“What’s a ‘rolling key’?”
“That’s the bit that lost me. Sorry.”
“It hardly matters if they take a little while to break it. Anybody who’s going to be dying in the next week or so can stay that way with my blessing.”
Cabal folded his legs under him into a corrupt lotus position beside the emperor and flicked through the speech. “Your work, Count?”
“Yes, as it happens. Yes, I wrote it. Why?”
“No reason,” said Cabal, holding the paper with his fingertips. “Very … rabble-rousing. Very appealing to the mob.”
“All the best speeches are,” said Marechal, scenting dissent. “The intention is to get the hoi polloi behind a little healthy expansionism, not dazzle them with a philosophical discourse.”
“No danger of that,” said Cabal. He leaned over and flicked the mirror with his finger. It started spinning rapidly, powered by the motor. The late emperor’s gaze settled on the glittering object and stayed focussed there. Cabal leaned forward and read in an intense whisper, “People of Mirkarvia. Friends. I come before you today to share a vision I have of the future. Not just the future of our own great and noble country but also that of our neighbours …”
Marechal gestured curtly at Karstetz and the two men tiptoed noisily out, their boots clacking and squeaking in the great echoing room. When they were gone, Cabal paused. He looked at the emperor, then he looked at the door through which the two officers had just left. Then he smiled a smile that had no intention of getting anywhere near his eyes.
* * *
Brocade, Your Imperial Majesty, your favourite!” It is always a little disappointing when somebody fulfils a stereotype to several decimal places. Prezof, the emperor’s tailor — more of a costumier, really — would have been laughed off the stage if he’d ever played his job. Tired, dull clichés, the critics would have said. Isn’t the playwright living in the present? Surely no respectable theatre would dare turn out a production of anything other than farce in which a personal tailor is a flouncing, pompadoured, powder puff? A pathetic, simpering, mincing … and so on and so forth. Prezof was all these things. He lived alone but for an obese cat that he called Felice. He had a well-thumbed copy of The Castle of Otranto, with his favourite passages underlined in green ink. He had an impressive collection of embroidered antimacassars on all the armchairs in his house which he changed daily whether anybody had sat there or not. There was nothing more important than the creation of fine clothes for His Imperial Majesty and not an hour went by when he wasn’t actively pursuing the muse. The materials were of the finest, the workmanship superlative, the design execrable. For Prezof may have been dedicated, hardworking, and diligent, but he was not in the least talented. It summed up Mirkarvia very nicely that nobody noticed. Even Cabal, whose artistic eye had been allowed to atrophy, found it painful to be too close to the exquisite robes in which the emperor was due to make his speech. As Prezof bustled the unusually silent emperor into his new clothes, Cabal took his blue-glass dark spectacles from his pocket, polished them on a small piece of chamois that he kept handy, and put them on. That was much better.
Prezof favoured him with a sour glance. Cabal’s black suit had been returned to him, repaired, cleaned, and pressed. A new white shirt, cravat, and shoes made him feel like himself again. His cane lay across his lap. He’d stunned Karstetz by thanking him for its return and almost sounding as if he meant it. All Prezof saw was an unexciting, conservative ensemble. Still, black was always good — but as a cloak? Yes, a cloak! Cabal tended to stride — a cloak would look marvellous billowing about him as he did so. So far, so obvious. Then Prezof demonstrated that he hadn’t lost his knack by mentally adding mauve galoshes and a tall fez with a feather. Cabal was not a vain man but he did stand upon his dignity, and if he had only been able to see that image in Prezof’s mind he would certainly have considered murder.
“Your Imperial Majesty is very quiet today,” said Prezof. “And a little pale, if I might make so bold. You are well?”
Antrobus looked down at Prezof and his eyes were black ports into an empty pit where a soul used to live. His lips slowly formed the words, “People of Mirkavia … Mirkarvia …” Prezof prided himself on being a sensitive person but, then again, he prided himself on being a great artist, and he was deluding himself there, too. He smiled at the dead man and told him there was a bit of mild flu going around and that was certainly the problem.
Cabal was getting bored waiting. He had one last syringe to inject just before they presented the imperial carcass to its public which would give the grey, marbled flesh the semblance of humanity. After that — well, he would have to see. The Count Marechal was clearly a career soldier, a political meddler, and an ambitious aristocrat, and any of these occupations in itself would have boded ill. How he managed to be all three simultaneously without tearing down the seams, and the mendacity and ruthlessness with which he was stuffed leaking out, was a small miracle. Cabal briefly wondered what mendacity and ruthlessness looked like as stuffing and imagined something like wet poppy seeds before his personality turned up and quashed such frivolous whimsy. He had to remain focussed if he were to stay alive.
Lieutenant Karstetz came in and stamped to attention because he liked it. “The Count Marechal requires your presence, Herr Cabal, at the imperial balcony. Oh, and take the corpse with you,” he added as an afterthought.
“Corpse?” said Prezof, appalled, stepping out from behind Antrobus’s bulk, where he had been brushing nap. Then he looked up at the pale emperor and a penny audibly dropped. He gasped and stepped back.
“Oh,” said Karstetz, miffed, “I say, the dressmaker. That’s a bind. This is all supposed to be terribly hush-hush. The count will have my guts for garters for letting the cat out of the bag.” He walked over to Cabal. “Be a brick and take his Imperial Deadness to the balcony, will you?” He looked at Prezof without rancour and drew his sabre. “’Fraid I’ve got a bit of cleaning up to do here, don’t y’know?”
Cabal took the emperor by the elbow and guided him to the door and out into the corridor. As he turned to close the door behind him, he saw Karstetz bearing down on the terrified Prezof. He loathed unnecessary killing but, then again, he loathed Prezof. Still, he felt it was necessary to at least register his disapproval. “You can’t go around killing people to cover up your mistakes,” he said. “You’ll kill off half the country at that rate.”
Karstetz paused. “You’re right, of course,” he admitted, apparently missing the implication. “I think that’s a very good point. I shall start being more careful — ” He turned back towards Prezof and raised his sabre. “Tomorrow.”
Cabal narrowed his lips and closed the door behind him. Halfway down the corridor, he heard a reedy scream from the room.
“This is a fine country you’ve got here,” he said to Antrobus II. “Such a fine place. A nominal leader who should have been in a sepulchre a week ago and a military full of inbred psychopaths.” They walked a little further. “A little bit like Imperial Rome, really.”
* * *
Marechal was crushing a dead cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray when Cabal entered. “Where have you been?” he demanded, thrusting a thumb over his shoulder at an ormolu clock. “Have you seen the time? Is he ready? Gott! Look at the state of him.”
Cabal produced a syringe and jammed it in Antrobus’s neck. Antrobus seemed wholly unconcerned. Within a few seconds, a spreading perimeter of good skin colour was expanding out from the needle mark. Where it passed, the pallid corpse tones were replaced with a glow of rude health, the dead eyes twinkled, the hair bristled. Lieutenant Karstetz entered as the transformation was well under way. “I say, I could do with a jigger of that stuff after a heavy night.”
“I’ll give you the formula,” said Cabal in the full knowledge that the stuff was toxic to the living.
“Does he know the speech?” asked Marechal.
“He knows every word he’s been taught,” Cabal r
eplied. “He can be relied upon to play his part.”
“Excellent.” The Count Marechal went to the curtain that divided the room from the balcony. It was a good day for a speech. The weather was clear and cool without being cold. A national holiday had been called and the people were feeling well disposed toward the ruling class. They showed this by milling around eating sausages, swilling beer, and slapping one another on the back while laughing too loudly. This, from Marechal’s perspective, was a vast improvement over them running around with flaming brands, torching government buildings, and stringing up tax collectors. He watched the crowd for a few moments, the faint sneer that lurked beneath his nose twisting his moustache.
Across the square, the basilica clock sounded the hour and the people grew quiet. Marechal stepped away from the window. “It is time,” he said, purely for effect. “This had better work, Cabal.”
“I’ve done my work properly,” said Cabal as he led the emperor forward. “You should be worrying about the standard of the speech.”
The curtains were drawn back, Cabal whispered a word of command into Antrobus’s ear, and the dead man stepped forward for his finest hour. Cabal stepped back into the shadows as Marechal and the other dignitaries formed in a line behind the emperor. Marechal curtly gestured to Karstetz. “Watch Cabal,” he whispered.
“Bit late in the day for him to try anything, isn’t it, old man?”
“A bit late?” He looked at Karstetz with mild disbelief, as if just realising that he was talking to a chimp in a cavalry officer’s uniform. “Just watch him, will you?” He joined the line.
Karstetz moved back into the room and perched on the corner of a table, an unconscious echo of how Cabal had first seen the Count Marechal. But where Marechal had watched him closely, Karstetz only grinned amiably, looked around the room with little interest, and started to hum an unlovely melody for the tuba. Cabal found an antique high-backed chair and made himself comfortable.
* * *
The crowd went deadly quiet as the emperor, Antrobus II of Mirkarvia, made his appearance. There had been plentiful rumours of his death floating about; despite Marechal’s threats and Karstetz’s enthusiasm, the imperial household leaked gossip like a buckshotted bucket. The people had been half looking forward to a nice revolution. And now up popped Antrobus, quite spoiling things. Still, they gave a cheer. The beer and sausages were free and they didn’t wish to appear churlish. They’d let him have his say and then have a revolution next week, after a decent interval. They were a downtrodden mass, but they had been brought up nicely.
Antrobus stepped up to the balcony rail and paused. And paused. The moment grew to impolite and impolitic length. The dignitaries in the line shot glances at one another. The crowd began to mutter, a distant susurration of uncertainty. Marechal’s expression never changed, but he made sure that the captain of the guards down in the square would be able to see his signal to shoot into the crowd if necessary. Then things would need to be done, and done quickly. Still, it would take only a moment to shoot Cabal through the middle of his supercilious face and blow recondite grey matter over the walls. He’d intended to do it anyway, but it would be so much more satisfying seasoned with revenge. Then he forgot about the pale pleasures of cheap brutality as the emperor raised his hands and the crowd fell silent once more.
“People of Mirkarvia …” He spoke in a pleasing baritone that carried easily across the square. “Friends …” He said it with such sincerity that commoners who had long referred to him as “lard arse,” “flobber features,” “cancer borne on the backs of the proletariat,” and other things less kind, suddenly felt unfamiliar but not unpleasant pricklings of admiration for their emperor. They hung on his every word. This was going to be important. “I come before you today to share a vision I have of the future. Not just the future of our own great and noble country but also that of our neighbours …”
It was powerful stuff, and those of a romantic, nationalistic nature in particular were borne along by it. Karstetz was all that and stupid to boot. He rose from the table and walked slowly towards the fluttering curtains as if drawn by siren song. He stopped and listened, transfixed. Cabal watched him as a scientist watches a beetle on a tombstone. After a few seconds, it was plain that Karstetz had forgotten all about him. Quietly, Cabal climbed to his feet, picked up his bag and cane, and walked softly, staying on the thick carpet, in the direction of the door.
On the balcony, Marechal glowed inwardly. This was exquisite, far better than even his fondest hopes. The crowd were eating this with an even more avaricious appetite than the one they’d used to demolish several tons of state-owned sausage. The rumours of the emperor’s death could now be skilfully twisted into the people “knowing” about the emperor’s fragile health. Yet he’d heroically torn himself from his deathbed to deliver this, his last and greatest gift to his people, his wish for the future. This wasn’t going to be some grubby little land-grabbing campaign. It was going to be a crusade.
“The disputed lands are ours,” roared the emperor. “Historically ours. Rightfully ours. They shall be ours again!” In the crowd’s collective consciousness, their neighbours turned from trading partners and allies into a bunch of thieving Gypsies, ripe for extermination.
Marechal smiled and looked at the others in the line — the generals, the marshals, the admirals of the Aerofleet, and the commodore of the tiny Gallaco Sea Fleet. They were entranced, enraptured. War was in the air, and it smelled good.
Then he noticed Karstetz standing behind the curtains, his attention entirely given over to the wrong subject. Cabal was nowhere to be seen. Marechal felt suddenly cold. So Cabal had escaped, so what? Marechal remembered a sack of cat hair and Cabal’s strange sense of humour, his loathing of war in general, and Marechal’s ambitions in particular. His suspicions deepened.
Karstetz didn’t respond to Marechal’s attempts to attract his attention while not distracting the crowd. He didn’t feel the intense gaze, see the sharp flicks of the head, hear the snapped fingers. He had ears only for the emperor’s speech. “Make no mistake,” Antrobus was saying, “these fair-weather friends, with their deceitful ways and their foul plans, are our enemies!” The crowd roared. “Our mortal foe!” They screamed for blood. “Our prey!” They gave voice to a full-throated howl of fury. It went half-throated when, belatedly, they realised what he’d said.
Marechal flicked his attention from Karstetz to Antrobus. Prey? He’d never written that. “We shall hunt them! Kill them! Eat them!” cried Antrobus in a passion. “They are our meat! We shall tear the flesh from their bones with our bare teeth and devour them!” Marechal realised with horror that the emperor was drooling, dark saliva bubbling from his lips. Down in the square, the people were looking suspiciously at their sausages.
“Ach, du lieber Gott,” he whispered. Then to Karstetz he barked, “Lieutenant! Get him!”
“Wha’?” Karstetz looked around as if waking. “What? Who?”
“The emperor, you dolt! Get him inside before it’s too late!”
“Brains!” The emperor was shrieking now. “If we eat their brains, we have their strength, their very souls. Brains!” The strength of his voice was going, quickly turning to a shambling imbecilic tone. “Human brains … must eat … brains …”
“There, there, old fella,” said Karstetz, appearing beside him. “Let’s get you indoors and into your coffin, shall we? Have a lovely state funeral. That’ll be nice, won’t it?”
“Brains,” said Antrobus unheeding, the drool dripping into a dark stain on his robes. “Must eat … brains …” He finally noticed Karstetz and decided to start with a light snack.
The crowd gasped and gagged, and some of them fainted as their Imperial Majesty fell upon a surprised cavalry officer. Karstetz may have started to scream before Antrobus smashed his head open on the marble balcony rail, threw him to the floor, and began to feed. It was so hard to tell amidst all the other screams.
Marechal’s mind worke
d quickly. He needed a ploy, and he needed it now. The French gambit, it had to be. “We are betrayed!” he shouted, and signalled to the captain of the guards. Sporadically at first and then with increasing discipline, rifle fire started to pour into the crowd. Marechal signalled three volleys and ran into the room. The door at the far end burst open and guardsmen rushed in. “Get that thing in here,” he bellowed at them.
“The emperor?” asked the sergeant at their head.
“Emperor? That’s not our emperor! We are betrayed! Drag it in here and kill it!”
He left them grappling with the foul thing that screeched and whooped at them. The situation was still controllable. The massacre in the square could easily be put at the door of enemy agents. The sudden panic he had caused would drive those last few moments into a strange world of uncertain memory. Had the emperor really turned into a monstrous cannibal before their eyes? Of course not. He’d been attacked by … by … a traitor! Karstetz had attacked the emperor. A life-and-death struggle — the heroic efforts of the emperor killing his own assassin even as he breathed his last. Yes, yes! It could work!
It was a shame about Karstetz, though. He’d owed Marechal money.
He ran through the palace unheeding of the precise course he was taking, uncertain even what he was looking for. He swung two doors open and found himself in the great banquet hall of the palace. It was one of the more medieval parts of the place, a long table running down its centre, a balcony running around from the end of the great staircase on the northern wall, a minstrels’ gallery. At the far end, unsuccessfully trying the doors there, it also had Johannes Cabal.
Marechal smiled bitterly, closed the doors behind him, and loosened his revolver in its holster. This was what his subconscious mind had been up to, hunting this man, this hated man. Sometimes he got a great sense of job satisfaction.
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