Of course, to know the mind of an ox is to waste inordinate amounts of time before recognizing the placid civility of a herbivore’s sensibilities. Lift gaze, then, to the two vaguely shifty characters edging in through the gate — not workers struggling to and fro in the midst of the old estate’s refurbishment; not clerks nor servants; not masons nor engineers nor inspectors nor weight-gaugers nor measurers. To all appearances malingerers, skulkers, but in truth even worse than that-
Twelve names on the list. One happily struck off. Eleven others found and then escaped like the slippery eels they no doubt were, being hunted by debt, ill luck and the vagaries of a clearly malicious universe intent on delivering misery and whatnot. But no matter such failure among the thugs sent out to enforce collection or deliver punishment — not the problem of these men, now, was it?
Bereft of all burdens, blessed with exquisite freedom, Scorch and Leff were here, in this soon-to-be-opulent estate that was even now rising from the dust of neglect and decay to enshroud like a cloak of jewels the mysterious arrival of a nobleborn — a woman, it was rumoured, all veiled, but see the eyes!
— Scorch and Leff, edging in nervously, barely emerging from the shadow of the arched gate. Peering round, as if lost, as if moments from running off with stolen chunks of masonry or an armload of bricks or even a bag of iron wedges-
‘Ho — you two! What do you want here?’
Starting guiltily. Scorch staring wide-eyed at the grizzled foreman walking up to them — a Gadrobi so bowlegged he looked to be wading hip-deep through mud. Leff ducking his head as if instinctively dodging an axe — which said a lot about his life thus far, didn’t it — and then stepping one small pace forward and attempting a smile that fared so poorly it could not even be described as a grimace.
‘Is there a castellan we could talk to?’ Leff asked.
‘About what?’
‘Gate guards,’ Leff said. ‘We got lots of qualifications.’
‘Oh. Any of them relevant?’
‘What?’
Leff looked at Scorch and saw the panic spreading like a wildfire on his friend’s face. A match to his own growing dismay — madness, thinking they could just step up another rung on the ladder. Madness! ‘We. . we could walk her dogs, I mean?’
‘You could? I suppose you could, if the Mistress had any.’
‘Does she?’ Leff asked.
‘Does she what?’
‘Have any. Dogs we could walk.’
‘Not even ones you can’t walk.’
‘We can guard the gate!’ Scorch shouted. ‘That’s what we’re here for! To get hired on, you see, as estate guards. And if you don’t think we can swing a sword or use a crossbow, why, you don’t know us at all, do you?’
‘No, you’re right,’ the foreman replied. ‘I don’t.’
Leff scowled. ‘You don’t what?’
‘Stay here,’ the old man said, turning away, ‘while I get Castellan Studlock.’
As the foreman waded away through the dust — watched with longing by the ox beside the rubble heap — Leff turned on Scorch. ‘Studlock?’
Scorch shrugged helplessly. ‘I ain’t never heard of him. Why, have you?’
‘No. Of course not. I’d have remembered.’
‘Why?’
‘Why? Are you a Hood-damned idiot?’
‘What are we doing here, Leff?’
‘Torvald said no, remember? To everything. He’s too good for us now. So we’ll show him. We’ll get hired on this fancy estate. As guards. With uniforms and polished buckles and those braided peace-straps for our swords. And so he’ll curse himself that he didn’t want us no more, as partners or anything. It’s his wife, I bet — she never liked us at all, especially you, Scorch, so that’s what you’ve done to us and I won’t forget any time soon neither so don’t even think otherwise.’
He shut his mouth then and stood at attention since the foreman was returning and at his side pitter-pattered a figure so wrapped up in swaddles of cotton it took three steps for every pendulum pitch forward from the foreman. The feet beneath the ragged hem were small enough to be cloven hoofs. A hood covered thecastellan’s head and in the shadow of the hood’s broad mouth there was some shy;thing that might have been a mask. Gloved hands were drawn up in a way that reminded Leff — and, a moment later, Scorch — of a praying mantis, and if this was the estate castellan then someone had knocked the world askew in ways unimag shy;inable to either Leff or Scorch.
The foreman said, ‘Here they are, sir.’
Were there eyes in the holes of that smooth mask? Who could tell? But the head shifted and something told both men — like spider legs dancing up their spines — that they were under scrutiny.
