The Gardener

Author's note: this is another snippet from the sort-of fantasy novel I'm trying to get written. Once again, this is up here primarily to showcase the prose and narrative style I'm using and which I'm trying to make sure is right, so any sort of critique is enormously appreciated.



The place is beyond a cesspit; it’s a sunken, decaying black void of repulsiveness. The pungent, angry stench of three generations of pure filth wafts up from the floors; the colourless, grotty, tobacco-stained walls loom aggressively over us; and in the murky, unlit corners, the vague shapes of hunched figures shuffle about, murmuring in rough, husky undertones. The place is like a lung – the hollow lung of a putrefied corpse, damply festering and crawling with ravenous vermin.

I absently finger the handle of my tankard; even amidst all the other odours, the warm, tangy stench of its contents, brining to mind a distinct blend of urine and melted rubber, is still thick in my nostrils. From across the table, the gardener continues to stare, his face, in the feeble yellow half-light, looking like little more than a knot of leathery flesh, grey stubble, and festering pockmarks. And leering again, hideously.

I clear my throat. ‘You understand, then?’ I repeat, trying to steady the tremor of nervous uncertainty in my tone.

‘What, leave the rear gate open? Uh-huh.’ His voice his hideously jarring – a gravelly, guttural purr that seems to underscore the crude hiccupping of his proletariat accent.

‘And...you’ll pay absolutely no attention to anything unusual you might see.’ I pause, licking my lips ponderously. ‘You...yes?’

He nods; his smirk broadens, and the sagging, hirsute, craterous flesh of his cheeks warps even further. ‘Y’like, bribed every idjit in the place not to notice a unicorn prancing about, then?’

‘Measures have been taken ,yes.’ From some darkened corner, the hollow rattle of knucklebones across a tabletop rings through the rank air. ‘You’ll get your money here, six the next evening. If you ever try to contact me again after that, I’ll have you killed. You understand me?’

He lifts a coarse finger and begins gauchely picking at a bloated, mud-coloured scab just below his right eye; I sink my teeth into my lower lip to fight back a retch. ‘F’sure.’ He sputters wetly, still leering with empty-eyed, moronic satisfaction at nothing in particular.

From another corner, an iron tankard clatters its way across the floor; there’s a bestial grunt, followed by the heavy thud of a chair collapsing. I swallow dryly; by all rights, I ought to be out the door already, but I am, in absolute truthfulness, not looking forward to stepping back out onto those streets...

‘An’ whaddaya plan to do?’

‘Hm?’

‘Once he’s dead. Th’guvnor. Whaddaya planning?’

I stare back wordlessly. He flings back his misshapen head, gulps noisily from his tankard, and arights himself, smirking at me again, the yellowish froth dripping from his tangled whiskers.

‘Right. A coup, then.’

I did not, in absolute honesty, think he would know that word. ‘Repossession, if you please. Repossession.’ If it can be avoided, I can very well do without my face being plastered all over the proletariats’ appallingly romantic conception of ‘revolution’.

His smirk grows almost freakishly oversized. ‘You going to improve things?’

I snort absently; my nose, it seems, has already begun to grow numb to the room’s foulness. ‘Not for you, certainly. I despise your kind.’

He nods again, his loathsome smirk not even flittering. His upper lip slides back over his splinter-shaped teeth. ‘And you’re trusting me to…’

‘You’ll still do as I say. If your kind was capable of seeing beyond a handful of coins, you wouldn’t need me to do everything for you.’

He nods again; his tongue worms its way from between his lips and delicately runs itself across the length of his moustache. ‘How long you planning to stick with it?’

I blow out my cheeks, my eyes absently wandering across the shadowy filth of the far wall. ‘A few weeks, at most, if the gods are merciful. It depends on how long it takes to get in touch with the king…have him send someone else…’

He snickers, a thick snort that seems to explode from the pit of his sinuses. Another moment of heavy silence drifts by.

‘Can I stay gardener? Once it’s all over? How ‘bout a promotion? Spot in the greenhouse, maybe?’

My gaze, for no particular reason, fixes itself upon a thin, perpendicular stretch of dull brown something smeared across a length of wall. ‘Once I’m up there? You’ll be lucky if I don’t have you hung.’

He guffaws again. The clammy, spluttering sound of someone’s thick guttural retching sounds from another corner. I purse my lips, swallow dryly again, and, rigidly steeling myself, manage to push myself to my feet. I snatch my coat from the back of the chair, my gaze now fixed upon my feet. ‘The people I’ll be helping, Stewart, will be the ones that behaved themselves. The ones that sat through all these god-forsaken years of Sternosse and took it. The ones that did nothing but drink themselves to death when their lives were being ground into the mud. The ones that stayed inside the law, Stewart. They’re the ones who deserve have their patience rewarded. When it comes to Sternosse, keeping your anger reined in is the hardest thing to do.’