But to his right was the Vulgar Unicorn, to his left the palimpsest tenement
wall. And before him stood one of the palace eunuchs, come seeking him with a
summons from Kittycat to discuss what might be done about the Weaponshop said to
be manifesting next to the Vulgar Unicorn.
‘Tell Kadakithis,’ said Tempus, arduously gaining his feet, ‘that I will be
there presently. As you can see…’ He waved around him, where no structure
stood or even could be proved ever to have stood ‘… there is no longer any
Weaponshop. Therefore, there is no longer any problem, nor any urgency to attend
to it. There is, however, one very irritable Hell Hound in this vacant lot who
wants to be left alone.’
The blue-black eunuch exposed perfect, argent teeth. ‘Yes, yes, master,’ he
soothed the honey-haired man. ‘I can see that this is so.’
Tempus ignored the eunuch’s rosy, outstretched palm, and his sneer at the Hell
Hound pretending to negotiate the humpy turf without pain. Accursed Wriggly!
As the round-rumped eunuch sauntered off, Tempus decided the Vulgar Unicorn
would do as well as any place to sit and sniff krrf and wait for his leg to
finish healing. It ought to take about an hour – unless Vashanka was more angry
at him than he estimated, in which case it might take a couple of days.
Shying from that dismal prospect, he pursued diverse thoughts. But he fared
little better. Where he was going to get another horse like the one he had lost,
he could not conjecture, any more than he could recall the exact moment when the