"What, man, is she your wife?" asked Orem.

Oh, they laughed at that. But Timias only grew colder and darker. "So your c.o.c.k has filled a Queen, boy? b.l.o.o.d.y lot of good may it do you."

It was the sort of remark that was not said, above all not in the Palace, for surely the Queen would hear.

"It's done me some," Orem said quietly. And then he remembered he needed to be amusing. "Shall we have a duel for the lady's honor?"

There were some t.i.tters at that. If it hadn't been for Timias's seriousness, there would have been more.

"The lady's honor is above the need of defense," said Timias. It was the courteous way to back down. Insult was one thing, but the thought of dueling the Little King was too dangerous. The Queen would surely not permit it. The chance of Timias losing would be too slight. But Orem would not let him drop the matter gracefully. The Little King was there to be laughed at, wasn't he? So let there be fuel for many a guffaw.

"How can you leave the lady championless, when I say her breast is in need of washing?" He turned to the lady. "What's your name, after all? Belfeva! Such a n.o.ble breast, Belfeva, and yet so friendless in this company!" He had learned the diction of the court quickly-it was just another game with words, like the puzzles and riddles he had created in the House of G.o.d. What a riotous clown, thought most who were there. How artfully he acts, thought those few who watched wisely. "I accept your challenge even if you don't offer it. And the weapon, what weapon will do, except for-yes, take your bread, sir! And your goblet! Wine-soaked bread at twenty paces."

It was hilarious, of course, just the thought of it. But more: it was impossible for Timias to bear. It's the flaw of the serious and cold-they cannot bear to be made ridiculous. "I'll do no such thing," said Timias.

"Then you'll come to my rooms tomorrow noon," said the Little King. "We have things to talk about, my friend."

"I have nothing to talk about with you." But the a.s.surance in his manner had weakened. Alone of the courtiers, Timias now realized that Orem was cleverer than he appeared, and could turn things his own way more easily than anyone but the victim would know.

"Then bring this lady, with her breast but without without her birthmark, and you may help me judge which is more beautiful-your companion, sir, or mine." her birthmark, and you may help me judge which is more beautiful-your companion, sir, or mine."

"No one is more beautiful than Queen Beauty."

"Ah, but Queen Beauty is not my companion. She keeps me as a pet, you know, and doesn't like to hear me bark too often or too near at hand. My companion tomorrow will be-" and he cast his gaze up to the head of the table "-will be the lady Weasel Sootmouth."

All eyes turned to the formidably ugly woman. She understood something of what Orem was doing, and so she leaned back her head and laughed. All could laugh, then. Once again the inept Little King had provided startlement enough for a week's gossip. Once again the banquet was a success.

Orem was not so stupid as he seemed to the courtiers, nor so clever as he seemed to Timias. He had no conscious plan in mind. He only knew that Timias did not laugh at him, and that attracted him; he was afraid, and lonely, and tired of the constant show he had to perform. Timias's very distaste for him made Orem want to like him.

The Friends of the Little King They came as commanded to Orem's room: Timias, the woman Belfeva, and Weasel. It was a strange meeting, at first. Almost nothing was said while the servants spread a "little" meal. Orem was already used to the plenty, and wise enough not to partake too heavily. He watched Timias and Belfeva as they awkwardly ate, repeatedly asking them the same question: "Is it good?"

"Oh, very good, very good," they said. It was clear that the strain was making Belfeva more and more afraid, but the truth in Timias led him to be angry, not frightened, and at last he said, "My lord Little King, why did you bring us here? If you want me to apologize, I will. I spoke improperly last night. However you want to shame yourself is fine with me."

Orem showed no sign of noticing that it was an ungracious apology. "You're generous, but I care very little about last night."

"Then why are we here?"

"I want company. For an expedition."

"Expedition?" asked Belfeva brightly. Timias glowered.

"Am I a prisoner in the Palace?" asked Orem. "I want to go abroad. As far as the garden. Or should I be more daring? King's Town is new to me. You know it well, since you have nothing better to do than explore."

"I have better things to do." Timias stood.

"We had a name for men like you in High Waterswatch," Orem said, and the geniality was gone from his voice. "We called them cold c.o.c.ks. Lots of strut, but you could leave them alone with the hens for a year and never an egg would drop."

Timias flushed, but bore it silently.

Orem walked nearer. "You're twice my strength and probably twice any other virtue I might have, Timias. Why don't you laugh at me?"

Timias looked away. "I have an idea of what a King should be."

"So do I," said Orem. "But the man who fits that idea is off in the country somewhere, wearing golden b.a.l.l.s on his eyes and never sleeping without priests and wizards on guard against the onslaughts of the Queen. Why should I pretend to be what he is? While the true King is alive, I can only be a buffoon."

And there it was-the key to Orem's real power in Inwit. The Queen had made him the b.u.t.t of ridicule, perhaps expecting him to strive for dignity and so become more and more ridiculous. But Orem had a tool she did not know he had. As long as he spun his web to capture the Queen's magic in a room, he could say whatever treason he might like and not be overheard. No one would dare repeat repeat his treasons, so the Queen would never hear of them-and in the meantime, the message to his hearers was unmistakable: the Little King may say what would be death for anyone else to say, and nothing happens to him. Let the laughers laugh. Among the very people least likely to be amused by him he was seen quite differently. The Queen does not punish the Little King for treason: therefore the Little King has power. his treasons, so the Queen would never hear of them-and in the meantime, the message to his hearers was unmistakable: the Little King may say what would be death for anyone else to say, and nothing happens to him. Let the laughers laugh. Among the very people least likely to be amused by him he was seen quite differently. The Queen does not punish the Little King for treason: therefore the Little King has power.

He did not show this power to many; but then there were so few who did not laugh at him.

"Come with me, Timias, and these ladies, too."

They went with him; many times they went with him, and showed him many things, and he showed them very little, but what they saw was enough, enough: I will show you, you, Palicrovol, and perhaps you will understand why Timias has stayed with Orem Scanthips even now, when he is no longer Little King. Palicrovol, and perhaps you will understand why Timias has stayed with Orem Scanthips even now, when he is no longer Little King.

They toured the gardens, and annoyed the gardeners with their conversation; visited the artists' workshops where old works were furbished, new ones manufactured; made the poets at Pools Park read their rhymes to them; admired and rode the horses at Queen's Stables; even toured the armory, for after all, the Little King was t.i.tular commander of the troops.

The Undoing of Justice But always Orem had in mind another visit. It seemed to come like a whim one morning when they gathered as usual in his rooms to plan the day's discoveries. "Why not the Coal House, to watch them try the criminals?"

Not even Belfeva failed to recall that the Little King had been plucked from that court to wive the Queen; but why not go there, after all? If the Little King wished to remember how low he had been in order to appreciate better where he was now, who were they to try to dissuade him? So they left the Palace-the back way, as usual, through Kitchen Street, and made their way afoot to the Coal House, where the masked judges spent their days deciding which unfortunates would be dismembered and which be merely killed.

Weasel Sootmouth, knowing what havoc the Little King's arrival unannounced might cause, instructed a servant to go ahead and warn the judges of their coming. Of course they all pretended to be surprised; of course the pretense was unconvincing. Orem had seen the place from the wrong point of view to be fooled by any show they might put on for him now. And yet he was not vindictive. He refrained from reminding them how they had met before. Indeed, he stayed aloof, showing little interest in the Coal House court itself. That was not what he had come for. It was the Gaols he meant to see.

Their guide demurred. "Common criminals," he said. "Why see them?"

Quickly enough the silence reminded him that the Little King had been just such a common criminal. The guards led them out. They tried to steer the Little King away from the Steer Pit, but he knew his way. They came to an awkward moment: the cutter was getting his tools ready to do the job. A new victim was ready, so the one in the clamps had to be cut and sent on his way.

"Of all the reliefs on the palace walls, I think this is most lifelike," said Orem.

"What will they do?" asked Belfeva. Not that it had been kept a secret from her; the great houses simply never bothered to discuss the cruelty that kept the city safe for them.

"They'll make a steer of him," Orem said. He did not realize that she would have no notion of the difference between steers and bulls.

It was Weasel who explained to her. Belfeva turned away, aghast.

In the pit the cutter waited, wondering what his spectators expected him to do. Orem could not relieve his anxiety. He himself didn't know. The victim himself had chosen-better castration than slavery. Unless Orem meant to change the law itself, what could he do but go along with the man's decision? And changing the law was beyond his reach. He could make no lasting changes, only little meddlings that would not reshape the working of Inwit, that would go unnoticed by the Queen.

At last Orem turned away, having said nothing. The cutter wasted no time after that-they were only a little way from the Steer Pit when they heard the piteous cries of the cut man. The Gaols were as they had been, except that now it was spring. The prisoners did not freeze now. Instead they lived in the stench and flies of their own excrement on the ground below. The upmost prisoners, as always, had it better, for the flies were not so thick where they were. It was plain that many of the prisoners were ill.

"This one's new," Orem said quietly as they walked past the cages. "And this one's been here days. He'll die before trial." They did not ask him how he knew. He knew. He showed no feelings to his companions, but they could taste his quiet, knew that this place had broken something in him, and created something else, something that had made him not the rustic that even the Queen believed he was. Weasel took his hand. He let her, but gave no sign it mattered, and soon she let go of him again. She did not mind; it was enough to see something that the Queen did not see. There was hope in that.

Up and down the rows, up and down, as if each prisoner were not identical to all the others. At last Belfeva grew sick and lagged behind, and Timias rebuked the Little King. "Haven't we seen enough of this!" he demanded. "Why did you bring us here?"

Orem had no answer for him. Hadn't he asked the same question of Flea after the death at the snake fight? I brought you here because there were two free hours. I brought you here to understand Queen's Town as it truly is, and not as it seems to you to be. I brought you here because in the criss-cross shadow of the cages, strangers saved my life. "They spat on me to wake me in the snow."

At that moment a prisoner on the second level cried out and ran to the bars of the cage, shouting.

"Orem! Lad, remember me, remember me! The favor, lad!"

Immediately the guards were thick between Orem and the shouter's cage. "Quiet up there!" shouted one, and several archers readied their bows for quick restoration of quiet.

Orem knew the man before he could decide whether he wanted to know him or not. "Braisy," he said.

It was enough to stop the archers. The commander of the guards came to the Little King to explain. "He's a common swindler, and not only that, he pa.s.ses people back and forth illegally into the city. We were finally able to catch him within the walls, pa.s.sless. Death for sure, for this one, my lord Little King."

Have you ever, Palicrovol, heard the inconvenient plea of one to whom you are in debt? And have you known that a moment's inaction would release you from his demands? But not his debt, no, there is only one release for debt. Orem stripped the place of Beauty's Searching Eye. "Free him," Orem said softly.

The guard went red. "My lord Little King, I can't."

"I confess to you, sir," Orem said, "that I took part in this man's crimes, and I insist that it is your duty to punish me exactly as you punish him. Open a cage for me at once."

"But you are the-the Little-"

"Free him," Orem said again.

Timias stepped in, spoke softly to the commander of the guards. "You heard him say the words. If she minded, would he have been permitted to say it? If she minded, would you be permitted to do it? But I a.s.sure you that if you don't don't do it, then it will be minded." do it, then it will be minded."

So Timias became the Little King's conspirator in a hundred little undoings of the harsh justice of the laws of Inwit. Orem's reason for working against the laws is plain: he himself had been a victim of those laws. Timias, however, had all his life been sustained by those laws. He maintained his wealth only because the guards kept the poor of Inwit too terrified to take it from him. Why, then, did Timias help undo what made him safe? Because Timias was no sycophant, as you have called him. Timias was that rare thing-a man who can genuinely grieve for suffering he has never felt.

This was the beginning of the small set of doings, the small Acts of the Little King of Burland. It is not a large chronicle: I will tell it all to you here in only a few hundred breaths. Yet at the end he had no reason, I think, to be ashamed.

The commander brought Braisy from the cage. Such an obsequious creature, so eager to lick the feet of the Little King. But Orem did not spurn him, and in fact spoke a few words kindly to him, and told the guards to give the man a pa.s.s.

"Name of G.o.d," said the commander. "How can I do it when he has no work?"

"In the pa.s.s name him servant of Gallowgla.s.s, a man of private means who is without servants at the moment. If he quits Gallowgla.s.s, he quits his pa.s.s."

Braisy's eyes went wide, but he swallowed and nodded. "Good enough for me, that's right, that's fair, that's a true favor it is."

The guards did it, and the ripple this made in the city was small enough that Beauty did not even notice it. But it was a ripple all the same, and changed forever the city you would return to, Palicrovol.

Perhaps the taste of power was heady as brandywine; but I think that Orem wasn't drunken on so small a draught. I think Orem went on to other exercise of power because he resented having done a mercy for a man that he despised, when there were others who deserved better of him who were not helped.

He began then to use the guard for his own small purposes. Find for me these two-they were my friends: A boy called Flea, Flea Buzz, perhaps ten or so, lives in Swamptown. But put no fear in him, treat him kindly, find out where he is and tell me.

A man named Rainer Carpenter lives in Beggarstown in hope of finding work some day on a pauper's pa.s.s. Find out where he is and tell me.

A grocer from High Waterswatch comes once a year, not long from now; Glasin Grocer, who was once the Corthy Price. Find out where he is and tell me.

And they told him. Orem sat in the Coal House, where the spies of the city are controlled; Orem sat there with Timias, Belfeva, and Weasel, and heard: Flea Buzz was caught a month ago, no pa.s.s and robbing a poor p.i.s.ser in Little Market. Lost both ears and now lives pimping in Beggarstown.

Tell no one who ordered it, but give Flea Buzz his pa.s.s, a full and free pa.s.s tied to no man, and give him an unlimited draw upon the Great Exchange; arrange it for me out of what the Queen lets me spend. I care very little how difficult it will be. It's either that or give him back his ears-if you can't do the second, you will do the first. And so they did it, and more: they watched over the boy, the guards who had been his terror, watched him quietly, protected him from harm; for wasn't this lad beloved of the Little King, who plainly had the blessing of the Queen?

As for Rainer Carpenter, the answer came more slowly, for he had never lost an ear and so did not figure on the perpetual records of the Gaols. At last the spies reported. Known to be a violent, drunken man, he was killed a year ago, days after being turned away when he tried too early to enter the city on a pauper's pa.s.s.

"Has it been a year?" Orem said quietly.

"Well over a year," said the spy, making sure again on his written report.

"And so too late before I even left the city." Orem looked at the coal-blackened wall. "Had he a family?"

"In a village in the west. He was driven out when the drought made paupers of all the farmers there; came here in hope of sending money back to them. The family is barely scratching a living as free laborers now that the rains have come again."

"Give them twenty cattle and land enough for them, and money enough for safety without arousing the envy of all their neighbors. Tell them it was earned by Rainer Carpenter before he died trying to save a lad from thieves. It isn't even a lie."

Glasin Grocer they found last of all. Prospering in his village far to the north of Banningside, loved and respected by all who did not envy and respect or fear and respect him. Orem thought of vengeance, but it was not his way. Glasin had cheated him, but all the same he had a chance to sell Orem into hopeless slavery, and did not do it. Was it Glasin's fault that those who had done better for Orem had suffered more? The Sisters did not weave justice into the cloth-that would be one thread too many. So Orem told them to grant Glasin a permanent stall in Great Market, in the best place, where the square debouched into Market Street at Low Court. Never had authority taken interest in a mere grocer until now: it was enough to make Glasin chiefmost grocer and something of a legend; it added many strophes to Glasin's song.

What matter if the guards and spies thought Orem odd? It was as if he thought his life were an artifact, and he the carpenter determined that all legs shall stand flat. Saw here, plane there, even things up, set things right until all is firm and steady again.

He had forgotten that he was not an artisan at all, but rather a farmer, whose only skill was to know the calendar and watch the sky, plow when the ground is ripe, bind when the corn is dry, and save a bit of the crop to seed the field next year.

Why Did You Choose Me?

It became their life together. It became the way they pa.s.sed their time. Belfeva and Timias spent their hours doing what no one in the Great Houses had ever thought to do: noticing the lives of the weak and helpless. They could not undo all the suffering of the city, but they could find the single acts of infamy that might be halted, to make the whole of the city that much less unfair. Then Timias and Belfeva would bring their tales to the Little King, and he would make his plan, blind the Queen, and work his small mercies. It did not go unnoticed in the city. The word quietly spread that the common people had a friend in King's Town, and among the hopeless and afraid, there grew a little hope, a little courage.

One day, when they were alone, Timias asked the Little King, "Why did you choose me?"

"Choose you?" answered Orem.

"To help you in this work we're doing." At Orem's puzzled expression, Timias laughed and explained. "Haven't you noticed that we're doing a work?"

"But-I only do this because I have you with me," Orem answered, and that was true.

But even truer was his answer when Belfeva asked him the same question. "Why me?"

"I think because whatever hand moved me to where I am, moved you to be near me."

But truest of all was the answer he gave to Weasel Sootmouth, when she asked him bitterly one day, "Why do you keep Timias and Belfeva with you? Don't you know it makes them ridiculous in the court, to be known as flatterers to that buffoon called Little King? And don't tell me the G.o.ds have brought you together, because you and I both know the G.o.ds are bound."

Orem thought for a while, and then said, "When I was a scholar in the House of G.o.d, I used to play at words and numbers, and my teachers thought that I had written truth. I laughed at them for finding truth in my play. Now I think-there's a shape to the way the world runs. Within that shape are many names that a soul can wear. I've fallen upon a name that brings me here, and whoever is named Timias and Belfeva must be with me, because that's the way of the world. All of it's a puzzle, but it's still the truth."

I think you see now that Orem Scanthips will bear his death if death is what you require of him. It is we who love you both who cannot bear it if the man who has most reason to be grateful to him is the man who takes young Orem's life.

21.

Orem's Future How Orem learned that he must die for Beauty's sake, and what he planned for himself in the face of death.

A Chance Conversation One evening Orem stood on a portico that hung emptily over a roof garden. He often came there to look down on the little forest there. Despite hours of trying, he had not yet found a way to reach the garden itself through the maze of the Palace. He thought sometimes that this is how the world must look to G.o.d, close enough almost to touch, and yet so infinitesimally small that he dared not touch it lest it break.

Out beyond the Palace Park, with its perpetual spring, a snowstorm was covering the city, the first of that year. It had been eleven months now since the snowstorm in the cages, when he stared death in the face. He thought back and remembered that he had not been afraid. He had fought death, but with stubbornness, not fear. Not pa.s.sion, either. His life was so placid in the Palace that he now believed that he was by nature a man of peace. Seventeen years old, and already comfortable in the contemplative life.

Of course it was not true. He was pent-up, frustrated, but these feelings left him languid and morose, so that the more he needed action the less he felt like doing anything. That was why he came to the portico and looked down over the garden and wished he could dwell in that small place; that was why he looked out over the city and wondered what Flea was doing tonight in the snow.