Chapter Sixteen #2
I wanted to slip out of the front gate and make my escape, but the gate was clogged with messengers and porters.
There was every risk that I’d be spotted by the RATS or some other official, and either arrested as a conspirator or pressed into service as a funeral director; either way, I’d be trapped.
I kept eating, trying to exude the impression that I would attend to all things once I had finished my meal, but right now I was too overcome with weighty matters to tolerate interruption.
I prayed no one would disturb me while I was deep in grief and breakfast.
My prayers went unanswered. A guard – one of the castle guards, not one of the RATS – sat down opposite me.
His face, or more particularly his vasty moustache, seemed familiar.
It bristled, even though the rest of his face drooped.
One had the impression that the moustache was putting a brave face on his face.
He too had a breakfast plate in front of him.
He pushed black toast, eggs and bacon around with his fork, armies on inconclusive manoeuvres without casualties.
“I’ve quite lost my appetite,” said he, pushing his plate away.
I was still enchanted by the novelty of actual food, so I stooped upon his leftovers. The tea was cold, but the toast and bacon – ah, ambrosia.
“Grief, is it?”
“Everything’s out of its proper place,” he grumbled. “Rebel armies marching to lay siege to my castle, monsters in the courtyard instead of down in the dungeon. The king himself dying in my bed.”
“Your bed.” I placed the moustache in my mind. “Sir Rudyard?”
He nodded. “It’s not that I mind turning my room over to the king.
It’s an honour. His kingdom, his castle, his room, of course, but I’d grown used to having my own space.
Now, it’s like I’m back campaigning again, sleeping wherever I can find a space to lay my head.
I’m not a young man any more. Haven’t had a good night’s sleep in weeks.
And now he’s gone. It’s all jumbled. It makes one feel adrift. ”
“To insist that all must have one and only one place,” I countered around a mouthful of toast, “is an error. The most interesting things wander.”
“Perhaps they simply have not found their place, and need to be shown the way. If everything was in its right place, everything would work neatly, wouldn’t it?” He dabbed at a spot of spilled egg. “Or is that arrogance?”
I privately thought it was rank stupidity, but my mouth was so full of toast I could not reply, so Rudyard continued uninterrupted.
“I once knew a little girl, Ealdufrida. She was kidnapped by a woodhag, you know. I rescued her. Never found her family, though.” He sighed a sound like a beached walrus, and his moustache billowed like a war banner.
“Felt I had to do right by her. I tried to find a place for her, but it only made her more unhappy. Brought trouble here, too. Chaps falling down stairs, everyone waving knives and accusations, all sorts of misrule. Burnt toast, too. But what else was I to do with her? Let her run wild in the wood? If everyone did that, where would the kingdom be?”
I swallowed the last toast I would ever taste.
“Tell me, what do you mean by ‘do right by her’?” It amused me that, even then, he had no idea who she truly was; how he had sent the princess of the realm down to work in his kitchen as a lowly scullion. “What do you think your place was, vis-à-vis Bait?”
“Ealdufrida,” he insisted.
“There’s half the problem,” I muttered, “not knowing her true name.”
He considered the question. “The king appointed me lord of Dunshelm, and these lands fall under my authority. As an orphan of no known family, she had no guardian other than me.” He frowned.
“It wouldn’t have been right to do nothing.
I did what any man would have done, when there was a child in need. ”
That brought me up short. For an orphan, Bait had a wealth of guardians.
Many had championed her. But Clickglee was gone, Sir Peledon lost in the maze of his own warped body, Neb was off in the woods with the rebel host, and Sir Rudyard here as much use in the circumstances as a soft-boiled egg.
Who was left to answer in her time of need?
What was I to Bait? What was my proper place?
I don’t think a conscience is a product of the flesh. Guilt can gnaw dry bones.
But I could not ignore the fact that I, too, had lost my appetite. The wide world no longer seemed as desirable.
“Perhaps we’re using the wrong sense of place,” I ventured. “Not a hierarchy, not a kingdom. Not an ordering of things. But place as in, well, place. Location. Four walls and a dry roof. A place to begin, a place to return. A place that’s always there. Home.”
I thought of cracks in plaster. I thought of ancient runes.
*
The RATS dragged Bait through the courtyard.
Bait could have told them of a half-dozen better ways to get to the South Tower from the main keep. Down through cellars, over rooftops, along the back of the stables. Unseen ways she could have navigated in the dark. The Dungeon teaches the virtue of alternative routes, of choices and secret ways.
As it was, they dragged her through the courtyard, past the Denizens.
The caterwauling and roaring began again, more furious than before.
Only-Sister’s chains cracked and creaked as the manticore strained against them.
The goblins in the cellars gibbered and screeched.
Even Gloop bubbled with anger. Only the minotaur was unmoved.
Bait could see nothing, but she could hear everything, all the cries of her kinfolk.
So could I. The uproar could be heard in the kitchens.
Sir Rudyard frowned. “What’s got into them?”
Nala came rushing up then, in great distress. She seized Sir Rudyard.
“The Chancellor,” she gasped. “He’s—” She saw that Sir Rudyard’s dining companion was Orphir’s mysterious colleague. For a moment she froze as if I were a basilisk, then plunged on.
“He’s going to do something awful,” she said.
The South Tower. Of all the places on the surface, Bait had the happiest associations with the South Tower.
She’d treasured her time reading books and talking about what was ancient history for Nala and the living world of the Dungeon for Bait, thinking that she was on the threshold of the life she should have had. The life others expected for her.
Now, the South Tower was a slaughterhouse. The air stank not of blood, but of bloods – the fluids and ichor of different creatures, subtly different but all mixed together in a charnel stink. The stones under her feet were sticky.
“There’s magic in dungeon relics and stone,” said Orphir, “but also in blood and bone. Wild magic spawned the damned beasts. I’ve been searching for an efficient way to capture it. But there is never enough time.”
Orphir removed the bag from Bait’s head.
A moment later, the RATS had to help remove Orphir’s hand from Bait’s teeth.
“Little monster,” he hissed, cradling his bloody fingers. One of the guards raised a fist to strike Bait, but Orphir shook his head. “Go out and start slaughtering. Start with the minotaur. Use polearms. Don’t get close. Keep killing until I tell you to stop.”