The Hexologists by Josiah Bancroft EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Josiah Bancroft
- Language: English
- Genre: Humorous Fantasy
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 57.5 MB
- Price: Free
THE KING IN THE CAKE
The king wishes to be cooked alive,” the royal secretary said, accepting
the proffered saucer and cup and immediately setting both aside. At his
back, the freshly stoked fire added a touch of theater to his announcement,
though neither seemed to suit what, until recently, had been a pleasant
Sunday morning.
“Does he?” Isolde Wilby gazed at the royal secretary with all the
warmth of a hypnotist.
“Um, yes. He’s quite insistent.” The questionable impression of the
royal secretary’s negligible chin and cumbersome nose was considerably
improved by his well-tailored suit, fastidiously combed hair, and blond
mustache, waxed into upturned barbs. Those modest whiskers struck Isolde
as a dubious effort to impart gravity to a youthful face. Though Mr. Horace
Alman seemed a man of perfect manners, he sat with his hat capping his
knee. “More precisely, the king wishes to be baked into a cake.”
Looming at the tea cart like a bear over a blackberry bush, Mr. Warren
Wilby quietly swapped the plate of cakes with a dish of watercress
sandwiches. “Care for a nibble, sir?”
“No. No, thank you,” Mr. Alman murmured, flummoxed by the offer.
The secretary watched as Mr. Wilby positioned a triangle of white bread
under his copious mustache, then vanished it like a letter into a mail slot.
The Wilbies’ parlor was unabashedly old-fashioned. While their
neighbors pursued the bare walls, voluptuous lines, and skeletal furniture
that defined contemporary tastes, the Wilbies’ townhouse decor fell
somewhere between a gallery of oddities and a country bed-and-breakfast.
Every rug was ancient, ever doily yellow, every table surface adorned by
some curio or relic. The picture frames that crowded the walls were full of
adventuresome scenes of tall ships, dogsleds, and eroded pyramids. The
style of their furniture was as motley as a rummage sale and similarly
haggard. But as antiquated as the room’s contents were, the environment
was remarkably clean. Warren Wilby could abide clutter, but never filth.
Isolde recrossed her legs and bounced the topmost with a metronome’s
precision.
She hadn’t had time to comb her hair since rising, or rather, she
had had the time but not the will during her morning reading hours, which
the king’s secretary had so brazenly interrupted, necessitating the swapping
of her silk robe for breeches and a blouse. Wearing a belt and shoes seemed
an absolute waste of a Sunday morning.
Isolde Wilby was often described as imposing, not because she
possessed a looming stature or a ringing voice, but because she had a way
of imposing her will upon others. Physically, she was a slight woman in the
plateau of her thirties with striking, almost vulpine features. She parted her
short hair on the side, though her dark curls resisted any further
intervention.
Her long-suffering stylist had once described her hair as
resembling a porcupine with a perm, a characterization Isolde had not
minded in the slightest. She was almost entirely insensible to pleasantries,
especially the parentheses of polite conversation, preferring to let the
drumroll of her heels convey her hellos and her coattails say her goodbyes.
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