Mort (24 page)

It was the kind of eating house that didn’t need a menu. You just looked at Harga’s vest.

Still, he had to admit, this new cook seemed to be the business. Harga, an expansive advert for his own high carbohydrate merchandise, beamed at a room full of satisfied customers. And a fast worker, too! In fact, disconcertingly fast.

He rapped on the hatch.

‘Double egg, chips, beans, and a trollburger, hold the onions,’ he rasped.

R
IGHT
.

The hatch slid up a few seconds later and two plates were pushed through. Harga shook his head in gratified amazement.

It had been like that all evening. The eggs were bright and shiny, the beans glistened like rubies, and the chips were the crisp golden brown of sunburned bodies on expensive beaches. Harga’s last cook had turned out chips like little paper bags full of pus.

Harga looked around the steamy café. No one was watching him. He was going to get to the bottom of this. He rapped on the hatch again.

‘Alligator sandwich,’ he said. ‘And make it sna—’

The hatch shot up. After a few seconds to pluck up enough courage, Harga peered under the top slice of the long sarny in front of him. He wasn’t saying that it was alligator, and he wasn’t saying it wasn’t. He knuckled the hatch again.

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I’m not complaining. I just want to know how you did it so fast.’

T
IME IS NOT IMPORTANT
.

‘You say?’

R
IGHT
.

Harga decided not to argue.

‘Well, you’re doing a damn fine job in there, boy,’ he said.

W
HAT IS IT CALLED WHEN YOU FEEL WARM AND CONTENT AND WISH THINGS WOULD STAY THAT WAY
?

‘I guess you’d call it happiness,’ said Harga.

Inside the tiny, cramped kitchen, strata’d with the grease of decades, Death spun and whirled, chopping, slicing and frying. His skillet flashed through the fetid steam.

He’d opened the door to the cold night air, and a dozen neighbourhood cats had strolled in, attracted by the bowls of milk and meat – some of Harga’s best, if he’d known – that had been strategically placed around the floor. Occasionally Death would pause in his work and scratch one of them behind the ears.

‘Happiness,’ he said, and puzzled at the sound of his own voice.

Cutwell, the wizard and Royal Recognizer by appointment, pulled himself up the last of the tower steps and leaned against the wall, waiting for his heart to stop thumping.

Actually it wasn’t particularly high, this tower, just high for Sto Lat. In general design and outline it looked the standard sort of tower for imprisoning princesses in; it was mainly used to store old furniture.

However, it offered unsurpassed views of the city and the Sto plain, which is to say, you could see an awful lot of cabbages.

Cutwell made it as far as the crumbling crenellations atop the wall and looked out at the morning haze. It was, maybe, a little hazier than usual. If he tried hard he could imagine a flicker in the sky. If he really strained his imagination he could hear a buzzing out over the cabbage fields, a sound like someone frying locusts. He shivered.

At a time like this his hands automatically patted his pockets, and found nothing but half a bag of jelly babies, melted into a sticky mass, and an apple core. Neither offered much consolation.

What Cutwell wanted was what any normal wizard wanted at a time like this, which was a smoke. He’d have killed for a cigar, and would have gone as far as a flesh wound for a squashed dog-end. He pulled himself together. Resolution was good for the moral fibre; the only trouble was the fibre didn’t appreciate the sacrifices he was making for it. They said that a truly great wizard should be permanently under tension. You could have used Cutwell for a bowstring.

He turned his back on the brassica-ed landscape and made his way back down the winding steps to the main part of the palace.

Still, he told himself, the campaign appeared to be working. The population didn’t seem to be resisting the fact that there was going to be a coronation, although they weren’t exactly clear about who was going to be crowned. There was going to be bunting in the streets and Cutwell had arranged for the town square’s main fountain to run, if not with wine, then at least with an acceptable beer made from broccoli. There was going to be folk dancing, at sword point if necessary. There would be races for children. There would be an ox roast. The royal coach had been regilded and Cutwell was optimistic that people could be persuaded to notice it as it went by.

The High Priest at the Temple of Blind Io was going to be a problem. Cutwell had marked him down as a dear old soul whose expertise with the knife was so unreliable that half of the sacrifices got tired of waiting and wandered away. The last time he’d tried to sacrifice a goat it had time to give birth to twins before he could focus, and then the courage of motherhood had resulted in it chasing the entire priesthood out of the temple.

The chances of him succeeding in putting the crown on the right person even in normal circumstances were only average, Cutwell had calculated; he’d have to stand alongside the old boy and try tactfully to guide his shaking hands.

Still, even that wasn’t the big problem. The big problem was much bigger than that. The big problem had been sprung on him by the Chancellor after breakfast.

‘Fireworks?’ Cutwell had said.

‘That’s the sort of thing you wizard fellows are supposed to be good at, isn’t it?’ said the Chancellor, as crusty as a week-old loaf. ‘Flashes and bangs and whatnot. I remember a wizard when I was a lad—’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know anything about fireworks,’ said Cutwell, in tones designed to convey that he cherished this ignorance.

‘Lots of rockets,’ the Chancellor reminisced happily. ‘Ankhian candles. Thunderflashes. And thingies that you can hold in your hand. It’s not a proper coronation without fireworks.’

‘Yes, but, you see—’

‘Good man,’ said the Chancellor briskly, ‘knew we could rely on you. Plenty of rockets, you understand, and to finish with there must be a set-piece, mind you, something really breathtaking like a portrait of – of —’ His eyes glazed over in a way that was becoming depressingly familiar to Cutwell.

‘The Princess Keli,’ he said wearily.

‘Ah. Yes. Her,’ said the Chancellor. ‘A portrait of – who you said – in fireworks. Of course, it’s probably all pretty simple stuff to you wizards, but the people like it. Nothing like a good blowout and a blowup and a bit of balcony waving to keep the loyalty muscles in tip-top shape, that’s what I always say. See to it. Rockets. With runes on.’

An hour ago Cutwell had thumbed through the index of
The Monster Fun Grimoire
and had cautiously assembled a number of common household ingredients and put a match to them.

Funny thing about eyebrows, he mused. You never really noticed them until they’d gone.

Red around the eyes, and smelling slightly of smoke, Cutwell ambled towards the royal apartments past bevies of maids engaged in whatever it was maids did, which always seemed to take at least three of them. Whenever they saw Cutwell they would usually go silent, hurry past with their heads down and then break into muffled giggles along the corridor. This annoyed Cutwell. Not – he told himself quickly – because of any personal considerations, but because wizards ought to be shown more respect. Besides, some of the maids had a way of looking at him which caused him to think distinctly unwizardly thoughts.

Truly, he thought, the way of enlightenment is like unto half a mile of broken glass.

He knocked on the door of Keli’s suite. A maid opened it.

‘Is your mistress in?’ he said, as haughtily as he could manage.

The maid put her hand to her mouth. Her shoulders shook. Her eyes sparkled. A sound like escaping steam crept between her fingers.

I can’t help it, Cutwell thought, I just seem to have this amazing effect on women.

‘Is it a man?’ came Keli’s voice from within. The maid’s eyes glazed over and she tilted her head, as if not sure of what she had heard.

‘It’s me, Cutwell,’ said Cutwell.

‘Oh, that’s all right, then. You can come in.’

Cutwell pushed past the girl and tried to ignore the muffled laughter as the maid fled the room. Of course, everyone knew a wizard didn’t need a chaperon. It was just the tone of the princess’s ‘Oh, that’s all right then’ that made him writhe inside.

Keli was sitting at her dressing table, brushing her hair. Very few men in the world ever find out what a princess wears under her dresses, and Cutwell joined them with extreme reluctance but with remarkable self-control. Only the frantic bobbing of his adam’s apple betrayed him. There was no doubt about it, he’d be no good for magic for
days
.

She turned and he caught a whiff of talcum powder. For
weeks
, dammit, for
weeks
.

‘You look a bit hot, Cutwell. Is something the matter?’

‘Naarg.’

‘I’m sorry?’

He shook himself. Concentrate on the hairbrush, man, the hairbrush. ‘Just a bit of magical experimenting, ma’am. Only superficial burns.’

‘Is
it
still moving?’

‘I am afraid so.’

Keli turned back to the mirror. Her face was set.

‘Have we got time?’

This was the bit he’d been dreading. He’d done everything he could. The Royal Astrologer had been sobered up long enough to insist that tomorrow was the only possible day the ceremony could take place, so Cutwell had arranged for it to begin one second after midnight. He’d ruthlessly cut the score of the royal trumpet fanfare. He’d timed the High Priest’s invocation to the gods and then sub-edited heavily; there was going to be a row when the gods found out. The ceremony of the anointing with sacred oils had been cut to a quick dab behind the ears. Skateboards were an unknown invention on the Disc; if they hadn’t been, Keli’s trip up the aisle would have been unconstitutionally fast. And it still wasn’t enough. He nerved himself.

‘I think possibly not,’ he said. ‘It could be a very close thing.’

He saw her glare at him in the mirror.

‘How close?’

‘Um. Very.’

‘Are you trying to say it might reach us at the same time as the ceremony?’

‘Um. More sort of, um, before it,’ said Cutwell wretchedly. There was no sound but the drumming of Keli’s fingers on the edge of the table. Cutwell wondered if she was going to break down, or smash the mirror. Instead she said:

‘How do you know?’

He wondered if he could get away with saying something like, I’m a wizard, we know these things, but decided against it. The last time he’d said that she’d threatened him with the axe.

‘I asked one of the guards about that inn Mort talked about,’ he said. ‘Then I worked out the approximate distance it had to travel. Mort said it was moving at a slow walking pace, and I reckon his stride is about—’

‘As simple as that? You didn’t use magic?’

‘Only common sense. It’s a lot more reliable in the long run.’

She reached out and patted his hand.

‘Poor old Cutwell,’ she said.

‘I am only twenty, ma’am.’

She stood up and walked over to her dressing room. One of the things you learn when you’re a princess is always to be older than anyone of inferior rank.

‘Yes, I suppose there must be such things as young wizards,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘It’s just that people always think of them as old. I wonder why this is?’

‘Rigours of the calling, ma’am,’ said Cutwell, rolling his eyes. He could hear the rustle of silk.

‘What made you decide to become a wizard?’ Her voice was muffled, as if she had something over her head.

‘It’s indoor work with no heavy lifting,’ said Cutwell. ‘And I suppose I wanted to learn how the world worked.’

‘Have you succeeded, then?’

‘No.’ Cutwell wasn’t much good at small talk, otherwise he’d never have let his mind wander sufficiently to allow him to say: ‘What made you decide to become a princess?’

After a thoughtful silence she said, ‘It was decided for me, you know.’

‘Sorry, I—’

‘Being royal is a sort of family tradition. I expect it’s the same with magic; no doubt your father was a wizard?’

Cutwell gritted his teeth. ‘Um. No,’ he said, ‘not really. Absolutely not, in fact.’

He knew what she would say next, and here it came, reliable as the sunset, in a voice tinged with amusement and fascination.

‘Oh? Is it really true that wizards aren’t allowed to—’

‘Well, if that’s all I really should be going,’ said Cutwell loudly. ‘If anyone wants me, just follow the explosions. I –
gnnnh
!’

Keli had stepped out of the dressing room.

Now, women’s clothes were not a subject that preoccupied Cutwell much – in fact, usually when he thought about women his mental pictures seldom included any clothes at all – but the vision in front of him really did take his breath away. Whoever had designed the dress didn’t know when to stop. They’d put lace over the silk, and trimmed it with black vermine, and strung pearls anywhere that looked bare, and puffed and starched the sleeves and then added silver filigree and then started again with the silk.

In fact it really was amazing what could be done with several ounces of heavy metal, some irritated molluscs, a few dead rodents and a lot of thread wound out of insects’ bottoms. The dress wasn’t so much worn as occupied; if the outlying flounces weren’t supported on wheels, then Keli was stronger than he’d given her credit for.

‘What do you think?’ she said, turning slowly. ‘This was worn by my mother, and my grandmother, and her mother.’

‘What, all together?’ said Cutwell, quite prepared to believe it. How can she get into it? he wondered. There must be a door round the back . . .