Fool's Errand (22 page)

Coming to a halt beside the fool's ornately carved, velvet-cushioned armchair, Mordecai peeled back the corners of the white silk handkerchief he held in his left hand. Gingerly picking up the stinking thing that lay nestled within, he set it down next to a plate of greasy sausages.

At the sight of the decomposing finger, the king let out a bellow of shock, leapt to his feet and scrambled away from the table as fast as he could.

“It is not as fresh as it was a few days ago,” sighed Mordecai, “but I can get you another if you like.”

“What … what is this?” stammered Finn, breathing hard.

“This?” said Mordecai, using one of the sausages to give the finger a poke. “This is a finger, Your Majesty—one that used to be attached to the peasant hand of your insufferable nursemaid.”

“
No!
” gasped Finn, his pale face growing even paler.

“
Yes!
” mocked Mordecai, waving his hands in the air.
“Yes!”

The king coughed then, so suddenly and so violently that when he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand it came away smeared with red. “I … have done
everything
you've asked of me,” he wheezed, pressing his hand against his chest as though this might aid in the drawing of breath. “Why would you do such a thing to Moira?”

Wrinkling his nose in distaste at the sight of the king's bloodied hand, Mordecai said, “Beyond the fact that it gave me great pleasure to watch her writhe in agony, I did it because you asked me to do it, Your Majesty.”

The king's blue eyes bulged in outrage. “That is a lie!”

Mordecai smiled. “Back when I first explained to you the way things were, do you recall saying that you'd consider my proposal that you marry Lord Bartok's daughter if I brought you proof that your nursemaid was still alive?” he asked slyly. “Well, here is your proof. Please accept my apologies for the delay in delivering it. You might think that it would be impossible for a man to forget that he had a severed finger tucked away in his desk drawer, but you know what it is like to be consumed by the responsibilities of running a kingdom.” Mordecai stopped suddenly, opened his beautiful, dark eyes wide and covered his mouth as though he'd just made an embarrassing slip of the tongue. “Oh, wait—that's right,” he whispered through his fingers. “You do
not
know what it is like to be consumed by the responsibilities of running a kingdom.”

Smiling broadly, he searched the young king's face for some sign that these taunts—and the knowledge that his beloved cow had been tortured at his unwitting behest—had finally broken him.

But Finnius was a king in more than name—he was a king at heart, a true prince of the blood to his very marrow. Biting his lower lip to keep from coughing, he drew himself up to his full height, looked down into the handsome face of the monster who'd once been his most trusted adviser and said, “Very well.”

“Very well?” said Mordecai uncomprehendingly.

“Very well, I will marry Lady Aurelia,” said Finn. “Will there be anything else, Your Grace?”

Mordecai stared up at him, despising him for his courage and dignity almost as much as for the height, strength and grace that afforded him such a regal bearing—a bearing that Mordecai, with his twisted back and withered, uneven legs, would never in a thousand years be able to copy.

Unless the princess and cockroach found the healing pool, that is.

If they found the pool, he, Mordecai, would become as tall, as strong and as graceful as any man in the kingdom—and far more so than this young fool, who would soon thereafter be as corrupt and stinking as the thing that now lay on the table before him.

“Yes, there will be something else,” muttered Mordecai, feeling sour in spite of the ever-comforting vision of the king dead at his feet. “This afternoon I want you to go out onto the Grand Balcony and present yourself to the common people. The lords of the realm have had the opportunity to observe you dining in state on several occasions over these past few days and to convince themselves of that which is in their best interests to believe: namely, that you acted of your own free will when you announced that you wished me to continue to rule in your stead. The merchants and tradesmen seem willing to accept the new reality for the same reason, but the lowborn masses are having a more difficult time reconciling themselves to your actions. Touchingly, it seems as though they are convinced that their beloved young king would not have abandoned them except under extreme duress. You will convince them otherwise. You will don your golden crown and most festive doublet, rouge those pasty cheeks of yours, march out onto the Grand Balcony and smile and wave like a ninny as you have always done, that the fears of the nobodies may be calmed.”

“I've never known you to concern yourself with the fears of the least of my subjects,” observed King Finnius coolly.

“Nor do I concern myself with them now,” said Mordecai. “But such rumblings encourage your so-called subjects to avoid embracing their fate, and I would not have it so. For just this very day I've given orders that
all
lowborn slums in Parthania are to be burned to the ground, their occupants to be sent to wherever they can be of most use to the realm. Able-bodied men shall be given the opportunity to join my personal army. Along with the cripples, ancients, women and children, those who refuse will be relocated to frontier settlements in need of cheap, expendable labour—all except the very smallest of the children, of course. They will be sent onward to the Mines of Torodania, where the overseers are ever in need of fresh recruits to toil within the deepest, darkest, narrowest, most treacherous of the tunnels.” “You cannot—” began Finn.

“I can, and I will, and if you speak against me or my plans to anyone, the streets of Parthania will run red with lowborn blood,” said Mordecai matter-of-factly. “At least if you behave,
some
of the slum dwellers will have
some
hope of surviving—as will your nine-fingered nursemaid.”

When the king said nothing, Mordecai knew he had won—again. “Very good,” he said in an upbeat voice. “Now, I must—”

“You know,” murmured the king as he gazed at the cushion-less chair upon which the cow used to plant her fat rump, “Moira would sooner see herself dead than see such evils committed in the name of saving her.”

Mordecai threw his heavy head back so far that pain shot through his thin stalk of a neck, twisting his jolly laugh into a scream of pain.

“Dead!” he panted when he'd recovered enough to speak. “Your Majesty, if you fail to cooperate, do you honestly think that I will show that fat cow such mercy as to simply
kill
her? I hope you do not—because I will not! I will see her long for death and never be granted it. And believe me when I say that I have the talent and experience required to keep the nearly dead alive for
years
. Now, if we're quite through here, I must take my leave of you for
I
have important matters of state to attend to—not the least of which includes making arrangements for your betrothal ceremony.”

Finn opened his mouth as though he meant to ask a question but abruptly seemed to think better of it. “Fine,” he said instead. “Only, what am I to do with Moira's … with the finger?”

“Keep it,” urged Mordecai as he picked up a greasy sausage with his bare fingers and took a lusty bite. “I brought it as a surprise for you, after all. And I can get another for myself any time I like.”

“As if I would want one ofyour fingers for myself!” chortled Mordecai that night as he sat in the comfortable chair in the fetid cell where the nursemaid yet resided, shackled to the glistening wall, wallowing in her own filth, her stringy hair hanging in rat's tails.

It was disgusting, really, the way she kept herself. Seeing it—and seeing that she'd hardly
touched
the grass and clover which were delivered fresh daily—Mordecai might have been tempted to say that she was more like a hog than a cow except that she'd grown too thin to be properly compared to a hog. She was not nearly as thin as she'd eventually be, of course—and not nearly as thin as she'd have been if Mordecai, fearful that she'd starve to death before he'd finished having his fun with her, had not reluctantly ordered that she be allowed to receive her share of mouldy bread every two days. But she was definitely thinner than a hog.

“You should have seen the king's face when I told him that he was the reason I'd cut off your finger,” said Mordecai now, smiling broadly at the memory. “He was almost as distraught then as he was when I told him that you'd writhed in agony when I'd done the deed.”

“But I did not writhe in agony,” said Moira.

“No,” agreed Mordecai with a flicker of irritation. “No, you did not. But you will.” Then, abruptly changing the subject to one he knew would cause her pain even if cutting off her fingers did not, he said, “His Majesty's health appears to be worsening, by the way. He gasps for breath all the time, and I have even seen him cough up blood.”

“Blood!” exclaimed Moira, who was so alarmed by this news that she leaned forward, unconsciously straining against her shackles.

“Yes, blood!” cried Mordecai, pleased by her reaction—and by the fact that her sudden movement had opened the dirty scab of her finger stump, causing it to ooze fresh blood.

Moira did not seem to have noticed that her wound had reopened. “This is not good, not good at all,” she murmured. “You're not preventing His Majesty from being tended by his physicians or from being bled and dosed with his tonics, are you? You're not causing him to suffer from hunger or cold or any other hardship?”

“Don't be stupid,” snapped Mordecai, annoyed by her concern for the king. “He is no good to me dead—at least, not at the moment, he isn't. I need him healthy enough to do my bidding.”

Mordecai waited for the cow to start mooing that she was sure the king would sooner die than do his bidding. Instead she said, “And how fares the Princess Persephone?”

At the mention of the princess, Mordecai's mood shifted again. She'd been on his mind again of late. The young girl from the banquet—the one in the green gown who'd been served up by her noble father like a platter of tender sweetmeats for Mordecai to sample as he would—had proven a disappointment. Having trembled and wept most irritatingly throughout her entire audition, she'd collapsed in hysterics when Mordecai informed her that she was banished from court forever on account of her now-ruined reputation. And as soon as his bedchamber door had slammed shut behind her, he'd found his thoughts drifting back to the Princess Persephone who, he was quite certain, would never have behaved in such an undignified manner.

Mordecai smiled now at the thought of the princess, faithless whore though she was. “Do you know that the king has not once asked me how his beloved sister fares?” he told the nursemaid. “I think he almost asked this morning but changed his mind at the last moment.

Perhaps he hopes that keeping me from thinking about her will somehow protect her. Silly, isn't it, when he should know that she is never far from my thoughts and that she could not be in greater danger if she were stripped naked, soaked in beef broth and staked down in a pit of starving weasels?”

Moira gazed up at him impassively, as though waiting for him to get to the point.

Mordecai stopped smiling at once. “I do not know how the princess fares for I've yet to receive a report from my man who is following them,” he muttered.

“Perhaps she and her Gypsy lover have evaded your man.”

Mordecai's eyes bulged in outrage. “The cockroach is not her
lover!”
he half-shrieked. Gripping the arms of the chair, he twisted in his seat and was about to bellow for a guard to come rip the cow's filthy tongue out of her head when it occurred to him that such an act would not only deprive him of the pleasure of one day hearing her beg for mercy but—perhaps more importantly—it would give
her
the pleasure of knowing how grievously her disgusting insinuation had upset him.

And so he turned back around, slapped the arms of his chair and laughed loudly to show her that her words had no power over him. Then, leaning forward, he asked her if she liked surprises. When she warily shook her head, he reached into the pocket of his robe and said, “Be that as it may, I have one for you.”

Obviously believing that her surprise would be something akin to the stinking one he'd given to the king that morning, the nursemaid recoiled. Laughing again, Mordecai paused for dramatic effect before withdrawing his hand with a flourish and holding up a perfect golden pear.

Moira sighed audibly and licked her cracked lips.

Mordecai dangled the piece of fruit under her lowborn nose for a few seconds before snatching it away and saying, “This is not for you. Miserable wretches like you do not eat the fruit of kings. However, I thought you might enjoy watching
me
eat it, that you might be reminded of the life you once led and all the things you once knew.”