The Empire of Gut and Bone

by M. T. Anderson

  Gregory wondered if maybe he could ask Gwynyfer to take a turn with him around the ballroom. He imagined the weight of her arms on his. He didn’t really know how to do ballroom dancing, but he guessed it had to do with holding on and swaying.

  “So,” Brian said to Gwynyfer, “you were going to point out all the members of the Imperial Council to us — everyone who could have used the Imperial seal.”

  She patted her forehead in despair. “Are you really — really — going to ask me about that? In the middle of a lovely party?”

  “Fourteen people died this morning in an attack,” said Brian. “Gregory’s and my world is under siege. This is no time —”

  She wailed, “How could you have come so far and still be so uninteresting?”

  “Here’s an idea,” said Gregory. “I was thinking — Bri — Gwynyfer — I was thinking that the best way for you to point out the members of the Council without anyone noticing would be, Gwynyfer, if you and me were to dance, the two of us. As we went around the room, you know, in circles, you could say, ‘Hey, there’s Lord Honeybunny.’ ”

  Gwynyfer smiled. “Is that an invitation?”

  Gregory bowed. “Gregory Stoffle of the Grand Duchy of Brookline greets Miss Gwarnmore, daughter of the Duke of the Globular Colon, and extends his wish that tulips will spell out her name and the air around her hair will smell like candy canes. He respectfully requests that she joins him so that together, they might demonstrate to the ancient Court of Norumbega how to get down and shake up a jive panic.”

  Gwynyfer laughed. “Miss Gwarnmore reservedly accepts Mr. Stoffle’s offer. May the brunch never flood his basement.”

  Gregory said, “That was beautiful, sister.” He winked at Brian, put his arm around Gwynyfer, and danced into the crowd with her.

  With his small, white face, Brian watched them go.

  Gregory couldn’t believe he had one arm kind of around Gwynyfer. His other hand held hers. It was like static electricity along his skin.

  He couldn’t believe how complicated her face was. It looked beautiful, every angle he saw it from. When she turned to the side, there was her profile — perfect and poised. When she looked right at him, her eyes were so clever, her eyebrows were so symmetrical, he felt like he had to say something.

  He said, “Your dress is a smart little number.”

  It was plaid silk.

  “Thank you. It’s the perfect frock for murder investigation.”

  “Obviously.”

  “So there,” she said, bobbing her head, “are the Ex-Empress and the Ex-Emperor. As the Stub’s parents, they’re the two most important members of the Imperial Council.”

  “How many members are there in all?”

  “Eleven, with the Regent. But he’d dead. So that makes ten. There’s Lord Dainsplint.”

  “Of course. Who had two motives to kill the Regent: both because he could try to become Regent himself, and because he wants to make sure that the Court stays in New Norumbega and the Great Body. Because like the wizard says, he owns a lot of land here.”

  “And you know the Earl of Munderplast.”

  “Who also has a motive: He was from the opposing party, and he also wants to become Regent.”

  “And Count Galahad Ffines-Whelter.”

  “Gesundheit.”

  “Gugs.”

  “Do you want to wipe your nose on my sleeve?”

  “You know Gugs.”

  “Yup. Does he have a motive for killing the Regent?”

  She thought about it. Her thinking face, Gregory noticed, was adorable. Finally, she answered, “I don’t think either he or Lord Dainsplint thought that the Regent was acting in the best interests of the Norumbegan Social Club. They thought he’d lost his way. Maybe Chigger and Gugs were in cahoots.”

  “What’s cahoots?”

  “Chums. Plotting together.”

  “So that’s five. There’s five more left.”

  “Over there is Lord Attleborough-Stoughton. The financier. He has bags of money.” With a wag of her head, she indicated a man in a fur coat with a bristly mustache. “He made millions on trains. He built the Esophagus Line.”

  “Reason for killing the Regent?”

  “He hated the Regent. And I bet he would be very angry about any suggestion that we abandon the Great Body and go back to Old Norumbega. His financial empire is here. All his railroads. If the Court ever left the Great Body, he would lose everything.”

  “So we should figure out where he was at midnight two nights ago.”

  “Sure. Spiffing. Enjoy asking him. He’ll adore that.”

  “Next?”

  “Next,” she said. “See that stiff with the monocle over there?”

  “Monocle,” Gregory said. “I didn’t think anyone still wore monocles.”

  “It’s not prescription,” she said. “He just likes the way it looks.”

  It was an older gentleman, balding, with a fringe of white hair and a white mustache with ends that pointed straight up. His monocle flashed in the candlelight, runes running continuously across its rim where he could read them. He was dressed in white tie and tails. Looking around the gathering, he pouted, as if he approved of nothing.

  “Wow,” said Gregory. “He looks like he has the runs and he’s trying to keep it in.”

  Gwynyfer laughed and nodded. “Yes,” she said. “That’s my father. Cheveral Gwarnmore, Duke of the Globular Colon.”

  Gregory looked at her, astonished. “Your father is on the Imperial Council?”

  Gwynyfer furrowed her brow. “Of course,” she said. “We’re from one of the most ancient Norumbegan families.”

  And as Gregory was about to ask a surprised question, a crooner standing in front of the band began singing.

  At the sound, across the room, Brian’s eyes grew wide.

  It was the voice they’d heard over the Thusser radio.

  He rushed, pushing and leaping, through the dancing crowd. Noblemen glared. Brian got to Gregory and Gwynyfer’s side.

  “Gregory!” he said. “Gregory! Do you hear that voice? That’s the guy we heard through the radio!”

  Gregory looked annoyed. “So go get his autograph,” he said.

  “No!” said Brian. “We heard him on the walkie-talkie! All gluey-voiced like that! Right after we heard a bunch of people talking, like the people in this room were all talking, I bet, before the band started playing. That radio — it’s a spying device! There must be a bug in here — a hidden microphone that picks up everything happening in the Grand Hall and the throne room. The radio isn’t just how Dr. Brundish talked to the Thusser — it’s also how he listened in on the Council’s secret business. That must be how the Thusser keep an eye on what’s happening in New Norumbega.”

  Gregory stopped dancing. He was shocked, but what Brian said made a lot of sense.

  “So much for tripping the light fantastic,” said Gwynyfer. She stepped away from Gregory.

  “Somewhere in this room,” Brian insisted, “there’s a microphone that’s broadcasting everything to the Thusser.” He began looking carefully around at the potted palms and the tables and the drones.

  Brian was starting to attract the notice of the Court. They were glaring at him.

  Gwynyfer’s mother, bedecked with peacock feathers, swept up to them. “The Duchess of the Globular Colon inquires of her daughter what she is doing fraternizing with that human creature.” She pointed at Brian.

  “Mother, he says that the Grand Hall has been tapped by the Thusser.”

  The woman stared at Brian. Other couples were starting to gather around them now.

  “You realize, Gwynyfer, that he’s an unknown. It is he who has been trying to get us to abandon the city.” Her aigrette trembled with disgust.

  “Ma’am,” said Brian, “I’m not —”

  The man in the beaver fur coat — Lord Attleborough-Stoughton — glowered at Brian’s side. “What’s your angle, kid?” he asked. “Who are you tangled up with? Yo
u with the manns?”

  “That’s not what I heard,” said Gwynyfer’s mother, the duchess. “I heard the Thusser. He has the pallid, morally exhausted look of a spy for the Horde.”

  “Is it the Thusser?” asked Lord Attleborough-Stoughton. “Huh? Fess up, kid. You’re in deep with someone.”

  Now Brian was surrounded by frowns. People were drifting over. “I read something in the paper about him.” — “Thusser spy.” — “Thusser.” — “Really? Too, too sad. So young in years, so old in vice.” — “That’s the one? The one people are talking about?” They surrounded him. He looked at their faces. They hated him.

  “That’s ridiculous!” he said, but no one was listening. “It’s ridiculous! I specifically said I want you to defeat the Thusser! Defeat them! Because North America, where I’m from, is in danger! Why would I want to —”

  “If anyone cares to shake on a small wager,” said Gugs, “I’d bet a magnum of champagne it’s the Thusser he’s from.”

  The Duchess said, “The boy tried to convince the Regent to abandon our city.”

  “I did not!”

  “What sort of game are you playing?” asked Lord Attleborough-Stoughton.

  Duke Gwarnmore, Gwynyfer’s father, just peered at the boy through his monocle.

  Lord Dainsplint appeared at the edge of the crowd. “What’s the ruckus, chaps? Oh, that miserable little blighter.”

  Brian protested to him, “You know I’m not in league with the Thusser! I’m the one who tried to convince you to stop them!”

  “I know you’re probably dangerous, and you’re certainly no fun,” said Dainsplint. “You’re always piddling in our campfire.”

  Brian was about to reply, but Dainsplint held up his hand. “No! No! You’re uninvited. No tea dance for you. Out! Out, I tell you!”

  Brian retreated in shame.

  Gregory watched him go. He shrank back into the crowd. He felt bad for Brian, but he didn’t want anyone to notice him and throw him out, too.

  The dancing had been so much fun.

  Now the music had stopped.

  Lord Dainsplint looked around. “Ho, ho, ho,” he said without pleasure. “Back to the drollery.” He waved a hand.

  The band started up again, and the crooner began to sing.

  And far away, through hundreds of miles of tubing and corky organ, in a camp by a ruined city, a Thusser radio operator with a headset leaned close to a console, nudging dials, smiling, hearing — faintly — Norumbega’s song.

  Brian walked through the empty palace. Everyone else was up at the dance.

  That was fine with him. He was so angry, he didn’t want to run into anyone.

  They weren’t wrong, he reflected. He did want them to lose, at this point. He wanted the mannequins to march into the city and demand their independence and get it. The Norumbegans deserved to lose. They were lazy. They couldn’t keep a thought in their heads for more than three minutes. They didn’t care about anything or anyone. They were selfish.

  Yes, but not just selfish. They were too giddy and bored to even be good at being selfish.

  Part of the palace had apparently not yet been built. The staircase he moped down hung outside the palace, with only badly nailed two-by-fours where a wall should be, like a stitch in the keep’s side.

  And Gregory — Brian was angry at Gregory, too. Retreating like that into the crowd so he could keep dancing once Brian was gone. It seemed like Gregory cared more about flirting with Gwynyfer than stopping the Thusser.

  Or, Brian admitted, than being friends with him.

  Brian had reached a wooden hoarding that led around the curved belly of the palace. He walked along it, peering out the windows at the city and the siege.

  The Mannequin Resistance was drawn up into lines, unmoving, in the desert. They were, he figured, waiting for someone from the Imperial Council to go out and hear their terms. Little did they know, no one was being sent.

  As Brian leaned out of one of the windows, the plank flooring underneath him began to shake. Someone else was walking along the hoarding.

  It didn’t feel very solid. He scurried along to the next arched door that led back through the thick palace wall and stepped through it. Inside was an old reception hall with a black-and-white marble floor. As Brian walked across it, he realized it wasn’t marble, but linoleum.

  He heard someone fumbling with the metal latch. He didn’t want to see anyone. He didn’t want to be accused again, so he stepped back and lingered behind a wing-back chair.

  It was the Earl of Munderplast, looking nervous. He shut the door and peered around suspiciously in the gloom — failed to see Brian — and rushed past.

  Brian watched the old man go. He remembered Lady Munderplast’s hint — that the earl had not been home the night of the murder.

  And he decided to follow.

  Carefully, he rose up and slipped along the corridor after the retreating nobleman.

  TWENTY-THREE

  As soon as the dancing resumed, Gregory whispered to Gwynyfer, “Let’s try to find the bug.”

  “What bug?” she asked.

  “The microphone that’s picking up everything you say in here,” he explained. He made his way toward the throne room. “It’s probably in here,” he said. “When we turned on the radio at first, the talking was kind of muffled. That’s probably because people were standing out in the Grand Hall, a little ways from the transmitter.”

  The heavy curtains into the throne room were open, and people stood by the Stub, drinking tea and eating biscuits. A beautiful nanny knelt by the throne, holding up a series of plastic letters and whispering their names to the one-eyed plug.

  Gregory and Gwynyfer stood near the Stub’s chair, inspecting it for suspicious hardware. It was a wooden armchair, painted gold.

  “Whoops,” said Gregory, and dropped a Triscuit on the floor. He stooped to pick it up and stow it in his napkin. While he was down on his knees, he looked under the seat.

  Nothing.

  He stood, glancing around at the pastel drawings Randall and Elspeth Fendritch had done on the walls.

  “Are you going to eat that?” said Gwynyfer, pointing to the Triscuit.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Five-second rule. You can still eat it.”

  “I was checking under the throne.”

  “Ahhhh.”

  “Let’s look at the walls.”

  They moved along the walls, scanning them for irregularities.

  Behind them, the Court danced and gossiped, talking of the awful Thusser and the chubby human kid and the boring manns.

  And then, Gregory found it. High up on the wall, in the center of a huge, painted sunflower, there was a disc.

  “Right there,” he said. “See?”

  Gwynyfer squinted. “It’s raised.”

  “Something’s attached to the middle of that flower.”

  “You’re right.”

  “How are we going to get it? It’s too high. You think I can drag the throne over here and climb up?”

  “A better idea: dance.”

  “Come on. Don’t you want to see if that’s the Thusser’s bug?”

  “I said I have a plan. Let’s dance.”

  Gregory and Gwynyfer spun around a few times. Then she said, “Now you’re going to lift me up as part of the dance and spin me. Sit me on your shoulder. Spin around. I’ll put my arms out and grab the disc.”

  Now this was a plan Gregory liked. Bold, flirty, and stupid. He was liking Gwynyfer more every minute.

  He lifted her up, swayed around. She screamed laughter like she was having a great time — maybe she was — and held her arms up in the air. He spun them in a circle, staggering with her weight. He ran into the wall, and she slid down.

  Adults were glaring.

  But as Gregory and Gwynyfer resumed their foxtrot position, Gwynyfer slipped the disc from her hand into his.

  Their fingers clasped around it.

  Brian crept along throug
h dark, deep places in the palace, following the Earl of Munderplast. At this depth, the walls were uneven — huge hunks of dried muscle larger than courthouses, stacked and slanted above Brian’s head. Torches were lit along the walls. Great, angular shadows sputtered. Brian followed the old man through chasms and defiles.

  He did not see the earl look backward and notice him. He did not see the earl draw a knife.

  The Thusser listening device was a disc with a hole in the middle and something like an earlobe.

  Gregory said, “I have an idea. Let’s go up to Dr. Brundish’s lair and get the radio. Then we can show everyone how it works.”

  Quietly, they removed themselves from the dance.

  Now Brian saw that others were arriving through passages in the huge slabs of tissue. They were wearing black robes. They walked through the broken cavernscape, all congregating on one point: a ramshackle amphitheater of jutting rock and uneven slope. The earl beckoned for them to pass him, whispering to each of them as they walked toward the rough-hewn stage. The earl himself hung back, surveying the meeting of this society in gloom.

  Brian hid behind a boulder, twitching with excitement.

  Gregory and Gwynyfer stood in the chirurgeon’s office.

  “Now,” said Gregory. “For the demonstration. I bet this gadget is broadcasting to the radio. So …”

  He flicked a switch on the radio. He held the disc near his mouth.

  The sound of talking and music came out of the speakers.

  Gregory and Gwynyfer exchanged confused looks.

  Gregory tapped the disc. “Testing,” he said. “Testing, one two three.”

  No trace of his voice reached the radio.

  “I don’t get it,” he said. Into the disc, he said, “This is a test. Broadcast. Hey. Yoo-hoo. YOO-HOO!”

  Nothing. The radio picked up the band, the mutter of people socializing.

  “It’s still picking up the throne room,” Gwynyfer said.

  “Which means,” Gregory concluded, “that we’ve made a stupid mistake.”