Ring, ring.
Exclemptes zo Wilhomp, Purveyor and Planner of Beastes Moste Reptilliyan, looked at the doorway to his establishment as if it were a dead spider. One-handed, he fumbled for the speaking-trumpet at his desk – a new and very much unwelcome addition.
“Akoloids!” he snapped down it.
“Yeah?” came the reply, fogged by several dozen yards, many spiderwebs, and the sucked-dry corpses of hundreds of lost mantisflies.
“There is a CLIENT at the doorway and they don’t seem to understand how to OPEN the DOOR. Do I need to put up instructions?!”
“Is the door locked?”
“The secretary takes care of that.”
“You fired the secretary. That’s why you’re up front.”
“She fired herself. Nobody strikes the person of the Baron Vogelschnapps and expects to retain employment, no matter how hard he tries to stick his hand down their blouse.”
“Right. Right. So, did you unlock the door, since she didn’t?”
Exclemptes hung up the speaking trumpet and glared sourly at his desk, where a large, beautiful key watched him with innocence. Your forebears build the business, you tend it as all your predecessors have, and what do your employees do? Leave you in the lurch to clean up their messes. Some people are just too stupid for words. It was in this spirit of mind that he took up the key, put it in the front door, turned it, and returned to his desk, where he plunged the instrument into a deep drawer that it might someday cease to disgust him.
Then he began to read the paper.
“Erm-” suggested the prospective client after some two minutes of this. His clothing was colourful but dissolute and his manner shabby, as was typical of heralds and messengers.
“Exclemptes zo Wilhomp, Purveyor and Planner of Beastes Moste Reptilliyan and co-owner of Wilhomp & Akoloids Greate Reptiyles,” reeled off Exclemptes. “But you may address me as ‘Master Wilhomp.’”
“Yes master Wilhomp.”
“Capitalize it.”
“Yes, Master Wilhomp.”
Exclemptes nodded in satisfaction. “Good. Now, what does your lord wish of me? Present unto me the documentation so that we can get on with this.”
“Err….m’lord wished to procure his order…verbally.”
“Verbally!?”
“Ah, orally?”
“I KNOW what ‘verbally’ means you illiterate louse!” Exclemptes slammed his fist into the desk. “But a contract without written seal? Does he take me for a buffoon? A jester? A churl? A CHUMP? Give me his name so that I may blackball him!”
“Baron Vogelschnapps,” gasped out the messenger, reeling under the onslaught.
Exclemptes’s stomach jerked two inches to the right.
“Well,” he said. His fist uncurled, palm flat to the desktop. Legal papers and half-drafted hiring notices for new secretaries stuck to his suddenly sweating skin. “Perhaps a one-time accommodation might be made. I am pleased to hear your lord has rethought his notions and sought to patronize our establishment once more. Now, what has he commanded you to purchase?”
“A… custom order, of sorts.”
“Pea-brained poltroon! ALL dragons, drakes, wyrms, wyverns, wurms, devil-lizards, serpents, and scaly horrors produced by Wilhomp & Akoloids are custom-made! Who do you think crafted the Wing’d Horror of Bannocksbolg, so valiantly slain by Saint Gurge? Who shaped the slithering bulk of Falafnal, the Worm of the West Shore, stabbed through the heart by brave Sir Boarbees? Who devised the first biological emanatory of jellied flame? Who first fine-tuned venom glands to carve rock as readily as flesh? Who hardened some scales to stronger-than-steel and tuned others to soft sweet arterial weakness, ripe for the sword? Who? WHO?!”
“…you?”
Both fists this time, sending a pen airborne for a fraction of a second. “NO you inordinately ignorant ignoramus! The Akoloids did that; the Wilhomps organized the thing. Which is what I am TRYING to DO right NOW but YOU. AREN’T. LETTING ME.” One finger jutted forth from a clenched and clutched claw of a fist, a nail aimed for the heart. “Now SPEAK!!”
“A becloaked sprawlbodied stinker, slowwaking with a big sweet spot,” blurted the messenger.
“Hm!” said Exclemptes. He leaned back in his chair and stroked his chin. “Hm,” he repeated. It was the first non-irritating thing to happen to him all morning. “Well!” he considered. “That is indeed interesting. Very interesting. You! Your message is certain?”
“Yes, Master Wilhomp.”
“Speak more surely! It is precise?”
“Yes, Master Wilhomp!”
“LOUDER! It is the exact and entire words your lord sent you with, not merely the summary of such?”
“YES, MASTER WILHOMP!” roared the messenger. “Probably. Yes. I think so.”
Exclemptes zo Wilhomp threw his pen. It missed the courier and bounced off the door.
“If that glass is chipped I will have you devoured,” he said calmly. “Now. Are. You. Certain. There. Was. Nothingelse?”
“No! Yes! There was nothing else, Master Wilhomp!”
“Did he say what this order was FOR?”
“Personal amusement, Master Wilhomp! Wants to ‘keep himself in hand!’”
“Hah!” guffawed Exclemptes. “About as literally as can be, what with THIS mess! The old coot would get as much swordwork done playing with his pants in private!”
“Pardon, Master Wilhomp?”
“Don’t gossip of your betters! Be on your way, and tell your master I will send him the bill with his order! And wash your tunic – you stain the air!”
“Yes Master Wilhomp! Thank you! Goodbye!”
“Faugh!”
Exclemptes zo Wilhomp locked the door in case the wretched thing should attempt to re-enter the premises, returned to his desk, and, after three tries, unhooked the speaking-trumpet.
“Akoloids!” he shouted down it. “Order from Vogelschnapps! It seems firing the secretary for offending him was indeed the right thing to do, exactly as I have told you! A becloaked sprawlbodied stinker, slowwaking with a big sweet spot. Personal amusement.”
“What, really?” came the reply, surprise naked and unashamed. “Why not stomp on some frogs instead? Same effort, and a lot cheaper.”
“The price is the POINT, as my father spent his whole life telling your father,” said Exclemptes with exasperated patience. “Nobody is impressed by something you can do for free. Get started. And tell the damned secretary to answer the door, the bell is ringing off its hook!”
“You fired her, remember?”
Exclemptes threw the speaking trumpet behind his desk, stomped to the door, turned around, stomped back to the desk twice as fast, dug out the key again, stomped back to the door, unlocked it, and threw the key inside his pants pocket so hard it broke skin on his leg. “Greetings,” he said through clenched teeth to the august, soberly-moustached gentleman at the door. “Exclemptes zo Wilhomp, Purveyor and Planner of Beastes Moste Reptilliyan and co-owner of Wilhomp & Akoloids Greate Reptiyles. Do come inside.”
“I was attempting to do so, sir,” droned the man, who had the sort of rigid cheekbones that had never once cracked under a smile, “but I fear that the door bade me different.”
“Hah hah, your grace. What can I do for the Duke of Babberidge this fine morn?”
“Well, my nephew could do with a bit of a toughening-up. I need something that can put up a fight against him and a good horse and a small assist-party of seventy beaters six houndsmen forty hounds and a squad of gunners. Don’t want to make things too easy on him.”
“Yes, yes, yes, of course, very sensible, very laudable,” said Exclemptes. “Tell me, shall you prefer the beast to be aerial or landbound? Leaping or creeping? Fey and wild or seething with malice? What of its emissions, do you prefer sanguine, bright, cold, searing, or screaming?”
“Oh, whatever’s best,” said the Duke, waving a hand carelessly in the manner of someone who’s never once been shy of a glove. “I suspect you know your business better than I do mine. Now I really must go; the day’s young yet and I have pressing matters to attend to. Shake a leg, sir. I shall expect it by Mortimermass.”
“Yes, your grace. Thank you, your grace. Take care, your grace.”
Exclemptes maintained his poise until the count of ten after the door’s shutting, then dove behind his desk to retrieve the speaking-trumpet. “AKOLOIDS!” he shrieked down it. “The Duke of Babberidge needs a dick-measurer for his nephew and his armada of gormless hired thugs and foxhunters!”
“What? That’s great!”
“The damned old fool doesn’t know a drake from a DUCK! He expects the world and described a mote of dust!”
“What? That’s terrible.”
“TELL ME ABOUT THAT.” Exclemptes sobbed elephantinely into his palms and the trumpet both, then swept his face away with his hands. “No, no, no. This will be alright. Do… a prowling ripper, extra rip. Cloak it, and add a flaremouth. Cold.”
“No wings AND no flames? In a show”
“DON’T SECOND-GUESS ME no, no, that’s too far, it needs SOMETHING. Put a sparktongue in that flaremouth. It won’t be able to light a candle without deepthroating it, but by god it’ll look a blast furnace.”
“’Tongue alone won’t cut it. I’ll put in some oildrool.”
“Are you LISTENING you WRETCHE-“
“Don’t second-guess ME.”
“YOU-!”
Akoloids hung up.
Exclemptes gave a cruel little shriek and flung his speaking trumpet to the desk.
“Err… pardon, Master Wilhomp?” asked the messenger. His clothing was the same, only a little dustier. “But might you have a moment?”
“Don’t interrupt!” snapped Exclemptes. “And yes. Obviously. All the time in the world for Baron Vogelschnapps.”
“Ah, thank you, Master Wilhomp. Yes, well, the Baron. The Baron has thought of some additional criteria for his order.”
Exclemptes’s eyebrows rose. Through great effort, his upper lip did not. “I see? Well, we are not in the business of alterations, but your lord IS among our most exclusive customers, so perhaps we can look the other way this once. What are his thoughts?”
“’Scratch the cloaks and put up wings; quickstart the waking, make the sweetspot bigger,’” reeled off the messenger in a toneless trance.
“Hm!” said Exclemptes, drumming his fingers on the table. “Hmmm! Well then. This we can do, though of course the bill will rise along with the wings – true flight is no mean feat to put on a sixty-foot beast!”
“Hundred-twenty,” chimed in the messenger.
“I beg your very small pardon you exquisite worm?”
“A hundred and twenty feet, Master Wilhomp.”
“Better, but best would’ve been to not have to ask for it.” Exclemptes sniffed aggressively through both nostrils. “The adjustments will be made. You may depart. You shall depart. Now.”
“Thank you, Master Wilhomp.”
“Akoloids!”
“Yeah?” rasped the speaking-trumpet, its ambient wispy buzz now redolent with the addition of thick, mucosal chopping sounds. Exclemptes did not make it his business to consider their origins.
“The Baron’s changed his mind. Scratch the cloaks and put up wings, quickstart the waking, double the sweetspot from big to bigger and supersize it.”
“Really? Did he realize he wasn’t even going to impress himself? Should be a pretty good show now, if you’re blind and deaf. On it.”
“High priority!”
“On it.”
Ring, ring.
“Go AWA- we’re open,” said Exclemptes with exquisite calm as a dress that could’ve been used as a life-raft entered the establishment.
“One is pleased to know this,” said a voice from somewhere inside it. “Tell me, might one procure a garden-pet here?”
“Madam,” said Exclemptes, delicately retrieving what looked like it was a sleeved glove and kissing what was probably a hand, “Wilhomp & Akoloids Greate Reptiyles have produced everything from sea serpents to lawn-drakes. Whatever place in your estate needs a beast, we can make it fit.”
“How droll. Harriet, give the man a cheque and get him to do something for the hedge-maze. One must depart; the smell here is giving one congestion.”
The dress subsided and departed, leaving in its wake a small, irritated-looking woman with a much smaller dress.
“Strict night owl,” she said, slapping the chequebook down on the counter. “Thickblooded, hungry for trespasser flesh, sleeps like a cat. Cheap job.”
“For a custom-”
“She wants the same damned thing her cousin got last year, but living in a pile of leaves instead of a rock garden. Reuse the design, strip out the fire, save both of us money. Take it or eat shit.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
The door clanged shut. Exclemptes stared at the cheque with conflicted and vexed emotions.
“’Scuse,” said the messenger. “Do you have another moment, Master Wilhomp?”
“Don’t sneak!” snapped Exclemptes, nearly falling out of his chair. “And don’t SQUEAK either – god, your awful voice is as high-pitched as a WOMAN’S! What is it NOW?!”
“I’m afraid the Baron had been thinking more while I was delivering my last message, and he request a few more tweaks, Master Wilhomp.”
“Fine. Fine! What is it?”
“’Nix the sprawl, turn the stink up to a smokestack, double the sweetspot.’”
Exclemptes smiled and nodded. “Yes. Wonderful. Good. Goodbye now.”
“Yes, Master W-”
Exclemptes slammed the door on the messenger’s foot, cursing a little as it rebounded off his stout, peasantly wooden shoes.
“Akoloids!”
“Yeah?”
“The Baron’s changing his mind again! Nix the sprawl, turn the stink to a smokestack, double the sweetspot!
“We already doubled the sweetspot.”
“Then DOUBLE IT AGAIN!” Ring ring. “Hello, welcome, to WHAT IS IT NOW?”
The messenger abashedly scratched the back of his head. “Err, forgot a bit. Take it to hair-trigger and grease the reflexes. Thanks. Sorry.”
“Go away. Yes, Akoloids, and take it to hair-trigger and grease the reflexes.”
The empty speaking-trumpet sat mutely on the desk.
“AKOLOIDS!”
“What, what? Something else?”
“HAIR TRIGGER. GREASE THE REFLEXES.”
“The Baron still going on?”
Exclemptes bit the speaking-trumpet. Ring, ring, ring, clack.
“Hello, are you open?” inquired the larger and more well-fed of the two men inserting their combined mass into the doorway.
“No, can’t you read the sign?” snapped Exclemptes, rehanging his jaw and hoping he hadn’t chipped a tooth. “What do you need?”
“Here, have a care!” admonished the smaller and more ruffled of the two. “That’s the newest knight of the land you’re speaking to! Sir Pearse!”
“Oh, how thoughtless of me!” smiled Exclemptes brightly. “TERRIBLY sorry to trouble a KNIGHT of the LAND, here come to seek such a big important matter. Now, what do you need to stab, sir? And might you muzzle you upstart grub?”
“Fair ‘nuff,” rumbled Sir Pearse happily, punching his squire affectionately in the kidney. “Shut up, you. I reckon I’ll take a Big Flambe, if you’ve still got any ‘n the stock from last year. Sure made a pretty mess back with Sir Forkmoore’s slaying, I tell you that.”
“Yes, yes, very tragic.”
“I reckon I’n handle that. Got a spear.”
“That should do it.”
“He preferred sword. Showy bastard he was.”
“Too true, too true,” said Exclemptes, shaking his head. “Cheque?”
“Here’n you go,” grunted Sir Pearse, passing the paper with one hand and grabbing his retching squire’s belt with the other. “Hush, you. On m’way now, g’day to you.”
The speaking-trumpet took a moment to work this time, which Exclemptes spent checking the surface for dentally-induced cracks.
“Yeah?”
“We DO have a few Grand Flambe lying around back there, yes?”
“Nope, the equinox tourney took ‘em all. But I could chop shop something close enough to qualify, as long as nobody looks too carefully.”
“It’s a knight’s slaying, the whole audience and every participant will be soused as shrimp and unsensible even when sober. Do it.”
Ring, ring.
Exclemptes steepled his fingers and gave a level gaze at the messenger. “Admit it.”
“Pardon, Master Wilhomp?” gulped the messenger. His eyes glazed with an extra layer of fear.
“Admit you screwed this all up. You can’t hear and can’t think and can’t listen properly and you’re having to salvage it all from half-recollected bits of nonsense and gossip your fellow servants can scrape together, hoping all the while they don’t feed you a discrediting line for their own gain – and the reason you delivered this verbally is because there WAS a document that you LOST and you don’t know what was on it because YOU CAN’T READ.”
The man sagged in relief. “Yes Master Wilhomp! It’s all true Master Wilhomp! I’m sure I’ve got it now though, Master Wilhomp! I asked the butler and he called me a worm but told me everything now, it’s all true! I’m positive! Please spare me!”
“Stop mewling and start speaking,” said Exclemptes, narrowing his eyes in lordly disdain. “And be sure that your Baron will have a full accounting of your failings should he find one fault with this product of your assigned errand!”
“Yes Master Wilhomp thank you Master Wilhomp praise you Master Wilhomp! Turn the heat up from smoke to flame and double the sweet on the spot!” babbled the messenger, backing out the door as he bowed and scraped so hard that he nearly cleaned the dust from the carpet.
Exclemptes shook his head as he picked up the speaking-trumpet. “Akoloids? Change the smokestack to a full flame and double the sweet on the sweetspot.”
A groan. “Really? I don’t know how much more vulnerable this thing can get; I’m already making it with a fully naked chest and a retracted ribcage; want me to just mount its heart on its nose so it can pop it whenever it sneezes?”
“The customer, right or wrong, is always paying.”
“Fine.”
Exclemptes hung up and rubbed his face and thought of luncheons. Akoloids wasn’t angry, god no, but he was already sliding into the sort of surly sulk that he liked to spend whole months in if prodded far enough. Just the sort of thing he needed. God, the amount of salt being added to the day’s coffee was almost enough to cancel out the sugar of Vogelschnapps returning. What a plum that was; he’d sworn to never set foot in the whole of Cabbledrach street again, let alone buy a Wilhomp & Akoloids original. But all aristocratic emotions were fickle and fanciful in the end, even spite.
Ring, ring.
“Admiral.”
“Wilhomp.”
“Six more serpents for the boarding drills?”
“Dullfanged and drooling.”
“Wonderful.”
“Superb.”
“Always happy to assist the navy.”
“Happy to be assisted.”
Exclemptes didn’t even bother picking up the speaking-trumpet; the order had been processed weeks in advance, as had every other of its kind for the past six decades. Predictability was probably why the navy had lost the last war, but if it purchased six practice-serpents every six months who was to say if it was bad or good?
He stood up. Enough prevarication. Luncheon called. Meats and breads and breaded meats and little morsels of fat from honest, boring, expensive animals, things no blade of Akoloids’s would ever touch. The chef would have prepared everything by now.
Ring. Ring.
Exclemptes’s eyes met those of the messenger. The messenger’s eyes met those of Exclemptes.
They were soft, watery. A particular kind of hazel.
“Well?” he snapped.
“I DID get it correct, Master Wilhomp,” said the messenger apologetically. “But there was one more thing, just one more thing. The Baron sent me out specific when I told him it was done, just for this.”
Exclemptes shut his eyes. “Speak. Then never be seen here again.”
“Forget about the sweetspot. Too big a hassle. Also please deliver one copy of the order to every member of the peerage on your patronage list as a surprise present from the Baron to the realm as a whole.”
Exclemptes smiled. “Well. Well, well, well. That’s a big order.”
“Yes, Master Wilhomp.”
“The biggest ever made.”
“The Baron believes that what goes around comes around, Master Wilhomp.”
“Yes it does,” mused Exclemptes. He was smiling, how odd. “Yes it surely does. Oh. Do you know someone called….mmmm….” his brain ticked through half-forgotten things; old meals; dead pets; someone’s aunt “…Svoush?”
The messenger jumped. “Pardon, Master Wilhomp?”
“Former secretary, I think that was her name. Wretched imbecile. You have her peculiar eyes.”
The messenger did not move a single muscle.
“What an utter and totally inexplicable coincidence THAT is!”
“Truly and completely, Master Wilhomp.”
“Now go away! And spend your next meager payday on a PROPER messenger’s uniform – that livery scarce befits your master; it looks like a paltry play-costume stolen from a theater-troupe!”
Slam, click, locked, and ready for lunch. But one last thing, one last word to the speaking-trumpet.
“Akoloids! Final adjustment to the Baron’s orders.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Nix the sweetspot, and we’re giving one to all our clients. The old baboon is having a birthday.”
“Ah.”
“Ah what?”
“It’s just, looking at the order all at once, this is a supersized flying flaming whip-quick greased-reflex monster, and now you say it has NO sweetspots, and-“
“And what?”
“But-”
“But WHAT?”
“…what if they barbecue the clients?
“So what if they do? It’ll be Vogelschnapps’s own damned fault for sending a clod-headed peasant to deliver his messages. I tell you, Akoloids, some people are just too stupid for words.”