"All right," said the Bailiff. "Have it your way if you must, but don't come running to me when half of Oakwood goes up in flames and there's a raging mob outside your window waving flaming torches and screaming for your head." He folded his arms huffily and sat back in the black leather armchair, his elegant vulpine muzzle jutting stiffly forward. In the deep silence that followed, the sounds of the bustling town floated up to the large first-floor room of the Manor House where the two vulps were ensconced.
Lord Selim glared at the Bailiff for a few moments, regarding the other's ornately patterned robes with some disdain, then spoke in an exaggeratedly honeyed tone which conveyed quite adequately the contempt he felt for his deputy's warning. "Yes, Wharton," he said. "I shall have it my way. I am the ruler of this town, and as such I am charged with making the decisions. You, it seems, are charged with making a fool of yourself." He paused for a moment. "And though your concern for my welfare is most gratifying, it would perhaps be appropriate for you to consider your own position in this town." Another, slightly longer, pause. "And also to consider just what might happen to that position should some... accident... befall me. Do you not agree?"
Lord Wharton shifted uncomfortably under Selim's steely gaze, and said nothing. He knew that his fortunes were inextricably tied up with those of the Lord Protector, and that they stood or fell together. He could not afford to anger his superior to too great an extent, however much the idea appealed to him. In the privacy of his mind, however, he was raging. He calls me a fool, he thought angrily. The only fool in this room is the one looking at me, and the way he's going, he'll be having that "accident" before the year is out. Selim wouldn't have the first idea how to do my job - but then he doesn't have the first idea how to do his own job, either.
"Then it seems that we are agreed," went on Selim, flashing the thinnest of thin smiles and scratching his ear idly with a force that made the other fox wince. "And that being so, I trust that you have no objection to putting our proposals to the Council this afternoon? It would, after all, be a tragedy if the people of this town were unable to benefit from such a forward-looking idea. We must move with the times, Wharton, and that means doing what is right, not necessarily what is traditional."
"Our" proposals, thought Wharton sourly. It won't be a matter of "our" when I have to pick up the pieces, but all he said aloud was, "So be it." He stood up, a full six inches taller than Selim and making sure that the other was made well aware of the fact, then inclined his head in the direction of the Lord Protector as minimally as he dared and was gone from the chamber in a whirl of red and gold.
Copyright © David "Loganberry" Buttery 2005. Last updated 9th July 2005.