In wet chuckle where a faded tunic
Drapes the shoulders of a broken branch
These are the dangers I might see
Leaning forward if the effort did not prove
So taxing but that ragged collar
Covers no pale breast with tapping pulse
This shirt wears the river in birth foam
And languid streaming tatters
Soon I gave up the difficult rest
And floated down in search of boots
Filled with pebbles as every man needs
Somewhere to stand.
CLOTHES REMAIN
FISHER
I
’m stuffed,’ said King Tehol, and then, with a glance at his guest, added, ‘Sorry.’
Captain Shurq Elalle regarded him with her crystal goblet halfway to her well-padded, exquisitely painted lips. ‘Yet another swollen member at my table.’
‘Actually,’ observed Bugg, ‘this is the King’s table.’
‘I wasn’t being literal,’ she replied.
‘Which is a good thing,’ cried Tehol, ‘since my wife happens to be sitting right here beside me. And though she has no need to diet, we’d all best stay figurative.’ And his eyes shifted nervously before he hid himself behind his own goblet.
‘Just like old times,’ said Shurq. ‘Barring the awkward pauses, the absurd opulence, and the weight of an entire kingdom pressing down upon us. Remind me to decline the next invitation.’
‘Longing for a swaying deck under your feet?’ Tehol asked. ‘Oh, how I miss the sea—’
‘How can you miss what you’ve never experienced?’
‘Well, good point. I should have been more precise. I miss the false memory of missing a life on the sea. It was, at the risk of being coarse, my gesture of empathy.’
‘I don’t really think the captain’s longings should be the subject of conversation, husband,’ Queen Janath said, mostly under her breath.
Shurq heard her none the less. ‘Highness, this night has made it grossly obvious that you hold to an unreasonable prejudice against the dead. If I was still alive I’d be offended.’
‘No you wouldn’t.’
‘In a gesture of empathy, indeed I would!’
‘Well, I do apologize,’ said the Queen. ‘I just find your, uh, excessively overt invitations to be somewhat off-putting—’
‘My excessively overt what? It’s called make-up! And clothes!’
‘More like dressing the feast,’ murmured Janath.
Tehol and Bugg shared a wince.
Shurq Elalle smirked. ‘Jealousy does not become a queen—’
‘Jealousy? Are you mad?’
The volume of the exchange was escalating. ‘Yes, jealousy! I’m not getting any older and that fact alone—’
‘Not any older, true enough, just more and more . . . putrid.’
‘No less putrid than your unseemly bigotry! And all I need do by way of remedy is a bag full of fresh herbs!’
‘That’s what you think.’
‘Not a single man’s ever complained. I bet you can’t say the same.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
Shurq Elalle then chose the most vicious reply of all. She said nothing. And took another delicate mouthful of wine.
Janath stared, and then turned on her husband.
Who flinched.
In a tight, low voice, Janath asked, ‘Dear husband, do I fail in pleasing you?’
‘Of course not!’
‘Am I the subject of private conversations between you and this—this creature?’
‘Private? You, her? Not at all!’
‘Oh, so what then is the subject of those conversations?’
‘No subject—’
‘Too busy to talk, then, is it? You two—’
‘What? No!’
‘Oh, there’s always time for a few explicit instructions. Naturally.’
‘I don’t—we don’t—’
‘This is insane,’ snapped Shurq Elalle. ‘When I can get a man like Ublala Pung why should I bother with Tehol here?’
The King vigorously nodded, and then frowned.
Janath narrowed her gaze on the undead captain. ‘Am I to understand that my husband is not good enough for you?’
Bugg clapped his hands and rose. ‘Think I’ll take a walk in the garden. By your leave, sire—’
‘No! Not for a moment! Not unless I can go with you!’
‘Don’t even think it,’ hissed Janath. ‘I’m defending your honour here!’
‘Bah!’ barked Shurq Elalle. ‘You’re defending your choice in men! That’s different.’
Tehol straightened, pushing his chair back and mustering the few remaining tatters of his dignity. ‘We can only conclude,’ he intoned loftily, ‘that nostalgic nights of reminiscences are best contemplated in the abstract—’
‘The figurative,’ suggested Bugg.
‘Rather than the literal, yes. Precisely. And now, my Chancellor and I will take the night air for a time. Court musicians—you! Over there! Wax up those instruments or whatever you have to do. Music! Something friendly!’
‘Forgiving.’
‘And forgiving!’
‘Pacifying.’
‘Pacifying!’
‘But not patronizing—’
‘But not—All right, that will do, Bugg.’
‘Of course, sire.’
Shurq watched the two cowards flee the dining hall. Once the door had closed, and the dozen or so musicians had finally settled on the same song, the captain leaned back in her chair and contemplated the Queen for a moment, and then said, ‘So, what’s all this about?’
‘I had some guests last night, ones that I think you should meet.’
‘All right. In what capacity?’
‘They may have need of you and your ship. It’s complicated.’
‘No doubt.’
Janath waved a handmaiden over and muttered some instructions. The short, overweight woman with the pimply face waddled off.
‘You really don’t trust Tehol, do you?’ Shurq asked, watching the handmaiden depart.
‘It’s not a matter of trust. More a question of eliminating temptation.’
She snorted. ‘Never works. You know that, don’t you? Besides, he’s a king. He has royal leave to exercise kingly excesses. It’s a well-established rule. Your only reasonable response is to exercise in kind.’
‘Shurq, I’m a scholar and not much else. It’s not my way—’
‘Make it your way, Highness. And then the pressure’s off both of you. No suspicions, no jealousies, no unreasonable expectations. No unworkable prohibitions.’
‘Such liberating philosophy you have, Captain.’
‘So it is.’
‘And doomed to sink into a most grisly mire of spite, betrayal and loneliness.’
‘That’s the problem with you living. You’re all stuck on seeing only the bad things. If you were dead like me you’d see how pointless all that is. A waste of precious energy. I recommend your very own ootooloo—that’ll put your thoughts in the right place.’
‘Between my legs, you mean.’
‘Exactly. Our very own treasure chest, our pleasure box, the gift most women lock up and swallow the key to, and then call themselves virtuous. What value in denying the gift and all it offers? Madness! What’s the value of a virtue that makes you miserable and wretched?’
‘There are other kinds of pleasure, Shurq—’
‘But none so readily at hand for each and every one of us. You don’t need coin. Errant fend, you don’t even need a partner! I tell you, excess is the path to contentment.’
‘And have you found it? Contentment, I mean, since your excesses are not in question.’
‘I have indeed.’
‘What if you could live again?’
‘I’ve thought about it. A lot, lately, in fact, since there’s a necromancer among the Malazans who says he can attempt a ritual that might retu
rn me to life.’
‘And?’
‘I’m undecided. Vanity.’
‘Your ageless countenance.’
‘The prospect of unending pleasure, actually.’
‘Don’t you think you might tire of it someday?’
‘I doubt it.’
Queen Janath pursed her lips. ‘Interesting,’ she murmured.
Tehol plucked a globe of pinkfruit from the tree beside the fountain. He studied it. ‘That was harsh,’ he said.
‘They wanted to make it convincing,’ said Bugg. ‘Are you going to eat that?’
‘What? Well, I thought it made a nice gesture, holding it just so, peering at it so thoughtfully.’
‘I figured as much.’
Tehol handed him the fruit. ‘Go ahead, ruin the prosaic beauty of the scene.’
Squishy, wet sounds competed with the fountain’s modest trickle.
‘Spies and secret handshakes,’ said Tehol. ‘They’re worse than the Rat Catchers’ Guild.’
Bugg swallowed, licked his lips. ‘Who?’
‘Women? Lovers and ex-lovers? Old acquaintances, I don’t know. Them. They.’
‘This is a court, sire. The court plots and schemes with the same need that we—uh, you—breathe. A necessity. It’s healthy, in fact.’
‘Oh now, really.’
‘All right, not healthy, unless of course one can achieve a perfect equilibrium, each faction played off against the others. The true measure of success for a king’s Intelligence Wing.’
Tehol frowned. ‘Who’s flapping that, by the way?’
‘Your Intelligence Wing?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘I am.’
‘Oh. How goes it?’
‘I fly in circles, sire.’
‘Lame, Bugg.’
‘As it must be.’
‘We need to invent another wing, I think.’
‘Do we now?’
Tehol nodded, plucking another fruit and studying it contemplatively. ‘To fly true, yes. A counter-balance. We could call it the King’s Stupidity Wing.’
Bugg took the fruit and regarded it. ‘No need, we already have it.’
‘We do?’
‘Yes, sire.’
‘Hah hah.’
Bugg bit into the globe and then spat it out. ‘Unripe! You did that on purpose!’
‘How stupid of me.’
Bugg glared.
The two women who followed the spotty handmaiden back into the dining room were an odd study in contrast. The short, curvy one dripped and dangled an astonishing assortment of gaudy jewellery. The clothing she wore stretched the definition of the word. Shurq suspected it had taken half the night to squeeze into the studded leggings, and the upper garment seemed to consist of little more than a mass of thin straps that turned her torso into a symmetrical display of dimples and pouts. Her plumpness was, perhaps, a sign of her youth as much as of soft living, although there was plenty of indolence in her rump-swaying, overly affected manner of walking—as if through a crowd of invisible but audibly gasping admirers—perched so perfectly atop high spike-heeled shoes, with one hand delicately raised. Her petite features reminded Shurq of the painted exaggeration employed by stage actors and weeping orators, with ferociously dark eye liner flaring to glittering purple below the plucked line of her eyebrows; white dust and false bloom to the rounded plump cheeks; pink and amber gloss on the full lips in diagonal barbs converging on the corners of her faintly downturned mouth. Her hair, silky black, was bound up in a frenzied array of braided knots speared with dozens of porcupine quills, each one tipped with pearls.
It was likely Shurq gaped for a moment, sufficient to earn an indulgent smile from the haughty little creature as she flounced closer.
A step behind this two-legged tome of fashion travesty walked the handmaiden—at least, that’s what the captain assumed she was. A head taller than most men, burly as a stevedore, the woman was dressed in an embroidered pink gown of some sort, shrieking femininity with a desperate air, and utterly failing to render the wearer any sort of elegance whatsoever. Diamond studs glinted high on her cheeks—and Shurq frowned, realizing with a start that the handmaiden’s face was surprisingly attractive: even features, the eyes deep, the lips full and naturally sultry. Her hair was cut close to the scalp, so blonde as to be very nearly white.
The curtsy the highborn girl presented before Queen Janath was elaborate and perfectly executed. ‘Highness, at your service.’
Janath cleared her throat. ‘Princess Felash, welcome. May I present Shurq Elalle, captain of Undying Gratitude, a seaworthy vessel engaged in independent trade. Captain, Princess Felash is the fourteenth daughter to King Tarkulf of Bolkando.’
Shurq rose and then curtsied. ‘Princess, may I compliment you on your attire. I cannot think of many women who could so exquisitely present such a vast assembly of styles.’
The handmaiden’s dark eyes flicked to Shurq and then away.
Felash preened, one hand returning to hover an artful distance to one side of her head. ‘Most kind, Captain. Few, even among my father’s court, possess the necessary sophistication to appreciate my unique tastes.’
‘I have no doubt of that, Highness.’
Another quick regard from the handmaiden.
Janath spoke hastily, ‘Forgive me, please, do sit with us, Princess. Share some wine, some dainties.’
‘Thank you, Queen Janath. You are most kind. Wine sounds wonderful, although I must regretfully decline partaking of any sweets. Must watch my weight, you know.’
Well, that’s good, since everyone else has to.
‘Oh,’ Felash then amended as soon her veiled eyes fixed upon the nearest plate heaped with desserts, ‘since this is a most special occasion, why not indulge?’ And she reached for a honey-drenched cake that mocked the notion of dainty, veritably exuding its invitation to obesity. Devouring such a trifle challenged the princess’s command of decorum, but she was quick, and in moments was carefully licking her fingertips. ‘Wonderful.’
‘Your handmaiden is welcome—’
‘Oh no, Highness! She is on the strictest diet—why, just look at the poor child!’
‘Princess Felash,’ cut in Shurq Elalle—although the handmaiden’s unchanged expression suggested she was well inured to her mistress’s callous rudeness—‘I must admit I have heard nothing of your visit to Lether—’
‘Ah, but that is because I’m not here at all, Captain. Officially, that is.’
‘Oh. I see.’
‘Do you?’ And the painted brat had the audacity to send her a sly wink. Felash then nodded towards Janath, even as she collected another sweetcake. ‘Your Malazan allies are about to march into a viper’s nest, you see. There is, in fact, the very real risk of a war. The more reasonable servants of the crown in Bolkando, of course, do not wish such a thing to come to pass. After all, should such conflict erupt, there is the chance that Lether will become embroiled, and then no one will be happy!’
‘So your father has sent you here on a secret mission, with appropriate assurances.’
‘My mother, actually, Captain,’ Felash corrected. She smacked her lips. ‘Alas, more than assurances were required, but all that has been taken care of, and now I wish to return home.’
Shurq thought about that for a moment. ‘Princess, the sea lanes that can draw us close to your kingdom are not particularly safe. Areas are either uncharted or inaccurately charted. And then there are the pirates—’
‘How better to confound such pirates than have one of them commanding our ship?’
Shurq Elalle started. ‘Princess, I’m not—’
‘Tush! Now you’re being silly. And no, Queen Janath has not babbled any secrets. We are quite capable of gathering our own intelligence—’
‘Alarmingly capable,’ muttered Janath, ‘as it turns out.’
‘Even if I am a pirate,’ Shurq said, ‘that is no guarantee against being set upon. The corsairs from Deal—who ply those wat
ers—acknowledge no rules of honour when it comes to rivals. In any case, I am in fact committed to transport a cargo which, unfortunately, will take me in the opposite direction—’
‘Would that cargo be one Ublala Pung?’ Janath asked.
‘Yes.’
‘And has he a destination in mind?’
‘Well, admittedly, it’s rather vague at the moment.’
‘So,’ continued the Queen thoughtfully, ‘if you posed to him an alternative route to wherever it is he’s going, would he object?’
‘Object? He wouldn’t even understand, Highness. He’d just smile and nod and try and tweak one of my—’
‘Then it is possible you can accommodate Princess Felash even with Ublala Pung aboard, yes?’
Shurq frowned at the Queen, and then at Felash. ‘Is this a royal command, Highness?’
‘Let’s just say we would be most pleased.’
‘Then let me just say that the pleasure of however many of you exist isn’t good enough, Highness. Pay me and pay well. And we agree on a contract. And I want it in writing—from either you, Queen, or you, Princess.’
‘But the whole point of this is that it must remain unofficial. Really, Shurq—’
‘Really nothing, Janath.’
Felash waved one sticky crumb-dusted hand. ‘Agreed! I will have a contract written up. There is no problem with the captain’s conditions. None at all. Well! I am delighted that everything’s now arranged to everyone’s satisfaction!’
Janath blinked.
‘Well. That’s fine, then,’ said Shurq Elalle.
‘Oh, these sweets are a terror! I must not—oh, one more perhaps—’
A short time later and the two Bolkando guests were given leave to depart. As soon as the door closed behind them, Shurq Elalle fixed a level gaze upon Janath. ‘So, O Queen, what precisely is the situation in Bolkando?’
‘Errant knows,’ Janath sighed, refilling her goblet. ‘A mess. There are so many factions in that court it makes a college faculty look like a neighbourhood sandbox. And you may not know it, but that is saying something.’
‘A sandbox?’
‘You know, in the better-off streets, the community commons—there’s always a box of sand for children to play in, where all the feral cats go to defecate.’
‘You privileged folk have strange notions of what your children should play with.’