In which Fain enters a city of artificial creatures
Five days later they entered a city which seemed like a gigantic machine. Buildings of hammered bronze breathed like kettles and smelt of bonfires, and whale-like boats floated through the sky. A giant living arrowhead lumbered toward Fain on carved lion’s feet. It was festooned with gold quincunxes and quatrefoils like a decorated general. Looking closer at this embroidered heavy ordnance, Fain was startled to see, behind a smoked glass panel in its belly, a spinning dice.
Nearby an old man dressed in an acid green harlequin uniform was busy with playing a trumpet, folding balloons and other street-emptying exploits. He was observing his own actions with apparent bafflement through smashed spectacles. His body bent like a bow, he feebly juggled silver rings and slapped them together without interest, interlinking them. Several metal people were watching his display. ‘A vagabond in a crush hat eh?’ said one of them.
‘Do creatures like you enjoy these displays of buffoonery?’ Fain asked the living wedge.
‘These actions in the road are permitted, though for safety purposes we avoid understanding them.’
At that moment the prancing relic collapsed, dropping his three cups. Seeing that all three were empty, the artificial onlookers rumbled among themselves and wandered off. Fain loaded the old clown onto the Lizard King’s back and they took him to what he whispered was his home, a hovel heated by wasps. Given a sip of wine, the jester roused enough to damn his circumstances. ‘Those creatures outside, they are dicehearts, mechanical people, and this is Diceheart City.’
‘I’ve seen a mechanical man before. Who made these?’
‘Drake the Adept, in an access of power like a sneeze. So here they are, created and abandoned, with no idea of the why of any of it. So different than ourselves? It’s very complicated, how I know this; and to understand it, you would have to become another person. No bad thing.’
‘How did you get here?’ asked the Lizard King, whose bulk filled most of the room.
‘I sought Drake the Adept, but was already in a desperate condition when I arrived—entering the city, I merely tripped and smashed nosefirst on the ground. The incident caused the fastest assemblage of bastards I’ve ever seen. Some chugged, some wheezed, but none attempted an expression never done before. If there was a chance of that, oh I’d gladly damage my muzzle again, try and stop me. But the city controls even such feeble projects. They have their hierarchy. Only the upper echelons have pincers, for instance. However, they did pay. Since then I’ve tried year after year to find what amuses those contraptions, but to little avail. All I have learned are the divers arts of the cornered man: snarling, begging, screaming, sobbing, whispering, fainting, feinting, painting, panting, ranting and, of course, sitting down.’
‘It sounds like being cornered is an education in itself.’
‘And cheap. Remember that. But now, you take the stupid hat and bells of irritation—I am finished.’
‘I don’t want to be a jester!’ Fain protested.
‘You can use it,’ whispered Hex, who had been removed to Fain’s shoulder again.
‘I won’t be advised by a tile.’
‘You need something,’ said the old greybeard, ‘and trick-magic is about misdirection. By concealing your desires, you may trick people into being cruel about the wrong thing.’
And with that, the jester expelled his vitality like a gas.
The Lizard King moved into the old clown’s house, and Fain donned the scarf, cap and bells, setting out to annoy one and all in the street. He started to flourish a bit of velvet around, manipulating it as though about to produce something from thin air. A crowd of dicehearts began to gather. Fain continued to manipulate the velvet, looking increasingly desperate. After an hour of this, Fain was approached by a scuttling carapace constable the size of a horse. Eight spiderlike legs of bone conveyed a skeletal cage fronted by a titanic, yawping set of humanlike jaws. As it capered and tilted along, a song of illness choired from its hollows.
‘The compropede will take you to be judged,’ said an armorite with a head of metal thorns and eyes of cherry-coloured glass. ‘You must be eaten into the cage.’
The jawed conveyance began to nip at Fain, who struggled as he was gathered horribly into the giant mouth and ejected into the cage on its back. Fain felt he was on the jolting cart to the gallows.
The Diceheart Palace was topped by two massive milk-glass hands raised as if in prayer but slightly apart, and at such a height that Fain could only imagine he saw some fluctuation or effect between them. Fain was disgorged finally within a court of authority. At its head was what Fain took to be the diceheart autarch, a massive mechanical heart which unfolded like a rose to reveal a pearl the size of a cannonball. Flanking this on one side was an armorite with pincers and a head like a sky-blue minaret, and on the other a dull olive-coloured sarcophagus with eight legs, topped with a baby head of red studs. The walls were crowded with onlookers, or perhaps mere regulatory devices.
‘They tell me you are king of this place,’ Fain addressed the rose. ‘Now I see their claim is rather farfetched.’
‘Your dismal antics in the street have bored one and all,’ tolled the rose, ‘with your flourishes, time-wasting, and jewellery made from apricot stones.’
‘Don’t be confused by his accusations,’ whispered Hex, ‘it’s his way of showing he’s curious about you. He thinks he’s asked a question and so expects a reply.’
Unaware of what question had been intended, Fain decided upon simple truth. ‘I am Fain the Sorcerer, and I quite frankly hate it here. Empty metal creatures, your city is a marvel! I suppose its emulation of a lobster halved lengthwise is symbolic? A community of dolls, ministers and tin soldiers the shape of fat moths—what’s the point?’
His audience looked at each other and began chugging strangely, jigging up and down.
‘Indeed you are all so begging for a punch in the nozzle I cannot find it in my heart to disappoint you.’
The dicehearts were laughing, with a light squeak of hinges.
‘I find you empty, and suspect that you are, technically, dead. This rack-and-pinion morality of yours, like yourselves, is large but as weightless as an owl. And it ejects blue smoke!’
There was amiable uproar in the court. What the old jester hadn’t realised was that the dicehearts found truth amusing, their laughter a means to evade it. They were more closely modelled upon humanity than he had suspected.
Fain turned to a nearby observer, a round frame in which pink lace flubbered with every breeze. An eye occasionally opened in the membrane, then clenched away again.
‘You sir—that rather fanciful assemblage which exists where your head should be—need any help getting rid of it? Observe as I juggle this cloud of dust!’
Fain gestured for quiet in the ensuing chatter and, approaching the autarch, announced: ‘My main intention was to perform a very particular illusion for you, the upper echelons of the city. Observe these dozen large metal rings.’ Fain clashed them together. ‘I will perform a disappearance, with the aid of an assistant—you sir!’ He led the pincered, minaret-headed courtier into the performance area, much to the apparent delight of all.
Fain slipped the rings together, linking them, then unlinked them and juggled with them, catching four on each arm and four around his neck.
‘Now sir, use those pincers of yours to snip through the rings on my right arm.’
The diceheart sliced through them, the twanged tangle hitting the floor.
‘And through the rings on my left.’
The diceheart cut through these.
Fain removed his scarf. ‘And—careful now—those around my neck!’
The assistant snipped through the five rings about Fain’s neck.
‘And now I will disappear and steal the royal barge!’
Freed from the binding ring, Fain vanished and walked out of the hilarity-filled court. The airboats were docked beside the milk-glass palace. He re-appeared as he walked up the gangplank to one of the ballooned barges. A tall, white-haired man in a black robe was stood at the front tiller, and Fain was about to order him to cast off when the guy ropes writhed loose, the gangplank fell away and the ship pulled into the sky with frightening speed. The old jester turned from the tiller to look at Fain, then seemed to suck in a hard breath, his white beard retreating into his chin. He removed his smashed spectacles and the eyes told Fain that this was Drake the Adept.
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