Emancipor grunted. “Master, I really need to get out of this city.”
“Ah, that would be withdrawal.”
They stared at each for a moment.
Then Bauchelain cleared his throat. “One last task awaits me. Given the unexpected turn of events this night, Mister Reese, I believe your tasks within Quaint are done. Thus, I grant you leave to, uh, leave.”
“I can’t thank you enough, Master.”
“No matter. One final thing. Can you give me directions to the Grand Temple of the Lady of Beneficence?”
“Of course, Master.”
Arm in arm with revelers and in the midst of a bawdy, drunken crowd, the Demon of Vice staggered into the vast, seething mob filling the concourse fronting the Grand Temple. He was singing, at the top of his voice, a song he had never heard before. Life was wonderful, again, and this was a night Ineb Cough would not forget in a long while. Or not remember at all. It didn’t matter which.
They stumbled over pieces of corpses, many of them still eager to party, if the twitching and writhing of dismembered limbs was any indication. A number of tenement fires had leapt closer to the temple, bathing it in lurid light. Near the steps was the mass of putrescent but doggedly throbbing flesh that was the Demon of Corpulence. He was surrounded by impromptu feasting, huge slabs of undercooked, dripping meat making the rounds, greasy smeared faces splashed with the light of rapture, and people were being sick everywhere, unaccustomed as they-well, no, Ineb corrected himself-they were sick with excess, glorious excess.
He saw Sloth being carried in atop a score of hands. Seeing Ineb Cough, she managed a faint white-gloved wave.
So, all were gathered, and need only await their brilliant saviour, Bauchelain, on his way to pronounce upon the city its fate. Ineb was delirious with anticipation.
“Sweeties, I’m here!” Storkul Purge spread her arms out to her sides and held the gesture. Before her, in the Orgy Room on the top floor of Hurla’s Brothel, shapes moved about in the gloom. Lots of shapes, she realised, all seemingly on their hands and knees. A good sign. In fact, judging from the grunting and squeaking, lots of good signs.
Except, of course, for the smell.
One figure rose up hesitantly before her.
Tragically, her eyes had begun to adjust to the darkness. “What is all that smeared on you?” she demanded.
A wavering voice, “Keeps them happy, you see.”
“Who?”
“Why,” the little man gestured behind him, “my pigs, of course.”
Pigs? By the Abyss, they were pigs! “But this is a brothel! Worst, this is the third floor! What are all these disgusting animals doing here when I wanted the normal disgusting animals!”
“I’m hiding them, of course! Everyone has gone mad! They want to slaughter all my beauties, but I won’t let them! Who’d look on the top floor of a brothel? Why, no one! No one but you, and you’re not here to lead my pigs to slaughter… are you?”
She considered for a long moment, then slowly lowered her arms, and sighed. “Fine, I’ll just hold my breath. Get undressed, old man, this one’s on the house.”
“I–I can’t do that! They’ll get jealous!”
Too much pent-up frustration by far. Storkul Purge screamed.
Wandering bemused in the subterranean chambers and corridors beneath the temple, Imid Factallo, his baby and Elas Sil could all hear the roaring from somewhere overhead. Ominous, as if a terrible slaughter was taking place in the city’s streets. Or so they believed, since their last sight of the above world had been the horrid death of the Stentorian Nun.
Yet here, below, there was naught but silence. Where were the nuns? The confiscated children? They had found no one, no one at all.
“Shh!” Elas Sil’s hand clutched his arm.
“I didn’t say anything!”
“Shhh!”
Now, close by, a gentle murmuring of voices. They were standing in a corridor. Before them was a T-intersection, with a door directly opposite them. Faint lantern light leaked from its seams, musty with scented oils.
Elas pulled him along, up to the door.
“This is it,” Imid whispered.
She looked across at him.
“Where they prepare the babies,” Imid explained, his heart thudding hard in his chest. He licked his lips, his mouth suddenly terribly dry. “They lead them in by the hand, the smiling nuns. Then whack! Down comes the cleaver! Chop chop, bones into the cauldron, some old hag stirring with a huge iron ladle, spittle hanging from her toothless mouth. All those tiny voices, silenced forever!” He stared down at the slumbering child in his arms. “We’ve come to the wrong place, Elas!”
“You’ve gone mad! You sound like… like a parent!”
And she flung open the door.
Light spilled over them.
A sea of faces. Cherubic faces, countless children of all ages.
All of whom cried out, “Inside, quick! Oh, shut the door!” More of a cacophony of voices, truth be told, but both Imid and Elas comprehended those two commands at the very least.
They stumbled into the domed chamber.
And the door was slammed shut behind them.
Children rushed forward upon seeing the swaddled baby. “Ooh! Another one! He? She? Is it well? Not sick yet, oh blessed Lady, not yet sick!”
Imid recoiled slightly at the upward grasping hands. “Get away, you horrid creatures! Sick? No one’s sick! No one, I tell you!”
“What,” Elas Sil demanded, “are you all doing here?”
“We are being well!”
“Well what?”
A slightly older girl stepped forward. “We’re being protected. From the outer world, that horrible, dirty, sickly place!”
“Sickly?” Elas repeated bemusedly. “What do you mean?”
“There are foul things out there-things that will make us sick. Animals, to make us sick! Flies, birds, bats, mice, rats, all diseased and waiting to make us sick! And people! Coughing, sniveling, wiping themselves everywhere! There are wayward fumes, emanating from anuses and worse. And wagons that might run us over, stairs we might fall down, walls we might walk into. You must join us, here, where it’s safe!”
“And healthy,” another piped up.
“What’s it like?” a third child asked.
Elas Sil blinked. “What is what like?”
“The world?”
“Stop that, Chimly!” the first girl scolded. “You know that curiosity is deadly!”
Someone in the crowd coughed.
Everyone swung round, and the first girl hissed, “Who did that?”
“Now!” Imid shouted. And, thankfully, Elas Sil understood. In unison they turned and scrabbled at the door latch.
Behind them: “Look! They’re getting away!”
Then the door was open, and the two saints with their charge fled out into the corridor.
“Get them!”
They ran.
King Necrotus the Nihile was seeing things from a new angle. Sideways, slightly upside-down. He had tried locomotion by wiggling his ears, but the effect had been meager. Clearly, his facial and scalp muscles weren’t designed to aid in the physical transportation of his head. That’s what the body normally attached to it did. It had been a pathetic conceit.
A large polished boot stepped into his view.
“Hello?” Necrotus called up.
The boot shifted, then the heel drew upwards and a hand settled on the king’s head, tilting it to one side. Necrotus found himself looking up at a crouching Bauchelain.
“Abyss averted!” the king sighed in relief. “I am so glad you found me. Can you see my body? It’s the one without any arms-and no head, naturally. It can’t have gone far… can it?”