‘Who were they again?’ Apto asked.
‘Famous,’ Brash retorted, ‘that’s who they were.’
‘I mean, what were their names?’
‘What difference would that make? They sang famous poems!’
‘Which ones?’
‘It doesn’t matter! They were the Redbloom Poets of Nemil! They were famous! They were from the time when bards and poets were actually valued by everyone! Not pushed aside and forgotten!’
‘But you’ve forgotten their names, haven’t you?’ Apto asked.
‘If you never heard of them how would you know if I knew their names or not? I could make up any old names and you’d just nod, being a scholar and all! I’m right, aren’t I?’
Calap Roud was shaking his head but there was a delighted glimmer in his eyes. ‘Young Brash, it serves you ill to berate one of the Mantle’s judges, don’t you think?’
Brash rounded on him. ‘You don’t know their names either!’
‘That’s true, I don’t, but then, I’m not pretending to be inspired by them, am I?’
‘Well, you’re about to hear inspiration of the finest kind!’
‘What was inspiring you again?’ Tiny Chanter asked.
Flea and Midge snorted.
Our host was waving his hands about, and it was finally understood that this manic gesturing was intended to capture our collective attentions. ‘Gentlemen, please now! The Poet wishes to begin, and each must have his or her turn—’
‘What “her”?’ demanded Brash. ‘All the women here got dispensations! Why is that? Is it, perhaps, because everyone eligible to vote happened to be men? Imagine how succulent—’
‘Enough of that!’ barked Tulgord Vise. ‘That’s disgusting!’
Arpo Relent added, ‘What it is, is proof of the immoral decrepitude of artists. Everyone knows it’s the women who do the eating.’
Moments later, in the ensuing silence, the Well Knight frowned. ‘What?’
‘Best begin, Poet,’ said Steck Marynd in a hunter’s growl (and don’t they all?).
A wayward ember spun towards Nifty Gum and all three of his Entourage fought to fling themselves heroically into its path, but it went out before it could reach any of them. They settled back, glowering at each other.
Brash strummed the three strings, and began singing in a flat falsetto.
‘Hang on,’ said Tiny. ‘If it was before kingdoms, how could there be a king?’
‘You can’t interrupt like that! I’m singing!’
‘Why do you think I interrupted?’
‘Please,’ said the host whose name escapes me again, ‘let the Poet, er, sing.’
‘On his bling!’ Flea sang.
Apto broke into a coughing fit.
The ‘oh sorrow’ declamation was intended to be echoed by the enraptured audience, and would mark the closure of each stanza. Alas, no one was in a ready state to participate, and isn’t it curious how laughter and weeping could be so easily confused?
Savagely, Brash Phluster plucked a string and pressed on.
Oh dear, I just added those two lines. I could not help it, and so I do urge their disregard.
Ah, and again.
The Entourage cried, ‘Oh sorrow!’ and even Purse Snippet smiled over her secretive cup of tea.
In the chaos that ensued, Brash thrashed at the strings of the lyre until one broke, the taut gut snapping up to catch him in the left eye. Steck’s crossbow, cursed with a nervous trigger, accidentally released, driving the quarrel through the hunter’s right foot, pinning it to the ground. Purse sprayed a startlingly flammable mouthful of tea into the fire, and in the flare-up Apto flung himself backward with singed eyebrows, rolling off the stone he’d been perched on and slamming his head into a cactus. The host’s hands waved frantically since he could no longer breathe. The Entourage was in a groping tangle and somewhere beneath it was Nifty Gum. Tulgord Vise and Arpo Relent were scowling and frowning respectively. Of Tiny Chanter, only the soles of his boots were visible. Midge suddenly stood and said to Flea, ‘I pissed myself.’
By this extraordinary performance Brash Phluster survived the twenty-third night and so would live through the twenty-fourth night and the following day. And as he opened his mouth to announce that he wasn’t yet finished, why, I did clamp my hand over the offending utterance, stifling it in the rabbit hole. Mercy knows a thousand guises, say you not?
Madness, you say? That I should so boldly aver Brash Phluster’s suicidal desire to further skin himself? But while confidence is a strange creature, it is no stranger to me. I know well its pluck and princeps. It bears no stretch of perception to note my certain flair in the proceeding of this tale, for here I am, ancient of ways, and yet still alive. Ah, but perhaps I deceive you all with this retroactive posture of assuredness. A fair point, were it not for the fact of its error in every regard. To explain, I possessed even then the quiet man’s stake, a banner embedded deep in solid rock, the pennants ever calm no matter how savage the raging storms of worldly straits. It is this impervious nature that has served me so well. That and my natural brevity with respect to modesty.