by Doris Egan
I brought my cup of tah over to the Net link and asked for messages. Stereth's old message still lay there with its privacy code intact, unread, like something dead. A message from Kylla saying to call her. And a message from Loden Broca Mercia.
Loden Broca Mercia? I wouldn't have thought he even had a Net code. I read:
Gracious lady:
Your kindness was much appreciated. Something has happened that forces me to beg your help again, much as I would wish not to. Please come to my room as soon as possible. This is an emergency. I need to see you right away. Every minute counts.
Loden Broca
Heavens! It was timed as half an hour ago. Barbarian that I am, a direct appeal for help seemed to me to call for an answer, and I couldn't say that the message hadn't hit a desperate note. Clearly some action needed to be taken immediately. My imagination started to race. What the hell was going on at Loden Broca's? In my mind's eye I saw men trying to break down his door while he cowered inside… in which case, how had he gotten to a Net terminal? All right, scratch that vision.
But damn it, what was I supposed to do about his problem? Surely I'd been through enough lately. Suddenly I recalled my embarrassing flight through the house the other night, pursued by Cousin Sim… Two days later, alone by the Net link, I felt my face get warm. I had not, perhaps, been comporting myself at my best these past few days.
I abandoned the remains of my breakfast, splashed water on my face, and pulled on my clothes. Enough of the invalid life.
Now… should I call Ran before I go? I really didn't want to interrupt his breakfast meeting when he was busy bringing the council around to where I wanted them to be. I penned a brief note saying where I was going and hurried to the door. Then I paused. All right, you don't want to act like a coward, but there's no need to act like a fool, either, is there? I went back to the trapdoor in the closet by the stairway, opened it, and took out one of the pistols and a new charge. Then I wrapped a green silk scarf around my head, tucking up my red-brown hair, and set a sun hat over it. The picture of Ivoran normalcy, if a little on the small side. The bulge under my robe would not be seen as unusual by anybody.
I arrived at Loden's inn sweaty and breathless, about twenty minutes later. There was no one out front. I slowed down, checking the doorway and the nearby buildings. Paranoia is always helpful. Maybe I shouldn't have come, it wasn't really my business what trouble Loden got into… but the man did appeal for help.
It was daytime, so the main door was unbolted. I was wondering whether to just cross he street and try pulling on the handle when it burst open in front of me. Loden appeared, hauling a dirty mattress. As he pulled it down the steps a skinny, gray-haired man strode up and stood in the doorway behind him. "And don't leave your kanz on my steps," he yelled. "Put it in the road! And you've got one more trip, and I lock the door behind you!"
I took my hand off the tip of the pistol, where it had apparently gone without my command. The gray-haired man slammed the door. Loden wrestled the mattress down to the edge of the road. He didn't appear to see me.
I walked over to him and tapped him on the shoulder. He jumped slightly. "Gracious lady!" he exclaimed. "Thank you for coming—"
"That was your landlord, wasn't it," I said.
"Uh, yes. He seems to have gotten himself excited—I didn't do anything—"
"You had me run over here because you're being evicted."
"He's throwing me out on the street! I have nowhere to go—"
I turned and started walking away. He ran after me. "Wait! Wait, noble lady, please—you haven't heard the whole story. Just give me a few seconds—you're here anyway."
I stopped and waited. He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his brow. "Look, it's more serious than you think. I'm suspended without pay from the Mercia Agency. Len's throwing me out here because I'm a couple of weeks late. I'm not on the job any more, so I don't have guards around me; I'm not even behind shelter at night. You're the one who told me my life was in danger! What am I supposed to do?"
He did have a point. The odds on his getting killed had gone way up. "Looks like it's time for you to leave town," I said.
"But if I do that, they'll never take me back into the Mercians. It's the only thing I'm trained for. And I owe them the rest of my journeyman duty."
I sighed. He did seem to be painted into a corner. "I don't see what you think I can do."
"I don't know either, but… isn't there something?"
Suddenly Loden seemed very young. In standard reckoning, he must have been less than twenty—inexperienced, from the provinces… and a trouble-seeking idiot. Ran would never agree to take this kid in, and I didn't blame him. Where else could we tuck him away? Kylla's? I'd never saddle her with this. "I suppose I could lend you some money for an inn," I said reluctantly, knowing the House of Cormallon would never see that money again.
He pursed his lips. "Uh… if there's any other way… there's no security in an inn, gracious lady. Not from somebody who really wants to get you. I haven't been able to sleep a full night here since you warned me."
"Well, what is it you want?"
"I don't know."
We stood there on the edge of the dusty street. I said, "All right, what's left in your room?"
"Clothes," he said eagerly. "Robes and uniforms, boots and sandals."
"Get what you can carry into a sack. Don't get a second sack for me—I'm not carrying anything." I glanced at the dirty mattress suspiciously—heaven knew what was living in it—and said, "and throw that thing away."
He dropped it at once into the street and went back indoors.
As it turned out, when he took a long time upstairs, I went up and helped him go through his possessions. And I did end up carrying a sack, of course. You probably suspected I would.
We marched through the streets with our respective loads, and I thought, What a sucker you are, Theodora.
I had him drop off the two sacks at a street laundry, which I paid for. Then I led him to the road outside our house. He put his foot onto one of the four concrete steps that lead to our front door, and I said, "Wait a minute, sonny."
Sonny? Where had that come from? Suddenly I felt like a grandmother. He stood down again and waited.
I said, "I'm not bringing a stranger onto the territory of my husband's House. I don't know you, and you haven't impressed me with your reliability." A trifle harsh, but my real opinion of him was that the only reason I absolved him from suspicion in Kade's murder was because he struck me as having no ability whatsoever to plan ahead. Granted that Ran felt the murder was poorly executed, if Loden had been involved I strongly doubted it would have come off at all. On grounds of incompetence alone, it was far more likely he was just what he seemed—a person in deep trouble.
I circled around to the back of our steps, by the wall,
and tapped a square durasteel plate about a meter and a half high. "This is our security station for receiving parcels. Nobody can see inside, and its walls are six centimeters thick, pure weapon-proof material. It's ventilated, because in olden times a Cormallon retainer used to sit in there to receive and open the mail." I grinned suddenly. "A very brave retainer, I assume. Anyway, there's room to sit up or lie down in it, and we can give you a slops bucket for your personal needs. That's no worse than some inns. It's a safe enough place to sleep."
I looked at him. "Or if you feel it offends your dignity, I can lend you that money for another inn."
He said at once, "No, this will be fine." Then he hesitated. "You are serious, right?"
"Look, I went to your place today to risk my life for you, and I'll do what I can for you otherwise, but I'm not bringing you on Cormallon territory. So make up your mind—"
"No, no—I didn't mean—I'll be happy to stay here. Just till I figure out what to do next."
Yeah, the Emperor will step down from the throne and start sailing paper boats in the park before you come to any intelligent decision. —Nasty, Theodora. Be fair. T
he boy is under a lot of pressure.
I said, reluctantly, "I'd better give you food money. Don't eat it inside there, it'll stink the place up."
"All right." He took without hesitation the new ten-tabal coin I gave him.
Then he went to the cookshop, and I put up a brief note on the station to the effect that it was out of order, and all parcels should be diverted to the Shikron villa.
When Ran came home, I hoped he would be in a tolerant mood.
"I put him in the mail box," I said to him as Sim discreetly left the room.
"I beg your pardon?" said Ran. "Mail box?"
"The one out front. I figured he could sleep there till he gets his life a little more in order."
"Mail box?" he repeated.
"I put a note on it," I said, "telling any messengers to shuttle deliveries over to Kylla's. And I cleaned out what was in it this morning."
"Theodora, you're telling me that Loden Broca is spending his nights in our parcel receipt?"
"Well, it's not a Taka hospitality suite, but it is weapon-proof, and we've both slept in worse places—"
He sat down on the divan in our parlor. "Great bumbling gods." He looked up. "Do we have any tah on hand?"
I went to get him a cup of the pink kind, because that's the most soothing, and he clearly hadn't had a good morning. I spooned it in, let it boil, and took him out the square tah holder with two empty cups. After he'd drunk a little, I said, "So how was the breakfast meeting?"
"Are you going to tell me the rest of this Loden Broca story?"
"I want to hear your story first."
"Gods. All right, I told them what you'd said."
"And?"
"They're a polite bunch. They couldn't attack the word of a Cormallon lady, so they agreed to table the entire matter till next year."
"Hallelujah!"
It wasn't an Ivoran word, but he recognized it. "Theodora, what are you going to do next year?"
"Let me fill you in on Loden," I said, and I did.
When I'd finished he said, "What an idiot he is."
"I know."
"I'd just as soon not even have him in our parcel receipt. But I suppose he took advantage of your soft barbarian heart."
"He did appeal to us for help, Ran."
"What of it? Let him appeal to the Mercians for help. And why didn't you have me paged at the Taka? I could've sent Sim back to you."
"More likely you'd have told me to let him appeal to the Mercians."
"Well, yes." Ran does not deny the obvious truths. "But I would have sent you Sim just the same."
"There wasn't time. Besides, why would you want me to wait for Sim when you've said we're not targets anymore? Are we in danger?"
He looked pained. I said, "Just what is Sim's purpose in life, anyway?"
"He's here on a holiday," Ran said. "Show him the capital."
We looked at each other. He sighed. "All right, what's done is done, I suppose. If anyone trails Loden to our house to pick him off, at least we've got Sim on hand to aid in the defense. —Mind you, that's if we look in the least degree of danger, Theodora. If the danger's only to Loden, he can deal with it himself."
"Well, naturally."
"I mean it. I don't want you taking any chances because his cute brown eyes are in jeopardy."
"Kylla said that about his eyes. I didn't."
"Yes, I recall now. You simply said they were remarkably fine."
I smiled. "Thank you for your understanding." I kissed him on the cheek.
Sim stuck his head in the door and said, "Do you have an extra pair of slippers? And did I see the Gossip Gazette somewhere this morning?"
I whispered to Ran, "He's adapting very well."
"And do we have any hard bread and jam?" asked Sim. "I'm very fond of bread and jam. Cherry would be best. Though I don't want to put you to any trouble."
The Cormallons had all gone home (except for Sim); our assignment for Jusik was officially over; and with Loden turning out to be a quiet guest, I had to agree with Ran that our attackers from Trade Square had probably lost interest when the case was canceled. He and Sim had gone to Ran's robemaker to get new suits for the two of them, and I'd pushed them out of the house gladly, looking forward to a few hours of peaceful reading.
Naturally the doorbells began to jingle. I checked the plate, saw it was Coalis, and let him in.
"You've interrupted Kesey's Poems,'" I said. "I may never get through that damned book."
"What a welcome, gracious lady." But he smiled; and I could see my way of greeting him pleased his na' telleth heart. "We should exchange volumes before I go. I'm car-
rying the Erotic Poems in my wallet, and / can't get through them."
"Importunate strangers keep interrupting you, too?"
"No, I just don't like the poems. Though I shouldn't prejudice you against them." He stooped to pass through the hanging that separates the parlor from hall, took off his sun hat, and whirled it expertly onto a table; narrowly missing a wildly expensive vase in the process.
He plopped himself down on a cushion and grinned up at me. "I'm glad you're home. Sit down, I've come to show you something."
I dragged a cushion over and sat beside him. He said, "Stereth asked me to come."
"He did?" It did take me a little by surprise, but then, I had no other good reason for him to visit.
"He wanted me to set your mind to rest on an issue." Coalis reached into the pocket of his inner robe, and pulled out a slim, worn book held together by a piece of string tied in an untangleable schoolboy knot.
"I hope that's not your volume of Kesey," I said, sensing it wasn't.
He slipped the string off and flipped forward, then backward a few pages. "Here," he said, and handed it to me.
Loden Broca Mercia had a page to himself. I whistled. "Six hundred tabals. That's a lot of money for a journeyman guard to owe."
"He wasn't very consistent in paying it back, either," Coalis pointed out.
I read the notations in green ink, payments of twenty to thirty tabals at a time. No wonder the boy had been living on scraps and tap water in that inn. Still, Coalis had a point; Loden often skipped a week or two, letting his interest rise dangerously. Even on his salary, he ought to have made higher payments at the very beginning. The figures were clear about that, particularly the figures done in black ink by a neater hand, near the bottom of the page. I said, "Is this true? He's up to twelve hundred tabals?"
"That's what happens when you miss payments," said Coalis. "He's barely scratched the principal at all."
I closed the book and returned it to Coalis for him to re-string. This all served to confirm Loden's story. Though he'd lied about how much he owed, which was, I supposed,
understandable. It's hard to admit you've been that much of a fool.
I said, "Stereth asked you to show me this?"
"He said he wanted to limit the uncertainty in your life. He didn't tell me what he meant by that."
Who ever was sure what Stereth meant? "How well do you know the minister, anyway?"
"Me?" The question seemed to surprise him. "I told you, we met on a na' telleth retreat. I was impressed with his talent for concentration. We've been spending a fair amount of time together lately because of the partnership, but I suppose once I'm settled he'll have other things to be working on."
"So he's been helpful to you in the partnership. Worth bringing him in."
"Oh, definitely! I wouldn't have had any guidance at all in this, if not for Stereth." Coalis's face shone. "He's been wonderful."
"Does he talk to you much about… about before, when he was an outlaw leader?"
"I wish he would. He said those days are past."
I breathed a tiny sigh of relief at that. Not that Stereth was a gossip, by any stretch of the imagination, but it was good to hear.
Coalis was going on. "He shows me all kinds of things now, though."
"Oh? What kind of things?"
"All kinds.
He's got a lot of friends, and he introduced me to some of them. They were able to help me a lot in the business."
"I thought you were mainly handling the business as a one-man operation. Isn't that what Kade was doing?
"Well, yes, but you need to know what to do… you need people to run the operations end of things. I'm too small to do it all myself."
Too small? Oh— "You're talking about the beating-people-up, leg-breaking end of things."
"Well, it is part of the business, Theodora. Otherwise no one would pay us back. They don't have regular collateral."
"No, I understand the concept. So you… direct the operations now, is that it?"
"Not yet. So far I've just watched. It's very interesting.
"I'm sure," I said noncommittally, thinking, So this is why he reminds Stereth of Lex na'Valory.
"But Stereth's promised me a chance to direct."
"Well, that sounds… promising."
"I'll be supervising everything myself, once Stereth gets us on track."
"Really." I wondered how to change the subject. I said, "I guess Kade's death opened up a whole new world for you. Maybe missing the monastery wasn't the worst thing, after all. It seems more of a liberation."
He looked slightly shocked. "How can you say that, Theodora? The field of moneylending is an interesting one, but it's only an illusion. Like any other lender, I'll be teaching that fact to my clients. Not that it takes much deliberate teaching. I can assure you, practically all of them eventually realize that the money they wanted in the first place was not that important."
"I see. You'll be bringing na' telleth philosophy into ordinary life."
"Of course; that's where it belongs. Naturally I'd advance further in the monastery, but I intend to follow the path as well as I can."
"That's very, uh, admirable of you. I'm not far advanced in the na' telleth way, myself."
"You're only a barbarian," he said tolerantly. "And I'm sure you've learned more than you think. One can't help getting lessons in na' telleth-ri, just by living."
"You may have a point. I've been thinking a lot about 'the other side of the mirror' lately."