“If my lord will pardon my forwardness,” Falc said, hoisting Alazhar to his feet by the back of his collarband. “Might I suggest that you send your son to fetch the ring off Prefect Altmer’s finger, while you and I very privately question this source of sausage.” He glanced back. “If Simayil is to make the journey to Drearmist, perhap that one should... accompany her.”
Chasmal glanced at the unconscious keeper. “You are too gentle, Son of Ashah. Better I think — come along, Alazhar, and do enjoy wearing that medallion for another minute or so — better I think, S’r Falc, to have my physician earn his board by r’storing that fellow to a condition suitable for him to be p’suaded to talk. That way we can learn whether his story agrees with what Alazhar is about, most kindly, to tell us. After which... best he join Altmer.”
They were soon in Chasmal’s private suite. Both rooms were surprisingly small, but after all he also had his office and audience chamber. Too, he had never remarried after a fever carried off his wife, several years ago.
“Did you mean t’ suggest that my son be made Prefect of the House, S’r Falc?”
“Perhap I should not speak,” Falc wisely said, whereupon he was urged, as he had expected and intended. He was meanwhile binding Alazhar in an interesting position. “Yes, Lord Chasmal, I would. Your son is no happy young man, and so has taken to the flesh and drink you disapprove of —”
“When it is every day and every night — yes, I disapprove!”
“Your pardon, my lord,” Falc said, and stepped back. Alazhar rolled his upside-down eyes, which were dark and almost purple. The pupils were huge in fear, approaching roundness. Falc drew his dagger. And waited, seemingly in complete calm.
After a long silence Chasmal spoke, and his voice lofted high. “Ah, plague on you, omo! Your intelligence and judgment are known across the continent. Speak, speak! I will listen — you say that Chazar is unhappy?”
“As Holder Chasmal or I would be, were we sole heir two years past twenty, and unwed, and allowed no responsibilities. Responsibility and a chance to serve and prove himself to the father he is angry with but does love and respect. These would surely be the greatest thing that could happen to your young lord. And to his father, who loves him. Surely a respected servant could advise and temper his youthful judgment. If not, my lord Chasmal might consider asking the Order whether a... retired Son of Ashah might serve as his adviser.”
Chasmal was staring, shaking his head. “And if that prove inadequate?”
Falc shrugged. “Both father and son will have learned something, and my good lord will be in the same position as now, but with new knowledge: in need of a Prefect of the House!”
“Gugh-hunnh,” Alazhar commented, upside-downly.
“I sh’d think you’d be in no hurry for our attention, source of sausage,” Chasmal said, and in spite of himself he laughed at Falc’s picturesque way of calling the small, thin man a swine. “Oh, Falc... by the by... how did you know that Simayil is of Silkevare?”
“I stood behind her while she knelt,” Falc said, aware that Chasmal was filling time while he considered his son. “When they kneel, those women of Silkevare do have a way all their own of turning their feet.”
Holder Chasmal was giving him a look, almost smiling, when the urgent knock sounded on the big panelled door behind him. He glanced at Alazhar. “Falc: do stand before him, will you, and hold out your cloak or something?”
Falc understood instantly, and did. He pretended to be examining the arm-loop in the left inside of his cloak while Chasmal opened the door. Here was Chazar, strangely, almost weirdly grey-blue-brown of eye — hence his name — and wearing a short robe of gold moss-weave tied with a cloth-of-gold rope. His boots were oddly out of place. Falc assumed they made the poor youth feel more the stem man to those ajmini with whom he disported himself.
“Chazar, I need your help,” Chasmal shockingly said, and beginning sobriety came into the son’s eyes as swiftly as it had the father’s at sight of what had awaited him in his office. “In my absence tonight, Altmer deliberately sought to murder Sir Falc of Risskor here, who you will remember is eminently trusted and beloved by m’ Lockese friend, Kinneven. Please go to the Boot Room and fetch the House Prefect’s ring which Altmer dishonoured.”
“Altmer... dead?”
“He challenged an omo, son. Worse, he challenged Falc of Risskor, and ‘ith only two men to back him.”
“Only t —”
Chazar’s gaze leaped again to the dark man standing well back of his father, for some reason examining the interior of his sail-sized black cloak with eyes like a pool of water in an old quarry. Then Chazar seemed to jerk himself together, a nice enough looking young man with rumpled hair, a skimpy beard, and too much meat at his middle for one of his years.
“Yes, my lord! I shall bring it to you at once, Father.”
Chazar hurried away. His father closed the door and went at once to Alazhar.
“Sir Falc is of a religious order, and p’suasion is surely b’neath him,” he told his former Housechief, in an amiable tone. “‘s b’neath me, too, but we are in a hurry, and you know that I have not always been so wealthed. And you do know how I got my start.”
Falc did not, but soon judged that it must have been as someone’s Discipliner of Slaves; Dungeoner, perhaps. Alazhar was swiftly persuaded both to weep and to urge upon his lord the intelligence that he was also employed by another Holder of Lango, Faradox. Faradox was prime rival and no friend to Chasmal, who would not agree to the betrothal of Chazar to Faradox’s daughter (an unpretty girl devoted to her music-making, whom Chazar abominated with reason). Alazhar’s purpose was to rouse the ire of the powerful Kinneven against Chasmal by murdering his beloved Falc.
All this astonished and horrified the questioners, though Chasmal showed little and the omo almost nothing. Chasmal ruined another tooth. That brought forth the information that Faradox had both paid much and promised much, which had made it easier for Alazhar to subvert the ambitious Altmer to this night’s deeds. Weeping, Alazhar assured his master that he would serve him as a grovelling slave, whereupon Chasmal disappointed Falc by ruining that traitorous tongue in addition to several front teeth.
Falc sighed. He would have asked a bit more, and crosschecked as well. It was a strange tale, and a strangely circuitous, even bizarrely complicated one.
He said nothing, but wrapped Alazhar’s face in a couple of towels while Chasmal went again to answer a knock at the door. Past his father, Chazar stared at the horrifying sight of that vulturine man cutting a towel-muffled, bloody, and quaking Alazhar free of two chairs. He was using an immoderately large black-handled knife with a hilt of jet.
“Don’ be staring at him, son. Alazhar is traitor and it was your father, not S’r Falc, who persuaded him to speak. Sir Falc of far Risskor, acting for a powerful Holder of far Juliara, has saved us much grief this night, if not our lives. Do just be buckling on that weapons belt.”
Chasmal accepted the ring from his son and waited while the young man buckled on the sheathed blades and pistol over his bright chamber-robe. Worn, Falc mused, as a disrespectful gesture to the father who held him in leash as a pet dog, and summoned him so urgently from his bed-sports.
Be a hound, Falc mentally urged, staring at Chazar of Lango. Be a hound, Chazar!
“Father —”
“A moment, Chazar. P’r’ap you will wish to change out of that chamber-robe, which does not wear a sword well. You’ll not bear that dishonoured blade for long, son; we will equip you with a man’s sword. Gi’ me y’r left hand.”
Chazar swallowed and his mouth forgot to close while his father weighted his extended hand with a large gold band, set with a caged aventurine cut flat and etched with a vigilant eye. The ring slid up the middle finger, just a bit loose. That was remediable, and besides it would be even looser on either of Chazar’s other two fingers.
“Be thou my perfect Prefect of the House, Chazar Chasma-langoson, and my eye, and see tho
u to the interests of this Holding, that they may be our mutual interests.”
At the words of the formula the astonished Chazar started to babble “Father —” Instead he remembered himself and, awkwardly clasping his ringed left hand to the sword-hilt on his left hip, went to one knee. “I shall serve my lord Holder to our mutual interest with Honour, and to the death!”
Still Chasmal spoke as employer rather than father. “Your first duty, Prefect, is no pleasant one. Convey this traitor, without benefit of physician, to the Pit. There leave him.” And Chasmal stepped back out of the young man’s way.
His new Prefect of the House rose, gnawing at his lower lip. He gazed upon the bloody man who had been second in this House only to his own father.
“Your father,” Falc said dourly, “has need of a man, now; a man he can trust.”
Chazar swallowed. Then, left hand on sword, the new Prefect of the House advanced into the room. This brought him into close-face proximity with the grim Deathknight. Chazar was unable not to stare.
“Prefect,” Falc said quietly, with a bow of his head. “Would you do me the favour of handing me the dagger you wear?”
The youth swallowed. Again he recovered. He started to reach across himself for the weapon, reconsidered, and instead unsheathed the knife with his left hand. He laid the blade into his right, and proffered it to Falc.
“I am emboldened to offer advice to the prefect: that he never again hand his dagger to another, even a Son of Ashah. Here it is back, with thanks.” Into the young man’s hand Falc laid an evilly broad, long blade whose guard was dark iron and whose hilt was black horn. Falc dropped Altmer’s knife into the sheath he had just emptied. “I fear that sheath of Altmer’s will not accommodate your dagger, Prefect, but this Holding’s leatherworker can swiftly make one.”
“A... Deathknight’s... dagger?” Chazar stared at the weapon in his hand.
Falc shrugged a gentle negative. “No; the dagger of the prefect of the House of the foremost Holder in Lango. Whom I presume to advise even further: never never depend on that silly little ‘lectric pistol! Now, far from me to tell such a man his duties, but Holder Chasmal does want this swine out of his bedchamber.”
Chasmal said, “And never never call an omo a Deathknight, either, Prefect”
The source of sausage was soon removed by a young man who walked tall. It was not Holder Chasmal but a father who gazed at Falc.
“That was a... a fine, fine gesture, most excellent Falc.”
Falc bowed. “I saw a different Chazar, and gave a man his first gift.”
“I hope you’re right. If so, we’ll both be much in your debt... Lifeknight.”
Again Falc bowed. Then he spoke formally, at last delivering his messsage. “Holder Kinneven sends greeting and best of portents to his friend Holder Chasmal, and advises me say to him as follows:
“‘Here is something no one knows about the purple shume.
Not only does it stand tall and its main stem grow ever
thicker, but it puts forth aerial roots.’”
Chasmal blinked his receipt of that cryptic message. Falc had tried not to question it, although the flowering plant called shume did not grow tall! Then his nod and totally bland expression told Falc that the Holder must understand and, good or bad news, would show nothing.
“Also: Holders Minndeven and Hanliven of Ryar made a hunting-area trade, for variety. Perhaps you will be interested in certain slaves in Darsin, four months hence. They will be the first from the Halatatsy area below Drearmist ever to be trained in Lock.”
Chasmal’s face showed mild horror: “I never even heard of Halatatat Sea... but Drearmist!”
“The area below Drearmist, to the south, is perfectly safe, Holder. Halatatsy is part of Hanliven’s territory, of Ryar: his vineyards. My employer believes that you will be interested in the Darsin Fair, four months hence. Holder Hanliven has also advised my lord of an outstanding harvest that has yielded a superb vintage.”
“Ah, that alone sounds reason for going,” Chasmal said, nodding, “though Darsin is a long, long way to travel. I sh’ll have to be giving cautious thought to the enmity and plotting of m’fellow Holder of Lango, and too I must be finding and trusting a new Housechief. I don’ suppose you have another ‘f your excellent s’ggestions, S’r Falc?”
“Holder Chasmal might send word to the Master of the Order with thought of Contracting with one of my brethen in Ashah, for his protection from Faradox. Pardon: the lord Holder Faradox.”
“I like the oversight,” Chasmal said, tight-lipped. “‘Treacherous bastard Faradox’, I’d say.”
Falc remained stiff. “It might also be amusing for Lord Chasmal to let word wend its way, through third-hand sources, to the Fardox Holding: that the lord Chasmal would double that Housechief’s benefits were he to consider change of allegiance.”
“I’d never take on anyone of that Holding! I’ve just learned that I can trust nothing and no one of Faradox!”
“Nor will my lord Kinneven, once I am back in Lock,” Falc assured him. “I used the word ‘amusing’ apurpose, Holder. The suggestion was not a serious one. Consider how it would upset Holder Faradox, and perhap create some dissension in that Holding! This is if you think he might need something else to think about... just to keep his plotsome mind busy?”
“Aha!”
With only a nod, Falc said, “Holder Kinneven believes that Housechiefs are best brought in from outside the Holding. I might manage to stop in Secter, on my way to Lock, and see whether Holder Arisan and his excellent Housechief still find each other... difficult.”
“Hmm.” Chasmal half turned to regard the dark man. “Arisan and his superb Baysh? But they have a problem? Why?”
“One must not tell all that one knows or surmises, my lord, else who would entrust me with knowledge? The problem of Holder Arisan and Baysh is no result of sloth or wrongdoing on Baysh’s part. As for the apparent main reason — does my lord Chasmal know Holder Arisan of Secter?”
Chasmal nodded, grinned, nodded, chuckled, bobbed his head. “I understand.”
“I will leave on the morrow,” Falc said. “The lord Chasmal might consider waiting one day, and then dispatching a public contractor to Secter. That man might consider stopping at the White Horn and there merely dally, in the event that Baysh happened by. If so, it would be within two days.”
“Hmm. Oh, and is that the extent of your message from my fellow Holder and friend, excellent Falc who has done so much for me this night?”
“I but defended this life and honour, lord.” Then Falc shook his head and came as close to smiling as he ever did; the person who avowed to have seen Falc of Risskor smile placed his own credibility in question. “No, Holder; the message I bear is twofold. My lord your friend sent word too that he does not wish to create dissension in Lango, or embarrass his most esteemed friend, or alarm him unduly... but that he has certain intelligence that Holder Faradox plots against you.”
There was nothing pretty or mirthful about Chasmal’s short burst of laughter. “You may advise him on y’r return, twice-excellent Falc — after your brief stop in Secter — that I believe my friend Kinneven! And that I wish Falc of Risskor were in my service!”
Falc bowed, and said nothing. Lord Chasmal was well aware of the code of the Order Most Old, if not its true purpose in linking and guiding the citystates and their greedily mistrustful Holders against a unity that could bring the abhorrent possibility of renewed Empire. Too, he knew Falc’s regard for Kinneven of Lock. Chasmal would not stoop to making offer for Falc’s services. He knew they were not available for payment alone, or without loyalty and esteem. Chasmal could not presently expect high esteem from one with the standards and alertness of an omo; not when a foreigner had to enter in and straighten out the messy affairs of household, family, and inimical rival!
“You will accept my hospitality, Falc, and a companion?”
“I will apologise for having cost my lord three peacekeepers �
�”
“Three traitors! Would that you c’d bide over and aid us in seeking whether this treachery runs deeper in m’ own household! Apology rejected as unwarranted, but you will accept my fervent thanks!”
Falc bowed and ritually stretched forth his weapon hand, palm open. “I shall ride for Lock tomorrow, my lord —”
“Well-provisioned!”
Another bow: “Wi’ thanks, and waste no wine on me! If my lord will not take offense, I will partake of his hospitality, but prefer no companion. I have been insulted, and I have slain. Falc must walk the Way of Communion this night.”
“That rite of your Order will not occupy you all the night, good Falc!”
“No, but my personal rule is to avoid night-companions after I have spent emotion and life. I might well be too harsh with her, and have no wish to harm one of my lord Holder’s valuable ajmini...”
“No five of which are so valuable as Falc of Risskor!”
“Nor ten either, with my lord Holder’s indulgence. But I beg my lord not to insist. Once under such circumstances I killed a companion, a mere girl, and without anger or cause. It is embarrassment to me still. I would not place myself in such a position again. Tonight my blood is high and hot, and in such passion the solitary way is best. For me.”
“Simayil, p’r’ap,” Chasmal began, but aborted the jest at sight of the dark man’s face.
“A question, Holder Chasmal. Are the slaves of this household forbidden beer?”
Chasmal’s head tilted to one side. “Only in the company of their betters. Otherwise... who trusts the water system of Lango?” Chasmal smiled at what the other man presumed to be a common saying in Lango-by-the-Sea, and would remember. “Why d’you ask, excellent Falc?”
“Had the answer been no, my lord’s new prefect would have another arrest to make. She might be watched, even so, as she was with me while Alazhar had me awaiting your pleasure. A big woman; her name is Sereah.”
“Sereah!”
“I hasten to add that I chose her. Alazhar did not send her.”
“Perhap I were well advised to plan a journey to the annual fair in Darsin. Best I do a good bit of trading. P’r’ap.” Chasmal nodded, obviously to himself as he considered, and Falc remained silent. Then: “As you wish it, excellent Falc. With regard to night-companion, I mean. You are like no other man, and while I would gladly give you five of the best-trained, I’ll force nothing on you. Except o’course the best mount in my stable, which you will accept else your own suffer a seizure and expire before sun’s rise.”
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