Tehol frowned. ‘Only if you must. You could just draw that hood up and so achieve anonymity.’
‘Very well. I will meet you in the street, so that I am not seen exiting a house I never entered.’
‘There are still watchers spying on me?’
‘Probably not, but it pays to be cautious.’
‘Very good. I will see you in a moment, then.’
Tehol descended the ladder. The single room reeked of sheep sweat, and the heat from the hearth was fierce. He quickly made his way outside, turned right instead of left and came to what had once been a sort of unofficial mews, now cluttered with refuse and discarded building materials, the fronts facing onto it sealed by bricks or doors with their latches removed.
Shurq Elalle emerged from the shadows, her hood drawn about her face. ‘Tell me more about this Selush.’
They began walking, threading single file down a narrow lane to reach the street beyond. ‘A past associate of Bugg’s. Embalmers and other dealers of the dead are a kind of extended family, it seems. Constantly exchanging techniques and body parts. It’s quite an art, I gather. A body’s story can be unfurled from a vast host of details, to be read like a scroll.’
‘What value assembling a list of flaws when the subject is already dead?’
‘Morbid curiosity, I imagine. Or curious morbidity.’
‘Are you trying to be funny?’
‘Never, Shurq Elalle. I have taken to heart your warnings on that.’
‘You, Tehol Beddict, are very dangerous to me. Yet I am drawn, as if you were intellectual white nectar. I thirst for the tension created by my struggle to avoid being too amused.’
‘Well, if Selush succeeds in what she intends, the risk associated with laughter will vanish, and you may chortle fearlessly.’
‘Even when I was alive, I never chortled . Nor do I expect to do so now that I am dead. But what you suggest invites… disappointment. A releasing of said tension, a dying of the sparks. I now fear getting depressed.’
‘The risk of achieving what you wish for,’ Tehol said, nodding as they reached Trench Canal and began to walk along its foul length. ‘I empathize, Shurq Elalle. It is a sore consequence to success.’
‘Tell me what you know of the old tower in the forbidden grounds behind the palace.’