“Taken care of? But Daddy said-”
“What Daddy doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Beverel replied suavely. “And what Daddy doesn’t find out from a certain tattletale little sister I could mention, won’t hurt you.”
Vug’s eyes brimmed with tears. “You always ruin everything.”
“Stop your namby-pamby whining, you puny excuse for an evil overlord’s daughter!” Beverel snapped, slapping Vug smartly across the face for emphasis. “I’m your elder and your better; you’ll do as I command you. Now take this wretched object-”
“That’d be me,” Gudge said stolidly.
“Shut up, Gudge,” Prince Lorimel put in for no better reason than to keep in practice.
“-put an iron collar and a pair of cuffs on him, take him out of here, and get rid of him,” Beverel went on. “I don’t much care how you do it as long as you have the castle limner make detailed sketches of the really juicy bits, afterward.”
Vug’s shoulders slumped. “Yes, Beverel,” she said. “As you command.” She went about freeing Gudge from his fetters and saddling him with the prescribed iron collar, leading chain, and traveling manacles, according to her received orders, then gave him a shy look. “Er, shall we go?” she asked timidly.
Beverel uttered a loud growl of impatience and demanded of Prince Lorimel, “Do you see what I have to put up with?”
“My poor, suffering darling,” the elf prince replied, batting his eyelashes madly. “Tell me all your troubles. Let me share your pain.” He turned a glowering visage to Gudge and in a voice of fiery wrath bellowed, “Don’t just stand there, you moron! Help that stupid girl get you out of our sight before she upsets my beautiful Beverel any further. Go!”
Gudge eyed his master with a look of cool disdain worthy of a Lofty Elf. So perfectly belittling was that glance that it gave Prince Lorimel the optic equivalent of being smacked right in the chops with a sizeable halibut. Even the lovely-but-cruel Beverel was shocked to see an expression of so much authority upon the countenance of such a previously underestimated supporting character.
But all Gudge said was, “Well, we’ll just be off then, m’lud,” and he headed up the dungeon steps with a bemused and doubtful Vug in tow.
Once they were beyond the dungeon door and had stepped gingerly over the puddled troll in the corridor, Gudge turned to Vug and said, “Beggin’ yer Depravity’s pardon, but this be as far as I can go ’thout ’ee gives me some d’rections, seein’ as how I be a stranger to Castle Bonecrack.”
Vug blushed a becoming shade of rosy pink. “Of course; how silly of me. This way, if you please.” She gave Gudge’s leash a tug, but it was really more of a gentle waggle that didn’t even make the links clank together.
By way of fetid passageways, dimly lit and vermin-haunted stairwells, musty rooms rank with the stench of ageless evil, and the back door to the kitchen, Vug at last brought Gudge out into the light of day. The elf prince’s castoff servant blinked to accustom his eyes to the long-missed brightness and filled his lungs with the sweet air of the little herb garden whither Vug had conducted him.
“Ah, ’tis true as they say,” Gudge opined, a look of beatific calm and resignation on his face. “A garden’s a lovesome thing, th’ gods wot, where t’ be cruelly done t’ death by an evil overlord’s daughter what’s as wicked as she’s beautiful. All right then, young lady: I be as ready naow as ever t’ perish, aye. Just say t’ word as to where ’ee’d find it most cornveenent fer me t’ stand whilst ’ee rends me limb from limb, if that’s yer pleasure.”
“Rend you limb from-? Oh my, no!” Vug dropped Gudge’s lead chain and clapped both hands to her face in an access of dismay.
“Nay?” Gudge gave her a speculative look. “Then I’m t’ die by murd’rous sorcery, aye?”
Vug shook her head in the negative so hard that she whapped herself across the mouth several times with both braids. “Not that. I couldn’t stand doing that to anyone.”
By now Gudge was truly flummoxed. “Not death by steel nor death by sorcery? What’s left, then? Ah, wait, I knows th’ answer! ’Tis poison as must send me into th’ shadows.” He slapped his forehead as best he could without breaking his own nose with the manacles binding his wrists. “How could I’ve forgot summat that simple? An’ this here garden where ’ee’ve brang me, m’lady, no doubt’s the source fer the venom as’ll be my doom, aye?” He bent over and plucked a large tuft of leaves from the nearest plant. “Well, as me old slut of a Mum used t’ say, don’t be shy, no one’s gettin’ any younger, no time like the present, and bottoms up!”
He stuffed the leaves into his mouth, chewed lustily, and swallowed, then stood by with a look of uncomplaining anticipation.
“Er, sir?” Vug tapped her captive lightly on the shoulder. “That was basil.”
“Oh, aye?” Gudge ran his tongue over his teeth, dislodging a few clingy green shreds. “An’ what’d poor ol’ Basil do wrong fer ’ee t’ be turnin’ ’im inter a poisonous shrub?”
Vug patiently corrected Gudge’s misapprehension. He listened attentively, then said, “I see. Well now, in that case, I’d be obleeged if ’ee’d point me at th’ nearest properly lethal veggie. Meanin’ no offense t’ yer Dread Badness, fer ’tis not yer comp’ny as I’m findin’ teedjus, but on th’ other hand, there’s no sense puttin’ off th’ inevitable, nay. Th’ sooner I’m dead an’ gone, th’ sooner I can stop bein’ scairt a mere halfway t’ death o’ dyin’, as is me present state o’ mind. So… got any henbane?”
Vug began to weep. “Oh, please stop being so nice about this!” she wailed. “It’s bad enough my having to kill you without your being helpful about it. Really, it’s too cruel!”
At this point, Gudge’s bewilderment had reached that level where the bewilderee begins to question his own sanity. In such cases, matters have come to such a cognitively dissonant head that the only two possible explanations are:
That the whole world has gone mad or:
That the witness to such alleged madness is himself irredeemably ’round the twist.
Most people placed in such a lose-lose situation tend to get rather testy about it. Gudge was no exception.
“Naow look’ee here, Missy!” he exclaimed, rattling his manacles in a monitory manner. “What’s all this blubberin’ about? Ain’t ’ee heerd th’ rules what governs dark an’ evil overlords an’ th’ fruit o’ their dark an’ evil loins? Yer th’ daughter o’ Lord Belg, aye?”
“Aye. I mean, yes,” Vug said in a miserable voice not much above a whisper.
“An’ ’ee knows yon rules of which I speak?”
This time Vug merely nodded.
“Then what’s holdin’ ’ee back from slaughterin’ me, seein’ as how th’ rules says ’ee’ve got t’ be as wicked as yer beautiful? Fer if that’s so, ’ee must needs be th’ wickedest creetur as ever breathed.”
It was now Vug’s turn to put sanity on the witness stand to determine when it had left the premises.
“You… you think I’m that evil-I mean, that beautiful?” she asked Gudge.
“Aye, m’lady.” Gudge’s face broke into a rapturous smile. “ ’Ee be th’ fairest thing as I’ve ever seen, an’ ’tis me one consolement, here on th’ brink o’ death hisself, t’ have been able t’ get me an eyeful o’ such pulchritude as yer own. Now let me die, fer ’tis me sad and sorrowful fate that-”
“Shut up, Gudge,” said Vug, and she threw him down and had him in the basil.
Some time later, Gudge sat up and scraped impromptu pesto out of his hair. “You know, if this is the way you’re going to kill me, my lady, I feel honor bound to tell you that it’s not working,” he said. “Not that I’m complaining, you understand.”