Bugg smiled. ‘The sentiment wouldn’t be free now, would it?’
‘No, it would not.’
As soon as die hapless advocate was gone, Bugg rose. Well, it’s begun. Almost to the day when Tehol said it would. The man’s uncanny. And maybe in that, there lies some hope for humanity. All those things that cannot be measured, cannot be quantified in any way at all.
Maybe.
Bugg would have to disappear now. Lest he get torn limb from limb by a murder of advocates, never mind the financiers. And that would be a most unpleasant experience. But first, he needed to warn Tehol.
The Elder God glanced around his office with something like affectionate regret, almost nostalgia. It had been fun, after all. This game. Like most games. He wondered why Tehol had stopped short the first time. But no, perhaps that wasn’t at all baffling. Come face to face with a brutal truth-with any brutal truth-and it was understandable to back away.
As Sleem said, there is no value in despair.
But plenty of despair in value, once the illusion is revealed. Ah, I am indeed tired.;
He set out from his office, to which he would never return.
‘How can there be only four hens left? Yes, Ublala Pung, I am looking directly at you.’
‘For the Errant’s sake,’ Janath sighed, ‘leave the poor man alone. What did you expect to happen, Tehol? They’re hens that no longer lay eggs, making them as scrawny and dry and useless as the gaggle of matronly scholars at my old school. What Ublala did was an act of profound bravery.’
‘Eat my hens? Raw?’
‘At least he plucked their feathers.’
‘Were they dead by that point?’
‘Let’s not discuss those particular details, Tehol. Everyone is permitted one mistake.’
‘My poor pets,’ Tehol moaned, eyeing Ublala Pung’s overstuffed pillow at one end of the reed mat that served as the half-blood Tarthenal’s bed.
‘They were not pets.’
He fixed a narrow gaze on his ex-tutor. ‘I seem to recall you going on and on about the terrors of pragmatism, all through history. Yet what do I now hear from you, Janath? “They were not pets.” A declarative statement uttered in most pragmatic tones. Why, as if by words alone you could cleanse what must have been an incident of brutal avian murder.’
‘Ublala Pung has more stomachs than both you and me combined. They need filling, Tehol.’
‘Oh?’ He placed his hands on his hips-actually to make certain that the pin was holding the blanket in place, recalling with another pang his most public display a week past. ‘Oh?’ he asked again, and then added, And what, precisely and pragmatically, was wrong with my famous Grit Soup?’
‘It was gritty.’
‘Hinting of most subtle flavours as can only be cultivated from diligent collection of floor scrapings, especially a floor pranced upon by hungry hens.’
She stared up at him. ‘You are not serious, are you? That really was grit from the floor? This floor?’
‘Hardly reason for such a shocked expression, Janath. Of course,’ he threw in offhandedly as he walked over to stand next to the blood-splotched pillow, ‘creative cuisine demands a certain delicacy of the palate, a culture of appreciation-’ He kicked at the pillow and it squawked.
Tehol spun round and glared at Ublala Pung, who sat, back to a wall, and now hung his head.
‘I was saving one for later,’ the giant mumbled.
‘Plucked or unplucked?’
‘Well, it’s in there to stay warm.’
Tehol looked over at Janath and nodded, ‘See? Do you see, Janath? Finally see?’
‘See what?’ «
‘The deadly slope of pragmatism, Mistress. The very proof of your arguments all those years ago. Ublala Pung’s history of insensitive rationalizations-if you could call anything going on in that skull rational-leading him-and, dare I add, innumerable unsuspecting hens-into the inevitable, egregious extreme of… of abject nakedness inside a pillow!’
Her brows lifted. ‘Well, that scene last week really scarred you, didn’t it?’
‘Don’t be absurd, Janath.’
Ublala had stuck out his tongue-a huge, pebbled slab of meat-and was trying to study it, his eyes crossing with the effort.
‘What are you doing now?’ Tehol demanded.
The tongue retreated and Ublala blinked a few times to right his eyes. ‘Got cut by a beak,’ he said.
‘You ate their beaks?’
‘Easier to start with the head. They ain’t so restless with no heads.’
‘Really?’
Ublala Pung nodded.
‘And I suppose you consider that merciful?’
‘What?’
‘Of course not,’ Tehol snapped. ‘It’s just pragmatic. “Oh, I’m being eaten. But that’s all right. I have no head!”‘
Ublala frowned at him. ‘Nobody’s eating you, Tehol. And your head’s still there-I can see it.’
‘I was speaking for the hens.’
‘But they don’t speak Letherii.’
‘You are not eating my last four hens.’
‘What about the one in the pillow, Tehol? Do you want it back? Its feathers might grow back, though it might catch a cold or something. I can give it back if you like.’
‘Generous of you, Ublala, but no. Put it out of its misery, but mind the beak. In the meantime, however, I think you need to get yourself organized-you were supposed to leave days ago, after all, weren’t you?’
‘I don’t want to go to the islands,’ Ublala said, dragging a chipped nail through the grit on the floor. ‘I sent word. That’s good enough, isn’t it? I sent word.’
Tehol shrugged. ‘If it’s good enough, it’s good enough. Right, Janath? By all means, stay with us, but you have to set out now to find food. For all of us. A hunting expedition and it won’t be easy, Ublala. Not at all easy. There’s not been a supply ship on the river for days now, and people have started hoarding things, as if some terrible disaster were imminent. So, as I said, Ublala, it won’t be easy. And I hate to admit it, but there are people out there who don’t think you can succeed.’
Ublala Pung’s head snapped up, fire in his eyes. ‘Who? Who?’
The four hens paused in their scratchings and cocked heads in unison.
‘I better not say,’ Tehol said. ‘Anyway, we need food.’
The Tarthenal was on his feet, head crunching on the ceiling before he assumed his normal hunched posture when indoors. Plaster dust sprinkled his hair, drifted down to settle on the floor. The hens pounced, crowding his feet.
‘If you fail,’ Tehol said, ‘we’ll have to start eating, uh, plaster.’
‘Lime is poisonous,’ Janath said.
And hen guano isn’t? Did I hear you complain when you were slurping down my soup?’
‘You had your hands over your ears, Tehol, and I wasn’t slurping anything down, I was spewing it back up.’
‘I can do it,’ Ublala said, hands bunching into fists. ‘I can get us food. I’ll show you.’ And with that he pushed through the doorway, out into the narrow alley, and was gone.
‘How did you do that, Tehol?’
‘I won’t take credit. It’s how Shurq Elalle manages him. Ublala Pung has an eagerness to show what he can do.’
‘You prey on his low self-esteem, you mean.’
‘Now that’s rather hypocritical coming from a tutor, isn’t it?’
‘Ooh, all the old wounds still smarting, are they?’
‘Never mind old wounds, Janath. You need to leave.’
‘What? Are there rumours I’m incapable of something?’
‘No, I’m serious. Any day now, there is going to be trouble. Here.’
‘Where am I supposed to go?’
‘You need to contact who’s left of your scholarly friends-find one you can trust-’
‘Tehol Beddict, really now. I have no friends among my fellow scholars, and certainly not one I can trust. You clearly know nothing of my profession. We crush beaks between our teeth as a matter of course. In any case, what kind of trouble are you talking about? This economic sabotage of yours?’
‘Bugg should really learn to keep quiet.’
She was studying him in a most discomforting way. ‘You know, Tehol Beddict, I never imagined you for an agent of evil.’