The Court of the Beast-Emperor

2 of 19

A lady servant led me below, to a windowless warehouse where a gang of chattering thralls exchanged my fine clothes—my fur-lined half-cape, my plunder-pants, my jeweled hat—for rougher things: stiff pants, a coarse brown tunic, and wooden sandals. I donned this new finery, thinking about fleas, and then our descent resumed. The servant led me down many stairs and through a maze of bricked corridors. He would answer none of my questions, so I cannot say exactly how far we descended, but there must have been a great weight of stone—fathoms and fathoms of it.

At last we found a dining hall, where a great stifling mass of men sat bent over plates of bread and parsnips. There, I was given into the custody of an older fellow, a lithe man who wore his black cap pulled down over his ears.

"You're the new man on the soup?" he asked.

"I think so," I said. "I'll have some of that bread, if you please."

"Oh, it's best you don't eat. First time, at least."

"But I'm hungry."

"You won't be after you've stirred the soup for a minute. Come on, let's get to it." He pushed his plate away, took me by the arm, and pulled me from the dining hall. We went still deeper into the cellars. The corridor walls became rough-hewn and the floors turned to thin mud, but what alarmed me most was the air, which grew warm and damp and carried the promise of a monstrous smell.

My new friend was a chatterer like the others. "Ours isn't a bad job, really. Better than water-bearing. I'd rather see it going out than going up, that's what I say. We've just got to help it along a little, that's all."

We came to a rack of poles, each twice as tall as I. My friend took two and gave me one. Our destination lay just beyond the rack. It was a great squat chamber, a little taller than me, and as long and wide as my father's trophy hall. In its floor was set the biggest pool of shit I'd ever seen.

My friend stepped to the edge and began poling the muck. "Come on, get to it," he said.

"This is the soup?" I asked. I thought he was joking. I knew that petitioners did the worst work in the citadel, but I'd never expected this—

"That's what we call it," he said. "If the pipes clog, it'll overflow. Float everyone right out of the citadel, hah! Name's Getter, by the way."

"Evan Spandos," I said, forming the words with as little air as possible.

He froze, staring at me. "A Spandos lordling, down here?" he said. "Who'd believe that? Not that I hold it against you—a man's a man, I say—"

"My father was here during the war," I rasped. My eyes burned and my tongue tasted as though it had been painted with the stuff.

"You don't say! Did he stir the soup?"

"I don't know," I said, circling my pole's tip in the muck.

"No, no," Getter said. "Go good and deep!" He leaned out over his pole, jauntily holding himself over the pool. "You'll be here forever if you just splash around like that. Not that you should listen to me—I've been down here a good long time. Months, I think. They want me to think that they've forgotten me, so I'll give up and go home. That's how the tarkies run you off. You going to make it, chum?"

I nodded and put my pole all the way into the soup.

"That's the way. You'll be upstairs in no time. What is it you're here for?"

"Love," I said.

"That'd do it."

From pipes in the ceiling, a renewing flow poured, spattering in the pool.

"Suppertime up there!" Getter said. "Better get to it!" Then he began to sing:

Oh, down here it's steaming!
so pour all the cream in!
we'll make dumplings for demons!
and then we'll be free men!

Later, when my lungs had adjusted, I sang him a verse of my own:

The bee to the flower,
The bird to the nectar,
The moth to the moon,
Me to you.

"Very pretty," my new friend said, his face thoughtful. "But you can't stir shit to it."

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