His second shoe had been put on. He stood up and immediately gasped, grimacing, and clutched his knee.
“Where are the healers?” he wailed mournfully. “Where’s my good Tata? You hanged him, moron! The sound of his voice alone made me feel better! Silence, I already know he was a poisoner! And I don’t give a damn! Who cares that he was a poisoner? He was a heaaaler! Get it, murderer? A healer. He’d poison one, heal another! And you only know how to persecute! You ought to have hanged yourself instead!” Don Reba bowed, pressing his hand to his heart, and stayed in this position. “You’ve hanged everyone! There are only charlatans left! And the priests, who give me holy water instead of medicine. Who’ll make the potions? Who’ll rub the salve into my foot?”
“Sire!” Rumata said loudly, and it seemed to him that the whole palace went still. “You only need to give the order, and the best healer in the empire will be in the palace in half an hour.”
The king stared at him in bewilderment. It was an awful risk. Don Reba had only to blink … Rumata knew why there was a row of round black vents under the bedroom’s ceiling-he could feel the number of eyes looking at him intently over the fletchings of their arrows. Don Reba was also looking at him with an expression of polite and benevolent curiosity. “What’s the meaning of this?” the king inquired testily. “All right, I give the order. All right, where’s your healer?”
Rumata felt his whole body tense up. It seemed to him that the arrows were already pricking his shoulder blades. “Sire,” he said quickly, “order Don Reba to present the famous Doctor Budach to you!”
Apparently Don Reba really had been caught off guard. The most important thing had been said, and Rumata was still alive. The king shifted his bleary gaze to the Minister of the Defense of the Crown.
“Sire,” Rumata continued, no longer in a hurry and using appropriate language. “Being aware of your truly unbearable suffering and bearing in mind the debt my family has to the Crown, I sent for the highly learned healer Doctor Budach from Irukan. However, unfortunately Doctor Budach’s journey was interrupted. The gray soldiers of the honorable Don Reba captured him last week, and his further fate is known only to Don Reba. I would assume that the healer is somewhere close at hand, most likely in the Merry Tower, and I hope that Don Reba’s strange aversion to healers has not yet had a fatal effect on Doctor Budach’s destiny.”
Rumata paused, holding his breath. Everything seemed to have gone off without a hitch. Watch out, Don Reba! He took a look at the minister—and went cold. The Minister of the Defense of the Crown had in no way been caught off his guard. He was nodding at Rumata with affectionate paternal reproach. Rumata hadn’t expected this at all. Why, he’s delighted, thought Rumata in bewilderment.
The king, on the other hand, was behaving as expected. “You rogue!” he screamed at Don Reba. “I’ll strangle you! Where’s the doctor? Where’s the doctor, I ask! Silence. I’m asking, where’s the doctor?”
Don Reba stepped forward, smiling pleasantly. “Your Majesty,” he said, “you’re a truly fortunate monarch, for you have so many loyal subjects that they occasionally interfere with each other in their efforts to serve you.” The king was staring at him vacantly. “I will admit that as with everything else that happens in your country, I was aware of the noble plan of the fiery Don Rumata. I will admit that I sent our gray soldiers to meet Doctor Budach—solely for the purpose of sparing a venerable old man the trials of a long journey. I will also admit that I was in no hurry to present Budach of Irukan to your majesty.”
“How dare you?” the king asked reproachfully.
“Your Majesty, Don Rumata is young and is as naive in politics as he’s experienced in noble battle. He is unaware of the lows the Duke of Irukan would stoop to in his insane fury at your majesty. But you and I know this, sire, do we not?” The king nodded. “And therefore I felt it incumbent upon me to make a preliminary investigation. I would not be in a hurry, but if you, Your Majesty”—a low bow to the king—“and Don Rumata”—a nod in Rumata’s direction— “so insist, then this very day after dinner Doctor Budach will appear before you, Your Majesty, to begin a course of treatment.”
“You’re no fool, Don Reba,” the king said, thinking about it. “An investigation is a good thing. It can’t hurt. Damn that Irukanian—” He howled and grabbed his knee again. “Damn this leg! So after dinner, then? We’ll be waiting, we’ll be waiting.”
And the king, leaning on the shoulder of the Minister of Ceremonies, slowly walked toward the throne room past a stunned Rumata. As he entered the crowd of courtiers, which parted in front of him, Don Reba smiled amiably at Rumata and asked, “I believe you’re on duty tonight at the prince’s bedchamber? Am I not mistaken?”
Rumata silently bowed.
Rumata wandered aimlessly through the endless corridors and passages of the palace—dark, dank, and stinking of ammonia and decay. He walked past luxurious rooms decorated with rugs, past dusty studies with barred narrow windows, and past storerooms piled with junk stripped of gilding. There was almost no one here. Only the rare courtier would risk visiting this maze at the back of the palace, where the royal apartments imperceptibly became the offices of the Ministry of the Defense of the Crown. It was easy to get lost here. Everyone remembered the incident in which a patrol of the Guard, walking the perimeter of the palace, had been frightened by the heartrending wails of a man stretching his badly scratched arms through the bars of an embrasure. “Save me!” the man shouted. “I’m a gentleman of the bedchamber! I don’t know how to get out! I haven’t eaten for two days! Get me out of here!” (There was a lively ten-day correspondence between the Minister of Finances and the Minister of the Court, after which they did decide to break down the bars, but for the duration of these ten days the unfortunate gentleman of the bedchamber had been fed with meat and bread passed to him on the end of a pike.) Besides, it wasn’t entirely safe. In these tight corridors, you could meet drunk guardsmen who were protecting the king’s person, and drunk storm troopers who were protecting the ministry. These would fight tooth and nail, and when satisfied would go their separate ways, carrying away the wounded. Finally, the murdered also wandered here. Over two centuries, the palace had accumulated a lot of them.
A storm trooper on sentry duty stepped out from a deep recess in the wall, his ax at the ready. “You may not pass,” he declared sullenly.
“A lot you know, fool!” Rumata said carelessly, pushing him aside.
He heard the storm trooper stomping indecisively behind him and suddenly caught himself thinking that insulting words and careless gestures now came naturally to him, that he was no longer playing the role of a highborn boor but had largely become one. He imagined himself like this on Earth and felt disgusted and ashamed. Why? What has happened to me? Where did it go, my nurtured-since-childhood respect and trust in my own kind, in man—the amazing creature called man? Nothing can help me now, he thought in horror. Because I sincerely hate and despise them. Not pity them, no—only hate and despise. I can justify the stupidity and brutality of the kid I just passed all I want— the social conditions, the appalling upbringing, anything at all—but I now clearly see that he’s my enemy, the enemy of all that I love, the enemy of my friends, the enemy of what I hold most sacred. And I don’t hate him theoretically, as a “typical specimen,” but him as himself, him as an individual. I hate his slobbering mug, the stink of his unwashed body, his blind faith, his animosity toward everything other than sex and booze. There he goes, stomping around, the oaf, who half a year ago was still being thrashed by a fat-bellied father in a vain attempt to prepare him for selling stale flour and old jam; he’s wheezing, the dumb lug, struggling to recall the paragraphs of badly crammed regulations, and he just can’t figure out whether he’s supposed to cut the noble don down with his ax, shout “Stop!” or just forget about it. No one will find out anyway, so he’ll forget about it, go back to his recess, stuff some chewing bark into his mouth and chew it loudly, drooling and smacking his
lips. And there’s nothing that he wants to know, and there’s nothing he wants to think about. Think! And is our eagle Don Reba any better? Yes, of course, his psychology is more intricate and his reflexes are more complicated, but his thoughts are like these palace mazes, reeking of ammonia and crime, and he himself is just foul beyond expression—a dreadful criminal and shameless spider. I came here to love people, to help them unbend, see the sky. No, I’m a bad operative, he thought remorsefully. I’m a no-good historian. When exactly did I manage to fall into the swamp that Don Condor was talking about? Does a god have the right to feel anything other than pity?
He heard a hurried clomp-clomp-clomp of boots along the corridor behind him. Rumata turned around and crossed his arms, placing his hands on the hilts of his swords. He saw Don Ripat running toward him, holding on to the blade at his side. “Don Rumata! Don Rumata!” he cried from afar in a hoarse whisper. Rumata let go of his swords. When he got close, Don Ripat took a look around and in a barely audible voice said in his ear, “I’ve been looking for you for an entire hour. Waga the Wheel is in the palace! He’s having a conversation with Don Reba in the lilac quarters.”
Rumata even squeezed his eyes shut for a second. Then, cautiously moving away, he said with polite surprise, “You mean the famous robber? But he’s either been executed or was invented to begin with.”
The lieutenant licked his dry lips. “He’s real. He’s in the palace. I thought you’d like to know.”
“My dearest Don Ripat,” Rumata said impressively, “I’m interested in rumors. Gossip. Jokes. Life can be so boring … You have clearly misunderstood me.” The lieutenant looked at him with wild eyes. “Judge for yourself,” Rumata went on. “Why should I care about the unsavory relationships of Don Reba—who, however, I respect too much to presume to judge? Besides, I apologize, I’m in a hurry. There’s a lady waiting for me.”
Don Ripat licked his lips again, gave an awkward bow, and sidled away.
Rumata was suddenly struck by a happy thought. “By the way, my friend,” he called out amiably, “how did you like the little intrigue that Don Reba and I carried out this morning?”
Don Ripat stopped eagerly. “We are very pleased,” he said.
“It was very charming, don’t you think?”
“It was magnificent! The gray officers are very glad that you have finally openly taken our side. You’re such an intelligent man, Don Rumata, and yet you consort with barons, with noble bastards—”
“My dear Ripat!” Rumata said haughtily, turning to walk away. “You forget that from the height of my birth I see absolutely no difference even between the king and yourself. Good-bye.”
He strode through the corridors, making confident turns and silently pushing sentries aside. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but he realized that this was a piece of astonishing, rare luck. He had to listen to the conversation between the two spiders. No wonder Don Reba had asked fourteen times as much for Waga alive than for Waga dead.
Two gray lieutenants, their blades drawn, stepped out toward him from the lilac curtains.
“Hello, friends,” Don Rumata said, stopping between them. “Is the minister here?”
“The minister is busy, Don Rumata,” said one of the lieutenants.
“I’ll wait,” Rumata said. He passed through the curtains.
It was pitch black. Rumata groped his way between the chairs, tables, and iron lamp stands. A number of times he distinctly heard someone huffing by his ear and was enveloped in a rich odor of garlic and beer. Then he saw a faint streak of light, heard honorable Waga’s familiar tenor, and stopped. At that instant, the end of a spear gently poked him between the shoulder blades. “Quiet, blockhead,” he said irritably but softly. “It’s me, Don Rumata.” The spear was removed. Rumata dragged a chair toward the streak of light, sat down, stretching his legs, and yawned loudly enough to be heard. Then he began to watch.
The spiders had met. Don Reba was sitting in a tense posture, his elbows resting on the desk and his fingers interlaced. A heavy throwing knife with a wooden handle was lying on top of a pile of papers to his right. The minister was wearing a pleasant although somewhat dazed smile. Honorable Waga was sitting on a sofa with his back to Rumata. He looked like an eccentric aged nobleman who hadn’t left his country palace for the past thirty years. “The chonted will shlake,” he said, “and they’ll unbiggedly shump the margays with a hollow blackery. That’s twenty long heapers already. It’d be marky to knork the motleners. But the heapers are bedegging redderly. This is how we’ll heaten the rasten. That’s our struntle.”
Don Reba stroked his clean-shaven chin. “That’s tooky jelly.”
Waga shrugged. “This is our struntle. Denooting with us isn’t rastenly for your gnawpers. It’s revided?”
“It’s revided,” said the Minister of the Defense of the Crown decisively.
“And drink the circle,” Waga said, getting up.
Rumata, who was listening to this gibberish dumbfounded, discovered a bushy mustache and a pointy gray beard on Waga’s face. A true courtier from the time of the last regency.
“It was nice to talk to you,” said Waga.
Don Reba also got up. “The conversation with you gave me great pleasure,” he said. “I have never before seen a man as courageous as yourself, honorable …”
“Me too,” said Waga in a bored voice. “I’m also amazed and proud of the courage of the First Minister of our kingdom.”
He turned his back on Don Reba and shuffled toward the door, leaning on his staff. Don Reba, continuing to look at him pensively, absentmindedly placed his fingers on the handle of the knife. Someone behind Rumata’s back immediately took an extremely deep breath, and the long brown barrel of a blowpipe squeezed past his ear toward the gap between the curtains. Don Reba remained standing for a second, as if listening, then he sat back down, opened a drawer, extracted a pile of paper, and became absorbed in his reading. The man behind Rumata’s back spat on the floor; the blowpipe was removed. Everything was clear. The spiders had agreed. Rumata got up and, stepping on somebody’s feet, started making his way back out from the lilac quarters.
The king dined in a huge hall with two tiers of windows. The ninety-foot table was set for a hundred people: the king himself, Don Reba, the royals (two dozen full-blooded individuals, gluttons and drunks), the Minister of the Court and the Minister of Ceremonies, a group of highborn aristocrats invited by tradition (this included Rumata), a dozen visiting barons with their ox-like baronets, and at the very end of the table various aristocratic small fry, who had somehow finagled an invitation to the royal dinner. When these last were being handed their invitations and chair numbers, they were warned, “Sit still, the king doesn’t like it when people fidget. Keep your hands on the table; the king doesn’t like it when people hide their hands under the table. Don’t look around; the king doesn’t like it when people look around.” At every such dinner, vast quantities of fine food were devoured, whole lakes of ancient wines were drunk, and masses of dishes made from the famous Estorian china were damaged or broken. In one of his reports to the king, the Minister of Finance bragged that just one of His Majesty’s dinners costs as much as maintaining the Soanian Academy of Science for half a year.
While he waited for the Minister of Ceremonies to proclaim “To the table!” three times, accompanied by trumpets, Rumata stood in a group of courtiers and listened for the tenth time to Don Tameo’s story about the royal dinner that he, Don Tameo, had the honor to attend six months ago.
“… I find my seat, we stand up, the king comes in, sits down, we also sit down. The dinner goes on as usual. And suddenly, imagine this, my dear dons, I feel something wet underneath me. Yes, wet! I don’t dare turn around, squirm, or feel it with my hand. However, I find an opportunity to stick a hand underneath me—and what happens? It really is wet! I smell my hand—it doesn’t smell like anything in particular. What a fable! Meanwhile, everyone is getting up, and as you can imagine, noble dons,
I am somehow afraid to get up. I see the king—the king himself!—walking toward me, but I keep sitting, as if I were a bumpkin baron without any manners. His Majesty comes up to me, smiles indulgently at me, and puts his hand on my shoulder. ‘My dear Don Tameo,’ he says, ‘everyone has gotten up and is about to go to watch the ballet, but you’re still sitting down. What’s wrong, did you eat too much?’ ‘Your Majesty,’ I say, ‘chop my head off, but something is wet underneath me.’ His Majesty was so gracious as to laugh and order me to stand up. I get up—and what happens? Laughter all around! Noble dons, I had been sitting on rum cake for the whole dinner! His Majesty was so gracious as to laugh a lot. ‘Reba, Reba,’ he said, finally, ‘these are all your jokes! Would you be so kind as to clean the noble don up, you soiled his seat!’ Don Reba, laughing uproariously, takes out a dagger and starts scraping the cake off my pants. Can you imagine my condition, noble dons? I won’t deny it, I was shaking in fear at the thought that Don Reba, humiliated in front of everyone, would take revenge on me. Fortunately, nothing happened. I assure you, noble dons, this was the happiest experience of my life! How the king laughed! How His Majesty was pleased!”
The courtiers roared with laughter. In fact, such jokes were customary at the royal table. The invitees would be seated in pâtés, in chairs with sawed-off legs, on goose eggs. They’d been seated on poisoned needles too. The king liked to be amused. Rumata suddenly thought: I wonder what I would have done in this idiot’s place? I’m afraid that the king would have had to look for another Minister of Defense, and the Institute would have had to send another man to Arkanar. In any case, I need to be on my guard. Like our eagle Don Reba.
The trumpets sounded, the Minister of Ceremonies bellowed melodiously, the king limped in, and everyone began to take their seats. The guardsmen on duty were standing motionless in the corners of the hall, leaning on their two-handed swords. Rumata got taciturn neighbors. On his right, the seat was filled with the quivering bulk of the sullen glutton Don Pifa, the husband of the well-known beauty, and on his left, Gur the Storyteller was staring at an empty plate. The guests paused, looking at the king. The king stuffed a grayish napkin in his collar, scanned the dishes, and grabbed a chicken leg. As soon as he sank his teeth into it, a hundred knives fell onto plates with a clatter, and a hundred hands reached for dishes. The hall became full of chomping and sucking sounds; wine started gurgling. The mustaches of the motionless guardsmen with the two-handed swords began to twitch avidly. Once upon a time, Rumata had gotten nauseated at these dinners. Now he was used to them.
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