The Hod King

by Josiah Bancroft

  It took him more than an hour to clean up the mess the general’s men had made of his room, then he scrubbed the lingering flecks of whitewash from his wrists, shaved his cheeks pink, oiled down his hair, and put on his only remaining untattered coat. As Senlin packed his billfold with every last mina the Sphinx had given him, he reassured himself that he was not making a mistake. The fact that the duke had responded to the letter was promising in itself. It was not a bad plan. Probably.

  When he stepped from the warm, glowing foyer of the Bon Royal, he was surprised by the heavy bank of fog that engulfed the city. The fog reduced the blazing coin of the Pelphian sun to an orange smudge. The city, he’d been informed by Mr. Stull, was always slow to dry after its regular baths. The fog would linger most of the day.

  Hearing a now familiar rustle overhead, Senlin looked up to find a macaw perched upon an iron sconce. “You burned the roast!” the bird squawked. Senlin called back, “You stupid cow!”

  An arguing couple erupted from the hotel doors. The pursuing gentleman had one arm in his coat. The lady was still buttoning up her tailored jacket when her companion caught her by the arm and tried to pull her back toward the lobby.

  “I meant it affectionately, darling. Even the breath of a kitten reeks sometimes,” he said.

  She jerked free of his grip, and he stumbled backward up a few steps. “Well, since we’re being so affectionate in our criticisms, Mr. Morris, I’ve pulled bigger worms out of apples!”

  “I’ve pulled bigger worms out of apples, Mr. Morris! I’ve pulled bigger worms!” the big parrot said. It spread its wings and glided out over the hazy plaza, repeating the phrase as it went.

  “Oh my god!” The gentleman cupped his forehead in horror. “Stop that bird! Someone shoot it! Shoot it!” he screamed as he charged after the vanishing parrot.

  Trusting that the Colosseum had not moved in the night, Senlin set out into the fog. Though the white city was blindfolded, it was not gagged. The haze rang with a thousand voices that crashed, overlapped, and blended into babble. The singsong call of a newsboy rose above the chatter: “Reverie! Reverie! Read it in the Reverie! Sphinx’s warship prowls the sky again! The Sphinx is back! What’s his game? Reverie! Reverie! Read it in the Reverie!”

  Senlin smiled. Edith was under way. The news refreshed his courage. He wouldn’t be friendless in the city for much longer.

  This happy thought was interrupted by the sudden realization that his toe had caught on something unforgiving. He had to trot several steps and swing his arms to keep himself from falling. When he looked back to see what had tripped him, he found one of the crystal manhole lids had popped a few inches up from its bed. He noted that, unlike the other quartz dials in the plaza, this disc was unlit. He was wondering what that could possibly portend, and then the plate began to rise from the cobblestones. It pulled along a bronze column like a nail from the ground. No, not like a nail, he thought—like a screw. The pillar twisted as it rose past Senlin’s knees, his waist, his shoulders, and finally past the top of his head. There, the screw stopped turning, and Senlin found himself facing an ornate column that was as wide as a drum of wine. In between the threads of the screw, black grease clung to scrollwork that evoked the veins of a leaf.

  An embedded plaque in the side of the column caught Senlin’s eye. The bolded herald declared: WILL-O’-THE-WISP, and in a smaller typeface beneath that appeared the lines: DO NOT FEAR THE SHADOWS CAST BY MY LIGHT. THOUGH THEY MAY HOLD THE SHAPE OF TRUTH, THESE VISIONS ARE NOT REAL. A GIFT FROM THE SPHINX.

  As Senlin read, a crack appeared down the length of the column, and a seamless door swung open toward him. He glimpsed a gloomy closet within, and he leaned in to investigate. Senlin was just starting to wonder why the Sphinx had built a device to spring unbidden from the Pelphian floor when he was pushed to one side. A buxom woman in an overlarge hat pressed past him into the cavity, crying as she went, “It’s mine! It’s mine! I saw it first!”

  Before Senlin could argue, the curved door clamped shut behind her, and the column began to twist slowly back into the floor.

  He wondered where the pillar led, and why the woman had been so keen to ride it down, but these were questions that would have to wait for another occasion. For now, he had an appointment to keep and the more pressing mystery of the duke’s character to unravel.

  When the Colosseum emerged from the mist, it seemed as abrupt and menacing as an iceberg. Senlin nodded to the guards stationed about the barred entryway and crossed the portico to the echo of his own heels. He could still detect snatches of the building’s former glory: He saw it in the pillars, stout as oak trees, and in the pale red-veined marble floor, which seemed to have been sliced from a mountainside and delivered in one piece. The noble figures in the lintels stood half-obliterated, the result, Senlin had learned from an old article in the Reverie, of insufficient ladders and indifferent demolitionists. The plinths between betting counters held ashtrays that overflowed with cigarette butts. Doves and magpies roosted in the ruined remains of friezes. Their calls diverged and harmonized like a tuning orchestra. He had arrived in the lull between fights. A few men wearing slept-in suits studied betting sheets, reviewing past mistakes and laying the groundwork for future ones.

  Approaching the stairs to the Coterie Club, he saw the way was guarded by the same mustached doormen who had torn his money and ripped his coat. Senlin couldn’t quite suppress a triumphant smirk.

  “Good day, gentlemen!” he said. The doorman with the hooped mustache raised his hand, preparing to strike. He halted when he saw the flash of the duke’s gilded calling card. “Please tell the duke that Mr. Cyril Pinfield is here for our appointment.”

  The doorman directed Senlin to put his palms on the wall, which he did, his smile dwindling. The doorman frisked him so violently, Senlin thought his ribs might crack. He’d seen carpets beaten more gently. The doorman rummaged through his pockets, removing a set of hotel keys, a pad and pencil, and a plump billfold. Even when it was apparent Senlin had come invited and unarmed, they did not let him pass. The second doorman marched upstairs, presumably to consult with the duke, while the other stayed behind to glare at Senlin with his hand on his sword.

  Bruised and annoyed that his moment of petty triumph had been spoiled, Senlin decided to torment the guard with some Boskopeian small talk. He said, “I had a dream last night in which I’d been turned into a sandwich.” One of the doorman’s eyebrows rose. “I had the distinct impression that I was delicious, but I don’t know what sort of sandwich I was. Perhaps pickle?”

  The guard gave a long and shuddering sigh.

  A handsome young man with a jutting blond beard trotted down the stairs. He wore a long frock coat that flattered his broad shoulders and trimmed his waist and contained more buttons than could ever be practical. His complexion radiated vitality. He showed a flash of immaculate teeth and stuck out his hand. “So you’re Cyril? Wilhelm Pell. But, please, call me Wil.”

  After the doorman’s frosty reception, Senlin was surprised by the duke’s warmth. He looked into the man’s sage-green eyes and understood why Marya had trusted him. He projected a sort of friendly sincerity. Senlin bowed and said, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Your Grace.”

  “Let’s not stand on ceremony, Cyril. In my experience, the men that lean hardest on their titles are the ones who did nothing to earn them. I loathe men whose greatest accomplishment was being born.”

  “Indeed, Your Grace!” Senlin said, and deciding there was no time like the present to introduce his Boskopeian awkwardness, he added, “And speaking of loathsome, I seem to have developed a hole in my sock. Isn’t that just the worst sensation: moist leather on bare skin? It’s like stepping on a toad.” Senlin gave a snickering, unsettling laugh but laughed alone.

  “Yes,” the duke said in the slow, vague way of a man reconsidering his first impression. “Well, let’s get you out of the hall.” He clapped Senlin on the arm. “I’ll show you the club.”

  Durin
g Senlin’s time at university, a distinguished don of letters had once invited him for a drink at the Fox and Chase Gentleman’s Club. The club, an old, converted manor, stood on a hill overlooking the campus, a spot chosen to give underclassmen something to look up to and admire. The don had extended the honor because he wished to discuss Senlin’s essay on the influence of maritime ballads upon the poetic canon. The gray-maned don wanted to edit the essay for publication. Senlin had felt more than a little flattered by the don’s attention and by the gin punch he was handed at the door. But the superior feeling was short-lived as it soon became apparent the don intended to assume complete authorship of the essay while Senlin would be compensated via that great nontransferable, nonrefundable currency of academia—gratitude.

  Yet, for all its leather upholstery and gin punch, the Fox and Chase Gentleman’s Club had been little better than a glorified reading room. The Coterie Club, by comparison, was a shrine to leisure. The bar, which encircled the entirety of the club, was fortified with exotic bottles and voluptuous glassware. Tucked among the rare port wines and brandies stood the stone busts of noble gentlemen and ladies, all of whom had been amusingly decorated with eyepatches, fussy hats, scarves, grease makeup, and wigs. The high tables that hugged the rail over the arena were set with bone china and tented napkins. Overhead, a system of belts turned a bank of fans, creating a leisurely, pleasing breeze. The hour still being relatively early, the club was empty save for the staff and a few gentlemen reading the Daily Reverie at the bar.

  But it was what lay underfoot that first captured Senlin’s attention. The floor was tiled in capital letters, turned this way and that, forming an unintelligible jumble that frustrated his habit of reading whatever was set before him.

  “I see you’ve noticed the floors.”

  “There seem to be an awful lot of misspellings,” Senlin said with affected earnestness.

  The duke laughed. “It’s only decorative.” The duke went on to explain that the letters had once been part of the building’s masonry that had been removed during the renovation and repurposed as floor tiling. Senlin wondered what lofty maxims had been lost in the tile-layer’s shuffle.

  “What was this building before? A courthouse?”

  “No, it was Ostraka University, College of Arts and Sciences.” The duke noticed his guest’s fleeting expression of surprise, though he misunderstood its cause. Senlin was thinking about the murderous hod and the book on trilobites that had once belonged to this now defunct university. It seemed a funny coincidence. “I know. It’s quite a mouthful, isn’t it? But you know academics: Why spend one word when you can waste three?” the duke said.

  “And those old stone heads wearing lipstick and wigs behind the bar—the former faculty?”

  “And deans, department heads, a laureled alumnus or two. I like bringing a little humor to the humorless.” The duke gave another winning smile. Though he smiled back, Senlin took the duke’s disrespect for academia as something of a personal slight. Surely this was proof that the duke was a scoundrel of the first degree! But then, knowing what he knew of the Tower’s institutions, publications, and so-called scholars, Senlin wondered if it was so unwise to assume that Ostraka University had been a bastion of enlightenment. For all he knew, the duke was scorning the men behind the Everyman’s Guide.

  The duke said, “I have a regular table, but I prefer the bar, if you don’t mind.” Senlin said he didn’t mind and followed the duke to a spot at the bar where an open newspaper and empty cup awaited his return. The bartender was a lean man with a short ponytail and a protruding Adam’s apple. The duke called him Joachim, and after asking for more coffee, invited his guest to order something.

  “May I have a cup of warm water, please?” Senlin said.

  “Warm wa—” The bartender looked to the duke, who seemed just as surprised. Senlin pretended not to notice their confusion, and the bartender recovered his professional air. “One cup of warm water coming up.”

  Senlin withdrew and opened his billfold. The fat edge of his banknotes, packed as tight as the gills of a fish, drew the duke’s eye, which of course had been the point.

  The duke waved off the offer. “Please, you are my guest. And I think I can afford a cup of warm water.” He smiled, perhaps hoping for some further explanation. Senlin only thanked him and promised to buy the next round. “So, Cyril, tell me, what business are you in?”

  “Accounting. Most of my clients are importers: sugar, coffee, tea, lard, rum, that sort of thing.” Their drinks arrived and Senlin sipped his warm water while the two other men watched with thinly veiled disgust. He rolled the water about in his mouth, swallowed, and made a sound of great satisfaction. “Tongue temperature: Perfect!”

  The duke’s smile was beginning to lose its luster. “Your office is here, in Pelphia?”

  “No, in Boskopeia.”

  The duke slapped the polished bar and belted out a laugh. “Oh, you’re a Boskop! That explains it! Here I’ve been wondering if you weren’t mad after all that business about the hole in your sock and drinking spit water. Now it all makes sense!”

  “Do you really have such a prejudice against my countrymen?”

  “Don’t take it so hard, Cyril! We Pelphians just like our cakes sweet, our spirits strong, and our parties wicked. But honestly, we have too many idiots running about.” The duke opened his frock coat and reached into the breast pocket. Senlin recognized the letter he pulled out. “I’d rather talk business with a Boskop accountant than a Pelphian fop. Which brings me to your letter.” The duke tapped the corner of the folded sheet on the bar. “I get dozens of these every day—men asking for loans or investments or the use of my name, which is a sort of currency itself. But you …” He clucked his tongue, his smile tinged with disbelief. “You want to turn my wife into stock?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do.” Senlin laced his hands upon the magnificent bar.

  The idea had developed over the hours Senlin had spent studying Pelphia’s obsession with Marya. It was obvious to him that the ringdom had turned her into an ideal. It was an urge he understood all too well. Perhaps it was only human to heap perfection upon another person and then worship the figment that resulted. And surely many of her devoted fans adored her without expectation. But so many had a stake in her fame—newspapers, venues, to say nothing of the socialites who wanted her at their parties—that at some point Marya had transformed from the subject of affection to an object of value. Senlin felt he had a fair notion of how Pelphia conceived of the Mermaid, but what he didn’t know, what he needed to know, was how the duke thought of Marya. Had he married her out of real affection or some base ambition? Senlin’s plan was to tempt the man with riches and fame and see if his love had a bottom line. So in his letter he proposed that the duke allow him to manage the sale of shares in his wife’s musical career. If the duke agreed to the transaction, Senlin would know for sure the man was a cad and Marya was in trouble. If the duke refused … well, the jury regarding his character would still be out.

  “I’m just not clear on exactly what you’re suggesting,” the duke said. For the first time, and to his credit, the duke’s smile vanished and was replaced by a frown. “Marya is a person. She is my wife. I’m not selling my wife.”

  Senlin glimpsed in the man’s passion what seemed to be sincere adoration. But he wouldn’t be so readily convinced. He pressed on. “No, you’d be selling stock in her name, in her likeness, her performance, her songs, her fashion, her brand of scent, and so on. She’s more than a person at this point, isn’t she? She’s a concept, an enviable ideal. And an ideal you can sell.”

  The duke drew a long breath, his beautiful brow beetled with thought. “I like your perfume idea. There’s something to that, I think. But as for the rest of it, you’re just describing her accomplishments. She’s already wealthy and renowned. Why does she need to be turned into stock?”

  And here it occurred to Senlin that his efforts to test the duke might incidentally corrupt him. But Senl
in knew the duke was a savvy communicator, a man accustomed to dealing with the press and presenting himself in a positive light. Senlin had to tempt thoroughly without pressuring him into doing something beyond his moral inclination. It seemed a tightrope in the dark: He had to feel his way forward.

  Senlin said, “The Tower is a big place. There are many, many ringdoms, many venues, many opportunities. What if your wife’s play was popular in the ringdom of Thane, or Japhet, or Banner-Wick, or Morick? What if she could tour the Tower, sell out shows in all the great playhouses? What if her perfume was on the neck of every fashionable lady in Andara Nur?” Senlin saw in the duke’s roving gaze that he was imagining the future as he painted it for him. “I think all of this is possible, but you will need help sowing the seeds of her success. You’ll need local partners, men who know how to promote and peddle and curry favor with local trendsetters: the journalists, dandies, and young ladies. You could try to research and finance all of that on your own, or you could sell stock in her; give many people a small sliver of her potential. Those shareholders could prepare the way for her, so that when she arrived on each stop of her tour of the Tower, the crowds would be ready, waiting, and immense. She could be the Tower’s first real star.”

  The duke squinted with thought. “It’s ambitious, I’ll give you that.” He examined the last sip of coffee rolling about the bottom of his cup. “But you’re forgetting something.”

  “What’s that?” Senlin said with a hopeful eagerness that had nothing to do with money.

  “The lady has a mind of her own. She’s not a pork belly or a sugar beet. She would have to agree to it. Because, after all, she’ll have to live it.”

  Senlin tried to hide the sudden lurch of disappointment he felt. The duke had refused the lure. “Of course,” he said meekly.

  “And what’s your place in all this? It seems to me you may have already given me your greatest contribution—the idea.”