Iain Banks - Walking on Glass

Starke was still talking, taking bits of paper out of the drawers in the desk and showing them to Grout, but Steven wasn't looking or listening. His eyes were glinting as he thought about the revenge he could have on the Islington people. He could go and dig up the roadworks during the night, and get some cement made up in a small container and cement up the holes in manhole covers you used to lift the things up by. If he filled those in they'd have a devil of a job lifting them! And he could attack the filled-in holes they'd done in Upper Street earlier this morning. He'd leave the ones he'd done, so they'd eat their words about his way being inferior; that would be satisfying!

He stood up and pulled his hard hat down firmly over his head. Starke was looking up at him; "Mr Grout?"

"What?" Steven said, looking down and seeing the young man again. He frowned and shook his head. "Never mind. Sort it out later. I've got things to do." He turned and walked away. Starke was saying something behind him.

He'd show them. He'd get back at them. He bumped into some people waiting to join the queue for the seats in the reception area (ha ha; he'd got in just before the rush!), and went out through the doors back to the street and the bright sunlight.

He'd sort this unemployment stuff out later. He should have gone to his local Job Centre anyway, where they knew him. Never mind. He at least had some ideas for Revenge. He'd go back to his room and change and wash, then... then he'd have a drink and think further about how to get back at them all. Maybe he would even mount a punitive expedition tonight, striking while the iron was hot, and all that. It was risky, especially considering he'd been out just that previous evening, putting sugar in car and motorbike petrol tanks, but it might be a good idea anyway. He'd have to think about it.

He drew a deep breath and headed for the nearest parked car.

It took Quiss longer than he had expected to get to the castle kitchens; they'd changed some of the corridors and stairways en route from the games room to the lower levels, and Quiss, taking what he thought was the usual way, had found himself making an unexpected left turn and coming to a windy, deserted, echoing chamber which looked out over the white landscape to the tall wooden towers of the slate mines. He had scratched his head and retraced his steps, then followed his nose to the chaotic kitchens of the Castle Doors.

"You," he said, and grabbed one of the kitchen helpers who was passing by carrying a heavy bucket full of some steaming liquid. The tiny scullion squealed and the bucket clattered to the floor, staying upright but letting some of its glutinous contents slop over the side. Quiss heaved the small attendant up by the scruff of its neck until its face was level with his. Its mask-face stared back at him with empty eyes. The green brim round its stained, spotted hood was like a giant washer, or a ring round a rather grubby planet.

"Put me down!" It yelped and struggled, the green cord round its waist waggling to and fro. "Help! Help!"

Quiss shook it. "Shut up you... spirochaete," he said. Tell me where I can find the seneschal in all this racket." He jerked the attendant's whole body and his own head to indicate the kitchen around them.

Quiss was standing at the foot of a flight of steps, on the outer edge of the pandemonium that was the castle's kitchens. The kitchens were buried deep in the structure, far from any outside wall. They were huge; there was a high ceiling, vaulted with cut slate on iron pillars, and standing where Quiss was, all the walls save for that immediately behind him were invisible, concealed by the rising steams, smokes and vapours from hundreds of pots, pans, vats, stoves, kettles, skillets, grills, tubs and cauldrons.

Light came from prisms hung in the roof; great cut slabs of crystal reflected light from the outside walls through long, empty light corridors and then down into the tumultuous kitchens. Also strewn across the complicated ceiling with the prism ports, obscuring whole sections of the barrelled structure, fume ducts writhed like immense square-flanked metal snakes, their grilled, barred mouths sucking the kitchens" vapours away to be vented high in some converted turret. The seneschal had told Quiss that the air circulation system was powered by one of the lowest ranks of the castle's diminutive attendants; they walked round inside treadmills linked to big watermill-like fans. Quiss felt his eyes start to smart in the fume-laden atmosphere, and as he peered through the grey, yellow and brown clouds of rising steam and smoke, thought of suggesting to the seneschal - if he ever found him - that he somehow persuade the scullions powering these airwheels that they should run rather than walk. It was, also, rather warm. Quiss could feel himself starting to sweat already, despite having left most of his furs lying at the top of the steps he had just descended.

"I don't know the way! I've never heard of him!" the squirming attendant said. Its little green-booted feet made running motions, though they were about a metre off the kitchens" slate-tiled floor.

"What?" Quiss roared, spraying spittle into the scullion's mask-face. He shook the thing roughly. "What, you excretory wretch?"

"I don't know the way to the seneschal's office! I've never even heard of him!"

"Then how," Quiss said, bringing the blank, sorrowful face closer to his own, "do you know he has an office?"

"I don't!" came the yelped reply. "You told me!"

"No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did!"

"No," Quiss said, shaking the attendant roughly so that the crownless brim round its cowl fell off, "I," he shook it again, sending the thing's hood flying off its head and revealing the smooth continuation of the mask over the creature's skull, so that its little arms waggled, trying to put the hood back on again as Quiss finished, " didn't ."

"Are you sure?" the scullion said groggily.

"Positive."

"Oh, heck."

"So where is he?"

"I can't tell you; it isn't allowed. I - oh! Don't shake me again, please!"

"Then tell me where I can find the seneschal."

"Waaah!" the small attendant said.

"You scrofulous tapeworm!" Quiss bellowed; he turned the attendant upside down and plonked its head into the bucket it had been carrying. The steamy yellow gruel in the bucket splashed out on to the kitchen floor. He let the minion struggle and kick for a little while, then hoisted it back out, shook it, and turned it the right way up again. His hands were getting messy; he wiped them on the creature's cloak.

"Now then," Quiss said.

"That was horrible !" the attendant wailed.

"I'll do it again and leave you there unless you tell me where the seneschal is."

"The who? No! Don't! I-"

"Right!" Quiss said, and dumped the scullion's head back into the now half-full bucket. He dragged it back out. The small creature's head lolled slightly on its shoulders and its arms flopped by its side.

"Tell you what," it said, breathing with some difficulty, "Let's both find somebody we can ask -"

"No!" Quiss shouted. He held the weakly struggling thing by one leg this time. He considered: surely things weren't so utterly disorganised in the kitchens that the scullions no longer knew who was in charge of them, or where his office was? Had things come to such a pass? It was a bad show, Quiss thought, shaking his head. The attendant had stopped struggling. He looked down, remembered what he was doing, said "Oh," and yanked the limp scullion out, dripping gruel. He shook it for a while until it gurgled and moved its head weakly. "Are you willing to talk yet?"

"Oh, shit, all right," the attendant said weakly.

"Good." Quiss walked over to a large range of working surfaces, hotplates, sinks and racks; he sat the scullion down on a flat surface, only for steam to issue suddenly from its rear; it squawked and jumped up. Quiss apologised for setting it down on a hotplate, put it on a draining board instead, and splashed some water over its mask-face.