‘I don’t want to go to the islands,’ Ublala said, dragging a chipped nail through the grit on the floor. ‘I sent word. That’s good enough, isn’t it? I sent word.’
Tehol shrugged. ‘If it’s good enough, it’s good enough. Right, Janath? By all means, stay with us, but you have to set out now to find food. For all of us. A hunting expedition and it won’t be easy, Ublala. Not at all easy. There’s not been a supply ship on the river for days now, and people have started hoarding things, as if some terrible disaster were imminent. So, as I said, Ublala, it won’t be easy. And I hate to admit it, but there are people out there who don’t think you can succeed.’
Ublala Pung’s head snapped up, fire in his eyes. ‘Who? Who?’
The four hens paused in their scratchings and cocked heads in unison.
‘I better not say,’ Tehol said. ‘Anyway, we need food.’
The Tarthenal was on his feet, head crunching on the ceiling before he assumed his normal hunched posture when indoors. Plaster dust sprinkled his hair, drifted down to settle on the floor. The hens pounced, crowding his feet.
‘If you fail,’ Tehol said, ‘we’ll have to start eating, uh, plaster.’
‘Lime is poisonous,’ Janath said.
And hen guano isn’t? Did I hear you complain when you were slurping down my soup?’
‘You had your hands over your ears, Tehol, and I wasn’t slurping anything down, I was spewing it back up.’
‘I can do it,’ Ublala said, hands bunching into fists. ‘I can get us food. I’ll show you.’ And with that he pushed through the doorway, out into the narrow alley, and was gone.
‘How did you do that, Tehol?’
‘I won’t take credit. It’s how Shurq Elalle manages him. Ublala Pung has an eagerness to show what he can do.’
‘You prey on his low self-esteem, you mean.’
‘Now that’s rather hypocritical coming from a tutor, isn’t it?’
‘Ooh, all the old wounds still smarting, are they?’
‘Never mind old wounds, Janath. You need to leave.’
‘What? Are there rumours I’m incapable of something?’
‘No, I’m serious. Any day now, there is going to be trouble. Here.’
‘Where am I supposed to go?’
‘You need to contact who’s left of your scholarly friends-find one you can trust-’
‘Tehol Beddict, really now. I have no friends among my fellow scholars, and certainly not one I can trust. You clearly know nothing of my profession. We crush beaks between our teeth as a matter of course. In any case, what kind of trouble are you talking about? This economic sabotage of yours?’
‘Bugg should really learn to keep quiet.’
She was studying him in a most discomforting way. ‘You know, Tehol Beddict, I never imagined you for an agent of evil.’
Tehol smoothed back his hair and swelled his chest.
‘Very impressive, but I’m not convinced. Why are you doing all this? Is there some wound from the past that overwhelms all the others? Some terrible need for vengeance to answer some horrendous trauma of your youth? No, I am truly curious.’
‘It was all Bugg’s idea, of course.’
She shook her head. ‘Try again.’
‘There are all kinds of evil, Janath.’
‘Yes, but yours will see blood spilled. Plenty of it.’
‘Is there a difference between spilled blood and blood squeezed out slowly, excruciatingly, over the course of a foreshortened lifetime of stress, misery, anguish and despair-all in the name of some amorphous god that no-one dares call holy? Even as they bend knee and repeat the litany of sacred duty?’
‘Oh my,’ she said. ‘Well, that is an interesting question. Is there a difference? Perhaps not, perhaps only as a matter of degree. But that hardly puts you on a moral high ground, does it?’
‘I have never claimed a moral high ground,’ Tehol said, ‘which in itself sets me apart from my enemy.’
‘Yes, I see that. And of course you are poised to destroy that enemy with its own tools, using its own holy scripture; using it, in short, to kill itself. You are at the very end of the slope on which perches your enemy. Or should I say “clings”. Now, that you are diabolical comes as no surprise, Tehol. I saw that trait in you long ago. Even so, this blood-thirstiness? I still cannot see it.’
‘Probably something to do with your lessons on pragmatism.’
‘Oh now, don’t you dare point a finger at me! True pragmatism, in this instance, would guide you to vast wealth and the reward of indolence, to the fullest exploitation of the system. The perfect parasite, and be damned to all those lesser folk, the destitute and the witless, the discarded failures squatting in every alley. You certainly possess the necessary talent and genius and indeed, were you now the wealthiest citizen of this empire, living in some enormous estate surrounded by an army of bodyguards and fifty concubines in your stable, I would not in the least be surprised.’
‘Not surprised,’ Tehol said, ‘but, perhaps, disappointed nonetheless?’
She pursed her lips and glanced away. ‘Well, that is another issue, Tehol Beddict. One we are not discussing here.’
‘If you say so, Janath. In any case, the truth is, I am the wealthiest citizen in this empire. Thanks to Bugg, of course, my front man.’
‘Yet you live in a hovel.’
‘Disparaging my abode? You, an un-paying guest! 1 am deeply hurt, Janath.’
‘No you’re not.’
‘Well, the hens are-and since they do not speak Letherii…’
‘Wealthiest citizen or not, Tehol Beddict, your goal is not the ostentatious expression of that wealth, not the fullest exploitation of the power it grants you. No, you intend the collapse of this empire’s fundamental economic structure. And 1 still cannot fathom why.’
Tehol shrugged. ‘Power always destroys itself in the end, Janath. Would you contest that assertion?’
‘No. So, are you telling me that all of this is an exercise in power? An exercise culminating in a lesson no-one could not recognize for what it is? A metaphor made real?’
‘But Janath, when I spoke of power destroying itself I was not speaking in terms of metaphor. I meant it literally. So, how many generations of Indebted need to suffer-even as the civilized trappings multiply and abound on all sides, with an ever-increasing proportion of those material follies out of their financial reach? How many, before we all collectively stop and say, “Aaii! That’s enough! No more suffering, please! No more hunger, no more war, no more inequity!” Well, as far as I can see, there are never enough generations. We just scrabble on, and on, devouring all within reach, including our own kind, as if it was nothing more than the undeniable expression of some natural law, and as such subject to no moral context, no ethical constraint-despite the ubiquitous and disingenuous blathering over-invocation of those two grand notions.’
‘Too much emotion in your speechifying, Tehol Beddict. Marks deducted.’
‘Retreating to dry humour, janath?’
‘Ouch. All right, I begin to comprehend your motivations. You will trigger chaos and death, for the good of everyone.’
‘If I were the self-pitying kind, I might now moan that no-one will thank me for it, either.’
‘So you accept responsibility for the consequences.’
‘Somebody has to.’
She was silent for a dozen heartbeats, and Tehol watched her eyes-lovely eyes indeed-slowly widen. ‘You are the metaphor made real.’
Tehol smiled. ‘Don’t like me? But that makes no sense! How can I not be likeable? Admirable, even? I am become the epitome of triumphant acquisitiveness, the very icon of this great unnamed god! And if I do nothing with all my vast wealth, why, I have earned the right. By every rule voiced in the sacred litany, I have earned it!’
‘But where is the virtue in then destroying all that wealth? In destroying the very system you used to create it in the first place?’
‘Janath, where is the virtue in any of it? Is possession a virtue? Is a lifetime of working for some rich toad a virtue? Is loyal employment in some merchant house a virtue? Loyal to what? To whom? Oh, have they paid for that loyalty with a hundred docks a week? Like any other commodity? But then, which version is truer-the virtue of self-serving acquisitiveness or the virtue of loyalty to one’s employer? Are the merchants at the top of their treasure heaps not ruthless and cut-throat as befits those privileges they have purportedly earned? And if it’s good enough for them, why not the same for the lowest worker in their house? Where is the virtue in two sets of rules at odds with each other, and why are those fancy words like “moral” and “ethical” the first ones to bleat out from the mouths of those who lost sight of both in their climb to the top? Since when did ethics and morality become weapons of submission?’