Blair thinks the Amorphous, a race of formless and seemingly omniscient beings, know more about the death of the women than they're saying. Ren suspects Blair's prejudices are skewing his judgment, and they're looking in the wrong place.
If they're going to solve the mystery and set Yarn right, it's going to take understanding on both their parts.
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Extract:
The palace was a great stone fortress, each ugly tower cutting an angular swath into the skyline of Yarn. Somewhere in its past, a forward-thinking architect had attempted to cheer the blank walls by picking out windows in whimsical shapes, expanding upon what had been old arrow slits. All Blair could think of when he looked at them was how embarrassing it would be for an invading army to be taken down by a swarm of arrows in the shape of a daisy.
Clipped gardens sat under the palace like a beer mat under a pint, and Blair walked through them until he reached its doors. He sucked his teeth to clear any lingering strings of food out of them and swept the ragged ends of his hair off his shoulders. He adjusted the strapping across his bare chest that kept his axes in place on his back. Finally he wiped the soles of his boots on the doormat. In the old king’s day, there would have been a couple of armoured guards outside the doors, but he continued into the palace unheeded.
The amorphous were swarming around the lobby, shifting shapes as they passed through. They drifted across the marble floors and staircase with its gaudy pattern of fat, naked cherubs holding gold grapes and wine goblets. And what exactly is the point of shifting? Blair wondered. An amorph’s basic shape was a glowing, faintly orange blob, and the only thing it could shift into was a slightly less blobby blob. They flitted from room to room, one after the other, some carrying stacks of paper or tea trays laden with food in stubby, arm-like protrusions. Some just hurried. Meanwhile fist-sized goblins scuttled across the floor with cloths and tiny buckets of soapy water, leaving gleaming trails and even shinier cherubs in their wake.
Blair strode through the chaos, pausing only briefly to shoo a couple of goblins who’d decided that his boots could do with a good clean. Their fluffy little heads turned up to give him pleading looks with their giant, watering eyes. He sighed and let them get on with it until his boots were so clean he could see his face in them. Hm. His beard needed a trim. Every step he finally did manage to take squeaked against the buffed floor.
The amorph that approached him attempted to look human but failed to manage more than the shape of a butternut squash with a head. He felt it was appraising him, even if it didn’t have eyes. The ‘head’ part of the butternut squash seemed to look him up and down, from his brow to his incongruously shiny boots
.
“Mr. Buckingham,” it said, each monotone word accompanied by a bright pulse. Blair wondered anew where the words came from since they didn’t have mouths.
“Do I know you?” Blair said.
“As you are aware, Mr. Buckingham, we have no unique physical characteristics. We have not spoken before, but you have spoken to another.”
“Did you eat him?”
“We do not cannibalise each other, Mr. Buckingham. We merge to share our knowledge and experience, and separate when necessary. You should not try to think of us in human terms.”
“Where’s young Daniel? He wants to see me.”
“His Majesty is this way, Mr. Buckingham. We would appreciate it if you would try not to cleave any of us with your axe to ‘see what happens’ this time. We lose much knowledge in the confusion when we are forced to separate.”
“You can just eat each other again, right?” Blair followed the amorph up the main stairs and through the corridors. “No harm done?”
“Again, Mr. Buckingham, we do not eat each other. We do not possess the equipment required to eat or excrete. When we join, neither of us ceases to exist. It is simply something we do together to share our experiences.”
“So it’s more like sex?”
“We do not have reproductive organs. We are not human, Mr. Buckingham, and we do not do human things.”
“There are lots of non-human things around and they all eat, sleep, and fuck. Why are you lot so different?”
“We do not believe we can explain it to your satisfaction, Mr. Buckingham. We have tried many times via different joinings and separations. We are distasteful to you. We understand.”
Blair slowed a little in his pursuit of the amorph down the corridor. “I, uh, I never said distasteful…”
“No, you said, ‘Why don’t you lot have faces? I’d get on a lot better with you if you had a face for me to look at,’ when you overindulged in wine at the king’s birthday party.”
“Oh.” Blair had, as the amorph had pointed out, been rather the worse for wine at the time, but he didn’t think he’d been quite that bad. “Remember that, do you?”
“We do not forget.”
Blair decided it was best to let the rest of the journey pass in silence. The amorph led him into one of the lounge rooms, although the king wasn’t exactly lounging. He had eschewed the use of several plush chairs and sofas in favour of staring out of the window. His little head was bent low, rounded cheeks all that could be seen through the fringe of untidy blond hair. His finery was a little too big for him, the cuffs of his shirt falling over his knuckles where they were perched against the window ledge. The previous king had been a lot lankier than the current one, even at this age. Daniel had his own clothes, of course, but he’d insisted on wearing his dad’s old ones ever since they’d unearthed them in one of the storage rooms, filling his shoes in more ways than one. Blair couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be in possession of a full kingdom even as a grown man, let alone as a twelve-year-old boy. Maybe it provided a bit of comfort. The amorph cleared its throat, or whatever it had instead of one, and King Daniel looked up.
“Mr. Buckingham has arrived,” the amorph said.
“Thank you, Issel and… is that Nie you’ve joined with?”
“Yes, Your Majesty. We will leave you now.”
The amorph glided out of the room. Blair looked down at Daniel, who jutted out his chin and stood straighter as if he could will himself to be as tall as Blair by dint of his status alone.
“How can you tell those things apart, Daniel?” Blair asked.
Daniel scowled at him. “You’re not supposed to call me by my first name.”
“Rubbish. I’ve been calling you by your first name since you were born. So teach me your fancy trick to tell those buggers apart.”
“How is it that you can’t work it out for yourself?” Daniel said as if Blair had just asked him how he managed to tie his shoelaces.
“No one can. They all look exactly the same. Even they admit that.”
“No one tries. If you spend enough time with them, they start to give off impressions of all their experiences.”
“The people don’t like it, you know. They see goblins and ghosties and whatever else in an ancestral human home and the think that humans are getting shafted out of more jobs.”
“The people? What you mean by ‘the people’ are some old men who think they poop gold and yourself. They can continue disliking it for all I care. Their bigotry and superstition keeps the assassins away, and their ignorance means more knowledge for me.”
“Maybe you should let some human staff into the castle, though.” Blair suggested. “At least try and make one or two friends?”
“I have friends, and I don’t give a… a darn if the duchies don’t consider them real ones.”
Blair forced a grin off his face at the childish attempt at swearing. “It doesn’t look good is all I’m saying. If you cut humans out completely, it’ll make them more suspicious.”
“I deal with humans all the time.”
“Only when you need something from them. It doesn’t look good to outsiders.”
“People used to think you and your tribe were barbarians,” Daniel said, casting a hand toward Blair. “They thought you were little more than wild animals. My father opened up trade and labour routes for you despite all the complaining. The amorphous tell me about my parents. They say that the nobles hated them, which means it’s my duty to be at least as hated, if not more so.”
Blair marshalled his thoughts. Every time the old king and Queen Sarah were brought up, it knocked the breath right out of him like a punch to the chest. A punch that knocked him right back to the days of their deaths. It was amazing Daniel could talk about them as casually as he did.
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