The Corpse-Rat King

by Lee Battersby

  “Call,” he said, and turned over his cards. “Two princesses.” He stood up, and reached over for the coins.

  Sangk smiled, and slowly fanned his hand on to the table.

  “One queen, one bishop,” he said, and laughed. “No wastrel.”

  “But… how…?”

  “Did you mean this?” Sangk casually flipped over the peasant card next to the bishop, revealing the tiny split at the top corner.

  “What…?”

  “Please,” Sangk sat back and held his arms wide open, appealing to the room around them. “Do you take me for a fool? Do you think I don’t know the make-up of my own deck? Each little mark, each little signifier?” He clapped his hands together, and leaned forward, picking up a card at random and holding it in front of Marius. “Do you think I didn’t learn to do this at my father’s elbow when I was a child?” he asked, stroking the card with his thumb, opening a split almost identical to the one on the bishop. Marius stared at the fresh mark as the fat man rubbed it against the face of a second card, muddying the edges until they were almost indistinguishable from either the wastrel or the peasant.

  “No.”

  “Oh, yes, I’m afraid so.”

  “No.” Marius shook his head. “You can’t do that.”

  “In my own house? I think I can.” Sangk leaned over and began scooping coins towards himself. “I win, don Hellespont. Whatever your little game was, you’re busted. It’s time for you to get out.”

  “How the hell…?

  “What?” he asked, laughing. “Did you think I didn’t recognize you? The way you walk, or hold yourself? The way you always lead with a small bet and never commit yourself until the third card, time after time after time?” He rose from the table, and began to scoop the money towards him. “Did you really think covering yourself up and putting on a funny voice would hide you from me? You’re as big a fool as your father, don Hellespont, if you think you can deceive me like that.”

  “It’s Helles. I go by Helles.” Marius scraped his chair back and stood.

  “Like I care,” Sangk nodded to the burly doorkeeper. “Escort this bankrupt out of my house.”

  The giant came over and grabbed Marius by each arm. Marius struggled, and gave up almost immediately. He may as well be trying to squirm through wood. Sangk stood before him, and grabbed the edge of his hood.

  “Next time,” he said, and flipped the hood back, “try a better…. Oh, Gods!”

  He stumbled backwards, arms rising to cover his face. Marius turned his head to look at his captor. The doorkeeper let him loose, and stepped back, fear and disgust written across his previously impassive features. Marius smiled, and the doorkeeper broke, and ran for the nearby staircase.

  “Oh, Gods,” Sangk was crying, over and over. “He’s dead. He’s dead. Oh, Gods.” Players at other tables were looking at them. Marius stared back. As he turned to each startled patron they leaped from their chairs and join the crush at the stairs.

  “They’re coming back,” Sangk cried. “They told me when I bought it, they told me. Oh, Gods…” He began to pray in his native Tallian, a long stream of syllables punctuated only by a rising ululation. Marius stepped forward and grabbed his collar, drawing him up.

  “What are you talking about?” he said, shaking the heavier man. “What?”

  “The duke,” Sangk babbled. “The men he killed. They’re buried down here, in the walls, in the back cave…” He began praying again. Marius let him go and he fell to the floor, pressing his head against the cold stone, begging forgiveness from whatever Gods he could rally to his cause. Marius turned away. The room was empty. Only he and the babbling man at his feet remained. He bent over the table, scooping the coins towards himself and counting them out. Eighty riner. He gathered them up, made his way to the next table and the next, gathering the abandoned winnings together. When he had finished he counted one hundred and fifty riner.

  “Not a bad haul,” he said to his terrified host. “I should come here dead more often.” He separated out a hundred riner and placed it in various pockets, then picked up the first of the remaining coins and waved it at Sangk.

  “Never steal what you can’t swallow,” he said. “First rule.” He placed the coin in his mouth, and gulped it backwards. It stuck in the top of his throat. Marius gulped again, pushed and pulled at it with the base of his tongue until it jumped into his mouth. He tried again, with the same result.

  “Shit.”

  There was no spit in his mouth, and, dead as he was, he could not summon any. He pondered the coin for a moment. Then he tilted his head back, opened his mouth as wide as he could, and dropped it back in. Gulping, and jerking his head back and forth like a baby bird, he managed to get it down.

  “Like a lizard swallowing a mouse,” he told the wailing Sangk. “I’ve spent a lot of time sleeping under bushes.” One by one he gulped the remaining coins down his gullet, until the table was empty. He looked over at Sangk for one, last, smug comment, and stopped.

  Deep within the unused rear of the cave, where a small corridor lead to a tiny antechamber, something stood. Had he been alive, Marius would not have seen it. But his dead eyes, able to distinguish shades of dark from each other with much keener facility, saw the shape, and the one behind it, and vaguely, the impression of several more.

  “They’re coming back,” he whispered, as the features of a long-dead man became clearer, dressed in peasant garb, the remains of an earth-moving basket hanging from his skeletal hand. The corpse leaned forward to get a better look at Marius. He opened his jaw, and a fine trail of sand dribbled out.

  “Kinnnggg…” he hissed.

  Marius stepped backwards involuntarily.

  “I… I’m on my way,” he said, and ran for the stairs.

  THIRTEEN

  Dusk was falling as Marius strode along the wharf and up the gangway onto the deck of the Minerva. The lines of navvies had departed, and the remaining activity was by way of making the ship ready to sail. Marius skirted the main activity and headed for the captain’s cabin. Halfway along the deck, the giant form of Mister Spone emerged from the crowd and waved at him.

  “Hola, Mister Helles! Got yourself packed then?”

  Marius waved back and hurried on. He knocked sharply on the captain’s door and entered without waiting for permission.

  The cabin had changed immeasurably since Marius had left. No paintings hung on the walls. The tables of knick-knacks were gone. The velvet drapes had been packed away, replaced by two sheets of oiled canvas that looked older than the ship by some measure. The throne upon which Bomthe sat had been superseded by a simple wooden chair. The captain himself had changed – the frippery with which he was clothed upon their first meeting was no longer apparent, and a simpler, more functional uniform now adorned his sparse frame. The charts over which he pored, however, were the same. He glanced up as Marius entered, and a frown of annoyance flashed over his countenance.

  “Mister…. Holes, isn’t it?”

  “Helles.” Marius withdrew a heavy pouch from his jerkin and threw it onto the table. It landed with a dull thunk. “Ninety-five riner.”

  The captain gathered up the bag without removing his gaze from Marius. He tipped it over, and counted out the coins within. When he was finished he gazed down at the neat piles he had built, tapping his teeth with one stiff finger. Marius waited in silence, head bowed, hands tucked into his sleeves like a meditating monk.

  “Well,” the captain said at length. “That presents me with something of a problem, Mister Hailes. I’m afraid our preparations have left us with very little available space. We simply do not have a cabin to spare on a single passenger, paying or otherwise. The best I can offer…”

  Marius barely seemed to move, but suddenly he was beside the table and sweeping the coins back into the bag. The captain curled an arm around them protectively, and held his other hand up to stop Marius’ movement.

  “I can offer you a private space, although it is not so big
as a cabin. If it is not to your liking…” His shrug finished his argument. The docks were only a few feet down the gangway. Marius could leave any time he chose to do so. Marius straightened, and regained his monk-like pose.

  “We sail without a second mate this trip. His room is on the top deck, behind and to the side of my own cabin. We’re using it as a storeroom for blankets and sundry items of clothing. It’s rather full, I’m afraid. No room for a cot. Still,” He smiled, and the curtains were no longer the oiliest things in the room. “I’m sure you could make yourself comfortable, if the need was great enough.”

  Marius stared at the pile of money, contemplating, for a moment, the possibility of recovering it, making his way off the crowded ship unharmed, and finding some alternative form of escape without Keth’s assistance. Then, slowly, he nodded.

  “Show me.”

  The captain deposited his payment in a drawer within his desk. He leaned back into his chair.

  “Figgis!”

  The boy emerged from the cabin’s rear door, and stood a few feet from the two men, sketching a short bow towards his master. “Yes, sir?”

  “Show our guest to his quarters, will you?”

  “Yes, sir.” The young lad moved to the door, and looked back at Marius. “This way, sir.”

  Marius turned to follow him, noting as he did so that Figgis had not been told where his quarters were located. No need to wonder how long ago the captain had decided on his berth – it had been his intention since the start. He followed Figgis’ out onto the deck, turned to the starboard side, and shuffled sternward along the thin space between the captain’s window and the railing. Marius glanced through the glass as he passed. Bomthe was staring straight back, tracking his progress along the deck.

  At the rear of the deck, thin enough that Marius would have mistaken it for a simple panel if not for the small semi-circular hole cut into it at waist height, stood the door to the second mate’s room. Figgis indicated it with a short wave of his hand, then scurried past Marius and back up towards Bomthe’s cabin. Marius tugged the door open. It was small enough that he had to turn sideways to fit through. He did so, and slipped into the tiny space beyond.

  To call it a room was to sell a mule as a horse. Marius had seen larger closets in the boudoirs of Endtown brothels. It was a good thing he didn’t need to sleep, he thought as he searched for footing amongst the waist-high piles of blankets. He had never like sleeping on his side, and the room was not wide enough that he could have done so on his back. Whoever the second mate had been, he had undoubtedly left Bomthe’s service in order to undergo puberty – a grown man, surely, could not have fit within the room for any length of time. Finally happy that he had attained sure footing, he reached behind him and closed the door, plunging the room into darkness. Marius waited for a moment or two to let his eyes adjust, then slowly sunk to his knees and crawled further into the space. A small window sat halfway along the rear wall, covered by a blanket indistinguishable from those on the floor. Marius pulled it down and let moonlight into the room. Bomthe hadn’t lied. It was a cabin, it was private, and it was above decks. As to anything else, well, the dead were beyond discomfort. Or, at least, they made do with it. With nothing else to do before the ship set sail, he started to fold blankets into neat squares and pile them up in the farthest corner.

  By the time the moon reached its zenith he had folded almost eighty blankets into neat columns of fabric against the rear wall. Much of the floor lay exposed, for all the good it did. Marius could, at least, stand without fear of tripping. A small shelf had appeared beneath the window. It would have been a bed, perhaps, for the resident, unless he was wider than a small snake, in which case the floor became even more important. It gave Marius somewhere to sit, but nothing more. He did so, turning to stare out of the tiny window. Whatever his privations, he was where he needed to be – on a ship, hidden, about to sail across an ocean so wide the dead would never find him. Motion. Any motion was a good one. Once the boat was underway he could relax, and make plans for landfall. The Faraway Isles would be a start. Once there, he could find an isolated village, somewhere where the dead were discarded in such a way that he wouldn’t have to live with their conversation. Then… well, he didn’t know what would happen then, but it was a start.

  He emptied his pockets and laid his riches out on the narrow shelf. A handful of coins, enough to gain a whispered conversation with a knowledgeable local, at least; a variety of stones, washers, and buttons to stand in the place of coins and foil the flittering fingers of street dips; a cosh, small enough to sit in the palm of his hand, that he had used once and sworn never to use again once the swelling had gone down, but that he’d never really managed to dispense with. He laid them alongside the satchel the dead had bequeathed him; and the accursed crown. It sat at the end of his makeshift row, twinkling darkly in the weak light, taunting him with its presence. Marius backhanded it to the floor, and kicked the priceless artefact across the room. It bounced from the wall of blankets and spun round to face him. The emerald in its frontispiece blinked at him as the light hit its multi-faceted face. Marius turned his attention to the satchel – he had ignored it in his constant flight across the country, without thought for its contents. It had simply been a weight to be carried. Only now, with nothing to do but wait for his freedom, did he think to open it and spill its contents onto the shelf.

  At first glance, the scraps that slid out looked like dried autumn leaves, a filthy wash of dead vegetable matter crammed into the bag like so much stuffing. It was only when Marius picked up a handful and examined them closely did he see what they actually were – scraps of paper: torn, crumpled, stained with dirt and age and, in some cases, blood; gathered from the corpses of who knew how many dead, written upon in a range of scrawls, some bearing the mark of culture and education, some barely legible, as if the hands that drew the words were controlled more by willpower than by any combination of withered and rotting muscles. Marius read through the few whose words he could discern – they were letters, from the dead to their living relatives. Marius scanned them quickly, mouth open in surprise. They were mundane, for the most part, of interest only to those who wrote them and, perhaps, those who might receive; it was the sheer number that boggled him. Each scrap was, he realized, a tiny plea for continuation, a need to reach out and reassure the author that the life they left behind had continued with some part of them remembered. Even if it were just the knowledge that Aunt Madge still complained of gout, or that young Roldo was still studying sail making at Ballico College, the dead needed someone to remember. But it was the simple notes, the ones written with large, clumsy letters, telling Mummy how much she was loved or Daddy how much he was missed, with strings of exes at the bottom like a line of illiterate signatures, that finally caused Marius to open his hand and let the brittle sheets fall to the floor. What was he supposed to do, he silently asked? There were so many. Was he to deliver them, like some sort of travelling postmaster? When they could not be read, when so many of them lacked addresses, as if the dead authors could no longer remember that important part of their previous lives? When the reactions of those who might have received them could only be a combination of grief, and fear, and anger towards the man who had delivered them? Marius was not the man to perform the task. Not him. He gathered the papers back up and replaced them within the satchel. So many letters from children. He placed the satchel on the floor and leaned his head against the wall, closing his eyes. Concentrate on what can be done. Concentrate on escaping the sword hanging over him, on stepping onto the sandy beaches of the Faraway Isles and leaving dead children, and dead kings, and the continent of Lemk behind. For the first time since he had picked up the Scorban king’s crown, Marius allowed himself to relax. He opened his eyes, and stared through the window at the land he was going to leave behind.

  A figure stood upon the wharf, an island of stillness amidst the ceaseless stream of moving humanity. As Marius stared, the figure stepped forward un
til it stood on the edge of the wharf, back to the press of movement, facing the flat stern of the Minerva, head tilted so the hood covering its face was pointed directly at the Marius’ window. Marius raised a hand to his mouth, slowly, as the figure reached up and pulled the hood back from its head, exposing his face. Marius bit down on his hand, oblivious to the sudden flare of pain that shot up where his teeth met the dead skin.

  “Gerd?”

  Marius slid his head backwards, away from the window, blinking in sudden fear. When he could trust himself to peek out the window again without panicking he did so. Gerd stood motionless at the edge of the wharf. As Marius watched he stepped forward, off the edge of the wharf, and dropped below the edge of Marius’ vision. He heard a dull splash, and then he was up off his perch and barging through the door, racing along the deck to bang his fist against the captain’s door. After an eternity, the door swung open, and Marius found his way blocked by the massive frame of Spone.

  “What the hell is the… oh, my god.”

  Marius stared up at the big man’s face. Spone was staring at him with a mixture of shock and disgust splashed across his features. Marius blinked stupidly, then, realizing the cause of the first mate’s shock, slowly reached up and pulled his hood over his exposed face.

  “I need to speak to the captain,” he said warily. Spone nodded, then backed into the room, keeping as much distance between himself and Marius as possible. Marius hurried into the room, moving past the giant mate with an apologetic nod, and stepped up to the captain’s table. Bomthe sat before a bowl of stew, a chunk of bread in his hand. Another bowl sat in front of a smaller chair to one side. Marius glanced at it, then at the mate, pressed against the wall of the cabin some feet away.

  “Captain,” he said without preamble. “We must depart, immediately.”

  “I’m sorry, Mister Helpus–”

  “Helles. It’s Helles, damn it.” Marius raised a fist to thump it on the table, recovered himself, and lowered it stiffly to his side.”