Midnight Tides

  A splashing of feet outside, then the curtain in the doorway was tugged to one side and Bugg stamped in, water streaming from him. He coughed. ‘What’s burning in the hearth?’

  Tehol shrugged. ‘Whatever was piled up beside it, of course.’

  ‘But that was your rain hat. I wove it myself, with my own two hands.’

  ‘A rain hat? Those reeds had wrapped rotting fish—’

  ‘That’s the stink, all right.’ Bugg nodded, wiping at his eyes. ‘Anyway, rotting is a relative term, master.’

  ‘It is?’

  ‘The Faraed consider it a delicacy.’

  ‘You just wanted me to smell like fish.’

  ‘Better you than the whole house,’ Bugg said, glancing over at Ublala. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘I haven’t a clue,’ Tehol said. ‘So, what’s the news?’

  ‘I found her.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘But we’ll have to go and get her.’

  ‘Go outside?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Into the rain?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well,’ Tehol said, resuming his pacing, ‘I don’t like that at all. Too risky.’

  ‘Risky?’

  ‘Why, yes. Risky. I might get wet. Especially now that I don’t have a rain hat.’

  ‘And whose fault is that, I wonder?’

  ‘It was already smouldering, sitting so close to the hearth. I barely nudged it with my toe and up it went.’

  ‘I was drying it out.’

  Tehol paused in mid-step, studied Bugg for a moment, then resumed pacing. ‘It’s a storm,’ he said after a moment. ‘Storms pass. I need a reason to procrastinate.’

  ‘Yes, master.’

  Tehol swung round and approached Ublala Pung. ‘Most beloved bodyguard, whatever is wrong?’

  Red-rimmed eyes stared up at him. ‘You’re not interested. Not really. Nobody is.’

  ‘Of course I’m interested. Bugg, I’m interested, aren’t I? It’s my nature, isn’t it?’

  ‘Absolutely, master. Most of the time.’

  ‘It’s the women, isn’t it, Ublala? I can tell.’

  The huge man nodded miserably.

  ‘Are they fighting over you?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Have you fallen for one of them?’

  ‘That’s just it. I haven’t had a chance to.’

  Tehol glanced over at Bugg, then back to Ublala. ‘You haven’t had a chance to. What a strange statement. Can you elaborate?’

  ‘It’s not fair, that’s what it is. Not fair. You won’t understand. It’s not a problem you have. I mean, what am I? Am I to be nothing but a toy? Just because I have a big—’

  ‘Hold on a moment,’ Tehol cut in. ‘Let’s see if I fully understand you, Ublala. You feel they’re just using you. Interested only in your, uh, attributes. All they want from you is sex. No commitment, no loyalty even. They’re happy taking turns with you, taking no account of your feelings, your sensitive nature. They probably don’t even want to cuddle afterwards or make small talk, right?’

  Ublala nodded.

  ‘And all that is making you miserable?’

  He nodded again, snuffling, his lower lip protruding, his broad mouth downturned at the corners, a muscle twitching in his right cheek.

  Tehol stared for a moment longer, then he tossed up his hands. ‘Ublala! Don’t you understand? You’re in a man’s paradise! What all the rest of us can only dream about!’

  ‘But I want something more!’

  ‘No! You don’t! Trust me! Bugg, don’t you agree? Tell him!’

  Bugg frowned, then said, ‘It is as Tehol says, Ublala. Granted, a tragic truth, and granted, Master’s nature is to revel in tragic truths, which to many might seem unusual, unhealthy even—’

  ‘Thanks for the affirmation, Bugg,’ Tehol interrupted with a scowl. ‘Go clean up, will you?’ He faced Ublala again. ‘You are at the pinnacle of male achievement, my friend – wait! Did you say it’s not a problem I have? What did you mean by that?’

  Ublala blinked. ‘What? Uh, are you at that pinnacle, or whatever you called it – are you at it too?’

  Bugg snorted. ‘He hasn’t been at it in months.’

  ‘Well, that’s it!’ Tehol stormed to the hearth and plucked out what was left of the matted reeds. He stamped out the flames, then picked the charred object up and set it on his head. ‘All right, Bugg, let’s go and get her. As for this brainless giant here, he can mope around all alone in here, for all I care. How many insults can a sensitive man like me endure, anyway?’

  Wisps of smoke drifted from the reeds on Tehol’s head.

  ‘That’s about to take flame again, master.’

  ‘Well, that’s what’s good about rain, then, isn’t it? Let’s go.’

  Outside in the narrow aisle, water streamed ankle-deep towards the clogged drain at the far end, where a small lake was forming. Bugg a half-step in the lead, they sloshed their way across its swirling, rain-pocked expanse.

  ‘You should be more sympathetic to Ublala, master,’ Bugg said over a shoulder. ‘He’s a very unhappy man.’

  ‘Sympathy belongs to the small-membered, Bugg. Ublala has three women drooling all over him, or have you forgotten?’

  ‘That’s a rather disgusting image.’

  ‘You’ve been too old too long, dear servant. There’s nothing inherently disgusting about drool.’ He paused, then said, ‘All right, maybe there is. However, do we have to talk about sex? That subject makes me nostalgic’

  ‘Errant forbid.’

  ‘So, where is she?’

  ‘In a brothel.’

  ‘Oh, now that’s really pathetic.’

  ‘More like a newly acquired raging addiction, master. The more she feeds it, the hungrier it gets.’

  They crossed Turol Avenue

  and made their way into the Prostitutes’ District. The downpour was diminishing, the tail ends of the storm front streaming overhead. ‘Well,’ Tehol commented, ‘that is not a desirable condition for one of my most valued employees. Especially since her addiction doesn’t include her handsome, elegant boss. Something tells me it should have been me weeping in a corner back there, not Ublala.’

  ‘It may simply be a case of Shurq not wanting to mix business with pleasure.’

  ‘Bugg, you told me she’s in a brothel.’

  ‘Oh. Right. Sorry.’

  ‘Now I’m truly miserable. I wasn’t miserable this morning. If the trend continues, by dusk I’ll be swimming the canal with bags of coins around my neck.’

  ‘Here we are.’

  They stood before a narrow, three-storey tenement, set slightly in from the adjoining buildings and looking a few centuries older than anything else on the street. The front facing held a carved façade around two square, inset columns of dusty blue marble. Decidedly female demons in bas-relief, contorted and writhing in a mass orgy, crowded the panels, and atop the columns crouched stone gargoyles with enormous breasts held high and inviting.

  Tehol turned to Bugg. ‘This is the Temple. She’s in the Temple?’

  ‘Does that surprise you?’

  ‘I can’t even afford to step across the threshold. Even Queen Janall frequents this place but a few times a year. Annual membership dues are a thousand docks… I’ve heard… it rumoured. From someone, once.’

  ‘Matron Delisp is probably very pleased with her newest property.’

  ‘I’d wager she is at that. So, how do we extract Shurq Elalle, especially since it’s obvious she is where she wants to be, and the Matron has at least thirty thugs in her employ who’re likely to try and stop us? Should we simply consider this a lost cause and be on our way?’

  Bugg shrugged. ‘That is up to you to decide, master.’

  ‘Well.’ He considered. ‘I’d like at least a word with her.’

  ‘Probably all you can afford.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd, Bugg. She doesn’t charge by the word… does she?’


  ‘She might well charge by the glance, master. Our dear dead thief has blossomed—’

  ‘Thanks to me! Who arranged for her overhaul? Her dry-dock repairs, the new coat of paint? We had a deal—’

  ‘Tell it to her, master, not me. I am well aware of the lengths you go to in appeasing your own peculiar appetites.’

  ‘I’m not even going to ask what you mean by that, Bugg. It sounds sordid, and my sordid self is my own affair.’

  ‘So it is, master, so it is. Good thing you’re not the nostalgic type.’

  Tehol glared at Bugg for a moment, then swung his attention once more to the Temple. The oldest brothel in all the land. Some said it was standing here long before the city rose up around it, and indeed the city rose up around it because of the brothel itself. That didn’t make much sense, but then few things did when it came to love and its many false but alluring shades. He tilted his head back to study the gargoyles, and the scorched reed hat slid off to splash on the cobbles behind him. ‘Well, that settles it. Either I stand here getting my hair wet, or I go inside.’

  ‘As far as I can tell, master, my rain hat was a tragic failure in any case.’

  ‘It’s your over-critical nature, Bugg, what’s done you in. Follow me!’

  Tehol ascended the steps with proprietary determination. As he reached the landing the front door swung open and the frame was filled by a huge, hooded man wearing a black surcoat, a massive double-bladed axe in his gauntleted hands.

  Appalled, Tehol halted, Bugg stumbling into him from behind on the lower step.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Tehol managed, stepping to one side and pulling Bugg along with him. ‘Off to a beheading, then?’ He gestured for the man to pass.

  Small eyes glittered from the hood’s shadows. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said in a raspy voice. ‘You are most courteous.’ He strode forward onto the landing, then paused. ‘It’s raining.’

  ‘Indeed, almost finished, I’d wager. See the blue overhead?’

  The axe-carrying giant faced Tehol. ‘If anyone asks, sir, you never saw me here.’

  ‘You have my word.’

  ‘Most kind.’ He faced the street again, then cautiously descended the steps.

  ‘Ooh,’ he said as he set off, ‘it’s wet! Ooh!’

  Tehol and Bugg watched him scurry away, hunched over and weaving to avoid the deeper puddles.

  Bugg sighed. ‘I admit to being greatly affrighted by his sudden appearance.’

  Brows raised, Tehol regarded his servant. ‘Really? Poor Bugg, you need to do something about those nerves of yours. Come on, then, and fear nothing whilst you are with me.’

  They entered the Temple.

  And Tehol halted once more, as suddenly as the first time, as the point of a knife settled on his cheek beneath his right eye, which blinked rapidly. Bugg managed to draw up in time to avoid bumping into his master, for which Tehol’s gratitude was sufficient to weaken his knees.

  A sweet feminine voice murmured close to his ear, ‘You’re not in disguise, sir. Which means, well, we both know what that means, don’t we?’

  ‘I’ve come for my daughter—’

  ‘Now that’s in very poor taste. We can’t abide such twisted, sick desires in here—’

  ‘You misunderstand – understandably, of course, that is. I meant to say, I’ve come to retrieve her, before it’s too late.’

  ‘Her name?’

  ‘Shurq Elalle.’

  ‘Well, it’s too late.’

  ‘You mean she being dead? I’m aware of that. It’s her ancestors, you see, they want her to come home to the crypt. They miss her terribly, and a few of them are getting alarmingly angry. Ghosts can be a lot of trouble – not just for you and this establishment, but for me as well. You see my predicament?’

  The knife point withdrew, and a short, lithe woman stepped round to stand before him. Close-fitting silks in rusty hues, a broad silk belt wrapped about her tiny waist, upturned slippers on her minuscule feet. A sweet, heart-shaped face, strangely overlarge eyes, now narrowing. ‘Are you done?’

  Tehol smiled sheepishly. ‘You must get that a lot. Sorry. Are you, perchance, Matron Delisp?’

  She spun about. ‘Follow me. I hate this room.’

  He glanced about for the first time. Two paces wide, four deep, a door at the far end, the walls hidden behind lush tapestries depicting countless couplings of all sorts. ‘Seems inviting enough,’ he said, following the woman to the door.

  ‘It’s the spent smell.’

  ‘Spent? Oh, yes.’

  ‘Smells of… regret. I hate that smell. I hate everything about it.’ She opened the door and slipped through.

  Tehol and Bugg hastened to follow.

  The chamber beyond was dominated by a steep staircase, which began a single pace beyond the doorway. The woman led them round it to a plush waiting room, thick-padded sofas along the side walls, a single high-backed chair occupying the far wall. She walked directly to that chair and sat down. ‘Sit. Now, what’s all this about ghosts? Oh, never mind that. You were, what, ten years old when you fathered Shurq Elalle? No wonder she never mentioned you. Even when she was alive. Tell me, were you disappointed when she decided on a career of thievery?’

  ‘From your tone,’ Tehol said, ‘I gather you are challenging the veracity of my claims.’

  ‘Which question gave me away?’

  ‘But, you see, I am not so ignorant as you think. Hence my disguise.’

  She blinked. ‘Your disguise is to appear as a man in his early thirties, wearing sodden, badly made wool—’

  Bugg sat straighter, ‘Badly made? Now, hold on—’

  Tehol nudged his servant with an elbow, hard in the ribs. Bugg grunted, then subsided.

  ‘That is correct,’ Tehol said.

  ‘A vast investment in sorcery, then. How old are you in truth?’

  ‘Sixty-nine… my dear.’

  ‘I’m impressed. Now, you mentioned ghosts?’

  ‘Afraid so, Matron. Terrible ones. Vengeful, disinclined to discourse. Thus far I have managed to keep them penned up in the family crypt, but they’ll get out sooner or later. And proceed on a rampage through the streets – a night of terror for all Letheras’s citizens, I fear – until they arrive here. And then, well, I shudder at the thought.’

  ‘As I am shuddering right now, although for entirely different reasons. But yes, we certainly have a dilemma. My particular dilemma, however, is one I admit to having been struggling with for some time now.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Fortunately, you appear to have provided me with a solution.’

  ‘I am pleased.’

  The woman leaned forward. ‘Top floor – there’s only one room. Talk that damned demoness out of here! Before my other lasses flay me alive!’

  ****

  The stairs were steep but well padded, the wooden railing beneath their hands an unbroken undulation of lovingly carved breasts polished and oiled by countless sweaty palms. They met no-one on the way and reached the top floor breathless – due to the ascent, of course, Tehol told himself as he paused at the door and wiped his hands on his soaked leggings.

  Head lowered and panting, Bugg was at his side, ‘Errant take me, what have they rubbed into that wood?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Tehol admitted, ‘but I can barely walk.’

  ‘Perhaps we should take a moment,’ Bugg suggested, wiping the sweat from his face.

  ‘Good idea. Let’s.’

  A short time later Tehol straightened, with a wince, and nodded at Bugg, who grimaced in reply. Tehol raised a hand and thumped on the heavy wooden door.

  ‘Enter,’ came the muffled command.

  Tehol opened the door and stepped into the room. Behind him, Bugg hissed, ‘Errant take me, look at all the breasts!’

  The wall panels and ceiling continued the theme begun on the wooden railing, a riotous proliferation of mammary excess. Even the floor beneath the thick rugs was lumpy.

  ‘A singular obse
ssion—’ Tehol began, and was interrupted.

  ‘Oh,’ said a voice from the huge bed before them, ‘it’s you.’

  Tehol cleared his throat. ‘Shurq Elalle.’

  ‘If you’ve come for services,’ she said, ‘you might be relieved to know the executioner’s big axe was pathetic compensation.’

  ‘He got wet in the rain,’ Bugg said.

  Tehol glanced back at him. ‘What is the relevance of that?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I thought you might.’

  ‘I’m not leaving,’ Shurq said, ‘if that’s why you’re here.’

  ‘You have to,’ Tehol countered. ‘The Matron insists.’

  She sat straighter in the bed. ‘It’s those damned cows downstairs, isn’t it? I’ve stolen all their clients and they want me out!’

  ‘I imagine so.’ Tehol shrugged. ‘But that’s hardly surprising, is it? Listen, Shurq, we had a deal, didn’t we?’

  Her expression darkened. ‘So I should do the honourable thing? All right, but I have a problem regarding certain appetites…’

  ‘I wish I could help.’

  Her brows rose.

  ‘Uh, I meant – I mean – oh, I don’t know what I mean.’ He paused, then brightened. ‘But I’ll introduce you to Ublala, an unhappy bodyguard longing for commitment.’

  Her brows rose higher.

  ‘Well, why not? You don’t have to tell him you’re dead! He’ll never notice, of that I’m certain! And as for your appetites, I doubt there’ll be a problem there, although there’s a trio of women who might be very upset, but I’ll handle that. Look, it’s a brilliant solution, Shurq.’

  ‘I’ll give it a try, I suppose, but I’m not making any promises. Now, step outside, please, so I can get dressed.’

  Tehol and Bugg exchanged glances and then complied, softly shutting the door behind them.

  Bugg studied his master. ‘I am very impressed,’ he said after a moment. ‘I’d thought this a situation without a solution. Master, my admiration for you grows like a—’

  ‘Stop staring at that railing, Bugg.’

  ‘Uh, yes. You’re right.’

  ****

  Matron Delisp was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. Seeing Shurq Elalle following a step behind Bugg, her face twisted with distaste. ‘Errant bless you, Tehol Beddict. I owe you one.’