by Doris Egan
My eyes narrowed. "Wouldn't have dreamed of giving us away? With a reward like that?"
She smiled, immune to my suspicion. "I'm sure Stereth Tar'krim's people can pay a friend more handsomely than the Governor's agents can. And not expect to get half of it back in taxes, either."
Reasonable. "He's not Stereth Tar'krim," I said, "and I'm not this Cantry."
"Gracious lady—" she began, shaking her head.
"But we are wealthy, and we like making new friends. No harm in that, is there?"
"None at all," she agreed, gazing demurely downward. "You could make two new friends today, if you wished." I looked interested, and she said, "My fiance, Hilo. He's a lieutenant in the Shaskala police, and he has duty in the detention cells this season. He has to bring messages there two or three times a night, for the guard officer on duty."
I still had some antipathy toward Imperials, based mostly I suppose on my experiences with them during my first stay on Ivory. But local cops seemed to me to be neither more nor less corrupt and special-influence seeking than the rest
of the planet's organizations. I was willing to give Hilo the benefit of the doubt.
"He would know where my husband is being kept?"
"More. He could get a message to him… and if he can be of small service in getting him out… if my lady has any ideas… he would be happy to place himself at your disposal."
"You two talked about this before you came to get me."
She smiled again, as far as she would acknowledge it. "It's so difficult, gracious lady, waiting and waiting to get married. We're not even quarter-wed, because my father says Hilo has to have a furnished house before anything else. You have no idea, all the little things that have to be bought—towels and silverware and rugs—"
"Yes, yes, I got the point earlier."
"Hilo's an orphan, and has no family home to take me to."
I sighed and brought out my moneybelt. "No man is an orphan," I said, "who has good friends."
She practically clapped her hands at the sight of the gold. "My lady is only a barbarian on the outside," she said. "Inside, she has the heart of a true and civilized Ivoran."
Heaven forbid.
Hilo came to see me about an hour later. I spent that time remembering in despair how we'd paraded from one City Hall office to the next all through the day, displaying ourselves to every major official in the city. Stereth Tar'krim and his barbarian companion. It was a wonder we hadn't been arrested a lot earlier.
Hilo was more plainspoken than his fiancee. He was a tall, good-looking dark-haired man in the blue-gray uniform of a municipal cop, and he wasted no time in getting to the point, albeit in a friendly way.
"He's on a floor by himself," said the lieutenant. "The Governor's overjoyed, and doesn't want to take any chances on losing him. There are three men on duty outside."
"You understand, as I told your fiancee, that he's not Stereth Tar'krim."
"I understand your words." said Hilo agreeably, without committing himself as to any belief in their truth. "I might wonder why you don't both call witnesses in your behalf."
"We don't have any witnesses in this city. And anyway… look, Hilo, to be frank—we're not Northwest Sector outlaws, but we're not using our real names either. It's a complicated story."
"I see. Well, it's all one to me, my lady, to be equally frank. If you want my help, you've only to speak."
I considered. Ran, being a true child of Ivory, is against revealing any information until it is torn from him by violence. However, there are times when it has to be done. I hesitated, then said, "Excuse me, Hilo, but aren't you taking a chance by opposing the Governor's wishes in this?"
"I have no great love for the Governor," said Hilo simply. "Most of the department feels the same. He's a crazy man, my lady, he's trying to reform the city government. He's published rules about bribery and extortion, which wouldn't be so bad, but he's actually trying to enforce them. Now I ask you, how can a young man ever expect to marry and raise a family on the salary of a city policeman without accepting gifts from time to time? Is it reasonable, gracious lady? I put the case to you."
"Uh, it does seem to be asking a lot. I'm afraid I don't know much about municipal salaries…"
"Take my word for it, the man is out of his senses. If the department were made up only of people who expected to live on their pay, it would be empty."
"I see. Well, I suppose you could move to another city—"
"Shaskala is my home, gracious lady. I just hate to see what this kanz is doing to it."
I hid a smile. It had only just occurred to me, this late in the conversation, that my Athenan teachers would have seen the ethics of the matter quite differently. I put out my hand. "A barbarian custom," I explained, "to seal our bargain."
We shook on it. There was no sorcerous glow, no explosion, no doves and balloons in the air. But quite suddenly I knew. Bless honest Hilo's heart, he was every bit as corrupt as he claimed. My smile returned, and this time I made no attempt to hide it.
"My husband is a sorcerer," I said, committing myself, and finally my uniformed friend looked surprised. And wondering how they would all take it, I added, "I have sort of a plan."
Chapter Five
Stereth Tar'krim and his barbarian companion, eh? I'd met a few semi-legendary figures on Ivory but I really hadn't planned on stepping into any storybooks myself. When the first moon was high over the city to our east, I was waiting in Damask Lane with a slaughterhouse meatwagon and two drivebeasts. The wagon stank.
Have I mentioned that before coming to Ivory I'd only eaten artificial meats? No matter. I held onto the reins and wondered if the streetsingers would make up a new song about the daring escape of Stereth Tar'krim. I hoped that they would. Better than they should make up one about the double execution of the outlaw and the friend who tried to break him out of jail.
"Theodora?" said a low voice nearby. Only one person in the city would call me that. It was a sickle moon, and I peered through the darkness at the alley's mouth, still trying to make out some sort of figure when a hand touched. my arm.
I must have jumped a foot. Only the conflicting fear of notice kept me from yelping wildly. "Are you all right?" said Ran's voice.
I put my hand over my heart. It felt as though there were a pigeon trapped in there. "Fine, just fine," I hissed, resenting the question. I saw his outline dimly now; he was still wearing the good clothes he'd gone out with that morning, and looked none the worse for wear. Break the man out of prison, and he was in better shape than I was.
Hilo appeared on the other side of me. "You look surprised, my lady," he said. "Didn't you think it would work?"
Truthfully, I hadn't. I'd never planned a jailbreak before. I'd participated in them, but that's not the same thing.
"No problem at all, really," said Hilo, grinning. "I brought him his dinner, and the coins I'd taken from the guards were under the plate. I just said, 'Tymon sends you this, and I'll be back in an hour.' Didn't say a word to me, you know, I wondered if he'd heard."
Adrenaline made Hilo talkative. It does that to a lot of people. The first time I'd been in a similar situation I'd practically pulled Ran's clothes off afterward. Hilo went on, "So I come in an hour later, and all three of them are stretched out at their posts, dead to the world. I took the keys, and here we are."
By giving Ran things that belonged to the duty guards, Hilo had made them vulnerable to sorcery from a distance. I said, "The only iffy part was whether you could win the coins away from them."
Hilo smiled smugly. "That was never in doubt, gracious lady."
Ran had climbed in beside me in the wagon seat. "What now?"
"Down the Winding Road," said Hilo. "It'll look like any wagon on its way to the slaughterhouse distribution centers below. That's where they pack the meat in ice, or dry and salt it. Anyone asks, you say you're from a small butcher shop in town, looking to get a few coins from some excess carcasses."
Ran tu
rned to me. "Have you paid this fine gentleman?"
"Partially," I said. "I believe we could do better for him."
He bowed to Hilo. "My House will be in touch."
"I have every faith in you," said Hilo. He threw us a salute as our wagon drew out of the lane and we headed toward the Winding Road.
The city was dark and silent. It was early in the night for a meatwagon to travel, but not unheard of. "I hate to lose another car," said Ran, referring to the one we would have to leave behind.
I turned to look at him in the dim moonlight. "Be glad you're alive."
He said, "Isn't that an employee lesson carved on the doors of the cheaper brothels?"
"Really? I'm surprised you know so much about the cheaper brothels."
I heard his low chuckle and felt him put one arm around me. "All right. Thank you very much, Theodora. I won't say I wasn't worried."
Long ago, the Shaskalans planted a grove of sutu trees at the edge of town. They whispered in the night breeze as we approached, their feathery tops swaying. The air should have been full of their heavy spice, but the stench of our cargo blocked it.
I pulled sharply on the reins. "What's that?"
I pointed down the incline of the road, half-hidden by the grove, where a necklace of small fires hung in the night. Ran leaned forward and put a hand on mine.
"They're too big for torches," he said.
I peered through the swaying trees. "Oil drums," I said finally.
"A roadblock."
"For us? How could they get ahead of us like that? They shouldn't even have missed you till morning, and even if somebody came in and saw, how could they move so quickly?"
"Who knows? But nobody matching my description with a barbarian friend sitting beside him is going to get through there tonight." He'd taken the reins and was turning the wagon around.
"Wait a minute here—where are we going?"
"I don't know. I don't know." He looked no more pleased than I did. "But you remember that road, Theodora, how narrow it is. There's no way we can get past without being seen."
So we clopped back into Shaskala. The sickle moon was high now. I looked at the faces of the buildings as we passed under the balconies. The whole city felt like a prison to me, one we couldn't get out of.
Halfway down the main street I said, "Keep going."
He turned tome. "What?"
"Keep going. Don't stop. We can't stay in this town anymore, and if we can't go down we'll have to go up."
Ran's face was blank, as it always became when his thoughts were especially turbulent. "But there's nothing up there but the High Plateau, and the Northwest Sector."
"Then we'll have to go to the Northwest Sector."
He continued to look at me. Then he turned back to the
reins, and the wagon rumbled on through the Shaskalan streets, and out to the outlaw road.
It was windy farther up the plateau, and the road became more narrow. We wouldn't have made it in a groundcar. But the night was clear and the drivebeast had been bred for this kind of climb.
I said, "You're all right, aren't you?"
"Sure, why wouldn't I be all right?"
"You're holding your right arm."
He shifted in the wagon seat. "I slept on it."
I thought about what we were riding into, and said, "I wish we had a map with us. I only have the vaguest memory of what this territory looks like. Still, one of the ranchers must have a Net connection—we can get through to Kylla or somebody in the family, and they can come and get us."
He said only, "A Net connection? In the Northwest Sector?"
Well, he was being a cheerful companion. "You sure you're all right?"
"Theodora, trust me, I'm fine." He took his hand away from his right arm. "Under the circumstances, a little worry is normal."
"Umm."
A few hours later we came out onto level ground: the top of the plateau. Ran shook himself to attention and said, "I think we should bear straight ahead. Most of the big ranches and farms are along the main track." He looked at me. "Are you getting tired, tymon? I can take over. I didn't mean to leave you on your own, I guess I was preoccupied."
"That's all right. Agonizing over our future has kept me pretty busy."
He took the reins and the drivebox. "I don't suppose we have anything in the way of supplies, or anything to build a fire with?"
"Nobody anticipated this part of the trip. We've got a ton of dead animal flesh, though. Hope you like it raw."
He nodded glumly at this information. "You know, the laws of magic say that some people are like lightning rods. I don't know what it is about you, tymon, but whenever you
come to this world I end up cut off from my family, traveling under an assumed name, and without any money."
"Are you trying to lay responsibility for this at my door?"
"No, no. Heavens, no."
Grotesque shapes loomed on either side of us in the darkness, the wind-twisted trees of the plateau. They seemed to crawl sideways on the ground, their branches frozen in spasm; some of them had managed to sprout and retain a few leaves, though, and they rustled as we passed.
Ran said, "I guess we should be thankful it's a clear night. I always heard the skies were misty up here."
"For a clear night you can't see very far. Do you think we should hole up till daylight?"
And a voice, not Ran's, said: "I wouldn't think so. Not with the distance we have to cover."
A speedy getaway is simply not an option with a freighthauler. I hit the STOP on the drivebox and reached for my weapons. Ran had already dived back over the seat, and I remembered that he was still unarmed.
"Please!" said the voice, reprovingly, and a large shape lumbered from the tree-shadows. It was a man seated on some kind of modified riding animal. The man was normal-sized but the mount, its white fur pale in the moonlight, came up past the wagon seat and could easily have carried two or three. "Let's not be unfriendly," said the man. His voice was a pleasant baritone, and what I could see of his face showed him to be relatively young, and not at all bad to look at.
"Since you're at our mercy anyway," said a new voice. I spun around and saw another man, shorter and stockier than the first, his hair shaved close to his head, standing at attention on the back of the wagon. His pistol was pointing directly at Ran.
Two more figures appeared on the roadside, both armed. "Kanz," I heard Ran mutter. He stood up.
"Can I help you gentlemen with something?" He looked around and said, "Gentlemen and lady, I mean."
That made me check again. It was dark, but one of the people standing on the side was either a woman or a crossdresser.
Moonlight was directly on the face of the mounted man, and he grinned. "Des Helani, honored by this meeting. May
I present Mora Sobien Ti—" the woman inclined her head, "—and Lex na'Valory, and Grateth Tar'briek standing behind you with the pistol. As you can tell from his name, Grateth was in the army and he knows how to shoot, so a word to the wise."
"I was in the army, too," said Lex na'Valory sullenly. He was a large man, solidly built, with short, wiry black hair.
"I didn't mean to imply you weren't," said Des Helani.
"And at least I had an honorable discharge," the man went on.
"He also lives up to his name," said Ran, and Lex na'Valory glared at him. "Road-names," Ran continued speculatively. "I take it that you're outlaws."
"And you're taking it well, too," said Des Helani. He dismounted and approached the wagon. "May I ask you both to get down?"
I held onto the grip and put one foot in the stirrup-step. A hand was on my arm; supporting me, and then Des Helani stepped away. Ran jumped down beside me, looking suspicious. This close, and with the moon on his face, I could see that the outlaw's eyes were cat-green, unusual but not unheard of for an Ivoran. His hair was brown, not black, and a lighter brown than usual. He saw me looking at him and he stepped forward and put a hand around each of my upper a
rms.
"Hey," said Ran. The stocky bandit with the pistol moved toward him.
But Des Helani merely swung me around so that I was facing the moon, now low in the west. "So it's true," he said happily, "suddenly the world is full of lovely barbarian women." And he bent and kissed my hand.
Ran looked disgusted. The moon was on his face, too, and I could see his lip curl. It's true, our bandit's manner was cliched, but it was a conscious cliched that he invited us to join him in. His tone so clearly said, "Please overlook my excesses, and play this game with me. I'm having too much fun to stop."
His energy was contagious, and I found myself smiling. I don't doubt that if I'd had a handkerchief to drop he would have bowed as he picked it up. In the constant dance of male and female, this was clearly a partner who always let you know where he was stepping next.
Mora Sobien Ti put a hand on the reins of our drivebeast, her brown skin bleached by the dim light. "If none of you minds," she said in a cool voice, "we do have a long way to go. And it'll be dawn in twenty minutes."
"Right," said Des Helani, suddenly all business. "The barbarian can ride with me, she's too small to be any problem for my mount. Lex and Mora, you can share the other mount, and Grateth can watch over our other new friend as he drives the cart."
So there was another of those tall animals tethered nearby. I said, "You really want me to climb all the way up there on that thing?" It came out more hollowly than I'd intended. The outlaw laughed. "It's modified, sweetheart, it wouldn't know how to be aggressive if it wanted to. And if you hold onto me tight enough, you won't fall off."
I had to climb up onto the wagon seat before I could maneuver onto the beast. Ran helped me. He said, "I think I should mention that we don't have any money. And I have doubts about anyone wanting to pay ransom for us."
"Ransom? The thought never entered our minds." Des Helani saw to it that I was settled and added, "You're the sorcerers who were staying in Shaskala. We've got work for you."
He touched his heels to the mount's side and we moved off. I turned briefly and saw Ran standing on the wagon, his face studiously blank.