t think they’re very hard exams.”
“Be suggesting that you will be pulling their intestines out through their mouths,” Balur suggested. “It is usually being quite effective when Lette is suggesting that.”
“Do you juggle?” called another councilor.
“Whose hand is it?” said yet another, who didn’t seem to have noticed the interruption to the card game yet.
“We’re not seeing anyone today,” said the woman Jocasta, putting a finger to her chin. “I remember it quite distinctly. I said to Fredricks outside that either that door stayed closed or my legs did. I was very clear on the whole issue.”
Will had had enough. He got up on the table and started kicking things over. As drinks spilled and coins went flying he felt he was finally getting their attention.
“I,” he said, “am Willet Fallows, prophet of Kondorra. I have led an army. I have organized the death of dragons, and you will fucking listen to me, or I swear by Lawl’s black fucking eye, Batarra will not have a council tomorrow.”
“Are we getting a day off?” asked someone from behind him.
“No,” Will snapped, “you are getting your shit together. There is a dragon at the gates, and he is telling how he’s going to steal the heavens from the gods. And along the way he’s going to take your country from you. So you are going to organize. You are going to get your military together and you are going to kick him and his preachers out of here. Because otherwise he is going to kill you. Each and every one. He is going to take all your wealth, all your power, and keep it only for himself.”
He turned in a slow circle, fixing each of them with his gaze, one by one.
And he was angry, and his heart was racing, and his breath was coming fast, and his fists were shaking, and he felt hot, and as if his shirt neck was slightly too small, but gods, he also felt fully alive for the first time since … since Kondorra.
Jocasta held his gaze. “You, sir,” she said, “are a bully.”
And abruptly it was Will’s turn to blink.
“You come in here,” she went on. “You shout at us. You threaten us. You demand you have your way. You say someone is talking against the gods. Let them talk. This is Batarra. People can say things you don’t like. That’s allowed. We’re not going to hunt them down for you. You can’t bully us, sir. Not you. Not your devilishly attractive companion, nor your pet monkey-lizard. Though if your devilishly attractive companion would like to join me and Fredricks later, then she is more than welcome.”
Will was still reeling a little. A bully? Him? He suddenly felt absurd, standing up on the table and throwing a tantrum at them all. How in the Hallows had that happened?
“It’s a dragon,” he said, pleading. “It’s not a someone. It’s a dragon. And it doesn’t matter what he says. He wants to take this kingdom over and force it into slavery. It’s what they want. They’re animals.”
“Says you,” said Jocasta, still bristling. “I don’t know who you are. You don’t have any proof you’re even from Kondorra. We need someone like that expert … what’s her name. That one from Tamar. Begins with a Q …”
Will threw up his hands. “I know Quirk! She’s a personal friend.”
Jocasta rolled her eyes. “Prove it.”
“Ask her,” said Will with a certain amount of heat.
“Will,” said someone else, “she’s three hundred leagues away.” It was Lette, he realized. He turned and looked at her.
“Look,” Lette said, ignoring the council’s blather, “the way I see it we have two options. One, we can kill all of these fools.” She indicated the council with a sweep of her hand. “Take control. Fight off all those that resist the coup, and take control of the rest of the army.”
Neither Will nor the council seemed to be a big fan of this option. Balur looked hopeful, though.
“Or,” said Lette, “we could find someone they do trust, get him to accompany us, and show that person. Then they report back, and these people remove all their fingers from their arses and do something.”
“Of the two,” said no-chin, “I think I like the second one more.”
“Is there any way,” asked the cross-eyed woman, “that we can get to keep the big monkey-lizard as some sort of hostage?” She winked at the room in general.
“Just so you know,” said Balur, “I am being fine with that.”
Will was looking at Lette. She shrugged and a knife appeared in her hand as if by magic. A couple of the council members still capable of paying attention started backing away from the table and toward the door.
And part of Will did want to take option one. He did want all of these arseholes to die. They were small, and petty, and awful. He wanted to end them the same way he had ended the dragons. He wanted to be the man Lette had thought he was.
But of course, if he did that, then really he would be small, and petty, and awful. And murderous to boot.
He looked at all the smug, overprivileged faces staring at him.
“An observer then,” he said.
Then he tried to pretend that part of him didn’t regret it.
9
Home Sweet Home
Quirk cast furtive glances about the Tamathian University as she made her way through it. Striding down its familiar corridors and past its once-comforting courtyards, she felt as if every eye was on her. Expressions curdled. Boisterous conversations died. Whispers slithered back and forth. She tried to control herself, to keep her shoulders straight, hold her head high. She had nothing to apologize for. This was her gods-hexed home.
It just didn’t feel that way anymore.
In her sleeve, her pamphlets felt heavy.
Diffinax was a landslide in Tamar now. No one had seen him, and yet still his name was on every set of lips. His message was echoed on every street corner. Order had been lost from the world. The gods were to blame. Diffinax was their savior.
In its worst extreme, groups calling themselves Diffinites would patrol the street, setting right the things they saw as wrong. Exactly what definition of wrong they used depended on the makeup of the group. Some h
ated sodomizers. Others hated those with pale skin. Others found those who hewed to a particular god especially offensive. Diffinax’s message was significantly lacking in details. It simply required dissatisfaction. Hatred was an added bonus.
One day she had found a boy called Eyter lying in a pool of his own blood outside one of Toil’s temples. He had had the temerity to question the wisdom behind a dragon threatening to overthrow the gods. Some Diffinites had taken offense. Quirk had helped him to safety, helped bind his wounds, and then helped him make his way home.
It turned out Eyter worked at the university printing press. It turned out Eyter had not been cowed by the Diffinites. It turned out that this caused several nebulous ideas to condense suddenly in Quirk’s mind.
So now Quirk wrote pamphlets protesting Diffinax’s presence. Eyter laid them out after-hours at the printing press and left her the copies to pick up. Each time she had searched for the magic combination of words that would unlock the truth in people’s minds. Each time it had felt like the stakes had grown higher.
Distribution was the worst part, though. Walking about with a stack of pamphlets hidden on her. She could not simply hand them out at a street corner. It would be like handing out invitations asking the Diffinites to come and beat her to death. And no one wanted to be seen taking the pamphlets, lest they offer the same invitation. Instead she had to find the right places to leave them. Where they could be stumbled over, and taken without attracting attention.
She knew it was working, though. She had heard her words discussed in the quad. Never flattering words. But discussed all the same.
Let that be enough. Please Knole, let that be enough.
She finally made it through the gauntlet of unfriendly corridors and reached the door to the stairs to her garret. Breathing a sigh, she pulled it open and stepped into the welcome shadows.
“Quirk.”
She felt as if she had been gut punched. Afrit’s voice hissed out of the stairwell, soft and urgent.
“Quirk, we have to talk. This can’t wait.”
Flame leapt in Quirk’s heart.
