The Empire of Gut and Bone (21 page)

W
ell?”
demanded the Ex-Empress.

Brian thought for a minute. He said haltingly, “Now … we know it’s someone on the Council, because only someone with a councillor’s ring could have sealed the order for a spare uniform to be left where Dantsig would find it. Right?”

The Ex-Empress sighed and held out her skeletal hands. “I have no earthly idea,” she said.

Brian had too many thoughts crowding his head … too many ideas swarming all over one another … and it wasn’t easy to think with all the courtiers staring at him in confusion, boredom, and anger. He needed time. He looked up and said, “The servant who received that letter was named Mr. Gwestin, and he was sent down to the dung furnace after we spoke to him. I would like to call him as a witness and ask him a few questions.”

The Ex-Empress waved her hand, and a servant bustled off to draw Gwestin away from his dung shovel.

“So …?” the Ex-Empress said.

Brian hesitated. He wanted a minute to collect his thoughts. Gregory and Gwynyfer looked at him expectantly — with suspicion, but with relief and gratitude. She didn’t realize that he’d been the one who had suspected her of aiding her father with the murder.

So many things to think about … so many people watching one another, and commenting on one another …

Brian looked up. “If I tell you who murdered the Regent — and why — then Dantsig and Kalgrash will be proved innocent, right?”

The earl looked with distaste at the two mannequins. “That would seem to be the case. Except that they are still prisoners of war. And, moreover, they are Norumbegan property. We may install them or deinstall them as is our august will.”

“If I tell you who murdered the Regent,” Brian repeated, “if I prove that there was a dangerous conspiracy right within the palace walls — then you owe me something, don’t you? You owe me a favor, like the release of these prisoners and information on how to activate the Rules Keepers and stop the Thusser.”

“You cannot bargain, boy,” said the earl.

The Ex-Empress added, “If we wish, we can just strip you and throw you over the balcony, too, when we’re done hurling Chigger.” She looked around. “Or is that no longer on the menu?”

Brian would not give up.

“When I tell you what has been going on …”
Brian said. “What I
think
has been going on … you’re going to —”

At this point, Gwestin appeared. He bowed before the Stub. “Your Imperial Highness,” he said, “may the herons call your name. May you hunt down the gods and bring them to bay. I am your lowliest servant: waitron and dung slinger.”

“Rise,” said the Earl of Munderplast. He gestured impatiently with his hand.

Gwestin looked to the Stub, as if for approval, and stood.

Brian moved forward. He was so nervous there was sweat on his shirt. He could tell everyone saw it. He did not feel very sure of himself. He couldn’t imagine what would happen when he accused someone.

“Mr…. Mr. Gwestin,” said Brian. “You are a servant of the Imperial palace, isn’t that right?” Gwestin nodded. Brian continued, “You received a note —
signed with the Council’s seal
— two nights ago, the night we arrived in the palace. Isn’t that right?”

Gwestin assented.

“And what did that note tell you to do?”

“Your Imperial Highness, your lordships, it told me to take a palace guard uniform down to the prison, ask to be let in to see the two mannequins, and to leave the uniform where they’d find it.”

“Did it say why?”

“Your Imperial Highness, your lordships, my betters do not need to explain themselves to me. I do what I am commanded.”

Brian nodded. He felt giddy with anxiousness.

“UNLESS,” he said. “UNLESS.”

“You’re rather leaking under the arms,” said the Ex-Empress.

The Ex-Emperor said, “Someone should fetch him a chamois.”

Brian’s rhythm was broken. It took him a second to get up his courage again. “UNLESS,” he insisted, “you never received a note at all, Mr. Gwestin.”

The Court gaped.

“You told us that the note was destroyed before we saw it. Maybe it never existed in the first place. Maybe
you
stole those two uniforms from the guardhouse. Maybe you kept one for yourself, and took the other one down to the prison. You told the guard on duty that the Council had ordered you to deliver a message to Kalgrash and Dantsig. No one was going to disbelieve you. They knew you worked at the palace. They knew your face.

“Or at least,” said Brian, feeling a weird kind of triumph suddenly, “at least they knew who you were
— until, a few hours later, when you put on a false goatee and the other uniform, and went and murdered the Regent.”

Gwestin showed signs of panic — and then he quelled them. He crossed his arms. “I did it,” he said, “for the glory of the Empire. I serve the Imperial House of Norumbega. The dog Telliol-Bornwythe had to die.”

The Court craned in to look at him. The Ex-Empress demanded he be spun around so everyone could see him. They all wanted to touch him, wanted to pluck at him.
There were hands all around him. He didn’t wince as they pinched him. Eyes stared into his eyes. He stood firm.

Gregory was at Brian’s side, mystified. “So who was … I don’t get it…. Who was that voice, the night he attacked us? It must have been him who attacked us, with the gas?”

“It was him,” said Brian. “I think.”

“Who was the voice over the intercom? Who was telling him to kill us?” Gregory was perplexed. “I thought it was the Thusser.”

Brian nodded. His brain was racing. “It was,” he said. “In a way.” He looked at the Ex-Empress, hoping she’d shush everyone, so he could explain. He said, louder, “IN A WAY, it WAS the THUSSER.”

She was busy poking at Gwestin, giggling at the purple spots on his arms where he’d been pinched. The Court gadded around him, grinning.

“The Thusser?” said Lord Dainsplint, who couldn’t pinch, since his hands were handcuffed behind his back. He stood nearby, interested in what Brian had to say.

“Yes,” said Brian. “The Thusser.”

“Hush!” cried Lord Dainsplint. “The boy says the Thusser are involved, too! Hush!”

The Court quieted down. They drew away from their victim. Gwestin staggered as they stepped back. His hair was twisted from where they’d pulled it. He had little nip marks on his shoulders, and pinch marks on his arms.

“You were an agent for the Thusser, Gwestin?” asked Lord Dainsplint. “That doesn’t ruddy well seem like a good way to support and sustain the old Empire.”

Gwestin, for the first time, looked angry. “The Thusser? I would not serve those wolves! Those animals! I serve only the Imperial House.”

Brian said, “That’s what you thought. But …”

He looked around. It was now or never. Everyone stared at him expectantly. If he didn’t get this right — if he couldn’t prove it — there was some chance the pinching would descend on him, the dragging, the hurling —
splatters.

“Mr. Gwestin, you thought you were serving the House of Norumbega. But you weren’t.” He shook his head. “You were —”

“A dupe?” suggested Lord Dainsplint. “A patsy?”

Gwestin looked deeply disturbed at the idea. Clearly, he hated the Horde. “I would never submit to the Thusser! My orders come from the highest authority! I listen only to him — only to …” — he bowed deeply, his voice catching with emotion — “Your Imperial Highness the Stub.”

“He tells you what to do?” Brian asked.

Gwestin bowed.

“The Stub?” Dainsplint protested. “That’s a bit rum. I mean, he’s an excellent chap, if you go in for eye rolling, but he’s not one of your great talkers, the Stub.”

“He spoke to
me.
His servant.”

Several women of the Court smiled behind torn fans. They thought he was crazy.

Brian said, “Ex-Empress Elspeth, do you know Dr. Brundish?”

“I do, of course. Lumpish fellow. Recently went walkers.”

“You know him well?”

“He has been my MD since olden times.”

Brian nodded gravely. “Dr. Brundish was a Thusser spy. He had a two-way radio that could pick up signals and transmit. He could listen, and he could broadcast reports to the world of the Thusser. He could whisper orders, Mr. Gwestin, and you’d hear them in your headset. And he had a powerful antenna that let him do this. A bug that let him hear everything that went on in the throne room.” Brian paused and breathed deeply. “That bug,” he said, “that antenna … it is … the Stub himself.”

At this, the Court approached Brian. They had their fingers out, ready for pinching. They seemed like they’d delight in it. “The Stub?” — “He accuses the Stub?” — “The Imperial Stub?”

“No! Truly! Your Highness! Ex-Empress! Didn’t Dr. Brundish help you when you were pregnant?”

“I don’t like the direction this conversation is taking,” the Ex-Empress said.

“Didn’t he? And … and …” The courtiers were almost upon him. “And Ex-Emperor Fendritch, Your Highness, didn’t your uncle, the last Emperor, complain because his kids all came out as spirals and sand and things, because of a Thusser curse?”

The Ex-Emperor shrugged. “My uncle complained about a great, great number of things.”

The fingers reached Brian. They began to squeeze.
Fingers were locked in Brian’s black hair. They pulled, they twisted — only lightly for the moment, nipping.

“Ex-Empress Elspeth!” Brian called. “Ex-Empress,
is it possible that Dr. Brundish injected you with something, or cast some kind of curse or spell over you — so that you gave birth to something that wasn’t Norumbegan?”

The Ex-Empress thought. The Court paused in their torment. The Ex-Empress said, “There were the injections, obviously. And the pentagrams. All strictly necessary to provide good fortune for an Imperial child. Pull the organs of the Great Body into alignment. Bring luck.”

Brian crouched, surrounded by stooping figures in gauze and old lace and silk, reaching forward, ready to torture him.

He said,
“That is not your son! He was built in you! Planted!”

Gwestin wailed, “My Lord! Your Highness! Your Imperial Highness!” and threw himself down before the Stub. He sobbed. “Speak to them! Tell them these are lies!”

“The Stub talked to you out loud at first, didn’t it?” Brian said. “It saw that you were loyal. It told you things.”

“He did! Your Highness!” The man was prostrate before the plug of a king.

“It wasn’t the Stub’s voice. It was Dr. Brundish’s. He could hear everything that was going on with the Council. He reported everything back to the Magister of the
Thusser Horde. Whenever he needed something done, he’d speak to you. He’d pretend to be the voice of the Stub. He gave you that headset, I bet.”

“Dr. Brundish was a loyal … He was a servant of the one, true Norumbegan Emperor,” said Gwestin, crying.

“So, see? He heard that the Regent was going to oppose the Thusser, and he needed him killed quickly. He had you do it. He told you how. Then he heard me speaking out against the Thusser, and saying that we needed to wake up the Rules Keepers, and he ordered you to kill me. You’re the one who put that little … little … death beetle in my hamburger. You’re the one who tried to poison us with gas. On the Stub’s orders. On Dr. Brundish’s orders. You see?”

The Court was shocked. They stood, almost uninterested in the prospect of harm. They held their fingers poised, at the ready, but did not swoop in to grab at Brian.

Until Gregory said, “Wait … but by the time Gwestin tried to gas us … when we heard the voice in the headset … Dr. Brundish was already gone. And we had his radio.”

“That’s impossible,” said Brian. “Unless … unless there was another Thusser with a radio somewhere in the Great Body who could transmit to —”

But the Court no longer wanted to hear what he had to say. They didn’t want to hear their sovereign Stub insulted. They moved in for torment.

Men in pinstripes, women in silk, they all moved in to
harass Brian in their cruel and elfin way, and he saw peering down at him the chiseled faces of grannies and leering men of business, daughters of the nobility, knights, all of them grabbing at him, pinching, twisting, plucking: gray hands, pearl buttons, a black cuff.

He struggled. The crowd was too thick. Gregory waded toward him.

They were all over Brian — sharp darts of pain — roiling like insects in some gruesome hive, ripped away from a wall and revealed piling near their queen. His legs quivered and shot up with new, sharp snaps. His arms were twisted. His shirt sagged.

He couldn’t breathe to scream. They were dragging — he could almost see, through the crowd of scuffed brogues and dancing pumps — they were dragging him toward the balcony.

His hair — he felt shocks of his hair pulled out like kernels off the cob. Across the floor … he grabbed at things he felt … but they were just a litter of plasterboard … slipped through his fingers. His arm jolted as someone dug their thumbs into the joint of his elbow.

“For the glory of the Stub!” they hissed. “Our Imperial Majesty the Stub!”

He flipped over, kicked at them. Gregory was at his side, shoving, screaming, “No!”

And Brian found himself being heaved up.

He was outside. On the balcony. Above the city.

The hot wind from fires blew across his face. Light was red. The city burned.

Arms lifted him, tearing at his clothes.

He swung out — facedown — the crater of the square below him — eight stories below — He screamed.

They held him.

He struggled.

They still held him fast.

They prepared to drop him.

Gregory hoarsely yelled. He lunged. They forced him back.

Brian wheeled his hands in the empty air.

And then, just as they were about to drop him, a voice said, “Excuse me. Lords, ladies, is this the Imperial Council of Norumbega?”

The elfin rout halted, intrigued.

They all looked back into the Grand Hall. It was a beautiful youth with golden, feathered locks. He was dressed in a white flag of truce. He held his head on a platter. “I have been sent by the Mannequin Resistance.” Awkwardly, he explained, “Your phone is out of order.” The youth’s head on the platter, it appeared, was attached by a few wires to his shoulders. This youth, the messenger of the armies that had ceased their fire, announced, “Your lordships, your ladyships, I bring dire news. The Thusser Horde are in the Great Body.”