Being illiterate, she has scrawled her name on to a list, assuming her name can be pictographically rendered into something like a chicken heart’s spasm the mo shy;ment before death, and lo, did not her two suitors follow suit, competing even here in their expressions of illiterate extravagance, with the first devising a most elaborate sigil of self that might lend one to imagine his name’s being Smear of Snail in Ecstasy, whilst the other, upon seeing this, set to with brush, scrivener’s dust and fingernails to fashion a scrawl reminiscent of a serpent trying to cross a dance floor whilst a tribe importuned the fickle gods of rain. Both men then stood, beaming with pride in between mutual baring of teeth, while their love sauntered off to find a nearby stall where an old woman wearing seaweed on her head was cooking stuffed voles over a brazier of coals.
The two men hastened after her, both desperate to pay for her breakfast, or beat the old woman senseless, whichever their darling preferred.
Thus it was that High Marshal Jula Bole and High Marshal Amby Bole, along with the swamp witch named Precious Thimble, all late of the Mott Irregulars, were close at hand and, indeed, ready and willing newfound shareholders when Master Quell and Faint arrived at the office of the Trygalle Trade Guild. And while three was not quite the number Quell sought by way of replacements, they would just have to do, given Mappo Runt’s terrible need.
So they would not have to wait until the morrow after all. Most
Happy days!
Conspiracies are the way of the civilized world, both those real and those imag shy;ined, and in all the perambulations of move and countermove, why, the veracity of such schemes are irrelevant. In a subterranean, most private chamber in the estate of Councilman Gorlas Vidikas sat fellow Council members Shardan Lim and Hanut Orr in the company of their worthy host, and the wine had flowed like the fount of the Queen of Dreams — or if not dreams then at least irresponsible aspirations — throughout the course of the night just past.
Still somewhat inebriated and perhaps exhausted unto satiation by self-satisfaction, they were comfortably silent, each feeling wiser than their years, each feeling that wellspring of power against which reason was helpless. In their half-lidded eyes something was swollen and nothing in the world was unattain shy;able. Not for these three.
‘Coll will be a problem,’ Hanut said.
‘Nothing new there,’ Shardan muttered, and the other two granted him soft, muted laughter. ‘Although,’ he added as he played with a silver candle snuffer, ‘unless we give him cause for suspicion, there is no real objection he can legiti shy;mately make. Our nominee is well enough respected, not to mention harmless, at least physically.’
‘It’s just that,’ Hanut said, shaking his head, ‘by virtue of us as nominators, Coll will be made suspicious.’
‘We play it as we discussed, then,’ Shardan responded, taunting with death the nearest candle’s flame. ‘Bright-eyed and full of ourselves and brazenly awkward, eager to express our newly acquired privilege to propose new Council members. We’d hardly be the first to be so clumsy and silly, would we?’
Gorlas Vidikas found his attention wandering — they’d gone through all this be shy;fore, he seemed to recall. Again and again, in fact, through the course of the night, and now a new day had come, and still they chewed the same tasteless grist. Oh, these two companions of his liked the sound of their own voices all too well. Con shy;verting dialogue into an argument even when both were in agreement, and all that distinguished the two was the word choices concocted in each reiteration.
Well, they had their uses none the less. And this thing he had fashioned here was proof enough of that.
And now, of course, Hanut once more fixed eyes upon him and asked yet again the same question, ‘Is this fool of yours worth it, Gorlas? Why him? It’s not as if we aren’t approached almost every week by some new prospect wanting to buy our votes on to the Council. Naturally, it serves us better to string the fools along, gaining favour upon favour, and maybe one day deciding we own so much of them that it will be worth our while to bring them forward. In the meantime, of course, we just get richer and more influential
‘He is not the type who will play the whore to our pimp, Hanut.’
A frown of distaste. ‘Hardly a suitable analogy, Gorlas. You forget that you are the junior among us here.’
