“Your predecessors have chosen to interpret ‘expulsion from Temalaguan soil’ rather liberally. The sentence of expulsion has frequently been carried out post-mortem.”
“I am not my predecessors,” Carlos said firmly. “You will return with us to the palace and be given quarters among my guards. Your movements will be circumscribed, but no other restraints will be placed upon you. You may eat and drink what you wish. A variety of women will be made available. These conditions will continue until you disclose the reason for your presence in Temalagua. After that you may do what you will. Leave. Stay. I have no intention of harming you. Should you decide to stay, well, I’m aware of your accomplishments—I’m certain you will have much to teach me, particularly as regards managing a business. And I’m equally certain that we will identify areas of common interest and have a great deal to discuss. You’ll be a welcome addition to my court. Of course…” The king’s smile seemed an article of complacent self-assurance. “You may choose to confess your motives here and now, and thus make all this unnecessary.”
“What leads you to think that I would ever reveal my motives?” Rosacher asked.
Carlos’ placid smile resurfaced. “We are much alike, Richard, you and I. In fact, I think we may be very nearly the same person. However, I have the advantage over you in that I have been this person since birth, while you have been forced, either by circumstance or some more powerful agency, to acquire the skills that have shaped our mutual character. Having this advantage, I know things that you do not, and one of these things is that eventually you will become bored with the unchallenging life I offer and will reveal your secrets if for no other reason than to create a dramatic episode.”
Rosacher could not deny the truth of these words, but even as he admitted to Carlos’ estimation of their kindred souls, it was as if he were receding from him, looking at him through the wrong end of a telescope, a view that enabled him to see that Carlos was, indeed, a well-intentioned man, a man capable, should he live, of doing great things, of changing the course of a nation and raising up an entire people from poverty; yet he would achieve this not because he was an altruist or a saint, but rather because he was a narcissist. Like all narcissists, like Rosacher himself, Carlos was likely prone to sudden shifts in temperament and, though by all reports the king had never varied from his benevolent pose, it was a pose. And thus it was possible that one day an event would transpire to turn him from a man whose ego was nourished by enacting good deeds to one with the capacity for unimaginable evil. Rosacher’s impression of Carlos had been so thoroughly transformed, he felt at sea, inclined to let the night go forward without intervention, and he said querulously, “None of this would have occurred had you been more cautious in your foreign policy.”
Carlos’ smile faded, replaced by a wary look. “I don’t follow. To what are you referring?”
“Your alliance with Mospiel,” Rosacher said. “Your designs against Teocinte.”
“Are you mad?” Carlos chuckled. “I have no designs against a country that is ready to tear itself apart. As for Mospiel, I’d sooner lie down with a barba amarilla than join with the prelates in any enterprise.”
“Teocinte has never been so strong as now,” said Rosacher.
“Perhaps I’ve been misinformed and your ties to the government in Teocinte are not as close as I imagined.” Carlos splashed wine into his glass. “Could you be unaware of Breque’s activities during the past year?” He sipped the wine and held the glass up so it caught the light; then he cast a sidelong glance at Rosacher. “Why have you come here?”
Rosacher ignored the question and said, “Councilman Breque has been a competent administrator. I haven’t been diligent in my oversight for some months now—my interests lay elsewhere. But I trust Breque to do what’s right for Teocinte.”
“Then you placed your trust in a fool or a madman. Or both. Breque sends me letters reaffirming Teocinte’s long-standing friendship with my country, and at the same time he has squandered a fortune on naval weaponry. Weaponry that can have no other purpose than an attack upon our ports. I might be concerned about this, but I have it on good authority that he has emptied his exchequer and has insufficient funds with which to buy ships. But you must know of this!”
Rosacher, shaken by Carlos’ assertion, said, “How did you get your information? Are you certain it’s accurate?”
“Oh, yes! In a short time, a few months, six months at best, Teocinte’s economy will collapse. No matter how much mab is produced, your debts will come due well before you can expect to receive payment. They have already come due in many instances. Breque will have to sell his weaponry and reduce the price of mab in order to sustain even a feeble economy.”
“The purchase of a few weapons…I can’t see how that will topple the economy.”
“Do you call seven hundred cannons a few? Six thousand rifles, the latest Russian model! One hundred armored war wagons designed to traverse the jungle, each large enough to carry a company! But you’re right. These are only Breque’s most recent expenditures, the ounce that tipped the scale. In the shipyards of Mataplan lie the keels of seventy great vessels that he has commissioned, intended to carry an invasion force…yet he cannot afford to complete them. I could recite a long list of Breque’s ridiculous purchases. Apparently the man had designs on the entire littoral, perhaps the entire continent. But to whatever end, he has accumulated more weapons than he has soldiers, more ships than men to fill them. I have no fear of Teocinte. Your country is doomed. It’s Mospiel I fear, for once Teocinte has been gutted by this idiot Breque, they will rush in and impose order, and there will be no buffer state between Mospiel and Temalagua.” Carlos paused. “You have been duped, my friend. That much is clear from your reaction. But this raises the question, for what reason were you duped? And how does your presence here relate to that fact?”
A mosquito whined in Rosacher’s ear. He slapped at it and, as if the slap were a cue, a grumbling noise issued from the jungle, then a roar that might have come from the throat of Griaule himself, so shattering it was—this followed by a volley of rifle fire and screams.
Carlos and Rosacher grabbed up their rifles, aiming them at the jungle. More screams, and Frederick, accompanied by a splintering of twigs and branches, burst from the shadowy foliage—Frederick as Rosacher had never before seen him, solidified into that bear-like shape that prior to this moment had only been hinted at, except in an artist’s depiction. Standing on his hind legs, slashing at the air with taloned paws, roaring as rifles continued to fire, Frederick’s torchlit reality was far more frightening than his portrait had been. In that posture he must have measured twenty feet from tip to toe, his body covered in coarse black fur, and as he swung his elongated head from side-to-side, its form that of a strange fruiting, some sort of mutant melon or squash, his face came into view, a leathery mask, slightly less black than the fur, that seemed to have been stamped onto the stump-end of a severed limb and had over time become a part of that limb, its nerves and musculature connecting, annealing with those of the stump, growing capable of gross movement, producing snarls and leers and various other expressions of rage and lust. His eyes were rheumy, redder than the artist had portrayed, and were set at more of a slant above the cheeks, giving him the aspect of a Tibetan devil god; but this was no brightly colored, ritualistic abstraction of evil, this was evil itself, evil incarnate, fanged and drooling and monstrous, with a lolling tongue and a furrowed brow and a quality of insane vacancy that somehow dominated the face, that was its base emotion.