‘Oh, I know what you’re hinting at, Crispan,’ chirped Bathkaarnet-she. Mornu, in his oblique way, had been reminding his majesty that Milua Tal should be speedily married to Prince Taynth Indredd of Pannoval; in that way, a tighter religious grip over Oldorando could be established.
Crispan Mornu gave no sign that he had heard the queen’s remark.
‘What will you do, Your Majesty?’
‘Oh, really, I think I’ll take a bath…’
Crispan Mornu brought an envelope from the recesses of his dark gown.
‘This week’s report from Matrassyl suggests that various problems there may come shortly to a head. Unndreid the Hammer, the Scourge of Mordriat, has died in a fall from his hoxney during a skirmish. While he threatened Borlien, some unity was preserved within the capital. Now with Unndreid dead and JandolAnganol away…’ He let the sentence dangle and smiled with a cutting edge. ‘Offer JandolAnganol a fast ship. Your Majesty — two if necessary — to get himself and his Phagorian Guard back down the Valvoral as speedily as possible. He may accept. Urge on him that we have here a situation we cannot control, and that his precious beasts must be removed or massacred. He prides himself on going with circumstances. We will see that he does go.’
Sayren Stund mopped his forehead and pondered the matter.
‘JandolAnganol will never take such good advice from me. Let his friends put it to him.’
‘His friends?’
‘Yes, yes, his Pannovalan friends, Alam Esomberr and that contemptible Guaddl Ulbobeg. Have them summoned while I have myself voluptuously bathed.’ Addressing his wife, he asked, ‘Do you wish to come and enjoy the voluptuous sight, my dear?’
The mob was in action. Its gathering could be traced from the Avernus. Oldorando was full of idle hands. Mischief was always welcome. They came out of taverns, where they had been harmlessly occupied. They locked up shops and picked up sticks. They rose from outside churches, where they had been begging. They wandered along from hostels and billets and holy places. Just to have a share in whatever was going on.
Some hrattock had said they were inferior to fuggies. Those were fighting words. Where was this hrattock? Maybe it was that slanje standing talking over there…
Many Avernian watchers regarded the brawling, and the pretext for brawling, with contempt. Others who reflected more deeply saw another aspect of it. However preposterous, however primitive the issue that SartoriIrvrash had raised, it had its parallels aboard the Earth Observation Station — and there no rioting would solve it.
‘Belief: an impermanence.’ So it said in the treatise ‘On the Prolongation of One Helliconian Season Beyond One Human Lifetime’. The belief in technological progress which had inspired the building of the Avernus had, over the generations, become a trap for those aboard it, just as the accretion of beliefs called Akhanabaism had become a trap.
Settled into an introspective quietism, those who ran the Avernus saw no escape from their trap. They feared the change they most needed. Patronising though their attitude was to the unwashed who ran through Goose Street and Wozen Avenue, the unwashed had a hope denied those far above them. Hot with fight and drink, a man in Goose Street could use his fists or shout before the cathedral. He might be confused, but he did not endure the emptiness the advisors among the six families endured. Belief: an impermanence. It was true. Belief had largely died on the Avernus, leaving despair in its place.
Individuals despair, but not peoples. Even as the elders looked down on, and transmitted wearily back to Earth, scenes of confusion which seemed to reflect their own futility, another faction was taking bold shape on the station.
That faction had already named itself the Aganippers. Its members were young and reckless. They knew there was no chance for them to return to Earth or — as the recent example of Billy Xiao Pin had effectively demonstrated — to live on Helliconia. But on Aganip there was a chance for them. Avoiding the ever-watching lenses, they accumulated their stores and marked out a shuttle they could appropriate which would transport them to the empty planet. In their hearts was a hope as bright as any to be found in Goose Street.
The evening grew slightly cooler. There was another earth tremor, but it passed almost unnoticed among the general excitements.
Calmed and refreshed by his bath, well fed, King Sayren Stund was in fit mood to receive Alam Esomberr and the elderly Guaddl Ulbobeg. He seated himself comfortably on a couch and assembled his wife behind him to make an attractive composition before summoning the two men to his presence.
All due courtesies were made, and a slave woman poured wine into glasses already freighted with Lordryardry ice.
Guaddl Ulbobeg wore an ecclesiastical sash over a light charfrul. He entered reluctantly and appeared no more comfortable to see Crispan Mornu present. He felt his position to be dangerous, and showed it in his nervous manner.
Alam Esomberr, by contrast, was excessively cheerful. Immaculately dressed as usual, he approached the king’s couch and kissed the hands of both majesties with the air of one immune to bacteria.
‘Well, indeed, sire, you did present us with a spectacle this afternoon, just as you promised. My congratulations. How ably your old rogue of an atheist spoke! Of course, our faith is merely deepened by doubt. Nevertheless, what an amusing turn of fate it is that the abhorred King JandolAnganol, lover of phagors, who only this morning stood trial for his life, should this evening stand revealed as heroic protector of the children of God.’
He laughed pleasantly and turned to Advisor Mornu to judge his amusement.
‘That is blasphemy,’ said Crispan Mornu, in his blackest voice.
Esomberr nodded, smiling. ‘Now that God has a new definition, surely blasphemy has one too? The heresy of yesterday, sir, is now perceived as today’s true path, which we must tread as nimbly as we can…’
‘I don’t know why you are so merry,’ Sayren Stund complained. ‘But I hope to take a small advantage of your good humour. I wish to ask you both a favour. Woman, serve the wine again.’
‘We will do whatever your majesty commands,’ said Guaddl Ulbobeg, looking anxious and clutching his glass.
The king rose up from a reclining position, smoothed his stomach, and said, with a touch of royal pomp, ‘We shall give you the wherewithal with which to persuade King JandolAnganol to leave our kingdom immediately, before he can delude my poor infant daughter Milua Tal into matrimony.’
Esomberr looked at Guaddl Ulbobeg. Guaddl Ulbobeg looked at Esomberr.
‘Well?’ said the king.
‘Sire,’ said Esomberr, and fell to tugging a lock of hair at the back of his neck, which necessitated his looking down at the floor.
Guaddl Ulbobeg cleared his throat and then, more or less as an afterthought, cleared it again. ‘May I venture to ask your majesty if you have seen your daughter just of late?’
‘As for me, sire, I am almost totally within the power of the King of Borlien, sir,’ added Esomberr, still attending to his neck. ‘Owing to a past indiscretion on my part, sir. An indiscretion concerning — most unforgivably — the queen of queens. So when the King of Borlien came to us this afternoon, seeking our assistance, we felt bound…’
Since he allowed the sentence to dangle while he scrutinised the countenance of Sayren Stund, Ulbobeg continued the discourse.