he could escape them on his own. Where, in a world of ocean, could he hide from water creatures? He’d been young and insanely foolish, a ship captain’s cabin boy emptying the slops over the bow, unaware that their ship had entered demon-haunted, seaweed-ensnarled doldrums, oblivious to the horrors swimming in their wake. And then when he’d befouled them, he’d laughed in their faces. It was a wonder they had let him keep his; but afrits did nothing but for a reason. They had wanted something from him. They needed a human agent for their purpose. Oh, to be a ship’s mate again, to be free of these infernal tunnels, to breathe sea air and not worry about the likes of these misfortunate boys…which thought brought him back to the problem at hand.
The simplest solution seemed to be to rent out Diverus as often as possible from now on.
There is much in life that seems random, events for which no obvious purpose is apparent even though they may compound. In the aftermath only can a pattern be discerned—missteps lead to an inevitable conclusion, an inescapable fate, sometimes doom and sometimes triumph. We curse the one and pretend to be responsible for the other, while neither fortune is true.
The next evening the paidika opened for business again. Only two of the boys were still out of commission, and that was excuse enough for Bogrevil to recommend Diverus to some of the clients. Immediately this proved unnavigable: He had been too clever. Previously he had talked so many of them out of engaging the handsome “damaged mute” that the first time he proffered Diverus like some newfound treasure, he got a look of such intense shock and loathing from the client that he made a great show of laughing nervously and proclaiming the suggestion “just my little joke,” before sending the client off with a reliable boy at half the going rate by way of an apology. Then he sat on the steps with a blighted look about the eyes.
He could not recall which or how many of the various strutting peacocks he’d dissuaded from Diverus in the past. There had been so many. If he didn’t refrain from promoting Diverus, he would surely see his reputation suffer—one could not habitually cover such an injudicious suggestion with a bit of laughter or soon the clients would decide for themselves that he was unreliable, and then he would find himself at the mercy of the afrits’ smoke. However he looked at it, promoting Diverus spelled doom.
The result was that Diverus was demoted back to walking about with a tray strapped to his head, and Bogrevil chose the last remaining punishment available when he loudly ordered Diverus to clean the three parlors after everyone had gone. “An’ before you retire, too—you don’t sleep till these rooms is spotless!” He had to hope that such a bellowed exaction sounded harsh enough. At least until he could think up something else. Meanwhile, he discovered that he had a much more pressing—and annoying—problem: his musician.
After a night of blissful accompaniment provided by the donated trio of players, Bogrevil found the out-of-tune plinking of the household instrumentalist no longer tolerable. It was a shortcoming that needed remedy, or else he would assuredly strangle the talentless lad in short order.
The trio had left behind a shawm, bestowing it upon the paidika as a kind of lagniappe, for indeed they had been richly compensated by the lubricious crowd all through the night, more so than at any venue where they’d previously performed. Bogrevil had even petitioned to buy their contract from the guest who happened to be their owner, but the price proved wildly immoderate. Nevertheless, he couldn’t—he just couldn’t—go back to the discordant torture that had graced the parlors before then. How had he ever tolerated it?
In a moment of brilliance—at least, he thought so—he proposed a contest to all the boys in the house, that whoever was able play the shawm would be relieved of all other cleaning and serving duties and elevated to the position of musician, a proposal dependent upon their ignorance of the fact that musician was not a title currently deserving of any respect at all, and certainly not something to which one aspired given the verbal abuse their master and his customers had heaped upon the hapless boy and his tuneless lute from the very first night. For those serving, however, the prospect was so much better than their current station that, one