He moved down the corridor and paused at the threshold of his shop so as to inspect the new arrival. Bardol CaraBansity was a solid man, less tall than weighty, with a ponderous way of speech and a heavy skull shaped not unlike a phagor’s. He wore a thick leather belt over his charfrul, and a knife in the belt. Although he looked like a common butcher, CaraBansity had a well-earned reputation as a crafty man.
With his hollow chest and protruding stomach, ScufBar was not an impressive sight, and CaraBansity made it plain he was not impressed.
‘I’ve got a body for sale, sir. A human body.’
Without speaking, CaraBansity motioned to the phagors. They went and brought the body in between them, dropping it down on the counter. Sawdust and ice fragments adhered to it.
The anatomist and deuteroscopist took a step nearer.
‘It’s a bit high. Where did you acquire it, man?’
‘From a river, sir. When I was fishing.’
The body was so distended by internal gases that it bulged out of its clothes. CaraBansity pulled it onto its back and tugged a dead fish from inside its shirt. He threw it at ScufBar’s feet.
‘That’s a so-called scupperfish. To those of us who have a care for truth, it’s not a fish at all but the marine young of a Wutra’s worm. Marine. Sea, not freshwater. Why are you lying? Did you murder this poor fellow? You look like a criminal. The phrenology suggests it.’
‘Very well, sir, if you prefer, I did find him in the sea. Since I am a servant of the unfortunate queen, I did not want the fact widely known.’
CaraBansity looked at him more closely. ‘You serve MyrdemInggala, queen of queens, do you, you rogue? She deserves good lackeys and good fortune, does that lady.’
He indicated a cheap print of the queen’s face, which hung in a corner of the shop.
‘I serve her well enough. Tell me what you will pay me for this body.’
‘You have come all this way for ten roon, not more. In these wicked times, I can get bodies to cut up every day of the week. Fresher than this one, too.’
‘I was informed that you would pay me fifty, sir. Fifty roon, sir.’ ScufBar looked shifty, and rubbed his hands together.
‘How does it happen that you turn up here with your malodorous friend when the king himself and an envoy from the Holy C’Sarr are due to arrive in Ottassol? Are you an instrument of the king’s?’
ScufBar spread his hands and shrank a little. ‘I have connections only with the hoxney outside. Pay me just twenty-five, sir, and I’ll go back to the queen immediately.’
‘You scerm are all greedy. No wonder the world’s going to pot.’
‘If that is the case, sir, then I’ll accept twenty. Twenty roon.’
Turning to one of the phagors standing by, flicking its pale milt up its slotlike nostrils, CaraBansity said, ‘Pay the man and get him out of here.’
‘How muzzh I pay?’
‘Ten roon.’
ScufBar let out a howl of anguish.
‘All right. Fifteen. And you, my man, present Bardol CaraBansity’s compliments to your queen.’
The phagor fumbled in its hempen gown and produced a thin purse. It proffered three gold coins, lying in the gnarled palm of its three-fingered hand. ScufBar grabbed them and made for the door, looking sullen.
Briskly CaraBansity ordered one of his ahuman assistants to shoulder the corpse — an order obeyed without observable reluctance — and followed him along the dim corridor, where strange odours drifted. CaraBansity knew as much about the stars as about the intestines, and his house — itself shaped rather like an intestine — extended far into the loess, with entrances to chambers devoted to all his interests on several lanes.
They entered a workshop. Light slanted down through two small square windows set in fortress-thick earth walls. Where the phagor trod, points of light glinted under his splayed feet. They looked like diamonds. They were beads of glass, scattered when the deuteroscopist was making lenses.
The room was crammed with learned litter. The ten houses of the zodiac were painted on the wall. Against another wall hung three carcasses in various stages of dissection — a giant fish, a hoxney, and a phagor. The hoxney had been opened up like a book, its soft parts removed to display ribs and backbone. On a desk nearby lay sheets of paper on which CaraBansity had drawn detailed representations of the dead animal, with various parts depicted in coloured ink.
The phagor swung the Gravabagalinien corpse from his shoulder and hung it upside down from a rail. Two hooks pierced the flesh between the Achilles tendon and the calcaneum. The broken arms dangled, the puffy hands rested like shelled crabs on the floor. At a blow from CaraBansity, his assistant departed. CaraBansity hated having the ancipitals about, but they were cheaper than servants or even human slaves.
After a judicial contemplation of the corpse, CaraBansity pulled out his knife and cut the dead man’s clothes away. He ignored the stench of decay.
The body was that of a young man, twelve years old, twelve and a half, possibly twelve years and nine tenners, not more. His clothes were of coarse and foreign quality, his hair was cut in a manner generally used by sailors.
‘You, my fine fellow, are probably not of Borlien,’ said CaraBansity to the corpse. ‘Your clothes are Hespagorat style — probably from Dimariam.’
The belly was so distended that it had folded over and concealed a leather body belt. CaraBansity worked it free. As the flesh sank back, a wound was revealed. CaraBansity slipped on a glove and thrust his fist into the wound. His fingers met with an obstruction. After some tugging, he extracted a curved grey ancipital horn, which had punctured the spleen and sunk deep into the body. He regarded the object with interest. Its two sharp edges made it a useful weapon. It had once possessed a handle, which was missing, possibly lost in the sea.
He regarded the body with fresh curiosity. A mystery always pleased him.
Setting the horn down, he examined the belt. It was of superior workmanship, but the sort of standard thing sold anywhere — at Osoilima, for example, where pilgrims provided a ready market for such goods. On the inner side was a button-down pocket, which he flipped open. From the pocket, he withdrew an incomprehensible object.
Frowning, he laid the object in his grubby palm and walked across to the light with it. It was like nothing he had ever seen before. He could not even identify the metal of which it was chiefly made. A shiver of superstitious fear crossed his pragmatic mind.
As he was washing it under the pump, removing traces of sand and blood, his wife, Bindla, entered the workshop.
‘Bardol? What are you doing now? I thought you were coming back to bed. You know what I was keeping warm for you?’
‘I love it, but I have something else to do.’ He flashed her one of his solemn smiles. She was of middle age — at twenty-eight and one tenner almost two years younger than he — and her rich russet hair was losing some of its colour; but he admired the way she was still aware of her ripe charms. At present, she was overacting her resentment at the smells in the room.
‘You’re not even writing your treatise on religion, your usual excuse.’
He grunted. ‘I prefer my stinks.’
‘You perverse man. Religion is eternal, stinks aren’t.’
‘On the contrary, my leggiandrous beauty, religions change all the time. It’s stinks which go on unchanged for ever.’
‘You rejoice in that?’
He was drying the wonderful object on a cloth and did not answer. ‘Look at this.’
She came and rested a hand on his shoulder.
‘By the boulder!’ he exclaimed in awe. He passed it to Bindla, and she gasped.