Muddle and Win (2 page)

Ugh.

Poor devil.

There’s no visitor now, in the palace of the curvy teeth. There’s a bit more decoration on the ceiling, though. There’s some on the walls and floor too. And scattered around the room  . . .

Well, that’s about half of his chin, over there by the fireplace.

There’s one of his eyes, rolling gently across the floor.

That’s one of his arms.

So is that.

So is that.

You’ve no idea what
that
bit is  . . .

And the air is filled with the laughter of the two fiends, who a moment before had been holding the smaller fiend between them. It’s loud laughter, because they find this sort of thing very funny indeed. And it has that added little note to it which makes you think, maybe, that they’re laughing extra loud and extra long on purpose, to please the person who wields the hammer, and to make it just a little less likely that one day they might be under the hammer themselves.

They troop out, still cackling, to the tap-rattle-tap accompaniment of their knuckles trailing along the floor. Their laughter echoes down long hallways of glowing brass, fading, seeming now to come from all around. Blending with the pervasive hum that isn’t so much heard as felt upon the skin.

It’s another day in Pandemonium.

THE WIELDER OF
the hammer was not laughing.

‘Tiresome,’ he said aloud.

He had a voice like layers and layers of dark, cunningly folded velvet, with all sorts of pockets and corners in which little meanings might be hidden. It was the kind of voice that could make something very little seem rather a lot. And when he sighed, as he did now, the light in the room flickered.

He gathered his rich red robes about him and went to pose before a brass mirror. He wanted to look at something soothing. He was, of course, quite beautiful. His hair was black, gleaming and flowing, curling to fall over the high collar of his cloak. His skin was smooth, his nose straight but not too long. His brows were strong and so was his jaw, on which
he
allowed a fine stubble to grow, as if he didn’t really care how he looked but just happened to be beautiful anyway.

His eyes were a little larger than they should have been, and they were very, very deep. They were the sort of eyes that you might not so much
look
into as
fall
into. And once there you would just go round and round, in the alternating light and darkness, until you forgot even your own name. And when you had forgotten that, you would never come out.

He did not have horns, unlike some of his kind. He did not wear a crown or a coronet either. He did not need to. He simply chose to look beautiful. And he chose that his fiends should all look appallingly ugly, to remind himself, and anyone who saw him, just how beautiful he was.

He also chose that he should be at least four times the size of anyone who worked for him. Size gets you respect, in Pandemonium. And the bright bronze hammer the size of a cathedral bell-clapper, which had just disappeared back inside his robes – yes, that helped too.

(His name? You’ll need to know it. Here  . . .

Corozin

Don’t use it more than you have to, and don’t say it aloud, more than you can help. It’s
really
better not to.)

He looked at himself in the mirror for a while. Then he lifted his hand, curling his long, beautiful fingers just a little to show that he was sensitive as well as strong. And he looked at himself again.

Ah, yes. It was a heart-meltingly beautiful sight. Or would have been, if he had had a heart.

He shifted his feet. Something went
squelch
! The brass floor of his chamber was still littered with bits of his unfortunate visitor. One bloodshot, bulbous eyeball peered up at him, wobbling slightly. He sighed again.

‘Muddlespot.’

A tiny imp appeared, somewhere down at floor level. He was carrying a brush that was almost as tall as he was, and a dustpan that was half again as wide. Both brush and pan were made of brass, of course. Even the bristles of the brush were brass.

‘Clear this up.’

And Corozin went back to admiring himself in the mirror.

The imp was a
very
little imp. His head and body were like two wrinkled peas, of which the slightly smaller one was balanced on top of the larger. He had a long nose and big ears, but his arms were silly little things like the forelimbs of a miniature T. rex and his legs were barely long enough to lift his dumpy body off the floor. Tufts of ginger hair, thick as spines, grew here and there on his grey skin. His eyes were bright and beady. On his head he wore a round red pillbox hat.

He looked around the room. He pursed his little lips and eyed the body parts scattered across the floor. It was an eight, he decided. An eight out of ten. The boss must have been upset. Teeth didn’t normally get embedded in the brass wall.

The imp was used to clearing up after these little events. In fact, he himself had been born in one. It had been soon after Corozin’s former boss had been hauled off down to the lower circles and Corozin had become the boss instead. Someone had disappointed him, had come here and gone
splat
under the hammer, and ended up in bits all over the floor. And Corozin had looked at the mess in distaste.

Then he had picked up one grey, leathery and now-quite-squishy body part in his beautiful long hands. He had selected one hairy, juicy wart, pinched
it
off the skin and spat upon it. Immediately, the wart had swelled up by a factor of about ten, grown a head, four limbs, ears, nose and a pair of bright beady eyes. It had even grown the little pillbox hat.

It had become an imp. A very little little devil. And Corozin had said to it, ‘You are Muddlespot.’

‘Yes, Your Serenity,’ Muddlespot had answered brightly.

‘Clear this up.’

And clearing up was what Muddlespot did. He did not mind the mess. He had got used to the ickiness of it. First he took the big bits and dropped them out of the window. Then he got the brush and swept the loose little bits into his pan, and they went out of the window too. After that he mopped up the squidgy stuff, and burnished the brass floor with the brass bristles of his brush until it shone and no stain was to be seen. Finally he prised out the bits that had got stuck here and there, and beat the brass back into shape with his own little hammer, until it was all smooth and he could polish over those places too.

He did it carefully and well. It was his job. He
liked
being good at the job. He liked the
zing
of his brass-bristled brush across the brass surfaces, and the way dented, stained metal would glow back into life again
with
a little rubbing and attention. It made him feel useful. It made him feel he was wanted, and would go on being wanted for as long as Corozin went on being disappointed in people.

And there was no sign of that changing. In fact, it had been happening rather more than usual just lately. That pile of bits under the window was getting quite large. Soon he’d have to climb up to the next floor, just to be able to carry on dropping things on top of it.

Whisper it low, but Muddlespot was
happy
. What’s more, he was getting away with it, which doesn’t often happen in Pandemonium. But that’s because he was small and no one paid him much attention.

Unless they had a reason.

‘Muddlespot?’

‘Er  . . . yes, Your Serenity?’

Corozin frowned. It was, he admitted to himself, a desperate measure. It had about as much chance as trying to run a ski slope on the lower reaches of Pandemonium. Snowballs in hell. Warts and success. Some things just
didn’t
go together.

But for the time being at least, it wasn’t about success. It was about not admitting failure. It was about Being Seen To Be Doing Something. And if he didn’t do something pretty quickly, he was going to find
himself
under a hammer that would make his own look like a hand-me-down from Tinkerbell.

He reached down with his finger and thumb, picked up the little imp by the scruff of his neck and held him at eye level. ‘You’re not busy, are you?’

The position Muddlespot now occupied was like someone who had been caught on the hook of a giant construction crane and hoisted up about twenty storeys with the crane driver grinning madly at him from inside the cab. The soles of his feet tingled at the thought of the drop below. He had a strong feeling that what he said next would be very, very important. And that ‘Yes’ was definitely the wrong answer. And that ‘No’ was almost certainly wrong too. His hands still clutched his dustpan and brush. In the pan lay two-thirds of the dead fiend’s nostril (and also some of its contents). The nostril rocked, gently.

‘I’m clearing up the mess, Your Serenity,’ he squeaked.

(That’s another of those little rules for Staying Alive in Pandemonium:

 . . . ALWAYS TELL THEM WHAT THEY ALREADY KNOW. KEEP TELLING IT. DON’T CHANGE
YOUR
STORY. WHATEVER YOU DO,
DON’T
SAY ANYTHING THAT THEY MIGHT THINK IS INTERESTING  . . .

Muddlespot hadn’t been out of the palace much, but he’d learned from watching the mistakes of those who strayed into it. Mistake Number One being to attract the boss’s attention in the first place. Quite often, that was all it took.)

‘Muddlespot,’ purred Corozin in his most soothing tones. ‘How many times? It’s Ssse-
rehn
ity. Like that. Slur it, E to E flat, just gracefully. You can do that, can’t you?’

‘Yes, Your Sere-e-enity!’ piped Muddlespot, who was born from a wart and had the musical ability to match.

Corozin winced. ‘I think you said you
weren’t
busy, didn’t you?’

‘I’m just clearing up the—’

‘Oh,
sssup
er! I’m so glad you’re available. I have a job for you. Congratulations, Muddlespot. I’m going to give you your chance. Your big break.’

‘You’re  . . . sending me up?’ said Muddlespot, like a comfortable headquarters clerk who has just been
told
of his transfer to a badly mauled rifle battalion camped out in the shell-holes where he is assured of honour, glory, death and frostbite.

‘Pre
ssise
ly. On a mission of highest importance.’

Muddlespot wilted. The nostril of his former colleague rolled off his pan and disappeared silently into the void beneath his feet.

‘I’m convinced you have the right qualities,’ said Corozin, releasing him. ‘Guards!’

Muddlespot fell all the way to the brass floor, where, still being essentially wart-like, he bounced two or three times. When he had stopped doing that and had picked himself up, he found that the two knuckle-dragging fiends had re-entered the room.

‘Our new agent,’ came Corozin’s voice from on high. ‘For Mission Alpha.’

The guards peered down at him. They were smaller than their master, but still a
lot
bigger than Muddlespot. They had fangs about as long as Muddlespot was tall. They had talons like iron stakes. Their eyes glowed hotly in their grey-black skin.

‘
Muddlespot?!?’
cried one of them.

‘Oh, that’s a good one!’ guffawed the other. ‘That’s a
good
one, Your Serenity, that is!’

‘You mistake me,’ said Corozin, with just that slight drop in his voice that signalled instant danger. The guards stopped laughing at once. They stood to attention.

‘I’ve been watching our young friend for some time,’ Corozin said. He turned to the window, searching his mind for anything good that could be said about someone who was both a wart and a gobbet-raker. ‘He’s very, er, diligent. Obedient. That’s what we need  . . .

‘Besides,’ he added, leaning out over the balcony and observing that the pile of heads, limbs, torsos and entrails of his former agents had grown remarkably since he had last looked at it. ‘Besides, for some reason we seem to be rather short of operatives at the moment. Unless one of you two would like to volunteer?’

‘Oh
no
, Your Serenity!’

‘We wouldn’t dream  . . .’

‘Pressisely,’ said Corozin. ‘Take him away and prepare him.’

‘Er, Your Serenity?’ squeaked Muddlespot, as a guard scooped him up in one claw.

‘
Thank
you, Muddlespot. I look forward to your report of success on Mission Alpha  . . .’

‘But Your Serenity  . . .’

Corozin flashed his most charming smile. ‘ . . . I
really
wouldn’t bother to report anything else.’

‘Come on, Muddlespot,’ growled the guard.

They left their lord admiring himself in the mirror of brass. They ambled down long, sonorous brass corridors and under arches of brass that were decorated with shiny pointed teeth of brass. Muddlespot went with them. He didn’t have much choice. He was about the size of a squash-ball in their claws.

Very like a squash-ball. They even bounced him a couple of times off the floor without thinking about it. He left nasty smudgy marks on the shiny brass carpet, which he would have to clean up later if he ever got a ‘later’ in which to do it.