The dome had proved so challenging to the royal architects that four of them had committed suicide in the course of its construction, and one had died tragically – if somewhat mysteriously – trapped inside a drainage pipe. ‘Seventeen years and counting. Looks like they’ve given up entirely on that fifth wing. What do you think, Bugg? I value your expert opinion.’
Bugg’s expertise amounted to rebuilding the hearth in the kitchen below. Twenty-two fired bricks stacked into a shape very nearly cubic, and indeed it would have been if three of the bricks had not come from a toppled mausoleum at the local cemetery. Grave masons held to peculiar notions of what a brick’s dimensions should be, pious bastards that they were.
In response to Tehol’s query, Bugg glanced up, squinting with both eyes.
Five wings to the palace, the dome rising from the centre. Four tiers to those wings, except for the shoreside one, where only two tiers had been built. Work had been suspended when it was discovered that the clay beneath the foundations tended to squeeze out to the sides, like closing a fist on a block of butter. The fifth wing was sinking.
‘Gravel,’ Bugg said, returning to his knitting.
‘What?’
‘Gravel,’ the old man repeated. ‘Drill deep wells down into the clay, every few paces or so, and fill ’em with gravel, packed down with drivers. Cap ‘em and build your foundation pillars on top. No weight on the clay means it’s got no reason to squirm.’
Tehol stared down at his servant. ‘All right. Where in the Errant’s name did you come by that? And don’t tell me you stumbled onto it trying to keep our hearth from wandering.’
Bugg shook his head. ‘No, it’s not that heavy. But if it was, that’s what I would’ve done.’
‘Bore a hole? How far down?’
‘Bedrock, of course. Won’t work otherwise.’
‘And fill it with gravel.’
‘Pounded down tight, aye.’
Tehol plucked another fig from the plate, brushed dust from it – Bugg had been harvesting from the market leavings again. Outwitting the rats and dogs. ‘That’d make for an impressive cook hearth.’
‘It would at that.’
‘You could cook secure and content in the knowledge that the flatstone will never move, barring an earthquake-’