Once they learned what happened, you couldn’t blame them if nobody on the island wished you a Merry Squidmate. Nothing spoils the appetite for merriment like a fresh moist corpse, and this particular one had been well-loved the island over before completing its rite of passage into corpsehood.

The previous Squidmate’s greatest controversy had been the quarrel that broke out between the puppeteer and the inkman when a mislaid ink pail nearly caused the drowning death of Antony Spelt, the Pigwench City Puppet Theatre’s star marionette. But this year, a murder! Word hadn’t got round yet, but once it did it would be a real fertilized-egg-in-the-nog, and by nightfall, holiday spirit was sure to be in woefully short supply.

Squidmate, as you may have gathered, was when giant squids from every ocean got together to reproduce, and to that end they converged on Pigwench Island and its encircling musk reefs, which every autumn released an aphrodisiacal spice that set their gigantic squid libidos ablaze. The ensuing spectacle was breathtaking, a unique phenomenon for the island, but imprisoned its inhabitants within an inky ring of carnal ferocity lasting several days, during which all sea trade came to a halt. No ship dared to sail near the island, and no docked ship dared to set off.

This wasn’t something to be taken lightly. A single squid could destroy a sailing vessel without bothering to look up from its newspaper1. A pair of them could destroy the city. A dozen could reduce the island to splinters. And there were hundreds. Nobody knew precisely what would happen, but a strong respect for their wrath had been maintained for centuries. An ancient tablet, found in a cave by the island archeologist, spoke of the event thusly:

And verily shalt thou never—and, for emphasis—ever do, but see that thou actively don’t do—at any time, nor shalt thou entertain thoughts of doing, but vigorously keepest thy mind on matters other than that which, in any conceivable manner might, with even the slightest of possibilities, mildly irritate or even somewhat vex a squid whilst it knoweth other squids during The Time of The Great Making of More Squids, lest ye incur the torment of a thousand deaths and several things which are far far—and, for emphasis—far worse than death itself, things of which it is forbidden to detail on this tablet, but things of which we doth now think silently to ourselves, and verily doth these things taketh away our appetites.

Tarquin had no desire to confront the horrors awaiting him at sea, but his fate would be sealed if he remained on the island: to hang from the neck until dead. Even longer if they felt he still hadn’t learned his lesson. There was certainly no turning himself in. He was, at least on the surface of things, guilty of murdering his brother. And nobody on the island was likely to believe his story about the puffin and the butter churn. Why, he scarcely believed it himself. Under the circumstances, he found he’d no choice but to brave the lusty black waters of the sea. The other constables would be mad to pursue him. And the mating had not yet fully begun, so he did stand a chance, however slim.

The sting of his brother’s death now waltzed about him to the tune of one of those gloomy ballads of which all the more suicidal minstrels seemed so irritatingly fond. But there wasn’t time to mourn. Tarquin’s afternoon had begun with a fall from the treasury office window, the prolonged repetition of the phrases ‘ouch’, ‘this really hurts’ and ‘this continues to really hurt’, and a hasty hobble into the shadows. All the while he busied himself trying to recall the details of his dream and how he came to acquire the beaked stone, which remained adamant that it had no immediate plans to do anything but dangle from his neck for the foreseeable future.

Now cold and fallow, the defiant little thing mocked him as it hung there at his broken heart. If he could get safely to the mainland, perhaps someone could help him sort it out. But a daylight escape would prove risky. The streets were alive with holiday bustle, so for the waning hours of the afternoon Tarquin kept to the many alleyways with which he’d grown acquainted in his years as a pickpocket.

“Keeping to the many alleyways with which you’d grown acquainted in your years as a pickpocket, are you?” came a voice. “If I didn’t know better I’d say you’ve just killed your brother.”

The voice echoed about the filth-covered walls lining the alley and caught Tarquin mid-skulk. It was a female voice, sullen yet playful, morose yet vivacious, a voice Tarquin knew all too well.

Winifred Glumm had taught Tarquin everything she knew about the picking of pockets, which he immediately forgot before teaching her everything he didn’t know about the making of love, giving the pair of them a rather impressive ineptitude for the respective arts of pick-making and love-pocketing.

“You dare show yourself here in this alley, in my alley, after betraying the rest of us by joining the constabulary?”

Winifred slipped like soiled silk from the shadows of an arched doorway into the slightly less dark shadows of the alley. Her dirty brown hair complimented the grime on her face and clothes exquisitely. She wore filth the way most women wore makeup or jewelry. It all matched, expertly put-together, stunning in its tattered, mired perfection.

“I haven’t betrayed anyone,” Tarquin insisted. “If anything you should be thanking me because now you have a friend on the insi—.”

The sudden collision of Winifred’s fist and Tarquin’s jaw sent him spinning down toward the cobblestones, which endeavored to impose themselves upon his cheek. His other cheek grew incensed and was in the midst of lodging a formal complaint when it found itself the nesting spot for Winifred’s muddy boot heel.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Were you saying something? I wasn’t listening.”

Winifred withdrew her heel and Tarquin stumbled to his feet.

“What was that for?!” he shouted, flinging spittle and tossing his arms about.

“Oh it’s nothing personal. I’m hoping to gain a reputation among the other thieves for standing up to authority.”

“I haven’t got any bloody authority!”

“No, but you’re a guard. Abusing you shows I’m not to be trifled with.”

Reaching for a tuft of his red lion tabard, Winifred yanked Tarquin to her soft sooty lips. Her tongue launched an invasion, and felt its way about his mouth like an earthworm groping at the depths of an abandoned mole den.

With helplessly flailing matchstick2 arms, Tarquin struggled against the pull of her one-handed grip. He grunted, attempted to draw back, placed his hands on Winifred’s shoulders and pushed. She had always been stronger, both physically and in constitution. Tarquin thrashed about with a regrettably comfortable familiarity. This was precisely where their relationship had left off.

Winifred brought her free hand round the back of Tarquin’s neck as her tongue went about its inquest. What was she doing? He pushed again. His arms burned, trembled, and lacked the strength to carry on. But with a final heave and a pop he found himself staggering backward.

“Winifred, please! You should really consider more ladylike ways of showing affection,” he said, panting.

“You’re conflating affection with misdirection. I was trying to steal your little beaklace.”

“Well I wish you would steal it. I have no idea how it got there, and I think it just made me kill my brother.”

A large crack resounded through the alley as the flat of Winifred’s hand struck Tarquin’s cheek and sent him reeling into a dilapidated cart piled high with old cabbages.

“What have I told you about making excuses?” She wagged a finger in his face. “It’s always the inanimate object’s fault, isn’t it? You haven’t changed a bit. Still evading accountability. Nevertheless you won’t have to worry about any more surprise kisses from me. I’ve met someone else. A celebrity. And we’re terribly, terribly happy together.”

Though a new addition to the lexicon, the word ‘celebrity’ was commonly reserved for those in the theatre, royalty, artists, poets and people who could fit four whole eggs in their mouths.

“Celebrity, eh?” Tarquin brushed withered bits of cabbage from his tabard. “Well I’m sure if you refrain from abusing him you’ll both be very happy together.”

“Would you care to meet him?”

“No, no I wouldn’t care to meet him. I wouldn’t care to meet him in the slightest. I would, however, care to find a good place to hide until nightfall. I’m in a spot of trouble, you see, and—.”

“Oh I knew you would! Come with me.”

Winifred seized Tarquin by the hand and tugged him toward the same arched doorway from which she had emerged. Again she disappeared just inside, then from within instructed him to stand against the building with his back to the doorway, and insisted he didn’t dare peek.

Peek at what? Why all the secrecy and ceremony? Couldn’t this wait? Tarquin considered stealing into the shadows, but it was too risky. These were Winifred’s shadows. No matter how fast he ran or how secret his destination, she’d be waiting when he got there, whereupon her boot would occasion the inevitable cobblestone reunion.

As he waited, Tarquin removed his tabard and stuffed it into one of the barrels that cuddled together against the stone wall. The stench of piss mingled with the ever-present smell of dead rat as someone emptied a chamber pot from a nearby second story window.

Tarquin leaned his head against the wall and watched the clouds drift by through the narrow chasm between the rooftops above. The sky was dimming, and he hadn’t the time nor the inclination for celebrity introductions. This was certainly taking a great while. Perhaps, he mused, because the bloke was trying to fit four eggs into his mouth.

An insistent ‘ahem’ sprang from the doorway, and Tarquin spun round. Though Winifred was still concealed, her hand protruded into the alley holding two small pieces of wood nailed across each other in the middle.

“So you’ve begun an affair with a wooden X. I wish you both all the happiness in the world. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a lot of skulking to do before nightfall.”

“Down here!”

Tarquin’s gaze followed several strings from the X toward the ground, where a small wooden man with a big chin, painted-on frown and finely tailored yellow suit tried in vain to place his tiny hands on his tiny hips.

Antony Spelt, the Pigwench City Puppet Theatre’s star marionette!

“Come here!” said the puppet, clumsily attempting to motion Tarquin closer.

Tarquin looked up at Winifred’s hand and back down at Antony Spelt.

“Go on, Tarquin, introduce yourself!” Winifred insisted. “He’s so handsome, isn’t he?”

Tarquin’s eyes went black and his face went flush. If this was in fact Antony Spelt, the same Antony Spelt who had delighted generations of children with his holiday antics year after year, the same Antony Spelt for whom the entire island held vigil when he battled for his life after nearly drowning in a bucket of ink, the same Antony Spelt the mere mention of whose name could soften the heart of even the most hardened Pigwench criminal, then Winifred had just committed a sin of such unutterable gravity, even Edwyck’s murder paled in comparison.

“Where in the blazes did you get that puppet?”

“Now don’t go forgetting your manners,” Winifred said. “I’ve told you before how rude it is not to address people directly when they’re standing right in front of you.”

Rude? To a few scraps of wood on some string? Well, they were celebrity scraps of wood on celebrity string. And Winifred wouldn’t let him go until he’d played along. Best to get it over with. He looked about the alley to see whether anyone might be watching.

“Um, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Spelt,” he sighed. “I’ve, uh, followed your career since I was a child.”

“Why thank you!” Winifred’s voice boomed with the affectation of masculinity as Antony Spelt made a great show of turning to his right and to his left.

But the voice suddenly fell into an urgent whisper.

“Call the authorities! I’ve been kidnapped!”

“What?” Tarquin threw a baffled glance at Winifred. “By whom?”

“Winifred! She’s been sending me obsessed letters for months now. They’ve been so disconcerting that I had to hire a bodyguard. But then what good is a marionette bodyguard against a proper person? Especially a marionette bodyguard with no puppeteer. What a waste of money!”

Tarquin passed a hand in front of Winifred’s eyes.

The puppet went on. “Last night I saw her as I was leaving the theatre. I began bouncing home as quickly as I could, but my puppeteer had sprained his ankle and couldn’t move very fast. Before he knew it she had knocked him into a pile of rubbish, amid the matchsticks of the aristocracy. She clubbed me over the head, and when I awoke she was singing me one of those gloomy ballads of which all the more suicidal minstrels seem so irritatingly fond.”

Tarquin stared up at Winifred in disbelief and then back down to the little wooden celebrity.

“Forgive me if I need a bit of clarification,” he said, “but who’s putting on your voice right now?”

“Winifred. Of course. Who else would it be? Somebody’s got to do my voice, and surely you don’t think she’d kidnap my puppeteer as well. That would be daft. Who’d want a puppeteer covered in aristocratic matchsticks?”

“Yes, but…” Tarquin looked up into the doorway to see Winifred holding out the wooden marionette cross and wearing a sour face to better get into character.

“Don’t look at her! The last thing you want to do is attract her attention. Listen, I need your help. I need you to help me escape.”

“But surely…” Tarquin didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t see anything about the puppet’s predicament that appealed to his sense of reason.

“It’s all very strange, I know,” Antony went on. “If the captive object of my affection happened to be a marionette, I’d just exercise my absolute control over the stupid thing to make the feelings mutual. But she didn’t. Just like a damnable woman, though, isn’t it?”

“Well that seems a terribly sexist thing to say.”

“Of course it is! Because I’m a terrible sexist! Surely you’re familiar with my reputation for misogyny. It’s why I’m so popular with the ladies. The wooden ones and the real ones. If you want a wench to eat out of your hand, treat her like absolute shite. Works every time.”

“Again, that’s rather sexist, and in light of your, you know, your current situation, I should think you’d be a bit more open-minded about women.”

Antony Spelt bounced passionately about the ground. “Oh I hate them now more than ever! When they go kidnapping you, it tends not to do much in the way of advancing their cause.”

“But I would have thought, uh, since she’s controlling your every move, your every thought, you know, her views might rub off on you or something.” Tarquin could scarcely contain his incredulity as he glanced again up at Winifred, who seemed lost in the persona of her little abductee.

“All that’s rubbing off on me are the hundreds of vermin she’s infested with.”

“I remember the vermin well,” Tarquin said with ponderous unease.

“Hey!” said Winifred. “I heard that!”

“Quiet, whore!” shouted Antony Spelt. “We’re talking here! Just us blokes! Speak only when spoken to! Take your shoes off! Gestate my children! And where’s my bloody supper?”

“Well I was just…” Winifred ricocheted back and forth between personalities so quickly, Tarquin was certain he heard her doing both voices at once.

“You were just nothing! Now get into that kitchen and make me something to eat!”

“Th—, there isn’t a kitchen,” Winifred said. “But I suppose I could try to fashion a light supper with my free arm…”

“Don’t suppose; do! Now… where was I? Ah yes. Kidnapped.”

Tarquin stood up and leaned in close to Winifred.

“Are you going to let him speak to you that way?”

“Oh, I don’t mind so much. He is a celebrity after all. I’m lucky to have him, and I really ought to remember that before I go forgetting my place.”

“Lucky to have—? Luck had nothing to do with it! You kidnapped the little twat!”

“Hey!” said Antony Spelt. “I heard that!”

“Well it’s true!” said Tarquin, crouching. “And it looks to me as though you have it better here than you ever did in your life in the theatre. Why the devil would you want to escape?”

Tarquin had a point. Apart from the homelessness and the vermin and the miserable living conditions, the little wooden chauvinist had to admit it was nice having a woman who would willingly lend herself to his demands. Even if she was ultimately the one making them. He stood clumsily still as he searched himself for a plausible retort.

“Look, I can’t be tied down to just one woman! And besides, the Squidmate Ink Pageant is set to begin the day after tomorrow, and I mustn’t disappoint the hundreds of children expecting me to perform. The pageant can’t carry on without me. It’s the highlight of the Accidentally Setting Fire to the Holiday Evergreen Ceremony.”

“You’re right.” Tarquin had stumbled into the one mess that could have made him forget his own plans for escape. He couldn’t just sit idly by and let Winifred ruin Squidmate.

“Let me think,” he said, and grimaced as he massaged his temples.

“Well be quick about it! I think I hear her coming!”

“Hear her coming? She’s been standing over you the entire time!”

“Antony, darling, is that you?” said Winifred, looking quizzically to her right and to her left.

“Of course it’s bloody him! You’re doing the voice you’re asking about… I mean, it’s all the same person: you!” Tarquin threw up his arms. “Fine. It doesn’t matter. I’ll just come up with a plan and get this over with. I suppose I could shove her to the ground now and grab you and run away…”

“Well I’m not in such a hurry as all that,” said Antony Spelt.

“What?”

“As you said, I do have it rather good. And the sex is incredible. Unquestionably the best sex I’ve ever had. I don’t feel quite ready to give it up just yet. Maybe you could rescue me the day after tomorrow or something.”

“Winifred is a terrible lover,” said Tarquin. “I should know. I’m the island’s leading expert on sexual cluelessness.”

“Well… she has genitals at least, which is more than I can say for myself.”

“Look, I don’t care about your genitals!”

“Good, because there’s nothing to care about,” the puppet said smugly.

“Fine! Your lack of genitals then. The simple fact is, I can’t wait two days to rescue you. The day after tomorrow I’ll either be dead or out to sea.”

“Then I’m afraid, dear boy, you will have ruined Squidmate for everyone.”

“Here now, what’s all this about ruining Squidmate?” came a voice. Tarquin swung round and froze. His eyes went large and a lump formed in his throat.

Leaning against the back door of a vacant shop, a balding chap in a lion-embossed red tabard chewed mindlessly on a piece of holiday cake. A patrolman Tarquin didn’t recognize. He brushed a few crumbs from his uniform and hoisted a small crossbow over his shoulder as he ambled toward Tarquin and the puppet.

A lump formed in the throat of the lump that had just formed in Tarquin’s throat, and even though he hadn’t been drinking any, he sprayed tea from his mouth onto the guard’s face.

With a scowl the guard wiped the tea from his eyes.

“Ruining Squidmate and tea spraying, eh? Both are punishable by a night in the pillory, and I’m apt to give you another just for… Hang on!”

A wide smile spread over the guard’s face.

Tarquin coughed and attempted to obscure his features by scratching his forehead. This was it. He’d been made. He was done for.

“Listen,” said the guard, “don’t take this the wrong way, but where did you get such a splendid pair of trousers?”

Tarquin knitted his brow.

“Pardon?” he said, cloaking his voice in gravelly coughs and tipping his head toward the ground.

“Those stripes! They’re quite fetching. Why, if it wasn’t already Squidmate I’d rush right over to the tailor’s and commission several pair to give as gifts. Wherever did you get them?”

Another pepper of coughs. “I… I don’t recall.”

“Well no matter. I’d take good care of them if I were you. And tend to that cough while you’re at it. The sick bed is no place to spend Squidma— Hang on again! The more I look at them, the more I think I recognize these trousers. Yes, I know them. I know them from somewhere. Are you sure you don’t recall where you got them?”

Careful not to raise it, Tarquin shook his head.

“Very well. I’m sure it’ll come to me sooner or later. Off you go! With trousers like those you’re sure to have a Merry Squidmate.”

Tarquin took several steps down the alley and threw a confused frown over his shoulder to see the guard smiling, nodding and waving goodbye.

He turned away again. But here it was. He could feel it like an arrow through the back. Behind him it began to dawn on the guard that the trousers he so effusively admired were, in fact, the standard issue striped pantaloons of the Pigwench City Guard and the very trousers he was wearing himself.

“Halt!”

Tarquin turned round. The constable stood trembling with his crossbow trained on Tarquin’s head. But where had Antony Spelt gone? Tarquin searched the periphery of his vision for the puppet.

In the darkness of the doorway he spied Winifred. She pressed her captive to her chest with a hand cupped over his mouth. Though they were merely painted on, Tarquin could swear the puppet’s eyes were bigger and his expression more desperate. Winifred gave him a jostle to make it appear he was struggling.

“Right, what’s going on here, doppelgänger?” said the guard, squinting down the sight of his crossbow.

“I’m afraid I don’t follow,” said Tarquin.

“Don’t play coy with me,” said the guard. “It’s evident someone has dressed you up like me in order to confuse me as to which is which.”

“Which… you is you?”

“Pulling the old double-switch on me again!” The guard went steely-eyed. “Well I’m not falling for it, not this time! I’m me. I’m the real one.”

“You mean, just because we have the same trousers?”

“I must admit, the resemblance is uncanny. You really had me going there for a moment, but I’m fairly confident I’m the genuine article.”

The guard lowered his crossbow and cast a puzzled stare down the alley.

“Well,” said Tarquin, backing away, “it seems you’re too clever for my disguise so I’ll just be on my—.”

“Oh but how can I be sure?” Again the guard aimed his crossbow at Tarquin’s bewildered face. “I know—I’ll ask you a question only I would know the answer to. But then if I’m not the real me, how will I know if you got it right?”

“Well you could just—.”

“No, no, I’ve got it! You ask me something that everyone but me would know, and I’ll get it wrong.”

“Help! Help, she’s a madwoman!” The artificial huskiness of Winifred’s Antony Spelt voice leapt from the doorway, followed at once by the puppet himself, who fell into a heap at Tarquin’s feet.

The suddenness of his appearance caught the guard off… well, off guard, and with a gasp he tripped backward over a stray cabbage, dropping his weapon. When it landed, the crossbow released its bolt, which cut through the air and planted itself with a wet crunch into Winifred’s arm.

“OUCH!” cried Winifred in her own voice as she dropped to her knees. “This really hurts!” Then, “This continues to really hurt!”

“Hurry!” she said, as Antony Spelt. “While she’s wounded!”

Tarquin seized the little puppet from the cobblestones and threw him at the guard, who caught him by the arms just as he had regained his footing.

The marionette apparatus dangled at the guard’s feet as he frantically flailed the puppet’s little wooden arms in his own face.

“Help! Help!” shouted the guard in his best Antony Spelt voice. “I’ve been kidnapped by a deranged stalker!”

Overcome with surprise, the guard again lost his footing.

“Who are you?” he said, toppling onto his back as he carried on flailing the puppet’s arms in his face.

“I’m Antony Spelt, man! Don’t you recognize me?” he responded in Antony’s voice. “You must help me! Please!”

The puppet continued to flog the guard in the face while the latter grimaced and tried his best to dodge the little wooden slaps.

Winifred gave a prolonged ugh and writhed her way along the ground toward the guard, who let out his own ugh before slipping back into character to give an ugh as Antony Spelt. Both of them still writhing, Winifred and the guard shared voice duties to allow each other successive turns at their own subsequent ughs. An ugh from Winifred, an ugh from Antony, an ugh from the guard, and so on.

Ugh. That one was from me. It’s all rather tedious, isn’t it? You’re welcome to insert your own ugh here if you feel so inclined.

Tarquin cast them all one last scowl before disappearing down the alley. This had easily been the low point of his day, and it was a day he’d begun by accidentally killing his brother and falling from a second story window. No telling how much worse it would get.

“He’s killed the captain!” shouted the guard, and began to emit a steady squeal, like an old door in no rush to creak open.

“My good man, I know you must think me a murderer, but the truth is, I’ve just awakened from a terrible dream. A nightmare, if you will. I was churning butter in a cavernous sort of parlor by the sea, you know, when my host for supper, an ill-mannered pipe-smoking puffin, began pestering me with all manner of questions about what I supposed I was doing. Well, I needn’t bore you with the details, but suffice it to say, while I’ve never been especially prone to sleepwalking, sleep-churning, or sleep-anythinging, it seems this particular instance has proven quite the exception, and what I thought was a butter churn was in reality this very sword, while the substance I mistook for butter was actually our dear captain, my brother. And well, you might imagine my surprise as I awoke, but I assure you it has all been a terrible accident,” is what Tarquin had every intention of saying here, just as he could hear himself exclaim, “I’ve just killed me brother!”

A brilliant display of his unrivaled talent for the art of panic.

His head aquiver in desperate denial, Tarquin pointed at his sword and gave it a brief waggle to convey his utter uselessness at murdering. The guard carried on squealing as he darted his own finger to the sword. Then Tarquin pointed back at the guard. Then the guard at the corpse. Then Tarquin at himself, still shaking his head, as the guard’s constant drone seemed to defy his need for breath. It grew stronger, more piercing, and sounded increasingly like a little girl.

Yet as unbearable as he found the squeal, it was nothing next to the pain inflicted by the guard’s fingertip, which now pointed at Tarquin’s chest and began to scald his heart. Was this the result of guilt or could his fellow constable be flinging an invisible spell across the room, a lightless energy beam striking at the black source of that which compelled Tarquin to commit somnambulatory fratricide? Because it was really hot, you know. Really really hot.

The burn drew Tarquin’s eyes down to his breast, where something heavy smoldered like a bellows-reddened coal. It hid under his tabard and hung from a delicate chain round his neck. Pulling the thing up and bouncing it between his palms, he had a quick look. Against a backing of engraved silver, a polished hemispherical black stone cast a distorted reflection of Tarquin’s own bewilderment back at him. Set into the stone’s center, a small protuberant silver beak, not unlike the bill of a duck, held a scarcely perceptible smile. Enveloping the beak, an amber glow pulsated from the stone, and with every surge of light, a wave of searing heat rendered it all but untouchable.

Lowering his neck, Tarquin let the stone fall to his chest and hastened to remove it. Wouldn’t come off. Curious. Lifting from the back, he had another go. Then from the sides. Each time he found the chain too tight, though the polished black stone dangled low at his chest when he released it. Odd, it seemed to constrict only when pulled. Whether or not this was his imagination, it would have to wait. He could hear the heavy clop of black boots shuffling up the wooden steps beyond the door.

Four guards stormed in past their squealing comrade, and each drew his sword at the sight of the slain captain. Tarquin mused as he watched them file in that they’d never been properly introduced. This was, after all, only his first day, and his brother hadn’t found the time to organize a formal welcome amid all the meetings he’d scheduled with the end of Tarquin’s sword, the floor and his own intestines. A pity the guards seemed in no mood for introductions now, poised as they were in combat stances between the door and their murder suspect.

A fifth guard stomped through the doorway and clenched his teeth behind a ginger beard as he surveyed the treasury floor.

“You may leave off squealing now, Reggie,” said the red-bearded guard. It was Constable Leggington, the dead captain’s chief lieutenant and all-round right hand, the gingerness of whose beard was rivaled only by the quickness of his temper.

“But I’m the klaxon,” said Reggie, and resumed squealing.

“Yes, but even klaxons go quiet after everyone within earshot is sufficiently panicked. Besides, you sound like a little girl. Everyone knows klaxons are boys. And your klaxon doesn’t even meet the age requirement. Think of the scandal! Really, Reggie, what would the other klaxons say?”

“They’d probably say something like,” said Johnson, the second guard to have arrived, and launched into a whirring noise that immediately fell silent when he caught sight of his superior’s ginger glare.

“Very well, since there don’t seem to be any cooperative klaxons about, I’ll just have to do it myself,” Leggington shouted. “I’ve revoked all of your klaxonic privileges! Nobody may make loud noises with his mouth or respond in alarm or panic to the loud noises from any of the mouths in this room except those that come from this mouth, my mouth, the very mouth I’m using to shout at you all right now!”

Leggington grabbed Reggie by the collar and shoved him into the doorway. “Since you can’t manage klaxon duty, I’m demoting you to Door. Now stand here with your arms out at your sides and remain locked until the only person who has the key—that is to say me—kicks you violently open to let himself out.”

With a sigh Reggie anchored himself in the doorway, bracing his arms against the threshold and puffing out his cheeks to appear more door-like.

“Good! Now we’re all going to be good little constables and sort out this murderer who has stood patiently by, waiting to be apprehended, while the rest of you wailed on like the standard bearers in a ninny brigade.”

Tarquin meekly raised his hand from the far end of the room. “Yes, about that…”

“Quiet, you!” Leggington turned sharply and stared down at the body, the blood pooling around it, the entrails, and beyond it all, the visibly troubled Tarquin, who felt compelled to throw him an uncomfortable smile and apologetic shrug.

“Right then, we’ve got him cornered!” the ginger lieutenant went on, addressing the men at his flanks. “But mind the floor as you close in. This will be a perfect opportunity to put your Not Slipping on Guts training into practice. Ready?”

“Yes sir! I won’t let you down, sir!” said Johnson, and took a single step forward onto a fleshy morsel of tissue that flung his leg into the air like a misfiring trebuchet.

“Like that, sir?” said Johnson eagerly, lying on his side and clutching his elbow.

“No, that isn’t it at all! That’s slipping on guts, the exact opposite of what you’ve been trained to do!”

“Let me have a go, sir,” said Carson, and readied his sword as he strode forward onto an unrecognizable bit of organ that sent him immediately onto the floor.

“Was that a bit more like it then?”

“No!” Leggington shouted. “That’s still slipping on guts!”

“Well I didn’t slip on quite so many guts as Johnson.”

“But you still slipped on guts, though, didn’t you?! The point of your training was not to slip on any guts at all!”

“Why don’t I show them how it’s done, sir?” said Reardon, taking a step toward an intestine resting quietly in a pool of blood. Raising his right leg, he carefully placed the tip of his boot on the intestine and shifted his weight onto it. He then drew up his left leg and dropped it firmly onto the intestine beside his right.

“See there?” he said. “Nothing to i—” With a squish the intestine spat forth from beneath his heels and flipped him onto his back.

“No! That’s about as far removed from not slipping on guts as you could ever hope to attain! Didn’t anyone learn a thing from his training? The very most rudimentary component of not slipping on guts is to avoid stepping on guts altogether!”

“Oh, yes of course!” said Johnson, still on the floor, as Carson and Reardon traded shrugs of helpless realization.

“But that’s just what they’ll be expecting, sir,” said Norman, the only other guard left standing apart from Reggie, who carried on stoically puffing out his cheeks and arms in the doorway.

“What?”

“The guts, they’ll be expecting anyone who’s trying not to slip on them to be avoiding them. That’s just what they want you to do.”

“What the guts want you to do?”

“Yeah, but if we go about it the clever way, with reverse psychology, and walk right over them as though we don’t care whether we slip on them or not…” Norman stomped with great determination over a pile of guts, whereupon he slid across the floor into the office desk, striking his groin on the corner before falling into a heap with the others.

“See there? Caught them completely by surprise,” choked a red-faced Norman.

“All I see is that you’ve managed to slip on the most easily avoidable guts in the room!” Leggington scowled at his fallen constables. “And why are you all still on the floor?”

“Well I thought about getting up, but I haven’t slipped on guts since I got down here,” said Johnson.

“Nor have I,” said Carson. “I couldn’t slip on guts right now if my life depended on it.”

“Indeed!” said Reardon. “Maybe the secret to not slipping on guts is just to go ahead and slip on guts, get it over with, and then you can carry on with the business of not slipping on them so long as you remain perfectly still.”

“You’re all bloody fired,” said Leggington, drawing his sword and trudging forward. “If you want something done right, you’ll have to do it your—.”

This is the bit where Leggington tumbled forward, onto his face, but not because of the guts I’m sure you were expecting. No, Leggington’s ankle was caught by a sword, deliberately placed in its path by someone who wished him a forward tumble. And as soon as the face he tumbled onto was sufficiently recovered that it could have a go at shouting, the rest of Leggington gave it the floor. In the figurative, oratory sense of course. It already had its fill of the floor in the physical, collisionary sense.

“Who bloody did that? Who was it?”

“I did, sir,” said Reardon. “And I knew you’d be cross at first. But once you consider all the guts I’ve saved you from slipping on, you’ll no doubt wish to thank me.”

“That’s it! Help me up! I’ll kill you all one-by-one!” Constable Leggington struggled to stand, but all the slipping had further smeared blood over the floor, and he slid directly back onto his face. The other four also clambered to their feet, but not one of them could manage a secure footing, and they repeatedly found themselves again on the floor. Still, this didn’t prevent them from attempting to help one another up, which not only proved futile, but very often induced the further slipping of the person they were meant to help. And so they carried on in this manner until long after a more sensible lot would have just crawled away.

If you’re thinking it seems like ages since we last heard from Tarquin, you’re right. And why? Because he’d flung himself through the window. At first he had looked on at all the slippage with great fear. But his fear soon melted into disbelief, and he nearly found himself amused before remembering that the featured guts of the evening’s entertainment had made their debut courtesy the point of his own sword, and that prior to liberation they had been safely locked away inside the only person who gave a semi-digested carrot about him. He’d somehow done the very most vile thing he could possibly imagine, and the mere thought of life without his brother made him not want to carry on. But he needed answers. So he’d taken a dive through the shutters, half hoping to escape and half hoping the fall would kill him.

proceed to Chapter Three

The puffin struck a match on his beak, lit his pipe, and sent a ring of smoke toward the peculiar affair underway in his parlor.

“Killing your brother, are you?” he said, languid and heavy-eyed. “I shall have to alert Dearest that there will only be three for supper.”

A grave assertion indeed, and one that would take several paragraphs to reach Tarquin Finn, who’d quite lost himself in the task at hand. Tarquin had no prior puffin experience, but in his lucid days he’d been quite sure that, like most other wild animals, they didn’t go round smoking pipes or hosting dinner parties. In fact he’d no memory of being summoned to this one’s parlor, yet here he was.

Though it wasn’t so much a parlor in the classic sense. Not the sort of place you’d find impressive, unless you happen to be a puffin yourself. But then if you are a puffin, you seem to be among the elect few who can read, a worldly puffin, long immune to the bedazzlements of common quotidian parlors.

This particular parlor was the envy of all the illiterate puffins at any rate. The stout little panda-toned waterfowl commonly dwelt within the crags in seaside cliff faces, and although our parlor was indeed hewn from one such cliff, it didn’t feature any of the velvety sofas, dusty old portraits or plush tasseled rugs we’ve come to regard as the touchstones of parlorism.

Well, maybe the one rug. And a stone fireplace. And a writing desk. And an armoire. And a puffin-tailored suit of armor. Plus all the things whose absence I’ve just lied about. What it desperately lacked, though, was a wall between itself and the sea. Whenever a wave crashed against the cliff, a cold salty mist would drift in on the breeze and moisten all the puffin’s nice things.

Tarquin stared vacantly, carrying on as he had, as the puffin’s words floated over and one-by-one popped like oily bubbles on the tip of his nose.

Killing.

Your.

Brother.

Preposterous. Kill the man who’d just saved his life? Preposterous. Kill his champion, his protector, the one human soul for whom Tarquin still possessed the will to care? Pre, post and plain, pure posterous. And what a preposterous little creature to levy such a charge.

Had he not now found himself so estranged from his senses, Tarquin might’ve told the puffin as much. He might’ve told the puffin that his older brother meant the world to him, that only yesterday he’d plucked Tarquin from both the figurative gutter and the literal one, that he’d rescued him from a living desolation of petty criminality. Why, Tarquin would fain have surrendered his own life than ever dream of—.

We shall leave off there, as for the moment he was incapable of any such thoughts. Suffice it to say, he’d given his wits the morning off. He merely stood there, his faded grey sleeve fluttering at a crooked elbow as he plunged a long wooden pole repeatedly downward. Eyes aglass, drool atrickle, chin abandoned to gravity.

“That’s right, Dearest, three for supper,” called the puffin, and returned to his pipe.

A nettled screech leapt from the kitchen amid the clatter of pots. “Which three?”

“What d’you mean, ‘Which three?’ You, me, and the murderer. Though I daresay I rather prefer the company of the dead one.”

This puffin fellow was certainly making it difficult to stare vacantly and carry on as one had. One of his words zizzed about Tarquin’s head like a gnat, sent a tickle over his ear and alighted on the bridge of his nose.

Murderer.

A cold salty mist moistened all the puffin’s nice things while Tarquin carried on as he had.

“It’s settled then.” The puffin cocked a brow at the object of his guest’s on-carrying. “And I don’t know how much more murdering you plan on, but I can’t imagine the poor chap any deader than he already is. You know you really might consider murdering someone else for a change. An auntie. Or maybe a second cousin. Second cousins make splendid murderees, you know. None of the regret or guilt that comes of murdering your close relations. Murder a second cousin and you’ll be laughing it off over canapés by nightfall.”

“I’m not murdering anyone,” said Tarquin. “I’m… I’m carrying on. You know, as I have.”

“Quite so.” The puffin blew a sweet-scented cobalt cloud. “And what manner of business do you suppose you’re carrying on with?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” With an audible grunt, Tarquin gathered up the will to look himself over. “I’m churning butter.”

Inside a wooden churning tub, wet sloshes pulsed a mindless andante while Tarquin’s long sunken face dropped further into vacuity. A salt-caked looking glass afforded him a distorted view of his own reflection. But one glimpse at the pallid horror staring back, and his eyes decided of their own accord not to share what they’d seen with the rest of him.

And who could fault them, ill-equipped as he was to survive the shock? If not for the limp black hair that hung like the wings of a dead raven over Tarquin’s temples, he might well have mistaken himself for a reanimated skeleton, and certainly his bone-white skin did little to dispel the illusion. With grey wormy lips and a stare hollowed by years of hopelessness, he appeared only slightly not as dead as someone who’d been in the ground for years. The churning staff seemed to animate him rather than the other way round, and his precarious hunch betrayed it as a lone crutch against the weight of his own wretchedness.

“Churning brother, you mean,” said the puffin, all smiles and smoke rings.

“Churning… brother?” Tarquin carried on as he had. “I’d never. He’s… all I’ve got.”

“Well now you’ll have him in liquid form.”

“Nonsense.” The churning staff began mounting a steady accelerando. “He’s just given me my first proper job.”

“Oh, he’s a nepotist, is he? Churn away.”

“He’s not a nepotist! He’s captain of the city guard. And he made me a constable only this morning. I’m guarding the treasury office.”

“Whipping your sibling into a creamy substance to spread over one’s toast is scarcely how you guard the treasury office.” Here the puffin shrugged. “But I suppose since it’s your first day, they’re likely to overlook it just this once. What did you do before he hired you?”

“I was…” Tarquin went stern-faced. Must. Carry. On. As. He. Had. “I was a pickpocket.”

“I see.”

“Reformed now, as of this morning. Though in truth I was such a useless pickpocket, there wasn’t much to reform from.”

The puffin curled his flame-bright beak into a cavalier smile. “And rather than lock you up for stealing, they left you alone with all the money.”

“Not at all!” said Tarquin. “So far I’m only permitted to guard the decoy chest.”

“And is churning butter essential to guarding this decoy chest you speak of?”

“Well… I must carry on—!” Splosh, splosh, splosh went a frantic allegro.

“But why? Have you recently purchased a cow? Apprenticed yourself to the village buttersmith? Joined a troupe of peripatetic dairy fetishists?”

Tarquin stared at his boots and shook his head. Why was he churning butter?

“Have you ever, in fact, churned butter before?”

The churning tempo assumed a gradual ritardando until at last the tub rested silent.

“No.”

“I think, my good man, if you pop open the churn and sample its contents, you’ll find it isn’t quite as you’ve imagined.” Here there were three wooden knocks as the puffin rapped his pipe on the lid.

Dear gods, couldn’t this puffin just leave him alone? With a sigh Tarquin removed the lid and dipped his fingers into the churning tub. He drew them first to his nose and appraised the scent before touching them to his tongue.

“Creamy,” he said. “Quite good really.”

“Your fingers,” groaned the puffin, “have blood on them.”

Tarquin examined his hand. A rich red trickle crept from his fingertips into his palm.

“It’s butter!” He slapped the lid closed and carried on as he had, angrily pumping and jerking the stick.

Prestissimo, prestissimo! The churn tilted and swiveled with every maniacal plunge.

“I must carry on as I have, carry on as I have!”

Again the puffin shrugged. “Suit yourself. If you choose not to see the truth of your atrocity then so be it. You were a rubbish pickpocket and now you’re proving on your very first day to be an equally rubbish guard.”

“You’re mad!” Tarquin shouted, flinging a small drop of spittle into the puffin’s face.

“Mad?” said the bird with a wipe of his eye. “I’m not the one holding a conversation with a talking puffin.”

And with one last tug of his pipe, the puffin vanished. Then immediately the parlor and everything in it scattered off like windblown sand.

Tarquin stopped churning. Nothing from before remained. Only darkness, staggering and absolute. So this was it then. This was death. The eternal nothing. The end. Tarquin sighed and prepared to settle in for a perpetual midnight. But he felt a wee-wee coming on. How long would he have to hold it? It seemed death was already proving more difficult than everyone made it look.

Hang on though. He wasn’t dead. His eyes were closed.

He opened them.

Light stormed in and struck him blind, but squinting, he slowly began to make out his surroundings.

A heavy wooden door loomed beyond a shuttered window, a chair tucked under a desk, and a ring of rusty keys that clung to a nail in the stone wall. The familiar trappings of the treasury office, in the upper chamber of the Pigwench City constabulary.

Had he been asleep? While standing? And even more curious, could he still feel the churning staff in his left hand?

The majority of Tarquin stood frozen in the lion-embossed red tabard and black boots of his guard’s uniform while his eyes made their way down his outstretched arm. On the end of it, he did indeed clutch something in a manner suggesting he’d just had a good churn. But it wasn’t a staff.

Held the wrong way round as though he had a blindfold and a set of scales to go with it, it was a hilt. The hilt of his own sword, pointed at the floor.

And here is where he should have stopped looking. He hadn’t been churning butter and that was all he needed to know. Curiosity satisfied. Off you go then. Time to put the kettle on.

But there was yet more to see, and the blade beckoned his gaze inescapably downward.

Dusty beams of sunlight poked through the shutters and glinted off the steel as it shed its crimson glaze in rhythmic taps, droplet by droplet, into the stomach cavity of something that looked as though it had only recently left off being a person.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip.

Like the ticking of a clock.

Surely it wasn’t his brother. Edwyck Finn wasn’t the sort to just lie down and let you stab him repeatedly in the torso as you dreamt about puffins. Even unarmed he’d been known to take on several attackers at once. A single malnourished foe who wielded his sword like a butter churn would’ve proven no match whatever. Especially if the foe in question was Tarquin, whom the elder Finn had vanquished in countless childhood sparring matches.

Tarquin surveyed the corpse, which also wore a red guard’s tabard. Only this was a much deeper red in places, particularly around the gaping torso hole through which its entrails stretched over the treasury floor. It didn’t look especially like Edwyck, but then it no longer looked like anyone who went about with his insides put away.

Bathed in its own scarlet juices, the body resembled a demon whose succubus mother had just sung it to sleep after reassuring it that plenty of dreadful things lurked under its bed. The eyes were closed softly, veiling the clearest clues to its identity. Were they indeed the same eyes that had looked on Tarquin with stern compassion as Edwyck lectured him to keep on the right side of the law?

Was this stomach now outside the body the stomach of the man who’d gone on about how he was really taking a risk by hiring Tarquin, but he didn’t want to see him hanged for his crimes, and how it was important to him that Tarquin stay alive because they were all each other had since Mum had died?

Was this rope of intestine reaching toward the desk the same intestine which earlier digested boiled carrots while the eater of those carrots admonished Tarquin to keep his nose clean, and eventually he might turn his life into something satisfying and rewarding?

The answer came as Tarquin studied the man’s beard. Though it was now caked with much more blood than the utter absence of blood it had ordinarily been caked with, it was clearly the bushy black beard Edwyck had worn as he concluded with, “You’re my brother and I love you and I don’t want to see you ruin your life.” This very beard had then brushed against Tarquin’s cheek as the brothers embraced.

This was Edwyck, without a doubt. Tarquin had managed to extinguish the one meagre flame in his otherwise abyssal existence. Edwyck’s faith in him had been all that kept Tarquin going—he’d lost all faith in himself ages ago—and now his reasons to live were all strewn about the floor in soggy scarlet chunks.

Here Tarquin forgot how to do the things one ordinarily never has to think about. Breathing, blinking, and the beating of his heart all came to a halt. All faculty and function hung suspended in a sudden entanglement of matter, space, and the passage of time. All sense of memory evaporated, all knowledge siphoned into the void. Linearity and simultaneity fused together, indistinguishable. Intellect retreated into consciousness, then consciousness into catatonia. Causality had a nervous breakdown and whiled away the remainder of its days slurping mushed peas from a spoon until finally being annihilated in the chance explosion of its sun, sucked into the resulting black hole, and compacted into the spaces between its own slowly disintegrating particles, dissipating over eons into a quantum, conspicuous absence of anything whatsoever. And reality, for its part, fucked right off.

Tarquin could feel, think, taste and perceive nothing but one sole, lone, unified, singular, solitary and unbearably oppressive omnipresence: a giant yellow stick of rich, creamy brother.

proceed to Chapter Two