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and his delusions of nobility.
He places the book back on the shelf.
—Skag is a word I know not the meaning of. Nor do I deign to seek it out. So sure am I that it is some foul slang for vagina or penis.
His chair creaks close and he butts me with the wheels. —And you, were you in my charge at an early age, what should I have named you?
His lips purse, dry flakes of blood, and grease from the trotters, mingle in the whiskers on his chin.
—Shiftless. Yes, Shiftless. Lazy and contemptible. Placing yourself outside the structure of things. Imagining yourself better than your place. Adding nothing to the common good and weal.
He reaches behind the chair and comes up with a short cat-o-nine-tails and prods me with the wood handle.
—You are a burden on us all. We strivers, we reachers and dreamers, without us, without our mighty efforts at forward progress, you and your slovenly kind would perish in your own filth.
He dangles the knotted leather cords of the whip in front of my face; I can see the dry blood clotted thick.
—Parasites. Sucker fish. Tapeworms. Reveling in the bowels of the citizenry. Living off our wastes. Upsetting the smooth functions of the body politic that we nourish with hard labors.
He raises the whip and lashes it across my face. —Shiftless. Useless. Leech.
I flinch, draw up my shoulders and duck my face into my chest.
He prods me again with the handle.
—Yes, huddle and hide from the light and truth, Shiftless. Is that shame? No, I think not. Fear. Simple fear of pain. Well, fear is a good forge. We can work many a useful tool with fear at hand. I have done so for years. In good service.
He shoves the end of the handle under my chin and forces my face up. —Sharp tools I made. Even if they have never been appreciated. Good tools and able. Suited to their task. And I would have made more and better. But for interference.
He pulls the handle away and bangs it against the floor.
—Had I been left to my own methods, Menace would never have shunned his conditioning and reverted to his nature. Under my own auspices and left unmolested here, the Mungiki would never have manifested.
He throws the cat-o-nine-tails, upsetting a pile of newspapers that sloughs to the floor.
—Skag Baron Menace! With no Mungiki he was nothing. I told them, Leave off and let me attend, yes? But they would not listen. Insisted in meddling. All but created the Mungiki with their own hands. Intrusions. Invasions.
He takes his hair in fistfuls.
—And who must then negotiate with the savages? Who must settle them in their place? And at what price?
He puts his hands on the arms of the wheelchair and pushes himself up on twisted legs; frozen at the waist, he stands cocked at nearly ninety degrees, waving arms as warped as his legs, all the bones of him corkscrewed. —Mere seconds in the sun, yes? Cancers in my bones, yes? Mad growths, yes? All because I went out to negotiate, to compensate for failures and oversights that were none of my own.
He drops back into the chair, sending it rolling a few feet across the moldering room. —Mr. Lament.
—A misstep, did I say? On my own part, yes? Surely it was a misstep. The misstep was loyalty. Listening to the simple caw and cries, yes? I should have
followed truer stars. My own heart and mind I should have followed! —Mr. Lament.
He heaves air in and out, wipes spittle from his mouth, fingering the blisters that pebble his cheeks.
—A life in service. For me, who should have been a prince in my own right. This is the price of sacrifice. This is the price of loyalty, Shiftless. The wages paid by an ignorant sovereign. —Mr. Lament.
He turns to Low, the boy standing in the open door.
—You have something to say, idiot boy? Something that cant wait till your better concludes his business? Come here, thing.
Low doesn't move.
Lament crooks a finger. —Come here now, Low. Or risk my displeasure.
Low comes slowly into the  room,  his tongue probing the ends of his moustache.