Reaper's Gale

  ‘All the masks torn off, yes.’

  ‘Where is the virtue in that?’

  The Elder God shrugged. ‘The perils of unfettered expansion, Advocate Sleem, are revealed in the dust and ashes left behind. Assume the species’ immortality since it suits the game. Every game. But that assumption will not save you in the end. No, in fact, it will probably kill you. That one self-serving, pious, pretentious, arrogant assumption.’

  ‘The bitter old man speaks.’

  ‘You have no idea.’

  ‘Would that I carried a knife. For I would kill you with it, here and now.’

  ‘Yes. The game always ends at some point, doesn’t it?’

  ‘And you dare call me the cynical one.’

  ‘Your cynicism lies in your willing abuse of others to consolidate your superiority over them. My cynicism is in regard to humanity’s wilful blindness with respect to its own extinction.’

  ‘Without that wilful blindness there is naught but despair.’

  ‘Oh, I am not that cynical. In fact, I do not agree at all. Maybe when the wilful blindness runs its inevitable course, there will be born wilful wisdom, the revelation of seeing things as they are.’

  ‘Things? To which things are you referring, old man?’

  ‘Why, that everything of true value is, in fact, free.’

  Sleem placed the coins in his own bulging purse and walked to the door. ‘A very quaint notion. Alas, I will not wish you a good day.’

  ‘Don’t bother.’

  Sleem turned at the hard edge in Bugg’s voice. His brows lifted in curiosity.

  Bugg smiled. ‘The sentiment wouldn’t be free now, would it?’

  ‘No, it would not.’

  As soon as the hapless advocate was gone, Bugg rose. Well, it’s begun. Almost to the day when Tehol said it would. The man’s uncanny. And maybe in that, there lies some hope for humanity. All those things that cannot be measured, cannot be quantified in any way at all.

  Maybe.

  Bugg would have to disappear now. Lest he get torn limb from limb by a murder of advocates, never mind the financiers. And that would be a most unpleasant experience. But first, he needed to warn Tehol.

  The Elder God glanced around his office with something like affectionate regret, almost nostalgia. It had been fun, after all. This game. Like most games. He wondered why Tehol had stopped short the first time. But no, perhaps that wasn’t at all baffling. Come face to face with a brutal truth – with any brutal truth – and it was understandable to back away.

  As Sleem said, there is no value in despair.

  But plenty of despair in value, once the illusion is revealed. Ah, I am indeed tired.

  He set out from his office, to which he would never return.

  ‘How can there be only four hens left? Yes, Ublala Pung, I am looking directly at you.’

  ‘For the Errant’s sake,’ Janath sighed, ‘leave the poor man alone. What did you expect to happen, Tehol? They’re hens that no longer lay eggs, making them as scrawny and dry and useless as the gaggle of matronly scholars at my old school. What Ublala did was an act of profound bravery.’

  ‘Eat my hens? Raw?’

  ‘At least he plucked their feathers.’

  ‘Were they dead by that point?’

  ‘Let’s not discuss those particular details, Tehol. Everyone is permitted one mistake.’

  ‘My poor pets,’ Tehol moaned, eyeing Ublala Pung’s overstuffed pillow at one end of the reed mat that served as the half-blood Tarthenal’s bed.

  ‘They were not pets.’

  He fixed a narrow gaze on his ex-tutor. ‘I seem to recall you going on and on about the terrors of pragmatism, all through history. Yet what do I now hear from you, Janath? “They were not pets.” A declarative statement uttered in most pragmatic tones. Why, as if by words alone you could cleanse what must have been an incident of brutal avian murder.’

  ‘Ublala Pung has more stomachs than both you and me combined. They need filling, Tehol.’

  ‘Oh?’ He placed his hands on his hips – actually to make certain that the pin was holding the blanket in place, recalling with another pang his most public display a week past. ‘Oh?’ he asked again, and then added, ‘And what, precisely and pragmatically, was wrong with my famous Grit Soup?’

  ‘It was gritty.’

  ‘Hinting of most subtle flavours as can only be cultivated from diligent collection of floor scrapings, especially a floor pranced upon by hungry hens.’

  She stared up at him. ‘You are not serious, are you? That really was grit from the floor? This floor? ‘

  ‘Hardly reason for such a shocked expression, Janath. Of course,’ he threw in offhandedly as he walked over to stand next to the blood-splotched pillow, ‘creative cuisine demands a certain delicacy of the palate, a culture of appreciation—’ He kicked at the pillow and it squawked.

  Tehol spun round and glared at Ublala Pung, who sat, back to a wall, and now hung his head.

  ‘I was saving one for later,’ the giant mumbled.

  ‘Plucked or unplucked?’

  ‘Well, it’s in there to stay warm.’

  Tehol looked over at Janath and nodded, ‘See? Do you see, Janath? Finally see?’

  ‘See what?’

  ‘The deadly slope of pragmatism, Mistress. The very proof of your arguments all those years ago. Ublala Pung’s history of insensitive rationalizations – if you could call anything going on in that skull rational – leading him – and, dare I add, innumerable unsuspecting hens – into the inevitable, egregious extreme of . . . of abject nakedness inside a pillow!’

  Her brows lifted. ‘Well, that scene last week really scarred you, didn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t be absurd, Janath.’

  Ublala had stuck out his tongue – a huge, pebbled slab of meat – and was trying to study it, his eyes crossing with the effort.

  ‘What are you doing now?’ Tehol demanded.

  The tongue retreated and Ublala blinked a few times to right his eyes. ‘Got cut by a beak,’ he said.

  ‘You ate their beaks?’

  ‘Easier to start with the head. They ain’t so restless with no heads.’

  ‘Really?’

  Ublala Pung nodded.

  ‘And I suppose you consider that merciful?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Tehol snapped. ‘It’s just pragmatic. “Oh, I’m being eaten. But that’s all right. I have no head!” ‘

  Ublala frowned at him. ‘Nobody’s eating you, Tehol. And your head’s still there – I can see it.’

  ‘I was speaking for the hens.’

  ‘But they don’t speak Letherii.’

  ‘You are not eating my last four hens.’

  ‘What about the one in the pillow, Tehol? Do you want it back? Its feathers might grow back, though it might catch a cold or something. I can give it back if you like.’

  ‘Generous of you, Ublala, but no. Put it out of its misery, but mind the beak. In the meantime, however, I think you need to get yourself organized – you were supposed to leave days ago, after all, weren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t want to go to the islands,’ Ublala said, dragging a chipped nail through the grit on the floor. ‘I sent word. That’s good enough, isn’t it? I sent word.’

  Tehol shrugged. ‘If it’s good enough, it’s good enough. Right, Janath? By all means, stay with us, but you have to set out now to find food. For all of us. A hunting expedition and it won’t be easy, Ublala. Not at all easy. There’s not been a supply ship on the river for days now, and people have started hoarding things, as if some terrible disaster were imminent. So, as I said, Ublala, it won’t be easy. And I hate to admit it, but there are people out there who don’t think you can succeed.’

  Ublala Pung’s head snapped up, fire in his eyes. ‘Who? Who?’

  The four hens paused in their scratchings and cocked heads in unison.

  ‘I better not say,’ Tehol said. ‘Anyway, we need food.’


  The Tarthenal was on his feet, head crunching on the ceiling before he assumed his normal hunched posture when indoors. Plaster dust sprinkled his hair, drifted down to settle on the floor. The hens pounced, crowding his feet.

  ‘If you fail,’ Tehol said, ‘we’ll have to start eating, uh, plaster.’

  ‘Lime is poisonous,’ Janath said.

  ‘And hen guano isn’t? Did I hear you complain when you were slurping down my soup?’

  ‘You had your hands over your ears, Tehol, and I wasn’t slurping anything down, I was spewing it back up.’

  ‘I can do it,’ Ublala said, hands bunching into fists. ‘I can get us food. I’ll show you.’ And with that he pushed through the doorway, out into the narrow alley, and was gone.

  ‘How did you do that, Tehol?’

  ‘I won’t take credit. It’s how Shurq Elalle manages him. Ublala Pung has an eagerness to show what he can do.’

  ‘You prey on his low self-esteem, you mean.’

  ‘Now that’s rather hypocritical coming from a tutor, isn’t it?’

  ‘Ooh, all the old wounds still smarting, are they?’

  ‘Never mind old wounds, Janath. You need to leave.’

  ‘What? Are there rumours I’m incapable of something?’

  ‘No, I’m serious. Any day now, there is going to be trouble. Here.’

  ‘Where am I supposed to go?’

  ‘You need to contact who’s left of your scholarly friends – find one you can trust—’

  ‘Tehol Beddict, really now. I have no friends among my fellow scholars, and certainly not one I can trust. You clearly know nothing of my profession. We crush beaks between our teeth as a matter of course. In any case, what kind of trouble are you talking about? This economic sabotage of yours?’

  ‘Bugg should really learn to keep quiet.’

  She was studying him in a most discomforting way. ‘You know, Tehol Beddict, I never imagined you for an agent of evil.’

  Tehol smoothed back his hair and swelled his chest.

  ‘Very impressive, but I’m not convinced. Why are you doing all this? Is there some wound from the past that overwhelms all the others? Some terrible need for vengeance to answer some horrendous trauma of your youth? No, I am truly curious.’

  ‘It was all Bugg’s idea, of course.’

  She shook her head. ‘Try again.’

  ‘There are all kinds of evil, Janath.’

  ‘Yes, but yours will see blood spilled. Plenty of it.’

  ‘Is there a difference between spilled blood and blood squeezed out slowly, excruciatingly, over the course of a foreshortened lifetime of stress, misery, anguish and despair – all in the name of some amorphous god that no-one dares call holy? Even as they bend knee and repeat the litany of sacred duty?’

  ‘Oh my,’ she said. ‘Well, that is an interesting question. Is there a difference? Perhaps not, perhaps only as a matter of degree. But that hardly puts you on a moral high ground, does it?’

  ‘I have never claimed a moral high ground,’ Tehol said, ‘which in itself sets me apart from my enemy.’

  ‘Yes, I see that. And of course you are poised to destroy that enemy with its own tools, using its own holy scripture; using it, in short, to kill itself. You are at the very end of the slope on which perches your enemy. Or should I say “clings”. Now, that you are diabolical comes as no surprise, Tehol. I saw that trait in you long ago. Even so, this bloodthirstiness? I still cannot see it.’

  ‘Probably something to do with your lessons on pragmatism.’

  ‘Oh now, don’t you dare point a finger at me! True pragmatism, in this instance, would guide you to vast wealth and the reward of indolence, to the fullest exploitation of the system. The perfect parasite, and be damned to all those lesser folk, the destitute and the witless, the discarded failures squatting in every alley. You certainly possess the necessary talent and genius and indeed, were you now the wealthiest citizen of this empire, living in some enormous estate surrounded by an army of bodyguards and fifty concubines in your stable, I would not in the least be surprised.’

  ‘Not surprised,’ Tehol said, ‘but, perhaps, disappointed nonetheless?’

  She pursed her lips and glanced away. ‘Well, that is another issue, Tehol Beddict. One we are not discussing here.’

  ‘If you say so, Janath. In any case, the truth is, I am the wealthiest citizen in this empire. Thanks to Bugg, of course, my front man.’

  ‘Yet you live in a hovel.’

  ‘Disparaging my abode? You, an un-paying guest! I am deeply hurt, Janath.’

  ‘No you’re not.’

  ‘Well, the hens are and since they do not speak Letherii . . .’

  ‘Wealthiest citizen or not, Tehol Beddict, your goal is not the ostentatious expression of that wealth, not the fullest exploitation of the power it grants you. No, you intend the collapse of this empire’s fundamental economic structure. And I still cannot fathom why.’

  Tehol shrugged. ‘Power always destroys itself in the end, Janath. Would you contest that assertion?’

  ‘No. So, are you telling me that all of this is an exercise in power? An exercise culminating in a lesson no-one could not recognize for what it is? A metaphor made real?’

  ‘But Janath, when I spoke of power destroying itself I was not speaking in terms of metaphor. I meant it literally. So, how many generations of Indebted need to suffer – even as the civilized trappings multiply and abound on all sides, with an ever-increasing proportion of those material follies out of their financial reach? How many, before we all collectively stop and say, “Aaii! That’s enough! No more suffering, please! No more hunger, no more war, no more inequity!” Well, as far as I can see, there are never enough generations. We just scrabble on, and on, devouring all within reach, including our own kind, as if it was nothing more than the undeniable expression of some natural law, and as such subject to no moral context, no ethical constraint – despite the ubiquitous and disingenuous blathering over-invocation of those two grand notions.’

  ‘Too much emotion in your speechifying, Tehol Beddict. Marks deducted.’

  ‘Retreating to dry humour, Janath?’

  ‘Ouch. All right, I begin to comprehend your motivations. You will trigger chaos and death, for the good of everyone.’

  ‘If I were the self-pitying kind, I might now moan that no-one will thank me for it, either.’

  ‘So you accept responsibility for the consequences.’

  ‘Somebody has to.’

  She was silent for a dozen heartbeats, and Tehol watched her eyes – lovely eyes indeed – slowly widen. ‘You are the metaphor made real.’

  Tehol smiled. ‘Don’t like me? But that makes no sense! How can I not be likeable? Admirable, even? I am become the epitome of triumphant acquisitiveness, the very icon of this great unnamed god! And if I do nothing with all my vast wealth, why, I have earned the right. By every rule voiced in the sacred litany, I have earned it! ‘

  ‘But where is the virtue in then destroying all that wealth? In destroying the very system you used to create it in the first place?’

  ‘Janath, where is the virtue in any of it? Is possession a virtue? Is a lifetime of working for some rich toad a virtue? Is loyal employment in some merchant house a virtue? Loyal to what? To whom? Oh, have they paid for that loyalty with a hundred docks a week? Like any other commodity? But then, which version is truer – the virtue of self-serving acquisitiveness or the virtue of loyalty to one’s employer? Are the merchants at the top of their treasure heaps not ruthless and cut-throat as befits those privileges they have purportedly earned? And if it’s good enough for them, why not the same for the lowest worker in their house? Where is the virtue in two sets of rules at odds with each other, and why are those fancy words like “moral” and “ethical” the first ones to bleat out from the mouths of those who lost sight of both in their climb to the top? Since when did ethics and morality become weapons of submission?’

  She was staring up at him, her
expression unreadable.

  Tehol thought to toss up his hands to punctuate his harangue, but he shrugged instead. ‘Yet my heart breaks for a naked hen.’

  ‘I’m sure it does,’ she whispered.

  ‘You should have left,’ Tehol said.

  ‘What?’

  Boots clumping in the alley, rushing up to the doorway.

  The flimsy broken shutter – newly installed by Bugg in the name of Janath’s modesty – torn aside. Armoured figures pushing in.

  A soft cry from Janath.

  Tanal Yathvanar stared, disbelieving. His guards pushed in around him until he was forced to hold his arms out to the sides to block still more crowding into this absurd room with its clucking, frightened chickens and two wide-eyed citizens.

  Well, she at least was wide-eyed. The man, who had to be the infamous Tehol Beddict, simply watched, ridiculous in his pinned blanket, as Tanal fixed his gaze on Janath and smiled. ‘Unexpected, this.’

  ‘I – I know you, don’t I?’

  Tehol asked in a calm voice, ‘Can I help you?’

  Confused by Janath’s question, it was a moment before Tanal registered Tehol’s words. Then he sneered at the man. ‘I am here to arrest your manservant. The one named Bugg.’

  ‘Oh, now really, his cooking isn’t that bad.’

  ‘As it turns out, it seems I have stumbled upon another crime in progress.’

  Tehol sighed, then bent to retrieve a pillow. Into which he reached, dragging out a live chicken. Mostly plucked, only a few tufts remaining here and there. The creature tried flapping flabby pink wings, its head bobbing this way and that atop a scrawny neck. Tehol held the chicken out. ‘Here, then. We never really expected the ransom in any case.’

  Behind Tanal a guard grunted a quickly choked-off laugh.

  Tanal scowled, reminding himself to find out who had made that noise. On report and a week of disciplinary duty should serve notice that such unprofessionalism was costly in Tanal Yathvanar’s presence. ‘You are both under arrest. Janath, for having escaped the custody of the Patriotists. And Tehol Beddict, for harbouring said fugitive.’

  ‘Ah, well,’ Tehol said, ‘if you were to check the Advocacy Accounts for the past month, sir, you will find the official pardon granted Janath Anar, in absentia. The kind of pardon your people always issue when someone has thoroughly and, usually, permanently disappeared. So, the scholar here is under full pardon, which in turn means I am not harbouring a fugitive. As for Bugg, why, when you track him down, tell him he’s fired. I will brook no criminals in my household. Speaking of which, you may leave now, sir.’