“No; I think it’s just that he’s finally cracked,” she said. “The vaginal secretions of a female stom.” She shook her head. “He probably doesn’t need the stuff at all; I bet he just did it as a joke on you and Dlo.”
“He’d better not have,” Miz said, eyes narrowing. “Or he’ll find some unpleasant things being done to him as he sleeps.”
A great cry went up; children dressed as glide-monkeys ran into the arena in front of the reviewing stand and scampered squealing and giggling before the great black swooping shapes of the stom-dancers.
The King jumped, woken from a daydream. He clapped dutifully as the children over-acted, pretending to die, flapping and jerking on the cobbles of the arena to the sound of further cheers.
Deep in the castle, in the apothecary’s work-shop, a long trestle table held a collection of beaten metal canisters, each with a detachable top holding a pump-handle and a trigger. A pair of mud-coloured, slimly fingered hands gently lifted the most ornately decorated of the canisters on the table-the one with the royal crest on it-opened it up and smeared a clear, greasy gel round the bottom of the pressure vessel, and carefully replaced it.
The male stom nest-space, hollowed out of a huge trunk six hundred metres above the ground-layer three kilometres north of the town, was a dark and rank-smelling cavern of a place. The way up to it was by hoist-cage and internal ladders rising through narrow, blocked-off rainwater down-channels. There was an ante-chamber to the roost itself where the King, his courtiers, other members of the royal family, nobles and their hangers-on all assembled, crowding into the dark, springily floored, candle-lit space, talking in hushed voices while Royal Guards checked that the male stom there in the nest-space were quiet and restive and generally looked as though they were settling down for the night.
The atmosphere was unsurprisingly tense; Cenuij felt it affect even him. The air was warm and stank of male stom and sweating nobles. He slid through the crowd of men with their canisters of tagging-paint and their guns and swords. He stood behind the King’s arch-impietist as the priest exorcised the gas canisters of any divine influence. Then he slipped away to the hide at the end of the nest-space itself, to try and find a vantage point.
There was still a little light left from the dusk outside. Cenuij crouched down and peeked out of a vertical slit cut out of the back of the roost cavern, surrounded by the boots and legs of men peering through horizontal slits higher up. It was like being blind. Miykennsians were supposed to have rather better night-vision than Golterians, but he wondered how any of them could see anything in this gloom.
“Here we are,” the scratchy, nasal voice of the Queen said, and Cenuij felt somebody bump into him. He looked round.
The Queen-a blousy creature with far too much make-up, zero dress-sense and apparently so incapable of ever deciding what jewellery to wear each morning that she simply threw on all of it-ushered her eldest son forward.
“Daddy’s new choirboy will look after you,” she whispered. She smiled toothily at Cenuij. “Won’t you?”
Cenuij looked at the child; six or seven, fat, all gums and gapped teeth, grinning idiotically and holding a model stom in his hand. There was some sort of sweet-smelling sticky stuff round his mouth.
Cenuij smiled insincerely up at the Queen.
“Of course,” he said. The boy handed him the model stom, climbed over him leaving a trail of stickiness and plonked himself down in Cenuij’s lap, hogging the view through the slit and forcing a gasp of breath from Cenuij, who had to lift the child up for a moment to sit him in a position where he wasn’t crushing his testicles.
“Make sure he keeps quiet!” the Queen whispered.
The boy stuck his nose into the viewing slit, wiping his hands on Cenuij’s cassock. Cenuij stared at the back of the child’s grubby neck and thought of several different ways of complying with the Queen’s request.
The first few noblemen and courtiers were those brave enough to choose or unlucky enough to be landed with stom at the far end of the roost, near the mouth-shaped exit. They crept up through the centre of the chewed-out cavern, past the dozing forms of hunkered-down stom,. one or two of which watched them go past and made deep, rumbling noises that made their neighbours restless, but otherwise the stom did not react.
It was difficult for Cenuij, with so low a vantage-point and a fat, sticky child in front of him, to see much of what was going on, even though his eyes had adjusted to the gloom, but he knew that what was supposed to be happening was that the man concerned approached his selected stom, gently sprayed the sleeping gas into its snout, then sprayed a patch or two of paint onto the side of its barrel chest, just below and forward of the wing root. Judging by the general mutters of approval and the reappearance of each of the men concerned-looks of considerable relief on their faces-everything was going according to plan.
It came to the King’s turn. He had opted for one of the stom near the middle of the cavern; a large, middle-aged beast he’d seemingly chosen for a couple of years running because it had an excellent record at taking glide-monkeys. Cenuij ignored the sickly-sweet smell of the child in his lap and edged closer to look out over the boy’s grease-slicked hair. He watched the dark-clothed figure crouch down and walk between the rows of snoring, rumbling animals.
The King approached the stom he’d selected. Cenuij could just see him giving his gas canister a final couple of pumps. Then he aimed it at the snout of the huge sleeping animal, spraying it for a couple of seconds.
The stom didn’t react for a moment. The King crept forward towards it, spray-can held out in front of him.
The stom shook itself; its great long head came up. The King stopped, then stepped back. The people around Cenuij went very still. The stom opened its mouth and made a yawning motion. The King sprayed gas at its head for five, ten seconds. The stom shook its head, then opened its mouth and roared. It reared up on its legs until it almost touched the top of the cavern, unfolding its wings as its bellow echoed through the nest; stom throughout the roost stirred and came awake; two on either side of the King woke up too, their snouts waving in the air.
People started to shout and scream. The boy on his lap tried to force his head up into Cenuij’s chin so he could see better; he rammed the boy’s head back down, fastening himself to the slit.
“Run!” people shouted. “Run, your Majesty!” The stom in front of the King wobbled and staggered forwards; he raised the gas canister and squirted more gas at it; the beast reared upright again and stood swaying. The two stom on either side rose up too; others at the back of the cavern lumbered off their nest-bowls, shuffling forward, necks craning, trying to move down to the middle of the roost and blocking the view from the rear of the cave.
“Guards!” somebody shouted. Cenuij felt a delicious thrill in his guts. The boy on his lap started to cry. The King’s stom-just visible above the heads of the other animals-fell slowly forward and disappeared. There was a scream from the middle of the cavern. The floor shuddered. People screamed and shouted all around Cenuij. He clenched his fists. The boy squirmed out from his lap and ran away through the forest of legs.
Royal Guardsmen ran into the roost chamber, guns drawn. They fired at the animals nearest them, guns roaring and snapping; bullets and laser bolts burst amongst the crowded animals, producing screams and roars and clouds of smoke and vaporised skin. The three rearmost stom whirled round and charged the guardsmen, who kept on firing but had to retreat. Two stom fell howling to the ground, heads ruptured, pumping blood; one crushed a guardsman under it, another wounded animal grabbed one of the men, picked him up and tossed him against the curved wall of the chamber with one blurring shake of its head. A fusillade of shots tore open its chest and it fell. Behind it, the push towards the cavern mouth became a rush, then a stampede; the floor vibrated to the thudding, thumping steps of the giant beasts and the air was filled with their cries and the noise of the guards’ guns as they advanced again.