“The fool in question.”
“That’s where my theories fall apart-the ones about you, Flicker. You’re up to something here.”
“Beyond plain survival?”
“No one’s going to kill you on this journey. You have made sure of that.”
“I have?”
“You snared me and Brash using the old creep, Calap Roud. You hooked Purse Snippet. Now you shamed Tulgord Vise and he needs you alive to prove to you you’re wrong about him.” She looked down at Tiny. “And even him, he’s snagged, too, because he’s not as stupid as he sounds. Just like Steck, he’s riding on your words, believing there are secrets in them. Your magic-that’s what you called it, isn’t it?”
“I can’t imagine what secrets I possess that would be of any use to them.”
She snorted again. “If anybody wants to see you dead and mute, it’s probably Mister Must.”
Well now, that was a cogent observation indeed. “Do you wish to be freed of your brothers or not?”
“Very deft, Flicker. Oh, why not? Free me, sweet hero, and you’ll have my gratitude and resentment both, for all time.”
“Relish, what you do with your freedom is entirely up to you, and the same for how you happen to think about the manner in which it was delivered. As for me, I will be content to witness, as might a kindly uncle-”
“Did you uncle me the other night, Flicker?”
“Dear me, I should say not, Relish.” And my regard descended to Tiny’s round face, so childlike in brainless repose. “You are certain he sleeps?”
“If he wasn’t, your neck would already be snapped.”
“I imagine you are correct. Even so. It is late, Relish, and we have far to walk come the morrow.”
“Yes, Uncle.”
Watching her walk off to find her bedding, I contemplated myriad facets of humanly nature, as I selected the opposite direction in which to resume my wandering. Capemoths circled over my head like the bearers of grim thoughts, which I shooed away with careless gestures. The moon showed its smudged face to the east, like a wink through mud. Somewhere off to my right, lost in the gloom, Sellup was singing to herself as she stalked the night, as the undead will do.
Is there anything more fraught than family? We do not choose our kin, after all, and even by marriage one finds oneself saddled with a whole gaggle of new relations, all gathered to witness the fresh mixing of blood and, if of proper spirit, get appallingly drunk, sufficient to ruin the entire proceedings and to be known thereafter in infamy. For myself, I have always considered this gesture, offered to countless relations on their big day, to be nothing more than protracted revenge, and have of course personally partaken of it many times. Closer to home, as it were, why, every new wife simply adds to the wild, unwieldy clan. The excitement never ends!
Even so, poor Relish. Flaw or not, I vowed that I would have to do something about it, and if this be my weakness, then so be it.
“Flicker!”
The hiss brought me to a startled halt. “Brash?”
The gangly poet emerged from night’s felt, his hair upright and stark, thorn-scratches tracked across his drawn cheeks, his tongue darting to wet his lips and his ears twitching at imagined sounds. “Why didn’t anyone kill him?”
“Who?”
“Apto Canavalian! Who won’t vote for any of us. The worst kind of judge there is! He wastes the ground he stands upon!”
“Arpo Relent attempted the very thing you sought, dear poet, and, alas, failed-perhaps fatally.”
Brash Phluster’s eye’s widened. “The Well Knight’s dead?”
“His Wellness hangs in the balance.”
“Just what he deserves!” snarled the poet. “That murderous bag of foul wind. Listen! We could just run-this very night. What’s to stop us? Steck’s lost somewhere-who knows, maybe Nifty and his fans jumped him. Maybe they all killed each other out there in the desert.”
“You forget, good sir, the Chanters and, of course, Tulgord Vise. I am afraid, Brash, that we have no choice but to continue on-”
“If Arpo dies, we can eat him, can’t we?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“And maybe that’ll be enough. For everyone. What do you think?”
“It’s certainly possible. Now, Brash, take yourself to bed.”
He raked his fingers through his hair. “Gods, it’s not fair how us artists are treated, is it? They’re all vultures! Don’t they see how every word is a tortured excretion? Our sweat drips red, our blood pools and blackens beneath our finger nails, our teeth loosen at night and we stagger through our dreams gumming our words. I write and lose entire manuscripts between dusk and dawn-does that happen to you? Does it?”
“That it does, friend. We are all cursed with ineffable genius. But consider this, perhaps we each are in fact not one, but many, and whilst we sleep in this realm another version of us wakens to another world’s dawn, and sets quill to parchment-the genius forever beyond our reach is in fact his own talent, though he knows it not and like you and I, he frets over the lost works of his nightly dreams.”
Brash was staring at me with incredulous eyes. “That is cruelty without measure, Flicker. How could you even imagine such diabolical things? A thousand other selves, all equally tortured and tormented! Gods below!”
“I certainly do not see it that way,” did I reply. “Indeed, the notion leads me to ever greater efforts, for I seek to join all of our voices into one-perhaps, I muse, this is the truth of real, genuine genius. My myriad selves singing in chorus, oh how I long to be deafened by my own voice!”
“Yearn away,” Brash said, with a sudden wicked grin. “You’re doomed, Flicker. You just made me realize something, you see. I am already deafened by my own voice, meaning I already am a genius. Your argument proves it!”
“Thank goodness for that. Now, sing yourself off to sleep, Brash Phluster, and we will speak more of this upon the morning.”
“Flicker, do you have a knife?”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m going to make Apto vote for me even if I have to kill him to do it.”
“That would be murder, friend.”
“We are awash in blood already, you fool! What’s one little dead critic more? Who’d miss him? Not me. Not you.”
“A dead man cannot vote, Brash.”
“I’ll force him to write a proxy note first. Then we can eat him.”
“I sincerely doubt he would prove palatable. No, Brash Phluster, you will receive no weapon from me.”
“I hate you.”
Off he stormed, in the manner of a golit bird hunting snakes.