As the assault wore on it looked to Spindle as if their protectors would be literally hacked to pieces, so he went behind the bar to collect his kitbag. Then he jumped up on to a table in full view of the entrance, pulled out a wrapped object, shook off the layer of insulating cloth and held over his head his last remaining cusser. ‘See this?’ he shouted.
The attacking Seguleh flinched back a step — they indeed recognized what he had.
‘Don’t press me! You come in here, we all go together! Understand?’
‘We won’t just lay down our swords, y’damned fool,’ Picker yelled out of a window.
Dragging uneven steps sounded outside and the bent figure of the mage, Aman, appeared at the doorway. He pushed aside the two attacking Seguleh to study the frozen tableau first through one eye then through the other, much lower one; the Seguleh ready, weapons poised; their preserved undead fellows; Blend and Picker taking advantage of the lull to wind crossbows; Duiker already holding a loaded one; and Spindle, arms upraised.
‘You wouldn’t dare wreck this temple,’ Aman said.
‘Temple?’ Spindle said in disbelief. ‘This is a bar.’
‘A bar. You think this is a bar?’
‘It’s our bar,’ Picker said. ‘So we can blow it up if we want to.’
‘Privilege of ownership,’ Blend added, spitting to one side.
The mage turned to Duiker. ‘And what of you, historian? Are you prepared to die?’
Duiker levelled the crossbow on him. ‘I’ve already died.’
One of the mage’s mismatched eyes twitched and he frowned his acceptance of the point. ‘I see. Well argued. For now, then.’ He waved the Seguleh back.
Once they were up the street Spindle couldn’t help himself and he leaned out of the door to yelclass="underline" ‘Hey, you Seguleh boys. You heel real well. Do you roll over too?’
It seemed to him that the four with Aman all missed a step with that comment, and their backs straightened. But he couldn’t be sure. He turned to the bar to find their preserved Seguleh guardians shuffling back downstairs. Everyone watched them go then lifted their heads to stare at him.
‘What?’
‘You’re not a proper saboteur, Spin,’ Picker said, and nodded to his hand. ‘Could you put that away now?’
He saw that he was still cradling the cusser in one hand. ‘This?’ He threw it up and caught it again to a collective gust of breaths from the other three. ‘Aw, don’t worry. It’s a dud. Hollow.’
Blend reached up as if to throttle him. ‘Well, you ought to let us know, dammit all to the Abyss!’
‘No. You shouldn’t know. Don’t you see? That would ruin the effect. They have to see the fear in your eyes to know it’s real, right?’
Picker waved him away. ‘Aw, shove it.’
‘Now is the time to gird one’s loins for the labour ahead,’ the diminutive fat man murmured as he walked the mud lane between leaning shacks of waste-wood, felt and cloth. He wiped his gleaming mournful face with a sodden handkerchief. ‘Yes indeed … the time has come to hitch up one’s trousers and be a man! Or is it to pull them down and be a man? I never could get that straight … Oh dear, I really should stop right there!’
He paused at an intersection of two lanes where a dog eyed him, growling. No hordes of unreasonably angry washerwomen armed with dirty laundry! Excellent. And the Maiten in sight where come curling currents from the plain where fates move as they do — forward, misplacing things as they go.
Seven dogs now surrounded him, muzzles down between forelimbs, lips pulled back from broken teeth.
Hoary old ones! Washerwomen preferable to this.
He drew a bone from one loose sleeve. ‘Good doggies!’ He threw. Though not nearly so far as he would have wished. He turned and ran, or jogged, puffing, in the opposite direction.
The next two corners brought him to the hut on the extreme western edge of the shanty town where he stopped, short of breath, and wiped his face.
‘And here he is panting in anticipation,’ the old woman sitting on the threshold observed around the pipe in her mouth.
‘Indeed. Here I am yet again. Your ever hopeful suitor. Slave to your whim. Prostrate in inspiration.’
‘I can smell your inspiration from here,’ she observed, grimacing. ‘You brought offering?’
‘But of course!’ From a sleeve he produced a cloth-wrapped wedge the size of a quarter brick.
The old woman raised her tangled brows, impressed, as she took it. ‘Things are progressing nicely, aren’t they, love?’ She tore a piece and moulded it in one grimed fist, warming and softening it. ‘The circle complete, yes?’ and she eyed him, smirking.
He ducked his head. ‘Ah — yes. Spoke too quickly, Kruppe did. Yet, is it not so? Was Kruppe not quite correct? There! Yes, god-like perspicacity, that.’
‘Back to anticipation, are we?’ the old woman murmured, and she drew long and hard on the pipe. ‘Suggesting … perspiration.’
‘Yes. Well. I am dancing as fast as I can, dearest.’
‘Hmm, dancing,’ she purred, exhaling a great stream of smoke. ‘That’s what I want to see. Won’t you come in?’
‘Gladly. Dogs and washerwomen and whatnot. But before … you have them, yes? Ready?’
She pressed her hands to her wide chest. ‘All hot and ready for you, love.’
The man passed a hand over his eyes. ‘Kruppe is speechless.’
‘For once. Now, come in — and think of Darujhistan.’ And she disappeared within.
Kruppe wiped his slick forehead. ‘Oh, fair city. Dreaming city. The things I do for you!’
Shall we draw a curtain across such a commonplace domestic scene? Modesty would insist. Yet Kruppe found the witch athwart her tattered blankets snoring to beat a storm. Well. Shall vanity be stung to no end? Shall the Eel skulk away, tail between its … whatever? Never! The prize awaits! And he knelt over the insensate woman, reaching for her layered shirts.
To feel eyes upon him. Beady eyes, low to the ground.
He turned to find the dogs watching from the doorway, eager, tongues lolling.
Aiya! Kruppe cannot perform like this! He flapped his hands. ‘Begone! Have you no decency?’
Liquid eyes begged, muzzles nudged forepaws.
Defeated, Kruppe drew yet another bone from within his voluminous sleeve and threw. The dogs spun away, claws kicking up dirt.
‘Now, where were we, my love?’ He wriggled his fingers above her and there from a fold of the shirts peeped the weave of a dirty linen sack.
Aha! And now to pluck this blushing blossom …
Kruppe walked the trash-strewn mud ways of Maiten town, and all was well. He inhaled the scent of the open sewer, the steaming waste, and sighed. He patted his chest where a bag rested still warm from another, far greater and more bountiful nook. All was music to his ears: the fighting dogs, the laundry slapped with alarming force upon the rocks, the fond taunting and rock-throwing of the playful local urchins.
And now for the city! Fair Darujhistan. Ringed round and enclosed. Yet are there not ways around all walls and gates for such as the slippery perspiry Eel!
CHAPTER XIV
It is said that once a ruler in far off Tulips hosted a great and rich banquet (Tulips then being a prosperous city, unlike now) at the end of which he invited the guests to stand and give their definition of a full and happy life — the best version of which he would reward with a heavy torc of gold. One after another the guests stood to assure the ruler that his was in fact that best exemplar of a full and happy life. A Seguleh traveller chanced to be attending the celebration and she did not rise to participate in the competition. Irked, the king bade the woman stand and deliver her, all too secretive, version of a full and happy life.