“An imperial pronouncement will be issued in two days’ time on the subject of further pronouncements. All hail Lord Crowley.”
—Pronounced by Lord Emperor Crowley on the way to Prague
“To “what do you owe the pleasure of my company …”
Perhaps too formal, don’t you think? And never ask a question you don’t want answered with an insult. Neener-neener-booyah.
“To whom do you owe the pleasure of Lord Crowley’s company this fine day in this … village?”
Referring to yourself in third person could work, but not this way. How about “I am the slam dunk and you are the ball”?
“Good afternoon and welcome; I am Lord Crowley and I am here today to …”
… say a few words over a dead body? Also, it’s warm in here. I’m ping-ponging off the walls. Please, sir, I’m just an innocent firefly. Please, sir, you must let me go. Was that a good impression of groveling? I’m not familiar with groveling myself, so all I—
“Welcome to all who have gathered here in this lovely village to attend my words on the occasion of a heroic advance in our war efforts …”
What if the village is awful and ugly? Well, I suppose the inhabitants never think so. Or maybe they do but are good at hiding it. Hidey-hidey ho! Hidey-hidey-hole!
“Hello, I am Lord Crowley, and today I will give a speech in this crap-hole of a village that will amaze and astound no one.”
Honesty is the best policy. Or so I’ve heard. Somewhere. Once upon a time, in a fairy tale. Fairies are tasty, although it’s wrong to eat them. Or so I’ve heard …
Damn it to Satan’s balls! Every time Crowley tried to compose the speech he had a terrible floating feeling, as if he were once more in Wretch’s clutches, about to do a flyover of that infernal volcano. Not to mention, he couldn’t make that Specky thing under the glass shut up, now he’d opened the floodgates.
I’m made of cheese! I’m made of cheese! I’m made of cheese!
But perhaps he also couldn’t shake the feeling because in their new accommodations, on the road to Prague, Wretch in truth lived in a compartment to the immediate left of Crowley’s desk—the wall that divided him from his familiar right there in front of him at all times.
Crowley imagined Wretch on the other side, curled up in slumber, perhaps even upside down like a bat in a belfry. One eye no doubt open, for even when he slept he was half-awake. One ear against the wall, listening …
Tweedle-dee-do. Tweedle-dee-dum. When you go to bed do you still suck your thumb?
The thought of Wretch uncurling, dropping down from hooks in the ceiling, and coming into Crowley’s own quarters made him shudder. For, if he didn’t know better, he would think Wretch messed with the top of his head every night for some reason. Right where the sore, itchy spot was. But he dare not touch it anymore to test it. The last time the spongy give had frightened him, and the dizziness that came with his touch.
Gives me the creeps, too, I must say, Lard Fouly. That’s one of them creeps-givers. Shivering all the timbers and all the hairs on my arms, if I had arms. But I’m just a little ol’ speck. What can a little ol’ speck know?
Enough. Crowley tossed his quill to the side and snuffed out the voice, cut the connection, ensured all the magical blockage was still in place. It had just been a test, for now, to see if he could communicate with the Speck yet still contain the Speck.
It had worked well enough, although the old Crowley would’ve raged at the Speck’s impertinence. The new Crowley, post–Volcano Land flight with Wretch, took it in stride. The old Crowley would also have found the Speck ridiculous and callow. Perhaps the new Crowley should envy the Speck’s lack of ambition, its clear burbling happiness.
Crowley sat back in his travel throne—gilded, creaky, finest leather, the works—next to the battered desk that had once belonged to the murdered art critic Ruskin in his Paris apartment. Crowley had left a few rather visible bloodstains from the prior owner, for snorts and giggles. A nice conversation piece even if it was a horrible desk, especially given Ruskin’s commitment to good design. One leg was shorter than the rest, and all sorts of graffiti had been cut into the top of it.
Like that bit: The Duke of Norville is a tosser who knows nothing of architecture. How original. How mature. How long had it taken Ruskin to carve that? Had he been suffering from writer’s block or had Crowley’s ever-tightening net around him destroyed his mind?
Another read: Ruskin loves only Ruskin.
Well, granted, Crowley had added that one himself. He’d also carved a few choice curse words he’d always loved and the Latin symbol for the ecstatic monad. That sort of thing. Whittling calmed his nerves. He did a lot of it these days.
There came the lurch and the plunk, as he thought of it, his body already used to it so that unlike at the start of their journey his bejeweled slippers dug into the floor and he clasped the arms of his throne tightly enough to avoid being thrown. The lurch signaled a shift in the locomotion of the imperial elephant, specially designed for him and now awkwardly making its way east through the last of the ridiculously thick forests outside Paris, which extended all the way through Bavaria to the high wall, built by the dread warlock Charlemagne, that surrounded Prague.
As it moved forward, it laid waste to most everything in its path, including trees, which meant it served a twofold purpose, the second being to destroy more and more of the cover his enemy needed to operate. Yet, Crowley was not without mercy, for the plumbing system from quarters on board the elephant replenished the land. So that the elephant did indeed wee and poo, and everywhere the elephant went, the Emperor himself made fertile the ground of his conquests. What he did reap and raze, he did then sow.
But the tromp-tromp of the elephant required much more of his magical attention than he’d thought it would, as well as that of the demi-mages. Some Republic innovations had gone into those wheels, but most of the “science” imported had failed, didn’t play nice with his magic. Even the best efforts of his indentured scientists to transfer what they called “Vaucanson’s duck” technologies had had little effect.
So there was now a droning microheadache in the back of Crowley’s skull not caused by the Speck—the space in which he quarantined the personal daily effort to animate the elephant. To join the compartments in which he controlled his demi-mages and his Miss Eiffel Tower surrogate in Paris—why install another flawed human?—always like a Speck in the corner of his eye. The thought occurred that he might one day have a dozen baby tumors in his skull as a result. Most days now, to offset the intense mental effort, Crowley ate whole chickens for breakfast and half a pig for lunch, and god knows what for dinner.
Any excuse to leave his quarters. The rooms were expansive for the interior of a battle elephant, but cramped next to Notre Dame. He had some portholes for windows, but they usually showed him trees or some banal scene of dead bodies or a muddy track. So he kept the shades down.
Worse, the thought to install Napoleon on another pneumatic pedestal that could rise out of the top of the elephant and give the general’s undead head a bird’s-eye view of the surrounding terrain had released unbidden the Frenchman’s inner travel guide.
The acoustics of the elephant being what they were, Napoleon’s faint commentary trickled down into Crowley’s rooms—especially long-winded that morning.
“… the birds, they fly away free. Why, in certain species, the fledgling will hitch a ride on the mother’s back. But leave the nest they must in time …
“… and it is definitely a kind of fairyland … makes fairy tales seem very real and very close by … Why, even the woodpeckers indeed are most robust and often unafraid of me as they go about retrieving insects and drilling holes in tree trunks … Do you know, wonder of wonders, I’ve been told their tongues are so long that they wrap around the outside of their skulls like a fishing reel …
“… although this is to say nothing of the local cuckoos, which lay their eggs in the nests of the red-faced imperial nuthatch, laying with them plots against those species’ ambitions, and the imperial birds none the wiser as they sit atop eggs that will hatch into babies that do not have the ambition of their own species but of another entirely, one that may not even be native to the area. Granted, this imperial nuthatch can in its displays appear a pompous fool, but, still, can one really sympathize with the treacherous cuckoo? That is really the question …”
Between Napoleon and the Speck, who could blame Crowley if he went stark ravers long before reaching Prague?
The thought occurred to Crowley later that afternoon that in the new hierarchy, he was to Wretch as Napoleon was to him. Above symbolically, but below in truth. And, who, pray tell, existed above Wretch? That might be the essential question. One he had no answer for.
Which made Wretch’s latest update in the closeness of his quarters doubly unsettling. For it involved not just Wretch’s infernal bulk pressing close on one side of Crowley, but that of the “update,” which had appeared in the flesh, on the other. Wretch’s would-be assassin, all grown up. Meant to be deployed from Paris, but moving up the invasion of England and Prague had destroyed that plan.
She was large, and of indeterminate age. “You’ll remember our assassin?” Wretch asked. “Ruth Less.”
“For god’s sake,” Crowley said, “tell her to pull herself in. Suck in her … chest … or whatever the hell that is.”
“Think of it as a kind of … backpack … on the front, my lord,” Wretch said. “She stores her provisions internally.” In that confined space, being next to her was a bit like being next to a huge toad, dripping ichor, or an enormous evil balloon. He found it hard to breathe.
Wretch spat out some words in a language so harsh Crowley felt like fishhooks were careening down his throat. Ruth Less pulled in her stomach, but to negligible effect. With Wretch on the other side, he felt bookended by creepy-crawlies.
The assassin’s name must surely be a joke—Ruth Less? Made worse by how the creature presented itself as a schoolmarm: a woolly pea-green cardigan and a bulky pink skirt down to the shoes that could just have been odd feet painted black.
This “assassin” had a head more like a bulldog, with glasses that, in a nauseating way, appeared to be part of the face. Except the head came to a gentle point, and at Wretch’s command Ruth Less’s entire skull peeled into four equal slices, and soon Crowley was looking down into a maw lined with sharp teeth, equal parts the inside of an orca’s mouth and that of a Venus flytrap.
The breath was spectacularly foetid, and, unzipped like this, the four equal slices had a peculiar mobility at the edges, more common to an octopus’s tentacles. The way it moved made Crowley want to vomit. Cilia were always filthy disease vectors, he felt. Good old sturdy feet or hooves got fungi, yes, or split hoof, but nothing like the variety of horrors that accumulated on cilia. And the beast appeared to be drooling as well.
Best, then, it be quickly on its way; he resolved not to protest at any length whatever purpose Wretch had in mind for it.
“Ruth Less is still growing, but she has made spectacular strides, my lord,” Wretch said.
The “my lord” grated. At least the Speck’s disrespect was honest.
“Yes … I can see. And smell.” Honestly, when had Wretch had the time to mentor and train Ruth Less? What with all the secret missions into the countryside that Wretch assured him would help the war effort, he must never sleep.
Ruth Less belched, and moist greenish skin touched Crowley’s arm, retracted. It felt as if someone had sutured squid suckers onto sweetbreads. He suppressed a shudder.
“And the purpose of this … assassin?” Crowley asked.
“By all means, my lord. She is ultimately to be of use against the Czech magicians, and the Golden Sphere, but in the meantime to be put to the test by pursuing another of our enemies.”
“How many enemies do we have these days?” Crowley was losing track.
“The young Jonathan Lambshead has the potential to become a thorn in our side,” Wretch said. “He has hold of an artifact of the Builders, our spies tell us. Unlikely he knows how to use it, but best to snuff him out earlier than later.”
“So Ruth Less is off to track Lambshead and eat him.” In truth, Crowley felt inclined to agree with Wretch’s plan, even though he was loath to approve of anything Wretch-related. But he’d felt something—a jolt or outflux of magical energy—in the vicinity of the Rome train wreck as he’d watched through the All-Seeing Puddle.
They’d received information that Jonathan would be on the train, but he’d escaped. Murky as it had been, he would’ve expected to have seen Jonathan after the wreck, but he hadn’t. Even though he had seen any number of other traitors and enemies trying to escape before being rounded up by his demi-mages. Curious that he’d caught no glimpse, but it was true the magical energy in question had taken time to fade, perhaps had befuddled the puddle, which had proven not nearly as effective as its parent.
Something unintended in his tone must have suggested disapproval, for Wretch left off the obligatory “my lord” in his reply, seemed to think Crowley needed convincing: “She needs to be out in the world. If she fails, then she wouldn’t have been a match for the Golden Sphere anyway.”
Wretch looked with clear affection at Ruth Less, and Crowley had to stave off a rush of perverse jealousy.
“Nothing to worry about, then? And yet we’re obviously worrying.”
“You did inflict much suffering upon his family.”
“I did?” It was at times difficult to keep track of whom he had killed and whom he had not. There was also the matter of what he had done personally and what Wretch had done. But, yes, the boy should be quite unhappy with him for any number of things.
“I have a little something of his father’s for the scent,” Wretch said, extending a long, long arm to his creature. In Wretch’s talons had appeared a gray object. “He smells like this. Similar. Not identical. Similar. Yes?”
Ruth Less snorfled and snuffled all over the object.
“Sim. A. Liar.” The word in Ruth Less’s mouth was as if someone had spoken while gargling through a mouthful of pond weeds, and then belched on the last syllable. The stench from that maw was even too much for Crowley’s indelicate sensibilities.
“Good, Ruth Less. Very good.”
“Goo. Duh.”
With a slurp and smack, Ruth Less retracted its mouth parts, became the semi-perfect version (from a middle or far distance) of an English schoolmarm, seemed eager to be going, mummified appendage in one of her own rather hard-to-identify appendages.
“What is that?”
“A mummified hand.”
“I know it’s a mummified hand, Wretch! I mean—whose mummified hand?”
“The mummified hand of Jonathan Lambshead’s father.”
“That you just happen to have on your person?”
“Something like that. For a rainy day. Never know when a body part will come in handy.”
Crowley suspected Wretch’s flippant tone hid a more serious and pertinent answer.
“And how goes the new plan to find the Golden Sphere?”
“Very well. The first wave of rabid undead chipmunks will be sent out soon. As a test only.”
Everything was a test with Wretch these days.
Two demi-mages had appeared, at Wretch’s command apparently, and made to escort Ruth Less out of the chamber.
“Your two demi-mages will not be coming back,” Wretch said. “You will need to appoint two new ones.”
“What?”
“As I said, Ruth Less is still growing, and she has quite the appetite.”
The Folly. His imperial elephant had been dubbed the Folly by some of the demi-mages he’d since had executed, for calling it that behind his back, but not far enough behind his back. Yet, in truth, Crowley’s elephant was a folly, if a folly with a purpose. The Folly—yes, perhaps this new, more thoughtful Crowley could claim that name with pride. It was not the typical double-decker mecha-elephant stuffed with the energy of half-dead animals.
No, it was three stories of magnificence with a unique ventilation system—Crowley thought of it as a circulatory system, for breathing, in particular his breathing (which he still needed to do; Wretch drew breath, but sometimes Crowley thought that was just for show). And then a kind of faux deep epidermal layer inside the outer skin, before the inner workings, filled entirely with undead albino salamanders in a lugubrious liquid one-fourth formaldehyde, one-fourth ground-up faery dust (actually ground-up goat overlaid with various spells), one-fourth swamp water, and, finally, one-fourth liquid strained from the All-Seeing Eye over a period of months.
A patient project, but well worth it, to create a kind of magical moat inside the elephant, protecting his quarters and everything else housed inside the Folly. The rough circle of salamander water helped him project the properties of the All-Seeing Puddle much farther than otherwise. Indeed, he’d had a glass panel put in the ceiling over his bed so he could watch as the salamanders passed overhead, their twinkling star-shaped toes a startling white against the glass at night, forming amphibious constellations.
Crowley rather loved salamanders, promised himself he’d set this batch free when he had no further need of them, had piped into their closed-off world only the finest food for their delectation. Sometimes it even included bits of demi-mage, for they did die of natural causes rather often, and it was, Crowley mused, sort of supporting the cycle of life.
By now, five days in, Crowley could distinguish one undead salamander from another with ease: Margie and Jean and Melody would remain loyal to the end; George and Larry and Ned, too.
Sometimes, he indulged in imaginary conversations with them, to while away the time before military briefings or updates from Paris. They made him feel comfy, pushed back against the claustrophobic sense of confinement. Him and the salamanders against the world. Some nights, after Wretch had left and he was shivering in bed … it felt like that.
Yet they could not help him with this speech that Wretch demanded he deliver at their next stopping point—a village in the middle of nowhere, the name translated into English bizarrely: “Slap on the Cheek.” He was to give a speech in Slap on the Cheek. Wretch cited security concerns as to why in such a remote location.
In the speech, he was to put forth the official reasons for the invasion of Prussia and Bavaria, and the annexing of Prague into his empire. Copies of which would then be sent by carrier pigeon and crow throughout Europe. To put more than one independent ruler on notice. To put Prague on notice. To serve notice, too, to the enemy, against interfering in what Crowley was to term “a regional dispute.”
Perhaps Prague would capitulate without a war. Perhaps they would look at what had happened elsewhere and understand the wisdom of surrender.
But his heart wasn’t in it. Wretch’s impertinence—well, it was more than that—ate at him, made him feel impotent. For a time, even the humiliating memory of Wretch patting him on the head like a dog had been balanced against Crowley’s fantasy of Earths imploding into nothing and him harnessing their energy for his war effort. Could he reach that distant goal without Wretch?
Yet the Speck … the Speck had changed that way of thinking. What had been a symbol of his control and lack of control both … had changed to a symbol of a possible alliance.
Might he find some common cause with the Golden Sphere against Wretch, and rid himself of his familiar while still maintaining his station? For several days, he had barely allowed himself the thought—the possibility so remote, and yet also in case Wretch through some uncanny eavesdropping might hear him inside his own skull.
But once he’d opened a conduit to the Speck in its jar, there was no going back. He’d decided not to be ruled by his familiar. He’d decided to rebel against his Wretch. Come what would.
Crowley opened the connection once more.
For he trusted the Speck more than his demi-mages or Napoleon to help him find out what Wretch did to him at night.
Finally, in the late-late afternoon, with Napoleon no doubt napping and thus blissfully deprived of his bird-laden monologues, Crowley wrestled the speech into submission, against the odds, tossed the parchment to the side. It wasn’t artful, but who cared?
A spark of pride. He was still the emperor, even if Wretch had called him a puppet. No one knew what transpired beneath the scenes and he must conduct himself in public with confidence and verve.
What now to do for fun? Now his tasks for the day were complete?
In the corner near his desk was the entrance to the controversial chute out the elephant’s backside, lined with slick aluminum. His emergency exit should the elephant ever be breached by an enemy. He contemplated the main door, gazed again at the chute. If he went out the door, Wretch was no doubt waiting—might even burst in on Crowley if he didn’t emerge rather soon. Whereas Wretch would definitely not be waiting at the end of the chute, and he might have a few moments of freedom.
He clutched his golden crown in his hand, carefully braced himself in the mouth of the chute, arranging his robes, his cloak, in such a way that it might protect him against the friction of his passage.
Hadn’t there been a playground back home he’d happily played on with just such a happy feature? Perhaps not housed inside an elephant, but he could remember sliding down without a care in the world, deposited on cedar chips or sand, only to want to immediately go again. A motley little crew of adventurers with him then. Not a leader at all, but just part of a gang.
There might be nothing like the cruelty of children, but also nothing like their unthinking comradery, either.
So down the chute he went, shrieking in delight at its twists and turns, tumbling out below the elephant’s tail at a good enough height that he had an instant of panic that he might break a leg.
But no: His demi-mages had placed bales of hay beneath the elephant, and he was embraced by a hearty outdoors smell and a bristly softness, and he bounced up from it to an audience consisting, for now, of a half circle of very serious demi-mages. Laughing, crown and speech in hand, for once without a care in the world.
Until a nervous demi-mage stepped forward and said, “My lord, General Napoleon—he is missing.”
Crowley looked up in alarm. The pedestal poked up above his magnificent Folly.
No head.
Napoleon had flown the coop.