The Empire of Gut and Bone Page 17

  “Hmm?”

  “This isn’t the Thusser’s listening device. This is someone else’s listening device. Two people had the throne room bugged. We picked off the wrong bug. And the Thusser can still hear everything that’s going on down there.”

  Brian crouched, watching six robed figures meet below. The Earl of Munderplast stood quite near him, looking down toward the others, arms crossed. He now wore a robe of black satin, too, and a hood.

  Below, the six figures talked quietly amongst themselves. Brian could make out no words. Syllables thwapped like bats around the broken chamber. Echoes muttered in all the dead, muscled corridors.

  And suddenly, the Earl of Munderplast and one other moved back toward Brian. The boy instinctively cowered, trying to push himself into a crevice. But they weren’t just walking past him — they were walking right at him.

  He panicked. He didn’t know if he should run or keep hidden.

  They were looking directly at him. Time to run. He got up. He scampered.

  They ran after him. The earl had a knife.

  Brian hurtled down the uneven hallway, hands out, pushing off against the fallen walls.

  The two figures rushed after him.

  He didn’t know the way back. He skipped over a crevasse. He looked behind him. They were gaining. Their hoods had fallen off: the earl and a young knight Brian had seen but did not know.

  He turned a corner, hoped for stairs. No such luck.

  He hurled himself along over an obsidian expanse of dried heart that felt like stone.

  The hands grabbed him.

  He was hauled backward.

  The knight gripped him. The Earl of Munderplast put his knife to Brian’s throat.

  They pulled him back toward the amphitheater.

  The others were waiting.

  “Brethren!” the earl announced. “We have a spy in our midst.” He and the knight gestured that Brian should walk down the ragged slope to the others. He stumbled and tripped, barely caught himself. The hands on his arms were firm. They bruised him.

  He was thrust into the middle of the ring.

  They stared at him.

  “Brian Thatz,” hissed the Earl of Munderplast. “Welcome to the final meeting of the Guild of Regicide Assassins.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I didn’t … I …” Brian couldn’t speak. The men glared down at him.

  “We gathered together some months ago,” said the earl, “for the express purpose of killing the Regent in a way no one could ever detect.”

  Brian looked around wildly for a way out. They had surrounded him. The earl still held up his knife. Brian needed delay. “Why?” he said. At least, if they were going to kill him, he wanted to understand.

  “We have, each of us, our own reasons,” said the earl. “I wished, of course, to unseat him so that I could run for the office. I wished power for the Party of Melancholy. It is time for the Court, the flower of Norumbegan chivalry, to lay aside their tea dances,” he said with disgust, “their games nights, their cheap frivolity. It is time for weeping, for lamentation, for planctus. We should lie listless upon couches. Recognize what we have lost.”

  Another figure pulled back its hood.

  It was Gugs.

  “I joined just the other day,” he said, swinging his arm. “When the Regent announced we might abandon New Norumbega. Can’t do that. Can’t abandon the old family hoard. All those streets we own. The fam built this city. Not about to give it up, see?”

  “So one of you …” Brian hesitated. “One of you, the other night … one of you dressed up like a guard? And … snuck into the Regent’s … the Regent’s room? And …?”

  The conspirators looked at each other. They did not look happy.

  The earl dropped the knife to his side and turned away. His voice echoing in the amphitheater, he said, “The murder was committed at midnight. Some wily gome slipped into the Regent’s room dressed, as you say, as a guard, and slit him open.”

  Brian looked between them. He didn’t even know some of them. “Which one of you, um, did it? Actually did it?”

  The earl said, full of despair, “At the hour of midnight, Brian Thatz, this parliament of conspirators was meeting. We wished nothing more than the Regent’s death.”

  “So, which of you —”

  “You misunderstand me, human,” said the earl. “We were here. At midnight. Hearken?” He turned to face Brian again. His eyes were full of shame. He walked his fingers up and down the knife’s blade. “Do you see what I am saying? We were all here. Together. Plotting. Look around at our sorry faces. We all wished to kill him. Any one of us would have raised our daggers anent his treacherous throat. But none of us — none of us committed the murder.” He concluded bitterly, “The fact that we are conspirators, plotting against the life of the Regent — that is the very proof that we had nothing to do with his murder. We are unfortunately … wretchedly … despicably … miserably … innocent.”

  Realization dawned on Brian. “So your meeting here … it’s your alibi.”

  The Earl of Munderplast nodded slowly. He looked at the haft of the knife. He inspected it in the reflected light from the torches, frowning.

  “Shall I kill him?” he asked the others.

  A young knight shrugged. “Why not?” he said.

  The earl nodded and stepped toward Brian.

  Brian pulled back. He glanced at the wicked blade — then looked left, right, up, everywhere for a route out.

  He felt hands grab his arms. Cup his elbows.

  Push him forward.

  The earl’s breath was thick in the gloom. He raised the dagger.

  “We’ll bury your body here,” said the earl. “After we drain it.”

  “Bad luck, old thing,” said Gugs at Brian’s ear.

  The earl pressed the blade to Brian’s neck. Brian gagged, started coughing. He felt the dull edge scrape his white flesh. He tried to pull away — and stammered, “Wait! Wait!”

  The earl looked skeptically at him.

  Brian said, “Wait! I know — I know — I can help you.”

  “Mmm?”

  Brian held up his hands. “I have an idea.”

  “Help me? In what wise?”

  “Win … you know … win the election.”

  The earl pulled the knife back.

  “Doesn’t seem very sporting,” said Gugs. “Chigger really is giving the thing his full swing.”

  “Tell me,” said the earl. “How could you help me win?”

  “Because … because …” Brian thought quickly. “Because we don’t know where Lord Dainsplint was the night of the murder.”

  “He had an alibi, thought I,” said the earl.

  Brian nodded eagerly. “He did! He told Gregory and me that he was with Gugs.” Brian pointed. “They both said they were playing cards in the basement.”

  Gugs shrugged uneasily. “Well, deuce take it, so we did, for a while. Played for an hour or so. Before I bumped along to the Regicide Assassins meeting.”

  “So he was lying, wasn’t he? And you were? You’re Lord Dainsplint’s alibi, and you’re lying.”

  Gugs admitted, “It was a bit of a steamer. A corker. I couldn’t very well say I’d been at a planning meeting for the assassination of the Regent. So when Chigger said he was with me at midnight, I said, ‘Eh, true enough, lads.’ It was not entirely the truth.”

  “So,” said Brian, “where was he?”

  Gugs looked angry. “I am not going to rat out Chiggs. Kill the kid, Mundy.”

  Brian flinched.

  But the Earl of Munderplast looked at Gugs. He looked at him long and hard. “You may have to ‘rat out,’ as you say, Lord Dainsplint. I would find it very useful if you ‘ratted him’ thus ‘out.’ ”

  “I won’t squeal. No, sir. Don’t want you and your bloody old Melancholy Party to win the ruddy election.”

  “I don’t know that you have any choice, Count Ffines-Whelter.” The Earl of Munderplast jammed the knif
e back into his robe somewhere, stepped forward, and put his hands on Brian’s shoulders. “You see, this darling child, this precious human cubling, this adorable, pallid little bairn — he can testify that you lied to hide Lord Dainsplint’s true location at the time of the murder. And if Dainsplint cannot explain where he was when the Regent met his end all untimely, then I fear Dainsplint will be under investigation for assassination. He will have to withdraw from the election.” The earl gave a gloomy smile. “Why, suddenly I feel the sun bursting through the clouds. It’s a delightful feeling. I am feeling lucky, Count Ffines-Whelter. It is a happy day for melancholy.”

  “I won’t tell you a thing,” said Gugs.

  “But you know?”

  Gugs turned and walked away. The others looked nervously after him.

  The Earl of Munderplast looked nothing but sly and triumphant.

  “Come along, Brian Thatz,” he said. “I am going to make you some hot chocolate. Tomorrow, we shall put, as they say, ‘the squeeze’ on Gugs. We shall consider what we may tell the investigating wizard, Thoth-Chumley. We will make some discreet inquiries as to where Lord Dainsplint might have been, if not playing poker or pinochle with his boon companion.” Munderplast put his arm around Brian and led him out of the rough amphitheater. “In his chocolate, does the human boy,” he asked, “prefer one marshmallow or two?”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The Earl of Munderplast motioned for a drone to pour more chocolate. Brian, Gregory, and Gwynyfer were seated on an old sofa in Munderplast House just a few streets away from the palace. Brian and the earl had run into the other two kids near the Grand Hall, and Brian had asked the earl to invite them along. Gregory, after all, was another witness: He, too, had heard Chigger lie the other day and say he’d been playing cards with Gugs when midnight (and the killer) had struck.

  Brian asked, “Do you think that Chigger really did kill the Regent?”

  The earl waved his hand around. “Or, one hopes, something even more embarrassing. Who can say what he’s hiding?”

  Munderplast House was a narrow, ramshackle three-story place crammed with chipped gargoyles removed from Old Norumbega centuries before. The floors were slanted. They creaked whenever the drone shuffled in front of the piano.

  “Is anyone going to go out and talk with the Mannequin Resistance?” Brian asked.

  “It would be political death so to do. Whoever talks with them admits that one is weak, and that one is willing to negotiate with servants. The Court will accuse anyone who parleys with the Mannequin Resistance of being on the side of the windup toys. The mechanicals do not deserve the guerdon of our attention.”

  Gregory pointed out, “They’ll get your attention pretty quick when they start blowing things up with those cannons. I kind of want to be out of the city by then.”

  “Once you provide your evidence that Lord Dainsplint lied,” said the earl, “you may go as you will, I am sure. Leave. Retreat ye to the Scummy Marches, the Phlebotl Plains, the Lung of St. Eustace.”

  “We can’t leave without our friends,” Brian declared. “They’re being held in the prison.”

  “Because, dear little wight, they are under investigation for assassination. They’re not likely to be revived soon, unless it’s for torture.”

  Brian, determined, said, “We’re going to prove that they’re innocent.”

  “Best of luck.”

  “And we’re not leaving,” Brian added, “until you tell us how to activate the Rules Keepers.”

  “Activate the Rules Keepers? … Yes, you’ve prated of it before…. Who remembers the Rules Keepers? Probably no one but Archbishop Darlmore, the Ex-Empress’s brother. I recall that he spoke often of the Thusser and the need to keep watch upon them, lest they break the Rules.”

  “Archbishop Darlmore?” said Brian. “I haven’t met him.”

  “He became so dull. So terribly, terribly dull. So awfully, despicably dull that he removed himself from our number and went to live as a hermit in the desert. The last I heard of him, he was off in the Wildwood. At the far end of the Dry Heart. He is probably mad by this point. Crazed. Wode as a jackrabbit in a sack. Why, I ask, would one leave all this?” The earl gestured at his sagging ceilings, his buckling walls, the broken stained-glass windows shoved into uneven spaces between the timber beams. He sighed. “True, true, verily; we are not what we once were. Our race was a proud race, and our dominion stretched from shore to shore, when mankind was but a pack animal scrounging in the bellies of dead pigs for sustenance.”

  Gwynyfer made desperate, secret signs with her eyes that the earl was about to become Melancholy and talk and talk and talk about how in the days of yore this fair folk had been the cat’s pajamas.

  “Well,” said Gregory, “it was really nice of you to give us hot chocolate. We should probably go.”

  “A shame. Just when I was about to speak of our proud heritage in the days of yore. I have photographs.”

  Gwynyfer rose and curtsied. “The daughter of the Duke of the Globular Colon renders heartfelt thanks to the Earl of Munderplast for his hospitality.”

  “And thanks for not killing Brian,” said Gregory. “That was really nice, too.”

  “Yeah,” said Brian. “Thank you.”

  Gregory explained, “He hates being killed.”

  “So do we all,” said the earl, sipping port wine.

  Brian, Gregory, and Gwynyfer shuffled toward the door.

  “Tomorrow morning,” said Munderplast. “Tomorrow morning, after the funeral, we shall call out Lord Dainsplint and make him account for himself.”

  Brian nodded. The three kids all waved to the earl, said good-bye, and let themselves out.

  As soon as they were on the street, Gregory started whispering to Brian. He told him about finding the little hidden microphone on the wall of the throne room. But he told him, also, that it hadn’t been the one broadcasting to the radio Dr. Brundish had left behind.

  “There must be another bug in the throne room somewhere,” Gregory explained. “We think maybe one of the Council is carrying it.”

  Brian said, “I can’t believe so many people were spying on the Regent.”

  “It does seem rather poor form,” said Gwynyfer.

  “But who could it be?” Brian asked.

  They were walking through the Imperial Square, in front of the palace. It was mainly a crater. The guardhouse and several mansions were piles of rubble. They had to skirt the edge of the square, since the middle was a hole. In front of them, the wall of the palace was blackened from the blast.

  “Why aren’t people more upset about the deaths?” Brian asked.

  “Because we aren’t people,” said Gwynyfer. “All your worries seem very strange to us. We —” She stopped short. She was staring into the ruins of a mansion. Far back, one of the palace guards stood. His lamp was flashing on and off.

  “Is he signaling at us?” Gregory asked.

  The three stared into the darkness. The lamp flashed. Someone else was coming. The guard ducked and stepped back into the shadows. He covered the light.

  “Let’s see what he wants,” said Brian. He tromped over the piles of rubble.

  Gregory and Gwynyfer followed.

  Unsteadily, they made their way across planks and broken furniture and chipped tissue. A few lone walls stood, where just that morning, one of the fanciest houses in the city had looked out on the Imperial Square.

  The guard retreated back farther into the ruins.

  “Hey!” Gregory called in a whisper. “What’s up?”

  The guard set down his lamp.

  Too late, the boys saw he wore a black mask over his nose and mouth.

  By that time, he had already raised what looked like a blunderbuss. He had pulled the trigger. And the ruins filled with smoke.

  It was some kind of gas gun. Huge billows of yellow smoke poured around Brian, Gregory, and Gwynyfer. They stumbled backward, eyes stinging, mouths burning. They felt the smoke curl down their throats,
parch their lungs.

  Brian screamed to anyone who might be passing by. “Help! It’s the killer! He has on his fake uniform!”

  Screaming, however, turned out to be the wrong thing to do. Brian yelled and yelled — and then drew breath. His lungs filled with poison. And he fell.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Gregory, scrambling forward, covering his face with his shirt, dimly saw Brian start choking. Brian’s hands were around his neck. His eyes were wide. Gregory took two short, darting steps over the rubble toward his friend — and then saw the guard charging up the mound of debris toward them, his blunderbuss still spitting gas.

  Gregory reacted by instinct. He closed his eyes and plunged toward the assassin, hand out. He half ran, half slid up and down the mound.

  The killer was not expecting anyone to head toward him.

  Gregory’s hand slammed into the man’s chest. The assassin raised his gun to batter Gregory’s head — he swung it —

  — and he would have sliced Gregory’s skull right open if Gregory hadn’t pushed the man, felt the man topple backward by two steps, arms swinging to right himself.

  Gregory had his eyes clenched shut. He had his shirt and his hand over his nose and mouth. He couldn’t see a thing. He felt the uniform. His hand crawled upward. He whapped the man’s face. He tried to tear off the mask. He felt a strap and pulled. The assassin collapsed toward him, smacked him in the neck.

  Gregory fell.

  He gasped. The smoke filled his lungs. He saw stars. He coughed. He retched. The man was stumbling away. Gregory realized that he must have pulled the mask off. The assassin bellowed with sneezes. Gregory heard the bricks shift as the killer retreated.

  The gas was still thick all around Gregory and he couldn’t see Brian now. He had no idea where his friend was. He raised himself up on his elbows. He pulled himself forward.

  A voice muttered something under Gregory’s belly. He jumped.

  Something was in Gregory’s hand. Something he’d pulled off the assassin was talking.

  He coughed and coughed. He was crawling down the slope, toward the square. Tears streamed down his face. He rubbed at his eyes wildly, but his hands were covered with grit. He sagged to the side and rolled before he could stop himself.