“Do you intend to reveal that you signed the contract?”
The Li-Gallant laughed. “I’m not so foolish, Thane. And should it happen that Gunnar learns that I was the signer, it would simply add to the suspicions.”
“It still wouldn’t be wise or prudent to neglect our payment, Li-Gallant.” The Thane stood abruptly, his nightcloak swirling. Vingi started, his eyes wide, and his hands disappeared below the surface of the desk. The Thane could see him fumbling for something unseen there.
“Should I think you were summoning your guards, Li-Gallant, I might take it as a personal affront. I could easily appease my wounded dignity before they could enter.” The Thane hoped he’d taken the right path, had gauged Vingi’s fear correctly. If not—he thrust the apprehensions from him.
“I don’t care for your threats, Hoorka,” Vingi replied, but his hands were now still. “If we were in public . . .”
The Thane said nothing, waiting. In the silence, the sound of a muffled voice could be heard in Vingi’s outer office, followed by a high, clear laugh. It held no threat.
The Li-Gallant brought his hands up and slid a pastel check across his desk. The Hoorka-thane smiled, his eyes openly laughing, and he leaned forward to take the payment.
“Our thanks, Li-Gallant.”
• • •
The Thane walked easily through the streets: easily because the throngs parted before him with an apprehensive glance at the black and gray nightcloak of the Assassin’s Guild. Gray and black: no colors, no loyalty except to Hoorka-kin. The aura of the deathgods hung about him, subtle and menacing, and none cared to taint themselves by approaching too closely to this impassive man. They were used to hardship and death—the people of Neweden, a ghetto world by any standard—but the Hoorka were hardened and deadly beyond the norm. Better they be avoided. That was the consensus.
The check from the Li-Gallant didn’t give the Thane as much pleasure as he’d expected. He had anticipated Vingi’s covert avoidance of payment, the hedging of an angered ruler. But Vingi’s anger had been something beyond the measured and calculating displeasure of a kin’s defense of offended pride, and it wasn’t in the Li-Gallant’s nature to let his ire fester long within himself. He’d exorcize the demon. How, and how would it affect Hoorka? The question nagged at him. Surely Vingi wouldn’t be so foolish as to declare this a matter of bloodfeud between their guilds? Vingi’s kin would die, and that would allow Gunnar’s ruling guild access to vacant seats on the Assembly. No, something more devious.
The populace noised about him as the Thane passed through a market square. Carts loaded with produce were surrounded by shouting buyers while farmers bellowed vaguely-heard prices and boasted of the quality of their particular products. Someone brushed against the Thane’s side and muttered a quick, overly-sincere apology as he darted back into the crowd. Here and there a few flashily – clothed Diplos—members of the Alliance Diplomatic Resources Team—made their way through the milling people, but even they, the aristocracy protected by the offworld power of the Alliance, gave the Thane wide berth. It was, after all, a Neweden jest that even the Dead would part to let a Hoorka pass.
The Thane walked slowly, letting the noise and bustle fade to the edges of his consciousness, thinking—
—the Li-Gallant wants Gunnar dead, and he wants to know whether the Hoorka have sided with his opposition. He’ll find a way to determine if his paranoia is founded in truth or not. But how will he go about it, what can he do?
—and what bothers me? Once I would have reveled in a confrontation like this, would have enjoyed the knife-edge of tension. Now I’m simply tired and unsure—I’d avoid this if I could. Cranmer’s thought: is it time to step aside? Should Aldhelm or Valdisa or someone else be Thane? No. No.
—it’s a fine day. The sunstar shines, She of the Five smiles. But my frown puzzles these people. Do they think I’m contemplating my next contract, that I’m daydreaming of spilled blood and death? And how many of them, thinking my imagined thoughts distasteful, would still advise their kin to come to Hoorka to settle a bloodfeud with another guild?
—I should rest. I’ve been so tired lately. Perhaps Valdisa—but no, that relationship has passed. Too many complications—
He touched the pouch in which the check rode and smiled, forcibly evicting his pessimism. Passersby shook their heads at the evil omen.
The Hoorka smile only at death.
• • •
The Thane was nearly across the market square, in the bluish shadow cast by the spires of the Tri-Guild Church. Just ahead of him, a man shoved his way through the throngs before the Hoorka. The Hoorka could see the wake of the disturbance spreading as people scattered, and in a brief clear space he caught a brief glimpse of the problem. A man without a badge of kinship—a lassari, kin-less and status-less—was shoving aside those in front of him. Then the crowds closed in again, pushing. The Thane saw a blur of blue-and-yellow–tinted flesh as a woman was knocked to the pavement, though he couldn’t tell if it were due to the manic lassari or the pressure of the crowd. He started to walk away at an angle to the welling struggling as a roar of wordless protest began to rise. He kept a scowl on his face, relying on that and the uniform of the Hoorka to make his way.
“Hoorka! I see you!” The shout came as the lassari thrust aside those nearest the Thane and entered the clear space about the Hoorka. The Thane continued walking, ignoring the man—he had a brief impression of frantic, dark eyes and a thin, wiry body clothed in dingy wraps—but the shout was repeated, imperious and commanding.
“Hoorka!”
The Thane halted and turned slowly. From the corner of his eyes he saw the crowd in the square moving to a safe distance from the confrontation, forming a rough circle about the two. The man was armed: the Thane could see the wavering orange fleck of a vibro tip in the man’s right hand, and the Hoorka swept his nightcloak over his shoulder, out of the way of his arms.
“A problem, sirrah?” The honorific was a mockery in his voice. Lassari were not due the respect of those with kin, and his intonation made it clear that he was mocking the man. It was, however, a truism that an angered lassari made a dangerous enemy—they didn’t have the worry of the safety of their fellow guild members. The Thane kept his eyes on the vibro arm, wary.
The lassari was breathing heavily, as if nervous or excited, and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other in a constant motion. The watching crowd moved a step farther back.
“Hoorka!” the man shouted a third time. “You’ve destroyed me. I might as well mumble chants with the Dead. No one talks to me, no one deals with me. Lassari, they say, and spit. Your fault.” The words were slurred, and from the distance of two meters, the Thane could smell the spicy odor of lujisa. The man was an addict, then, and a thief, for only a rich man or a thief could afford the offworld drug. On Neweden, there were no rich lassari. It also meant that he was beyond reason, lost in the false logic of an interior world with few touchstones to the reality around him. Lujisa addicts had been known to attack strangers because of a sudden whim or fancy. Was this such an accidental encounter? The Thane wondered. Then: could Vingi have arranged this so quickly after our meeting?
The Thane stalled, saying anything that came to mind as he studied the man. “I don’t know you. Hoorka-kin doesn’t know you. You’ve mistaken me for another, perhaps? I have nothing to do with you, and I don’t see you, lassari.” He spoke tentatively, watching for any reactions his words had on the man.
“You DO!” The last word was a scream that echoed from the spires of the church. Birds took quick flight from the rooftops and settled down again slowly. The lassari spat on the pavement and shook his head as if annoyed by some insect. “The Hoorka wouldn’t accept me as apprentice. You made me lassari.” He scuffed at the ground. “You did it. You know me.”
“I don’t even see you. And Hoorka chooses its kin as it pleases.” He waited, then spoke again. “I don’t see you. You don’t exist to me, lassari.�
��
There seemed to be nothing else to do. The insult came grudgingly from his lips. The susurrus from the watching crowd held them, as aware as the Thane that there was nothing else he could do. The attack would come, or not: who could tell? Lujisa made for strange behavior, and until the lassari moved, he was trapped. The Thane moved his hand fractionally closer to his vibro.
And as if that action had triggered a reflex in the lassari, the man lunged without warning. The Thane, more out of instinct than intent, stepped back and to one side, his hands reaching for the attacker. The hum of the vibro dopplered past his ear, and the Thane chopped at the man as his momentum carried the lassari past the Hoorka. The lassari twisted in an effort to stop his fall and the Thane’s blow caught him on the shoulder. The Thane pivoted to see the man roll and gain his feet—the crowd retreating frantically as the lassari came near them. The Thane watched the hand holding the vibro and the waist: his training—the training he’d in turn imparted to Hoorka-kin—had taught him that while a person may feint with any part of his body, the hips must go in the direction of movement. The Thane unsheathed and activated his vibro as the lassari regained his footing.
The man’s next charge was unsubtle, lacking any pretense or grace. With a flick of his wrist, the Thane brought his nightcloak over the man’s vibro arm as he cut at him with his own weapon. The lassari screamed in pain as the vibro tip gashed his side. He went limp, dropping his weapon. The Thane kicked it away as the man rolled on the ground, clutching his wounded side. The crowd moved in closer, drawn to the agony.
The Thane shut off his vibro and sheathed it. He was breathing heavily, tired far beyond the little effort he’d needed. He looked down at the moaning lassari. “I had no quarrel with you, no-kin-of-mine. And Hoorka do not kill unless paid to do so. Not even lassari.” He let his cloak fall back around him, and the people moved to give him a corridor through the crowd. Trying not to show his weariness, the Thane walked away, his face forbidding comment.
As he passed from the square into the narrow back streets of Sterka, he found all the vague pleasure of the day gone. It was unusual enough for a Hoorka to be attacked, but this confrontation nagged at him with implications beyond the surface. Had Vingi, or even Gunnar, arranged it, as a way of avoiding a declaration of formal bloodfeud with the Hoorka? Had it been intentional and not simply an accident of timing and circumstance—a whim of Dame Fate?
Lastly—and it bothered the Thane that this seemed important—could he have avoided the fight, could he have eased himself away without knifing the man?
After all, what insult was there to the deranged maunderings of a lassari and lujisa addict?
The questions pounded at him, one with the throbbing in his chest and the troubling wheeze he could hear in his lungs.
He moved in his clear space through the streets. The sunstar sparked lazy motes of dust in the air. Birds foraged for crumbs in the central gutter of the street.
The Thane walked toward the city gates.
Chapter 4
“AT THE CORE OF the Hoorka philosophy, if that’s what this, ahh, moral code with religion must be called, is a shrewd knowledge of Neweden mores and cultural patterns. The Hoorka exist through the practice of guild-kinship—Neweden’s replacement for the biological, nuclear family—and the normal jealousies to which humans are prone. Now; no, make that: Since the advent of the Hoorka, there is an alternative offered Neweden. Rather than calling a formal bloodfeud between guilds and the possibility of carnage that that entails and by all the gods, that’s a clumsy sentence. Umm, cancel and begin program, please.
“The Hoorka function as an alternative to the traditional method of settling conflicts: the bloodfeud. On Neweden, a bloodfeud may become a small-scale war, all perfectly legal. By contacting the Hoorka and signing their contract, a person can fulfill his duty to his kin or his gods for any insult, and still retain his life with his pride.
“The Hoorka price is high, but that fits in with their crude; no, make that”—(pause)—“unsophisticated variation on Social Darwinism: in essence, crude survival of the fit. They contend that wealth is an outgrowth of power and fitness—and yet the victim retains a chance of escaping this harsh justice, for the victim may have ‘survival traits’ that are not tied in with the accumulation of lucre. The odds are never overloaded in the favor of the Hoorka. If the victim isn’t carrying a bodyshield, as an example, the Hoorka will decline to carry firearms or stings in carrying out the contract. This aspect of the code has had a corollary effect: most contracted victims decline to use such technologically-based defenses, relying instead upon speed and stealth.”
Cranmer reached over the desk to switch off the voicetyper and then looked at the words he’d just written. “Anything particularly wrong with that, Thane? It’s simply for my notes. What eventually gets put together for publication will be scattered with a more esoteric vocabulary so that the University people don’t feel their intelligence is being insulted—if they can understand a concept too easily, they think it below their notice.”
“You sound mildly bitter, scholar.”
Cranmer leaned back in his floater and put his hands behind his head. He pursed his lips, eyes closed. “No, just realistic. I’ve been away from it long enough to have an objectivity about the drawbacks of my profession. I don’t care for that much posturing and pretension in anyone but myself.” He grinned. “And that’s a normal human instinct.”
The Thane had been standing near the shield that cut this—Cranmer’s rooms—from the other caverns of Underasgard. Now he moved forward and sat on the bed. Above him, a lamp tinted gold threw light down on the crown of the Thane’s head, so that every line of his face was accentuated. The Thane caught sight of himself in a mirror across the room, and he grimaced. He moved slightly, so that the light struck him at an angle, softening his face. He surreptitiously examined the results, hoping Cranmer hadn’t noticed his vanity. “Wait until we Hoorka go offworld. You’ll have to revise your paper.”
Cranmer frowned. He leaned forward toward the Thane, his eyes questioning. “Thane, in the months I’ve spent with you, I’ve never hedged truths. If the Hoorka do go offworld—and I don’t know that d’Embry’s ever going to allow that—I think you’re going to run into far more trouble remaining consistent than you realize. You’ll be operating under totally different social structures, if nothing else. The code might have to be re-worked to some degree. You’re set up for Neweden, not Niffleheim or Longago or Aris. This planet is the only one of which I’m aware that has such a hidebound caste system—the guilds—and they are what make the Hoorka code work.”
“The code is sufficient.” The Thane shook his head in disagreement. Light shifted across his face. “If we start tampering with our structure, making exceptions and addendums here and there, what will distinguish us from common criminals? No,” he said emphatically, “I’ve thought of this before. I don’t see where the structure of any other society will be so alien that the code would fail.”
“I’m not suggesting that the code become fluid.”
“That’s good. Then perhaps you do understand Hoorka.”
“Do the two of you do nothing but argue all day?” Both men turned to the doorshield to see Valdisa standing there, a gentle smile on her face, her hands on her hips in mock disgust. Short dark hair frothed the side of her thin, finely-featured face and neck. A nightcloak was clasped around her shoulders, masking her figure.
“Come in, m’Dame,” the Thane said. She nodded. Her lithe, athletic body moved with a grace that the Thane remembered with pleasure and envy. She sat on the foot of the bed, near the Thane.
Cranmer had sat back in his floater again, half-reclining, his head staring at the ceiling. “I was informing our revered Thane that sometimes the creation has to transcend the creator—my old line, I realize—but all things are subject to modification, if they want to survive.”
Valdisa laughed, a crystalline sound. “Not a philosophy that would appeal to h
im, neh?” She placed a cool hand briefly over the Thane’s, then withdrew it. The Thane glanced at her; she smiled in return.
“Or to most Hoorka, I would hope.” The Thane chuckled to show that he was jesting, but he was remembering Valdisa’s hand. “Cranmer’s simply caught up in a vision of the perfect thesis, neatly bound and impervious to logic.”
“And life isn’t definable in terms of a thesis, then? Gods, my colleagues will be profoundly disappointed to hear that. They’ll mull it over for a year and then write a paper on it. Smash their entire concept of reality . . .” He thumped the voicetyper for emphasis. The three of them laughed. Cranmer looked from Valdisa to the Thane. He shoved the floater back from his desk and stretched his arms out, fingers interlocked. Joints cracked aridly, and Valdisa winced.
“I guess I should wander off and see who’s on kitchen duty,” Cranmer said. “Thinking’s hard enough work for us sedentary types—and from the look on m’Dame Valdisa’s face, she has business to discuss. Yah?”
Valdisa nodded, smiling. “And you should take some exercise. That’s a flabby body you carry with you.”
“Would I then stand a chance with you, m’Dame?” Cranmer struck a melodramatically romantic pose.
“Possibly, sirrah.” Over-coyly.
“I’ll see the two of you later, then.” Cranmer, whistling a motet off-key, waved a hand at the two Hoorka as he left the room. Valdisa watched the doorshield close again behind him and turned to the Thane.
“I’ll miss the little man when he leaves us,” she said.
The Thane, looking at the papers neatly stacked beside the typer, nodded his head in agreement. “As will I. I need his objectivity, however galling it sometimes becomes.”
“Well, he was right; I do have business to discuss with you.” Valdisa pulled a flimsy from the breast pocket of her nightcloak. Paper crackled as she unfolded it. “You said to notify you when the next contract arrived. I just received one.” She glanced at the document. “From a Jast Claswell of the Bard’s Guild, to attempt the killing of an E. J. Dausset, of the Engineers.”
Assassins' Dawn Page 5