Their Majesties' Bucketeers (15 page)

Now, Mymy, let your pelt be still! I quite agree, it was a vile and debasing arrangement. Nonetheless, it was openly stated and freely acquiesced to. Dahwoms, at the time, was rather old, and I suspect that even our heroine did not expect the relationship to continue into perpetuity.

In any case, Vyssu and her erstwhile employe came to Middle Hedgerow, although the proposition turned out substantially differently than anyone anticipated. She was, as she is now, a charming creature, astute and graceful, quick, and possessing a natural elegance perceptible even to the least sensitive of lamn. To his surprise and horror, Dahwoms quickly found himself looking upon her as a daughter and treating her accordingly. Obodiin, who I gather shared something of the old lam’s less honorable fleshly inclinations, had desired Vyssu for some long while; that, and rher cupidity, led to rher eventual undoing, although precisely how this was motivated, Vyssu wasn’t to know for a long time.

For five years, the three of them and numerous servants dwelt in that great old house in Middle Hedgerow in circumstances of complete respectability. Old Dahwoms kept to his part of the bargain entirely, without making any claims upon the children or demanding aught from them but that they grace his table with their presence and otherwise grant to him their kind companionship. For this and many other favors, Vyssu came to love him greatly, but Obodiin, dissatisfied, grew bolder as the years of frustration piled one upon another. No amount of genteel company nor polite education would satisfy rher.

One dark night following a birthday dinner party given in rher honor, Obodiin pushed a tipsy Dahwoms down the stairs and, with the household money—no inconsiderable amount—absconded to the Continent.

Still grieving the loss of her adopted father, Vyssu, now become a poised, sophisticated young lady, temporarily set elegance aside, deciding to put the rough teachings of her inglorious origins and upbringing to good use. She followed the ungrateful Obodiin to the Continent, where she spent a full two years alternatively tutoring the children of the rich and powerful—incidentally making many impressive friends in the process—and seeking out the whereabouts of Dahwoms’s murderer.

Somewhere along the way, I am not sure precisely how, nor am I sure I want to know, Vyssu encountered Fatpa, a highwaylam of illustrious repute, almost a local hero in a region which was subsequently doomed to involuntary incorporation into the Podfettian Hegemony. In those days it was a wild, adventurous sort of place where males carried enormous pistols to defend themselves, females and surmales were often kidnapped and taken to wife as a tradition, and life itself, though dearly bought at times, was cheap as tissue paper in a hatbox.

In those craggy, ill-explored mountains, Vyssu struck a bargain of her own with the robber. There was an outpost watering station for the stagecoach lines where she would catch the express she had somehow learned that Obodiin would be upon. Once the coach reached a place which they had mutually agreed was satisfactory, Fatpa would halt the coach. And all went as planned.

“Stand and deliver—your money or your life!”

The stagecoach screeched to a halt, its frightened watun stamping and foaming about the jaws. The driver reached into his box for a fowling piece long obsolete in any civilized portion of our Empire, but Fatpa was upon him in a trice, snatching away the gun and striking the fellow with it in a stunning but charitably light and otherwise uninjurious manner.

This, Vyssu had insisted upon as a part of their agreement.

The driver climbed down from the carriage into the dusty roadbed, and the passengers, an odd assortment of travelers, vagabonds, and local peasants, followed him. Among these were Vyssu, heavily veiled as is the custom in that part of the world, and a surmale, equally unrecognizable, except that she had followed rher for days in the capital and knew rher true identity full well.

Fatpa quickly deprived all the passengers of their worldly goods, even taking a brace of domesticated sandshrimp from a peasant woman and dangling them across the reinrail of his chariot. Wielding a huge pistol in each of his hands, he bade the group remount, halting Vyssu and the surmale at the last moment.

“Hold on, then, it gets a bit lonely up here in these hills, and I could do with a bit of fun before I let the pair of you go on!” He waved all three pistols threateningly, and Vyssu was appropriately outraged, as was the surmale. However, they complied with his demand to stay behind, and the stagecoach driver gratefully made haste away from the scene of the recent and future crime.

When the dust had settled from this getaway, the pistols turned, leveled at the surmale alone, and one of them was handed across to Vyssu who shed her veils. “Obodiin, remove your hat so that I may look upon you before you die!” She had not ever shot a pistol before, and it waggled up and down in her hand in a manner far more frightening than any properly aimed weapon would have been.

Obodiin pulled rher hat and veils away, shocked to hear this voice, to see this face from a past rhe thought was long behind rher. “Why, Vyssu, what a sweet surprise to see you, darling, whatever are you doing in
this
awful place?”

“Seeing that justice is done, Obodiin. This is my friend Fatpa, here. I suggest that you hold still, for he is a deadly shot, and even better with a knife, which he can throw with startling accuracy.”

“But what is it you want from me? I have done you no harm! Indeed, I have always harbored extremely fond memories of you, my dear.”

“Oh, be still! Obodiin, this is scarcely a kood social or even a court of law, so I’ll not bandy words with you. You murdered poor old Dahwoms, three of the servants saw you do it from separate vantages and independently came to me to tell me so. I found proof that you had arranged to travel days before your evil and ungrateful deed, and I found the empty cashbox in Dahwoms’s study, as well. Do you deny any of this?”

Obodiin fidgeted, looked about rher for an avenue of escape, and then said shrewdly, “No, I do not. We grew up together, Vyssu, and did many things nearly as bad as that before we knew what gender we would be. You have grown soft from easy living, though, and will not kill me in revenge—you’re too genteel and civilized. As it would be craven to hire the job done, rather than do it yourself—and I see that you believe that, too—you’ll not have your ruffian dispose of me. So I believe I’ll go, now. It’s been pleasant seeing you again after all these years. Perhaps we can do it again, some time, what do you say?”

With that, Vyssu discharged her pistol straight into one of Obodiin’s eyes, and the guilty culprit dropped dead at her feet. They left rher body there, riding away behind Fatpa’s watun, and the fellow has been with her ever since.

When they returned to Foddu, Vyssu discovered, as haste had not allowed her to before her departure, that Dahwoms had left her all his fortune. It is to be surmised from certain remarks that Obodiin made before the murder that rhe knew of this, expecting Vyssu to share her good fortune, and undertook to hasten its arrival.

Yes, Mymy, I know that an inheritance scarcely constitutes the sort of betterment I described in the case of the comb vendor, but that is not all of the story. Vyssu took what was left to her, no mighty fortune, to be sure, for the properties of Dahwoms were heavily mortgaged and his vices had consumed no little amount, as well. From what remained after his debts were paid, she built a second fortune, vastly greater than the first. You will believe me, I trust, when I inform you that Vyssu is one of the wealthiest individuals in all of Mathas. Given our unspeakable social class system, this will never buy her respectability, but it does buy her respect. The Archsacerdot himself sometimes borrows money from her for various Church enterprises, as do certain members of the royal family.

“I think I understand,” said I. “There always did seem more to Vyssu than was readily apparent, but tell me, Mav, why does she remain in the Kiiden, then? What became of Dahwoms’s old home in Middle Hedgerow?”

“That place? If you can keep a secret, Mymy—it’s highly important that you do, as you shall see.”

“I don’t know as I should like the burden of so important a confidence, Mav. But you ought to know me well enough by now to realize that I understand when to keep my silence.” I felt mildly insulted again, but attempted not to show it.

Mav removed his pipe from a nostril and examined it, a ripple of humor running through his fur. “So you do, my dear, I apologize sincerely. And I shall tell you on any account, for it is quite amazing, really. The place in question is riddled with a hundred secret passages and hidden rooms, having to do with Dahwoms’s various unsavory practices. They are all most carefully concealed and connected now with an underground passage to some nearby buildings.

“Dahwoms’s house was sold some years ago and is now the Podfettian Embassy—there, you know the place! The tunnels run to Their Majesties’ intelligence agencies and there is nothing which transpires inside the building of which we—by which I mean the Government—are not intimately aware! Clever lady, our Vyssu, for it was her idea, and carried out at a considerable profit to her, I might add!

I interrupted Mav’s quiet laughter with another question. “But, Mav, if Vyssu is so rich and, well, worthy of respect, why does she remain in the Kiiden, operating a bawdy house?”

“Mymy, I am shocked that you know such words! Really! Never mind, it is another of her ideas, you see. You know the sort of place she runs, straightforward, no perversions, simple, innocent—if you’ll permit the term in this connexion—pleasure? This gives to young females and surmales of the poorer districts gainful employment in an atmosphere protective of their dignity. It also provides Vyssu with a stock from which to draw the matches which she makes for the upper classes, for she educates her employes in all the social graces and finds for them good marriages when their prime is past.

“In her own way, Mymy, Vyssu is a great revolutionary, for, once she is done, the hereditary distinction in this city between upper and lower classes will be illusory in its entirety. What do you think of that?”

XIII: The Innocent Culprits

“I
never meant to
kill
him!”

Mav’s broken body lay across a trio of hastily assembled cushions in a parlor at Srafen’s home, to which we had, in happier times, not before been admitted. This quiet chamber, apparently, had been the late Professor’s sole domain, its walls completely plastered up with diagrams and sketches of countless hideous creatures, only the veriest few of which are still extant upon the globe, the majority long extinct, known by nothing more than their scant subsoddean remains.

This vista of dubious esthetic appeal was interrupted only by huge floor-to-ceiling racks for the familiar cylindrical forms of books, their labeled ends revealing that no few of them had been written by Srafen rherself, including—(filed alphabetically like any of the other works here)—rher classic
The Ascent of Lamviin
.

The room was filled agreeably enough with the scent of ancient, well-seasoned cactuswood wainscotting, pereskine shelving, and dozens of free-standing glazed display cases of exotic origin and material—as well as from the hundred or more bizarre biological specimens preserved within them. The place, however, smelled not in the slightest of the carpet-setting resin whose malevolent odor permeated and polluted the remainder of the house, a point most definitely in its favor at the moment. There was, too, a firegrate whose would-be cheerful blaze failed utterly to dispel the gloom which had settled over us all owing to the unhappy fate of my poor detective friend. Considering Mav’s fervent desire to finish his effort well, it had seemed both to Vyssu and myself that bringing him here to his old teacher’s house had been the most fitting thing we could do.

“I tell you, it was
not
my doing, at all!”

This had been Srafen’s faithless husband, Law, who had spoken, his wastrel gaze cast downward as he did so upon Mav’s silent, inert form. I had applied what inadequate skill I possessed as well as the impoverished contents of my bag in defense of my dear companion’s mortal existence, yet the wound was terrible to behold even now, having bled heavily and darkly through its bandages. It was that very joint, strained in the act of preserving his own and Ensda’s life, almost to the extent of being severed, which had, so many years ago, suffered near-crippling damage from the arrow of a savage. It had now been forcefully reopened upon some hidden, poorly healed seam, spilling out Mav’s life onto the cobbles of Commoner’s Bridge.

I had not been able to staunch the flow; the villain, Ensda, had escaped his own doom virtually unscathed, at the grievous expense of a far better lam than he. I was determined that the scoundrel and charlatan now be brought to stern justice.

Vyssu, the grimmest of imaginable arrangements in her fur, had agreed.

Our return into the city, as I have indicated, marked the lowest point so far in my life. The lunological faker we had tucked neatly between two seats. Had my friend not been there with us, too, gradually losing his already pitiably weakened grasp upon existence, this “doctor” should have seemed most comical a spectacle, rocking back and forward upon the bottom of his carapace with the motion of the carriage, his limbs having been fastened together neatly above his jaws. He cursed vehemently at us, shattering the reverie which had preoccupied me, cursed Mav, cursed the cab which he had chosen for his ill-fated escape, cursed the partners he had chosen for his crimes. He likewise cursed the day on which he’d first begun telling people what to do on the predication of the supposed relative positions of the moons of Sodde Lydfe.

“You cretins!” he exploded, causing me to wish vainly for some means of immobilizing his nostrils—I thought of several drugs, of which I had none, and of my professional ethics which, in Ensda’s case, were rapidly evaporating. “How you all would stand on line, clutching your pitiable earnings, eager to hand them over to anyone who would make decisions for you! I actually once spent an entire afternoon sagaciously explaining a lunoscopic chart which, I discovered afterward, I’d inadvertently hung upside-down upon the easel! And yet you stood there by appointment, raptly listening, eyes turned inward blissfully at the comforting prospect that you’d never be called upon again to strain yourselves to generate an independent thought!”

Having virtually resigned myself by now to losing the battle for my dear friend’s life, I dully allowed a bit of my attention to drift toward the conlam. “Yet you, ‘Doctor,’ made your contemptible living from those you mock, explaining the positions of the Martyred Trine.”

He gave me a bristly chuckle. “Indeed I did, and every day gave hearty thanks to whatever superstitious clod named them thus—as well as saving a certain amount of gratitude for the happy coincidence that this world of ours possesses three moons! I’ll never understand it: have not the public been informed that their precious Martyred Trine in the sky are but three balls of rock whose relative positions are significant of nothing save the way they fall about each other and this planet? I am no philosopher, to be sure, yet this much I, myself, have managed to understand!”

“I am no philosopher myself,” I replied, and glancing once again at Mav’s motionless body, added, “nor much of a paracauterist. Yet, at this moment, did I but believe, even in the remotest tip of a finger, that some magic might restore my friend to me, I might very well stand in your queue, Ensda, and give over my money. You are a criminal—you prey upon the lonely and the sick, the hopeless and those struck with tragedy. I hope you get what you deserve!”

Again that cynical ripple: “Ah, a sentimentalist! And I suppose that you attend the
established
Church with regularity and listen to
their
brand of counterfeit advice and consolation? The Royally Approved brand?”

“Why, no, as a matter of fact.” Nor had I done so since earliest childhood.

“Well, at least in that, you are consistent. We are all in the same business, you know—performing a ‘service’ for which there is no need. My dear, ‘criminals’ like myself and like the Reverend Trinist Churchlamn would be out of business in a fraction of a moment if your lonely, sick, hopeless, tragic masses simply took charge of their own lives. No one can make anyone less lonely or ill, generate hope or negate tragedy. Or make anyone else happy, for that matter. Only we can do that for ourselves, by identifying what it is we want and then acting to obtain it. Most people spend their lives avoiding the knowledge of what it is they really desire, and it is these self-evaders who become
my
customers. They deserve me, my dear, they richly deserve me, and I do my best to serve them as they merit!”

I bridled at his cynicism. “By selling them nonsense instead of the advice they really need—the advice which you have just given me?”

“Precisely—by selling them the nonsense which they will accept nine thousand times as willingly as the truth. There is very little money in the truth, my dear, very little money at all. Usually some ugly form of popular execution, instead.”

“I only meant to
frighten
him!” Law now insisted for perhaps the thirtieth time in the past hour. “It was this accursed investigation of his! Oh, how did I ever get mixed up in all this? Why ever did I agree to—”

“Silence, idiot!” growled Ensda, freed now of some of his restraints. He rose and began to pace the little room—until he was jerked up short and thus reminded that I had left one of the rings upon a walking leg and fastened another to that of Srafen’s large, heavy desk. He stopped and, addressing Law, pointed a finger at Mav: “You will place us both between the Blocks, whether this foul snooper—”

“Gentlelamn,” intoned a brisk, familiar voice, “kindly do not speak of me in the third person, for it is neither very polite nor yet appropriate.” My hearts leaped as Mav stirred upon the cushions. “Mymy, my dear, I thank you for your kind ministrations; they were most helpful. If you will observe, the bleeding has now stopped—another benefit of
resre
disciplines. I believe that, with a spot of kood—”

“Mav! If you do not remain still, you will start bleeding again! Kood is a stimulant, which you do not require—it might very well prove fatal!”

“Unlock these fetters,” offered Ensda with a hideous leer, “and I’ll
happily
get him his kood.”

“Your generosity overwhelms me, my good Doctor. I see that I was successful, by Pah, not only in apprehending you, but in preserving your person for the tender mercies of Their Majesties’ Justice! Quite gratifying, really, Tis will be well pleased!”

I spoke once again. “Mav, you really must lie still. You have given me quite a turn, you know, and Vyssu, as well—two turns, really, for I thought you surely to be dying, nor do I fully understand this recovery of yours.”

Vyssu, very silent for once, nodded agreement.

“Nor do I, altogether, Mymy. I believe that I reflexively began the disciplines whilst hanging from the bridge. I remember nothing after that, except some vague sense that the two of you were highly agitated—oh yes, and your valiant attempts to save my being. Tell me, then, what is the damage?”

I hesitated, not quite knowing what to say. Then: “Well, since you have not succumbed to exsanguination, I should say that, if you will comport yourself with prudence over the next several weeks, you may enjoy greater mobility in that shattered joint than you have previously. It was most amateurishly set, and—”

“Upon the field of battle, if you will recall, my dear. Capital! Now where have you secreted my inhaling tube? And, Law, you will explain your earlier remarks immediately, or face the Blocks for a certainty. What do you mean you did not intend to kill me? When?”

Law cast his gaze about the room and seemed to shrink upon himself. Not a soul present would stand up for him. Besides myself, Mav, Vyssu, and vile Ensda, the remaining individual present had been totally silent, almost hysterically withdrawn; Myssmo’s world was disintegrating before her unbelieving eyes and it was fully consistent with her character that she should now deny that world and sink into a dull torpor, a sort of waking
hann
.

Gone too was Law’s old-school playboy bravado. He took breath to speak, but Ensda growled again, and, for the first time, there was the slightest whimper from Myssmo. Mav interrupted: “Ensda, threaten him again, and I shall personally see that you are placed within the coldest, darkest, dampest cell in all of Mathas while awaiting execution for the murder of Professor Srafen! Now speak, Law! Perhaps you can save yourself a similar fate!”

There was a long pause, then, in confirmation of what my friend had suspected all along, Law removed the walking glove from his right rearmost hand.

As well as, to all appearances, the hand along with it.

“Why, you
are
the one who attacked us in the Kiiden!” I said, quite unnecessarily, and, from Mav’s expression, out of turn. Yes, there they were, the first childlike, tender shoots of regenerating fingers. I knew now that their predecessors lay preserved in my surfather’s office ice chest.

“And you,” Law answered in a lifeless voice, “are the one who struck my hand off in retribution!” He looked upon his severed limb almost in disbelief.

With a chuckle in his fur, Mav observed, “Quite so, old lam, and what, if I may inquire—which officially I’m obliged to—has become of your accomplice in incompetent thuggery?”

Law winced. “Oh, him? A hireling, merely, picked up by chance at a tavern very near there. He should be gone by now, aboard the very ship on which he came. I believe that they were to steam tonight—the
Habo
, it was, I think. Podfettian: I chose him because he didn’t speak a word of Fodduan. Not that he let on, I—”

“Get hold of yourself!” Mav shouted suddenly. “You’re wandering!”

Law blinked. “Oh, sorry. Where was I? You must believe me, sir, it was never my intention that anyone—most particularly myself—should be injured in what transpired. It is just that, well, your inquiries were taking you rather closer to my…that is, they seemed to endanger me, so I took measures to frighten you off.”

“Hmm—I begin to see,” replied the detective quietly. He’d found the pocket of the cloak I’d draped him with and was now, despite the strongest warning looks from me, dripping volatile solvents into his silver pipe. Now he stopped and looked at Law quite sharply. “And what has all of this to do with Doctor Ensda, here?” My friend quite suddenly sounded fatigued—I suppose there is a limit to what anyone, however trained and fit, can endure. His fur drooped and suddenly seemed to lose its luster.

With a clank, Ensda struck the limit of his leash again, glared at me, and sat down where he was upon the nearest cushion to Myssmo, who uncharacteristically—but now understandably—shrank backward from him, emitting another little whimper. “I’ll tell you what it has to do with me! I’ll not be bound over for a killing I had no connection with! I’ve done time before, and whatever they give me now, I can do it standing on my jaws—but I’ll
not
go between the Blocks for the likes of these!” He waved a hand, indicating Law and Myssmo.

“It was a simple enough scheme, but this pair was even simpler, and, accordingly, required my assistance, not only to carry it off, but to think of it in the first place!
This
—” he pointed now toward Myssmo—“actually
believes
in the watu-marbles I dispense as personal advice. Lunology? Rot it all, I cannot so much as calculate the position of tomorrow’s
sunrise
! Yet use the proper ‘magic’ words, and morons like her
always
believe—and pay!”