"Am I to be paid?"
"Oh, aye, the going rate, as set by the Actor's Guild, minus your initiation fee into that cabal of graspers. When I was but a player, methought producers the world's worst tyrants, oppressors, cheats, and skinflints. Now that I am a producer, meseems that actors are the most grasping, vain, arrogant, capricious, unreasonable, untrustworthy, dissolute, and generally worthless rogues in Zevatas's world."
When the curtain fell at the end of the first act of The Wrong Bedroom, Jorian excused himself from Margalit and went around to the stage entrance. Presently Merlois stepped out on the stage and introduced that "celebrated, cultivated, renowned, charming, versatile, entertaining, and altogether irresistible storyteller, Nikko of Kortoli."
Jorian took a bow and said: "I shall tell the tale of a onetime king of Kortoli named Forbonian, who loved a mermaid. Know that all the kings of Kortoli since the days of Ardyman the Terrible have had names beginning with 'F.' This Forbonian was a good-to-middling king, not so brilliant as Fusinian the Fox, but far superior to that ass Forimar the Aesthete. Forbonian went about amongst the people, learning how they practiced their skills and betimes taking a hand at the plow or the loom or the hammer himself. Thus he found himself in the fishing village of Storum, helping the fishermen to haul in a net they had cast.
"The net seemed unwontedly heavy, and when with many royal grunts and heaves it was hauled ashore, it transpired that caught in its meshes was a veritable, palpable mermaid. She was not at all pleased at being snatched from her native element, and she screamed threats at the fishermen in her own language, which none understood.
"One old fisherman said: 'Your Majesty, here's a picklement. Whilst I know not her speech, I had it from my grandsire that mermaids threaten those who capture them with storms and shipwrecks, and that such calamities invariably come to pass. Let us, therefore, slay her and bury her well inland, ere she return to the sea to raise her fishy tribe against us.'
'That seems unduly drastic,' said the king. 'I cannot overmuch blame the sea-wench. I should be wroth if the mer-folk were to net me and draw me down into their liquid element. Let me bear her back to the palace. I will essay to turn her hostility to friendship by kind treatment'
"So Forbonian whistled up his bodyguard. They made a litter of poles and lashed the mermaid to it, notwithstanding that she struggled and gave one guardsman a nasty bite with her needle-sharp, fish-catching teeth. Back at Kortoli City, the king commanded the guards to drop the mermaid into the royal swimming pool, which stood in a small courtyard in the palace, open to the sky. The return to the water seemed to calm her, albeit she still muttered threats and maledictions.
"That very day, Forbonian began to train the mermaid. His first task was to establish communication. This he did by offering her a reward of a small fish every time she learned a new word of Novarian. At the end of a fortnight, the mermaid actually smiled when the hour of instruction came round. She said: 'You good man, King. I love you.'
"Forbonian spent more and more time with the mermaid, to the neglect of his royal business. Since none could pronounce her name in her own tongue, Forbonian bestowed upon her the name of Lelia.
"Let me say that real mermaids are not much like the beings depicted by artists. If you imagine the lower half as the after end of a porpoise, and the upper half as a hybrid of human being and seal, you will have an idea. True, the mermaid had arms much like those of a human being, save for the webbing betwixt the fingers. Her face was more or less human, but the forehead and chin sloped smoothly back. When she swam, she cocked her head up to swim nose first, like a seal, and her head, neck, and body merged smoothly into one another. Under water, her nostrils closed tightly, like those of a seal or an otter.
"Furthermore, real mermaids do not sit on bulging buttocks on the sea rocks, combing their long hair over protrusile breasts. They have no buttocks, their breasts are small and hardly break the piscine smoothness of their shape, and their hair is but a patch of seal-like fur on then-scalps. I do not think many of us would find such a creature surpassingly beautiful by human standards, although they doubtless have their own kind of beauty, just as a horse or a tiger may have.
"Natheless, a mutual sympathy sprang up between Lelia and the king, so that his greatest pleasure came to be the hours he spent beside her pool, instructing her. He took to stripping and swimming with her, claiming that she was teaching him new strokes.
"Now, King Forbonian's queen was Dionota, the daughter of the Hereditary Usurper of Govannian. Dionota was a comely female but, alas, not a sweet or companionable one. Her voice had become permanently roughened from screeching at the king, or anyone else within earshot, during her frequent tantrums. Now she became jealous of Lelia, notwithstanding Forbonian's assurances that the mermaid meant no more to him than a good horse or dog.
"At length, one day when the king was elsewhere, Dionota entered the courtyard of the pool and dumped a bucket of lye into the water. Either she mistakenly thought that the lye would instantly slay Lelia, or she did not realize how fluent in Novarian the mermaid had become, so that she would inevitably tell the king what had been done to her.
"Lelia's shrieks brought the king running, to find his mermaid writhing on the flags beside the pool, her skin blistered and inflamed. He fetched the royal physician, who used several jars of salve in coating Lelia's injured skin, and he had the pool drained and refilled.
"Lelia told Forbonian about the bucket of lye—not that she knew what lye was, but the cause and effect of her distress were plain enough. In a fury, the king went to Dionota and said: 'This is the end, you stupid bitch! Pack your gauds and get out. I am dissolving our marriage and sending you back to your father.'
"And so it was done. A month later, Forbonian got a letter from the Hereditary Usurper of Govannian, saying: 'Curse it, I thought I had got rid of this peevish baggage when I palmed her off on you, but no such luck. I shall have to wed her to the Tyrant of Boaktis, whose wife has lately died.'
"Forbonian chuckled, for he knew there was bad blood between the Usurper and the Tyrant. In this way, in the guise of cementing eternal friendship, the Usurper was playing a scurvy trick on his enemy.
"Now there was no one to come between the king and his mermaid. One day he told her: 'Lelia, I truly love you. Will you marry me?'
"Lelia said: 'But Lord King, how can that be? We are of different kinds, you and I.'
" 'Oh,' quoth Forbonian, 'we shall manage. What is the use of being a king if one cannot put over things impossible to common men?'
"Forbonian went to the high priest of Zevatas to ask him to sanctify the union, but the priest recoiled in horror. So did the priests of Heryx and the other gods. At length Forbonian simply issued a royal decree, making Lelia his lawful wife.
"Then arose the problem of consummating this unconventional marriage. The doors of the courtyard had all been shut, and the only light was that from the twilit sky overhead and some candles that the king had caused to be set on the flagstones about the pool. Forbonian said to his bride:
" 'Lelia dearest, if you will hoist yourself out on the stones, we will have at it.' Lena did not much like being out of water, claiming that the dry air made her skin itch. But she heaved herself out.
"Assured of his privacy, the king, a man of about my size, doffed his garments and set to fondle and caress Lelia. When he thought her properly receptive, he essayed to mount her; but try as he would, he could not effect an entry. At last he said: 'Devils take it, Lelia, how do they do it amongst your folk?'