by Glen Cook
“I want mom!”
“I know.” She patted his cheek.
The woman toweling Zouki asked, “Is he the one, ma’am?”
“I don’t think so. Not obviously.”
Zouki thought she looked very sad.
Arif considered the tactical situation. Mom was trying to get dressed while Stafa was trying to climb on her and Mish was complaining about something Nana had said to her. None of them were watching the door. It was a good time to go see what was happening.
He just walked out the door like it was something he was allowed to do anytime he wanted.
As children will, he had forgotten to take into account all facets of the situation. His grandmother grabbed hold of his clothing and with one yank sat him down beside her. “Where do you think you’re going, Arif?”
“I was just...”
“Just what, Arif?”
“Just going to see what the Dartars are doing.” He stuck out his lower lip.
“A bird is going to nest there.” Nana pinched his lip. “You know the rule. You and Stafa can’t go out unless a grown-up goes with you.”
“I was just going right up there.”
“Right up there is where the bad man grabbed Zouki yesterday. Remember?”
“Well, he wouldn’t grab me! If he did I’d punch him in the nose! I’d punch him so hard...”
“Arif!” Nana glared at him. Her face was starkly serious. “This isn’t a game. It isn’t play. It’s real. How are you going to get away from the bad men when you can’t even get away from your old Nana?” She reiterated, “It’s not a game, Arif. Now tell me the rules. What are you supposed to do?”
Lip out farther, Arif began reciting the litany of responses he was to make if somebody tried to kidnap him.
Mish rushed out of the house. “Mom, did you see Arif? He...” She saw him sitting there. Almost instantly, her eye strayed to the Dartars up the street. She did not hear a word Nana said. She always got deaf whenever Mom or Nana started yelling at her.
***
Azel strolled all the way around Government House twice, looking to see who was watching, if anyone was. He did not spot anyone. If someone was around he was good enough not to give himself away. That would be unusual for the ground-level men of the Living and impossible for the Dartars, who could not-and probably would not-disguise themselves as anything but what they were. There were jokes and parables about the Dartar inability to adapt. “Stubborn as a Dartar,” was a maxim as old as Qushmarrah itself.
Azel strolled to a tradesman’s entrance, knocked. A soldier opened a peekhole. “What you want?” he demanded.
“I got to see Colonel Bruda about the cut flowers he ordered.” He grinned. The guy wouldn’t know what the hell was going on, but he’d have a damned good idea, what with all the guys coming around about flowers for the Colonel. He could not be unique, could he? What the hell would a Colonel do with a ton of posies?
The Herodian bolted up behind Azel. In his own language he told his partner, “I’m going to take this gink up to Bruda. Hold the fort.”
The partner grunted. He had not bothered to look up from his lap. Too long in garrison, Azel figured.
His guide led him through dusty, seldom-used passages. He amused himself trying to estimate Government House’s backdoor traffic from the disturbances in the dust. He played the same game every time.
The guide turned into the long north-south hall. Azel glanced back. Nobody behind them. Nobody up ahead. There never was, but you had to check. You didn’t let up.
Should he do it?
Why the hell not? There wasn’t a damned thing they could do. He grinned.
He got his weight behind the punch and buried it in the soldier’s left kidney. The man folded around the blow, then crumpled. Azel leaned against the wall and waited. When the soldier finally began to get himself together and looked up, there were tears in his eyes.
“Gink, eh? You gotta learn not to let your asshole overload your brain.” He said it in Herodian vulgate, not the formal, upper-class Herodian most outsiders learned.
He saw something stir behind the soldier’s eyes. “Don’t even think about it. I’d tie your ears in a bowknot.” He extended a helping hand. “Let’s go see the Messenger of the Faith.” Though most everyone, including the common Herodian soldiers, used old-fashioned designations, among themselves the true believers used ranks that were religious.
The man let Azel help. He started off unsteadily, bent slightly, head hanging.
“I don’t reckon I hit you that hard, but if you start pissing blood you better see your regimental doc.”
The soldier said nothing. He took Azel up several floors and into a room where a Herodian ensign, still looking forward to his first shave, jumped up and opened another door, said something to someone on the other side. Then he told Azel, “He’ll see you in a minute.”
The soldier shuffled out
“What was the matter with him?”
“Made a mistake. Made an ethnic slur.”
The boy did not meet his eye. Azel grinned, moved to a window, looked out at the bay. Hell of a view of the harbor. He wondered if he’d ever go to sea again. Not likely. That was a young man’s game. A young, stupid, blind man’s game. If you saw or figured out what you were walking into you didn’t walk.
“Rose?”
Azel turned. Colonel Bruda beckoned him. Azel followed him into the other room, grinning. He was not a tall man himself but he could see the top of Bruda’s shiny head. “I figured out how you guys can win every battle from here on in.”
Bruda faced him, frowning.
“You just pick a sunny day for the fight, put all your officers out front, and have them bow to the enemy.”
Bruda’s frown deepened. He did not get it.
“I never seen a one of you guys that was over twenty-five that wasn’t bald as a lizard’s egg. You’d blind them with the reflections. Then you could just go finish them off.”
“Your sense of humor is something we don’t need, Rose.”
“You need some of my talents, you take them all.”
“Consider the possibility that you may not be as indispensable as you’d like to think, Rose.”
Azel grinned. Bruda was as predictable as sundown. “Hell. You know, Governor Straba said something just like that when he still thought I worked for him and not for Cado.”
Bruda lost some color.
These Herodians were something. Hell on a six-legged camel in a gang, with their vaunted discipline and religious fervor. But catch them solo with a crack like that and they drizzled down their legs.
Of course, Bruda was the investigator of record in the hard, messy death of Governor Straba. Not a very good investigator, Colonel Bruda. He hadn’t caught a whiff of the truth. He had no idea that Azel wasn’t the killer.
Let him think whatever he wanted if it kept his knees knocking.
Azel had traced the murderer but had kept that to himself. It might be useful someday.
“You’ll have to wait a few minutes, Rose. He’s with someone. But he knows you’re here.”
“All right.” Azel went to the window and contemplated the harbor. For the serenity of the sea... The serenity that masked the darknesses moving in the deeps, beneath the turquoise surface. Heavenstone, the Dartars called it. Ha. Nothing to do with heaven. Gorloch knew.
Gorloch knew that behind every facade there was nothing but shadow. Ultimately, there was nothing but The Shadow.
Gorloch knew.
Bruda made little noises behind him as he tried to work but could not concentrate. Azel heard his sigh of relief when the room’s second door opened.
“Rose?”
Azel turned. “Ah. My favorite courtier.”
The man’s name was Taliga. Like all the Herodian aristocracy he was short and bald. Azel made no secret of the fact that he thought Taliga an incompetent asshole who would starve to death quickly if ever Cado-his brother-in-law-got an attack of smarts an
d planted a boot in his butt.
On some level Taliga was aware that he was a parasite. He hated Azel for waving it in front of him, in public. He was Azel’s deadliest living enemy.
Azel knew that. He had created Taliga deliberately. Someday the Herodians would deem him a greater liability than an asset. When that decision was made he wanted the sanction handed to an incompetent first. Taliga was his alarm.
He did not bait the man today, beyond the initial crack. He attempted small talk, grinning all the time. Friendliness, too, would set Taliga’s teeth on edge. It was a Herodian maxim that your enemies were at their friendliest and most solicitous just before they sank the knife in your back.
The military governor awaited them in a small, spartan room on the highest level of Government House. His own quarters. He took the admonitions of his faith personally. He said, “Thank you, Taliga. Good morning, Rose. It’s been a while.”
Azel waited till Taliga was out of the room. “Hasn’t been anything worth coming in about.”
“What did you do to Taliga this time? He was severely distressed.”
“Nothing, General. I was the soul of civility. I asked about his wife and daughters. I commiserated properly when he reported that your sister has been suffering from a recurring flux.”
“You’re a dangerous man, Rose. You know us entirely too well.”
“Sir?”
“And you dissemble altogether too convincingly. But I suppose that’s why you’re so good at what you do and I should be thankful you work for me and not for my enemies.”
“There’s truth in that, sir.”
“You’re also altogether too blunt. It makes you needless enemies. Someday Taliga will try to kill you.”
“To carry bluntness a step further, sir, if he tries that they’ll find pieces of him in every quarter of Qushmarrah.” “He’s not much, Rose, but he’s family.” Azel restrained a smile. Something had given unflappable, pudgy, but tough-as-shield-leather Cado a sour stomach and he wanted to work it off with some verbal fencing. “I like working for you, sir. But I like being alive even better. I ain’t let nobody push me since I was seven years old. Ain’t likely I’d start now. It’s like, anybody who ever leaned on me and had to pay the price belonged to somebody’s family.”
“So. Let’s stop being bull apes pounding our chests. You’re here after a long drought. Does this mean there’s finally something worth reporting?”
“Not much. The Living are either felling apart or going underground completely. Probably both. And mostly felling apart in the Hahr.”
“That’s where al-Akla executed those men.” “One sign of an impending collapse.” “Al-Akla’s little scheme is beginning to work, then.” “Those guys made it work. The thing that brought me in, it ain’t much more than a rumor, but if it’s true it’s sure the Living is coming apart, at least in the Hahr.” “What’s the rumor?”
“A guy named Ortbal Sagdet got himself killed down there last night. That’s a fact. I checked. The rumor is, he was the Living’s number one boy down there. Thieves got him, looks like. Thieves usually know enough not to mess around where there’s gonna be comebacks that’ll get them dead.”
“How soon can you get a confirmation on whether or not this Sagdet was what rumor says?” Cado’s piggy little eyes were sparkling. “Never.” “Eh?”
“How am I supposed to get your confirmation?” “You belong to the Living.”
“I’m what they call a ground-level soldier. The bottom of the heap. And I’m never going to be anything more.”
“Why not?”
“The Living is an Old Boys outfit. I got three marks against me. The big one is, I wasn’t out there to get my butt kicked at Dak-es-Souetta. The other two are I didn’t get it kicked at the Seven Towers or on the Plain of Chordan, either. So it won’t ever matter who I am or what I could do for them, I’ll never be anything but a spear carrier.”
Cado got up and went to a window. Physically he fit the stereotype of the Herodian ruling class. He was short, bald, and plump. He could posture, be pompous, and was vulnerable to flattery. Like the rest. Unlike most, though, there was a razor-sharp mind under his shiny pate. “Where were you in those days, Rose?”
“Out of town.”
“You did say you used to be a sailor, didn’t you? That that was how you learned Herodian. And there’s little room on the seas these days for Qushmarrahan ships. Well, no matter. We’re here, and it’s now. If there is a way to identify Sagdet positively as a high officer of the Living, I’d be generously grateful.”
“If there’s a way I’ll find it, sir.”
“I know you will. And what of our friend the Eagle? Anything to report there?”
“I screwed up. I got me a job grooming horses for them but the first day, one of them got to mouthing off about city people and I broke both his legs for him. I didn’t figure it would be smart to hang around after that.”
“You’re a man of great violence, aren’t you?”
“Sometimes that’s the only way to get a message across. I never saw you guys sending out missionaries to spread the One True Faith.”
“A point. I...” Cado went red with anger.
Azel faced the window as an ensign invaded the room, so excited he hadn’t bothered to knock, so young he still had hair. “Sir!” he exploded. “Signal from the South Light. The new governor’s galley is in sight.”
“Damn! The bastard would have good winds coming across, wouldn’t he?” Cado kicked a stool across the room. “Machio, don’t you ever bust in here like this again. If it’s the end of the world in five seconds you knock and wait. Understand?”
“Yes sir.”
“All right. Thank you. Get out.”
The ensign went, tail between his legs.
“Our troubles redouble when we’re least prepared to handle what we already have. Rose, I want you to stick with me today. I want you studying this Sullo pig from the beginning. He’s the first one they’ve sent who could be genuinely dangerous.”
“Stay with you? For the public reception and everything?”
“Yes.”
“Too dangerous. There are people who would recognize me. I’ll have no value if anyone suspects I work for you. Not to mention it might shorten my life expectancy.”
“I want to explore your thoughts about what al-Akla might be up to in the Shu. I’ll have you outfitted as a soldier in my personal bodyguard. You’ll pass. Nobody looks at the men behind the commander.”
“In the Shu? He isn’t up to anything in the Shu that I’ve heard, sir.”
“He sent Joab and more than a hundred men into the maze down there this morning. You hadn’t heard?”
“No sir. I was working the Sagdet angle.” Azel was disturbed. This was not good. He did have to find out what it meant. Soon. But it looked like Cado was going to keep him tied up all day. Damn!
He should not have come.
5
Aaron removed the last of the clamping straps that had held the parts of the mast step motionless while the adhesive between joins and around the holding pegs had set. He waved to the men working the hoist. They began lowering the harness that would lift the mast step so they could swing it over and drop it into the ship’s half-completed hull.
The new Herodian foreman, Cullo, who had not yet been on the job two weeks, came to inspect the finished product. “Perfect,” he pronounced it. “I’ve never seen more perfect joins, Aaron. They’re cabinetry quality.”
“That’s the sort of work I was taught, sir. And what I’d be doing if I was well off enough to do whatever I wanted.”
“Forget that. Stay with us. In five years you’d be a master shipwright.”
“Yes sir.” The way the Herodians were stripping the little forest on the hills south of Qushmarrah there would be no timber left in five years. Under the old regime every tree taken had had to be justified and every ounce of it put to some use. If he could find no other reason to dislike Herodians, Aaron could
dislike them because they were locusts, stripping resources and wealth wherever their armies were successful. He suspected greed moved them more than did religious fervor.
He helped secure the harness, then stepped back. There would be nothing to do till the laborers had the mast step ready to drop into the hull. Cullo was on to someone else, so he went and found Billygoat where he was pounding and tamping caulking rope into laps of clinker planks with a wooden mallet and wedge. The old man was quick and deft. He was ten feet ahead of his assistant, who was sealing the laps with hot pitch.
“That stuff stinks,” Aaron told the old man.
“Pitch? You get used to it. Gets to smell damned good if you’re out of work for a while. You dogging it?”
“Hoisting the step.”
“Uhm.”
“They decided what to name her yet?” Billygoat knew everything before the foremen did. There was a battle going on at the top over the name of the ship. A struggle between zealots and practical merchants who knew she would be entering ports where the Herodian god would not find a warm welcome.
“Nope. Something on your mind, Aaron?”
“Yeah.” He did not know how to broach it without sounding like an old woman, so he just had at it. “Remember when you told me about they found those lost kids out by Goat Creek?”
“Uhm.” The older man’s hands never stopped moving.
“You ever heard about them finding any other ones?”
“Worried again?”
“Some. Not for me this time. Friend of my wife had her little boy taken yesterday. An only child.”
“Uhm.” Billygoat paused to look at him directly. “You got one hell of a big determination to let this business fuss you, don’t you, Aaron?”
What could he say? He couldn’t mention the dreams and the nightmare certainty that something would happen to Arif. After all your precautions? they would ask. You have to be crazy.
Maybe he was.
“Now you bring it up, though, Aaron, yeah, it seems I do remember hearing about two, three other kids that turned up the
same way. Good clothes, good health, short on memories of what happened to them while they was missing.” Billygoat’s hands were busy again.