Songs of the Dying Earth

by Gardner Dozois

  “She’s been this way her whole life,” Dame Trunadora told Cugel. “Always careless, always shirking her duties. She doesn’t love our little sweeting the way I do.”

  “I do so!” Dame Vaissa’s voice bellowed forth at last. “Is it my fault that my health is too delicate to get down on my poor hands and knees and scrub the tiles? And if you truly loved dearest Pippy, you’d have cleaned up the mess yourself, rather than let it mount on a matter of principle. Look! His poor little eyes are watering from the fumes! And poor Leodopoif never stole the spoons. You only dismissed him because you were jealous of his affection for me! But as it happens, dear Cugel of Kauchique has graciously accepted a position in my service. His delight it shall be, hereafter, to keep the floor beneath Pippy as spotless as new-loomed samite.”

  “Indeed, dear lady, I am eagerly anticipating the duty,” said Cugel, happy to have a chance to speak for himself at last. “There was a great aviary on my father’s estate, and many a time I assisted the keeper in caring for our dear feathered companions.” He bowed to Dame Trunadora, in a close imitation of the elaborate reverences of the courtiers of Prince Kandive. Dame Trunadora regarded him with a chilly lemon-colored stare. She sniffed.

  “Very likely,” she said. “But if it is so, then you may as well begin at once. See the cabinet yonder, under the flowering sispitola? You’ll find there a steel brush and a dustpan. Clean away the guano, and make certain you carry it over to the compost-pile afterward. Then wash down the floor with perfumed water, and dry it with chamois cloth.”

  “At once,” said Cugel, bowing once again. “Please, concern yourselves no further! Only leave me here, to improve my acquaintance with little Pippy as I work.”

  “I should say not!” Dame Trunadora extended an arm thin as a broom-handle within its velvet sleeve. The green bird leaned down, and, steadying itself with its formidable beak, clambered onto her wrist. “Leave our adorable baby alone with a stranger? Really, Vaissa, what can you have been thinking?”

  Dame Vaissa twisted her red mouth in a moue of disgust. “Look at his poor little claws! You haven’t bothered to trim them in a month, obviously. Never mind, Pippy darling! You shall come with me now, and I shall show dear Cugel how we trim your little toenails.”

  She thrust out her arm and the green bird stepped readily across, flexing its gray and scaled feet for pleasure at the well-padded surface. Grimacing, she swung her arm around to Cugel. “Put out your arm, sir. Step up, Pippy! There now! You see, Trunadora? Pippy knows a gentleman when he sees one.”

  “You are too kind, madam,” said Cugel, barely managing not to gasp as the needle-pricking talons punched through his sleeve and into his wrist. The green bird sidled up Cugel’s arm to his shoulder, where he had an excellent view of its hooked, sharp-edged beak.

  Cugel had further occasion to note the beak when it bit him, some three or four times during the process of learning to trim avian toenails. There were special silver clippers to be used, and a special diamond-dust file, and a special ointment to be painted on the creature’s feet afterward. Dame Vaissa sat with her hands well within her sleeves, patiently instructing Cugel in the painful process, though he could barely hear her over the creature’s deafening screams. Now and then, she remonstrated gently with Pippy, in the fond language mothers use to infants, when he removed yet another half-moon divot of Cugel’s flesh from knuckle or fingertip or ear.

  “Perhaps it has been awhile since you handled birds,” Dame Vaissa remarked, extending a forefinger. She made kissing noises and Pippy leaped from Cugel’s shoulder, leaving a mound of chrysoprase excrement there as it came and buffeting his head soundly with wingbeats. The green bird lighted on Dame Vaissa’s hand and proceeded to preen itself, as Cugel, fingering the bleeding notch in his left ear, smiled through clenched teeth.

  “Some few years, madam. And, of course, he isn’t used to me yet. I trust we shall become great friends, if I am allowed to spend a little time alone with him.”

  “No doubt,” said Dame Vaissa, with a yawn. “Well. We mustn’t idle! Do please clean up the mess under the dear baby’s perch, won’t you? And, when you’ve finished, you might just step out to the porters’ agency and fetch me a new set of chair-bearers. Tell them I wish for strapping fellows of matched height, preferably with chestnut hair. Protective greaves wouldn’t be a bad idea, either. And I expect you’ll want to bring your things here—were you staying at a lodging-house? You can have Leodopoif’s old room, it’s quite nicely appointed. Oh, and could you stop by Madame Vitronella’s shop and ask her to make up five bottles of my personal cologne? Have her deliver it. And then, of course, I’ll require you to attend me when I go out this evening. The dear Prince has appointed me principal judge in a contest of amateur efforts at love-poetry! So amusing!”

  “Tiresome old baggage!” Cugel grumbled, throwing himself down on the narrow bed that had been furnished him. He stretched out his long legs and folded his hands behind his head. It was past the hour of midnight, and he had spent most of the long day on his feet in the service of Dame Vaissa. Firstly, running the thousand little errands she had found for him, each one of which took him a substantial distance from the house and the green bird, and though he strained his ears to hear the incantation with which Dame Vaissa enabled him to get past the gogmagog, yet he was unable to make out so much as one clear syllable. His second annoyance lay in accompanying her to the court of Prince Kandive the Golden.

  While this latter also kept Cugel far from the object of his design, nevertheless he had looked forward to swaggering and cutting a fine figure before the ladies at court. He had been disappointed to learn, therefore, that while at Prince Kandive’s palace, he was expected to remain in the forecourt with the flunkeys and footmen of other nobles, partaking of orange-flower-water and small biscuits and listening to below-stairs gossip.

  “Regardless,” he told himself, “I am still Cugel the Clever! Already I have progressed farther than Meternales, whose wisdom was undoubted. He never got so far as I. Have I not already penetrated the house, and won the sisters’ trust? I know where the bird is kept. All I require now is a chance to be alone with him, and a means by which to quiet him while I spirit him out of the house, and to learn the egression spell with which to pass the door-warden.”

  He considered the first requirement, scowling to himself. There was no hope of managing the theft during the hours in which he was expected to dance attendance on Dame Vaissa; for that was every hour in which she was awake. She generally rose sometime in the early afternoon. In the hours beforehand, Dame Trunadora kept close watch over the green bird.

  Cugel’s scowl darkened as he considered the vinegary charms of Dame Trunadora. At last, he shrugged. “What though, Cugel! Have you not an unfailing way with the female sex? If you cannot ingratiate yourself with the old witch, you are not your father’s child.”

  So, on scant hours’ sleep, Cugel made his way to the solarium. As he neared the door, he spotted a kitchen drudge toiling ahead of him, carrying a pair of buckets full of something that steamed.

  “Ho, there! What is it you carry?”

  The drudge turned dull eyes to him. “Hot water from the kitchen boiler. My lord must have his bath.”

  “Your lord? Do you mean the green bird?”

  “Even he. My mistress requires it brought fresh every morning. I will be beaten if I deliver it late,” she added pointedly. Cugel looked in vain for a curve of flesh he might pinch or swat, and settled for wresting the buckets from the drudge’s hands.

  “I will deliver the water today. Back to your dishpan!”

  Muttering, the drudge left him. Cugel bore the water onward to the solarium, and shouldered his way through the doorway. At once, he spotted Dame Trunadora with the green bird on her shoulder, murmuring tender nonsense as she fed the creature sugared tapioca balls.

  “Good morning, dear lady,” said Cugel, setting down the buckets. “See! I have brought fresh water for little Pippy’s bath.”


  “On whose orders?” Dame Trunadora demanded.

  “Why—that is to say—your lady sister requested that I see to the bird’s comfort in all respects. Therefore here am I, ready to serve in whatever manner you require.”

  Dame Trunadora narrowed her yellow eyes. Impatiently, she gestured at a wide silver basin, set beside a tall silver pitcher on a tabletop of green serpentine. “Pour the water, then!”

  Cugel brought forward the buckets and obeyed, humble and deferential as any slavey. “What am I to do next, madam?

  “Prepare the bath, fool.” Dame Trunadora seized the pitcher herself, and poured forth a little chilled water perfumed with attar of flowers of ‘Ood. She cast in also a measure of rose petals. “Put your hand in the water! It should be of a mild and pleasant temperature, not so cool as to give my adorable a chill, but by no means so hot as to scald him.”

  “Then I think perhaps you had better add more cold water,” said Cugel, resisting the urge to cram his burned fingers into his mouth.

  The water’s temperature was adjusted to Dame Trunadora’s satisfaction; only then did she hand the green bird down to the rim of the silver basin. He hopped in readily and began to splash about at once, throwing water in all directions but more often than not managing to wet Cugel.

  “Watch Pippy closely,” said Dame Trunadora. “Don’t let him get water up his sweet little nostrils.”

  “Of course not, madam.”

  Dame Trunadora went to a cabinet in the wall and opened it, disclosing therein a mask of Shandaloon, the god of the south wind worshipped by the people of Falgunto. She raised her hands before it and uttered an imploration, and straightaway warm air came gusting forth from the godmask’s open mouth. Cugel meanwhile kept his gaze steadfast on the green bird, whose wet feathers had shrunk in an appalling manner to the gray under-down, giving it the appearance of some unwholesome hybrid of bird and drowned rat. All the while, he meditated on how he might win over Dame Trunadora, since his person had failed to please her.

  “Madam,” said Cugel at last, “I have a concern.”

  “Regarding my tiny beloved?” Dame Trunadora turned at once, to see that all was well with the green bird.

  “No, madam, a personal concern of mine own.”

  “And why should it be mine?”

  “I thought perhaps you might offer advice, since you know your sister well.” Cugel twisted his countenance to express, as far as he was able, that he was in the grip of acute chagrin while still possessed of a fundamental chivalric impulse.

  “Whatever can you be babbling about, man? Vaissa is easily known; all vanity and self-indulgence,” said Dame Trunadora, with a sharp laugh. “And in her younger days, very well known by any handsome male who cared to apply to her.”

  “That is the matter of my concern,” said Cugel, looking down as though abashed. A gout of bathwater hit his face, and he concealed a sidelong glare at the green bird with the hand that flicked the water away. “The lady is of reverend years. When she was beset, I rushed to her aid, as I would have rushed to the aid of my mother. She offered me employment in her service, as I thought, out of honest gratitude. But…”

  “Well?”

  Cugel bit his lip. “How shall I say it without giving offense? Last night, she made certain…overtures, of an indiscreet nature.”

  Dame Trunadora looked him up and down. “What! To you?”

  “Even I, madam.”

  She began to laugh, heartily. “Now by all the gods, she has grown desperate!”

  “Needless to say, I am at a loss,” Cugel went on, noticing that a certain glint of good temper, as of new-minted gold, had come into the old woman’s eyes. “I would not for the world disoblige the good lady in any honorable request—so far as flesh will perform to a man’s requirement, which it will not always do—but if nothing else, there is the lady’s good name to consider.”

  Dame Trunadora whooped with merriment. “Her reputation was ruined years ago! There was a tavern in Kandive Court that was open ‘round the clock, the Princes’ Arms, and the youths at court took to calling it Vaissa’s Legs!”

  “I fear they speak with even less respect now,” said Cugel, in nearly-believable sorrow.

  “Oh, what do they say? Tell me!” cried Dame Trunadora. She arranged a plush towel on the table before the stream of warm air. “And bring my heart’s little master from his bath.”

  The green bird was disinclined to leave the warm scented water, and Cugel sustained three minor and two considerable flesh wounds from its beak before managing to close his hands around the horrible-looking thing. Resisting the urge to dash its brains out, he brought it to the towel and set it down. “They say, madam, that Dame Vaissa is a pitiable old creature, who lost her beauty long since and now loses her wits.”

  “Do they really?” Dame Trunadora smiled as she bent down to watch the green bird lolling about on the towel, beating its wings to dry them. “What else?”

  “Why, they say her beauty was never noteworthy to begin with. Also, that so voracious and predatory she was, young men oftimes climbed from her chamber window to get away, and thought a broken leg a reasonable risk if only they might escape,” Cugel improvised. He wrapped his fingers in his jerkin, hoping the bleeding would stop.

  “So they did,” said Dame Trunadora, holding out a sugar-stick to Pippy. The bird snapped it in half with its beak. “Such a clever poppet! They did, until I showed them the secret passage in the wine cellar, that leads down to the river. They’d offer to go downstairs to fetch a bottle of fine old Cobalt Mountain vintage, to make sweet dalliance the sweeter, and how they’d run once she’d let them out of her sight! Three hours later she’d still be panting in impatience, and they well on their way to East Almery, to take their chances with barbarian women.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Cugel, unable to believe his luck. “With respect, madam, were I not indebted to your sister for a position here—and the chance to make Pippy’s delightful acquaintance—all this might cause Dame Vaissa to be lowered somewhat in my estimation.”

  “Call her a dreadful old trollop, if you like,” said Dame Trunadora cheerfully. She eyed the bloodstains seeping through Cugel’s jerkin. “Did Pippy nip you? You’ll find a lavatory yonder, two doors down the corridor on the left. In the red chest in the corner are gauze and styptic.”

  “You are as gracious and virtuous as your sister is, lamentably, not,” said Cugel. “But to return to the point, madam: what am I to do, should Dame Vaissa grow importunate again? I fear to refuse her, for I blush to admit I cannot afford to lose my position in your household, and yet the very thought—”

  “Why, refuse her, man,” said Dame Trunadora, grinning through chapped and colorless lips. “Then I shall retain your services myself. That will annoy her to apoplexy.”

  Over the next week, Cugel got very little sleep, studiously cultivating his acquaintance with Dame Trunadora by day and dancing attendance on Dame Vaissa by night. Though the latter beldam was, in truth, innocent of any attempt on Cugel’s virtue—which strangely abraded his sense of pride—nonetheless she wearied him with her constant errands, sending him into a hundred pink and lace-trimmed hells to fetch new shoes of seven-inch heels, or sweetmeats, or unguents, or wigs. So envenomed, he improvised hours of malicious court gossip for Dame Trunadora’s delight, regaling her as he chipped away at Pippy’s ammoniac feces, or prepared dainty morsels for Pippy’s delectation, or played the zithar (badly, his fingers being bandaged) in order that Pippy might be lulled to pleasant sleep by gentle melodies.

  Though Cugel won Dame Trunadora’s good opinion, none of his ministrations seemed to improve Pippy’s opinion of him. The bird continued to bite him savagely, whenever it got the chance. Nor did it display any sorcerous abilities, not even to recite minor spells; its vocal repertoire was limited to ear-shattering shrieks and the single word “Hello”, upon which it descanted in varying pitch and with monomaniacal persistence for hours at a time, until Cugel wanted to beat his own head ag
ainst the wall, if not Pippy’s.

  Nor might Cugel steal much sleep in the three bare hours between waiting on either lady; for there was still the wine-cellar to be explored, until he was able to locate the secret exit. Three hours’ covert search, over as many days, by the light of a candle-stub, found it for him at last: a cobwebbed door behind a stack of empty crates, with its antique and curiously wrought key hanging beside. Another hour it took to lubricate the lock and hinges with kitchen-grease procured from the drudge; another hour to coax the lock into opening. Cugel peered down the dank passage beyond and smelt the air of the river, and congratulated himself.

  Next afternoon, while on an errand to procure for Dame Vaissa three ells of checkered bombazine of Saponce, Cugel deviated from his duty long enough to visit the river-wharf where he judged the other end of the tunnel must lead. There he saw many little boats unattended, and smiled to himself. Having learned so much, he briefly visited a minor wizard’s stall in the marketplace, where, amongst the dubious potions and rank deceptions, he found what he sought, and purchased it with Dame Vaissa’s silver.

  “Way, there! Make way for the most noble and gracious daughter of Deviaticus Lert!” roared Cugel, striding along before her slipping and puffing bearers. Dame Vaissa simpered from her high palanquin, and waved graciously at the other great folk being borne down the long aisle to Prince Kandive’s palace, where flambeaux set between the cypress trees illumined the way. Two great pink-flowered magnolias bloomed at either side of the forecourt’s entrance, and scattered lush petals on those entering through the immense gates that bore Kandive’s armorial crest cunningly worked thereupon.

  Orange lights streamed from the high windows of the palace, so that the white gravel of the forecourt seemed a bed of red coals, darkened here and there by the shadows of the bearers who jostled for room before the several dismounting blocks. Cugel bounded up to the block nearest the palace doors, and bowed to extend his hand to Dame Vaissa. Bracing his heels against the brickwork, he hauled her forth from her palanquin, and the bearers groaned in relief.