by Dave Duncan
He must resist the temptation if he wanted to continue living on old Amorgush. He stooped for the clothes he had dropped on the floor an hour ago. They were fine clothes. Give the old bag her due—she was generous. That was about the only good thing to be said of Amorgush, though. She claimed to be forty, and the gods should strike her dead for perjury. She was reputed to be the richest woman in Joalvale. She was certainly one of the stupidest, although not quite stupid enough to believe the words of adoration he whispered to her every day about this time. She knew he was only a hired man.
He slipped into his pink linen breeches and kid shoes, fastened his wide leather belt lovingly. That did not come from Amorgush. It was probably of Randorian make, although he had stolen it in Mapvale a couple of years ago. A twist would bring the ornate buckle free, bearing a thin strip of steel, flexible yet razor sharp on both edges, a beautiful thing. He loved it. Poor little Dosh always felt naked without at least one weapon concealed somewhere on his person.
He donned his silk tunic—a delicate lilac shade, exquisitely embroidered with many-colored wildflowers—and admired himself in the mirror for a moment, then looked more carefully, checking for love bites. He found none. What he did notice, with annoyance, was the gleam of scalp through his curls. Blond men always went bald young, and he was no longer as youthful as he liked to think he was. There were faint lines starting on his forehead. He turned away angrily from his reflection.
The old hag was still asleep, snoring now. That relieved him of the obligation of a sticky, hypocritical farewell embrace. Amorgush was a good living, but he felt he earned every crust of it, and he headed for the door with the conviction that he had just done a noble day's work. After such a session, his nominal duties in the stable always seemed positively recreational.
The corridor was deserted. He strode along it, admiring the pillared grandeur, intent on a quick bath to get the stench of her perfume off him. All things considered, though, his position in the Bandrops household was the most enjoyable sinecure he had found in his highly varied career. For one thing, Joal was the finest city in the Vales, with every facility a man could dream of. He was paid enough to indulge his versatile taste in vices. Best of all, he need not fear the wrath of a jealous husband, because Bandrops knew exactly what his coachman did during siesta hour.
It had been Bandrops who had first brought Dosh into the house. Bandrops Advocate was an up-and-coming politician—which in Joal meant a man with the instincts of a killer spider—who was widely expected to bribe his way into the Clique when the next vacancy occurred. He had married Amorgush for her money, as his personal tastes ran more to the likes of Dosh than to matrimony. For a while poor Dosh had been required to satisfy both of them regularly, which had been hard work, but now the master had found himself a tender juvenile page, and his calls upon his coachman's evenings were much rarer.
As Dosh reached the head of the staircase, who should be trotting up it but that very same Pin't Pageboy, looking hot and flushed and positively adorable. He stopped, and the two of them appraised each other warily. Dosh had a faint worry that Pin't was after his job with the mistress. Pin't was distrustful of Dosh's own advances, although he had so far managed to resist them admirably.
"Feeling the heat?” Dosh inquired. “It's a remarkably warm fall."
"You don't look very cool yourself,” the brat retorted. He had a dark curl trailed artfully over his forehead—Dosh wished he knew how the kid organized that so consistently. “I was looking for you."
"Wonderful! I'm just heading for the bathhouse. Come along."
Pin't curled a lip in refusal. “The master wants you."
Dosh regretfully dismissed the thought of cool water. At this time of day, Bandrops would be wanting a coachman, not a catamite—probably. He shrugged. “Then I'd better go to him. But keep my offer in mind."
"I can't think why I should."
Dosh trotted down. “Experience, my boy!” He reached out in passing, aiming an affectionate pat, which Pin't foresaw and dodged. “I could teach you some very useful tricks."
"I doubt it,” Pin't retorted.
He was certainly wrong.
Dosh knocked and was bade enter. The master's office was a sumptuous, sun-bright room overlooking a manicured garden. The rugs alone represented more wealth than most men earned in their lifetimes. Amorgush left all the financial decisions to her clever husband.
Bandrops's perpetual stoop seemed only to emphasize his bulk. He sported the thickest, blackest eyebrows Dosh had ever seen, under a shiny bald pate, although every other part of him sprouted dense black hair. He had a mellifluous, orator's voice, a raging ambition, and sadistic tastes in recreation. He was wearing a loose silk tunic of sky blue and leaning his fists on his ornate desk.
He greeted his coachman with a disagreeable scowl. “I am sorry to drag you from your work."
"I am entirely at your command, sir, of course,” Dosh remarked airily as he crossed the sumptuously colored Narshian rug. He was much more interested in the other man standing near the window.
The other man was younger, leaner, even harder, with a cold intensity in his face to warn the discerning observer of potential trouble. He, too, wore the standard Joalian tunic and breeches. In contrast to Bandrops's, his forearms were almost hairless, well muscled, and also much paler than his hands. As were his shins. His cheeks above his close-trimmed beard were darker than his ears and forehead.
"This is the boy, Kraanard,” Bandrops declaimed. “Dosh, this is Kraanard Jurist. He has need of your services."
"As my master bids me, sir.” Dosh bowed to the stranger, wondering what sort of services were implied. He wondered, too, why an obvious soldier, a man who normally wore greaves, vambraces, and helmet, would be masquerading as a jurist.
Kraanard regarded him with unconcealed contempt. “Have you a moa, boy?"
If Dosh wished to be impertinent, he could now ask where a lackey like him could ever acquire the wealth to own a moa, but that was not what was meant. Moas resisted new riders with murderous zeal; it took months to attune a moa to a man. Dosh was skilled at many things other than seduction. He could harness the household stock to the master's coach and drive it. Officially, that was all that was expected of him.
When Bandrops had hired him, though, he had set out to imprint one of the household moas—mostly because he thought the brute would make suitable severance pay if he had to leave without notice. Bandrops knew he had been trying, because he had commented on the numerous bruises and tooth marks poor Dosh had acquired in the process. What he did not know, apparently, was that Dosh had persevered. There seemed no reason not to tell the truth in this instance, for the other servants knew.
"There is one I can usually manage, sir."
The other men exchanged pleased glances.
"You will come with me,” Kraanard announced. “We shall be gone only a few days."
Dosh had survived so long in his perilous career only because he possessed an acute sense of danger. Now tocsins clamored in his mind. There was something extremely fishy here. He contrived an expression of youthful anxiety, which had always been one of his most effective.
"I doubt I can handle Swift for that long, sir. I am only an amateur on a moa."
Bandrops reddened, but it was the soldier who answered.
"The matter is extremely important. Even if you suffer some scrapes, you will be well rewarded."
"I am sure to be thrown a few times, sir. Then Swift will escape."
Kraanard's eyes narrowed. “We shall have others with us. We shall round it up for you. They never go far."
Now the details were starting to take shape—a troop of lancers!
"If you need a moa rider, sir, surely there must be hundreds of native-born young Joalians far more expert than I am."
Again the two men exchanged glances. Then Kraanard strode across until he was right in front of Dosh and could stare down at him with cold gray eyes and unmistakable menace. He was conside
rably taller.
"But I understand that you are familiar with a man named D'ward."
If he wanted to shock, he succeeded. Dosh felt as if he had been dropped into ice water and for once his self-control failed him. "The Liberator?"
Kraanard was pleased by the reaction. “Some call him that. He is here in Joalvale, somewhere over by Jilvenby."
D'ward! It had been more than three years. They had been traveling with a band of Tinkerfolk, Dosh's own people. Dosh had tired of the grinding poverty and run out on them. But before that...
"No!"
A dangerous silence ... Kraanard said, “What does that mean?"
Dosh himself did not know what that meant. He did not know what he was thinking. D'ward!
"It means he wants money,” Bandrops growled in the background. “He's a greedy, grasping scoundrel with the heart of a whore, but he'd sell his own mother for a few silver stars."
Mother certainly, but not D'ward!
Why not D'ward? Dosh did not know. He needed time to think.
Kraanard smiled. He closed a fist in Dosh's hair and bent his head back. “How does thirty stars sound, boy? All you have to do is identify him for us. We'll handle the rough stuff. You won't be hurt."
Dosh uttered the plaintive cry he used to indicate pain or fear, but at the moment he was feeling neither. He was filled with an inexplicable fury. Thirty stars? That was too much. What sort of gullible fool did they think he was? Far too much! Thirty stars was more money than he'd ever owned in his life.
"What's the Liberator to you, boy?” Kraanard demanded. His breath stank of fish.
Good question! “Sir, you're hurting me!” Dosh wailed, but his mind was churning. What, indeed, was the Liberator to him? Betraying friends had always been one of his specialties, so why should he feel so different about D'ward? Was it because D'ward, although he had known exactly what Dosh was, had always treated him as an equal, another human being? He was almost the only person who ever had. Dosh slid the knife out from his belt.
The trooper did not notice the movement. Snarling, he twisted Dosh's hair harder. “Answer me!"
Dosh gave him his answer. Flexible blades were tricky for stabbing, but he drove it expertly between Kraanard's ribs. He had a very intimate knowledge of anatomy—he knew the way to a man's heart. The knife came free easily as the body dropped. Bandrops gaped, then dived around the desk, heading for the door and opening his mouth to shout, but he should have done the shouting first. Dosh leaped, took him from behind, and cut his throat.
He had wiped the blade clean on Bandrops's tunic before the blood stopped pumping out of its owner. Meanwhile, he was thinking hard. Killing had never bothered him—nor excited him either. His heart was beating quite normally—but he had certainly behaved in a very uncharacteristic fashion. Why refuse an offer of thirty stars, however remote the chances of collecting?
More to the point at the moment, how had the authorities known that Bandrops Advocate's coachman could identify the Liberator? He could think of no reasonable explanation in mortal terms, which meant the gods must be meddling again. Dosh revered no god. He despised most of them—especially Tion, the Youth.
Which god was mixed up in this? Many men and women affected special loyalty to a specific god, swearing allegiance to a mystery. Tion had the Tion Fellowship and probably several other cults also; Thargian warriors would belong to the Blood and Hammer, loyal to Karzon. Dosh knelt beside Kraanard and peered carefully under the neck of his tunic, looking for a chain. Not finding one, he undid the laces, but then he was forced to conclude that the late, unlamented Kraanard had not been wearing an amulet. He stripped the tunic off the corpse and began to inspect it—a nice, well-muscled body. He noted with approval how tiny the wound was and how little it had bled, like a deadly snakebite, he thought proudly.
He did not find what he was looking for until he removed Kraanard's breeches. High on the inside of the man's right thigh he discovered a small red birthmark in the shape of an Ø. Dosh would bet his ears that the man had not been born with that birthmark.
Well! He had expected a five-pointed star, symbol of the Maiden. Astina was presiding deity of Joalia, her resplendent temple standing not a mile away. In her avatar of Olfaan, she was patron goddess of soldiers. If a Joalian trooper was sworn to any deity, it should be Astina, but Ø was the symbol of Eltiana, the Lady. The label was so inconspicuous that the cult must be a very secret one. The Lady was goddess of such things as passion, motherhood, and agriculture. None of her aspects was especially threatening, so far as he could recall; a few of them demanded ritual prostitution from their worshippers, but Dosh had no quarrel with that.
He patted the dead man's cheek. “You rascal! You're a spy—or even an assassin, perhaps? I misjudged you!” But the evidence was clear—the Lady was after D'ward and could be assumed not to have his best interests at heart.
He rose and surveyed the carnage. Moments ago those two had been rich and powerful, and he a lowly flunky. Now they were dead while he was still alive. Such is life. Situations change, though—having slain a prominent citizen and a soldier, poor Dosh would soon be as dead as they were if he lingered long in Joalvale. All he would have left to look forward to would be a prolonged and very public death.
Besides, whatever D'ward was doing in Joalvale, the lunatic ought to be warned of Eltiana's concern. It would be an hour or two before anyone thought to interrupt the master at his business. That was long enough for him to get well out of town. Amused by a sudden inspiration, he took the time to undress Bandrops's corpse also—that should confuse the issue a little.
Investigating the secret compartment in the desk, Dosh found a bulky purse he estimated must hold fifty or sixty stars. Unfortunately the jewelry he had seen there on earlier inspections was absent. He considered the possibility of running back upstairs to collect Amorgush's, but concluded reluctantly that the old cow might be awake by now. Hanging the bag on his belt, he headed for the door. Jilvenby lay to the northeast, near Joalwall. A fast moa ought to make that in a day, and despite his earlier disclaimers, he was now extremely skilled at handling Swift.
He was skilled at many things.
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5
The sun hung low over the snowy peaks of Randorwall as Julian Smedley headed back to Losby through a green jigsaw of paddy fields and orchards, divided by winding hedges of bloodfruit bushes. Here and there between the trees, he could see small groups of the faithful making their way homeward. Randorvale was very lush, vaguely reminiscent of the south of France if one did not look too closely at the vegetation or question what mountains those were.
His stump ached fiercely—the finger stubs were already visibly longer than they had been this morning—but all in all he felt as if his feet were barely touching the ground. His dander was still up, a fizz of mana. The old spice merchant trudged along at his right in triumphant silence, while on his left, young Purlopat'r ambled with gigantic strides that would not have shamed a moa, prattling shrilly about the glorious miracle the One had vouchsafed his believers.
It had been quite a good show, actually. Before setting out from Olympus three days ago, Julian had equipped himself with two dozen gold earrings for converts he might bring into the fold during his two-fortnight circuit. He had thought he was being grossly optimistic, but he had used up eighteen of them already. Eighteen in one day was certainly a Service record—he had heard of Pinky Pinkney managing twelve. Seventeen of the troopers, including Captain Groud'rart himself, had also clamored to join the church on the spot, but the rales required them to take a course of instruction first. Some of them would change their minds, of course, but some would not. To have believers within the royal army could be a tremendous advantage for the Undivided, perhaps leading to infiltration of the Randorian government itself. When Julian Smedley returned to Olympus and submitted the usual report, it was going to be a very unusual report. The new boy had scored a stunning success. It was too bad that he h
ad done so by flaunting his personal miracle cure, and there would be whispers about that. Shag ‘em! The alternative had been martyrdom, and the Service did not demand that of its agents. He had not used the trapdoor like Pedro Garcia. He had turned certain disaster to pure triumph. He had even outscored Jumbo Watson.
There was Kinulusim's cottage now, on the outskirts of Losby, flanked by his storage shed and the paddock. There were two rabbits in the paddock.
"Someone has come,” Purlopat'r squeaked.
The someone would be from Olympus, almost certainly, and Julian's first thought was that now he had an audience to brag to. His second was that of course a fellow didn't brag, and his third was perverse annoyance that whoever it was would get the story in spades from Purlopat'r and Kinulusim. Dammit! He wanted to slip his miracle into his written report without comment, not make a great shemozzle out of it.
Their approach had been observed. The man heading out to meet them was short and stocky, wearing brown breeches and tunic—Joalian garments that were well suited to riding but which at once made Julian acutely conscious of his own absurd Randorian draperies. In a moment he identified the newcomer and his mana fizz flared close to anger.
Alistair Mainwaring was a plumpish, brown-haired man of indeterminate age. His English bore a faint Highland brogue that showed up even when he spoke Joalian and quite strongly in Randorian. He was one of the most effective missionaries the Service possessed, known around Olympus as Doc and to the natives as Saint Doc, although his degree was in anthropology, not medicine. He was also head of the Randorian section, thus Julian's boss, and a sanctimonious twit. Had he come all this way just to check on his most-junior assistant's progress?
They met, and Julian raised his gloves overhead to make the circle—thereby demonstrating that he had no fears of unfriendly onlookers and had the district under control. The other three copied him instantly. Kinulusim and Purlopat'r would be much impressed to have two holy apostles honoring Losby at the same time. The old spice merchant would also be frantic with curiosity to know why.