Mordew

by Alex Pheby

  Anaximander recognised this as a ruse – under the table Padge was preparing a pistol, double-barrelled, the gunpowder adding a pepperiness to the miasma of odours in the room. ‘Pay me with that scroll,’ the dog said, not so much in the expectation that that price would be agreed, but more to cause Padge pause and thereby give Anaximander more time to act.

  Pause Padge did, and because he did not have the magical augmentations that Anaximander had, his parsing of the various possibilities was much slower and accompanied by the tugging of ringlets and the checking of their disposition in a hand-mirror he drew from his pocket. Regardless, Padge was too slow. Anaximander leapt across the table, his claws extended, his teeth bared, threatening violence on two fronts: to the scroll and to Padge’s person.

  Padge raised the pistol and let off a shot, but not before Anaximander’s left forepaw collided with the man’s right arm, so that his aim was wide, and the bullet intended for Anaximander’s heart struck only his shoulder. Such a wound would disconcert both man and dog, but not Anaximander, who was bred to treat such events as inconveniences, and, indeed, he took the resultant surge of angry energy pain delivers and used it to clamp down harder with his teeth on the flesh of Padge’s neck. Unfortunately, this neck was no longer where it had been, Padge having pivoted in the split second after the gunshot, and the dog’s teeth clashed ineffectually against each other.

  Even a magic dog is bound by the laws of physics – momentum, gravity, inertia, etcetera – and despite Padge no longer being where Anaximander had leapt, the dog carried on travelling in that same direction until he reached the ground in a tumble of disparate objects, and when he turned to continue his attack, there was the fat man, oily and self-satisfied, pointing the pistol at him. In the moment before Padge spoke, while his lips were forming the words, Anaximander calculated that the possibility of enacting fatal violence against the man and thereby fulfilling the gin-wife’s requirements of him was still high, but only at the almost certain cost of Anaximander’s own life, something that would then outweigh the obligation he had established with her, which was, after all, only for the clearing up of some blood in her gin-house.

  And there was the new consideration – that suggested by the existence of the scroll – which, it seemed, superseded his previous mission. And also that he had made an attempt in good faith to do what the gin-wife had asked of him, to his own personal detriment. These three things, he felt, when combined with his now internally vowing to satisfy his obligation at a later date, the gin-wife having set no specific deadline for the conclusion of their business, allowed him to take his leave immediately and without delay, that being the safest course of action.

  Padge’s lips formed around a letter, but Anaximander had no desire to hear it spoken, and as he scampered under the table and away through the open door he closed his ears to it, and to the explosion from the second barrel of the pistol, though he could not ignore the burning in his hind leg where the bullet hit, thankfully on the opposite side to the existing wound on his shoulder, thereby allowing him to make a getaway, whereas a wound to the other side might well have made his progress dangerously unbalanced.

  Pain is a system by which a mind inhabiting a body is warned that there is damage to which it must pay attention. It presents to the mind as unpleasant if the damage is mild, unbearable if the damage is severe, but in both cases the function is to ensure that the bearer of the damage knows to effect repairs. If repairs cannot be made – if the bearer is incapable, or if the situation precludes the necessary effort – there is precious little point in the pain making itself felt, but make itself felt it does, so the intelligent dog must rationalise the pain away, by understanding that, yes, there is a bullet embedded in the joint of his shoulder, and yes, there is a deep gouge in the flesh of his hind leg, but this he already knows, and since he intends to attend to it at the first opportunity, whatever agonies it provokes in him need not be added to by the feeling of fear, despite that being what the body wishes him to also feel, fear being an excellent way to insist that the mind attend to the wounds promptly.

  Anaximander licked at his rump as he hid in a space behind a building some distance from Padge’s premises, but he did not stay there long – just long enough to ensure that Padge was not searching for him – and once he was sure that there was nothing to fear immediately and nothing that he could hope to do to tend to his wounds he came out from his hiding place and went straight to the source of the scroll, which was a substantial palace high in the Merchant City adjacent to the Pleasaunce.

  He limped and, despite himself, whimpered, and behind he left a very easily followed trail of blood, but this trail became less obvious as his wounds clotted and scabbed and he was more interested in the trail he followed than the trail he left, since the smell of the scroll was now very strong – stronger the closer he came to the building.

  Because the presence of a thing smells stronger than its absence, and Anaximander knew that the scroll was still in the possession of Padge, and was hence absent from the place ahead, its smell should have been reduced, not increased. The dog understood from this that the scroll was, itself, one of a class of objects with the same odour, and that one or more of these objects was in the place to which he was travelling.

  Knowing what he did – that the scroll dictated the terms of distribution of the wealth of Clarissa Delacroix, Treeves’s mother; that she lived in the slums with Treeves and his father – that much he could smell; that if she lived in the slums rather than in the palace ahead she might well be assumed dead; that Padge had taken the trouble of availing himself of the scroll presumably with the aim of falsely claiming the listed items – then Anaximander could deduce that property belonging to Treeves’s mother and/or Treeves, his companion Sirius’s service-pledge, were present ahead.

  Knowing also that man is an acquisitive being and puts much store by the gathering and keeping of objects, and that the people of the slums had nothing, but might want much, then it seemed to him that to reconnoitre the palace and make an inventory, however basic, of the objects belonging to Treeves’s mother and/or Treeves would provide information of interest to Sirius, someone Anaximander was always keen to satisfy, as has been established, on the grounds of their shared struggles.

  So on he went.

  The doors to the palace were firmly shut and of a solidity unlikely to yield to the force a dog can muster, nor did Anaximander feel he could walk up and announce himself and expect to be granted entrance, so he followed the boundary of the grounds to a place where there was a wall low enough for him to climb.

  Onto this wall he jumped, making his wounds protest and reopening recent scabs, something he quickly forgot since on the other side of the wall were dogs, several of them, disguised in their smell by virtue of the fact that they had been washed and perfumed and coiffured as a person might be and did not smell like dogs at all.

  As we know, dogs cannot generally speak, but that is not to say that Anaximander could not converse with them, since there is in pack animals a shared form of communication that exists silently beneath the perception of man, a kind of thought-exchange, that, while less specific than the language of words, is no less complex and which can be used to garner and give information very effectively.

  Anaximander jumped down and the dogs, five altogether, all female, circled him and sniffed him, and though no transcription of the thought-exchange is possible, since it is conducted without words, they were concerned over his wounds, excited at his presence, delighted at his size, intrigued by the aura of magic that clung to him, earnest in their desire to be released from the grounds of the palace, suspicious in general, unsatisfied, hungry, under-exercised, and a hundred other emotions so specific to dogs that there is no way of representing them to anyone who is not a dog.

  Anaximander, though he presented himself to himself as a dog of the world by virtue of his abilities in speech and his intercourse with the affairs of men, was somewhat overwhelmed by the presence o
f so many other dogs, and females at that, and for a little while all thoughts of the scroll departed and during this time the less said the better, since voyeurism is, at the least, rude, but when they had attended to the affairs that dogs find very natural and normal, but which men find objectionable, he returned to his former business and learned, by thought-exchange, all that these dogs knew of the matter at hand, which was a great deal, since dogs had little to do in that place but to sit quietly and look neat, and so their minds filled themselves with the comings and goings of the people there.

  First Anaximander learned that the scroll had been stolen by Treeves, Gam and Prissy, Anaximander recognising them through a thought-account of their smells. Then he learned that the palace had gone into turmoil at this event, so much so that the general routines were altogether disrupted. Then, that Clarissa, who had been missing for so long, was shortly to be determined dead under the law, and that efforts were being made to locate her heir, Treeves, and that should he not be located by the end of the season, the majority of the wealth of Mordew would pass to her nearest living relative, a distant cousin, who was their owner, and that this was all the people of the palace could talk about, even the servants. Clarissa had lived here herself, which is why he could smell her things, but she had always been a troublemaker and had turned her back on her family and gone off with her mate, of whom the family disapproved, and fled.

  There was a great deal else, and while they shared the other dogs did their best to lick his wounds and put him at his ease, but Anaximander could not relax, since he knew that Treeves’s mother was not dead, and that this was both an enormous opportunity and a dreadful risk since a live person may claim their wealth, but they may also be killed to ensure their wealth is passed on, and now the dog saw two ways – the wealth might pass to the owner of these females, and it might pass to Treeves. If it passed to Treeves then this was why Padge had a stake, since he might force Treeves by his means to transfer ownership of all or part of this wealth to Padge himself, and these means might include violence to Treeves’s associates, including Sirius.

  When this last thought struck him, he left without a glance behind, though he did leave them with his sense of gratitude, and they gave him the hope that he would return.

  His intention had been to run to the slums, to find Treeves’s mother, to describe to her what he knew, and to outline his reading of the possible outcomes so that she might judge the best course of action for herself, but as he ran he felt himself growing weaker. This was much more abrupt than the gradual weakening one might experience on the receiving of an infection in a wound, and that is often accompanied by a fever and the excretion of pus from the infected site.

  Anaximander turned his attentions inward with that sense that animals who live their lives by relying on their bodies have, feeling for anything unusual, and it wasn’t long before he realised that the bullets that Padge used were made from a poisoned alloy. This he could tell because the wound on his rear leg, where there was no bullet embedded, was clean, but the bullet in his shoulder was leaking a metallic stinging sensation, and that this sensation was spreading into the flesh surrounding, most worryingly into his throat and neck, which were swelling. And now his ear on the one side, and his eye, and his muzzle was numb and, all in a moment, he slumped sidelong to the ground. It was all he could do to drag himself under cover, which he found behind a log pile, sheltered in the doorway of a merchant house.

  Time then passed in an unusual manner, both excruciatingly drawn out and accelerated, and he drifted into and out of consciousness so that, had he been asked to account for the time, he wouldn’t have known when it was, or how long he had been lying there. At one point he was dragged by a servant into the street and could barely raise his head to indicate he was alive. Speech left him and he was taken away on a cart, it seemed for disposal, since he was piled with other rubbish at the edge of the slums and left there, where he was eyed by seagulls and pecked occasionally.

  It is shameful to be unable to defend oneself from vermin, and Anaximander felt shame as he lay there, rats nibbling at his raw flesh, but whatever took a taste of him did not take another – he surmised, later, that the poison had tainted his meat and made it unpalatable – and so he survived their predations, though he could not fend for himself in any other way.

  He managed to reach the ground one day when the pile he was on collapsed under its own weight and he tumbled into a pool of the Living Mud. Here he lay and reconciled himself to death, since he showed no signs of recovery and was weakened by a lack of water.

  This sense of his own passing came to a head when, opening his eyes and taking what he felt was his final breath, he smelled Treeves’s mother, and saw her, clad in white, black-eyed and barefooted, walking towards him. It is well known that those who are about to die are visited by visions of the other side, proximity allowing a bleeding across of sensations proper to that realm, but Anaximander was more rational than this, and he believed that, instead, this was a kind of delusion brought on by the mind when it has lost all hope and seeks to fulfil its wish for salvation by whatever means it has at its disposal, even if it is a phantasy.

  Whichever it was, he used his remaining strength to say ‘Clarissa!’ This, if nothing else, was a way of expressing that uniqueness of being that he possessed, one last time, by making a word and indicating his ability to describe the world through language.

  By coincidence, if you prefer to believe in such a thing, or by fate, or by magic, or by the actions of the corpse of God in conjunction with that aspect of his spirit that her son possessed, this vision was Clarissa Delacroix in truth, mother of Nathan Treeves, leaving her hovel following the death of her mate. She had, Anaximander would learn as she nursed the dog back to health, only ever come to the slums to force her mate to use his power, something he refused to do no matter how hard she baited him. On the day of his death, she decided to return to the Merchant City and await Treeves, who was coming into his magical inheritance. She took Anaximander with her for company, demonstrating an unusual degree of strength for a woman of her physique by carrying him across her shoulders, until they both came to a house the key to which was hidden under a bucket in the front. There she made a fire and fed him good meat which she bought with a stockpile of gold coins.

  From this point onward Anaximander was hers, service-pledged, and the gin-wife, in his opinion, could go hang.

  The dog and his new mistress remained mostly in the house, except for short periods when they went out to purchase supplies. These they got from traders on the slum margins and in the slum proper, since Clarissa was keen not to draw attention to herself by going into the Merchant City – where she was well known by virtue of her high birth – and on their returns they occupied themselves mostly with talking. This was an activity that was sufficiently stimulating for both of them since Clarissa’s story was of great intrinsic interest and, though Anaximander knew no narratives of anything like as much complexity as hers, his mistress had spent many years with no-one to talk to and thus had a pent-up desire to express herself.

  Over the several months during which Nathan Treeves was contained within the Manse of the Master of Mordew – and despite any incongruity between time as it passed in the city and time as it passed in the Master’s places, of which there was some, given that the interior of the Manse, Clarissa said, was contained within a ‘discrete intermediate realm’ not identical with the ‘material realm’ in which everyone else found themselves – there were discussed a number of strands of information which Anaximander was until that point unaware.

  Firstly, he learned that the Treeves’ lowly estate as slum-dwellers was a relatively recent development in their fortunes, confirming what the palace dogs had suggested but adding the information that, on the discovery of Clarissa’s pregnancy, Nathaniel Treeves – Nathan’s father – had had something of a crisis of faith brought about by a set of circumstances the details of which Clarissa was as yet unwilling to discuss, and on
which Anaximander consequently did not press her. Whatever these circumstances were, they made it so that Nathaniel gave up all his previous activities – again, particulars of which Clarissa withheld, though they clearly had something to do with events of weight and consequence, at least judging by the shadowing of Clarissa’s mien that occurred if mention of them was accidentally made – and disavowed all of his former acquaintances. He led her by the hand into the slums, where he seemed determined to die through inactivity. This was something that proved difficult to achieve, and it was more than a decade before he could do it. This she found terribly difficult for the understandable reasons that: it is hard to see someone whom you love disintegrate slowly over years; it is awfully dull; the daily trials of slum life are wearing in the extreme; someone of high station finds the slums appalling through contrast with their former life; the slums are both very distant from one’s former life, but not so distant that one cannot be discovered by those determined to do so; but primarily because she saw no pressing need for him to do it when better alternatives were available.

  Secondly, that despite the above, she would not have returned to her family palace, Delacroix House, to take up her role as princess for anything, since she was of the opinion that such a thing was a ridiculous and unworthy use of her time. Related to this was talk of her real business in life, which was related to Nathaniel Treeves, the Master of Mordew, the Mistress of Malarkoi, God, an organisation called the Crusades, a thing called a tontine, a thing called the weft, and a long-running – confusingly, she seemed to imply the length of this period was measured in centuries – dispute over dominance of this or that aspect of the above listed. Work towards resolution of this business Clarissa carried on in the slums, where she performed experiments designed to end the struggle in her favour, though these she did not explicate.