Hugh Cook - The Worshippers and the Way

No, it was not that kind of revolution at all.

Instead, there was a settling of scores, a plundering of moneylenders, a vandalistic wantonage of arson for the hell of it, and much japing destruction in imitation of the careless saturnalia of the Festival of the Dogs.

So what could Fax salvage from this debacle?

Well – the death of Polk the Cash, of course!

Fax knew the fair Penelope Flute to be in danger of being enslaved by Polk, who had taken unfair advantage of Penelope's poverty to obtain a mortgage on her flesh. Very well. Fax would take advantage of the confusion of the night to dispose of Polk.

Then, if he could later win the heart of the voluptuous Penelope, he would confess the secret of that murder, thus confirming her in her love for him.

With that thought in mind, Fax headed into the commercial center of Actus Dorum. Here every Ethnos Minor was to be found, for the place was home not just to the Pang of Dalar ken Halvar but also to a motley rabble of Ebrell Islanders, Southsearchers, failed wizards, Ashdan ethnologists and others who had come to the imperial heartlands by way of the trade routes.

But when Fax found Polk's house, the moneylender was not there. Instead, Polk the Cash had gone to the Frangoni rock. This – or so said Polk's neighbors – was so that the noseless moneylender could take into protective custody the young Frangoni maiden Onica, youngest daughter of Asodo Hatch. It was known to the neighbors that Onica had mortgaged herself to Polk, and they claimed that the noseless one had decided that his investment needed special protection on this most uncertain of nights.

So Fax hurried to the Frangoni rock, firm in his intent to ambush Polk at or near Hatch's house, then beat the moneylender to death.

Well.

The neighbors were both right and wrong.

Polk's neighbors were right in thinking that the noseless one had taken himself off to House Takabaga. But he had not gone there with any confiscation in mind. Rather, he had gone there in search of his own protection. It is harder to imagine a greater compliment than this: that a moneylender should take refuge with the most mercilessly plighted of his creditors at a time of general riot verging on wholesale revolution. Yet Polk the Cash – who rightly counted himself an excellent judge of character – had paid the Family Hatch this compliment.

Thus when Scorpio Fax came bursting into House Takabaga, he found Polk seated cross-legged upon a meal-mat, enjoying a bowl of scorpion soup. And when Fax called upon Polk to come outside and be murdered, the effect of this call was to precipitate violence.

This violence woke from sleep the slumbering Asodo Hatch, who came stumbling from the bedroom in a state of dazed bewilderment, to find Scorpio Fax sprawled full-length on the beaten earth of the floor, with the shards of a soup pot scattered around him.

Explanations followed, explanations to which Fax reluctantly added once he had recovered consciousness. Whereupon Asodo Hatch, who was not at all amused, declared Fax to be his prisoner, and further declared that he would deliver this prisoner to Na Sashimoko that very night.

Frangoni: the purple people of Parengarenga. Those who dwell in Dalar ken Halvar keep themselves very much to themselves to themselves on the great rock known as Cap Uba, west of the Dead Mouth and east of the commercial center known as Actus Dorum.

There in the temple of Isherzan they worship the Great God Mokaragash, the Resurrector of Souls. The ethnarch of the Frangoni of Dalar ken Halvar is Sesno Felvus, who is also and necessarily the High Priest of the Great God Mokaragash.

This bowl has fed from

Strangers whose offence

Is spoken by their saliva, by the grub Which lives between their lips and sings Of locust-lust and slime Thicker than worms.

I would have the food of my own people,

But here devour, perforce,

The bedbug's tapeworm,

The brandling's red and yellow,

The bloodworm's grease:

And eat my words in whispers in the night, Lost in the heartland of an alien dust.

So it came to pass that, early on the night of the Day of Three Fishes, just three days short of Dog Day, Asodo Hatch was woken from sleep to find Dalar ken Halvar in disorder and Scorpio Fax sprawled full-length on the floor of House Takabaga.

After formally taking Fax a prisoner, Asodo Hatch then with equal formality invited Polk the Cash to enjoy the hospitality of House Takabaga during these times of uncertainty.

"I have it on good information," said Hatch, improvising a lie of some cunning, "that the revolutionaries now on the loose in the city have a death-list, and that your name is near the top of that list."

Of course, the noseless one did not need the encouragement of such lies, but Hatch wanted to make sure. For Hatch hoped that by sheltering Polk in this time of trouble he would thereafter obtain some amelioration of his financial burdens. Polk, for his part, readily accepted Hatch's invitation, and had grace enough to conceal the fact that just such an invitation had already been extended to him by Talanta and Onica.

With the affairs of the moment thus arranged, Hatch confirmed to one and all that he intended to take Scorpio Fax to Na Sashimoko, the ruling palace of the City of Sun. Having made that announcement, Hatch hauled Fax away into the night.

"All right," said Fax, once they were out of earshot of House Takabaga. "You can let me go now."

"Let you go!" said Hatch. "What makes you think I'm going to let you go!"

"I was trying to kill Polk! He – he – "

"You were trying to kill him in front of my daughter Onica!

You witless idiot! You'd have made her witness to murder, and then, then, well, either we turn you in or else she becomes a part of a conspiracy to conceal murder. Didn't you think of that?"

"Of course I thought of that," said Fax, who had thought no such thing. "But – "

"I told you!" said Hatch. "I told you to get yourself back to the Combat College. I thought you were going there! If I'd thought for a moment that you were – "

"He's your enemy, Hatch! Polk's your enemy! I thought – "

"Come on," said Hatch. "I've no time for listening to speeches."

Here Hatch was true to his breeding, for the Frangoni have ever preferred making speeches rather than listening to them.

Having thus cut short Fax's excuses, Asodo Hatch took Fax down the Backsteps which descended the western slopes of Cap Uba.

"So what happens to me at Na Sashimoko?" said Fax, unable to conceal his fear for his own future.

"We dungeon you," said Hatch.

"The emperor has no dungeons," said Fax.

"Not at his palace. But the Grand Arena is not so terribly distant."

"You don't gain by threats," said Fax. Trying to play the part of the brave revolutionary. Then, suddenly: "Hatch. Hatch. It would be the easiest thing to let me go. A moment's work. There's no witnesses here, not now, not in the dark."

"You don't like this game?" said Hatch. "That's easy, then.

The Dead Mouth is but a stone's throw distant. Oh, I can let you go, if that's what you really want."

The Dead Mouth was as close as Hatch said it was. And it was deep. Even in the brightest of sunlight, to look down into it was to see darkness falling to darkness for what looked like eternity.

It was quite impossible to see the bottom. While Hatch presumed that the Dead Mouth did actually have a bottom, legend held it to be depthless, and in practice it was, for no rope of mortal make could measure out more than its merest lip. It was, naturally, an irresistible attraction to suicides.

In the face of that threat, Scorpio Fax fell very quiet, and Hatch led him through the stumbling dark toward the palace of Na Sashimoko.