Helliconia: Helliconia Spring, Helliconia Summer, Helliconia Winter (72 page)

‘Scerm you, I’ll be there.’ He climbed to his feet and leaned against the wall to pull his pants up under his charfrul, which he adjusted with slow deliberation.

His wife hurled a cushion at him. ‘You dolt, why do you never concentrate? Finish what you’re doing. Tell these fools to go away.’

He shook his head and his heavy cheeks trembled. ‘It’s the unremitting clockwork of the world, my beauty. Keep it warm till I return. I don’t order the comings and goings of men …’

He moved down the corridor and paused at the threshold of his shop so as to inspect the new arrival. Bardol CaraBansity was a solid man, less tall than weighty, with a ponderous way of speech and a heavy skull shaped not unlike a phagor’s. He wore a thick leather belt over his charfrul, and a knife in the belt. Although he looked like a common butcher, CaraBansity had a well-earned reputation as a crafty man.

With his hollow chest and protruding stomach, ScufBar was not an impressive sight, and CaraBansity made it plain he was not impressed.

‘I’ve got a body for sale, sir. A human body.’

Without speaking, CaraBansity motioned to the phagors. They went and brought the body in between them, dropping it down on the counter. Sawdust and ice fragments adhered to it.

The anatomist and deuteroscopist took a step nearer.

‘It’s a bit high. Where did you acquire it, man?’

‘From a river, sir. When I was fishing.’

The body was so distended by internal gases that it bulged out of its clothes. CaraBansity pulled it onto its back and tugged a dead fish from inside its shirt. He threw it at ScufBar’s feet.

‘That’s a so-called scupperfish. To those of us who have a care for truth, it’s not a fish at all but the marine young of a Wutra’s worm. Marine. Sea, not freshwater. Why are you lying? Did you murder this poor fellow? You look like a criminal. The phrenology suggests it.’

‘Very well, sir, if you prefer, I did find him in the sea. Since I am a servant of the unfortunate queen, I did not want the fact widely known.’

CaraBansity looked at him more closely. ‘You serve MyrdemInggala, queen of queens, do you, you rogue? She deserves good lackeys and good fortune, does that lady.’

He indicated a cheap print of the queen’s face, which hung in a corner of the shop.

‘I serve her well enough. Tell me what you will pay me for this body.’

‘You have come all this way for ten roon, not more. In these wicked times, I can get bodies to cut up every day of the week. Fresher than this one, too.’

‘I was informed that you would pay me fifty, sir. Fifty roon, sir.’ ScufBar looked shifty, and rubbed his hands together.

‘How does it happen that you turn up here with your malodorous friend when the king himself and an envoy from the Holy C’Sarr are due to arrive in Ottassol? Are you an instrument of the king’s?’

ScufBar spread his hands and shrank a little. ‘I have connections only with the hoxney outside. Pay me just twenty-five, sir, and I’ll go back to the queen immediately.’

‘You scerm are all greedy. No wonder the world’s going to pot.’

‘If that is the case, sir, then I’ll accept twenty. Twenty roon.’

Turning to one of the phagors standing by, flicking its pale milt up its slotlike nostrils, CaraBansity said, ‘Pay the man and get him out of here.’

‘How muzzh I pay?’

‘Ten roon.’

ScufBar let out a howl of anguish.

‘All right. Fifteen. And you, my man, present Bardol CaraBansity’s compliments to your queen.’

The phagor fumbled in its hempen gown and produced a thin purse. It proffered three gold coins, lying in the gnarled palm of its three-fingered hand. ScufBar grabbed them and made for the door, looking sullen.

Briskly CaraBansity ordered one of his ahuman assistants to shoulder the corpse – an order obeyed without observable reluctance – and followed him along the dim corridor, where strange odours drifted. CaraBansity knew as much about the stars as about the intestines, and his house – itself shaped rather like an intestine – extended far into the loess, with entrances to chambers devoted to all his interests on several lanes.

They entered a workshop. Light slanted down through two small square windows set in fortress-thick earth walls. Where the phagor trod, points of light glinted under his splayed feet. They looked like diamonds. They were beads of glass, scattered when the deuteroscopist was making lenses.

The room was crammed with learned litter. The ten houses of the zodiac were painted on the wall. Against another wall hung three carcasses in various stages of dissection – a giant fish, a hoxney, and a phagor. The hoxney had been opened up like a book, its soft parts removed to display ribs and backbone. On a desk nearby lay sheets of paper on which CaraBansity had drawn detailed representations of the dead animal, with various parts depicted in coloured ink.

The phagor swung the Gravabagalinien corpse from his shoulder and hung it upside down from a rail. Two hooks pierced the flesh between the Achilles tendon and the calcaneum. The broken arms dangled, the puffy hands rested like shelled crabs on the floor. At a blow from CaraBansity, his assistant departed. CaraBansity hated having the ancipitals about, but they were cheaper than servants or even human slaves.

After a judicial contemplation of the corpse, CaraBansity pulled out his knife and cut the dead man’s clothes away. He ignored the stench of decay.

The body was that of a young man, twelve years old, twelve and a half, possibly twelve years and nine tenners, not more. His clothes were of coarse and foreign quality, his hair was cut in a manner generally used by sailors.

‘You, my fine fellow, are probably not of Borlien,’ said CaraBansity to the corpse. ‘Your clothes are Hespagorat style – probably from Dimariam.’

The belly was so distended that it had folded over and concealed a leather body belt. CaraBansity worked it free. As the flesh sank back, a wound was revealed. CaraBansity slipped on a glove and thrust his fist into the wound. His fingers met with an obstruction. After some tugging, he extracted a curved grey ancipital horn, which had punctured the spleen and sunk deep into the body. He regarded the object with interest. Its two sharp edges made it a useful weapon. It had once possessed a handle, which was missing, possibly lost in the sea.

He regarded the body with fresh curiosity. A mystery always pleased him.

Setting the horn down, he examined the belt. It was of superior workmanship, but the sort of standard thing sold anywhere – at Osoilima, for example, where pilgrims provided a ready market for such goods. On the inner side was a button-down pocket, which he flipped open. From the pocket, he withdrew an incomprehensible object.

Frowning, he laid the object in his grubby palm and walked across to the light with it. It was like nothing he had ever seen before. He could not even identify the metal of which it was chiefly made. A shiver of superstitious fear crossed his pragmatic mind.

As he was washing it under the pump, removing traces of sand and blood, his wife, Bindla, entered the workshop.

‘Bardol? What are you doing now? I thought you were coming back to bed. You know what I was keeping warm for you?’

‘I love it, but I have something else to do.’ He flashed her one of his solemn smiles. She was of middle age – at twenty-eight and one tenner almost two years younger than he – and her rich russet hair was losing some of its colour; but he admired the way she was
still aware of her ripe charms. At present, she was overacting her resentment at the smells in the room.

‘You’re not even writing your treatise on religion, your usual excuse.’

He grunted. ‘I prefer my stinks.’

‘You perverse man. Religion is eternal, stinks aren’t.’

‘On the contrary, my leggiandrous beauty, religions change all the time. It’s stinks which go on unchanged for ever.’

‘You rejoice in that?’

He was drying the wonderful object on a cloth and did not answer. ‘Look at this.’

She came and rested a hand on his shoulder.

‘By the boulder!’ he exclaimed in awe. He passed it to Bindla, and she gasped.

A strap of cunningly interwoven metal, much like a bracelet, supported a transparent panel in which three sets of numbers glowed.

They read the numbers aloud as he pointed to them with a blunt finger.

The numbers writhed and changed as they watched. The CaraBansitys looked at each other in mute astonishment. They watched again.

‘I never saw such a talisman before,’ Bindla said in awe.

They had to look again, fascinated. The figures were black on a yellow background. He read them aloud.

As CaraBansity put the mechanism to his ear to see if it made any noise, the pendulum clock on the wall behind began to chime thirteen. This clock was an elaborate one, built by CaraBansity himself in his younger days. It showed in pictorial form the rising and setting times of the two suns, Batalix and Freyr, as well as the divisions of the year, the 100 seconds in a minute, the forty minutes in an hour, the twenty-five hours in a day, the eight days in a week, the six weeks in a tenner, and the ten tenners in a year of four hundred and eighty days. There was also an indicator to show the 1825 small years in a Great Year; that pointer now stood at 381, the present date by the Borlien-Oldorando calendar.

Bindla listened to the mechanism, and heard nothing. ‘Is it a clock of some kind?’

‘Must be. Middle numbers make it thirteen o’clock, Borlien time …’

She always knew when he was at a loss. He chewed his knuckle like a child.

There was a row of studs along the top of the bracelet. She pressed one.

A different series of numbers appeared in the three apertures.

‘The middle one’s the year, by some ancient calendar or other. How can that work?’

He pressed the stud and the previous series appeared. He set the bracelet down on the bench and stared at it, but Bindla picked it up and slipped it over her hand. The bracelet immediately adjusted itself, fitting snuggly to her plump wrist. She shrieked.

CaraBansity went across to a shelf of worn reference books. He passed over an ancient folio copy of
The Testament of RayniLayan
, and pulled out a calf-bound
Seer’s and Deuteroscopist’s Calendrical Tables
. After fluttering through several pages, he settled on one and ran his finger down a column.

Although the year by the Borlien-Oldorando calendar was 381, this reckoning was not universally accepted. Other nations used other reckonings, which were listed in the Tables; 828 was listed. He found it under the ancient, discarded ‘Denniss Calendar’, now associated with witchcraft and the occult. Denniss was the name of a legendary king supposed to have ruled all Campannlat.

‘The central panel of the bracelet refers to local time …’ He tested out his knuckle again. ‘And it has survived inundation in the sea. Where are there craftsmen now who could manufacture such a jewel? Somehow it must have survived from the time of Denniss …’

He held his wife’s wrist and they watched the numbers busy with their changes. They had found a timepiece of unparalleled sophistication, probably of unparalleled value, certainly of unparalleled mystery.

Wherever the craftsmen were who had made the bracelet, they
must be secure from the desperate state to which King JandolAnganol had brought Borlien. Things still held together in Ottassol because it was a port, trading with other lands. Conditions elsewhere were worse, with drought, famine, and lawlessness. Wars and skirmishes wasted the country’s lifeblood. A better statesman than the king, advised by a less corrupt scritina, or parliament, would make peace with Borlien’s enemies and see to the welfare of the population at home.

Yet it was not possible to hate JandolAnganol – though CaraBansity regularly tried to do so – because he was prepared to give up his beautiful wife, the queen of queens, to many a stupid child, a half-Madi. Why should the Eagle do that, if not to cement the alliance between Borlien and its old enemy, Oldorando, for his country’s sake? JandolAnganol was a dangerous man, all agreed – but as much under the cudgel of circumstance as the lowest peasant.

The worsening climate could be much blamed. The madness of the heat, increasing generation by generation, till the very trees caught fire …

‘Don’t stand dreaming,’ Bindla called. ‘Come and get your ridiculous contraption off my wrist.’

The event that the queen feared was already in process. King JandolAnganol was on his way to Gravabagalinien to divorce her. From the Borlienese capital of Matrassyl he would sail down the River Takissa to Ottassol, there to take a coastal ship westward to Gravabagalinien’s narrow bay. JandolAnganol would present his queen with the Holy C’Sarr’s bill of divorcement in front of witnesses. Then they would part, perhaps forever.

This was the king’s plan, and very stormy he looked about it.

Accompanied by a brave sound of trumpets, escorted by members of his Household in finest array, King JandolAnganol was driven in his state coach down the hill from the palace, through Matrassyl’s crooked streets, to the quayside. In the coach with him was a solitary companion: Yuli, his pet phagor. Yuli was no more than a runt, with the brown hairs of his infancy still showing through his white coat. He had been dehorned and sat against his master, shuffling in nervous anticipation of the river journey.