Interesting Times

raggedly.
    “What’s your name, young man?” said Mr. Saveloy.
    “Four Big Horns, my lord.”
    “Very good. Very good. I can see that you will go a long way. What is your job?”
    “I am Grand Assistant to the Lord Chamberlain, my lord.”
    “Which one of you is the Lord Chamberlain?”
    Four Big Horns pointed to the man who had preferred to die.
    “There we are, you see?” said Mr. Saveloy. “Promotion comes fast to adaptable people, Lord Chamberlain. And now, the Emperor will breakfast.”
    “And what is his pleasure?” said the new Lord Chamberlain, endeavoring to look bright and adaptable.
    “All sorts of things. But right now, big lumps of meat and lots of beer. You will find the Emperor very easy to cater for.” Mr. Saveloy smiled the knowing little smile he sometimes smiled when he knew he was the only one seeing the joke. “The Emperor doesn’t favor what he calls ‘fiddly foreign muck full of eyeballs and suchlike’ and much prefers simple, wholesome food like sausages, which are made of miscellaneous animal organs minced up in a length of intestine. Ahaha. But if you want to please him, just keep up the big lumps of meat. Isn’t that so, my lord?”
    Cohen had been gazing at the assembled courtiers. When you’ve survived for ninety years all the attacks that can be thrown at you by men, women, trolls, dwarfs, giants, green things with lots of legs, and, on one occasion, an enraged lobster, you can learn a lot by looking at faces.
    “Eh?” said Cohen. “Oh. Yep. Right enough. Big lumps. Here, Mr. Taxman…what do these people do all day?”
    “What would you like them to do?”
    “I’d like them to bugger off.”
    “Sorry, my lord?”
    “[Complicated pictogram],” said Mr. Saveloy. The new Lord Chamberlain looked a little startled.
    “What, here? ”
    “It’s a figure of speech, lad. He just means he wants everyone to go away quickly.”
    The court scurried out. A sufficiently complicated pictogram is worth a thousand words.

After the stampede the artist Three Solid Frogs got to his feet, retrieved his brush from his nostril, pulled his easel out of a tree, and tried to think placid thoughts.
    The garden was not what it had been.
    The willow tree was bent. The pagoda had been demolished by an out-of-control wrestler, who had eaten the roof. The doves had flown. The little bridge had been broken. His model, the concubine Jade Fan, had run off crying after she’d managed to scramble out of the ornamental pond.
    And someone had stolen his straw hat.
    Three Solid Frogs adjusted what remained of his dress and endeavored to compose himself.
    The plate with his sketch on had been smashed, of course.
    He pulled another one out of his bag and reached for his palette.
    There was a huge footprint in the middle of it…
    He wanted to cry. He’d had such a good feeling about this picture. He just knew it would be one that people would remember for a long time. And the colors? Did anyone understand how much vermilion cost these days?
    He pulled himself together. So there was only blue left. Well, he’d show them…
    He tried to ignore the devastation in front of him and concentrated on the picture in his mind.
    “Let me see, now,” he thought. “Jade Fan being pursued over a bridge by man waving his arms and screaming, ‘Get out of the way!’ followed by man with prod, three guards, five laundry men, and a wrestler unable to stop.”
    He had to simplify it a bit, of course.

    The pursuers rounded a corner, except for the wrestler, who wasn’t built for such a difficult maneuver.
    “Where’d he go?”
    They were in a courtyard. There were pigsties on one side, and middens on the other.
    And, in the middle of the courtyard, a pointy hat.
    One of the guards reached out and grabbed a colleague’s arm before the man stepped forward.
    “Steady now,” he said.
    “It’s just a hat.”
    “So where’s the rest of him? He couldn’t have just…disappeared…into…”
    They backed away.
    “You heard about him too?”
    “They said he blew a hole in the wall just by waving his hands!”
    “That’s nothing! I heard he appeared on an invisible dragon up in the mountains!”
    “What shall we tell Lord Hong?”
    “I don’t want to be blown to pieces!”
    “ I don’t want to tell Lord Hong we lost him. We’re in enough trouble already. And I’ve only just paid for this helmet.”
    “Well…we could take the hat. That’d be evidence.”
    “Right. You pick it up.”
    “Me?