Steven Erikson - The healthy dead

“It’s fennel, Master,” Emancipor said.

“It is? Well, whatever.”

Head buzzing, the manservant marched over to the weeds and began pulling the thin spidery leaves from the stalks. “I feel like a damned caterpillar.”

“The white and black banded ones?” Bauchelain asked. “I am pleased to inform you that those transform into the most beautiful butterflies.”

Emancipor stared over at his master.

Who stared back.

A moment of silence, then Bauchelain cleared his throat. “Yes, well, off you go, then.”

Imid Factallo wandered down Runner’s Avenue, strange twitches spasming across half his face. They had started up a few days ago, some consequence of the wound he had received in his head, which he’d thought fully healed. But now… in addition to the twitches he was having strange thoughts. Desires. Illicit desires.

He wondered if he and Elas Sil had done the right thing. But it was too late now. That sorceror, Bauchelain, was… frightening. In a peculiar, uncanny way. As if a warm thought had never once entered his mortal soul, and all that hid within was dark and cold. And the stories Imid had heard from the city up the coast… there was said to be a second sorceror, given to hiding, with the most venal appetites. Thus… evil.

A concept Imid had rarely thought about, but now it haunted him. There had been little particularly good about old Necrotus the Nihile. The usual assortment of unsavory indulgences common to those with absolute power. A score of repressive laws intended, as Elas Sil explained, to keep the king rich and free to revel in excess at the expense of the common folk. But if you paid your tithes and killed or robbed nobody important, you could live out your life without once crossing the path of trouble. And of course, such systemic corruption flowed down easily enough, the poison of cynicism infected the lowest city guard as much as it did the king. Bribery solved most problems, and where it couldn’t, swift and brutal violence did. In other words, life was simple, straightforward and easily understood.

And, perhaps, evil. In the way of apathy, of indifference, of tacit acceptance of inhumanity. A cruel king made cruel nobles, who in turn made cruel merchants, and so on down to cruel stray dogs. And yet, Imid Factallo longed for a return to those times. For, it turned out, an earnest king, a king obsessed with goodness, delivered to all below him a certain zeal from which all manner of cruelty derived. Born of harsh judgmentalism-Elas Sil insisted such a word existed, and if didn’t before then it did now-the sheer frenzy of noble ideals put into practice without flexibility or compassion was proving as destructive to the human spirit as anything Necrotus and his ilk may have contrived to inflict upon the people.

Evil possessed myriad faces, and some of them were open and genuine.

Whilst others, like Bauchelain’s, revealed nothing, nothing at all.

Imid could not decide which of the two was more frightening.

He arrived at the home of Elas Sil, knocked thrice as custom dictated, then entered, as the law now permitted since privacy invited… private things. Entered, then, to find her quickly emerging from the curtained backroom, adjusting her tunic with a decidedly guilty expression on her face.

Imid stopped two steps in from the doorway, frozen in horror. “Who’s back there?” he demanded. “He’ll get castrated! And you-you-”

“Oh be quiet, there’s no one back there.”

He stared at her. “You were masturbating! That’s illegal!”

“Nobody’s ever proved the unhealthiness of it, have they?”

“Not physically, no, but emotionally unhealthy! Is there any doubt of that, Elas Sil? Your mind is drawn into base desires, and base desires lead to sordid appetites and sordid appetites leads to temptation and temptation leads to-”

“The end of civilisation. I know. Now, what do you want, Imid?”

“Well, uh, I was coming here to, uh, confess.”

She advanced on him, smelling of women’s parts, and with a growing sneer said, “Confess, Imid Factallo? And what must you confess to a fellow saint, if not temptations? You hypocrite!”

“I confess my hypocrisy! There, satisfied? I’m having… impulses. All right?”

“Oh, never mind,” Elas said, turning away and sitting down on a nearby chair. “It’s all so pathetic, isn’t it? Did you hear? They’re stealing babies, now. If it screams, it’s breaking the law. If children play-fight in the street, they’re breaking the law.” She looked over. “Have you done your required exercises today?”

“No.”

“Why is your face twitching?”

“I don’t know. Must be a side effect.”

“Of good living?”

“Oh, aren’t you funny.”

“Well, should we exercise together?”

Imid’s eyes narrowed. “What do you have in mind?”

“Something seriously illegal. Your visit interrupted me.”

“That’s not exercise!”

“Now there’s a depressing confession for you to make, Imid Factallo. Of course, I could take it as a challenge.”

“You’re disgusting.” He paused. “Say some more disgusting things.”

Emancipor Reese was sweating by the time he passed unaccosted through the city gate. His nerves were jumping wildly and he felt slightly sick. Likely the dust and the stench of ox and mule sweat, he told himself as he jostled among the farmers driving their loaded carts through the narrow passage. With Oponn’s blessing, he would have completed his tasks by tomorrow, and so could return to a sane lifestyle-or, as sane as was possible whilst in the employ of two homicidal masters.

He hoped his wife was living well on his earnings back in Lamentable Moll. The brats would be in school, still, although the eldest might well be apprenticed out by now. It had been four years, after all. A lifetime, given what the manservant had lived through since that fateful drunken day when he’d knocked on the door to Bauchelain’s room at Sorrowman’s Hostel.

She’d have found lovers by now, too, he suspected. Sailors, fishers, maybe even a soldier or two. He didn’t begrudge that, much. It could be a lonely life, being a mother with no husband close by.

Twenty paces in from the gate, Emancipor moved off to stand clear of the carts and braying beasts of burden filing past. He looked round, trying to sense what was different about this place, compared to the countless other cities he had visited. It was quieter, for one thing. Off to the right, at the end of a narrow passage, was something like a square, in which citizens stood in rows waving their arms about and jumping in place. He wondered if these people might also be saints, all of them skull-cracked and now entirely insane. There were few urchins to be seen, and none of the hopelessly destitute begging for coins in the gutters. Indeed, the street looked surprisingly clean.

If this was the good life, then it wasn’t so bad, he concluded.

Of course, it was not going to last. Not with Bauchelain and Korbal Broach scheming its downfall. He felt a pang of regret.

“What are you doing here?”

Emancipor turned. “Excuse me?”

The woman standing before him was wearing white enameled armour, a white cape lined in gold silk. Her face belonged to that of a marble statue carved by some artist obsessed with perfection, down to the pallid dust on her cheeks and to either side of her even, pert nose. The red paint glistening from her lips made it appear she had just drunk a flagon of blood. Cold, hard blue eyes were fixed on his with haughty contempt. “You’re loitering, citizen.”

“Actually, I was hesitating.”

She blinked, then frowned. “Is there a difference?”

“Of course,” Emancipor replied. He considered explaining the difference, then decided not to.