The Stranger's Woes (16 page)

Kamshi was already sitting in the driver’s seat. He looked at us and said coldly, “Are we going?”

“We are,” I said. “Anday, old friend, you sit in front. You take up so much room! No offense.”

“Yes, there’s a lot of me,” Anday said. “It’s no matter. I’m never offended when someone is just stating the facts. Only uneducated philistines object to that.”

“Ha! Get a load of that, Max.” Melamori looked at me and laughed.

Captain Shixola hesitated a moment, then burst out laughing himself. Anday looked at them in supercilious surprise. Then I smiled, too, ever so slightly. I didn’t even have the strength for that.

I rolled up in a ball on the back seat and laid my head in Lady Melamori’s lap. My feet were propped up against poor Shixola’s hips. I knew it was bad manners, but I wasn’t capable of resisting the urge. I slept soundly in spite of the hefty portion of Elixir of Kaxar I had downed and the deliciously disturbing lap of Lady Melamori beneath my left ear.

It was the first time since my return from Kettari that I had fallen asleep without wrapping the notorious kerchief of the Grand Magician of the Order of the Secret Grass around my neck. Sir Juffin Hully adamantly discouraged such experiments, and I didn’t have the least desire to risk finding out what the consequences of neglecting it might be. But now I didn’t even think about my talisman. It had slipped my mind completely.

I had no idea what I dreamed about, but I woke up none too cheerful. This in itself was unusual, considering how much Elixir of Kaxar I had recently imbibed.

“We’re almost in Echo, Max. Wake up,” Melamori said, tugging at my nose playfully. “I don’t think I can take a step. Your head weighs a dozen tons or more!”

“But of course. It’s where I keep all my clever thoughts,” I said, straightening my stiff back with difficulty. “How long did I sleep?”

“I guess about five hours. Kamshi didn’t race. He crawled like an old man in his cups. He wanted to spare your loyal slaves, I suppose. Right, Sir Kamshi?”

“I just didn’t want them to get left behind,” the lieutenant said. “Sir Max, she pestered me the whole way. Tell her I can’t go any faster.”

“If you think I’m an expert on the optimal speed of living corpsepedestrians, you are sadly mistaken. Do you think things like this happen to me every dozen days?” I mumbled sleepily, reaching into my pocket for the bottle of reviving liquid and looking aghast at the horrific procession straggling behind us. “Everyone here? I don’t want to have to scour the country roads, rounding up the ones that got left behind.

“No one fell behind, Sir Max. I was watching to make sure the whole way,” Shixola said.

“The whole way? You poor thing,” I said with sincere sympathy. “You could have looked away now and then. I’m forever in your debt, Shixola.”

“Well, I must admit, I did turn around once or twice,” the captain said.

“And it’s good you did. How’s it going, Blackbeard Junior?” I placed my hand on the plumply rounded shoulder of my heroic chronicler.

“The article is finished. Everyone can take it easy,” Anday said cheerfully. “Want to read it? You’ll catch, Max, I just know it.”

“That’s for sure,” Melamori laughed. “After an article like that they’ll put up statues of both of us, Max. Yours will be a bit taller than mine. But the biggest of all will be Sir Anday’s, of course. Gurig’s will just have to move over. Did I catch, Sir Anday?”

“Yes. Catch it she did,” Anday said, a bit annoyed. He seemed to be talking not to us but to his favorite interlocutor: himself.

“Well?” I said to Melamori. “Should it come out in print?”

“Should it? It must—after Sir Rogro cuts a few strong passages about how reluctant the policemen were to enter the ravine, of course. And he will cut them, believe me. It is the truth, naturally, but you can understand the boys. And eventually they did go down into the ravine. That’s something I never would have done. You have to be more magnanimous with people, Sir Anday. Have a heart. We are such fragile things, and our inner workings are so delicate.”

Anday grumbled something under his breath. Lieutenant Kamshi looked at him in frank disapproval but kept silent.

“That’s all right,” I said. “Magnanimity is an acquired trait since it’s a side effect of the good life and the offspring of prosperity. As for Anday Pu, all that is still ahead of him as far as I can tell.” I patted him on the back. “Don’t worry, hero. If Lady Melamori is satisfied, I won’t even bother to read it now. I’ll read it in the paper, that’s more fun.”

“Oh, come on. It won’t kill you to read it now,” he said, his grumpy petulance giving way to unbridled enthusiasm. “You were really smoking back there,Max! The heroes from the days of yore would have taken a back seat to you. You catch? It was really something!”

“I hear you. And they do, too.” Grinning, I waved my hand in the direction of the window.

The streets of the Capital were swarming with astonished citizens. They stared in unfeigned horror at the gloomy procession of the undead from the Magaxon Forest.

“I never knew Echo was so full of do-nothings and gawkers.”

“You can’t blame them. A sight like this would make just about anyone drop everything and come out to look. I wouldn’t want to miss a parade like this, either,” Captain Shixola said.

“Can I get out here, Max?” Anday said. “It’s a stone’s throw to the editorial offices of the
Royal Voice
, and I may be able to get the story in for the evening edition.”

“Sure you can. Why ask? You’re a free man, praise be the Magicians.”

Kamshi stopped the amobiler, and Anday jumped into the street with remarkable agility, shouting good day to us as he was already disappearing into the crowd.

“Well, what do you think of my find?” I asked Melamori.

“The dinner’s over once and for all,” she said. “The first half hour he really did write the article. After that he regaled me with stories of his student days and his adventures at the Court. He has such a sweet accent. I would have died of boredom if it hadn’t been for Sir Anday. You were napping, Shixola didn’t take his eyes off your moribund regiment, and Kamshi pretended he couldn’t look away from the road—though at a pace like that, the amobiler could have gotten along without any driver at all.”

Lieutenant Kamshi didn’t say a word. He was sick and tired of the whole conversation, I think.

I don’t know about my fellow picnickers, but I was darned glad to see the old walls of the House by the Bridge. It’s so nice and quiet. Here Juffin Hully was in charge, and he would save me from this bunch of obedient corpses. For some reason it was extraordinarily unpleasant for me to look upon the fruits of my most recent exploits. I couldn’t come up with any rational explanation for how I was feeling.

Sir Juffin came out to greet us. He gazed at the eccentric crew, snorted in amusement, cocked his head, and began barking out orders, to my great relief.

“Melamori, go home to rest. Scram! This monster in the Mantle of Death has run you ragged. If I need you, I’ll call. Max, stop looking so mournful. If you don’t smile right this second, I’m sending for the healers. And hurry up and hide this treasure in the small cell next to our office. I’m talking about Jiffa, not Lady Melamori. Then come back to your morbid flock, and help Shurf deal with them. You stay here for a few minutes, boys, and guard the quarry. By the way, which one of you decided to invite Sir Max on this picnic? Was it you, Kamshi? I’m curious.”

“No. It was Shixola’s idea. I insisted we should be acting on our own since the Magaxon Forest had never fallen under your jurisdiction. Besides, I had been planning the operation so long I really wanted to carry it out myself,” Kamshi admitted.

“Really?Well, good going, Shixola. You’re making progress. Intuition like that is very valuable. What are you waiting for, Sir Max? Come on, lead Sir Jiffa away and take a stone off my heart.”

“You, and you,” I said, gesturing toward the dead brigands who were holding the leather-bound mummy, the captive but not conquered Jiffa. “Come with me. All the rest of you, wait for me here. Understand? Forward, commandos!”

“Understood, Master!” they mumbled submissively.

“Wonderful!” Juffin said in triumph. “You’re a born emperor, Max. Or, at the very least, a prince. And you said you didn’t like giving orders.”

“I hate it,” I said bitterly.

“But you’re good at it. You’ll get used to it. You’ll have to.”

“I hope not. I prefer killing outright.” I threw an acerbic glance at Kamshi, remembering the recent accusations of cruelty. What an idiot I was for getting upset. A reputation like that is very valuable in our profession. It should be guarded at all costs.

We deposited Jiffa in the small, narrow cage of a room, the secret door to which was located in the far corner of the office Juffin and I shared. The cell was just what was required: it was a miniature version of Xolomi. Leaving it, casting spells or practicing magic in it, and even using Silent Speech were all impossible. It was a sort of detention center for particularly hardened cases. I had never known it to be occupied, so Jiffa was a reminder of the glorious traditions of the beginning of the Code Epoch when this, the most reliable cell in the whole Ministry of Perfect Public Order, was never empty, even for a day.

“Put him down on the floor,” I told my loyal subjects. “Like that, yes. Oh, I almost forgot. You can remove the gag from his mouth. Let him curse—it’s every man’s right. I’m for freedom of speech, even when it’s objectionable. As long as I don’t have to hear it myself.”

Truth be told, they didn’t give a rat’s rear about my high-mindedness. They removed the gag, so Jiffa managed to wish us a pleasant journey, but a bit too eloquently for my taste.

The rest of the corpses continued their aimless shuffling in the corridor. Sir Juffin had already rushed off somewhere on other matters. And my comrades-in-arms, the brave police officers, their faces pale with rage, were listening to the harangue of their immediate superior, Captain Foofloss.

I started eavesdropping. Unbelievable. Foofloss was berating my heroic colleagues for not wearing their belts. I had always known that Foofloss was a bigger cretin than Boboota, but just how much bigger had escaped me till now.

“I think the best thing you could do would be simply to shut up and go to a tavern, Captain,” I said amicably. “As for your subordinates’ belts, at the present time they are adorning the wrists and ankles of a dangerous criminal, whom your gentlemen officers and I have just detained. I could go into detail, but as far as I know, you have a hard time understanding human speech. So please don’t interfere when your men are doing their jobs.”