Green Bridge, October 5th, III:Leeland 15
Cyrus smelled Green Bridge before he saw it. The scent of smoke and sulfur had been growing in the air all day while they travelled northeast, and as the chill October wind picked up in late afternoon the smell grew with it. He wrinkled his nose.
“Several thousand coal stoves make the world such a fragrant place,” he remarked to Vicod. “I wonder if the merchants thought of that when they opened up the coal trade with the Gray Kingdom.”
Vicod shrugged lightly from atop his chestnut destrier. “If Snugg or Leadfeather hadn’t started hauling coal, then one of the others would have done it. Every mother and child in Green Bridge is warmer through the winter for their efforts. As for me, I couldn’t abide Peacock Hall without the warmth of coal. I’d have decamped for Vale after the first day of autumn last year, whatever the Dean said of my appointment.”
Cyrus glanced around at the low wooden houses on either side of the Roosterfoot Road. New, red brick chimneys were much in evidence on the outer walls of some, where the better-off villagers had replaced their fireplaces with the new coal-burners. A few even had carefully fitted steel pipes rising to the rooftops. Already these trailed plumes of dark smoke; the nights had turned chill early this year. Cyrus wrinkled his nose again and wondered whether the next great revolution in home heating would smell even fouler.
Vicod and Cyrus rode in silence until the small outlying village passed behind them. Their students were strung out in a weary line of men, women, and horses, though Sheria showed no obvious fatigue as she jogged along with the band. Gmork rode just in front of Cyrus on the borrowed horse, nearly in his lap. He looked around curiously, munching on a sandwich. The goblin practically never slept more than an hour or two, but ate nearly constantly. Behind them, Merrily’s palfrey, less energetic, drooped its head. They had ridden long days since slipping away from the King’s men outside the church, and to make better time he’d left Daisy and the wagon to follow behind with Le Hen and Greensmith. He found he missed the old warhorse’s familiar gait and broad back.
Cyrus turned and looked to the rear. Merrily herself was riding behind Mr. Hornhugger, and the two were bickering again about some undoubtedly foolish thing. He’d made them share a horse on the return trip in the hopes they’d make peace, but they never seemed to tire of needling each other. He wondered if Merrily had spurned a romantic overture; his students were endlessly falling in and out of love with each other.
Hunter, he reminded himself sternly. Mrs. Hunter. They were still in the classroom.
“Three more miles,” he called back to the class at large. “You can sleep when we’re inside the walls, but not before then! The Guard may have spies and saboteurs about, and your families won’t thank me if you’re all killed in an ambush because you were too busy thinking of your beds and bedmates.”
They straightened in their saddles, and he nodded approvingly. The first- and second-year programs at Triad were most efficient at weeding out the unfit, leaving a strong residue to mold into proper Applied Historians. Few of those who remained would quit in the following three years, though there were always one or two lost to accidents with poorly set grappling hooks or giant rolling boulders. Students who wanted an academic career without the thrill of sudden death at any moment usually ended up in the College of Literature.
They passed through the south gate of Green Bridge not long after. The ancient walls were covered in scaffolding, and large stacks of rough-cut stone blocks were piled on either side of the road outside them. Already the outlines of massive reinforcements to the walls could be seen on either side, just visible in the early October dusk.
The students began to disperse once they passed within. Sheria disappeared into the dark streets as well, without so much as a word of farewell. As the group broke up, Mr. Hornhugger pulled his horse up next to Cyrus, with Mrs. Hunter still perched behind him.
“I need my palfrey back please, Professor,” she said wearily. “I have some errands before I go home.” Cyrus fancied that Hornhugger glanced back at her, or wanted to, but he couldn’t be sure.
He slid, slowly and carefully, off the horse, tottering slightly when he hit the ground on his good leg. Hunter mounted her own horse and looked down at him for a moment with questioning eyes.
“Go on.” He waved his hand at her. “Attend to your matters and your man. But Mrs. Hunter—I trust I’ll see you at the funeral.”
It began to rain as Vicod, Cyrus, and Gmork made their way toward Farley Island along East Piggling Street. Vicod courteously offered his horse to Cyrus and walked alongside. Both men flipped up their hoods and huddled down against the cold rain. Cyrus absently wrapped the front of his cloak around Gmork, still riding in front of him. The lamp-lighters were out, kindling the oil lanterns that studded the streets at regular intervals. Most of the brightly colored shop fronts were closed, though a few hopeful taverns remained open for business. The burghers of the Charter City of Green Bridge made their way home, or to a warm place with friends, with their hoods up and their shoulders hunched.
In the trade quarter, Vicod nodded to one side of East Piggling as they rode. “Another new warehouse. They’re putting them up faster than a painted lady outside a bank.”
Cyrus looked at his companion quizzically.
“Sorry,” shrugged the Carolese. “Maybe it doesn’t translate into Uellish.”
Indeed, the warehouses had expanded in both size and number. Many of the old townhouses that used to be scattered among the larger buildings in the quarter had been bought and torn down, to be replaced with hulking, rather indelicately constructed edifices with large doors, few windows, and many guards. Some sprouted tall stacks from which larger plumes of coal smoke emerged and drifted over the city. Not many visitors were allowed in—even Snugg regulars like Cyrus were politely turned away. Veridia had told him little of their contents, and he knew better than to plumb her for information. He felt fortunate to be allowed other plumbing tasks.
There was a sharp clanging sound from one of the rooftops of hard slate, and Cyrus’s eyes automatically flew to the source of it. But he could see nothing, save for a few dying sparks. Some new devilry of Snugg & Co., he thought.
Soon they arrived at Queen Anne’s Square, on the near side of the Green River. Across the long, multi-spanned Three Fish Bridge, the lights of Farley Island glimmered invitingly, despite the rain.
“We’re being followed,” said Vicod softly, his tone of voice suggesting he was inquiring what sort of wine to pour with dinner.
“I know,” replied Cyrus, as if a Svegnian Black Rose would be just the thing. “Two, on horseback. They picked us up just after the warehouse district, I think. Blew their chance, though—Three Fish Bridge is no place to pick a fight.” He glanced at the two Billies stationed at the bridgehead.
Neither historian looked back; that would be unprofessional. They nodded politely at the policemen and made their way out onto the long bridge.
“Maybe they’re not looking for a fight,” proposed Vicod, in the way that a man would point out that Svegnian wines only really go with mutton and inferior beef.
Cyrus reached down for his purse and fumbled it, dropping it on the ground beside the horse. “Get that for me, will you friend?”
Vicod turned and reached down to retrieve the purse. He handed it back up to Cyrus with a wink. “They have gone. I suspect they were dissuaded by the law men.”
The two continued on over the long, stone spans.
“Do we have any new enemies? Or are these some of the usual lot?” inquired Vicod as they reached the midway point.
Cyrus shrugged. “No new ones that I’m aware of. The King and First Minister of Uelland, their army and intelligence apparatus, some bastardized gathering calling itself a ‘National Assembly,’ every member of God’s Holy Ecclesia, what’s left of Foregrub and Quimble… am I missing any?”
“Snugg & Co., if you’ve annoyed Miss Snipe more than usual.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. If Veridia Snipe wanted me dead, I’d be dead yesterday. She doesn’t need to send men to lurk about ostentatiously in the shadows.”
“You made her pregnant, Cyrus, but you haven’t yet managed to propose marriage. Women sometimes find that state of affairs irritating.”
“If I proposed to Veridia Snipe, then I do believe she’d have me killed.”
Vicod shook his head in mystification. “In the year I have passed here, I have not yet gained an understanding of Uellish women. The females in Carelon are much more straightforward.”
“I’m not sure Veridia Snipe is actually a woman,” replied Cyrus. “I think she may be some kind of clockwork automaton—or perhaps a goddess.”
His Carolese companion smirked at him. “If you buy me a bottle of Claire Paget, I may forget to tell her you said that. And when did you take up mysticism? Have you begun to grow senile already?”
They reached the end of Three Fish Bridge and waved genially at the Billies on the other side. The lawmen, wrapped up in cloaks against the heavy rain and leaning miserably on their wooden staves, simply nodded tersely in acknowledgment. Around and below them were the massive stone blocks of the island’s new defensive wall, slowly being constructed in pieces as the riverfront properties could be bought and torn down. The acrid smell of coal fires continued unabated.
A few pamphlets, detached from some wall by wind and indifferent fixation, scampered about the street. Glancing at one, Cyrus saw that they were from the smattering of Republican propaganda pieces that had been appearing in Green Bridge for the last few months. This one featured a flattering wood-cut of Hobb the Wise, First Minister of the new Republic. Vicod picked it up, scowled, and tucked it into his pocket.
“Thinking of joining the revolution?” quipped Cyrus, raising an eyebrow.
“No,” replied his companion. “The privy on my floor at Peacock Hall was out of paper this morning. If Hobb insists on making war upon us, I can at least wipe my arse on his face.”
In the open square that separated the tall, granite gates of Triad University from neighboring Bastings Hall, Cyrus halted and helped Gmork to the ground. “Go back to my cave and make a fire,” he instructed. “In the fireplace, this time, or I’ll roast you on it. See if there’s some black-bitter-man-drink left in the big comfy room at Peacock. I think I will be out late in the night. Then you may do as you see fit until dawn. No burning, stealing, beating, sneaking into other man-caves, lurking, loitering, or destroying unattended cats.”
The goblin nodded cheerfully and slipped into the night.
“Why don’t you teach him Uellish?” asked Vicod. “All of his race are learning it. His King has ordered that their people shall speak Uellish and live in peace among men.”
Cyrus looked back at the small figure hurrying toward the university gates. Gmork stopped for a moment before entering, speaking with another goblin who emerged from an alley nearby. The newcomer was larger and wore a broad hat. Cyrus eyed them curiously but thought little more of it. Goblins had recently become quite common at Triad.
“Because I like having a goblin who still thinks like a goblin,” he answered Vicod’s question. “I spent a year among their kind—”
“—I know,” interrupted Vicod. “I’ve read the book. We’ve spoken of it too many times for me to count. What about the goblin speech do you find useful?”
They reached the steps of Bastings Hall, where Cyrus dismounted and handed the reins of Vicod’s horse to a sleepy attendant. Then they began to walk slowly up the steps, Cyrus hopping awkwardly on his wooden leg.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Perhaps it simply amuses me. But I think it useful to preserve the language. Language creates thought, and thought creates perception. The world of our five senses is exclusively a function of our perception. I’ve seen… strange things come from words,” he ended lamely.
Vicod chuckled. “Keep your secrets then, friend. I expect you’re concocting some obscure thesis to publish in a tome of a paper for the next Continental Symposium, which all of three people will read. If you really want to reach an audience, you should write fiction.”
They reached the great doors of Bastings Hall, which were firmly closed. The large overhanging balcony gave shelter from the rain, and both men threw back their hoods in relief. A small contingent of mercenaries stood at attention before the doors, each man armed with a long-barreled gun and protected by mail and a breastplate.
“Welcome back Professor Stoat, Professor Rayth,” said one of them. “You are expected. The Queen herself instructs that you should be admitted. Please enter.”
✽✽✽
They sat around the long oaken table in the large audience chamber on the second floor of Bastings Hall: Cyrus and Vicod, still wet and travel-stained; Captain Vernon Vigg of the Billies, dressed in his finest black doublet and silver buttons, despite the lateness of the hour; Nicola Snugg, her gray-streaked black hair done up tightly and wearing a simple walking dress of white-dyed wool; Veridia Snipe, looking awkward and uncomfortable in the broad cotton dress that the lateness of her pregnancy demanded. Veridia normally preferred pants and a suit coat modified from the fashion of her male counterparts, and Cyrus knew the feminine attire would be at least as galling as her extended girth.
The light in the room was dim, with just a few oil lamps pushing back the darkness. No one was eager to speak, and so they did not. In the dark silence, each nursed his own thoughts.
A door opened at the side of the room, and the Queen entered alone. They rose.
Queen Anne wore a gown of white silk and a shawl of gold cloth. Her long black hair was loose, and the only jewelry on her person was a thin, golden tiara crafted to resemble woven holly leaves. Her eyes were a piercing, radiant green and her skin was pale. She was taller than most women, and her shoulders were broad without being square. Cyrus found that he was holding his breath.
She walked swiftly and purposefully over to the table without a hint of pretense in her carriage, then gracefully sat herself down at its head. A servant to hold her chair would have been ludicrous.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“Be seated,” she said firmly. They were seated. The rain battered at the windows and the wind rattled the shutters.
“On the twenty-seventh of September, a man in my service was murdered,” the Queen began. “You all knew Rolland Gorp, or knew of him. To some of you he was a friend; to others a useful agent. To me he was both.” She paused for a moment, but maintained a steely composure. Cyrus felt a little wrench within himself. Rolly was dead? He hadn’t stopped to contemplate the reality of it until now. He looked around the table, wondering what the others were feeling.
“I have many enemies,” continued Queen Anne, “and I have no doubt Rolly paid for his service to me at the hands of one of them. This cannot pass without an answer. A murder alone would demand justice, but also my adversaries must not learn they can attack my friends without consequence.” She looked meaningfully at the small group around the table. She didn’t need to say more. All knew the precarious state of Queen Anne’s grip on power in the north. Strong allies were thin. Cyrus thought of the militia in Roosterfoot who had so quickly abandoned them when the Republican Guard drew near, and the half-finished defenses around Farley Island.
Nicola Snugg spoke up. The new head of the Snugg clan following Beatrice Snugg’s death—and the chairman of its governing board—had a habit of speaking slowly, and Cyrus found it forced him to listen carefully to what she said.
“Your Majesty. I am sure we each share your grief at the loss of Mr. Gorp. He was most useful to my organization, and well liked. It seems to me, however, that the proper resolution to his murder lies with the men of the law. We have no interest in private justice at this time.” Though she referred to ‘private justice’ without the slightest emphasis or color, nonetheless Cyrus shivered slightly. Snugg & Co’s ‘Special Operations’ Department was legendary throughout the Neighbor Kingdoms.
Captain Vigg shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Vigg’s bulk had only increased in the year since Cyrus had first become acquainted with him, and his round, credulous face suggested a deep affection for pastries with white powdered sugar.
“The Billies, and I Your Majesty, want nothing more than to solve this murder. But the Billies are a small force, and Green Bridge is a big town. We normally rely on private agents retained by the next of kin when there’s a murder. And this one’s difficult—there weren’t witnesses, and there wasn’t much evidence beyond the body. Some say he was last seen with a… goblin… but so far nobody’s been able to find out which one.”
Cyrus sat up with a shock. A goblin? Attacking a man in Green Bridge? The thought of it was absurd. Those few goblins in Green Bridge at any time were there to trade or to study at Triad. But even their rustic cousins upriver would have to be truly desperate to attack a big-man.
“My men aren’t much good at talking with the grayskins,” continued Vigg, “and anyway they’re mostly lying low. So that’s why, Your Majesty, if you’ll forgive me, I suggested we bring in Professor Stoat here.”
The eyes at the table turned to Cyrus, and he found himself flushing slightly. Veridia, in particular, seemed to be peering at him most intently. He cleared his throat.
“Were there bite marks on the body?”
There was a shocked silence at the table. Nobody answered.
“The body. Of the deceased. Had someone been gnawing at it when it was found?”
Captain Vigg found his voice. “No, Professor. He was stabbed several times, then left for dead. It appears his office was searched as well.”
Cyrus shrugged. “Then it wasn’t a goblin. I’d stake my hat on it, and perhaps a very nice dinner out. Feral goblins in large groups will kill for sport, but they always eat what they kill. The ones we have here are not feral, and would only attack a big-man in desperate hunger.”
“Couldn’t the goblin have had a personal disagreement with Mr. Gorp, or perhaps been hired by someone else?” asked Vigg.
“The first, I consider highly unlikely,” answered Cyrus confidently. “But in any case, goblins will only attack a big-man with overwhelmingly superior numbers. A half dozen or more goblins walking into Redbun Hall would have been hard to miss, even for mathematicians. Who found the body, and when?”
Vigg glanced nervously at Veridia Snipe, then back to Cyrus. “It was… a goblin, Professor. One of the two students they took on last year. Went by the name of Obilly Smallhat among city folk, though what his own people call him I don’t know. He told Dean Comland and brought the Dean to the body, but then he disappeared in the confusion that followed. No one’s seen him since. It was around nine o’clock, after most folk had gone to bed.”
Cyrus sat back and pondered this. He’d met Obilly Smallhat once or twice. Timid little fellow, but spoke well and had plenty of promise, to hear Dean Comland tell it. He pictured the scene: A goblin, alone at night, finds the dead body of a big-man and goes to find the big-man who is the chief of the tribe he has joined…
“Professor,” came the Queen’s clear voice from the head of the table. “The hour is late, and you have work to do. I trust I may rely on your speed and discretion. Discuss your payment with my chamberlain.” She nodded at Veridia and, without waiting for a reply, rose to her feet. The others around the table reflexively rose as well.
After she had swept regally out of the room, Cyrus turned to Vigg.
“I want to see the body. You haven’t put him in the ground yet, have you?”
The captain shook his head. “The Queen ordered that he be preserved for two weeks, with the hope you’d return in time. The embalmers worked on him after we took him out of Redbun, and I have him packed in salt in the basement of William Hall. I can take you tonight. I also had an artist draw the scene from two angles.”
Cyrus nodded. “I’ll meet you at William Hall in half an hour.” Captain Vigg departed swiftly.
Vicod passed by him on the way out as well. “When you are finished with the body, Cyrus, come find me at the Pinny Purse. I expect you will need a stiff drink. I will wait for you.” Cyrus gave his friend a thin smile, and Vicod departed.
And then it was Veridia’s turn. She walked over to him slowly, one hand supporting her belly. Pregnancy had not been kind to Veridia. Her frame was thin to begin with, and though she had put on weight she seemed ill-equipped to bear the burden. She was sick frequently, and there were dark circles under her eyes. Nonetheless, in eight months he hadn’t heard a single word of complaint escape her lips.
“I’m glad you’re back,” she said stiffly, keeping her distance. “I was worried you wouldn’t return in time for the funeral.”
Cyrus cocked his head at her in confusion. Even for Veridia, this was awkward… and then he remembered Nicola Snugg. The older woman was standing just behind Veridia, staring at both of them disapprovingly. Seeing Cyrus’s eyes meet hers, Snugg stepped forward and glowered at him.
“We have great expectations for your investigation, Mr. Stoat,” she declaimed hollowly. He bit his tongue, forcing himself not to correct her form of address. “Your experience with these… grayskins… will be invaluable in bringing the murderer to justice. And,” she added, leaning closer and growing slightly more animated, “a swift resolution will be most welcome. Our trade relations with the Gray Kingdom are delicate. There is some political problem among the goblins that they won’t speak of to us, but their coal shipments have decreased sharply. Our factor, Miller, thinks there is a group among them that wants to go back to their old ways. The goblins must see that our justice is swift, sure, and final—or there may be more difficult problems than one dead mathematician.” And with that, she walked primly out of the meeting chamber.
That left only Cyrus and Veridia.
He stepped forward, put his arm around her waist, and very gently drew her close. She resisted for a moment, but then relented and melted into him. He lifted up her chin and kissed her, and she crooked an elbow around his neck.
“You were gone too long,” she said with soft accusation, pulling back. “My bed is growing cold these October nights.”
“Is that all I am to you?” he demanded playfully. “A walking bed warmer?”
“You barely walk,” she retorted, giving him a light shove. “We should get you a chair with wheels. Then you couldn’t go so far on these excursions with your students.”
“I have a duty to educate the young,” he replied loftily, guiding her toward the door to the hall outside, his hand still on her waist. “It is a solemn duty, and one I fulfill at great personal cost and inconvenience.”
“A solemn duty to go messing about in the countryside, crawling into dungeons and drinking whiskey around a campfire with your friends? You’re neglecting your other solemn duties, Mr. Stoat.”
“Professor Stoat. Tenured. What other duties am I neglecting, Miss Snipe?”
She kissed him again, this time rather more consequentially.
“Right here?” he asked, his voice muffled. “We’re in a public building, Veridia.”
“I’ve gotten to know every room of this public building in detail for the last year, while you’ve been out messing around with horses and castles and pretty young women,” she said, eyeing him. “And I happen to know that this room, right here,” and she opened a nearby door, “is reserved for visiting notables, is presently unoccupied, and locks from the inside.”
She drew him in, and he stopped arguing.
✽✽✽
Captain Vigg flipped back the lid of the wide crate, exposing a bed of brownish salt in rough crystals. Veridia, on the other side of the broad table, pressed a perfumed cloth to her mouth and nose, and turned her face away. Vigg, apparently nonplussed, gave a quiet command to the four Billies around the table, and they began scooping away the salt into barrels nearby.
Rolly’s face emerged first. It was pale, gray, and had dark splotches.
“Your embalmers need to go back to school,” remarked Cyrus.
“Not much call for it around here,” answered Vigg apologetically. “Most folks go in the ground within a day or two.”
“Once upon a time,” offered Cyrus, watching the work, “in the days of the Old Ecclesia, every funeral had the body on full display, unless it was a real mess. Embalming was an honored profession back then. The New Ecclesia never bothered to revive the practice. One of the very few practical decisions to come out of Talen Vicarus in the last seven centuries, really. But now we have amateurs with vinegar and salt.”
“My mother used to make fried potatoes with vinegar and salt,” remarked one of the Billies, laboring away with the scoop. “I’ll never look at a potato the same again after this.”
At last the salt was removed, and the Billies pried off the sides of the crate. What was left of Rolland Gorp lay on the table. Cyrus put on a pair of leather gloves and gently brushed away a few grains from the chest.
Rolly had been a large man—both tall and fat. Cyrus, who had seen quite a number of corpses in his life, nonetheless found the present state of the body quite discomforting. Rolly deserved more dignity than to have his chest and belly splayed out on a table, slowly turning to worm food. But that was a problem for tomorrow.
He lightly probed the chest wounds. It was plain to see they were deep; the weapon had pierced him in three places just over the heart, and Cyrus judged the blade would have been as long as a foot. He looked carefully over the rest of the body, then directed the Billies to gently turn Rolly on his side so he could examine the back.
“No other marks,” he remarked. “No fresh scratches on his arms or hands. Nothing on his face.”
Captain Vigg nodded. “We thought the same thing. No signs he was in a fight, or even tried to defend himself.”
Cyrus shook his head in disgust. “A goblin would have had to throw a grappling hook on his shoulders to get up that high—or else stand on a stool. And Rolly would have had to watch calmly while he did it. Where was he found?”
“Lying face down on the floor,” answered Vigg. “I’ll show you the room tomorrow. No blood trail—just a pool beneath him. If he’d been sitting or lying down when he was stabbed, we’d see a trail of some kind. You can look for yourself, of course.”
In the dim light of the basement, Cyrus glanced across the table at Veridia. She had removed the cloth from her face, and was staring down at Rolly, her expression unreadable.
“It won’t matter,” she said finally. “Rumors have already begun to spread that a goblin killed him. Unless we find a more convincing culprit, Captain, the merchants and the common folk of Green Bridge will believe those rumors.” She didn’t add the bit about “bad for business.” She didn’t need to. Cyrus knew her well enough to hear it.
He took a last look at Rolly.
“Cover him up again please, Captain. We’ll see to this man’s final dignity tomorrow.”
✽✽✽
The Pinny Purse was an old tavern. Fashionably impoverished students had sat on its crooked benches and eaten greasy meals from its pitted tables for longer than any living memory, and even recorded history was a bit foggy on when exactly the Purse had first opened its doors. Certainly it had been there in the time of Dean Wilbur Handcock, who was known to have first posited, in its dim subterranean hall, the ethical definition of the sandwich. Alifred the Walleyed, too, made reference to the establishment in his speech announcing the Charter of Green Bridge, suggesting that certain fine details of that great document had been inspired by the shape of a particularly egregious soft pretzel delivered to King William Lackshoes during feverish all-night negotiations. During Bloody Maude’s reign, when the student body of Triad learned of the passionate but doomed revolt of their comrades at the Royal Academy of Uelland, the Triadians reacted one and all by marching in solidarity across the square to the Purse and drinking as many pints as they could before their tabs were called. Indeed, even the founding of the mighty Snugg & Co. trading concern could be traced indirectly to the august halls of the Purse, as Ferdinand Snugg was said to have quit his partnership with Reginald Leadfeather in disgust after a disagreement on the proper application of mayonnaise to chips. It was, in short, a public house of ancient and hallowed lineage.
Cyrus and Vicod sat together at one of the Purse’s ancient and hallowed—and also food-stained and rickety—tables. Cyrus stared morosely into a chipped clay mug of ale, while Vicod sipped in delight from a rather smudged glass of Claire Paget. The rest of the bottle stood at attention nearby. Outside, the night was black, cold, and rainy, but within the Pinny Purse there was light. There was even a sort of warmth—a side effect of emissions from the assembled Triad student body and whatever was decomposing in the elderly rushes scattered indifferently on the floor that decade.
Vicod swished his Claire Paget in the glass and took a sip. “When did you and Rolly become friends?” he asked curiously.
Cyrus snorted. “You were there at the exact moment it happened. You were naked, at the time. It was… sometime between when I slid off the roof of Palace Naridium and when I landed in that cart full of horse manure he’d pushed underneath us. I decided—when I was about ten feet above the cart, I think—that any man who can work out in his head where another man will land when he jumps off a roof is worth having as a friend.”
“Really?” Vicod frowned. “You two spent the whole trip back to Green Bridge bickering. When you invited him to join us here on Fridays, I thought you had taken leave of your senses.”
Cyrus smiled wryly. “You should have heard us on the way down. At least on the way back we weren’t trying to kill each other.”
“I still have three Thom Verasee novels he lent me,” remarked Vicod. “I expect I shall feel guilty about not returning them for the rest of my life.”
“Don’t,” answered Cyrus. “He stole those from the College of Literature. And they bought the novels under false pretenses in the first place—I found the receipts once when I was spying on the chief librarian. The College of Literature would be collectively mortified if anyone caught the faculty reading modern fiction, so they wrote it up as several volumes of Brassen comital lists from the reign of Charles Gorgevon.”
“Why were you spying on the chief librarian?” asked Vicod curiously.
“Because he deserved it,” muttered Cyrus into his ale.
They were both silent, lost in their own thoughts. The hum of conversation around them hit a natural lull, and Cyrus looked around the dimly lit room. He rose to his feet and brought his mug into the air.
“To my friend Rolly!” he shouted at no one in particular. The mix of students and workmen looked up at him in surprise, as did Vicod.
“To my friend!” he said again, and jabbed the mug in the air, spilling some of it on his arm. “He drank here with you and me, and he loved peanuts, and if he’d not been quite so good at mathematics then Professor Rayth and I would both be quite dead. So—drink, damn you all! Drink to Rolland Gorp! Three rounds for everyone, on the College of Applied… Mathematics!”
Something new began to happen.
CYRUS: When did they put a piano down here?
VICOD: What?
CYRUS: Don’t you hear that?
VICOD: Yes. Where’s it coming from? And what’s happening to my feet?
CYRUS: Are you… singing? Wait—am I?
Raise a pint! Raise a glass!
Add some whiskey to your mass!
We’ve a man to toast before he’s in the ground.
Do a sum in your head,
For a mathematician’s dead
There’s a solemn mission now so gather round.
Down a scotch, drink a bourbon
Find a pipe and put some herb in
And we’ll send him off to rest without a tear.
Being sober makes less sense
Then a square’s circumference
The solution’s in the radius of a mug of beer—
Drink to the dead!
Drink to the living!
Life is short and nasty
And death is unforgiving.
You can live your whole life through without a drink at all,
But when it’s time to toast the dead you’ll need some alcohol!
CYRUS: What, by the Ecclesia’s shriveled testicles, is going on here?
VICOD: I can’t stop singing!
Tip one back, pour one down.
Let the measure of your frown
Be defined by the opposite parallel of its chord.
And you’ll see after a while
That the chord will make a smile
Helped along by all the booze you can afford.
Math is better when
It’s mixed with barley wine and gin,
And Rolly isn’t here to say it’s not.
Toss ‘em back with Cyrus Stoat
‘Til you approach your asymptote,
And float across that axis with another shot.
Drink to the dead!
Drink to the living!
Life is short and nasty
And death is unforgiving.
You can live your whole life through without a drink at all,
But when it’s time to toast the dead you’ll need some alcohol!
CYRUS: What’s happening to my legs!
VICOD: Cyrus Stoat, you are dancing!
CYRUS: No I’m not! I’m not dancing! Don’t look! Nobody look at me dancing!
VICOD: It’s as if you had little pieces of metal beneath your shoes, Cyrus. Where is that sound coming from?
Now it’s time to say goodbye,
And nobody wants to cry
So take my arm and let’s dance out into the night.
Three would be more fun,
But tonight it’s one plus one.
I’ve heard one plus one makes three,
And if you prove it true to me
Then we’ll make it home, you’ll see—
And wake up to find we’re three by the morning’s light!
Drink to the dead!
Drink to the living!
Life is short and nasty
And death is unforgiving.
You can live your whole life through without a drink – at – all –
But when it’s time to toast the dead you’ll need some alcohol!