ARC: The Corpse-Rat King

by Lee Battersby

  “Enter.” The voice from within was imperious, clipped. Whoever was knocking was interrupting something far more important than their errand warranted, that much was made clear. Marius pushed open the door and stepped through.

  A trading ship is a working ship. All available space is devoted solely to the making of money. The only room not devoted to that noble purpose was used to house the absolute minimum number of sailors it took to make the journey possible. There is no room for frippery, for useless substance, for baggage or personal items not utterly necessary to the trader’s only mission – to make as much money in as quick a time as possible. Everything is streamlined, cut back, minimalist, functional. This was not the case within the walls of the captain’s cabin. The moment Marius stepped through the door his feet left bare wood. The cabin was floored with mosaic tiles, patterned so that he stood upon the lower paw of a puissant lion, whose roaring head poked out from under the oak four-poster bed underneath the starboard window. Heavy velvet drapes were parted to allow sunlight in, where they fell directly across the captain’s desk, a slab of black wood so large the cabin must have been built around it, rather than try and fit the thing through the door. The captain himself was sitting in a high backed chair that looked like a replica of the throne of Lenthus XIV, the so called Moon-King of Ureen. Marius hoped it was a replica – its cost would be merely breath-taking, instead of impossible to comprehend. Massive gold-framed paintings adorned the walls. Marius counted at least two Fermenis, and one Cabdur that, if genuine, was probably worth as much as the rest of the boat added up. Tables abounded, and shelves, piled high with ornaments collected from around the five oceans. Marius frowned. How could any of this survive even the most moderate sea, never mind the massive swells such as those he had experienced crossing the lower equator? Either everything was glued down with the strongest glue known to man, or this captain must have a boy solely employed to pack and unpack the room depending on sailing conditions. Marius caught movement in the shadows of the far side of the room. As if in answer to his thoughts a young lad emerged, no more than eight or nine years old, polishing a small picture frame and replacing it on a low shelf by the door to the captain’s wash room. He looked up at Marius and nodded a greeting. Marius returned it, and took a small step to the side, positioning himself so he stood in front of a small table that bowed under a field of velvet-mounted brooches and pins. He stood with his hands behind his back, and willed his torso to stillness. The captain looked up from a spread of parchment, and raised his eyebrows.

  “And you are?”

  “Marius Helles.” Marius gave the captain a good looking over. He was tall, thin, with a nose like a flamingo’s beak and a chin to match. His hair was tied back in the style favoured by certain Scorban nobles who had the sense to know exactly how long their family was, and wished for it to continue. His uniform, while certainly conforming to the standards of the Scorban Trading Guild in cut and style, looked to have been hand-sewn by merchants who wished to keep all their fingers, and knew exactly which material would be most costly for the job. Almost every trader Marius had ever met dressed for comfort first, warmth and dryness second, and protocol last. This man looked as if none of these attributes rated quite as highly as dancing. He drew up a pince-nez on a chain, and stared down at Marius from a mental distance of many miles.

  “And just what do you think you’re doing on my ship, Mister Helles?”

  “Spone sent me up.”

  “And?”

  “I’m your passenger. My companion left a deposit to secure a cabin.”

  “Ah. Yes.” The captain leaned back in his chair and folded long hands over his stomach. “Your strump… companion.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  The captain stared at Marius for several seconds, taking in the hood pulled over his face, the guarded stance, the motley combination of mismatched clothing. He smiled, a tight little thing worn by anyone who negotiates from a position of complete strength, and who has made their final assumption long before the voices have run out.

  “A small one,” he said. “The amount she left with us. It was, shall we say–”

  “A deposit.”

  “Yes. Quite so. Passage itself will take rather more remuneration, I’m afraid. A passenger takes up considerable space, particularly one who will contribute nothing to our trading mission.”

  “How much?” Marius had been expecting this sort of tactic. After all, when everyone can see the barrel, it’s only the one stretched across it who has to worry about its size.

  “Let me see…” The captain counted off on his fingers, silently staring at the ceiling. “Another eighty riner should cover our expenses. That is,” he added as Marius became even stiller, “unless there’s a problem.”

  “No.” Marius sucked his teeth. He needed this man. “Not a problem. Eighty riner, food and board in a private cabin from here to your destination. You are travelling to the Faraway Isles?”

  “Port Moubard, actually. Will that suffice?” The amusement in the captain’s voice could have strangled a parrot. Marius resisted the temptation to think of the captain as a parrot.

  “I’m not fussy.”

  “Evidently not.” The captain indicated the desk. “Payment in advance, naturally.”

  “When do you sail?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “When do you sail?”

  The captain stared at Marius. Marius stared back. Faced with the darkness under his unmoving hood, the captain blinked and made busy with his parchment.

  “First tide tomorrow morning. I’ll be battening up three hours before first light.”

  “You’ll have your money by dusk.”

  “Good.” The captain waved towards the door – Marius was dismissed. “Be here by then, with my money, and I’ll have a space cleared for you among the men.”

  “I said a private cabin.”

  “That’s not possible, I’m afraid. We simply do not have the room to–”

  “Ninety five riner, for a room above decks.”

  “Fine, fine.” The captain returned to his parchment. “Let it not be said that Ethamanel Bomthe was not an understanding man.”

  “Bomthe?”

  The captain looked up.

  “You’re aware of me?”

  “Not a bit.” Marius swung about and pushed through the doors, leaving the captain blinking behind him.

  Ninety-five riner in just over fifteen hours. One thing was certain – Marius wasn’t going to make that kind of money from honest work. Neither was he going to be able to pick enough purses. That left few options. Marius strolled down the gangway, deep in thought, dodging the stream of navvies still loading the Minerva with wares. At the bottom, the man called Spone gave him a distracted wave.

  “All right for the off, then?”

  Marius waved back. “Just getting my stuff.”

  “Right you are. See you for embarkation. Don’t get in any trouble.”

  Trouble, Marius thought as he headed off down the docks. That’s just what I intend to get into.

  ELEVEN

  North of the river, Borgho City takes on a different aspect. Whereas the south quadrants are closed in, warrens of alleyways and tenements, and progress is often marked as much by who decides to block off which alley mouth with their stall as by a traveller’s memory of the streets, the northern quadrants are more spacious. The streets are wider, the guards who patrol them – and guards actually do patrol them, which is another distinct difference – are cleaner, and once you crest the first line of foothills and move onto the slopes of Varius’ Folly, the hill that dominates this end of town, the houses begin to resemble small palaces rather than apartments, separated from each other by orchards and fences of ornate metalwork. There is good reason for this. Back when Borgho City was the centre of its own little fiefdom – before King Nandus disappeared on his disastrous campaign against the ocean, and the Prince of the House of Scorby had swept down at the front of ten thousand
men and announced that Borgho was now part of the new Kingdom of Scorby, much to the citizens’ indifference – the hillside had been occupied by whatever nobles the King had anointed each week. Even Littleboots had lived there, towards the top, in gold-plated stables that stretched for half an acre, with his own liveried servants and a field of finest grass, imported from Feen. The gold-plating had lasted less than twenty-four hours after the servants realised their equine master wasn’t coming back. But the stables still stood, as well as the warren of escape tunnels the King had built underneath, for Littleboots to use in the case of revolution. The whole thing had been claimed by the horse’s neighbour, a duke of some renown who swapped killing foreigners for importing their artwork, and the stables now stood as a magnificent folly at the bottom of his extended gardens. Whether the Duke knew of the tunnels beneath the stables was a matter of conjecture. His son did, and addicted to gambling as he was, it provided the perfect locale for a gaming hall of no little grandeur and quite a lot of bankruptcies.

  All Marius needed was a stake, and a table to join.

  The stake was no problem. Marius had had very little opportunity to be thankful for the deadness of his flesh, but the gewgaws he had lifted from Captain Bomthe’s side table made no impression on his pain receptors, even as the motion of walking caused them to dig into his back and buttocks. With a definite destination in mind, and a time frame to match, he wasted little time in extricating himself from the docks and striding through the peacock-coloured frontages of the fashion houses and lending men towards the gentle rise that marked the end of the commercial quarters and the beginning of their residential area. No aspiring merchants here – the owners of these double and triple storied keeps, surrounded by as many square feet of lawn as could be placed between their bedrooms and the press of humanity beyond the stone walls and elaborate metal gates, were the unofficial rulers of Borgho City. The King of Scorby may be sovereign of every stone in the ground and man or woman who walked across them, but just try ruling the citizenry without first feeding them, or clothing them, or at the very least, letting them watch pretty women take their clothes off while getting smashed on a Saturday night. The higher up the slope, the larger the lawn, and the more powerful the resident. At the top, well, Marius had been close, and the men and women who lived there were as far removed from the ordinary citizens of the city as Marius was from his birthright, and with as little concern for it. Right now, however, as he did his best to saunter as unobtrusively as possible along the well-lit promenades, and avoid the attentions of the fit and alert guardsmen who strolled along in pairs, he had a residence of only middling intimidatory presence on his mind.

  The fifth Duke of Milness had been, in his early youth, a powerful figure amongst the nobility of Borgho City. He was handsome, dashing, an astute commander in the tiny conflicts the Borghans had called wars in order to justify the cost of minting medals, and an even cleverer general of his family’s money on the trading floors. A popular figure amongst the matriarchs of the nobility, they saw in him a fine match for their daughters and weren’t above sampling the merchandise just to make sure. But a fall from his horse while playing a spirited round of whack-the-prisoner on his thirtieth birthday had changed all that. The duke had become withdrawn, reclusive, even – it was whispered amongst other nobles as they passed each other in the corridor on the way to swapping bedrooms – rather smelly. He withdrew to his estate halfway up the hillside, and it was presumed that only the endless procession of tradesmen who passed through the gates in the daylight hours could vouch for his wellbeing. Even so, after he was found dead on the floor of his bedroom one morning by a plumber who had dared approach his living quarters in pursuit of an overdue payment, his funeral procession was attended by hundreds of well-wishers who remembered his early days, and wanted a final glimpse of a man of such notable lunacy, and this in a city with Nandus for a king. Having no children of his own, the estate passed into the hands of a distant nephew, and it was only when the sixth Duke of Milness took possession of his new house did it become known what the old duke had been doing on his own all those years.

  In short, water closets. One for every room of the house, one behind every oak in the gardens, one on either side of every bed in all seventeen of the bedrooms. One inside each bath. All of them linked. None of them functional. The sixth duke opened every door and window in the place, and moved into an apartment in the centre of the city for over a year. When at last he could enter the building without his eyes watering, he brought several labourers with sledgehammers and wrenches, who proceeded to demolish every toilette in the place. Which is when they discovered the tunnels that the pipes all linked to, and following them, found themselves in the stables of that most noble and exalted member of the senate, Littleboots.

  Unkind gossips speculated that perhaps the fifth Duke of Milness hadn’t been so celibate after all. Downright vicious gossips wondered whether his isolation had been the result of being knocked back by the horse in question. The young duke simply filled in the pipes, sold the estate to an olive oil trader, and moved back to Scorby. Had he realised how quickly the trader would re-open the tunnels, and how often he would use them to enter the never-ending gambling saloon that had grown up under Littleboots’ stables, he would have asked a higher price.

  Things had evolved little since Marius had last visited the area. Merchants, as a rule, abhor change, unless they can control its value, and their domestic surroundings reflect this. The frontages that Marius passed looked as they had since he was a child – the trees were taller, and the vines that clambered along walls and dripped out onto the road were more established, longer in their reach. But they were the same trees, the same creepers. The gate he pushed through and the lawns he walked past were those originally put in by the fifth Duke of Milness, and the door he knocked on had a history only slightly shorter than that of his family. It swung open on the eleventh knock. A swarthy, middle-aged man emerged, dressed in nothing more than an expensive silk robe which hung loose, exposing everything to view, at least, those parts not covered by the white hand of the woman hanging from his shoulder. He stared at Marius with ill-concealed impatience.

  “Well?” he demanded. Marius coughed, and stared over the other man’s shoulder, deliberately ignoring the long, slow movements of the woman’s hand.

  “I’ve come for the game.”

  “Wrong house, friend.”

  “Marius Helles told me to ask for Vimineth Sangk.” He reached into his jerkin and removed the trinkets he had accumulated on the ship. “The entrance fee is fifteen per cent of the stake, he said.”

  Sangk smiled, and held the door open. “Helles? Why didn’t you say?” He relieved Marius of his burden and eyed them speculatively. “Three riner.”

  The gold frame alone was worth that much, but Marius said nothing. He’d been gifted something greater. Sangk didn’t recognise him, and that gave him an advantage. When it comes to gambling of any kind, you take whatever assistance you can find.

  “Where is it?” he asked, stepping inside and turning towards the double doors at his right.

  “Not that way,” his host replied. He removed his lady’s hand and drew his robe closed. “Go take a bath.” She slid away from him and shimmied down the hallway. Marius watched her go. When he looked back, Sangk was grinning at him like an Endtown pimp. “She moves like that all the time, friend. All the time.” He grinned wider, revealing a mouth full of gold teeth. “Let’s go.”

  He turned and made his way towards the rear of the house. Marius followed in his wake, doing his best to look like a gormless newcomer, even tripping over the dip in the floor he had made with a brass bust after a particularly drunken misadventure. He could have found his way in the dark, with his eyes closed and his legs tied together. But Sangk’s ignorance was his greatest weapon, and he was happy to trail along behind him.

  They reached the kitchen that ran the length of the house’s rear. Sangk beckoned him over to a ceiling-high larder
door, and swung it open with a flourish.

  “It’s a toilet.”

  “Appearances deceive, friend.” Sangk reached in and pulled a hidden lever. The rear wall swung open, revealing a tunnel.

  “They certainly do,” Marius agreed, and followed him into the dark.

  TWELVE

  The central ballroom of the duke’s underground tunnel system would be counted one of the eleven wonders of the world, were anybody counting such things. They weren’t, and as a consequence only gamblers, addicts and the desperate were aware of the place. Hewn from solid rock, it lay over forty feet from end to end, with a vaulted ceiling twenty feet high. Bas reliefs of great moments of Milness family history had been carved into its smooth walls, and if there were perhaps a few dozen extra enemies being smote, or the mountain lion being bested bare-handed was several touches larger than the mouldering skin in the upper library, who could argue with someone capable of commissioning such a place? Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the giant cavern was its colour – every surface was a bright retina-damaging pink. Tapers placed at head height filled the roof with a dingy black smoke which did little to dispel the feeling that the visitor had somehow managed to burrow his way through to the centre of a giant, petrified marshmallow. At the entrance, a fat man in greasy coveralls lounged on a chaise longue with a massive tray of fried entrails perched on his stomach. At Sangk and Marius’ approach, he levered himself into an upright position and nodded at Sangk.

  “Three riner,” Sangk said, handing over Marius’ stake. The fat man examined them without interest, then turned and rummaged in a large wooden trunk behind his seat.