Just so.
And, as poor Calap Roud’s corpse cooled there on the hard ground, all the others stared in an array of horror, shock, sudden appetite, or mulish indifference, first upon Calap and then upon me, and then back again, deft in swivel to avoid the Chanters with their gnarly fists and black expressions (and Relish, of course, who stood examining her fingernails).
Yet t’was Relish who spoke first. ‘As if.’
Extraordinary indeed, how two tiny words could shift the world about-face, the volumes of disdain and disgust, disbelief and a hundred other disses, so filling her breath by way of tone and pitch as to leave not a single witness in doubt of her veracity. Calap Roud in Relish’s arms? The absurdity of that notion was as a lightning strike to blast away idiotic conviction, and in the vacuous echo of her comment, why, all eyes now fixed in outrage upon Tiny Chanter.
Whose scowl deepened. ‘What?’
‘Now we’ll never hear what happened to the Imass!’ So cried our amiable host, as hosts must by nature be ever practical.
The mood soured then, until I humbly said, ‘Not necessarily. I know that particular tale. Perhaps not with the perfect recall with which Calap Roud iterated it, but I shall do my best to satisfy.’
‘Better choice than your own story,’ muttered Apto, ‘which is liable to see us all killed before you’re done with it.’
‘Unacceptable,’ pronounced Purse Snippet. ‘Flicker owes me his tale.’
‘Now he owes us another one!’ barked Tulgord Vise.
‘Exactly!’ chimed Brash Phluster, who, though an artist of modest talents, was not a fool.
‘I shall assume the added burden,’ said I, ‘in humble acknowledgement of my small role in poor Calap Roud’s fate—’
‘Small?’ snorted Steck Marynd.
‘Indeed,’ I replied, ‘for did I not state with sure and unambiguous clarity that my tale bears only superficial similarity to our present reality?’
As they all pondered this, Mister Must descended from the carriage, to get his butchering tools from the trunk. A man of many skills, was Mister Must, and almost as practical as Sardic Thew.
Butchering a human was, in detail, little different from butchering any other large animal. The guts must be removed, and quickly. The carcass must be skinned and boned and then bled as best as one is able under the circumstances. This generally involved hanging the quartered sections from the prong hooks at the back end of the carriage, and while this resulted in a spattered trail of blood upon the conveyance’s path, why, the symbolic significance was very nearly perfect. In any case, Mister Must worked with proficient alacrity, slicing through cartilage and tendon and gristle, and in no time at all the various pieces that had once been Calap Roud depended dripping from the carriage stern. His head was sent rolling in the direction of the shallow pit containing his hide, organs and intestines.
Does this shock? Look upon the crowd that is your company. Pox the mind with visions of dressed and quartered renditions, all animation drained away. The horror to come in the wake of such imaginings (well, one hopes horror comes) is a complicated mélange. A face of life, a host of words, an ocean of swirling thoughts to brighten active eyes. Grace and motion and a sense that before you is a creature of time (just as you no doubt are), with past, present and future. A single step could set you in his or her sandals, as easy as that. To then jolt one’s senses into a realm of butchered meat and red bone, a future torn away, and eyes made dull and empty, ah, is any journey as cruel and disquieting as that one?
To answer: yes, when complimented with the growling of one’s own stomach and savoury hints wetting the tongue.
Is it cowardice to turn away, to leave Mister Must to his work whilst one admires the sky and horizon, or perhaps frown in vaunted interest at the watchful regard of the horses or the gimlet study from the mules? Certainly not to meet the gaze of anyone else. Cowardice? Absolutely.
Poor Calap Roud. What grief and remorse assails me!
Brash Phluster sidled close as the trek resumed. ‘That was vicious, Flicker.’
‘When the mouse is cornered—’
‘“Mouse?” Not you. More like a serpent in our midst.’
‘I am pleased you heeded the warning.’
‘I bet you are. I could have blurted it out, you know. And you’d have been lying there beside Roud, and I’d be safe.’
‘Do you wish me to resume my tale, Brash? Recounting all the other lovers of the woman with the brothers?’
‘Won’t work a second time.’
‘You would stake your life on Tiny Chanter’s self-control?’
Brash licked his lips. ‘Anyway, now you have two stories, and Purse isn’t happy about it. She’s disgusted by what you did to Calap. Using her story like that. She feels guilty, too.’
‘Why, Brash, that is most perceptive.’
‘She won’t be forgiving, not anymore.’
‘Indeed not.’
‘I think you’re a dead man.’
‘Brash!’ bellowed Tulgord Vise. ‘Cheer us up! Sing, lad, sing!’
‘But we got our supper!’
Tiny Chanter laughed and then said, ‘Maybe we want dessert. Midge?’
‘Dessert.’
‘Flea?’
‘No thanks.’
His brothers halted and stared at him. Flea’s expression was pained. ‘I been bunged up now six whole days. I got bits of four people in me, and poets at that. Bad poets.’
Tiny’s hands twitched. ‘A dessert will do you good, Flea.’
‘Honey-glazed,’ suggested Midge, ‘if I can find a hive.’
Flea frowned. ‘Maybe an eyeball or two,’ he conceded.
‘Brash!’ Tiny roared.
‘I got one! Listen, this one’s brilliant. It’s called “Night of the Assassin”—’
‘Knights can’t be assassins,’ objected Arpo Relent. ‘It’s a rule. Knights can’t be assassins, wizards can’t be weapon-masters and mendics got to use clubs and maces. Everyone knows that.’
Tulgord Vise frowned. ‘Clubs? What?’
‘No, “night” as in the sun going down.’
‘They ride into the sunset, yes, but only at the end.’
Brash looked round, somewhat wildly.
‘Let’s hear it,’ commanded Tiny.
‘Mummumummymummy! Ooloolooloo!’
‘Oh sorrow!’ came a gargled croak from Sellup, who stumbled along behind the carriage and was now ghostly with dust.
‘I was just warming up my singing voice,’ Brash explained. ‘Now, “Night of the Assassin”, by Brash Phluster. An original composition. Lyrics by Brash Phluster, music by Brash Phluster. Composed in the year—’
‘Sing or die,’ said Tiny Chanter.
‘In the black heart of Malaz City
on a black night of blackness so darrrk
no one could see a thing it was all gritty
when a guard cried out “harrrrk!”
But the darkness did not answer
because no one was therrre
Kalam Mekhar was climbing the tower
instead of using the stairrr
The Mad Empress sat on her throne
dreaming up new ways of torturrre
when she heard a terrible groan
and she did bless the mendic’s currre
There was writing carved on the wall
great kings and mad tyrants wrote dire curses
there in the gloomy royal stall
so rank with smeared mercies—’
‘She’s sitting on a shit-hole?’ Tulgord Vise demanded. ‘Taking a dump?’
‘That’s the whole point!’ Brash retorted. ‘Everybody sings about kings and princesses and heroes but nobody ever mentions natural bodily functions. I introduced the Mad Empress at a vulnerable moment, you see? To earn her more sympathy and remind listeners she’s as human as anybody.’
‘People know all that,’ Tulgord said, ‘and they don’t want to hear about it in a damned song about assa
ssins!’
‘I’m setting the scene!’
‘Let him go on,’ said Tiny. Then he pointed a culpable finger at Brash. ‘But no more natural bodily functions.’
‘Out of the dark night sky
rained down matter most foulll
and Kalam swore and wiped at his eye
wishing he’d brought a towelll
But the chute yawned above him
his way to the Mad Empress was a black hollle
could he but reach the sticky rim
he was but moments from his goallll
In days of yore she was an assassin too
a whore of murder with claws unfurlllled
but now she just needed hard to poo
straining to make her hair currrlll’
‘I said—’
‘It’s part of the story!’ squealed Brash Phluster. ‘I can’t help it!’
‘Neither could the Empress, seems,’ added Apto under his breath.
‘Kalam looked up then to see a grenado
but swift he was in dodging its plungggge
and he launched up into the brown window
and in the narrow channel he thrashed and lunggged
And climbed and climbed seeking the light
or at least he hoped for some other wayyy
to end the plight of this darkest night
as he prayed for the light of daayyy
Through the narrowest of chutes
he clambered into a pink caverrrnnn
and swam among the furly flukes
“oh,” he cried, “when will I ever learrnnn?”
’Tis said across the entire empire
that the Empress Laseen did give birrthhh
to the Royal Assassins of the Claw entire
you can take that for what it’s worrthhh
But Kalam Mekhar knew her better than most
and he did carve his name on her wallll
and we’d all swear he got there first
because we never went there at allll!’
Imagine, if you dare, the nature of the silence that followed ‘Night of the Assassin’. To this very day, all these years later, I struggle and fail to find words of sufficient girth and suitable precision and can only crawl a reach closer, prostrate with nary more than a few gibbering mumbles. We had all halted, I do recall, but the faces on all sides were but a blur, barring that of Sellup, who marched in from a cloud of dust smiling with blackened teeth and said, ‘Thank you for waiting!’
It is said that as much as the dead will find a way into the ground, so too will they find a way out again. Farmers turn up bones under the plough. Looters shove aside the lid of the crypt and scatter trucked limbs and skulls and such in their hunt for baubles. Sellup, of course, was yet to be buried, but in appearance she was quickly assuming the guise of the interred. Patchy and jellying, her lone brow a snarling fringe above murky matted eyes, various thready remnants of mucus dangling from her crusted nostrils, and already crawling with maggots that had writhed out from her ear-holes to sprinkle her shoulders or choke in the nooses of her tangled hair, she was the kind of fan to elicit a cringe and flinch from the most desperate poet (though sufficiently muted as to avoid too much offence, for we will take what we can get, don’t you know).
The curious thing, from the point of view of an artist, lies in the odd reversal a dead fan poses. For the truly adoring worshipper, a favourite artist cursed to an undying existence could well be considered a prayer answered. More songs, more epics, an unending stream of blather and ponce for all eternity! And should the poor poet fall into irreparable decays – a nose falling off, a flap of scalp sagging loose, a certain bloating of intestinal gases followed by a wheezing eruption or two – well, one must suffer for one’s art, yes?
We artists who remained, myself and Brash and indeed, even Purse Snippet, we regarded Sellup with an admixture of abhorrence and fascination. Cruel the irony that she adored a poet who was not even around.
No matter. The afternoon stretched on, and of the cloudy thoughts in this collection of cloudy minds, who could even guess? A situation can fast slide into both the absurd and the tragic, and indeed into true horror, and yet for those in its midst, senses adjust in their unceasing search for normality, and so on we go, in our assembly of proper motions, the swing of legs, the thump of heels, lids blinking over dust-stung eyes, and the breath goes in and the breath goes out.
Normal sounds comfort us. Hoofs and carriage wheels, the creak of springs and squeal of axles. Pilgrims upon the trail. Who, stumbling upon us at that moment, might spare us little more than a single disinterested glance? Walk your own neighbourhood or village street, dear friends, and as you see nothing awry grant yourself a moment and imagine all that you do not see, all that might hide behind the normal moment with its normal details. Do this and you will come to understand the poet’s game.
Thoughts to ruminate upon, perhaps, as the twenty-fourth day draws to a close.
A Recounting of the Twenty-fourth Night
‘WE MADE GOOD time this day,’ announced our venerable host, once the evening meal was done and the picked bones flung away into the night. The fire was merry, bellies were full, and out in the dark something voiced curdling cries every now and then, enough to startle Steck Marynd and he would stroke his crossbow like a man with too many barbs on his conscience (What does that mean? Nothing. I just liked the turn of phrase).
‘In fact,’ Sardic Thew continued, beaming above the ruddy flames, ‘we may well reach the Great Descent to the Landing within a week.’ He paused, and then added, ‘Perhaps it is at last safe to announce that our terrible ordeal is over. A few days of hunger, is that too terrible a price to pay for the end to our dread tithe among the living?’
Midge grunted. ‘What?’
‘Well.’ The host cleared his throat. ‘The cruel fate of these few remaining poets, I mean.’
‘What about it?’
Sardic Thew waved his hands. ‘We can be merciful! Don’t you see?’
‘What if we don’t want to be?’ Tiny Chanter asked, grinning greasily (well, in truth he was most fastidious, was Tiny, but given the venal words issuing from those lips, I elected to add the grisly detail. Of course, there is nothing manipulative in this).
‘But that – that – that would be—’
‘Outright murder?’ Apto Canavalian enquired, somewhat too lightly in my opinion.
Brash choked and spat, ‘It’s been that all along, Apto, though when it’s not your head on the spitting block, you just go ahead and pretend otherwise.’
‘I will, thank you.’
‘Just because you’re a judge—’
‘Let’s get one thing straight,’ Apto cut in. ‘Not one of you here is getting my vote. All right? The truth is, there’s nothing so deflating as actually getting to know the damned poets I’m supposed to be judging. I feel like a far-sighted fool who finally gets close enough to see the whore in front of him, warts and all. The magic dies, you see. It dies like a dried-up worm.’
Brash stared with eyes bulging. ‘You’re not going to vote for me?’ He leapt to his feet. ‘Kill him! Kill him next! He’s no use to anyone! Kill him!’
As Brash stood trembling, one finger jabbed towards Apto Canavalian, no one spoke. Abruptly, Brash loosed a sob, wheeling, and ran off into the night.
‘He won’t go far,’ opined Steck. ‘Besides, I happen to agree with our host. The killing isn’t necessary any more. It’s over—’
‘No,’ said an unexpected voice, ‘it is not over.’
‘Lady Snippet,’ Steck began.
‘I was promised,’ she countered, hands wringing about the cup she held. ‘He gave me his word.’
‘So I did,’ said I. ‘Tonight, however, I mean to indulge the interests of all here, by concluding poor Calap Roud’s tale. Lady, will you abide me until the morrow?’
Her eyes were most narrow in their regard of me. ‘Perhaps you mean to outlast me. In consideration of that, I will n
ow exact yet another vow from you, Avas Didion Flicker. Before we reach the Great Descent, you will satisfy me.’
‘So I vow, Milady.’
Steck Marynd rose. ‘I know the tale you will tell tonight,’ he said to me, and to the others he said, ‘I will find Nifty Gum and his ladies and bring them back here, for I fear they must be suffering greatly this night.’
The Second Collected Tales of Bauchelain & Korbal Broach: Three Short Novels of the Malazan Empire Page 24