The Crown of Ke’phar
J Simon
I
In distant Sa’bahr, pirates once abducted a story-mad lunatic in hopes of ransoming her back to her wealthy father. Instead, in a fit of dubiously divine inspiration, she attempted to inscribe every story ever told upon the captain’s forehead while the poor man slept. The other pirates spent so much time clustered around him trying to read the stories that they quite forgot to pillage or plunder. Under the leadership of their lunatic new captain, these curiously altered pirates proceeded to fill vast underground treasure-caves with storybooks, sing drunken sea shanties about libraries, and waylay the one floating book-repository that had ever been built approximately fifty thousand consecutive times. The previous captain, determined to destroy his successor, took to springing out and shouting the endings of every new story she found: ‘…and all the turtles ate spicy food until they shot up into the sky on pillars of farting flames and became stars!’ Angered, the lunatic hired a daft pirate lad to jump out and shout the endings at her first. Sure enough, the old captain was defeated: You can’t kill a man who’s already dead, and you can’t ruin a story that’s already been ruined. Of course, the lunatic never enjoyed a story again, but so what? Defeating the enemy is the thing, isn’t it? Not how you do it.
We Serzhi have more experience than we might wish in facing enemies. Years ago, the missionaries of distant Majra conquered and occupied our lands. Surely, Serzhen must be a barren desert realm of ignorant savages in desperate need of correction. It has sense, doesn’t it? If persistence and skill (plus a teeny bit of irrigation) summon a riot of colors and blooms from our fields; if crazed desert sages and insanely obsessed artists paint the sky with words until every color whose name has ever been spoken crashes together and drowns us all in stories; if perilously perceptive widows help merrily malicious maidens orchestrate dances that demonstrate the depraved depths of their demented wrongdoing; what does it matter? We speak with as many tongues as the sky has turtles, answering even the simplest question with stories enough to fill a thousand nights and a year. The Majeri have only one story—’because god said so’—but they tell it a lot.
In those early days, desperate and teetering on the utmost cliff’s edge, we cobbled together the best means we could to resist the Majeri. And defeating the enemy is the thing, right? The story-mad lunatic knew. Perhaps if I shouted out an ending to my story, I could seize control of the narrative: ‘And everyone cheered for Aris and gave him pie forevermore!’
Sadly, Reality seemed to have its own ideas about what should happen to me…
* * *
Many people called out greetings as I walked down Market Street. Being our people’s foremost lawbringer, able to defend his kin against Majeri excess by wrapping their own strict, inflexible laws around their necks… that has value, I guess. But there’s also value in being where you are and seeing what you’re looking at. Look, really look, at Market Street. Hear the chants of merchants telling a story halfway, in hopes that passers-by will stop to demand the rest. Smell the clashing yet curiously complimentary scents of flowers and spices, baked goods and incense. See the kaleidoscopic combinations of fabrics and colors formed by churning mobs of people as they surge toward the cleverest stories or most enticing deals. Angelic-faced old women fired pastry arrows at me from tiny crossbows on the theory that, if it was stuck to my burnouse, I’d have to buy it. Lovely veil-dancer girls whirled past—what an exquisite lie, those veils!—while their little sisters snuck up behind me and tried to pick my pocket. I must be a genius, because I pre-defeated every last one of them by the simple expedient of being poor!
I glanced again at the paper in my hand. It was a summons to the Majeri compound, the realm of our beloved conquerors. For once, it was couched as a request… not a demand. In a world as large and as strange as ours, surely all things are true somewhere. Surely I’ll someday be overwhelmed by a panting, ardent desire to strike all color but one from my eyes and all meaning but one from my tongue. Surely I’ll someday be willing, even eager, to visit the Majeri compound. Today was not that day. If I threatened my tongue and my eyes with such punishment, they’d presumably detach themselves and wander off to live lives of epic, even legendary villainy. Thus did I avoid the Majeri. I had no choice! By keeping my tongue and eyes inside my head, I was presumably saving the world!
“Aris!” called a familiar, beguiling voice. “Up here!”
I turned in a complete circle, trying to figure out what was going on. Then I looked up. For months, an elevated ‘street-above-the-street’ has been under construction, all rickety wooden scaffolding and impossible promises that threatened to drive me mad with anticipation. But now… finally!… it was open. Seeing the widow Essaffah wave at me, I blushed a little as I mounted the creaking wooden steps. Does anyone have a wider smile than Essaffah? All right, that’s a bad question, given the width of the average camel’s mouth. And if you think that camels don’t smile, I’d like to helpfully suggest that you haven’t been trying hard enough. You’ll need ropes and hooks and lots of wire, but I can assure you that you will eventually be trampled to death by an extremely happy-looking camel.
“Aris!” Essaffah cried. “Young hero-wizard-Sheyk! You must buy my cakes!”
The comeback slipped from my tongue as I climbed higher and higher above Market Street. True, the elevated street wasn’t all that high, but it gave me a very different perspective than I’d ever had. Unlike the effortless flight I’ve enjoyed in my daydreams, this was altogether more real and sweaty and intimately connected with thoughts of plummeting and crashing. Then I did a double take. Those children down below… were they intentionally leaning on the wooden props, causing the elevated street to sway from side to side? Yes! They were! Probably they’d been hired by the merchants of Upper Market Street, on the theory that a man fearing for his life would be too distracted to competently defend his coin pouch. I finally reached Essaffah—who was standing in something like a basket hanging off the left side of the rickety structure—and stopped, inhaling the wondrous scent of her dried honey spice-cakes.
“Aris!” Essaffah said, her eyes wide and round. “Since I define my self-worth by my ability to sell cakes, if you refuse to buy this one, you’re cruelly stealing all joy from my life! Are you truly that evil??”
“I’d be stealing all joy from your life?” I said laconically. “Nothing else gives you any joy at all? I’m sure your wife would be interested to hear that.”
“She knew what she was getting into when she married me,” Essaffah said complacently. “Assuming that she delights in my delight and mourns for my mourning, you’d be extinguishing all joy from two lives by refusing me now! Buy this cake or we’ll both send you envelopes containing a sole bitter tear every remaining day of our wretched and pitiable lives!”
“Will the two of you cry at me on alternating days, or both at once?” I asked, vitally interested.
“Aris!!!”
“Oh, all right. I guess I won’t crush your soul today,” I grumbled, reaching into my coin pouch. Essaffah’s greatest evil, I think, is that she makes being robbed so much fun. Being around her, one is likely to end up (1) extremely poor, and (2) drenched in honey. Then again, I’m not sure that’s such a terrible fate.
I moved on before Essaffah could strike again. The elevated roadway swayed dangerously, baskets on either side holding merchants who called and chanted and pushed at me with sticks. They weren’t actually trying to push me to my death, I decided—it’s just that the only way to steady myself would be to grab their merchandise. Or their faces. Something told me they hadn’t thought this through.
At the very end of the elevated roadway was a larger, more elaborate basket comprised of a thousand flowering vines all twined together. In it sat a man grand in both size and dignity, garlanded by beauty but with eyes harder than stone. Which, if you think about it, must make them a wondrous building material, if an extremely unsettling one.
“Sar Efrem!” I said. I bowed, and I meant it. “You’re looking well. Too well. Where there’s sickness, there’s doctors. By the transitive properly, your wondrous healthfulness must actually scare doctors away! Please, stop being so healthy, lest no one be left to heal the rest of us!”
“Aris,” he said, regarding me dispassionately. “May I speak plainly? No matter. Assuming that every dull, thudding fact I speak is actually a delightful metaphor for… something… I think you’ll find that my facts overflow with phoenixes.”
“…and your tongue is a weird kind of slimy wet flower?” I said eagerly.
“Of course it must be so,” he said, carelessly taking a sip from a flask that, I assume, contained something a trifle more inspired than water. I’ve tried to cultivate the immense power and presence that Sar Efrem exudes just by existing, but so far I’ve only succeeded in making my wife mistake me for a constipated frog (I think she was joking). Thus, I’m a perfect success, if you retroactively redefine what I was trying to do in the first place!
“Now,” Efrem said, “to business. When you broke my wealth a year ago, I swore I’d never forgive you…”
“Some would say that you’re still a fairly wealthy man,” I suggested, “only now, you’ve earned it.”
Sar Efrem looked at me. Just that. Lions look at gazelles that way, I think, when they want the gazelles to subject their lives to a thorough self-examination, end up feeling bad about themselves, and offer themselves up in shame to be eaten. It wasn’t the easiest thing to take, is what I’m saying.
“Aris,” Sar Efrem said, “today, you can earn a one-hundred-and-seventeenth share in my forgiveness—”
“Are those Ascension Flowers?” I demanded, staring in amazement at his colorful robes. Ascension Flowers are bud-shaped paper lanterns that, once lit, rise into the air. Expanding, heated air makes them bloom into spectacular flowers of immense size and color and perfection—and indeed, his garb seemed to consist entirely of unlit Ascension Flowers all wired together. On the one hand, I felt an overwhelming urge to light them. On the other hand, if his clothes rose up into the air and left him wearing nothing at all, would I be struck blind before or after I’d seen the glorious flowers floating above?
“I’m sorry,” I finally said, tearing my eyes from his robes. “What were you saying?”
Sar Efrem sighed. “Today, you can earn a one-hundred-and-seventeenth share in my forgiveness. Lying rumor claims that our beloved Majeri rulers have taken my daughter, Dhira, captive. Will you be a mighty great hero and go to her, riding lightning itself for your steed? I hope not. I’ve found that lightning has a deleterious effect on my daughters. Disappoint us all and ride the law itself into battle!”
“One-hundred-and-seventeenth… so I could earn total forgiveness by rescuing her a hundred and seventeen times?” I said excitedly. “Hmm. This could be tricky. If I kept accidentally tripping and shoving her back into prison, would that make you more or less likely to forgive me?”
Sar Efrem gazed levelly at me. “You have a peculiar habit of abducting my daughters. And, rather inexplicably, marrying them, at least in Eyla’s case. Abduct just this one more.”
“It will be done,” I promised.
Sar Efrem paused, annoyed, as the elevated roadway began to tremble. Several of the merchants were lowering goods on ropes to people waiting below. The people sent money up in return. It looked like they were selling and buying, but how could they be? They weren’t even haggling!
“What’s going on?” I asked, queasily gripping the railing.
“It’s the Mutuality Sodality,” Sar Efrem said, not bothering to conceal his contempt. “I suppose my words should be garlanded with lies and wrapped in beauty, but their ilk don’t deserve it. You know how the well-funded, well-established, refined and perfected Black Cabal acts as a criminal empire that moves goods to where they can be sold free of Majeri taxes? The Mutuality Sodality—a loose association of people all helping one another—does the same thing, only worse. Amazing! You know, I’m sick of relying on the ground to hold up my feet. Sure, it’s good at it. Sure, it’s reliable. But I want to try something different! From now on, I’m going to strap cats to my feet and try walking on them!”
“Of course it must be so,” I said dutifully. I went in for a hug, which I don’t think I’ve ever done before, and which was especially awkward given that Sar Efrem stared at me in abject horror the whole time. When I pulled back, there wasn’t a single Ascension Flower stuck to my burnouse. Oops. Next time, I reminded myself, apply the gum resin first. Sighing, I tried to figure out whether there was a way I could leave Upper Market Street without falling victim—again!—to the widow Essaffah.
* * *
Gaze at a flower; Behold your beloved; Look at an orange tree where every fruit has been trained into the shape of a manically grinning face. Feel happiness swell within, and wonder whether your eyes themselves are capable of drinking happiness from the world. You’d think, when I speculated about this, that Eyla would have made a simple rejoinder like ‘what about blind people?’, but instead, she wanted to know if losing happiness meant that it was spewing back out again—’barfing from your eyes!’, as she put it. With an enthusiasm I have reason to question, she’s still trying to get the phrase to catch on.
I was jostling my way through the bustling, shouting, merry chaos of Market Street when everyone started barfing from their eyes all at once. Silence fell. Storytelling ceased. All sound drained away. The click and clank of white-painted armor preceded a pair of Majeri soldiers as they marched up the street. Lies are forbidden in the occupied territory of Serzhen. If you strike all wonder from a man’s tongue, will he still be able to speak? The Majeri can, but I’m still not sure how they do it: A mechanical replacement tongue of steam-driven gears, or disciplining the original with a precisely coordinated series of small, wet whips?
The two soldiers stopped in front of me. “Aris Al-Sindba, a Serzhi, of Serzhen?” demanded the gaunt one.
“Some people like mint more than others,” I replied, a statement which was undeniably true, and therefore not a lie.
The stocky one dourly looked me up and down. “It’s him, all right,” he muttered, then raised his voice: “His eminence Dhrevos Scarb, Chief-Of-Mission for all Durbansq, has chosen to grant you the compliment of requesting that you attend him. Now.”
“Is that a request—or a demand?” I asked keenly.
The two soldiers exchanged unhappy glances. Apparently, the idea of not dragging me away screaming hurt their very souls.
“It’s a request,” the gaunt one admitted.
“Then, perforce, I will go… eventually.”
They fidgeted, grimaced, then finally turned and marched away. All around me, conversations slowly picked up, ranging from insult contests to all-out whimsy battles to epic fits of haggling filled with more florid words than the other two combined. I patted the message in my pocket. First that, and now this? Scarb wanted to see me, but he was being nice about it. There was something extremely disquieting about that. I considered answering his summons right away, but then, I also had Dhira to worry about. If I wanted to free her, I was going to have to refresh my memory on certain points of law.
I walked most of the way up Market Street, then took the proper turn and made my way to the House of Forbidden Delights. It was a grand, sprawling building of many courtyards, and it was the one place in Durbansq where we could be free of Majeri interference. Originally, it was billed as a house of ill repute, making the mere act of entering it a holy taboo that no Majeri could break. When they found a loophole to get around that, the House became a succession of other taboo-violating institutions… most recently, a madhouse for women who think they’re chickens (which may seem inoffensive until you remember that chickens don’t wear clothes), a coven of (surprisingly nude) artists who work only with offal, and now—finally—a make-believe slaughterhouse for people who were crazy enough to think they were animals, yet generous enough to want to feed their families.
“Animals only,” Yusuf said lazily.
“I’m a camel,” I said firmly, “and you must kill me! You must!”
“You’re a camel?” Yusuf said skeptically. “Prove it.”
I stepped right up to him, making a throat-clearing noise as if getting ready to spit in his face.
“Go in, go in,” Yusuf cried, “quickly—please!”
Grinning, I slipped past him into the House of Forbidden Delights. It was beautiful and airy, seemingly as much outdoors as in. Pairs of scholars strode past, gesticulating broadly as they held forth on new theories of being. Groups of children sat around their teachers, eagerly listening to one (hypothetically) educational tale after another. In one vine-swarded room, our copies of the Majeri lawbooks nestled under layers of tangled vines and blazing flowers. Talk about the lovely and the vile! Late some night, if the boom and blast of varicolored fire powder explosions scared a flock of bats into emptying their bowels, the mixture of wonder and profanity wouldn’t be exactly the same as this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a bunch of Majeri ran out to study it.
Ambika Breadsmith came over—don’t tell me that wheat can’t weep in fear, I know that the bread bearing the imprint of her mighty fists is saltier than others!—and questioned me on behalf of the City Assemblage. They’ve been doing good work these past months, coordinating our defense and making sure our response to the Majeri is consistent. She agreed that I should take Dhira’s case and added some other work, as well. It was nothing onerous… just approving and accepting certain concessions we’d gotten the Majeri to make. (As the Pearlbound Pirate could attest (you know, the one who escaped a gigantic oyster to find himself completely covered in pearls), miracles do occur!) I picked out some lawbooks and took them to a pleasantly shady courtyard to see what I could do for Dhira.
I’d written down various helpful laws and quotations when a grinning young woman swung down from the ceiling. Some of the stories I’ve heard posit wives as humorless nags or rescuable tracts of unattainable beauty: Eyla is neither of these. She’s small, but she’s a lot. If I gave her Ascension Flowers, she’d stuff them full of fire powder until an exploding wonderment of flame and beauty devoured the sky, and if the world happened to be destroyed, well, what a ride to get there, no? I still haven’t gotten used to the way wonderment seizes her very soul when she looks at something that amazes her… like me. I surely don’t deserve to be looked at like that, but somehow I keep forgetting to mention it to her.
“Aris,” she said, dropping to the ground in front of me. Her grin was predatory, not unlike the Cat Who Built Nests In Its Ears (it grinned all morning long, at least, before it got so dizzy from constantly whirling in circles that it ended up throwing up without end). Eyla walked up to me, with that groomed look of innocence on her face that meant that pure havoc was lurking somewhere very nearby. “You look like a man who doesn’t expect to be attacked by his wife,” she mused. “I like that! OH NO—WHAT’S THAT OVER THERE!?”
I flinched, but managed not to turn and look. “Stay back! I’m not Aris,” I said cannily. “I’m a tiger who devoured him and took his place.”
“You don’t look like a tiger,” Eyla said skeptically.
“Oh, but I am! And the proof of it is, I haven’t attacked you, due to the fact that I’m pretending to be human!”
“So, to prove that I’m me and not a tiger, I should attack you?” she said, brightening.
“Maybe I should have thought this through,” I sighed.
I’m not sure how I ended up face-down on the ground with sticks tangled in my hair and Eyla whooping with laughter as she sat astride my back. Presumably a djinni with a very weird sense of humor had something to do with it.
“What’s that you’re working on?” Eyla asked as she got off of me.
“Laws,” I said succinctly, on the theory that plain, boring truth might put her to sleep and allow me to get back to work. Eyla snatched my notes, her eyes narrowing as she looked them over.
“Dhira’s name is in here,” she said dangerously. “You know, I was going to defeat the Majeri by hanging a constellation of knives dangling from the moon. It would descend so slowly, they wouldn’t even realize they were being killed until half a month in. Clever of them to provoke me by abducting my sister. I’ll kill them much faster, now.”
“Some fools claim we should use the right tool at the right time,” I said uneasily, “as every butterfly who’s ever assaulted flowers with an iron-spiked mace could attest. Stay your hand. We have the law.”
“And I’m supposed to sit here, the good little wife, and wait for you to solve everything for me?” Eyla demanded. “Is that who you wish I was? If I just invoked the insidious criminal might of the Black Cabal…” She stopped herself in mid-word, looking like she was about to gag. “Honestly, who came up with a boring, pathetic name like ‘The Black Cabal’? I know! We should call ourselves ‘The Measureless Cruelty Of The Sedulous Snake’! That would make ‘em think!”
“Use the right tool at the right time,” I insisted. “If the law fails, then we’ll have to risk the Black Cabal, but until then…”
“So what you’re saying is, in order for my life to have meaning, I have to make sure the law fails,” Eyla noted, snuggling up to me. “Is that a motivation you really want to give me?”
“Ahhh…” I tried not to show how badly her closeness was distracting me. To judge from her barely-suppressed laughter, I’m not sure I succeeded. “It seems we disagree, yes? Let’s settle this with a game. You choose the game—”
“Aris-slapping!” she said immediately.
“I don’t think I like the sound of that.”
“I could slap you until you’re so dizzy that you do,” she generously offered.
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. The instant you win, you can do whatever you want, with my blessing… but since you chose the game, I get the first move. Agreed?”
“Agreed!” she said eagerly, her hand twitching. “Well? What are you waiting for?”
“An auspicious breeze,” I said judiciously. “I’ll make my first move, hmm, in a year or two. After which I’ll immediately surrender and let you, as the winner, do whatever you want. Until then, I’m afraid you have no choice but to meekly wait for the contest to be over.”
Eyla’s eyes narrowed. “I know where you sleep, you know. Next to me. Think about it.”
“Dhira will be freed,” I said fervently.
“Promise me.”
“I promise you a thousand times.”
“You’re a liar by your own admission.”
“But not a perfect one,” I said, smiling. “One of those thousand times, I slipped up and accidentally told the truth. Dhira will be freed.”
“I’ll leave it to you, then—for now,” Eyla said sourly. “But never doubt that my work of finding wonders for you to look at is incredibly important, too. If you kept barfing from your eyes all day, you’d presumably die of dehydration.”
“I, ah, hadn’t thought of that,” I admitted. Eyla climbed back up to the roof, and I turned back to my laws.
It was a curiously punctuated afternoon. Most of my time was occupied by the dry, staid regularity of Majeri law—but the moments that really stood out were when Eyla hurried back, having discovered something amazing she just had to share with me. Once she dragged me to another courtyard to stare at huge butterflies that hovered languidly in front of flowers like gouting fountains of heart’s-blood red. Once she brought back a baby stick insect and attempted to menace me with it (“Logically, the only way that I can protect you from harm is to know exactly what you need to be protected from… which, to an outside observer, might look an awful lot like chasing you around with bugs and laughing like crazy!”). Once she brought in my fellow lawbringer Candle-Of-Truth Hameen and somehow induced him to sing cloying love ballads at me. Given the way the light glinted from the scars on his bald head, the songs were all the more disturbing for the way his cold, calculating eyes never left mine.
I finally finished my notes, as ready as I’d ever be. I wasn’t sure where Eyla had gone off to, so I wandered from courtyard to courtyard so I could say my farewells.
I found her atop the Spire of Delight. The people that we lawbringers help tend to send in little messages of thanks: Notes filled with quaint animal stories, or happy colorful drawings splatted together by their children, or convoluted mathematical proofs that—having reduced their troubles—we’ve left them fewer stories to tell and therefore stolen from them. So many notes—and boxes, and packages, and other bulky gifts—have accumulated over the years that we’ve taken to stuffing them under the floorboards of a room which, as a result, now teeters nearly three people’s height above the rest of the House. If I ever feel melancholy, all I have to do is climb the spire halfway, stick my head in from the side, and drown in gratitude and glory enough to bury the world.
“Uh-huh,” Eyla said, nodding seriously as Sula the Stork finished telling her something. “I see.”
“Eyla?” I said, climbing up to her level. Sula nodded to me as she climbed down the other side.
“The Majeri, wondrous as they are, usually seize people just for existing,” Eyla said, her lips tight. “How generous! They can never stop giving us gifts, even if that gift is always ‘someone to hate’!”
“I know,” I said cautiously. “I’ve been working all day on a plan to gift the Majeri so many fun legal arguments, the weight will actually crush a melodious song of pain from their lungs that just happens to sound like the exact words that will set Dhira free!”
“But what if Dhira didn’t get swept up just for existing?” Eyla said bleakly. “What if she did something specific that broke Majeri law?”
I stared at her. “Something specific?” I said faintly.
“The right tool at the right time, huh?” Eyla said brightly. “All that research you’ve been doing, is it the right tool for this?”
“My sword, it’s specifically for stabbing spiders,” I admitted. “Hence the eight tiny blades. And now you tell me we’re hunting snakes? I suppose you’ll claim it’s my own fault for not wearing floppy, flexible swords that look suspiciously like work gloves—”
“Damn straight!”
“—but I need to know exactly what Dhira did.”
“I’d tell you if I knew.” Eyla paused. “Although not at first. I’d invite you to sensuously spank yourself until I considered myself amply repaid—with amusement!—for the information. That’s what I’d do if I did know… but I don’t. Maybe she tied the Majeri’s beards together and spun them around like the world’s ugliest kaleidoscope.”
“I didn’t know kaleidoscopes hated me,” I said, surprised.
“Dhira was arrested in the Banyan,” Eyla said. “Presumably, if I stab the rest of the world long enough, there’ll be nothing else left and we’ll abruptly find ourselves there!”
“Or we could walk,” I suggested.
“Oh, and that’s fun!” she snorted.
Giving my head a little shake, I offered my arm. Eyla took it (with a bright smile that told me I’d have to do something… interesting… to get it back), and we headed for the Banyan.
* * *
Some trees stand stately, tall, and graceful—as Eyla says, “like a bunch of boring wooden jerks that don’t know how to be interesting”. The Banyan is not one of them. Over the years, countless hanging aerial roots have found earth and grown into new trunks, allowing the great tree to spread and spread until a forest of one has conquered an eighth the area of Durbansq. The Banyan feels like something left over from a lost age, ancient and primal and utterly wild. Vast numbers of slender quasi-trunks make the Banyan look like a bearded mountain-orchid of incredible size that offended the gods by smelling better than them and so was turned to wood. I ducked under enormous spiders with yellow bodies the size and shape of bananas, while Eyla hooted at the little red monkeys that curiously followed us. Before long we came to an open gallery where the roots were kept trimmed back, and where the people of Durbansq could gather to gossip and trade. Old men held their granddaughters rapt with tales of perilous pirate princesses, while merchants of sober years tried hard to look like they weren’t listening in. Children played their daft hop-skip-jump games, and given that the “prize” seemed to involve being splattered with paint, I’m not sure if it went to the winner or the loser. Eyla and I made the rounds, questioning people about Dhira. No one had seen anything. Well, the Banyan is large. We might not have come to the right place.
I noticed that people were clustered around a niche in the great all-tree, staring in amazement at… something. I pragmatically got in line so I could wait my turn to see it. Eyla pragmatically screamed “FIRE!!!” and waited for everyone else to run away. Given that it was her saying it, they didn’t. When she opened her mouth to try again, I had no choice but to stop her by… well, kissing her. It was a horrible chore! Really! I didn’t enjoy it at all!
We finally reached the front. The thing in the niche was an orb of colored clay perhaps half my own height. Just that. Cracks radiated across it, imbued with gentle glowing colors like the first dim pulse of wood giving birth to fire, or the faint less-than-purple of an orchid’s shadow, or the shining brightness of a newly hatched dragonfly’s wings. Was there nothing more to it? It was interesting, yes, but hardly worth the attention people were giving it. Then my eyes shifted, and those few simple lines described an oddly sparse yet utterly perfect sketch of a laughing woman’s face, bursting with so much joy and life that I could almost hear her guffaw.
I glanced at Eyla to see if she’d seen it. Then I looked back… and the face was gone. I moved my head from side to side and blinked until my eyes went blurry, but it was nowhere to be found.
“There!” Eyla hissed.
I moved over to where she was… and those deceptively simple lines shifted into the face of an old man, suffused with a grief beyond time, sketched with such consummate skill that I could almost see the dead child he was grieving. Then I blinked, and that image was lost, too.
After a while (I found five images, Eyla six), Eyla and I let others take our place. Some artists are so obsessed with their craft that their works can take years, even decades to complete, and are true works of genius. Unquestionably, the artist who’d made this deserved the title of “Shandiki”. I paid my coin for the privilege of having seen it. If it traveled from town to town long enough, maybe I’d see it again. I’d like to think so.
“Hasn’t anyone here seen Dhira?” Eyla grumbled.
“If you went and got yourself arrested,” I mused, “we could rule that place out. After all, it would be a ridiculous coincidence—pretty much impossible!—that you’d be arrested in the exact same spot as Dhira. Just keep getting arrested over and over until we can rule out every place but one!”
“Or we could go to Bromeliad Throat. I told her about it yesterday.” Eyla shrugged. “Dhira seems to think that my whole life is one neverending cavalcade of wonders. The way she follows me around, you’d think she’d worry about getting her nose stuck up my—”
“Ahem!”
“I’ve told her about all kinds of happy fun desert pits full of scorpions and bones, but does she go there? No!” Eyla said bitterly. “She just shows up in Dog’s Nest, and has the temerity to be better at gambling than me! The moment I own my own tongue again, you’d better believe she’s going to hear my thoughts on the subject!”
I started to turn toward Bromeliad Throat, then paused, looking back at her. “Speaking of body parts, why did I find the Eyla Flag flying from my nose this morning?”
“Oh. That.” Eyla glanced sidelong at me. “Why do you think I put it there?”
I grinned, enjoying the challenge. “Let me think,” I said. “Ah! I know! Given that gods are immortal, presumably all the pieces of them are immortal. Meaning that, if one of them sneezed hard enough, you’d have two gods… one, a disembodied glowing nose floating from place to place and blessing people with its dewy, glittering, golden mucous. The other, a grim and noseless man forever pinning miscellaneous animals and people to his face in hopes of finally winning the annual Beauty Contest Of The Gods. Having an Aris stuck to his face, you feared, would make the other gods laugh so hard that they’d retroactively forget to create the universe. That’s why you marked me with the Eyla flag, which is ugly enough to scare away the gods themselves, including Lord Noseless. Wow! How wonderful, selfless, and pure! You saved us all with your hideous, disgusting flag!”
“Thank you? I think?” she said, her voice shaking with barely-suppressed laughter.
As we headed toward Bromeliad Throat, a tangle of dried stems and honeycombed seed pods crunched under our feet, the only sign that the Time of Rains had ended a mere month before. The vibrant flowers that had followed it were a fading memory, the formerly-expansive pools of shallow water that had formed now just cracked and dry mud.
“But how could so many flowers go away so quickly?” I mused. “How could beauty flee the world in just a moment’s time? It couldn’t. Obviously, the world’s greatest villain must have traveled the world on his magic flying gourd to abduct all the world’s flowers in but a single night!”
“I haven’t believed in Kathari Bhakal since I was eight,” Eyla said dismissively.
“Oh, he’s real. At least, those of us who do believe in him get to have a huge feast and festival and capture someone dressed like him who’s carrying a huge sack of candy (which, presumably, is what grieving flowers become when they weep sweet tears of besugared amber until there’s nothing left but deliciousness), and we get to beat him with sticks until he throws candy at us to make us stop!”
“Free candy?” Eyla enthused. “Maybe he’s real after all!”
“Just don’t take any candy he gives you,” I advised her. “He only gives away evil candy.”
Eyla glanced at me. “How could candy be evil?”
“You wouldn’t have to ask that if you’d lost as many brothers as I have to wolf-shaped cookies,” I said darkly.
It wasn’t long before we reached Bromeliad Throat. Deep in the shadow of the great all-tree was one of the last places where water from the Time of Rains could still be found. The whole gallery was flooded to a hand’s height, making it necessary to walk on the great bulging roots that surrounded it on all sides. The sight of so much water affected me powerfully. In an arid land like Serzhen, water is wealth. Seeing this was like seeing the whole world drowned in a pool of shallow, muddy treasure.
Not that anyone else seemed to share my solemn reverence. Numerous children were flopping about in the mud, excitedly asking their parents if they were swimming. A dour-faced old man dipped his toe and looked surprised when, contrary to the legends about immersing one’s self in water, he didn’t immediately drown. I gazed at the water and smiled. My father grows rose bushes. If I could feed all this water to a single plant, its flowers would presumably swell and swell until they exploded and murdered us all with sublimity. Which, admittedly, poses certain problems, but you can’t deny that our ghosts would smell good.
About halfway across the clearing, I spotted a shifty-eyed man passing goods to a merchant who was ostentatiously looking the other way. It had to be the Mutuality Sodality again. Thanks to the way it was formed, the Black Cabal can only admit women. Curious, I asked Eyla about it.
“Who needs the Mutuality Sodality?” she snorted. “They’re doing the same thing as the Black Cabal, only worse. Why bother? Sure, you could make a bubbling froth of teeny-tiny pies out of each and every one of a pomegranate’s seeds, but wouldn’t it be better to just make one full-size pie?”
“No! Regular pies are a commonplace. A froth of tiny pies? Now there’s a way to fill the world with wonder! In the words of the Seven Sages of Antiquity upon seeing the World Pie for the first time…”
“Focus!” Eyla demanded, snapping her fingers under my nose. “Fine. A froth of tiny pomegranate pies is better. Therefore, that’s what the Black Cabal is. The Mutuality Sodality is a single boring old pie. They wish they could be the Black Cabal.” She paused, wincing. “Bleah. What a stupid name. We should call ourselves ‘The Dread Secret Shadow Of The Weeping Skull’. Obviously.”
We finally reached the far end of Bromeliad Throat, where a trader from the Qabdi desert sat. A bright smile creased her dark face as she offered us paper cones heaped high with spices.
“Ah, my friends! Set your tongue aflame with punishment for the many wonders it hasn’t yet spoken!” she said affably. “Or, better yet, taste spices until you shout out in pain! If you lick enough storybooks first, presumably you’ll have no choice but to shout out tales!”
Eyla snorted. “The last time I slipped Aris that much spice, he just screamed inarticulately,” she said, then paused. “What do you know, your spices really are wonderful! I’ll take three of everything!”
I rolled my eyes. “Eyla… we’re poor, remember?”
“A fact I aim to remedy, as soon as I succeed in convincing my father that ‘spinning around until you dizzily forget you gave your daughter a wedding present’ is a fun new dance that deserves to be repeated over and over again!”
I groaned. “I don’t suppose you know what happened to Dhira?” I helplessly asked the merchant.
She nodded, the smile sliding from her face. “That,” she said, “is the curious and inexplicable sort of tale which brings pleasure neither in the telling nor the hearing… but if you would have it of me…”
“I would,” I said grimly, and settled in to listen.
* * *
It is and is not, but the stars are actually shining diamond-clad people who are stuck to the roof of the sky as it endlessly turns around us. During the day, they see the underside of the world, a bizarre place of inward-sticking anti-mountains and bugs that rain endlessly down from an earth they’d accidentally burrowed through. By night, the star-people get to enjoy a vast glorious constellation of cookfires and lanterns that sparkles endlessly down below.
One young man was particularly entranced by a diamond-clad girl who, shall we say, was particularly suited to embodying the chiming perfection of the crystal spheres. Sometimes she graced him with her glittering smile (how, exactly, she got her teeth so gunked up with gemstone powder is a question that history has been unable to answer). On the other hand, sometimes she ignored him in favor of his hated rival, that self-important cape-wearing dolt who down-earthers called Comet. One day, Comet came to him with a glittering smile of his own.
‘Ah, my friend! You shine so brightly, it’s impossible not to love you! Please, take these gems, and shine all the brighter!’
The star was suspicious, of course, but his pulse quickened as he thought of the smiles he might draw from Her were he twice as bright. He accepted the gems and stuck them to every part of his body that he could reach.
‘Truly, you are a wonder! Seeing your magnificence, I feel that I must offer you every pearl in my possession! Which, since oysters rarely leap into the sky, isn’t as many as you might think, but it’s still a fair amount!’
Again the star was suspicious, but ah!—what mightn’t She think of him, were his smile glowing and gleaming and bright! He took the pearls, and stuffed them into his mouth until his cheeks bulged out at the sides.
‘Finer and finer! My heart leaps at the sight of you! Please, take my cloak, and make your wonder complete!’
The star donned the cloak, but now—finally!—he weighed too much and broke free of the sky. He shot to earth, his long glowing cloak flaring out behind him, and was never seen again. Comet tried courting the girl, but since he had no gems or pearls or cloak, she hardly even looked at him. They say she floats there still, bitterly waiting for someone to praise the chiming perfection of her glorious crystal spheres.
I walked slower and slower as I approached the Majeri compound. The center of Durbansq used to be a great park where children played, young couples vanished into the bushes together, and gossips eagerly went about peering into those self-same bushes. Or, to hear them tell it, the evil bushes flagrantly whipped their branches aside, forcibly cramming depravity down their eyes and into their brains. It makes sense to me. Who could behold a fumbled first kiss and not be instantly transformed into a chatty pervert?
All that is over now. When our Majeri conquerors came, they took the heart of Durbansq for themselves. They chopped down the trees. The tore up the flowers. They paved the earth and built great white-painted buildings that, in their thudding regularity, seem to represent a complete and utter abdication of imagination. Where are the winding streets, the bizarre houses, the exuberant paintings that express the innermost souls of their inhabitants? Then again, perhaps squared-off, identical white buildings do describe the innermost souls of their inhabitants. Odd, isn’t it? I hadn’t known it was possible to weep for the Majeri.
I showed the gate guard my passbook and entered the Majeri compound. I crossed a plain courtyard straight to Justicemonger’s Hall, which looked just the same as all the other buildings. What kind of life is it, if you can only identify your home by counting? I showed my passbook again, and a bored guard checked his papers.
“Aris Al-Sindba, a Serzhi, of Serzhen? You’re to go upstairs immediately. Dhrevos Scarb wants to see you.”
“Sadly, given the continued failure of my experiments in invisibility, he may just get what he wants.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” Dragging my feet only a little, I headed upstairs. The Majeri have three classes, and it isn’t wise to keep one of the Exalted waiting. Sadly, the Exalted seem to take a weird and malignant joy in making other people wait. A clerk showed me into the antechamber outside of Scarb’s office and left. I sighed, sitting down and wondering how long I could stare at plain white walls without going mad. Then I paused, sitting up straighter. No one could be that boring. Mustn’t there be strange and spectacular paintings on all the walls? They were just impossible to see, given that they’d been painted in a thousand cunning shades of white.
I was still staring at the walls and trying to convince myself that I actually saw something when I heard Dhrevos Scarb’s raised voice coming from his office. Curious. He usually reserves his shouting for me. I glanced around. I was alone in the room—but I’d need an excuse if the clerk came back and found me eavesdropping.
I leapt to my feet. “Truth is true!” I cried, staggered to the core of my being at this sudden realization. I clutched my heart, gurgled for effect, and collapsed to the ground… in a way that happened to place my face right by the door. It wasn’t well-fitted, and I could easily see through the gap underneath. Dhrevos Scarb paced back and forth in front of his desk. The Chief-Of-Mission for all Durbansq was dressed in the same plain white as his underlings, though in much finer fabric. The people in front of him were none other than the Justicemongers of Durbansq. Lower in class, being merely Aspiring, their position handing down rulings and judgements gave them a certain amount of power. Not that anyone so fanatically lawbound would do anything interesting with it. I’ve heard that Justicemongers insist on signing a ‘requisition to behold’ before they’ll even look at their beloved… every single time! One must hope they never attempt to consummate their marriages, or the sheer volume of paperwork might drown the world.
“…you’ve have had more than enough time,” said Justicemonger Jarumen, whose physique and disposition had earned him the name (in my mind) of the Toad of Justice. “Durbansq should have been pacified long ago.”
“It is!” Scarb argued. “Almost. It will be, soon!”
Justicemonger Jarumen raised an eyebrow. “You consider Durbansq pacified? Then, legally, we must send to Majra for a team of judges to evaluate this place. Either they will agree that it has been pacified… or they will call in reinforcements to finish the job that you failed to do.”
“I AM NOT A FAILURE!” Scarb screamed.
“We will dispatch the fastest available riders to summon an evaluation team from Majra. Either you will be commended, or you will be replaced. Our audience is at an end.”
“WAIT!” Dhrevos Scarb forced a terribly calm smile to his face. “I… misspoke. We aren’t ready… quite… yet. Hold your riders.”
“You’ve had more than enough time…”
“If I had just one month more…”
Hearing the clerk walk down the hall, I hastily scrambled back to my seat. He passed by without stopping… but before I could get up again, the door opened and the Justicemongers marched out. Dhrevos Scarb stood in his open door, scowling at nothing in particular. Spotting me, he hesitated as if unsure he needed even more unpleasantness in his life, but he finally waved for me to come inside.
I followed Scarb into his office. Sweat beaded his balding head, testament to his refusal to adapt to our hotter clime. Small golden figures covered his desk, glowing with value, having been seized from people like Sar Efrem. I guess his goal was to put on a display of wealth so impressive that it left his visitors weak in the knees. Sadly, my idiot body got confused and sent the sensations to my stomach instead, filling me with the desire to barf all over him. Dhrevos Scarb sat behind his desk, fingers steepled together. I remained standing, since I had not been invited to sit.
“Aris.” Scarb gazed levelly at me. “I don’t know why you and your kin resist us so much. You should be falling over yourselves to praise us. After all, we desire only to help.”
“I’m sure it must be so,” I said dubiously.
“But then, when have those who needed our aid the most ever welcomed it?” he said philosophically. “Wrapped in lies, you don’t even realize how much your own savagery is hurting you, because you lack the light of truth by which to see. When we come, shining like a blazing beacon of goodness and right, you cry out that we are blinding you. This is not true. When your eyes adjust, when you become accustomed to what once caused you pain… ah, the wonders you would have if you accepted our ways!”
“Truly it is amazing,” I said.
Dhrevos Scarb gazed at me with cold eyes. In wonder tales, this is where the villain would prance about singing a catchy song about how much fun it is to kick puppies. Dhrevos Scarb demonstrated how completely and utterly unfit he was to be a wonder-tale villain by merely shuffling some papers across his desk.
“We are helping you, you know.”
“Never would I doubt it.” Mentally, I added… ‘I believe all kinds of things. I just happen to be wrong a lot’.
Dhrevos Scarb finally looked at me. “Perhaps we could better pacify your people if we showed you more trust,” he mused. “More responsibility might be just the thing. So be it. Your City Assemblage has already approved these measures, so we need only go before the Justicemongers and work together to make them law.”
“Eh?” I hastily consulted the papers Ambika Breadsmith had given me. There it was… the names of the various provisions I was supposed to help get approved. I followed Scarb back downstairs, uncomfortably reminded of the story of Comet and Star. More power, more responsibility was just what we wanted… but when had Dhrevos Scarb ever given us something without taking twice us much in return?
“It’s a travesty, really, that a savage like you can act as a lawbringer at all,” Scarb said conversationally. “I’ll have to see about getting your emergency clearance revoked.”
“Didn’t I tell you?” I said blandly. “My latest filing had the unanticipated side-effect of pushing your revocation hearing back a month. Well. Another month. So it seems I’ll be around for a while.”
“You will lose,” Scarb said. “The way of righteousness may be slow, but it always wins.”
We entered the chamber of the Justicemongers, who looked much the same as they had in Scarb’s office. I tried to emulate the weirdly sticky Wizard-Witch of Eshmayah, who had the power to sweat out an invisibility potion and so vanish from uncomfortable situations; but my own sweat, sadly, only made me damp and uncomfortable.
“Justicemonger Jarumen,” Scarb said briskly, “we would like to see these provisions approved and adopted…”
I quickly read over each provision as the Justicemongers reviewed it. They did indeed grant us Serzhi an array of new powers, along with considerable and much-longed-for self-determination. Nor did there seem to be anything hurtful lurking behind their words. I still didn’t like it. After all, it was Dhrevos Scarb standing next to me, looking about as inflamed with passion as a frog who’d died six weeks before from eating too much wet cabbage. Does it matter who a gift is from? Just ask Star.
“That would be the last of them? Yes, I believe it is.” Scarb showed me a rare smile, if only for a moment. “That is all, Aris. You are no longer wanted.”
I had a feeling that Eyla might take issue with that, but I bowed backward out of the room rather than bring it up. Scarb swept off to his elevated realm. I stuffed the papers in my pocket and went to look for Dhira.
* * *
Heading north through the city doesn’t sound so complicated, but only if you’ve never braved the tangled back streets of Durbansq. I won’t say that the words ‘weird’ and ‘inexplicable’ were invented specifically to describe them, but only because I’m trying to trick the Majeri into venturing north, thus tying them—literally!—into confused knots. I haven’t figured out the whole thing yet, but it ends with Dhrevos Scarb pooping on his own head.
“We’re lost, aren’t we?” Dhira said fatalistically. “So this is how I die. Forced to walk in increasingly tiny circles by a cheerful dolt—”
“—until you get so hungry that you resort to cannibalism and eat my face, only for my disembodied lips to follow you around telling stories until you die of a massive whimsy overdose?” I guessed.
Dhira rolled her eyes. “Sure. That. Where are we going?”
“Your situation is… complicated. What’s the harm in seeking out good food and better advice?”
We emerged on Craftholder Street, surprising me completely… we weren’t that far east, were we? I stopped by the Honey Tree, a tall dead trunk that provided home and nest to bees beyond count. Honey actually leaked down its sides, and I looked both ways before leaning forward to furtively lick it. Dhira stared at me like I was crazy. I licked my lips and made yummy noises.
“Oh, what the hell,” she finally sighed, darting in to lick it herself.
It didn’t take long for us to reach the holy grove, where the world’s wisest man resided. The remains of a Majeri wall surrounded it, crumbling and overgrown and painted every bright color in the universe. The wall had become so much a part of Durbansq that, according to our histories, it had always been there… even before the Majeri built it. If that seems impossible, I assure you, if you drink enough sura it’ll eventually make perfect sense.
I led Dhira into the grove. It wasn’t large, but all the noise and bustle of the city swiftly dropped away, silent and stately trees soaring to either side. Entering a whole different universe usually requires squeezing through the navel of a goddess, but something about the holy grove seems to accomplish the same thing in about a dozen paces.
We reached the center of the grove, where a small hutch stood next to a fire pit, and a flattened circle showed where generations of children had sat as the world’s wisest man bestowed upon them his oddly perilous idea of wisdom. Safira sat on the sole bench, poking idly at the fire. She was a woman of middle years with a pleasant, rounded face and formerly-white robes that had been painted, by the hand-splats of children, with every color found in a mentally disturbed sunset’s dreams of murdered rainbows. She had once been Majeri, but for more than a year had found life in Durbansq far more congenial.
“Aris!” she said, pleased. “You’ve finally brought me that human sacrifice I’ve been wanting!”
“What?” Dhira asked, startled.
Safira winked. “I’ll give you two secrets. One, he has brought me a human sacrifice. But… and this is the important part… it’s not you. Now, won’t the two of you come closer? Whoops! How did this big, shiny knife get in my hand?”
“Perhaps we should put our problems before the Font of Sagacity himself,” I said drily. “Where is Gaja Vidur? He must be back by now. I mean, I can deduce that my grandfather returned from his travels by the fact that a laughing old man keeps stealing my breakfast and eating it at me. And since they were traveling together…”
“Bide a moment.” Safira went over to the hutch and poked her head inside. When she looked back at us, there was a wry expression on her face. “Ultimate wisdom, some say, is incompatible with something so earthy, so human, as being sick and having diarrhea. So please feel free to assume that the world’s wisest man refuses to see you because he hates you.”
“Gaja Vidur hates me?” I said, startled.
Safira raised her eyebrows. “What choice did he have? You told that awful joke about the sad old man and the incontinent frog, didn’t you?”
“No!! There is no such joke!” Safira just looked at me. I fidgeted. “Well, I mean, there will be. You can’t challenge me like that and not expect me to make one up! The last line could be something like… if he let the frog perch on his head, no one could tell if he’d been weeping?” I looked up, startled. “Wow! Gaja Vidur is so wise, he can see into the future and hate me in advance for a joke I haven’t even told yet!”
“Approximately,” Safira agreed. She smiled warmly at Dhira. “Go on. Tell me your concerns. I’ll stand here at the hutch door and repeat everything you say. Not because I’m relaying it to Gaja Vidur. Because I’m the apprentice of a parrot, and after that disaster of a worm-eating lesson, I really have some catching up to do.”
“Do parrots eat worms?” I asked.
“Nope! Hence the problem. I ate fifty.”
Dhira hesitated to simply tell us her problems. This is Serzhen, after all, where everything we speak is supposed to be a wonderment of tales and lies. Safira helpfully leaned her head back and started to snore loudly. Catching on, I did the same, allowing Dhira to pretend she was alone and so speak freely. Reassured, she told the story of her crime (assaulting with genuinely inspired insults a Majeri soldier who told a little girl to shut up), her subsequent arrest, and her oddly easy escape. Only after I’d stumbled upon her did we figure out that the Majeri were following her, intending to capture whatever man she went to so that he could be held responsible for her crimes. How could she go back to her father’s house, or stay with me and her sister, if it meant trouble for us?
I silently shook my head. Majeri law is an enormous thing, but in all its vast complexity, there’s no place for women. You don’t blame a table for collapsing, you blame the carpenter that built it. According to the Majeri, a woman isn’t a person—she’s property. Her crimes must be blamed on the man who owns her, and her very existence is little more than a weapon to stab him with. Dhira grimaced. Where could she go? What could she do? Joining the Black Cabal seemed unlikely. Although they admitted women, and her sister Eyla was involved with them in some way, she wanted nothing to do with the reign of criminal terror she’d heard so much about.
“I’m reminded of a tale,” Safira said. She paused, seeming to listen to something inside the hutch. With occasional pauses, she relayed the story to us:
“A girl was once born whose whole body was covered with a froth of beating hearts in every conceivable size and color. She had to be very careful what she touched, lest she instantly fall in love with it. Her parents, who were gardeners, were very concerned about the seeds that were constantly getting stuck to her body. How could they make sure that their little girl stayed safe? ‘Birds are evil,’ they lied. ‘Stay away from them. They’re so purely, deeply amoral that the good earth can’t stand to touch them. It actually repels them, which is why they can fly.’ One day, the girl—now a young woman—wove herself a great silken sphere to protect herself from birds… but a giant spider happened to be passing by, mistook it for a giant egg sac, and came running. ‘Quick!’ her parents told her, ‘call as many birds as you can. They’ll fight off the spider!’ ‘But didn’t I hear somewhere that birds are evil?’ she mused as the spider devoured her mother. ‘And someone told me that feathers are slimy,’ she continued as the spider devoured her father, ‘and that beaks come detached at night and wander around whispering terrible secrets into peoples’ ears,’ she finished as the spider devoured her as well.” Safira shrugged. “She could have carefully, cautiously tried what she’d merely heard was bad. Instead, she fell victim to what was bad. So it is told…”
“…and so it must be,” Dhira said thoughtfully. We joined Safira on the bench. The three of us passed around curry and spent a good long while eating and laughing and sharing stories. Safira was sharp enough to see through every one of our would-be deceptions, but good-natured enough not to care—so long as we weren’t deceiving ourselves.
“I can’t lead the Majeri to my father or to Aris,” Dhira mused. “I know the pitfalls there. The Black Cabal… I’ve heard bad things about them… but until I truly know for myself…” She sighed. “I’ve got to try them, don’t I?”
“Don’t ask me what passion must inform your fifty thousand beating hearts,” Safira said mildly. “Aris will help you find the Black Cabal. Aris will protect you. And if we smear him with enough spices, presumably he’ll be so tasty that if the dread criminal masters of the Black Cabal do turn out to be cannibals, they’ll eat him first!”
“Do I get a say in this?” I demanded.
“Yes,” Safira said, smiling. “What spice would you like us to start with?”
Some time later, my burnouse dusted yellow and red with… the tears of my enemies, presumably, assuming that every cook in the world hates me for some reason… I led Dhira into northern Durbansq. At a particular outcrop of purple-speckled rock, I looked both ways and then opened a concealed door to reveal a long tunnel leading… somewhere.
“In there,” I said cheerfully.
“Um.” Dhira took a hesitant step forward. “Are you sure?”
“No,” I said reassuringly, “I’m totally evil and only want to get you alone so I can eat your soul.”
“What?!”
“Well, what sort of person would say ‘Trust me… I’m not evil!’ Only someone who was evil! Thus, saying that I am evil proves that I’m not evil. I’m just that considerate! Theoretically, the eviller I act, the more comforting it should be! Hey, want to hear my most diabolical laugh?”
“I don’t believe this,” Dhira muttered. She headed into the tunnel. I closed the door behind us and followed.