“And so,” said a voice behind the accused, “do I.”
Both Pie and Gentle turned to take in the sight of a scabrous, bearded individual, dressed in what might generously have been described as motley and less generously as rags, standing on one leg and scraping shit off the heel of his other foot with a stick.
“It’s the hypocrisy that turns my stomach, Hammeryock,” he said, his expression a maze of wiles. “You two pontificate,” he went on, eyeing his pun’s target as he spoke, “about keeping the streets free from undesirables, but you do nothing about the dog shite!”
“This isn’t your business, Tick Raw,” Hammeryock said.
“Oh, but it is. These are my friends, and you’ve insulted them with your slurs and your suspicions.”
“Friends, sayat?” the Pontiff murmured.
“Yes, ma’am. Friends. Some of us still know the difference between conversation and diatribe. I have friends, with whom I talk and exchange ideas. Remember ideas? They’re what make life worth living.”
Hammeryock could not disguise his unease, hearing his mistress thus addressed, but whoever Tick Raw was he wielded sufficient authority to silence any further objection.
“My dearlings,” he said to Gentle and Pie, “shall we repair to my home?”
As a parting gesture he lobbed the stick in Ham-meryock’s direction. It landed in the mud between the man’s legs.
“Clean up, Loitus,” Tick Raw said. “We don’t want the Autarch’s heel sliding in shite, now, do we?”
The two parties then went their separate ways, Tick Raw leading Pie and Gentle off through the labyrinth.
“We want to thank you,” Gentle said.
“What for?” Tick Raw asked him, aiming a kick at a goat that wandered across his path.
“Talking us out of trouble,” Gentle replied. “We’ll be on our way now.”
“But you’ve got to come back with me,” Tick Raw said.
“There’s no need.”
“Need? There’s every need! Have I got this right?” he said to Pie. “Is there need or isn’t there?”
“We’d certainly like the benefit of your insights,” Pie said. “We’re strangers here. Both of us.” The mystif spoke in an oddly stilted fashion, as if it wanted to say more, but couldn’t. “We need reeducating,” it said.
“Oh?” said Tick Raw. “Really?”
“Who is this Autarch?” Gentle asked.
“He rules the Reconciled Dominions, from Yzordder-rex. He’s the greatest power in the Imajica.”
“And he’s coming here?”
“That’s the rumor. He’s losing his grip in the Fourth, and he knows it. So he’s decided to put in a personal appearance. Officially, he’s visiting Patashoqua, but this is where the trouble’s brewing.”
“Do you think he’ll definitely come?” Pie asked.
“If he doesn’t, the whole of the Imajica’s going to know he’s afraid to show his face. Of course that’s always been a part of his fascination, hasn’t it? All these years he’s ruled the Dominions without anybody really knowing what he looks like. But the glamour’s worn off. If he wants to avoid revolution he’s going to have to prove he’s a charismatic.”
“Are you going to get blamed for telling Hammeryock we were your friends?” Gentle asked.
“Probably, but I’ve been accused of worse. Besides, it’s almost true. Any stranger here’s a friend of mine.” He cast a glance at Pie. “Even a mystif,” he said. “The people in this dung heap have no poetry in them. I know I should be more sympathetic. They’re refugees, most of them. They’ve lost their lands, their houses, their tribes. But they’re so concerned with their itsy-bitsy little sorrows they don’t see the broader picture.”
“And what is the broader picture?” Gentle asked.
“I think that’s better discussed behind closed doors,” Tick Raw said, and would not be drawn any further on the subject until they were secure in his hut.
It was spartan in the extreme. Blankets on a board for a bed; another board for a table; some moth-eaten pillows to squat on.
“This is what I’m reduced to,” Tick Raw said to Pie, as though the mystif understood, perhaps even shared, his sense of humiliation. “If I’d moved on it might have been different. But I couldn’t, of course.”
“Why not?” Gentle asked.
Tick Raw gave him a quizzical look, glancing over at Pie, then looking back at Gentle again.