The Jester’s Sorrow

by Rudi Dornemann

At evening, with one of the ring moons rising and another halfway to zenith, signals flashed between the spires of the city.

Zaurbino watched through his panoculars, jotting notes on the slate of the parapet wall, until a little after the river-chimes sounded midnight, when he snapped his chalk and hurled it into the dark garden below. “Politics,” he said, turning his back on the view.

I didn’t say anything, but kept my hand ready in my pocket if he demanded another stick of chalk.

He sucked his teeth with a smacking sound, something he did when frustrated.

“They can’t see it,” he said, “None of them.” He stared at some of his scribbles. “Idiots!”

I said nothing. As a jester of the 37th pattern, Zaurbino had earned his moods.

“Famine by midsummer. Panic among the banks. War by autumn. Chance of plague by spring.” He looked over his shoulder and squinted at the play of lights among the spires. He sat on the wall, his backside erasing the last hour’s notes. “An evil year for being.”

Most people never see a jester above the 12th pattern outside the great festivals, so they either expect them to be as sublime as the festival pageants or as antic as lower-level clowns. Truth is, being valet to Zaurbino was depressing, even if he didn’t confine himself to lightless rooms like my previous employer.

Instead, he insisted on bribes and spies and cracking the signal-codes of the leading families. As far as I could tell, he did it so he could obsess over the all the catastrophes their leadership would inevitably bring us.

When he began humming the dirge of the nine sisters in a self-pitying falsetto, I was unable to contain myself.

“Why torture yourself–and me–any longer? Throw yourself over the railing and be done with it.”

He looked dolefully at the rocks and thorn trees below. “No,” he said. “My lot is to know too much. To be able to do too little.”

“All you do is mope! Can you do anything littler than that?”

He just sniffled.

“At least you could go mope in the grand square. Spread some misery to the first families.”

A smile cracked his asymetrical moon face.

“Misery,” he said. “Their misery. A delightful thought.”

This didn’t bode well, but as I followed down the spiral stair into the city, I sensed my own melancholy might be lifting, or at least my boredom.