More gasps. Worse, a crowd was gathering in the concourse behind them. Dead and living both.
“Oh,” Elas said behind Imid, “you’re in for it, now.”
The nun lifted her arms out to the sides. “Adjudication is demanded!” she cried out. “The Lady of Beneficence shall speak! From her most Holy Altar, she shall speak!”
A strange, grinding noise came from the blockish stone beside the woman, then, a quavering voice. “Do I smell baby?”
One slap against the massive, flabby cheek, then another, and another and another and “Stop! Please! Don’t hurt me!”
“Nauseo? You awake?”
Bleary, sated eyes blinked up, the woeful expression dwindling away, to be replaced by a scowl. “Ineb Cough. What are you trying to do, kill me?”
“I was trying to wake you!”
“Was I asleep? Not surprising, you know. I’m filled to bursting-what a night! So unexpected!”
Ineb Cough was standing on the Demon of Corpulence’s chest, or he thought he was-might have been just the left breast, since Nauseo Sloven had burgeoned to fill the entire alley, flesh piled up against either wall, more flesh sprawling and tumbled down to just short of the alley-mouth. “Even so,” Ineb said, loosing a beery belch, “I need you up and around. We’ve a journey to make.”
“A journey? Where?”
“Not far, I promise.”
“I can’t. It’ll be too hard. I’m ready to explode-gods, where did all that greed come from?”
Ineb squatted down and scratched his pocked jaw. “All pent up, I suppose. Hiding, lurking. As for the food, well, seen any dogs in the streets? Cats? Horses? Me neither. The night’s been a blood-bath, and it’s not even half done. Who could have imagined all this?”
“What’s happened, then?” Nauseo asked.
“Someone in the city’s gone and hired two necromancers, Nauseo, to bring down this reign of terror.” He pulled at his nose, which was itchy and runny with all the powder stuffed into it. “Seems they’ve made quite a start.”
“Necromancers?”
“Yes. One of them’s a conjurer and binder of demons, too, which makes me very nervous. Nervous, Nauseo, oh yes. Even so, he’s yet to try for me, which I take as a good sign, weak as I was back then.”
“No worries now, though, is there?” Nauseo shifted slightly and mounds of flesh rumbled and rolled beneath Ineb. “We’re too strong, now. There’s not a binder alive who could take us, emboldened as we now are.”
“I expect you’re right. So, it does seem as if these necromancers are staying true to their word. Pluck Macrotus from his throne, prop someone less horrible in his place, and Quaint returns to its normal, sane, decrepit state. Might even be Necrotus himself-the other one raised him, you know.”
“Oh, joy!”
“Anyway, we’ve got to go. Have you seen Sloth lately?”
“Why, she was here earlier-”
From somewhere below came a faint moan.
Those among the denizens still capable of motion had moved on by the time Emancipor Reese spied Bauchelain, his master slowly walking with hands clasped behind his back, pausing every now and then for a word or two with various crippled dead and undead citizens, as he made his casual way towards the palace steps where sat the manservant.
Bauchelain peered up at Emancipor. “Is King Macrotus within?”
Emancipor nodded. “Oh yes, he’s not going anywhere.”
“I was in the company of King Necrotus,” the necromancer said, looking round, “but it would seem we have become separated-there was a mob… well, the details aren’t relevant. I take it, Mister Reese, that you have not been accosted by a corpse intent on entering the palace?”
“Afraid not, Master.”
“Ah, I see. I am curious, has it struck you, Mister Reese, that events have quickened with a decidedly rapacious pace?”
“From the time that Invett Loath charged out of this building behind me, the whole city seems to have lost its mind.”
“Invett Loath?”
“The Paladin of Purity, Master. Lord of the Well Knights. I am afraid…” Emancipor hesitated, “well, uh, I loaned him a kerchief. He’d bloodied his nose, you see. It was just common courtesy, how can I be blamed for that? I mean-”
“Mister Reese, please stop. I so dislike babbling. If I understand you, one of your many kerchiefs is now in the hands of this Paladin. And this is, in your mind, in some way significant.”
“Master, do you recall that D’bayang field we passed through, oh, five, six days past?”
Bauchelain’s eyes narrowed. “Go on, Mister Reese.”
“Well, the buds were open, yes? They call ’em poppies but they aren’t really poppies at all, as I am sure you know. Anyway, the air filled with spores-”
“Mister Reese, the air was not filled with spores, provided one remained on the road. As I recollect, however, there was some tumult, in your mind, at least, that resulted in you running madly through that field-with a kerchief covering your nose and mouth.”
Emancipor’s face reddened. “Korbal Broach asked me to carry that woman’s lungs, the ones he took that morning-Master, they were still breathing!”
“A small favour, then-”
“Forgive me, Master, but it wasn’t small in my eyes! Granted, it was unseemly, my horror and the ensuing panic. I admit it. But anyway. As you know, I so dislike enlivening alchemies-stupor and oblivion, yes, of course, at every opportunity. But enlivening, such as comes from D’bayang poppies? No. I despise that. Hence, the kerchief.”
“Mister Reese, the kerchief you loaned the Paladin was not the one filled with D’bayang spores?”
“Alas, Master, it was. I’d meant to wash it, but-”
“The Paladin was afflicted?”
“I believe so. Of a sudden, zealousness overcame him.”
“Possibly leading to… indiscriminate adjudication?”
“That’s one way of putting it, aye.”
Bauchelain stroked his beard. “Extraordinary. The guise of reasonableness, Mister Reese, permits all manner of intolerance and indeed, pernicious attack. Once that illusion is torn away, however, the terror of oppression becomes a random act, perhaps indeed an all-encompassing one.” He paused, tapped one side of his nose with a long finger, then remorselessly continued, “That chest of coins rightly belongs to you, Mister Reese. Raising the dead? Entirely unnecessary, as it turns out. All that was required was a single, subtle push, at the hands of an innocent, somewhat naive manservant.”
Emancipor stared at the necromancer, desperate to refute the charge, to deny all culpability, yet unable to speak. In his mind, a risible refrain: no, not me, no, no, it wasn’t me. It was him. Who him? Anyone him! Just not me! No, not me, no, no…