The New Weird - Ann VanderMeer [111]
"It's a test," she said, as she adjusted the position of her tiara atop her spiraling platitudes of hair and stamped out her cigarette. Heels were not the best footwear for the planks and cobblestones of Gile, but she wore them anyway. I thought the mink stole a little much, but who was I to say? To look the Conscience of the King, I wore one of his finer suits, a silk affair with winged collar and matching cape. In addition, I borrowed a large signet ring encrusted with diamonds. We left the Philosopher General in deep meditation and went forth as royalty, past the heap of fish skeletons, toward the boardwalk that led to the tavern.
The tavern keeper had known the countess in her earlier life and was pleased to see her doing so well. We asked if he had beheld the foreign healer and he told us he had.
"A short fellow," he said, "with a long beard. All he wears is a robe and a pair of boots." The tavern keeper laughed. "He comes in every day a little after sunrise and has me make him a drink he taught me called Princess Jang's Tears. It ends with a cloud of froth at the top and a constant green rain falling in a clear sky of gin toward the bottom of the glass. I'd say he knows a thing or two."
I ordered two of them for us, using gold coin as payment. The tavern keeper was ecstatic. We sat by the large front window that looked out across harbor and bay. Neither of us spoke. I was contemplating my transformation over the past years from unwanted vagrant to the executor of a kingdom, and I am sure by the look in Frouch's eyes, she was thinking something similar. The strange drink was bittersweet, cool citrus beneath a cloud of sorrow. Then the doorbell rang and our healer entered.
The tavern keeper introduced us, and the healer bowed so low as to show us his star-shaped bald spot. He told us his name was unimportant but that his reputation was legendary even on the remote Island of the Barking Children.
"You are far flung," the countess said to him, "but can you cure loss?"
"I can cure anything, Countess," was his reply.
"Death?" I asked.
"Death is not a disease," he said.
He agreed to accompany us back to the palace if we would have a drink with him. The tavern keeper created a round of Princess Jang's Tears on the house, and we sat again at the table near the window.
"I feel you have a strong connection to this place, Countess," said the healer.
"You're as sharp as a stick of butter," she said, and lit a cigarette.
"Do you regret your days here?" he asked her.
"If I did, I would have to regret life," she said, turning her face to the window. Princess Jang's Tears were not the only ones to fall that morning.
The healer nodded and took his drink in a way that showed me he might have a regret or two himself. My hope was that these disappointments did not stem from the health of his patients.
We rode back to the palace in perfect silence. The healer sat next to Frouch, and I across from them. As the carriage bounced over the poorly maintained road from Gile, I studied the man we had hired. His face, though half-hidden by a gray beard, showed its age yet still shone with a placid vitality. I knew he was smiling, though his lips did not move. On the palms of each of his hands were tattoos of coiled snakes. The robe he wore did not appear to be some form of foreign dress but in all reality a cheap, flannel bathrobe that might be worn by a fisherman's wife. Around his neck hung an amulet on a piece of string ― an outlandish fake ruby orbited by glass diamonds set in a star of tin-painted gold. His small burlap sack of belongings squirmed at my feet.
"The young man's grief will consume him if I don't take drastic measures," the healer said to me after he had spent a day studying His Royal. We sat in the dining hall at the western end of that table which was so long and large, we at court called it the island. It was late and most of the palace was asleep. I sipped at coffee and the healer crunched viciously away at a bowl of locust