The Poisons of Caux: The Hollow Bettle (Book I) (9 page)

idal Verjouce was a terrible man—that, no one could dispute. But in the way of the day, where there was no shortage of terrible ladies or gentlemen, no one would dare speak directly to the Guild’s Director of his terribleness. Not even as a compliment, the way King Nightshade might be flattered when reminded of his own somewhat lesser brand of awfulness. Verjouce was the kind of terrible that even frightened King Nightshade, although he was loath to admit such.

Even if Verjouce weren’t such a frightening apparition, his glowering countenance and vicious tongue were enough to give children nightmares. He stood head and shoulders above his cowering subrectors, with a mane of long hair parted severely down the center of his scalp—its shade one that was hard to pinpoint, almost devoid of color, as if all the pigment were somehow leached out of it.

Yet it was Verjouce’s eyes that were by far his most frightening feature—not because where his eyes once were now rested only hollow pits and discolored knots of scar tissue. The frightening thing, about his eyes was that
he
I
was the source of his own disfigurement
—having
I
blinded himself with his own hands to devote himself more fully to the sense of taste.

So it was that Vidal Verjouce was in need of an assistant who could help him negotiate the daily obstacles of the temporal world—the stairs, the curbs, the cobblestones. A glorified guide dog. This assistant must be discreet, since the Guild’s Director was indisputably the most powerful
man in Caux (a fact known to everyone, except, perhaps, the Nightshades). He must be loyal and reliable and detail-oriented. Luckily for Sorrel Flux, appearances did not matter.

Sorrel Flux had been Vidal Verjouce’s trusted assistant for many years. He had come to know the Guild’s Director in ways that no one should. Because, arguably, one of the best talents Flux possessed was the ability to recognize and coddle a meal ticket, Sorrel Flux tried never, ever to disappoint his master.

“Clearly you have failed me.” Verjouce’s voice was cold and severe and, to Sorrel Flux’s horror, directed at him. “There is no girl with you?” The blind man turned his unseeing face this way and that, searching.

They were being lulled by the train’s steady passage along the tracks.

“Director,” Flux heard his voice whimper,
“please
. There was an unexpected group of Nightshade sentries—”

“Your laziness is exceed only by your fallibility.”

The Guild’s most frightening Director was tapping his cane—a cane he used not to negotiate his way around the world of the seeing, but rather to intimidate and torture.

“Something about unpaid taxes—” Flux yelped.

“You were to see to the affairs of the tavern during your stay—were you not?”

Flux looked suddenly sheepish.

“On second thought,
nothing
surpasses your laziness,” Verjouce hissed.

“They took over the tavern—”

“So you’ve managed to involve the Crown.”

Sorrel Flux swallowed nervously—his turkey neck bobbing with the effort. The Guild’s Director had been very explicit on this point—do not under any circumstances involve the Nightshades in this little adventure.

“Answer me. Have you brought me the girl?” Verjouce once more asked, the pits of his eyes burning into Sorrel Flux’s own.

“No.” Flux barely spoke the word, he was so horrified. “The girl escaped.”

The Director just stared at him, almost seeing, with those awful sightless eyes, for the remainder of the trip to Templar. By the time the Ambrosia—the Guild’s private train—pulled into the glass and iron arches of the Templar terminal, Flux was a complete, wilted mess.

n the ancient walled city of Templar, Arsenious Nightshade was suffering badly from a cramp in his royal foot. The king shifted his weight clumsily In an evil twist of fate, he was made twice discomforted, first by his tragic disfigurement and then by the absence of his favorite royal throne. In the chaos of the move, it had been waylaid. So he suffered standing upright, although he would much prefer to be sitting, making the afternoon a tormented one for the rest of the palace. Occasionally, he mopped his royal brow as he stared unenthusiastically out the window to the royal balcony, and the square below.

It had been over a year since he’d drawn the country’s attention to his embarrassing disfigurement—against his better judgment. Still, no cure had been found for his hideous club-foot. The embarrassment of going public was hardly worth it—except to the queen, who happily tortured all the failures.

He’d endured smelly ointments and mustard poultices, bitter teas and mud baths. Still, he suffered so, enduring shooting pains and muscle spasms. As he agonized, he tried not to remind himself of just how old the city was—he hated anything old, creaky, or dusty, and this sack of stones his wife called a castle was just that. The only reason they came here at all was because his wife
insisted
. She preferred to celebrate the Festival of the Winds here—she thought the acoustics were impeccable, and acoustics were important to her because it amplified the suffering she planned to cause.

The King of Caux cast a quick glance at a hulking monstrosity of an armchair masquerading as a throne upon the dais. His
spare
throne, his footmen had called it, but he knew it for what it was: a filthy antique. He longed for the one he sat on for most of the year in Kruxt, to the south, where he had moved Caux’s capital in a stroke of genius after assuming power. The sun, the beach, the palms—the climate was much more agreeable down there, with nothing to remind him of the ticklish subject of, well, his subjects. Templar was decidedly gloomy, and this was coming from a man who liked gloom—even invited it into as many lives as he could. The whole city was filled with antiques. He shuddered, sneaking another look at the old Verdigris throne.

The king was in a hard place. He liked all the pomp and trappings of royalty—what Nightshade wouldn’t?—but anything with a pedigree older than his own reign caused him
enormous anxiety, guaranteeing a cold sweat and occasionally even resulting in welts and boils.

Arsenious limped around so his back faced the window.

The King of Caux, the notorious King Nightshade, was a small man and painfully thin to look at. The dull light of the gray morning added nothing to his dreary complexion from the front and almost gave up entirely as he turned away. His long sparse beard was trimmed in the fashion of the times, and as he picked at it absentmindedly, he was joined by perhaps the more infamous of the pair—the queen.

In she walked, briskly, and the king’s mood lifted momentarily. She looked around like she meant business—always exciting for the king. Queen Artilla, pale and dark-haired, was ever so wicked. King Nightshade was wicked, too, but even he would freely admit that his wife’s wickedness trumped his own quite handsomely. It was for this reason that he loved her.

“Ohhh,” the king groaned. “Artilla! I am most miserable. Please, dear, lift my spirits, won’t you?”

“The king decrees he is most miserable!” loudly cried the Royal Diarist, writing in a parchment roll from the corner of the room.

The king, at the queen’s urging, had thoroughly begun to document his royal life for the history books. Caux was, after all, still a literary land—even though King Nightshade had most of the ancient books burned—and the king, fancying himself a bit of a poet, wanted history to favor him.

“What else is new?” asked the queen, rolling her eyes. She had little patience for people’s suffering unless she’d caused it.

Not sufficiently comforted by the queen, King Nightshade turned to his right, where in an enormous overstuffed wheelchair sat his twin brother, although, to look at the two, one would hardly know of their relation. This gluttonous lump was Prince Francis. The prince was stone-deaf, and when he wasn’t sleeping, he was eating. (As with most people who are missing one of the five senses, he compensated with one of the other four.)

The king gave his brother a withering look, and knowing his audience, he turned instead to complain to the general room, containing the usual assortment of indentured servants, led by the dim-witted Lowly Boskoop.

“Perhaps it was the long journey, my king?” suggested Lowly Boskoop, whose duties required him to endure not only the trip from Kruxt with the royal family each year, but the indignity of his name.

“The journey? The journey, you say? The journey I make every blasted Windy Season to this damp and dismal castle?”

“Perhaps a touch of indigestion?” tried another helpful aide. The room was filled with helpful aides, each hoping to make it through the day.

“A touch of something, that’s for sure.” The queen sighed.

“You are not helping, Artilla. A little sympathy is in order. If you were feeling poorly, I assure you I’d turn the kingdom upside down for something to make you better.”

“Yes, but I
never
feel poorly,” quipped the queen.

“Perhaps the bicarbonate you liked so much last time?” offered Lowly Boskoop. Bicarbonate was Lowly Boskoop’s failsafe cure for all ills—he used it often and for anything, but primarily because he frequently ate too much treacle.

“Oh, let me see if I follow you,
Lowly
Boskoop. You’re suggesting bicarbonate will help my foot cramp?”

“You might try it, Arsenious—” the queen attempted.

“What kind of thoughtless buffoon do I have in my service? Are you even qualified to dispense this advice? Perhaps you have a diploma, then? From the school of
Quackery?
Who even authorized you to speak, you vulgarian?!” The king looked around the room, fuming. He paused theatrically.

He felt a poem coming on—and instinctively, everyone in the room cringed. When intelligible, his poems featured awful acts of unkindness and injury, and often the listener was reminded of his previous meal. But to the great relief of his captive audience, the king, after a creative pause, continued with his lecture.

“What if this is the work of a treacherous poisoner? Has anyone thought about that? What if I, the king, have been poisoned cruelly? Would you feel foolish offering him a
bicarbonate of soda?!” The
king’s tone was now high-pitched.

“Woe be it to the fool who offers the King of Caux a cure, for he prefers to suffer!” cried the Royal Diarist.

The king sagged, deflated.

“You have not been poisoned, Arsenious.” The queen sighed again. “You have a foot cramp. Besides, you barely eat! Your brother sees to that—” The queen pointed a jeweled finger at the prince, who indeed served as King Nightshade’s trusted taster. Beside the king, the prince stirred, but seeing no food before him, he settled back into sleep.

“If a king can’t trust his own brother, who can he trust?” said King Nightshade defensively. He had become quite reliant on his twin—he liked the fact that he wasn’t forced into idle chitchat with someone from the Guild. Thinking of the Guild, the king looked around the room.

“Any sign of the Director?”

“Ugh. That man. Don’t you see enough of him in Kruxt?”

“Artilla. Please.”

“He better be bringing me someone good this time,” the queen said. “You did remember to ask him, Arsenious, didn’t you?”

The queen, as usual, was in need of a new taster. The king had forgotten to ask.

“Of course, my dear,” he said.

“They keep sending me amateurs.”

“Artilla. The reason you are in need, yet again, of a taster is that you keep finishing them off. No one, my dear, stands a chance against you.”

“You compliment me so.”

She took a moment to admire her bejeweled hands,
whereupon one finger sat an especially large and dangerous-looking green ring.

When she looked up, the tall and imposing figure of the Guild’s Director stood silently before her, a slightly evil smirk playing about his lips.

The king sat up as if stung by a bee.

“Everyone,” he ordered, “OUT!”