Helliconia Summer - Brian W. Aldiss [436]
‘Some of your friends have arrived. They say they’re holy, but everyone seems to be holy here. The chief of them doesn’t look holy. He’s too handsome to be holy. He looks naughty to me. Do you like naughty people, King Jandol? – because I think I’m rather naughty.’
He laughed.
‘I think you are naughty. So are most people. Including some of the holy ones.’
‘So it is necessary to be exceptionally naughty to stand out from the crowd?’
‘That’s a reasonable deduction.’
‘Is that why you stand out from the crowd?’
She slipped her hand into his, and he clasped it.
‘There are other reasons. Being a fire god is one.’
‘I find most people are terribly disappointing. Do you know, when my sister was murdered, we found her sitting upright in a chair, fully dressed. No blood visible. That was disappointing. I imagined pools of blood. I imagined people threw themselves all over the place when they were getting killed, as if they hated what was happening.’
JandolAnganol asked in a hard voice, ‘How was she killed?’
‘Zygankes, stabbed right through the heart with a fuggie horn! Father says it was a fuggie horn. Right slap through her clothes and her heart.’ She glanced suspiciously at Yuli, following his master, but Yuli had been dehorned.
‘Were you frightened?’
She gave him a scornful look. ‘I never think about it. At all. Well, I think about her sitting upright, I suppose. Her eyes were still frozen open.’
They entered the tapestried reception hall. Milua Tal’s warning had served to alert JandolAnganol to the arrival of Alam Esomberr and his ‘little rabble of vicars’, as Esomberr had called them. They were surrounded by a crowd of Oldorandan grandees, from whom a bumble of polite regard arose.
The eagle eye of the king, penetrating to the rear of the chamber, observed another familiar figure who, as the king arrived, was being bustled out of a rear door. The figure turned to look back as he left the room and his gaze, despite all the heads in between, met JandolAnganol’s. Then he was gone, and the door closed behind them.
On the entry of the king, Esomberr broke courteously from his companions and came forward to make a bow to JandolAnganol, giving one of his mocking smiles.
‘Here we are, as you see, Jandol, my somewhat ecclesiastical party and I. One twisted ankle, one case of food poisoning, one envoy longing for the fleshpots, otherwise all in good order. Travel-stained, of course, from a preposterously long walk across your domains …’ They embraced formally.
‘I’m glad you are preserved, Alam. You will find the fleshpots rather gloomy here, that’s my impression.’
Esomberr was eyeing the runt standing by the king’s side. He made playfully to pat Yuli, and then withdrew his hand. ‘You don’t bite, do you, thing?’
‘I’m zivilised,’ said Yuli.
Esomberr raised an eyebrow. ‘I don’t want to speak out of turn, Jandol, but will this rather stuffy crowd here, Sayren Stund and company, tolerate even a zivilised you-know-what in their midst? There’s a drumble on at present – to celebrate the death of your betrothed, I gather …’
‘I’ve met no trouble yet – but the C’Sarr arrives soon. You had better get your fleshpotting in before then. By the way, I have just seen my ex-chancellor, SartoriIrvrash. Do you know anything about him?’
‘Hmm. Yes, yes, I do, sire.’ Esomberr rubbed his elegant nose with a finger. ‘He and a Sibornalese lady came upon me and my rabble of vicars shortly after you and your phagorian infantry had trotted on ahead in your brisk, forceful manner. Both he and the Sibornalese lady were on hoxney-back. They journeyed the rest of the way with us.’
‘What business has he in Oldorando?’
‘Fleshpots?’
‘Try again. What did he tell you?’
Alam Esomberr cast his eyes down to the floor as if seeking to recall an elusive memory. ‘Zygankes, travel does soften the mind … hm. Why, I really cannot say, sire. Perhaps you had best ask him yourself?’
‘He had come from Gravabagalinien? Why was he there?’
‘Sire, perhaps he wished to