The Bookman - Lavie Tidhar [28]
It was not a royal lizard, a Les Lézard, but rather an animal, that walked on four legs and was dark brown, with yellow bands crossing its naked body like warpaint. It raised its head and hissed loudly at the audience, a long, forked tongue darting out like a weapon.
The umpire took a step back, swallowed, glanced again at the balcony and said, apparently determined to play his role through to the end, regardless of possible consequences – "And in the other corner, all the way from the savannahs of the Dark Continent, the reigning champion – it's the Red King!"
The lizard that entered the ring second was not red – it was more olive-brown, Orphan thought, and mostly without bands – but it looked fierce, and as soon as it saw Goliath it raised its head and hissed, and the two lizards began circling each other, while the umpire exited the ring with a look of relief on his pale face.
The Red King inflated its neck. The other lizard backed away, then hissed. Its tail lashed against the floor, and metal flashed. A long, silver knife was attached to Goliath's tail. Orphan felt sick, and suddenly terrified by the obscenity of the scene. He looked up and saw the two lizards on the balcony standing immobile, and beside them the fat man, who was looking not at the ring but at him, Orphan.
Sweat dampened his palms. He looked around him, seeking a way out, but the one door was shut and Mother Jolley was leaning against it with a body as heavy and shapeless as a sack of grain. She is a barricade, he thought. She would not let me through.
The Red King rose on its hind legs. It stood tall, and the silent crowd fell back as if cowed – or as if faced with a superior, a royal lizard. The Red King's tongue darted out, tasting the air.
Goliath struck.
The giant lizard darted forward and its tail lashed at its standing opponent. The knife cut into flesh and the Red King fell down. Its jaws closed around Goliath's neck and its claws dug into Goliath's body. The two lizards rolled on the floor, biting and clawing at each other. The Red King's tail lashed at Goliath and inflicted a wound.
"Watch." It was barely a whisper. Beside Orphan, Jack's eyes were moving wildly, looking on the audience, on the fight, on the balcony with its royal watchers. Jack's pupils swam in his eyes like foulweather moons.
Orphan looked at the crowd. They stood away from the ring, immobile and silent until they seemed like statues. He searched for Marx and found him standing to one end. They were all cowled, he realised. Something about the audience… and then he realised.
It was not merely human.
Slowly, he found them. Following Jack's gaze, his own instinct. The lizards standing in the crowd. The hint of a tail, the impression of an elongated snout. Les Lézards.
Caliban's get was at the King's Arms.
In the ring, the two fighting lizards disengaged and withdrew from each other, hissing. Deep cuts could be seen in both their bodies, and they left bloodied footprints on the floor.
Goliath inflated its throat. The Red King hissed and stood on its hind legs again. Goliath followed it, and the two lizards stood and faced each other. They were a grotesque parody, Orphan thought. Like two princes stripped of their finery of clothes and of their title, undressed of civilisation. They were two savages, fighting for the entertainment of their brothers and their former servants.
Is this what Jack wanted me to see? he wondered. How his hatred of the lizards could be justified, that they would allow such a thing to be, that they would glory in it? And yet, there were humans there too, allowed to watch this degradation, and to enjoy it. It was a dangerous game Jack was playing, he realised. Orphan had thought him a mere public-house revolutionary, safe amidst his intellectual friends, his harmless Tesla set and his illicit printing press, but it wasn't so. He was a different thing altogether, much more dangerous and unexpected than he had ever seemed to Orphan: