“What? What is it?”
“Your hands.”
Marius glanced down.
“Gods damn it.” His flesh hung gray and withered across the prominent bones beneath. He glanced up at Gerd. “My face?”
Gerd nodded.
“Fuck.” Marius lowered his head so that the edges of the robe hid him from view. “Lesson learned, then. We can’t afford to lose our concentration, fall into dead patterns.” His hands tingled. He watched in wonder as the skin grew pink, swelling with life until they looked like any other man’s. “I’m never going to get used to that.” He raised his head. “All right, now?”
“Yes,” Gerd pointed ahead. “Here’s something to keep you occupied.”
“What?”
A dozen feet in front of them, somebody had set up a stall at the side of the queue. Bright painted wood stood in contrasting shades to the equally bright stone behind. The stall was in three parts. As Marius and Gerd watched, people stepped up to the first part, a giant board listing menu items for sale. After thirty seconds they stepped on, and gave their order and money to a fat, bearded man in grease-stained shirt and apron. He shouted it over to the three youths who manned the final section of the stall, who, quick as oiled machinery, seared meat in a massive wok, cut salad, threw it together on flat bread, rolled, folded and wrapped the finished meal, and passed it to the customer before their thirty second journey took them past the stall. Marius nodded in appreciation.
“Clever,” he said. “Nothing like a captive market for making good money. You hungry?” Gerd blinked in surprise.
“You know what? I am.”
“Me too. And I wasn’t a second ago. What do you think?” he smiled mirthlessly, “Is our attention to being alive paying dividends, or are we just patsies for good marketing?” He drew a small bag of coins from inside his robe. “What would you like?”
“Where did you get that?”
“Oh,” he smiled, and waved his hand non-committally. “The big city helps those who help themselves.”
“Help themselves to others’ belongings,” Gerd grumbled, but he turned to examine the approaching menu. “There, um,” he said after several seconds, “there seems to be an awful lot of rodent on the menu.”
Marius laughed. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Scorbans consider magrats a delicacy. They farm them.”
“They what?”
“Sure. There are factory farms on the city outskirts. They raise them like chickens. Very clean, very nice,” he said in a passable attempt at a local accent. “They don’t just scoop them out of the gutter. Raised on corn and oats, clean water, no garbage. They’re good eating, if your cook knows what he’s doing.” He turned his eyes towards the board, paused long enough to whistle. “These prices, he must know what he’s doing, eh?”
Their thirty seconds were up. They stepped forward, within hailing distance of the stall owner.
“What will it be, gentlemen?” he called, rubbing massive, hairy hands down the front of his apron, an act that served merely to stir fresh paths into the layers of grease and grime already there. Marius raised a hand in greeting.
“Business good?” he said with a smile. The stall owner shrugged.
“We’re lucky today,” he replied.
“Lucky?”
“Another week and we’d have been out of luck, and then…” he turned his hands up in a gesture typical to Scorbans, a short, dismissive upwards chop that said ‘Just my luck, shit for dinner again’. Marius nodded in sympathy.
“How so, friend?”
The fat man indicated the stall. “Not my stall, see? Government owned. We just buy spaces in the lottery. Got to admit, I was lucky. Nobody wanted to buy this end of the reign. Another week, some other bugger would have won the concession, and I’d still be down in Cackmarket square competing with everyone else for grandmothers and lunch shoppers.”
“The government…” Gerd shook his head, tried again. “You auction off the chance to profit from the King’s death?”
“Not auction,” the stall owner grimaced. “Lottery. We’re not savages.”
“Absolutely not,” Marius nodded in approval. “Purely business, right friend?”
“Right.”
“Damn civilised, if you ask me.”
“Well thank you for your approval,” the fat man replied, only the slightest hint of sarcasm creeping into his tone. “Now, if you don’t mind, you might want to order before you pass by.”
“Of course, of course.” Marius dipped into the pouch, drew out a few coins. “Let’s live like there’s no tomorrow, shall we? Two of your large rolls, with extra chilli. And do you have any Kessa Water?”
“No, but if you’ve got three more of those,” the owner indicated the coins, “I’ll send Ethren down into the markets to get two bottles and find you in line.”
“Done.” Marius paid his price. “A pleasure doing business.”
“Yeah, sure, of course.” The fat man nodded, called the order across to the youths, who began the process of assembly, then turned towards the rear of the stall. “Ethren!”
Marius and Gerd stepped on as he began issuing instructions to the young girl whose head had popped through the curtain at the rear of the stall. She gave the two customers a good look over, then disappeared. Marius took the two rolls as they were offered, gave one to Gerd, and they stepped away from the stall.
“Brilliant,” Marius said as he bit into his roll.
“What?”
“Well, this for a start.” Marius brandished his lunch. “Seriously, that is really good rat.
But this whole setup. It’s a brilliant idea.”
“I don’t get you.”
“Look.” Marius indicated the line around them. “How long is this lot going to take to get
to the head of the queue? Ten hours? How many do you think brought lunch with them? I bet it’s the same for every function that occurs up here. People get excited, or they’re ordered to come up here by bosses or wives or public acclamation. Then they’re stuck in the queue, hungry, thirsty, and what are they going to do?” He laughed. “Captive audience.”
“So?” Gerd’s shrug was eloquent.
“So?” Marius shook his head. “How many people do you think there are in this city?”
“I don’t know. Twenty, thirty thousand?”
“Ninety-three and a half thousand at last census. I know, I helped fudge the figures on the Tallian quarter.”
“What? You altered census figures? Why on Earth would you do that?”
Marius smiled. “Do you think it’s a good idea if the Scorban government knows how
many of its traditional enemies really live in the heart of its base of power?”
Gerd shook his head slowly. “Gods. Have you ever done anything honest in your life?”
“I…” Marius stared into the distance for a moment. “That’s not the point. What I’m
saying is, there’s ninety thousand people down there. That equates to, what, say a thousand food merchants, maybe? Any one of whom would kill for the chance to open up in a prime location like this, above the stink and the sweat, with a guaranteed clientele, quiet, orderly, in and out in under a minute with no arguments, no fights, no chance of some fat-headed thug with a cosh and an inflated sense of his own hardness coming round every month demanding protection…” Marius stopped, smiling, until the person behind them bumped forward, and he stepped back into his place. “So, run a lottery. Give every merchant a chance to buy in based on something immutable, something unchanging…