Chapter 13 - Wargermopolis
“And then Candlehead appeared!” Said Nuggets. His visa fluttered as he pumped a triumphant fist. “You should have seen him! Swooping on Ordus, at the head of the tourists. The soldiers were stunned, completely surprised. They ran before Jodee’s might!”
Mr. Grey knocked against a heavy driftwood door. He tapped, exactly five times, on the door’s embossed iron symbol; two morays twined around a walking stick. He corner-eyed Nuggets and said, “But not all escaped? You said Ordus retained some. Was Honeydew…”
“Don’t worry on that,” Nuggets interrupted him. “Yeah, she couldn’t get away. But it’s, like, all good. He just brought her here, back to Wargermopolis. They took this city - Defense Force armies - when they invaded Panache. We’ll take it back soon, and free all tourists! Yessiree zimzam vimvoo.”
“So she’s in prison?”
“Well no, she’s in jail. I guess you could post her bail. Seems like a waste though. When you can just wait. Jodee’s revolt approaches. Oh and by the way, how did you get here? How’d you two find the city?”
Mr. Grey rapped his knuckles again on the iron door-symbol. Tom, standing on Nuggets’ other flank, smeared his nose upon the handkerchief; lengthily. Nuggets glanced between them. Eventually Mr. Grey said, “We met a local herdsman.”
“But the Abyssal Desert, how’d you get across? Without food and stuff?”
The synchronized tramping of boots on gravel broke their conversation. Nuggets’s downy-cheeked face, the sallow face of Tom, and Mr. Grey’s expressionless mien looked down the gloomy alley. At the far end, where the Sun Fish’s daylight spilled brightly on a paved road, a trio of Defense Force soldiers entered.
They marched in sync along this narrow corridor of Wargermopolis in which the three stood. They marched around piles of building rubble and over crunching bits of glass. They marched below the broken windows and drooping balconies of upper apartments, and as they went, local residents ducked cautiously inside or softly closed their curtains. The soldiers marched beside the alley walls of wan, gloomy brick; marked in graffiti layers.
The bottommost layer of art on the brick walls told Glory Days folktales. The oft-lightless alley couldn’t boast the ornate murals of the wide, bright thoroughfares, but that bottom-layer of paint on the narrow corridor walls still showed the pride in the artist. The picture of crystal Koi Fish and blushing Salmon Fish twining together, thrice a man’s-height; or the depiction of a cottonfruit reaper gathering a buttery harvest; these were no works of base talent along which the soldiers marched.
Scrawled over both these grander pieces, however, were additions of later generations. The soldiers passed by a multitude of line-art works and block-letter words, touting Jodee’s revolution. Art-soldiers stared at their corporeal counterparts with horrorstruck faces, as tourists bound them in rope or dangled them from cages above dung pits. The mottos and phrases were no less candid, no more creative: ‘Down with Defense Force’, ‘Up with Jodee’, ‘Let the bubbles free, man’. These words, drawn over the old murals in big, bloody letters, heckled the real soldiers marching through the alley.
And yet another layer of graffiti dwelt atop those lesser additions. When the Defense Force retook the city, the locals retook their walls. They’d either tried restoring the old murals - with universal failure - or added new portraits. The soldiers passed one especially-poor likeness of Jodee herself: painted in her sparking-grindstone robe, her alwayslush sapling drooping in one hand, a broken bottle of cologne in her other. Flies and fleas flew in ashen specks from the pits of her arms and rained down on stick-figure farmers.
Such did the soldiers pass as they walked the alley, toward Tom, Nuggets, and Mr. Grey. They kept their guns shouldered, but they marched purposefully toward the three loiterers at the door. The three tried blending with the sneezing, sallow-faced, sweaty, coughing, wheezy, thin, and otherwise sick locals and tourists; roaming the streets with the haunted eyes and hollow breath of starving dogs; or lying exhausted - like road flattened critters - in the rubble. Tom sniffled into his handkerchief with gusto. Nuggets put up a challenging face until Tom elbowed him, at which he too sniffled in his little visa. Mr. Grey coughed once, dryly.
They were the sole occupants of an otherwise empty alley. The soldiers walked directly to them. The central one wore bronze armor with silver bands marking him as an officer. He folded his arms over the metal plate and said, “You three. Tourists are you? Well then, let’s see those visas!”
Mr. Grey presented his neatly-folded, fabric, replacement visa from Wine Medo. His face looked almost joyful as he ceded a proper document. Nuggets took the cloth patch from his nose and offered it with a shaking hand. Tom spent several tocks feeling the various pockets of his robe before drawing a visa of his own. Mr. Grey reflected that he’d never seen Tom’s visa; it looked faded and motheaten.
The soldier on the left took all three. He held them out one-by-one, so the officer could read each. The officer glanced between the three before him and each corresponding visa presented. After inspecting, he said, “What are you about then, eh? Not rebelling, are you? Not Jodee’s partisans, are you?”
Nuggets looked away suspiciously. Tom sniffled. Mr. Grey said, “No sir, we’re not rebelling. We’re here to see the doctor. My friend’s sick, you see, and…”
“Sick ehhhh? You three going about without cologne? You do know that’s not just illegal; it’s dangerous. You’re putting yourselves, and everybody else who isn’t accustomed to your odors, at risk.”
“Apologies sir. He sniffed a few too many local flowers. We’re all wearing cologne now.”
The officer gave each a final eyedown. He nodded to the left soldier, who returned their visa cloths. The officer said, “Well, don’t dawdle. There’s a curfew here in Wargermopolis; anytime the Sun Fish swims off by more than a dozen leagues. Make sure you’re not on the streets by then, eh? Carry on.”
The soldiers walked away and left the alley. Tom and Nuggets let out relieved breaths. Mr. Grey said, “That seemed orderly. By the way, Nuggets; is that always this town’s name? Wargermopolis?”
“I don’t know, comrade,” said Nuggets. He looked after the soldiers distractedly. “I’m not a tour guide.”
“Wargermopolis.” Mr. Grey pinched his chin. “It’s not quite a tongue-slide”
Tom folded his sullied handkerchief with care and placed it into a pocket; he stuffed his visa away haphazardly. He said, “This plan is stupid,” in a deliberate evocation of Honeydew, though his nasally, deep voice tarnished the likeness. “We should find a hideaway. We don’t need treatments, I feel well en…”
Fortunately, Tom escaped into a lawful fit of coughing or sneezing. Mr. Grey had raised his knuckles again to the hospital door. Before he could tap out another quiet 5-note beat, it swung wide…
…and revealed a doctor behind. She kept one hand inside the heavy driftwood entry, and the other tucked in a front pocket of a coal-dust covered, single-shoulder-strap, hippopotamus-patterned robe. Mr. Grey thought she looked a bit like Lord Snake’s doctor, back in Wine Medo. She was a ‘she’, but had the same sour twist-of-mouth. And the same face, lined by the rollicking twins, Care and Time.
The doctor threw her eyes over them in a quick sideways-scrape; enough to shave off an impression of tourists. She said, “What now, more of you able-body seekers? You’ll find no stock for revolution here, so get out from under my lintel. This house is for the sick.”
“Please miss,” said Mr. Grey as she began closing the door. “My friend here is sick. A bad odor bite, I think. Lots of coughing, a good number of sneezes. He’s from Wine Medo. He sniffed one-too-many foreign flowers.”
Mr. Grey waved a presenting hand at Tom. The doctor slid her eyes onto the sick man. She snipped them up and down and across Tom’s big form, like a tailor with measuring tape. Tom noticed the attention and tried to look vigorous. He threw his shoulders up, threw his eyes wide, and forced a smile among his bristles. He said, “I feel absolutely fine, we shouldn’t ha…” But a lawfully-obligated coughing fit cut him short. Tom bent double and released a slew of throat-ripping barks.
The doctor said, “Don’t get many of you Wine Medo lot. Hmmm, perhaps some drawer in here holds a dose or two of ambrosial-cologne. Oh very well, come in. But step fast. The ward’s thronging.”
The doctor yawned the door open and took a sharp backstep. Tom filtered in after a few dry-handed pokes, followed by Nuggets and Mr. Grey.
The doctor closed the door and took the lead. They followed her keen-tapping footsteps down a cave-ish corridor of rough, scratching bricks. A few sparse lanterns swayed on iron hooks in the ceiling. The creaking parchment-and-metal lights shed a greasy film of lesser-dark, by which the three had dreary vision. They saw small, den-like hollows lining the crooked hall. Curtains stood over the fronts of these holes, but some were drawn open. Each time Mr. Grey peeked inside, his eyes found one of the patients.
Each odor attack victim lay on a bed of moss-covered stone. Some sprawled across the lichen, so that Mr. Grey saw a full display of their illness; how it wracked their limbs wan, stripped fat and muscle, and outlined their ribs under their robes. Others curled in on themselves; like sun-withered caterpillars on pavement. Every patient - when they flayed open their pale and veiny eyelids, like parchment scribbled over with ink - stared with uncomprehending eyes; dark and ruddy eyes, like thunder-clouds beneath a blood moon. Every patient - when they drew back their flaking lips to show the pearly bone and flushed gums behind - exhaled sick-laden air. Each raw breath topped off the hospital cave-halls with a humid, sour-cheese-smelling miasma.
Another physician sprung suddenly from an alcove, wearing his own coal-dust robe. He strode up to their doctor, set a palm on her shoulder, and consulted in a funeral-home whisper. The doctor leading Mr. Grey, Tom, and Nuggets paused over the chart presented, struck her signature into the parchment with a quick-draw quill-scrawl, then tapped once more down the hall. The three visitors followed.
Mr. Grey drew up closer to her. In a fitting inside voice, he said, “Doctor, miss, these patients…”
She snapped her neck around and flicked eyes on him. “What about them then?” she asked. “You’d dare find fault with the poor and sickly?”
“No, but… will they cease existing?”
“Cease existing?! They’re only odor attacks, young man. Most will see a full recovery,” Another physician sprung from another alcove, holding two options of decorative wreath and a pamphlet of suit-fabric swatches. The doctor shook one of the wreaths, pointed to a swatch, and walked on. She said, “Of course there wouldn’t be sickness at all if you tourists hadn’t wafted yourselves through Panache.”
Nuggets’ voice came up petulant and loud behind Mr. Grey. “Jodee’s setting people free! She’s tearing down walls,” The doctor shushed him, so he went on softly, “Locals can travel, tourists see all the landmarks. No stupid restraints, set by time and place.”
“Never mind those restraints might exist for a purpose,” said the doctor. She snapped around a sudden T-section corner of the dark hall. A case of craggy brick stairs led to a second story. The doctor mounted these with an unflagging pace. She ranted through the ascent. “Never mind that foreigner scents attack some people more often than others. Never mind that odor-cologne’s not available everywhere. Never mind that lots of locals can’t pay the treasure costs when cologne is available. Noooo, let’s just throw locals and tourists into one big, smelly petri dish, and watch the stink spread! And you don’t plan to stop at Panache! Noooo, you want to do the same thing in Pluck, and Prestige, and old Antiquity too. You partisans lack even a fragment of foresight.”
“We’re not partisans,” said Mr. Grey. He spoke absently and stopped walking, distracted by a sick-alcove set along the stairs.
The doctor stopped and spun; glaring down a sharp nose. “You’re Defense Force loyalists then? As if they’re any better. You think only the sick find treatment here? Roughhousing victims take an equal share of my time. Broken bones, busted noses, blackened eyes; you Glory-lovers have all sorts of ‘fixes’ for unrest.”
Nuggets stuck his downy chin at her. He spoke with conviction. “We’re not Defense Force. We’d never work with soldiers.”
The doctor threw her hands up and turned to the next crooked step. She said, “Whatever you are, you’re wasting my time. I’ve people to heal.”
Mr. Grey said, “Just a moment, please. I… I think I know this woman.”
Mr. Grey pushed aside a half-closed velvet curtain and stepped into the sick-hollow. One of the greasy lanterns let its filmy light fall across a mossy stone bed and, atop it, the room’s lone occupant. She looked pale, like other patients. No breath issued from her nose or mouth. But, from the ragged, rushed, squeaky puffs of her mice-hair, Mr. Grey saw that existence clung - just barely - to the body of Ms. Maysey.
She lay there, motionless. Insensible to Mr. Grey’s entry, and to the louder entries of Nuggets, Tom, and the doctor behind him. Her mice did glance at Mr. Grey, but from resigned, sunken, beady eyes. As a rodent, caught by its tail in a trap, and thinking itself destined for slow starvation, sees the unexpected early doom of a housecat’s approach; just so did Ms. Maysey’s mice watch Mr. Grey.
The doctor swept past the statuary man. She took Ms. Maysey’s chart from the foot of the mossy bed and gave it a quick skewer with her eyes. “This is precisely what I mean,” said the doctor with a hint of triumph. “A patient like this; preexisting conditions. She’s hopelessly neurotic and intractably hypochondriacal, you know.”
“I know,” said Mr. Grey.
“Well, someone like her? One missed cologne dose; they’re bedridden. Their bodies barely function with the illnesses they only imagine!”
Mr. Grey drummed a foot on the rugged brick floor. “But she’ll make a full recovery?”
“A full recovery?” began the doctor, but checked the snide comeback she’d planned. “She’s… receiving aromatherapy. You said you know her?”
“We’re coworkers.”
“Oh, coworkers,” The doctor breathed with unmistakable relief. “As I said before, she’s being treated. Now, you wanted that cologne? For your big friend there?”
Tom began, “I feel fi…” but Nuggets clapped his shoulder and spared another coughing fit.
Mr. Grey said, “This aromatherapy; she’ll get better after it?”
The doctor had walked to the curtain. She turned back to Mr. Grey and frowned. She folded her arms, pursed her lips, and in a gentler voice said, “It’s not likely. She was at high risk for odor bites and scratches. She shouldn’t have been outside Starharbor at all. The therapy will ease her pain. But it’s likely she’ll cease existence. Sorry.”
Nuggets and Tom shared looks of sympathy to which Ms. Maysey was senseless. Mr. Grey’s face expressed nothing, but he said, “Are there other treatment plans?”
The doctor hid an impatient, tapping hand inside her robe pocket. “Not unless you want a fish contract. And those are expensive. Now are you going to dawdle all day or can we find that ambrosial-cologne? I do have other patients.”
“It’s just that we’re coworkers,” said Mr. Grey. “Not asking feels wrong. Could you tell us more? About this contract with fish, the treasures involved?”
“Oh, very well. We’ll see if the attending haruspex is available.”
The doctor walked over to a driftwood table crouching in the corner. She took the telecards that lay atop, stacked them into a sending-house, called the haruspex to their hollow, and knocked the message out. They waited. Mr. Grey, Nuggets, and Tom stood awkwardly on one side of the cave-room, the doctor on the other. Mr. Grey drew his ticker. He found the greasy lantern glare made its face unreadable.
Presently a second healer entered from behind the velvet curtain. He wore the same coal-dark robe of hippopotamuses. He rubbed a palm through pattern-bald hair, put on a great frown, and said, “Who’s supplying the entrails?” After a tock he discarded the frown for a toothful smile and nudged Tom on the shoulder, letting them in on the joke.
The haruspex went and stood by Ms. Maysey. He pulled a length of dry cow gut from his shoulders, set one end against his ear, and hovered the other above her pale, motionless body. He passed it first above her heart, circling his hand in a waxing motion, before moving slowly up to her head. The haruspex hummed a constant, gravelly, ancient tone as he performed the ritual. Ms. Maysey’s hair mice watched the proceeding with beady, dull eyes.
The haruspex ended his drone and draped the gut back across his shoulders. He turned to Tom, Nuggets, and Mr. Grey. He said, “Unfortunate case. Terrible shame. Taken at the height of existence. Nothing for it. Body’s half-ceased-existing already.”
The doctor nodded, as if to say she’s already stated as much. Mr. Grey asked, “Not even a fish contract? That wouldn’t help her?”
“Oh a fish contract would do,” said the man with a bald-head-nod. “Exorbitant cost. Case like this. Surely not something you wish to pursue?”
“I would like to hear the terms.”
The doctor rolled her eyes and rapped on the floor. The haruspex lowered his head at Mr. Grey. The man peered from behind his brow and bald patch, confirming Mr. Grey was serious. Finding nothing in Mr. Grey’s face that wasn’t, the haruspex shrugged. He rubbed his hands together briskly, then held them wide to the sides with palms upward-facing. He rolled his eyes back until only the bloodshot ivory showed. He spoke thusly, in a whispery voice:
“Even Great Fish, with all their enchantment, may neither give nor redact existence. Only may they shuffle it. Yet the Clam Fish hears your voice, grey man with fiddle. If you would spare this mortal woman with hair of mice, you must then enchant, with good tone and timbre, here and now in the room of her illness. Think of the great Clam Fish; dedicate your enchantment to him, that he may hear it and be pleased. But know; half the mice-hair’s existence only may you buy in this manner. The enchantment’s cost? The treasure for half an existence? Half your own.”
The haruspex rolled his eyes back, lowered his arms, and looked at them. Nuggets stared back with dropped jaw, Tom bobbed his head up and down with a confusion-knit brow, and Mr. Grey looked on unreadably. Back in his normal voice, the haruspex said, “Never good terms. Only way to give her even half-an-existence costs half yours. Shame. But these things happen.”
“Kind of you to inquire,” said the doctor. She drew back the curtain. “Back to your friend’s cologne then.”
Tom sorted out the reading, cast Ms. Maysey a last look of mourning, and turned to go.
Mr. Grey said, “Half’s not all that much.”
The others stopped on their way to the curtain. Tom waxed his sleepy eyes alert with a pale hand. He said, “Reconsider this. She’s a nice lady, but…”
The doctor added, “She’s a coworker?”
“It seems courteous. Just the coworkerly course,” said Mr. Grey. “And that half I’d give, who’s to say I’d use it well?”
Tom forced a stern, ordering look onto his weary face. Nuggets saw it. He interposed, saying, “It’s, I mean, his decision.”
The haruspex said, “If you’re serious…”
Mr. Grey’s face answered.
He set his coffin on the driftwood table beside the fallen telecards. The hollow’s dank light turned his unbuckling, bow-nut-twisting, and peg-turning into clumsy procedures. Mr. Grey eventually arranged his instrument how he wanted. The doctor, meanwhile, had swept the velvet curtain aside and gone to attend other patients. The haruspex stayed to watch and stood between Tom and Nuggets. The haruspex laced his fingers before him. Nuggets mimiced the stance. Tom folded his arms and grimaced. Illness and the dim light doubly darkened his face.
Heavy shadow collected in the hollow’s corners. It fell thickly on the three bystanders. The haruspex, Nuggets, and Tom became background; like parchment printouts plastered against the jagged bricks. When Mr. Grey stepped away from his coffin - stepped beneath the greasy lantern gleam - he seemed to stand alone, over Ms. Maysey on her mossy slab. Mr. Grey brought the violin softly to his shoulder, nestled his chin against its rest, thought of the Clam Fish, and played.
He played to the room. Not a fusillade of jerky-elbowed sawing or a whacking staccato jig. Simple order. Picked notes. A minor key. Nor did Mr. Grey make clamor by scattering shiny pebbles over the dusk floor. His enchantment needed no common treasures. Mr. Grey plainly played. He played beneath the lantern spotlight, shining faintly; like a lighthouse in the fog. He played over Ms. Maysey, on her bed of moss. He stood stiff and grey - a statue but for his arms - over his coworker of the mouse hair. And as Mr. Grey played, earthy brown crept down Ms. Maysey’s pale arms. It slid across her thin cheeks. An inky gleam returned to the beady eyes of her wood-mice hair. Under the dim light and the glacial aspect of the statuary man looming over her, existence ripened in Ms. Maysey; like fields in a golden sun.
When Mr. Grey’s enchantment sank away - into the absorbent shadow-and-brick walls - he made no ceremony. He quickly set his violin and bow away and buckled the coffin. Ms. Maysey appeared, if not her old hypochondriacal self, healthier by a flush. Her mice breathed easier and air flowed between her lips. Mr. Grey seemed unchanged; but then, he could hardly turn greyer.
The other three peeled themselves off the brick-wall backdrop. Mr. Grey turned, coffin in hand, and said, “No point waiting around here. She might be startled, finding us waiting; waking in a strange setting. Best to let her be.”
Tom walked up and gave Mr. Grey’s shoulder a shake, as if testing his solidity. He released a nasally sigh, and said, “We can probably just go. I feel just…”
At that moment, the doctor reappeared with a metallic whisk of curtain, and said, “Do you or don’t you want that ambrosial cologne?”
“The bail’s all here. Step over to the waiting area. Enjoy the complimentary mintwater. Sorry, bidders only; your big tagalong here can’t have any. We’ll release the prisoner into your custody just as soon as exit processing’s finished.”
The young clerk finished sweeping Mr. Grey’s treasure-bail into a metal coffer. She handed the heavy box to another attendant, smoothed the fabric and straightened the buttons on her single-shoulder, peppermint robe, and stepped back from the long processing counter. Behind this long stone table - and its row of clerks attending other buyers’ bails - rose a crumbling edifice; sandstone blocks and draping vines. Yawning rectangular passages opened at the wall’s base. Their clerk pushed aside a vine curtain hiding one such entrance. She disappeared into the dark corridor, carrying the order for Honeydew’s release.
Mr. Grey and Tom stepped from the counter. They walked across the plaza tiles, side-by-side, to a bundle of granite benches huddled under the shade of a silk-tree. A tapped keg of mintwater sat on a grassglass coffee table at the center. A tourist knot gathered at the spigot while they waited for bails to post. Neither Tom nor Mr. Grey felt thirsty. They avoided the other tourists and took seats on a granite bench.
Tom sniffled, and rubbed a ferocious palm against the cloud-zeppelin patterned over his clavicle. Mr. Grey said, “Maybe you should let it be. Let the cologne work.”
“It makes me itchy,” said Tom. He dropped his hand to the bench. “And smells like a wafer mill.”
“But you’re still sick, Tom. You need scent defense. You look better already: a less waxen face, diminished eye bags, coarser whiskers on your cheeks.”
Tom’s sour expression worked against his improved pallor. His mouth opened for complaint, but a jeering rancor of voices interrupted him. Mr. Grey and Tom looked across the plaza, past a geyser-fountain of splishing water.
Beneath the facade of a temple, on the opposite side of the plaza from the wide clerks’ counter, a wider stage was set for auction. The temple pediment glared down as a single immense, carved, vanilla-ebony-swirl marble block. The stage came from simple driftwood and leather stock, and cowered beneath the threatening overhang. The marble above bore the likenesses of two great fish - Prawn and Koi - facing each, with a smooth stone bubble between, and a surrounding phalanx of rifles. The stage below bore a dozen prisoner-tourists, and an auctioneering officer.
The hubbub came from the crowd surrounding the stage. They cried rapid-fire bail bids for the latest prisoner, while the auctioneer rattled along at a chariot-pace. Gradually, the shouts turned scanty as the treasure-bail rose and the interest in each prisoner dropped.
Mr. Grey nodded toward the stage. “How do you suppose that works?”
Tom stared blankly. “What’s confusing about it? They bid for inmates.”
“But why would bidders compete? Who’s competing here? Couldn’t they bid once; one bidder per prisoner? Why raise the bail bid?”
“Local custom probably.”
“Well I’m glad ours was private.”
“What was Honeydew’s bail price?”
Mr. Grey ground a palm on the stone bench. “Oh, nothing too expensive.”
Tom grunted. He drew his handkerchief, cracked it in the air, then blew his nose. In a muffled voice he said, “We should have broken her out. She’s with you and me, not the partisans. She’s held here unlawfully.”
“Better this method. These are the proper channels. Besides, you’re still sick.”
Tom said nothing. The two sat quietly in the stringy shade of the silk-tree. They listened to the rising auction bids, the gurgling fountain, and the gossip around the mintwater spigot. Mr. Grey felt peaceful - oddly at ease in a city troubled by miasma and violence - sitting by Tom on the stone bench.
Jangling chains. Clattering hooves. They looked to the tall, rectangular hall, the one their clerk had vanished into. That clerk reappeared now. She drove - beneath the dangling vines - a cowsowhorse-drawn wagon. The wagon bed held a person-sized wooden box; tightly wrapped in huge iron links, with a top-end perforated by airholes. Mr. Grey and Tom stood. The clerk steered the cart through a set of swinging bar-doors in the counter. She threw an extra lash into the cowsowhorse, which stumped to the sitting area at an unchanged pace. The box in the wagon rattled; more than expected from the wagon’s passage over smooth plaza-tile.
The clerk drove the cart to the waiting pair. She hopped from the driver’s bench. As she walked around to the back of the wagon - big iron keys jangling in her hand - she said, “How much did you pay? Actually, don’t answer. Whatever the treasure, you deserve a refund. This is one ill-tempered animal.”
The clerk undid the oversized padlock holding the chains into an X-shape. The links dropped with a final clatter. The clerk stepped to the side, grasped a rope handle with a long reach, flung the box’s door wide, and stepped quickly back. The crate’s dark interior gawped at Tom and Mr. Grey.
Then Honeydew appeared. She did not leap savagely forth, but stepped coolly from her confinement, and hopped from the wagon. The clerk shied away, but Honeydew paid her no least mind. She looked right to Tom and Mr. Grey. Both her dark eyes, and the dark eyes in the golden water-lilies on her robe, glinted. She said, “What’s up goons?”
In immediate and absolute contrast to her domestic exit, Honeydew turned feral. Her nostrils flared, her eyes unfurled with bloodshot rage, her lips curled back in a snarl, and her legs flung her - shoulder-first - at the pair. Mr. Grey stepped back. Honeydew paid him no more mind than the clerk. She launched herself at Tom.
Honeydew landed upon Tom a barrage of shoulders. Tom used his arms in defense, but he had much body to protect. As soon as his big hands moved to cover his head and face, she came in low and thundered against his chest. When he curled in to spare his bruised belly, she slunk behind, shouldering his spine and the backs of his legs. No matter where Tom brought his hands, Honeydew found an opening for one of her pointy shoulders. She accompanied the attack with furious yelling. “YOU FAT, SLOW, BUMBLING DOUBLE-CROSSER!” she screamed. The gossip circle around the complementary mintwater looked on in awe and terror.
Honeydew retreated a few strides; not to ease off or catch her breath, but to make room for a momentum-building charge. Mr. Grey saw an opportunity. He stepped between. She might have charged regardless, had not Mr. Grey been a man of singularly stoneish aspect. She growled and stalked sideways. Mr. Grey raised a hand and said, “Please, Honeydew. Tom’s sick. We just came from the hospital.”
Honeydew stopped, but glared at Tom with frozen-oil eyes. She said, “I don’t care. He deserves it.”
“He came here with me though. He helped free you too. What’s the issue?”
Tom dropped his heavy arm-shields and stood straight. Angry welts rose across his pale skin. Tom’s brow furrowed. His expression showed hurt, anger, and perhaps some fear.
Mr. Grey noticed that not just the tourists in the waiting area, but the ones on the bidding stage, and the bidders too, had all fallen silent. They watched the scuffle. He gestured to Tom and Honeydew; a suggestion that they continue their discussion - and any possible violence - in a private setting. Both ignored him. Honeydew flung an accusatory index at Tom. She said, “This oaf’s the problem! Not just the problem; all our problems. We’ve let him waddle behind, slowing down every step. He pretends he’s this wise warrior, our hero, our protector. But he’s only some lazy, stupid, hang-dog, gorbellied, TRAITOR!”
After an angry pause, Tom roared. “I’m not stupid or lazy!” His voice boomed across the plaza, cracking like a teenager’s on the last word. Mr. Grey noticed all the stranger-eyes bearing on them: the clerk’s, the tourists’ by the mintwater barrel, the tourists’ on the stage, the bidders’, the soldiers’. He wished this last group of rubberneckers would jump in; tell them off; send them from the plaza. But the soldiers watched Tom and Honeydew’s fracas with the same fixedness as everyone else.
Mr. Grey said, “I know what this is: a miscommunication. Let’s discuss calmly - somewhere in private - to…”
“Miscommunication!” said Honeydew with a snarling click. “You’re picking his side. Won’t even hear me out.”
“Certainly I will. Listen to your side, I mean. But we’re jumping…”
“Then listen well,” Honeydew cut him short again. And not just Mr. Grey, but the third-parties too, listened. “This isn’t a jump. It’s direct from Diegeonary Ordus; that noisy soldier. You remember how they caught us in The Lost City. When they PUT ME IN CHAINS?!”
“Yes, but there was…”
“Well Candlehead escaped. Put on a pipe show. His spectacle - his enchantment - set Ordus off. The diegeonary went on this bean-spilling rant. But before that even, remember how they found us at the dragon ferry?”
“I think Ms. Maysey caused that. Clued them to our plans; the Defense Force men, as well as Blackjaw and Slake. In fact we saw her. Not…”
“No, there’s no Ms. Maysey here. Here we have a spectacular case of betrayal. It. Was. Him,” she said with a flourished finger at Tom. “He told the soldiers where we were going, when he sulked away at the temple. Not Ms. Maysey, not Blackjaw and Slake, but this WEASEL, has been telling the Defense Force where to find us. He told them after the temple, he told them in Museumtown. I hope you’ve kept an eye on him since you got here. I expect he’ll tell them again. First chance he gets.”
A hush fell over the onlookers. Mr. Grey turned to Tom. The big, sick man hadn’t grasped everything Honeydew said. But his face, with half an understanding, showed half an anxious grimace. He glanced at the listening crowd. He said, “Let me give my own version, but with privacy.”
Mr. Grey wanted the same, but Honeydew clicked sharp. “Say it here and now. No more sneaking and skulking, you odious worm!”
Mr. Grey and Tom glanced at the backdrop gazers. The hard gleam in Honeydew’s oil-eyes, however, said there’d be no privacy in the dialogue. Mr. Grey turned to Tom and said, “Go ahead then, Tom. There’s nothing embarrassing. Just explain plainly.”
Tom shuffled. He couldn’t meet Mr. grey’s blank stare. He settled his eyes on Honeydew, who responded with a derisive click and glare. Tom fixed his face into anger. He said, “She distorts my intentions. She twists my actions. She… meanly corrupts.”
Honeydew snapped. “His words have no weight!”
Mr. Grey held up a hand. He cricked his head at an angle to catch Tom’s eye. He said, “Tom, you have my trust,” Honeydew screeched, but Mr. Grey went on, “Just speak to the truth. I’m sure it’s not bad.”
Tom met Mr. Grey’s eyes. He looked tired. He sighed. “Mr. Grey, you’re a good man,” he began. “But you’re bad at choice. You won’t pick a side. Not when you can avoid sides, when things are easy… But making a choice; that’s what existing’s about. Any side will do, if you believe it.”
Tom cleared his throat and struggled on. “And the thing is, Mr. Grey: with adversity, you’re forced to action. It makes you stronger, buddy.”
Tom went quiet. He kept his eyes on Mr. Grey. Mr. Grey felt his ticker pulse keenly. After some tocks he said, “So… you did inform on us? To the Defense Force?”
“Of course he did!” said Honeydew. “I just told you so.”
Mr. Grey patiently waited. Tom said, “Yes, I told the Defense Force. For your betterment!”
Mr. Grey wore well his face of stone. He said, “Back in Wine Medo, Gourd’s ship attacked our hostel. Later after that, you met him alone…”
“I forgot about that,” said Honeydew with wrathful excitement. “They stole our treasure!”
“That was an experience!” said Tom. His voice rose above its usual gravel, full of defensive pitch. “It was exciting, and we weren’t injured. All we lost was some treasure. What’s treasure matter? Old bookmarks, tie clasps; they’re only… pointless gewgaws.”
Tom pulled his eyes wide, lifting the heavy bags, loosing the wrinkled corners. He left them open for Mr. Grey; if only Mr. Grey would return compassion, understanding. Mr. Grey returned, to the hopeful face of Tom, cold stone. Tom’s eyes turned elsewhere. They skirted past Honeydew. She had her own opinion on treasure; he’d have no sympathy from her. Tom looked at the crowd. His eyes jumped from face to face, seeking a corner, an understanding port. Each onlooker his eyes lit upon shifted their own eyes away. Even the marble ones of Prawn and Koi - on the pediment above the bidding stage - averted Tom’s.
Tom returned his steely, shiny eyes to Mr. Grey. He said, “I didn’t betray… I only wanted to…”
“It’s no matter now. What is done is done,” said Mr. Grey. Tom’s wide, scared eyes lulled with relief.
Honeydew sputtered. “You mean to forgive him?” she asked. “After all that, you still want him with us?”
Mr. Grey said, “I do think it’s time to part,” Tom had the road-worn handkerchief halfway to his nose. He stopped. Mr. Grey went on, “Honeydew and I, we’ll resume our vacation. We’ll wrap up business. But the fact is this; You’re still too sick, Mr. Tom.”
Tom tossed the handkerchief to the plaza tiles. He said, “I’m not si…”
Mr. Grey interrupted him. “I’m sorry, but I feel firmness is called for,” And Mr. Grey certainly put words to action. He shifted not a sliver of grey body, twitched not a muscle of grey face. Only the grey mouth moved, forming toneless, dry words. “You’re simply unable to accompany us in this endeavor. It’s not a question of eligibility based on visas, or a question of willingness. It’s a deficiency of capacity.”
Honeydew huffed, but said, “As long as he leaves and can’t tattle,” She took out her hand mirror and put in place a few golden strands.
Tom spent a moment confused. Mr. Grey didn’t elaborate. When Tom finally grasped the words, he straightened his shoulders. He forced a smile in his whiskers; it didn’t reach his eyes. He said, “I’m your protector. Remember the Lost City? And the Sourbeak field?”
Mr. Grey checked the time on his ticker. “Your services aren’t needed,” he said. “I suggest you return to Wine Medo… sir.”
Tom’s face quivered. It flickered between a forced smile of courage and sickly, sad defeat. The latter won. Tom’s lids, his mouth, his whole expression, sagged. Illness, remorse, resignation; they overspread his pale cheeks and tarnished his metal eyes. He picked up the battered, soiled handkerchief from the plaza dust.
Tom stepped toward the nearest plaza exit. He glanced back, however, at Mr. Grey. Mr. Grey looked the same; held the same mask as always. Tom said, “Good luck Mr. Grey,” He walked away with head hung. Mr. Grey kept his eyes fixed on his ticker; when he looked up, Tom was gone.
The bidding plaza had been mute in the last exchanges. Even the fountain ran silent. Now, as tourists and soldiers and environmental factors realized the show was finished, they returned to business. The mintwater circle gossiped at lower hush, the bail-bids resumed, and the fountain gurgled, sadly.
Honeydew walked beside Mr. Grey. “Good riddance. Can’t keep traitors on your team. You… you are okay, right?” Mr. Grey nodded stiffly. “Good. You kept the lure?”
Mr. Grey nodded again. “It’s in my violin coffin,” he said, in a little voice.
“Capital. Odds are it’s pawnable. Let’s talk travel plans.”
They walked toward a different exit from Tom’s. Honeydew noticed the bidding for the other jailbirds. “Completely rigged,” she said. “They’ve got Glory Day’s ringers, spinning up the bail. By the way, how much was my treasure cost?”
“Give us the special. Or whatever you recommend,” said Honeydew. She cut the cold, humid air with a dismissive hand. The wooden skewers woven through the chalky robe of their server jangled. He bowed low, with an arched spine instead of bent hips. He padded down a set of shallow, stone, felt-topped steps. Other patrons - scattered, sitting at the crescent aisles below Mr. Grey and Honeydew - hushed while the server passed. Only when he reached the bottom of the half-moon gallery where patrons sat, and crossed the stained floor with orders for the bar, did the clandestine patrons resume whispering.
Honeydew watched the server go. When he’d left earshot she said, “I hope it’s not candy-flavored. This local drink special. What do you think?”
Mr. Grey was listening to the local enchantment special; a shoe-shining piece plucked on the tavern bard’s zither. He guessed, from the vapid, off-key notes, that the shoes in question were turning out streaky. A double-click follow-up from Honeydew got his attention. He said, “What’s that? Oh I’m not sure. Maybe it’s more mintwater.”
“Why doesn’t anyone here sell regular drinks?”
“I guess we’ll see.”
“Or who knows, maybe this one’s the fortune-shifter. Sure, there’s not enough bats and roach rivers. But the people are the same shade of Starharbor-pale. We might finally have something with beans.”
Mr. Grey observed the sallow-faced, shadowy customers. Mostly tourists, they’d spread themselves as far as possible from one another. Conversation only dwelt within the few duos and trios of the sparse crowd. The rest huddled silently over deep earthenware bowls. They sheltered their fayre and faces from prying eyes with elbows and arms. But while speech issued only from select pockets in little whispers, every patron worked to fill the room with a sniffling, coughing, sickly atmosphere.
A hacking fit sounded from the crescent aisles behind the pair. Honeydew said, “I suspected him, you know. Back in Toscamo. Remember, at the amphora wharf? I mentioned his slinking? Smart of you to remind me. We should have watched him closer.”
Mr. Grey shifted on their bench. Packed, cracked, leather upholstering did nothing to pad the stone beneath. Honeydew waited for Mr. Grey to speak. She sighed, and went on, “I know you and Tom got along. I admit, his mallet was handy. Occasionally. But we’re better off without him. Think what we’ll achieve now. No one forcing us into bandit battles, or partisan-quests. We’ll put ground under our shoes; catch all the sights. Beshrew me! We’ll double - maybe triple - the places we see… We can do it lawfully too. With our visas,” she added, with a conciliatory click.
Mr. Grey said, “That’s so, I suppose,” He tugged absently on the violin-coffin’s zipper. “We should decide on a plan.”
“My thoughts exactly! I say, quit this festering city. See what else happens in Panache. Think there’s anything like the Lost City? A lost pyramid maybe, but less mist-shrouded?”
“What I meant was, a plan about the Golden Lure,” he dropped his voice to its inside-most whisper.
“The lure? I guess so. Let’s have a look.”
Honeydew motioned to the coffin. Mr. Grey checked to make sure they weren’t being observed. Every other patron seemed engaged with their food, their whispers, or their sickly suffering. The aisles behind Mr. Grey and Honeydew lay outside the light let in by the high window-slits in the walls. Mr. Grey couldn’t see where the eyes of the patrons behind him fell. He brought his shoulders in to block any view. He unzipped the coffin’s front pocket quietly, pulled the tiny golden minnow out - in a tight fist to prevent its flashing - and slowly splayed his fingers. Honeydew curved her own shoulders to help conceal the open palm. She gave an appraising squint over the Lure.
She said, “What do you think; grand treasure? A little wheel, some deal, a bit of a bidding war? I wager whatever we get will fund this entire vacay.”
Mr. Grey said, “We spent so long in the retrieval…”
“You think we should charge by eons spent?”
“I think we shouldn’t sell it.”
Honeydew dropped her head to the table and groaned. She angled her neck and rolled her eyes at Mr. Grey. “You’d take it to Jodee? Still? For some visa-filling ‘adventure’?”
Mr. Grey closed his fingers over the lure and returned it to the coffin pocket. He tilted back his own head. He stared thoughtfully. Above, a painted plaster ceiling revealed a rugged, flaking, smoke-absorbing character. The fresco showed a gang of weasels darting at an enormous sea-serpent. The weasels nipped at the armoring scales from the serpent; a monster with a dozen snake heads. The heads coiled and struck with their fangs among the furry hoard, trying to fend them off, to keep them from its faded-gold belly. But the rodents used numbers to overwhelm the snake heads. They tore the monster’s armor, and rushed the vulnerable guts. The smoke damage to the fresco worked hardest on whatever compound gave the weasels’ their umber fur. Their painted coats were sooty, and the flaking paint made them look infested with fleas. As Mr. Grey looked up at this scene, the coughing and sniffling of the inn’s secretive patrons seemed to echo the sounds of the ferocious conflict. The coughs became the growls of the weasels; the sniffles became the ripping-away of the serpent’s scales.
Honeydew went on. “Fine. We’ll give her the lure. A quick jaunt to… wherever Jodee’s citadel is, here in Panache. A hopefully quick visa signing. Who knows; maybe her stronghold’s worth seeing.”
Mr. Grey brought his eyes from the faded fresco. He looked at Honeydew and said, “I actually don’t think we should. Deliver it to Jodee.”
“What!” she said. The other whispers paused. A few sets of eyes glinted their way. Honeydew threw her own glares back at the lookers, and they returned to their business. In a softer voice she said, “That’s the whole reason we followed the partisans. Find the Golden Lure. Get it to Jodee. Fill out her visa. You want to regroup with that candle-headed freak?”
Mr. Grey shook his head evenly. “I don’t think we should give the Lure to Candlehead either.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“It’s just,” Mr. Grey looked at the other, pale customers. “I think giving the lure to Jodee… it’s wrong. Lawfully speaking.”
“Why? It’s not like it does anything. It doesn’t, does it?” Mr. Grey shook his head; again, evenly. “Yeah, it’s some trinket. Giving it to her won’t hurt or help. So it’s not unlawful. Or we can keep it. Sell it for treasure. Am I missing something?”
Mr. Grey thought. The coughing and sniffling made focus difficult, but he fought for an organized mind. He thought of the illness and suffering. He’d seen the rash of odor violence distantly, in the streets of Wargermopolis. He’d seen the sickness up close, inside the hospital. He thought about Ms. Maysey. About her breath coming in spare squeaks through her mouse-hair. About her lying, not-existingly-pale, on a stone-and-moss bed, barely spared by a contract with a Fish. He thought of all the tourists - and of all the Glory Days locals - who wouldn’t scratch by like Ms. Maysey. His mind flashed, for a moment, to Tom’s illness. He pushed away that thought.
He nodded to himself, looked at Honeydew’s impatient frown, and said, “I begin to think: making her fill out a visa won’t change anything.”
Honeydew snorted. She peered closer at Mr. Grey. “You’re serious? Of course it won’t. I thought that wasn’t the point. I thought it was ‘a matter of form’?”
“It started that way,” Mr. Grey admitted. He waved a hand; gesturing at the murky room around them; gesturing at the wracked city beyond. “But look at what’s happened in Glory Days; all from Jodee. She should return to Starharbor. It’s to everyone’s benefit. And now that’s become clear, I no longer feel like making her fill a visa fixes the problem.”
Honeydew drummed her right hand’s fingernails in tiny clicks against the stone counter. With her left she cradled her chin, and watched the bar for signs of their drinks. Seeing none, she turned her head with her fingers, back to Mr. Grey. Both her eyes and her mouth said, “So what then?”
“I had one idea,” Mr. Grey leaned in and whispered at the ear Honeydew cupped.
She frowned. “Bad idea. Impossible odds. It’s beyond our reach; they’re keeping out tourists. Too much risk of partisan attack, from what I heard.”
“I heard that too. But I also heard of an opportunity. Except, we’d need a scheme.”
Honeydew’s oil eyes ignited. “Sounds like a half-interesting diversion.”
The return of their server paused their planning. He leaned over, set their drinks before them, took their payment of shiny pebbles, and without ceremony, returned down the felt-topped steps.
Mr. Grey and Honeydew peered into their clay cups. Honeydew’s held fizzy candywater. Mr. Grey’s held milk.
They grimaced, glanced at each other, and swapped drinks.