It was late
afternoon and the streets of Searingsands were teeming as always. It was one of the many things the Former
Baron disliked about the district that regardless of when you stepped outside
you were never more than a few moments away from being molested by a street
seller trying to haggle with you for some piece of junk or other, like a tatty
old rug with an ugly, faded pattern which also happened to be a magic carpet,
or rusted old lamp you did not need, nevermind the fact that it might hold a djinn. He had dealt with a djinn once before and
found it to be an entirely disagreeable sort of creature, always demanding that
he make another wish, long after the initial three had run out. It seemed it did not take well to people who
worded their wishes like legal contracts and Franck suspected that it was
trying to catch him out just the once, just so it could have the
satisfaction. Whilst it's true that he
had secured many useful items and pieces of information from the beast,
eventually its feral whining had become far too annoying and he had
(ever-so-carefully) wished it into the aether.
He did not need another one.
And of course
the sellers weren't the worst of it.
There were also the dancers, getting in the way of a decent gentleman's
stride with all their half-clad gyrations and veiled temptations. If he had wanted any of that the Former
Baron would have married decades ago, but as it was he was far more interested
in his Philosophy than in any single piece of flesh. If only the dancers could see that!
And there were
the musicians accompanying them. Had
any people in all of Shadow come up with a more infuriating instrument than the
bagpipe? Anyone listening to it as they
approach a corner would expect to see some poor out-of-breath wretch fighting
with a particularly weedy cat over the last scrap of rat, but to their surprise
instead discovers upon rounding the corner that it is in fact some poor wretch
striking up an unnecessarily intimate relationship with a hitherto unknown sort
of wooden octopus. Most undignified and
entirely unrequired.
Franck had
tried telling a bagpipe player this once during one of his father's visits when
he was about ten. To say that the
musician had been put out by it would be seriously understating the matter. Were it not for the young Von Spektr's quick
reactions and even quicker wits he would likely have ended up having his lungs
used as an extra set of bellows for the reedy, unwieldy instrument, which just
goes to show that even the men who play bagpipes cannot be trusted. They were thugs, the lot of them, and who
knew what they might do if they ever got hold of a real octopus!
And as if all
this weren't bad enough, the streets of Searingsands were far too crowded and
narrow and convolutedly twisted for any of the usual conveyances to be used to
navigate them. There were no
automobiles in Searingsands, partly for this reason and partly because the
hypostatick engines they used were viewed with the deepest suspicion. There were exceedingly few carriages and
those only tended to work near the harbour for the transport of cargo. Even horses were few and far between, and
were all either in the employ of the militia, or privately owned by merchants
or some of the more eccentric noblemen.
The rest of the nobility and a few of the wealthiest merchants went
around in litters carried by their servants.
There were none of those for hire and The Former Baron had very little
money left with him and didn't want to borrow on the credit of his name for
fear of gaining some unwanted attention.
The fact that
it was exactly that kind of attention that he was now going to seek out
explicitly didn't make a difference.
There was more than one figure in Searingsands he would rather avoid if
he could.
So, for Franck
and for Gulliver, as with almost everyone else in the district, the only way to
navigate through the streets of Searingsands was on foot, and the Former Baron
loathed it.
With all the
crowds and the illogically ordered streets, not to mention the various hills (once
great sand dunes, or so the theory went) which Searingsands was built upon, it
took them nearly two hours to get from their apartment in the midst of one of the
more impoverished wards to the top of the palace hill and the residence of the
Kahn which crowned it. There was no
doubt it was an impressive edifice, one of the greatest in all Shadow, or so
some said, with its massive gilded dome and the eight needle-like towers which
rose up around it in pairs, the two shortest at the front and the two tallest
reaching to the sky at the rear. With
the arches which joined each tower to the main palace halfway up each
structure, it seemed almost like a great golden spider crouching over the city.
Gulliver
slowed as they approached it, all the better to stare at its heights in wonder,
but Franck was having none of it. He
had seen the palace hundreds of times as a boy, knew all its secrets and flaws,
and was deeply unimpressed by the lot of it.
"Stop
dawdling, boy," he called behind him as Gulliver slowed once more,
"it's naught but a moulded mound of marble and gold and not worth your
time!"
"You mean
that's all real gold?" Gulliver replied, flabbergasted.
"Of
course it's real gold! Now if the
architect had been able to synthesise some artificial kind of gold to use -
perhaps one which could withstand aetheric attack, or which wouldn't stain when
hit by a rain of tomatoes - now that would have been much more impressive, but
no, it's just soft run of the mill gold from a run of the mill mine studded
with perfectly ordinary, run of the mill diamonds, compressed from ancient
decaying plant matter like every other diamond on the planet. So hum-drum! Now move along, Gulliver my lad, we have an appointment to
make!"
And so they
made their way into the plaza before the palace where the great circus pavilion
they had seen from the other side of the district loomed large and, in Franck’s
opinion, entirely too vulgar. He paid
it no heed, carefully ignoring all the promoters, porters and performers who
seemed to be milling about outside, and instead actually speeding up as he made
his way past towards the palace proper.
“Uh,
Franck!” Gulliver called out from
behind, “I think you should-”
“Oh, for
goodness’ sakes, Gulliver,” Franck replied, not even bothering to turn all the
way around, “we don’t have time for you to stop and gawp at every little
shimmering trinket and attraction.
We’re at the top of the Kahn’s hill, everything here is gaudy and
sparkly and ancient and I’m sure completely fascinating to one so used to brine
shrimp and amusingly shaped squalls for entertainment, but we are not here as
tourists, nor are we here as historians, art critics, architects, or any other
category of person who has a legitimate right to give three Highorchard figs
about any of it. We’re here to see the
Kahn and I would rather we just got on with it. It’s apt to be painful enough as it is without standing around,
wasting time, looking at a clown tripping over his own smile!”
Diatribe over,
the Former Baron turned on the spot and began marching quicker than ever
towards the palace. He could just
vaguely hear Gulliver panting behind him as he raced to catch up.
“But, Franck,”
the lanky pirate managed, out of breath, as he reached the Former Baron’s side,
“I really think you need-”
“I do not need
anything other than to get to the palace and gain and audience with the Kahn,
Gulliver. Anything else is just getting
in the way, so would you please be quiet as I speak to that guard over there
and see if I can win him over with my famous charms!”
“I’m not-”
“Gulliver!”
The pirate
sighed, sounding particularly pathetic with no puff left, and the Former Baron
took it as a welcome sign of capitulation.
He marched on ahead in silence, if you could describe the growing hubbub
of the plaza, and the circus which took up most of the space, as being anything
like silence.
“You there!”
he called as he approached the guards standing by the great front doors of the
palace, currently closed against all comers.
“I seek an audience with the Kahn immediately,” he continued.
“Oh really?”
the guard replied in an accent so thick you could eat it like porridge, “And what
makes you think you are going to get one?”
“The Kahn is…
is an old friend of mine and he would be most interested to speak to me.”
“I’ve heard
that one before.”
“But he really
is.”
“And that
one.”
“We spent a
long Searingsands summer together when I was but ten years old.”
“And my aunt
is a three-legged spinemongrel from Westreach.”
“We built a three
storey, articulated treehouse together out of old plates of brass and pretended
we were fighting off an invasion of the Dhampyr!”
“She’s got a
very pretty tail, I can assure you.”
“It had a
working hypostatick lift!”
“And my aunt
can bark in fourteen languages. You aren’t
getting in you crazy old man! Besides,
even if I let you in the Kahn isn’t receiving any guests tonight on account of
the circus.”
“The circus?”
Franck asked, puzzled.
“Yes, it’s the
big striped tent behind you? About yay
high?” the guard pointed over Franck’s shoulder.
“I know what
it is, you overpaid doorpost,” Franck replied, losing his patience now, “but
why would the circus prevent the Kahn from receiving visitors?”
“Probably
because he’ll be attending it,” the guard replied sniffily, “he’s the patron,
besides I suspect he’s as keen to see this ‘boy from the other world’ as
everyone else.”
Franck opened
his mouth, closed it, opened it again.
“You’re
starting to resemble a fish, sir,” the guard said, “I suggest you head
back the way you came and douse yourself in the fountain before you dry out
completely. Good evening to you!” He couldn’t actually look away because
Franck was still standing right in front of him and he would hardly be a good
guard if he turned his back on any who might approach, but he certainly did a
very good job of looking straight through him.
The Former
Baron, meanwhile, turned very slowly, an expression of surprise still
flickering across his face.
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