The Bone Magician by F E Higgins Page A

an intellectual giant. Beag had acquired knowledge that few Urbs Umidians would believe, let alone remember, and he had forgotten more than most could even know. But on the third, the matter of
     his fortune, Beag had been well and truly thwarted. Of all the facts he had learned, the hardest had to be that there was no money to be made from poetry and singing. But perhaps there was a living to be earned from potato throwing. Certainly it was a
     talent that appealed to the stunted imaginations of the Urbs Umidians.
    Beag had come to the City two winters ago carrying little more than the clothes on his back, the shoes on his feet and an old leather
     bag with a wide strap that he wore across his chest. It contained, among other things, his writings: poetry and ballads – in the main lovelorn and unceasingly depressing – that he liked to recite and sing, and for which he hoped one day to
     win acclaim.
    He arrived at the city walls late at night and walked around them until he came to one of the four pairs of guarded entrance gates.
     Unfortunately for Beag, it was the North Gate which led, naturally, into the northern half of the City. As soon as the guards saw his shabby dress, his wet woollen hat and heard his foreign accent they determinedthat
     he should not enter. The pair of them took a step forward in a most aggressive and unfriendly manner and crossed their muskets to block his way. Of course, on account of Beag’s size, the muskets crossed in front of his face, which was not the
     guards’ intention, so they lowered them and stood rather awkwardly bent over and challenged him to explain himself.
    ‘My name is Beag Hickory,’ he said proudly, ‘and I have come to your fine city to make my fortune.’ He could not
     understand why this pronouncement caused such hilarity between the guards.
    ‘Oho,’ said the uglier of the two, ‘and how do you intend to do that?’
    Beag drew himself up to his full height by means of rising slyly on to the balls of his feet and pulling a peak in his sodden hat (which
     sagged almost immediately). ‘I am a poet, a scholar, an entertainer, a teller o’ tales—’
    ‘Then you’re at the wrong gate,’ interrupted the other guard sullenly.
    ‘Is this not Urbs Umida?’ asked Beag.
    ‘Aye, it is. But you’re still at the wrong gate. I suggest you try south of the river,’ said the first guard, not
     bothering to stifle a yawn. ‘You’ll find more of your sort downthere, or should I say, your short .’ Both men laughed heartily at this witticism.
    Beag frowned. ‘What do you mean, my sort ?’
    ‘Paupers, chancers, circus acts,’ replied the guard, and his voice had hardened.
    ‘Try the Nimble Finger Inn on the Bridge,’ said the other. ‘Betty Peggotty, the landlady, sometimes she exhibits
     strange creatures.’ This set the other guard off into such a paroxysm of laughter that he was rendered incapable of speech.
    Beag, who had learned both when to persist and when to yield, rightly concluded that this was one of those times when a person yielded.
     ‘Very well,’ he said, and he withdrew with his dignity intact and a slight gunpowder stain on his waistcoat where the guard had poked him. ‘You say the Nimble Finger? Perhaps I shall see you anon. I bid you goodnight and good
     fortune.’
    And so, some time later, Beag made his entrance rather less grandly than he had hoped through the South Gate. The guards there waved him
     on without a second glance. Beag could not fail to notice almost immediately that the aroma on the south of the Foedus was distinctly unpleasant and by careful elimination he soon realized thatit was due to the river.
     Yes, the streets were sludgy and muddy and scattered about with all sorts of debris, recognizable as vegetable and animal remains, but it was the river that gave off the odour that made his nose wrinkle involuntarily. Beag walked alongside the Foedus,
     logically assuming that the bridge he sought must be on it somewhere,