by Matt Weber
“—on refusing service to a loyal officer of the realm’s law?” said the judge. “With no cause save his injury? You’ll be the first for the dog’s-head glaive, I think. The feckless White, that thing is thirsty, I can feel it.” His ruined eyes began roving in their sockets with frantic crunching noises. “Jealous—”
The proprietor was in the kitchen by this point, rousting the cook with a poke from the rifle he kept behind the bar. He couldn’t shoot, and it wasn’t loaded; but it made him feel just better enough to keep from standing in one place and saying things to the effect of eeeeeeeeee.
The three travelers had all occupied a table by the time the proprietor emerged, bearing hot pork with scallions and heaping bowls of wine and barley. The judge and the scribe sat close to one another, the lout farther away. The proprietor put out three sets of plates and utensils, but only the judge ate.
“Jhan will be in the Great South Plain,” said the scribe, “taking whatever steps he has settled on to displace the Orchid Throne as the seat of Ua’s power. Three spells of wondrous travel will take us to him in two weeks—I know a sorceraster who specializes in these, though finding him will take us out of our way. Unless you wish to rein in the Louts first, of course; this eventuality was unplanned for—”
“Ssshhh,” said the judge, spraying pepper sauce and ash before him. “We will not make a liaison with the Ratter at this time, Unerring.”
The scribe’s face was occupied, for less time than it takes a snake to strike, by a marvelously versatile expression. “Jhan is without agenda,” she said. “He will do you no good unmoored.”
“The Ratter is my good right arm, and he will do me good when drubbing is what’s called for,” said the judge—with an expulsion similar to that accompanying his earlier stipulation; the presence of such ejaculations concomitant to his speech may be taken as read for the remainder of the scene. “At present I have other needs.”
“He has acquitted himself well at more subtle tasks,” said the scribe.
“Granted,” the judge said; but the wave of his blackened hand seemed to retract the grant. The proprietor retched quietly when he realized he had seen white blink through the black. “Yet the task I had in mind requires specialized expertise.”
“What task is that?”
The judge announced something unintelligible, then collapsed into a fit of coughing. The plumes of ash this sent into the common room’s air would hardly, by this point, bear mentioning, save for the proprietor’s realization about the increasing number of white patches exposed by these flights of carbonized skin—to wit, that they were, in fact, light pink, gleaming with the healthy glow of new skin.
“Begging the Judge’s pardon—”
“We must bring suit against the gods.”
The proprietor felt his eyes strain away from their sockets. The scribe raised an eloquent eyebrow. Even the lout emitted a reluctant grunt.
“I suppose it is not without precedent,” the scribe conceded.
The judge hawked out a raspy laugh. “You allude to the fates of Phog the Intemperate, I take it, and the Sapphire-Studded Litigator.”
“Those are only the human plaintiffs,” said Unerring. “They have done rather well, on average. The Belcher of Thunderheads was consigned to the very bottom hell, if you recall, and he retained a cadre of barristers unequaled then or since in the draconic tradition. A hundred generations and he still has yet to reattain the mortal planes. The Flayer of Infants was destroyed entirely—”
“Pah,” said the judge, “he was a demon to begin with; it was all they had left to do. But I take it, then, that you are not apprised of the famous suit of the bat, Eet Zephyrwing?”
“A mark of the true expert,” said the scribe, “is a familiarity with his subject so utter that even the more obscure elements of it strike him as obvious and well-known.”
“It was before your time,” said the judge. “Before mine, even, though not so far. But when I was a mere spirit, still cutting my teeth on the celestial statutes, the suit of the bat was whispered about in our study halls, and cited occasionally in the legal journals, though always en passant. It is never directly quoted. It is never taught. It is never cited in case law, no matter how germane the issue might seem to be. The text of the decision is available in no known library; its author is not known, nor is his or her fate. Here is what is known. The gods were divided in their preference for the outcome.” The judge wiped a crust of ash off his forehead with the back of his hand, revealing more healthy skin on both; an obliging breeze carried the ash off before it alit on the hot pork. “As they are in this case. And the damages.” He breathed deeply in through his nose and let out what seemed to be a long, contented sigh. “The judge in the case, whoever he or she may have been, ruled that Eet Zephyrwing be summarily made a demigod.”
“You are already a demigod,” the scribe observed.
“Correct,” said the judge. “Healing my injuries is minor damages by comparison.”
“And you mean to replicate this amazing bat’s comprehensively obfuscated legal feat.”
“I am barred from entry to the Courts Celestial until I complete my charges on the mortal plane,” said the judge. “Fortunately, I have a trustworthy proxy.”
The scribe tapped her fingers on the wooden writing-board she carried, filling the common room with a light, musical rhythm. The lout closed his eyes and moved his head in time for a moment or two. “You need protection,” she said at last. “You are enervated; it isn’t safe to leave you on this plane alone. Not with the weapons they have now—”
“The Ratter,” said the judge, “as I have asseverated, will do me good when drubbing is what’s called for.”
“He is not here.”
“I can arrange to be there. I am enervated, Unerring, but compared to these mortals I am hardly frail. Besides.” He nodded his head in the direction of the lout, sending more crumbs of ash out, where they all drifted in a neat halo around the dish of hot pork. “I am not without protection, even now.”
“Louts lack discernment,” said the scribe. “Subtlety. Louts do not gather information, they do not synthesize, they do not conjecture—”
“A lout killed the only one of Ua’s three pretenders worth the killing,” said the judge, “and his subtler betters did not save me from that enormous gun. If I pointed this lout at a gun, Unerring, what would happen? He would kill the operator and bring me the gun. How would his lack of subtlety have degraded his effectiveness in such an instance? A gun brought me down. Not trickery, not strategy, not subterfuge. A huge machine, which hurt me only because it was strong enough to hurt me. That is what my opponents have taught me to fear. Not subtlety.”
“Then find the Ratter.”
The judge cocked his head, which by now was merely crusted in ash, though that ash seemed to avoid getting into his food or his eyes. “You will not see him even if I do.” Before Unerring could open her mouth to speak, he continued. “You know you will not see him. You want him working with me. You want him working. You fear he’s feeling his own uselessness, without me around, without you. He doesn’t know how to direct himself. He doesn’t know what he needs to do. He’s unmoored, and you’re worried what will happen.” The smile with which the judge spoke became broader, if no kinder. “You don’t want him to lose his sense of purpose. His direction. That’s more important than being near him, for you. You don’t want to think of him the way he was when we found him. Even if you don’t think it would happen—maybe you do, maybe you don’t. You can’t bear having to think that it might. That it might be happening right now.”
The scribe graced the judge with a smile as thin and flat as the edge of a single sheet of paper.
“His Honor’s rulings are always flawless. I shall send a communique with a subpoena-serving demon as and when I am quartered. May I use the Trillium Circuit apartments?”
“As long as you keep them in good order,” said the judge—and here the proprietor of the tavern, who
was in fact still watching the exchange in enthralled terror, as the citizens of the coastal cities of the Archipelago are said to watch the all-pulverizing duels of the enormous moths and lizards and other chimerae that emerge betimes from the depths of their seas, could not help but be knocked back by the pure humanity of the comment—which, it hardly needs to be said, was no genuine admonition, but rather a flare of absurdity to illuminate the judge’s towering and unmarred trust in his subordinate. “How will you enter the Court Celestial?”
“The Dauphine of Gossip still holds the Flatulent Springs. I shall have a tale or two for her if I step quickly.”
The judge made the sort of face that even one ignorant of the mystic geography of Ua might expect in response to a name like “Flatulent Springs.” “The Black Waterfall is closer. And Undying Phog owes me a favor.”
“You executed Undying Phog a century ago.”
“Executed?” said the judge around a mouthful of rice. “Whatever for?”
“Violating the terms of his immortality, Your Honor.”
“What did he do?”
“He was unfaithful, Your Honor.”
The judge snorted. “What made him think that would work out?”
“His wife was Niima the Polymorphous, Your Honor.”
“Ah.”
“It’s coming back to me,” said the judge. “What was it he said before I parted his neck? ‘Appearances can be deceiving—’”
“‘Appearances are meant to be deceiving,’” said the scribe. “‘What the sorcerers don’t tell you is that truth is the ultimate bore.’”
“We should execute more such buffoons,” said the judge. “Who controls the Black Waterfall now?”
“It passed to Phog Skinchanger on the death of his father.”
“Did we ever get the favor?”
“What?”
“The favor Phog owed me. Did we get it?”
The scribe looked coolly at the judge. “I do not think Phog Skinchanger is likely to hear arguments on the transfer of favor-debt through inheritance.”
“Make him hear it.”
“That is the sort of thing for which, when we have him,” said the scribe, so evenly that it was almost impossible to tell the words were coming from between clenched teeth, “we have the Ratter.”
The judge shrugged at the undeniable justice of the sentiment. Even his robes of office seemed to have regenerated themselves with the meal; the proprietor could make out gold-embroidered characters beginning to reconstitute themselves on the hems of his sleeves. “The Flatulent Springs it is, then,” he said. “Do not let me detain you.”
“As you say,” the scribe said, and left without another word.
The silence in the inn struck the proprietor as that of a tiger casually turning its head and locking its eyes with a defenseless, tasty sort of prey. At the very thought, it seemed, the judge’s eyes wandered to find his own behind the bar.
“I am a demigod,” the judge pointed out. “Bring me drink and company. A cup for yourself, please, and one for my inarticulate companion.”
The proprietor did not need to be told twice. He, a pitcher of wine, and three stoneware cups were at the table in as few heartbeats as he could manage (though it was not a small number, as his heart was going considerably faster than usual). He did not need to be told to pour, nor to drink. The judge took a deep draught, but made no reaction; the lout took a sip, but gazed at it appreciatively, his eyes as animated as the proprietor had seen them in all that short, infinite evening.
“The great loves of history fall into two categories,” the judge said, as the proprietor refilled his cup unasked. “The brief ones, that rise and burst like fireworks, all noise and color—then fade in moments to a wisp of smoke on the night wind. And then there are the stupid ones.” Another draught; another refill from shaking hands. “The ones in which the principals understand what they have just well enough not to let it drift away, no matter what they do to one another—and keep themselves blinkered enough to what they have just well enough to let it slip. To allow the extraneous or the tawdry or that which is simply worth less to interfere with the incredible purity, the incredible value, of the tie that binds them. This is the category in which Jhan and Jangmu’s love falls. Forever kept from realization by the flaws and fears of two of the most powerful and worthy mortals ever to walk the Rafters of the World. She joined me first, you know—his first image of her, before they were colleagues, was as Unerring Scribe Jangmu, though she was not famous under that style yet. He never saw the degradation from which she came, as she did that from which he did. He is blind to what she was, and she does not fully see what he has become; because she will not see, and he will not look.”
The proprietor thought, then, on his own love—on the woman who had not made love to him for months, on the five children they had raised and the two they had lost, on the business they had raised from the very dirt as they had raised the beams of this tavern. She had fled days ago, when the Plague of Darkness fell that augured the coming of the Priestkiller Worm; she had asked him to come, but he had refused once, and she had not pressed the matter. (She was not, as a rule, a person who did not press a matter.) He had, at no particular urging, explained his reasoning: No matter the calamity, there would be those on the road who needed food and drink, and if the rumors about the Priestkiller Worm were true, there was no fleeing it in any case. But he did not wish to stop her from leaving if she wished; at such a time, she should be with those who would give her the most comfort—her mother and children. It was not a great love; the proprietor would have laughed off anyone who had said it might be. Yet hearing this ash-covered judge exclude it, without even looking at it, from his own esteem—that rankled, that pricked the proprietor’s none-too-heightened sense of honor. “Perhaps, Your Honor,” he said, “there are other ways in which greatness might manifest in love.”
“Like your own salt-of-the-earth marriage, barkeep?” said the judge. “Spare me your populist claptrap, I’ve no patience for it. I am a judge and a headsman; my glaives draw the dividing lines between life and death. You may choose to rank your own grimy association on a level with the Epic of Shing or… what was that new confection that so exercised you, Fatal?”
“Hariti and the Inventor,” said the lout. His voice was light and pleasant.
“The very one. In any case, leave me out of it. Grinding like a tilted millstone through a handful of decades’ worth of humping and whelping hardly qualifies you as an instructor in love to the coming ages; the last thing I need is a report of every gritty turn. Have you any more of this hot pork?”
Not for you, the proprietor thought. I’m already sorry I wasted a perfectly civil pig on such a black tongue, he thought. I wouldn’t tell you the story of my marriage if you sent a subpoena-serving demon for it, he thought. “I’ll have it right out,” he said, and stood abruptly up from his seat.
He had drunk more wine than he was accustomed to; the rapid resumption of the standing posture brought a wave of dizziness over him, and he stumbled, putting a hand on the lout’s shoulder to keep from falling. Swift as a snake, the lout covered the proprietor’s hand with his own thick one, the nails bitten down to the quick; his palms were strong but smooth and soft, like a baby’s foot. A half-second later, his eyes met the proprietor’s, a faint dismay tingeing the porky, unshaven features. The proprietor felt as though he had swallowed a skinful of icy water, as though the blood in his veins had been replaced with snow. He did not feel himself slide to the ground.
The lout’s chest rose and fell. “Reflex,” he said.
The judge looked mournfully at the proprietor’s corpse, brushing the rim of residual ash from around his face, and a cloud of it out of his hair. “If there is a fault here, it is mine. I trained you in those reflexes.” He sent a quick puff of air through his nostrils. “There was no great fault in him. Some kindness in his last moments would have been better. We did not prepare for this, did we, Fatal? For victory, of course, r
estored in glory to continue our work on the Courts Celestial; for extinction, even, in whatever hell is reserved for the monstrously incompetent. But rabbiting about incognito in the world of mortals? I fear we are ill-positioned for it.” He grunted once and shook his head. “Search out that pork, please. No call to leave it fester.”
The pan was still warm; soon it was clean.
Matt Weber is the author of the post-post-apocalyptic science fantasy The Dandelion Knight, its companion novella DISPATCH FROM A COLORED ROOM, and the short story collections REVERIE SYNDROME and VERSO. He’s published short fiction in Nature, THE NASSAU LITERARY REVIEW, and COSMOS; his story “Statler pulchrifex” appears in FUTURES FROM NATURE, and “Keynote Speech: Fourth Annual Symposium on Information Disorders, Inaugural Section on Reverie Syndrome” has been featured on Wattpad. He’s also published research articles in several of the better journals in psychology and neuroscience, but that was in another country and, besides, the wench is dead.
For the rest of it, he’s a data scientist by trade, a neuroscientist by training, a father and husband by love and grit and happenstance, a coffee junkie by necessity. He works for a company that doesn’t like him to use its name in promotional materials, and he lives in New Jersey with his wife and three children, who are better than all of you stacked on top of one another. Nothing personal.
He has Internet presences:
Blog and site:www.cobblerandbard.com
Twitter:@mattweberphd
Wattpad:@Matt_Weber
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