a few last words to the man, who grunted in reply, and then the Invigilator closed the door and turned to face Tanal.
'One of those well-respected academics is now staining your sheets, Yathvanar.'
Tanal blinked. 'Sir, she was sentenced to the Drowning—'
'Revoke the punishment. Get her cleaned up.'
'Sir, it may well be that she will recall—'
'A certain measure of restraint,' Karos Invictad said in a cold tone, 'is required from you, Tanal Yathvanar. Arrest some daughters of those already in chains, damn you, and have your fun with them. Am I understood?'
'Y-yes sir. If she remembers—'
'Then restitution will be necessary, won't it? I trust you keep your own finances in order, Yathvanar. Now, begone from my sight.'
As Tanal closed the door behind him, he struggled to draw breath. The bastard. There was no warning off her, was there? Whose mistake was all this? Yet, you think to make me pay for it. All of it. Blade and Axe take you, Invictad, I won't suffer alone.
I won't.
'Depravity holds a certain fascination, don't you think?'
'No.'
'After all, the sicker the soul, the sweeter its comeuppance.'
'Assuming there is one.'
'There's a centre point, I'm sure of it. And it should be dead centre, by my calculations. Perhaps the fulcrum itself is flawed.'
'What calculations?'
'Well, the ones I asked you to do for me, of course. Where are they?'
'They're on my list.'
'And how do you calculate the order of your list?'
'That's not the calculation you asked for.'
'Good point. Anyway, if he'd just hold all his legs still, we could properly test my hypothesis.'
'He doesn't want to, and I can see why. You're trying to balance him at the mid-point of his body, but he's designed to hold that part up, with all those legs.'
'Are those formal observations? If so, make a note.'
'On what? We had the wax slab for lunch.'
'No wonder I feel I could swallow a cow with nary a hiccough. Look! Hah! He's perched! Perfectly perched!'
Both men leaned in to examine Ezgara, the insect with a head at each end. Not unique, of course, there were plenty around these days, filling some arcane niche in the complicated miasma of nature, a niche that had been vacant for countless millennia. The creature's broken-twig legs kicked out helplessly.
'You're torturing him,' said Bugg, 'with clear depravity, Tehol.'
'It only seems that way.'
'No, it is that way.'
'All right, then.' Tehol reached down and plucked the hapless insect from the fulcrum. Its heads swivelled about. 'Anyway,' he said as he peered closely at the creature, 'that wasn't the depravity I was talking about. How goes the construction business, by the way?'
'Sinking fast.'
'Ah. Is that an affirmation or decried destitution?'
'We're running out of buyers. No hard coin, and I'm done with credit, especially when it turns out the developers can't sell the properties. So I've had to lay everyone off, including myself.'
'When did all this happen?'
'Tomorrow.'
'Typical. I'm always the last to hear. Is Ezgara hungry, do you think?'
'He ate more wax than you did – where do you think all the waste goes?'
'His or mine?'
'Master, I already know where yours goes, and if Biri ever finds out—'
'Not another word, Bugg. Now, by my observations, and according to the notations you failed to make, Ezgara has consumed food equivalent in weight to a drowned cat. Yet he remains tiny, spry, fit, and thanks to our wax lunch today his heads no longer squeak when they swivel, which I take to be a good sign, since now we won't be woken up a hundred times a night.'
'Master.'
'Yes?'
'How do you know how much a drowned cat weighs?'
'Selush, of course.'
'I don't understand.'
'You must remember. Three years ago. That feral cat netted in the Rinnesict Estate, the one raping a flightless ornamental duck. It was sentenced to Drowning.'
'A terrible demise for a cat. Yes, I remember now. The yowl heard across the city.'
'That's the one. Some unnamed benefactor took pity on the sodden feline corpse, paying Selush a small fortune to dress the beast for proper burial.'
'You must be mad. Who would do that and why?'
'For ulterior motives, obviously. I wanted to know how much a drowned cat weighs, of course. Otherwise, how valid the comparison? Descriptively, I've been waiting to use it for years.'
'Three.'
'No, much longer. Hence my curiosity, and opportunism. Prior to that cat's watery end, I feared voicing the comparison, which, lacking veracity on my part, would invite ridicule.'
'You're a tender one, aren't you?'
'Don't tell anyone.'
'Master, about those vaults.'
'What about them?'
'I think extensions are required.'
Tehol used the tip of his right index finger to stroke