Chapter 38 - Don't Mess With The Newt

"May I ask a personal question?" Myria asked the watchman tasked with guiding her to Mister Brown's current abode.

The… anthropoid… made a suggestive face that would have gotten him arrested, had he not already been wearing a watchman's uniform. "Wahl. 'Pends on how pers'nal you're planning on getting." He seemed to remember his manners. "Lady."

"I am unsure. I believe it to be quite personal." His face became, if anything, even more suggestive. "Are you, in fact, human?"

Nobby's face fell, then rallied. "Course I am. As human as you, your ladyship." He completely missed the look of alarm on Myria's face. "Even got a certificate 'testing to the fact! Corporal Saint John Nobbs, it says. Certified Human it says."[1]

"I see." Myria processed this for a moment, in awe of the sheer range of human physical variability. She had worried, for a moment, that he might be a species that the Auditors were unaware of. "Corporal Nobbs, have you seen Mister Brown? How does he fare?"

"Izzat his name? Not heard that one. You shoulda heard some of the names the boys been using. Oh. Sorry. Yah I seen him. He was right ripe when they brought him in."

"Yes. But how is he now?"

"Well he's a bit cleaner. Screamed bloody murder when we tried to wash his beard. Had to get the troll officers to hold him still. Thought he was going to break his own arms and legs we did."

"That does not sound reassuring. He must have suffered. Could you not have informed me first? I may have been able to reassure him of your intentions."

"Oh he know'd our intentions, your ladyship. And he really went bloody mad when we tried to wash his beard. You won't believe the things he had living in there! Only managed to calm him down when we promised to make a nice little home for the newt."

"The… newt?"

"Oh ya. It had been living in there, see. Dunno what they eat. Newts, not the bloke. You'd have to ask someone else about that. Newts I mean."[2]

"I see. And he is now clean?"

"Well, less filthy f'sure. You can stand the smell now, if you don't get too close, mind you."

"I shall be prepared."

"Hopefully he'll be happy to see you." Nobbs took a shot in the dark. "You bein' friends and all? He hasn't been best pleased with us. Of course might have something to do with him being cooped up in the cells too."

Myria shuddered at the memory of enclosed rooms, bars, and feeling trapped. She was beginning to understand empathy more and more, and found it a very uncomfortable skill. "He is being kept in the cells? Is this truly necessary?"

"Well, I dunno. You'd have to ask the commander about that. I suppose he thinks the poor slob's barmy as can be, doesn't want him wandering off and rolling in poo again. Beggin' yer pardon, miss."

Myria, flanked by Corporal Nobbs, stood before the cell and regarded its inhabitant with some sadness. Seated on a cot, hands fiddling with his beard. He appeared cleaner, certainly. They had apparently found some worn but serviceable clothes for him. And his hair and beard, while still matted, looked less like something you'd find growing in a cesspit and more like hair.

The eyes did not appear to be any less mad, though. They kept darting about the room, and his mouth kept morphing between a gaping smile and a grimace.

"Mister Brown, are you well?"

"Mister Brown? Who is Mister Brown? We are Mister Filth. Mister Filth kept in a cage, lest he murder with his rage." He stood up and slid up to the bars, giggling. "Does the traitor like our poetry? We have discovered it only recently. It is quite easy you see. You merely string words into lines with equal syllables and phonetic similarities." He beamed at her as he grasped the bars of his cell.

Myria found herself moving a half step backward. "I see."

"Except that humans believe that they don't always have to have phonetic similarities. And sometimes the syllables are not equal. And then there is a thing called a Kai Hyu where all that matters is the pattern of syllables and that is clearly incorrect because GRRAAHHAHAYAAA! HAHAHA! Do you like the colour red?"

Myria blinked at the sudden shift. Trying to follow Mister Brown's conversation was like trying to track a dust mote in a roomful of people. "I am sorry?"

"Red! 700 to 635 nanometers! 430 to 480 Terahertz! At the edge of the visible spectrum. Do you like the colour red!?"

Myria turned to Corporal Nobbs, who merely shook his head and made a whirling motion with one finger near his ear. "I… I find that colour appealing in some circumstances, yes."

Mister Brown stuck his face in between the bars and lowered his voice. "I like it too." Myria had to lean forward to hear him clearly. "Would you like to see it come out of you?"

Myria felt her knees weaken and she stumbled slightly. The corporal grabbed her arm. "Oy! That's quite enough, you manky git. Scaring the lady like that."

She shook her head, trying to reconcile the horror of Mister Brown's words with his expression when he had said them. He had not looked like he was trying to threaten her, merely intense curiosity.

Mister Brown began to giggle, breaking through her thoughts. "Lady? LadyLady?" He chuckled and drew back from the bars, covered his mouth with both hands, and began making choking laughing noises through tight fingers.

"I told you he was mad, your ladyship."

"Perhaps. And perhaps not as mad as one would think."

"Mad but not mad. Alive but not alive!" Mister Brown stopped laughing and staggered around the cell, clutching his abdomen suddenly. "Starving! That is what we are!"

"We tried to feed ya, ya loony."

"Feed us?" He stumbled back to the bars, appealing to Myria. "They have taken away all of our nourishment. We starve. And our newt will die."

"I swear, we tried to feed him, miss. But all he does is try to smear it on hisself, so we stopped. We figured when he got hungry enough-"

"No. No if you forced him to eat that way, it would likely kill him. He must have a special diet."

"What, like meat pie without the carrots? Sergeant Colon says they give him wind."

"Perhaps… somewhat more special than that, constable. I believe I can be of assistance in this matter."

"Oh yes. The renegade will feed us its food will it? And then we will become like it? Clean and tall. Will we become a Lady as well?"

"I do not believe that is possible."

"See what I said? Barmy."

"In the cage, we sit and rage. We starve alone to skin and bone. The traitor's bread will… will…" He scratched his head furiously. "What rhymes with bread?"

"It will make you not dead? Mister Br-"

"DO. NOT. CALL. US. THAT! We are Mister Filth! Mister Brown is dead!"

Myria gaped for a moment, then recovered. "I will not call you Mister Filth." She thought quickly. "It no longer applies to you. It cannot be used to describe you."

"Who are we then? We cannot be Mister Brown. Mister Brown is dead. We are no longer Mister Filth?" He picked at his clothes and beard. "They have taken our filth from us. Even our newt. Now we have nothing remaining." His eyes appealed, water running down his cheeks without, for the first time, leaving trails of mud behind. "Are we now Mister Nothing?" He fell to his knees at the bars of the cell, looking as lost and forlorn as any creature could be.

Myria stepped toward him and offered her hand. Had she been watching carefully, she would have seen the unassuming and rather odd corporal place his hand on his truncheon. "When I was having… difficulties, a friend told me I could choose any name I desired. That I could choose a name that described what I wished to be. I wanted to be whole, to be complete in and of myself, so I chose a name that helped me. And when I no longer needed it, I took back my original name. Because I learned that a name is only as important as you want it to be. It does not have to define who you are. Perhaps… perhaps you should do this as well."

The once-Auditor reached out a hand tentatively and touched hers. "Your hands are very clean. We do not know what we want to be. We want to be free of this cell."

"Then perhaps you should choose a name that represents freedom, as you see it."

He looked at her with beetle-bright eyes. "Then we will choose. We will choose Mister… Mister Sharps. Yes. Mister Sharps. We will cut away the thing that holds us, will we not?" He squeezed her hand and smiled.

Myria was not at all sure she agreed with the choice of name, but at least he as Mister Sharps was more calm than he had been as Mister Filth. Perhaps. Perhaps now she could help him.

"Now… where is our newt?"

[1] Nobbs was one, as far as we know, the only member of the Watch required to carry a card specifying that he was actually human. Initially it was so he wouldn't get tossed out of restaurants, though once the Librarian started frequenting them, their service policy toward primates broadened pretty dramatically. It was that or pay for some rather expensive renovations after the Librarian finished remodeling the place.

[2] Earthworms, small crickets, and meal worms mostly. Except for the Howondalandian Goliath Newt, which subsists primarily on small river fishes that mistake it's mouth for a nice shady cavern to hide in… and unwary bathers who move too slowly.