by Jack Vance
“I hardly know what happened today,” said Glinnes, “beyond the bare fact of the raid.”
“The bare fact is about all anyone knows,” said Akadie. He seemed unusually subdued and neutral, and careful in his choice of words. “The starmenters knew exactly who they wanted. They took exactly three hundred folk of substance, and about two hundred girls as well. The three hundred are to be ransomed for a minimum of a hundred thousand ozols apiece. No ransom prices have been set on the girls, but we will do our best to buy them back.”
”Then they’ve already been in communication?”
“Indeed, indeed. The plans were carefully made, and each person’s financial capacity was carefully gauged.”
Lord Gensifer said with facetious self-deprecation, “Those left behind have suffered a loss of prestige, which we keenly resent.”
Akadie went on. “For reasons apparently good and sufficient, I have been appointed collector of the ransom, for which effort I am to receive a fee. No great amount, I assure you in fact, five thousand ozols will requite my work.”
Glinnes listened, dumbfounded. “So the total ransom will be three hundred times a hundred thousand, which is—”
“Thirty million ozols—a good day’s work.”
“Unless they end up on the prutanshyr.”
Akadie made a sour face. “A barbaric relict. What benefit do we derive from torture? The starmenters come back regardless.”
“The public is edified,” said Lord Gensifer. “Think of the kidnapped maidens—one of whom might have been my good friend Duissane!” He placed his arm around Duissane’s shoulders and gave her a mock-fraternal squeeze. “Is, then, the revenge too severe? Not to my way of thinking.”
Glinnes blinked and gaped back and forth between Lord Gensifer and Duissane, who seemed to be smiling at a secret joke. Had the world gone mad? Or was he in truth living a preposterous dream?
Akadie formed a quizzical arch with his eyebrows. “The starmenters’ sins are real enough; let them suffer.”
One of Lord Gensifer’s friends asked, “By the way, which particular band of starmenters is responsible?”
“There has been no attempt at anonymity,” said Akadie. “We have attracted the personal attention of Sagmondo Bandolio—Sagmondo the Stern—who is as wicked as any.”
Glinnes knew the name well; Sagmondo Bandolio had long been the quarry of the Whelm. “Bandolio is a terrible man,” said Glinnes. “He extends no mercy.”
“Some say he is a starmenter only for sport,” Akadie remarked. “They say he has a dozen identities about the cluster, and that he could live forever on the fortunes he has gained.” The group mused in silence. Here was evil on a scale so fast that it became awesome.
Glinnes said, “Somewhere in the prefecture is a spy, someone intimate with all the aristocrats, someone who knows the exact level of every fortune.”
“That statement must be reckoned accurate,” said Akadie.
“Who could it be?” pondered Lord Gensifer. “Who could it be?”
And all persons present considered the matter, and each formed his private speculation.
Chapter 16
The Tanchinaros, by defeating the Karpouns, had done themselves a disservice. Since Sagmondo Bandolio and his starmenters had taken their treasure, the team was without resources, and because of their demonstrated abilities, Perinda could schedule no thousand-ozol or two-thousand-ozol games. And now they lacked the treasure to challenge any teams in the ten-thousand-ozol class.
A week after the Karpoun game the Tanchinaros met at Rabendary Island, and Perinda explained the sorry state of affairs. “I’ve found only three teams willing to play us, and not one will risk their sheirl for less than ten thousand ozols. Another matter: we lack a sheirl. Duissane seems to have caught the interest of a certain lord, which naturally was her ambition. Now neither she nor Tammi choose to risk the exposure of her precious hide.”
“Bah!” said Lucho. “Duissane never loved hussade in the first place.”
“Naturally not,” said Warhound. “She’s Trevanyi. Have you ever seen a Trevanyi play hussade? She’s the first Trevanyi sheirl I’ve ever known.”
“Trevanyi play their own games,” said Gilweg.
“Like ‘Knives and Gullets’”, said Glinnes.
“And ‘Trills and Robbers.’”
“And ‘Merling, Merling, Who’s Got the Cadaver.’”
“And ‘Hide and Sneak.’”
Perinda said, “We can always recruit a sheirl. Our problem is money.”
Glinnes said grudgingly, “I’d put up my five thousand ozols if I thought I’d get it back.”
Warhound said, “I could scrape up a thousand, one way or another.”
“That’s six thousand,” said Perinda. Until I put in a thousand—or rather, I can borrow a thousand from my father… Who else? Who else? Come then, you miserly mud-thumpers, bring out your wealth.”
Two weeks later the Tanchinaros played the Ocean Island Kanchedos, at the great Ocean Island Stadium, for a twenty-five thousand-ozol cpurse, with fifteen thousand hazarded by each team and ten thousand by the stadium. The new Tanchinaro sheirl was Sacharissa Simone, a girl from Fal Lal Mountain—pleasant, naive and pretty, but lacking in that imponderable quality sashei. There was likewise general doubt as to her virginity, but no one wanted to make an issue of the matter. “Let’s all of us have a night with her,” grumbled Warhound, “and resolve the question to everybody’s satisfaction.”
Whatever the reason, the Tanchinaros played sluggishly and committed a number of startling errors. The Kanchedos won an easy three-ring victory. Sacharissa’s possibly innocent body was displayed in every detail to thirty-five thousand, spectators, and Glinnes found himself with only three or four hundred ozols in his purse. In a state of stupefied depression he returned to Rabendary Island, and flinging himself down in one of the old string chairs, he spent the evening staring across the broad at Ambal Isle. What a chaotic mess he had made of his life! The Tanchinaros—impoverished, humiliated, on the verge of fragmentation. Ambal Isle now farther from his grasp than ever. Duissane, a girl who had worked a curious enthrallment upon him, had now fixed her ambitions upon the aristocracy, and Glinnes, previously only lukewarm, now roiled at the thought of Duissane in another man’s bed.
Two days after the catastrophic game with the Kanchedos, Glinnes rode the ferry into Welgen to find a buyer for twenty sacks of his excellent Rabendary musk-apples, a matter soon arranged. With an hour to wait for the return trip, Glinnes stopped for a bite of lunch at a small restaurant half indoors, half out under the shade of a fulgeria arbor. He drank a pot of beer and gnawed at bread and cheese, and watched the folk of Welgen move about their affairs… Here passed a group of true Fanschers sober young folk, erect and alert, frowning into the distance as if absorbed in concepts of great portent… And here came Akadie, walking quickly, with his head lowered, his Fanscher style jacket flapping out to the sides. Glinnes called out as he passed, “Akadie! Drop yourself in a chair; take a pot of beer!”
Akadie halted as if he had struck an invisible obstruction. He peered into the shade to isolate the source of the voice, glanced over his shoulder, and ducked hastily into a chair beside Glinnes. His face was pinched; his voice when he spoke was sharp and nervous. “I think I’ve put them aside, or Iat least I hope so.”
“Oh?” Glinnes looked along the way Akadie had come. “Who have you put aside?”
Akadie’s response was typically oblique. “I should have refused the commission; it has brought me only anxiety. Five thousand ozols! When I am dogged by avaricious Trevany awaiting only a moment of carelessness. What a farce. Thet can take their thirty million ozols, together with my paltry five thousand, and fabricate the most expensive bum-stopper in the marveling memory of the human universe.”
“In other words,” said Glinnes, “you have collected the thirty million ozols ransom?”
Akadie gave a peevish nod. “I assure you, it is not real money; that is
to say, the five thousand ozols which becomes my fee represents five thousand spendable ozols. I carry thirty million ozols in this case”—here he nudged a small black case with a silver clasp—“but it seems like so much wadded paper.”
“To you.”
“Precisely.” Akadie peered over his shoulder once again. “Other folk are less adept in abstract symbology, or more accurately, they use different symbols. These tokens to me are fire and smoke, pain and fear. Others perceive an entirely different set of referrents: palaces, space-yachts, perfumes and pleasures.”
“In short, you fear that the money will be stolen from you?”
Akadie’s nimble mind had far outdistanced a categorical response. “Can you imagine the vicissitudes liable to the man who withheld thirty million ozols from Sagmondo Bandolio? The conversation might go in this fashion: Bandolio: ‘I now require of you, Janno Akadie, the thirty million ozols entrusted to your care.’ Akadie: ‘You must be brave and forebearing, since I no longer have the money.’ Bandolio: … Alas. My imagination falters. I can conceive no further. Would he be cold? Would he rave? Would he utter a negligent laugh?”
“If indeed you are robbed,” said Glinnes, “one small benefit will be the gratification of your curiosity.”
Akadie acknowledged the remark with only a sour side-glance.
“If I could surely identify someone, or something; if I knew precisely whom or what to avoid…” He left the sentence unfinished.
“Have you noticed any specific threat? Or are you just nervous?”
“I am nervous, to be sure, but this is my usual state. I loathe discomfort, I dread pain, I refuse even to acknowledge the possibility of death. All these circumstances now seem to hover close.”
“Thirty million ozols is an impressive sum,” said Glinnes wistfully. “Personally, I need only twelve thousand of them.”
Akadie pushed the case toward Glinnes. “Here you are; take whatever you require and explain the lack to Bandolio… But no.” He jerked the case back once more. “I am not allowed this option.”
“I am puzzled on one account,” said Glinnes. “Since you are so anxious, why do you not simply place the money in a bank? Yonder, for instance, is the Bank of Welgen, twenty one seconds from where we sit.”
Akadie sighed. “If onlv it were that easy… Mv instructions are to keep the money ready at hand, for delivery to Bandolio’s messenger.”
“And when does he come?”
Akadie rolled his eyes up toward the Fulgeria. “Five minutes? Five days? Five weeks? I wish I knew.”
“It seems somewhat unreasonable,” said Glinnes. “Still, the starmenters work by the systems they find most useful. And think! A year from today the episode will provide you many a merry anecdote.”
“I can think only of this moment,” grumbled Akadie. “This case sits in my lap like a red-hot anvil.”
“Who exactly do you fear?”
Even at his most fretful, Akadie could not resist a didactic analysis. “Three groups hotly yearn for ozols: the Fanschers, that they may buy land, tools, information and energy; the noble folk, in order to refurbish their flaccid fortunes; and the Trevanvi, who are naturally avaricious. Only moments ago I discovered two Trevanyi walking unobtrusively behind me.”
“This may or may not be significant,” said Glinnes.
“All very well to deprecate.” Akadie rose to his feet. “Are you returning to Rabendary? Why not ride out with me?”
They walked to the dock and in Akadie’s white runabout set off eastward along the Inner Broad. Between the Lace Islands, across Ripil Broad they sped, past Saurkash, then along narrow Athenry Water and out upon Fleharish Broad, where they observed a rakish black and purple craft darting back and forth at great speed.
“Speaking of Trevanyi,” said Glinnes, “notice who joyrides with Lord Gensifer.”
“I noticed her.” Akadie thoughtfully stowed his black case under the stern seat. Lord Gensifer drove his boat through a sportive caracole, projecting a long feather of spume into the air, then rushed hissing forward to overtake Akadie and Glinnes. Akadie, murmuring an objurgation, allowed his boat to coast to a standstill; Lord Gensifer drew up alongside. Duissane, wearing a charming pale-blue gown, glanced sidewise with an expression of sulky boredom but made no other acknowledgment. Lord Gensifer was in one of his most expansive moods. “And where are you bound this lovely afternoon, with such a pair of hangdog looks about you? Off to rob Lord Milfred’s duck preserve, or so I’d wager.” Lord Gensifer here made waggish allusion to an ancient joke of the district. “What a pair of rogues, to be sure.”
Akadie replied in his most polished voice. “I fear we have more important concerns, beautiful day or not.”
Lord Gensifer made an easy gesture to signify that the course of his little joke was run. “How does your collection progress?”
“I took in the last moneys this morning,” said Akadie stiffly. The subject was clearly one he did not care to pursue, but Lord Gensifer tactlessly continued. “Just hand me over a million or two of those ozols. Bandolio would hardly feel the difference.”
“I’d be pleased to hand you over the whole thirty million,” said Akadie, “and you could settle accounts with Sagmondo Bandolio.”
“Thank you,” said Lord Gensifer, “but I think not.” He peered into Akadie’s boat. “You really carry the money about with you, then? Ah, there in the bilge, as casual as you please. Do you realize that boats sometimes sink? What would you say then to Sagmondo the Stern?”
Akadie’s voice cracked under the strain of his displeasure. “The contingency is most remote.”
“Undoubtedly true. But we’re boring Duissane, who cares nothing for such matters. She refuses to visit me at Gensifer Manor—think of it! I’ve tempted her with luxury and elegance; she’ll have none of it. Trevanyi through and through. Wild as a bird! You’re sure you can’t spare even a million ozols? What about half a million? A paltry hundred thousand?”
Akadie smiled with steely patience and shook his head. With a wave of his hand Lord Gensifer pulled back the throttle; the purple and silver boat lunged forward, swept around in a slashing arc and drove north toward the Prefecture Commons, the heel of which closed off the tip of Fleharish Broad.
Akadie and Glinnes proceeded more sedately. At Rabendary Island, Akadie chose to stop ashore for a cup of tea, but sat on the edge of his chair peering first up Ilfish Way, then across Ambal Broad, then through the row of pomanders which screened Farwan Water. These, with their tall waving blades, created a sense of furtive motion which made Akadie more nervous than ever.
Glinnes brought forth a flask of old wine to soothe Akadie’s apprehension, with such good effect that the afternoon waned into pale avness. At last Akadie felt obliged to go home. “If you like you can accompany me. Truth to tell, I’m a trifle on edge.”
Glinnes agreed to follow Akadie in his own boat, but Akadie stood rubbing his chin as if reluctant to depart. “Perhaps you should telephone Marucha and let her know that we are on the way. Inquire also if she has noticed unusual circumstances of any sort whatever.”
“Just as you like.” Glinnes went to make the call. Marucha was indeed relieved to learn that Akadie was on his way home. Unusual circumstances? None of consequence. Perhaps a few more boats in the vicinity, or it might have been the same boat passing back and forth. She had barely noticed.
Glinnes found Akadie on the end of the dock, frowning up Farwan Water. He set off in his white runabout and Glinnes followed close behind, all the way to Clinkhammer Broad, clear, calm and empty in the mauve gray light of evening. Glinnes saw Akadie safely to the dock, then swung about and returned to Rabendary.
Hardly had he arrived home before the telephone gong sounded. Akadie’s face appeared on the screen with an expression of lugubrious triumph. “It went exactly as I had expected,” said Akadie. “There they were, waiting for me behind the boathouse four of them, and I’m sure Trevanyi, though they all wore masks.”
“What
happened?” Glinnes demanded, for Akadie seemed intent on arranging his tale to the best dramatic effect.
“Just what I expected; that’s what happened,” snapped Akadie. “They overpowered me and took the black case; then they fled in their boats.”
“So. Thirty million ozols down the chute.”
“Ha hah! Nothing of the sort. Only a locked black case packed with grass and dirt. There will be some sorry Drossets when they force the lock. I say Drossets advisedly, for I recognized the peculiar stance of the older son, and Vang Drosset’s posture is also characteristic.”
“You mentioned—four?” Akadie managed a grim smile. “One of the thugs was somewhat frail. This person stood aside and kept a lookout”
“Indeed. Then where is the money?”
“This is why I called. I left it in the bait-box on your dock, and my forethought was amply justified. What I want you to do is this. Go out on your dock and make sure there are no observers. Take the foil-wrapped packet from the box and carry it inside your house, and I will call for it tomorrow.”
Glinnes scowled at Akadie’s image. “So now I’m in charge of your confounded money. I don’t want my throat cut any more than you. I fear I must charge you a professional fee.”
Akadie instantly emerged from his preoccupation. “How absurd! You incur no risks. No one knows where the money is—”
“Someone might make a thirty million ozol guess. Don’t forget who saw us together earlier today.”
Akadie laughed somewhat shakily. “Your agitation is excessive. Still, if it gives you comfort, station yourself with your hand-gun where you can watch for trespassers. In fact, this is perhaps the judicious course. We’ll both feel better for the vigilance.”
Glinnes stuttered in indignation. Before he could speak, Akadie made a reassuring gesture and dimmed the screen.
Glinnes jumped to his feet and strode back and forth across the room. Then he brought forth his hand-gun, as Akadie had suggested, and went out on the dock. The waterways were empty. He made a circuit of his house, walking wide around the prickleberry bushes. So far as he could determine, there was no one on Rabendary Island but himself.