Unexpectedly, d’Embry broke in, her voice low and steady. “Li-Gallant, you should recognize one thing. The Alliance will work with anyone holding the power of Neweden. It doesn’t matter to us whether that is you, Gunnar, or any of the other scheming little ruling guilds that proliferate here. We’re concerned only with aspects of Neweden that touch upon the Alliance: your exports, your payment for imports, the maintenance of the Port, and your representation on the Niffleheim Council. What is important here, I stress for the last time, is the possibility that the Hoorka have placed themselves in a compromising position of support for one or another of your guilds. If they wish to do so, it’s entirely their choice. It would mean that they would be restricted to Neweden, but that is all—as far as the Alliance is concerned. We would have no further restriction for them.
“Your men fulfilled a contract for the Port authorities, if I recall correctly?” D’Embry’s gaze slowly moved from the Li-Gallant to the Thane. He realized belatedly that the last question had been directed to him.
“We were paid to remove a saboteur. Your predecessor paid with offworld weaponry. The contract was successful, as I recall. Valdisa and d’Mannberg were the Hoorka-kin working that night. Yes, I remember.”
The Thane watched the Regent’s hand—tinted a faint blue as if numbed by cold—go from the medallion to the table. And then the Regent shifted positions in her chair, a slight movement, but so quick and sure that it startled the Thane. It was incongruous in comparison to her slow speech and deliberate gestures, not at all part of the carefully-nurtured image of an antagonistic older woman. It worried him—he wondered how else he’d underestimated her complexities. He’d made the mistake of thinking her two-dimensional, taking her aloofness as shallowness or—at best—indifference. He would have to revise that estimation.
And he realized that he’d missed part of her reply. “. . . considered allowing the Hoorka to accept offworld contracts, but this matter needs to be settled. There are other questions, of course. Can the Hoorka maintain cohesiveness on a larger scale? Perhaps you’ll find you have to limit the contracts you accept, and in that case what would determine acceptance or non-acceptance? The whole question of your integrity would take on a new dimension. Can you maintain the para-military regimentation that seems to be the only thing between the Hoorka and chaos? What would happen when there is no guild structure in which to function? But these questions are to be answered when you are implanted offworld—if that happens—and obviously I can have no real glimmering of that final solution, and have no real interest in it. I won’t be involved by then. So let us first settle this small problem. If the Hoorka can’t function on one . . .” The Regent hesitated, and the Thane saw her swallow the next word. A derogatory adjective? And was that hesitation deliberate also? “. . . small world, then certainly they cannot deal with several.” There was hauteur in that voice, the ingrained superiority of civilization to the rural, the backward.
Duel with her, then. Parry and riposte. But you’re outclassed.
“Our kind aren’t unknown historically, m’Dame, even on the homeworld. Are you familiar with the Thuggee of ancient India?”
“No. And our ancestors were once also barbarians. We’ve progressed beyond that stage, and no one should use them as an excuse.” A pause. “Well, one would hope that we’ve passed beyond our old follies. But I’m not concerned with historical precedent. Your particular, ahh, commodity is useless if it becomes linked to a political cause.”
Touché.
“If I may be allowed a moment,” interjected Potok. He had been slumped deep in the yielding caress of his chair. He spoke from that same ultra-relaxed position, a body seemingly without skeletal support. “I’m closer to the problem in some ways than any of us here. It was, after all, the leader of my guild and my personal friend who was the target of this unknown contractor.”
Looking at the Li-Gallant.
“It is one aspect of your code I would change, Thane,” Potok continued, turning to the Thane. “Why not release the names of the unsuccessful contracts as well as those you complete?”
“The bolt that misses you in the dark can tell you nothing of its owner, sirrah. The code works, and I see no reason to change it. Nothing can be proved. I say Gunnar escaped us, as some contracted victims will do, and the Li-Gallant claims that we let him go free. We can argue the point all day, should we care to do so.”
“That, at least, is true.” Potok slid ever deeper into his chair. His chin rested on his chest. He seemed totally at ease with the room and the situation, and, because of that, certain of his position.
It suddenly seemed ludicrous to the Thane. All of us, he thought, carrying on our pretexts of self-confidence, making sure that our posturings fit the image, that we stay in character. And how many of us are that sure of ourselves and not simply frightened actors? The Regent? Perhaps.
Surely not myself.
Potok spoke again. “My only contribution to this meeting is to state that the Hoorka have not allied themselves with us. I’ll state that under oath, if necessary. The truth is quite the contrary.” His gaze flickered past the Thane. “Our records are open to Alliance scrutiny, m’Dame d’Embry—or to the Li-Gallant Vingi, if it will satisfy his curiosity. I’ve no love for the assassins—my kin-brother was almost killed—but they are fair. I’ll grant them that much. Were I or Gunnar less scrupulous, I might be tempted to say that they had formed an agreement with us, simply because that would discredit them and possibly erase a future threat to my guild, especially when one considers that the contractor is evidently too cowardly to declare an open bloodfeud against Gunnar.”
The Li-Gallant examined his sleeve.
“M’Dame, Neweden wouldn’t allow the joining of our guilds,” Potok continued. “We’d simply unite the other guilds against us and fall. Murder is too easy a solution here; it comes too quickly to our minds, perhaps because it is so simple. No, the Hoorka have nothing to do with us. My words should have some weight with you, Regent.”
There were innuendos, shadows of meaning that colored Potok’s words. The Thane felt helpless amid the possibilities. Does he say those words hoping he won’t be believed, since it’s the obvious way for him to respond if he is allied with the Hoorka? Does he say it hoping that I’ll feel indebted to him and Gunnar, and reconsider their offer? Or be less eager with a future contract? Is it simply that he can’t miss the opportunity of contradicting and hindering the Li-Gallant? He shook his head slightly. Too many possibilities, too many directions.
He had lost any semblance of confidence. It had drained away.
“It does seem to have been an odd time for your kin to fail a contract, Thane, considering the stature of the victim,” reiterated Vingi.
You’re right, Li-Gallant. The thought roared in the Thane’s head. You’re right. Perhaps there should have been no escape, even if it meant violation of the code. (And further inside: No, how can you think that? It was a small voice.) “I would consider that, instead, evidence in our favor,” the Thane said, speaking from habit while the inner fight raged. “Even realizing the consequences, we followed the code.”
“And around we go again?” The Regent let disgust show in her voice. She turned to the Li-Gallant, the medallion on her neck catching the light softly and throwing it back into the room. “You mentioned that you had a thought for deciding this question, Li-Gallant?”
“I did, m’Dame.”
Both the Thane and Potok looked at Vingi, the Thane with feigned nonchalance, Potok with the beginning of some faint alarm that dragged him from the depths of his chair.
The Regent stood, quickly. Her tunic swirled, then settled around her in an unruffled perfection. Light shimmered from the fabric, and the pale yellow-white of the ippicator bone was set like a jewel in the play of light. “Good. Then I’ll waste no more time with these semantic games. Since you’ve managed to fritter away my morning inconclusively, Li-Gallant, I hope your plan bears ripened fruit. I shall be interested in the results.
” She stared at the Thane for a long moment as her hand went again to the ippicator medallion. “If the Hoorka can’t be indicted, perhaps you and I will talk further, sirrah.”
M’Dame d’Embry, in a rustling of glowcloth, left the room.
• • •
Neweden rested uneasily in the twilight. The sunstar, declining with haste from the western sky, laced the horizon with brilliant scarves of farewell—banded azure, green-gold, and topaz bordered by brilliant orange—all drifting to gray as the star became bloated and oblate, a gelatinous mass easing its weight carefully onto the pricking spires of distant hills. The ghost of Gulltopp had its entrance in the east. Lights began to move in the streets as Neweden sought to banish the tiresome onslaught of night.
For Eorl, it was time to return to Underasgard and its eternal night.
Eorl had been visiting his true family—not that it ever seemed to be a pleasant task. In the two standards since he’d joined the Hoorka, they had yet to accept the fact that he had no interest in becoming an artisan like his true-mother (and she for her own part refused to see his lack of talent). As for his true-father, non-guilded himself and saved from the onus of being named lassari because of his true-mother’s affiliations (it was this very law that made it preferable to marry within one’s own guild)—his true-father would sit and watch their arguments without comment, his eyes dulled by too much binda juice. She persisted in viewing the Hoorka as a temporary affectation of her true-son that would, given time and much argument, wither and disappear like a discarded garment.
Such attachment to true-family came because both true-parents-had been offworlders and did not entirely understand the rigors of guild-kinship. It was an onus Eorl had borne through his childhood, having to endure the taunts of Neweden children because Eorl lived with his true-parents instead of at the guild commune. He had not enjoyed that, and he did not enjoy the visits home.
And this day was no different from the others that preceded it. Eorl wondered why he persisted in taking the time. It was a masochistic relationship; he succeeded only in ripping open the crusted skin over the old wounds and in reminding himself of how those wounds had once hurt.
The visits always started off well, a glow of optimism born of distance. They’d avoid the sensitive topics with an uneasy adroitness until all the neutral, dull subjects were laid aside with a nearly audible sigh and someone (it was almost always his mother) would ask about the Hoorka or mention that someone had been assassinated by Hoorka-kin. The voice would suddenly turn archly cruel—had Eorl been involved in that killing?—and mention that it was a fine thing for a person who could have joined a respectable guild to kill another person without personal enmity or a formally declared bloodfeud. And the argument would begin, until mingled pain and anger would drive him from their house.
No, it wasn’t worth the effort. Eorl suddenly realized that he had subconsciously arrived at a decision. This had been the last visit. He wouldn’t see them again.
The thoughts held remarkably little sting.
Shadows raced eastward from the closely-packed buildings, clawing their way up walls or pooling in exhaustion in the streets. Eorl was in Brentwood, a dilapidated section of Sterka with some houses dating back to the Settling. It was reputed—despite the evidence in the scant and spotty Neweden archives—that the first ship had set down here, on what was once a hilly forest. The styles of that fabled period tended toward tall structures with decorative and non-functional facades. Occasionally, one would see a bas-relief with fanciful representations of ippicators or mythical creatures. Grotesques perched menacingly above the street and leered down at the passers-by—across the street from him, Eorl watched one grotesque scamper along the roofline, point, and jeer insults at him. Despite his melancholia, Eorl smiled—not too many of the houses still functioned that well. He gestured at the imp with a fist and the creature fondled itself obscenely and ran to the far side of the building. For the most part, the friezes of Brentwood had cracked and fallen as the machinery failed, and grotesques stared stiffly from their last posture or leered up from the ground on which they’d fallen. Still, seen in evening’s half-shadow, the area had a gothic character that called racial memories from long sleep. Old superstitions seemed to walk freely here—and Brentwood had more than its share of bizarre cults and odd happenings.
But a Hoorka could walk anywhere. The aura of the guild surrounded and protected him. The deathgods smiled on the assassins. They were safe.
The streets were nearly empty—it was too late in the day for the neighborhood crowds and too early for the night denizens. Up the narrow, winding street, Eorl saw a woman pushing a floater across the intersection. Heads grinned and frowned from the floater, several dozen of them—it was a startling moment before Eorl recognized the pallor of their faces as being native stone and the heads themselves as gargoyle carvings. A few youths lounged in a tavern doorway near him, speaking in the tortuously slow syllables of people on a time-stretcher. They scowled—too slowly—as the Hoorka passed; not unexpectedly, since Stretchers made most people irritable. By the time they decided to confront him (Stretchers also having been known to make the user foolishly brave) he had passed them. He glanced back to see one of the youths open his mouth and raise a fist. The air around him seemed heavy—the fist moved ponderously. A wirehead, stumbling by the youths and lost in his own reality, attracted their attention then, and Eorl looked away. The head-carting woman had passed through the intersection. He caught a brief glimpse of her blue dress before houses blocked her from view.
It was not the most pleasant of neighborhoods. Yet he’d grown up here, while his true-mother’s guildhouse had been located in the interface between Brentwood and a richer neighborhood. He’d roamed these streets as a child and then again as the leader of a band of unruly jussar. And then the guildhouse had been moved; while his true-mother followed her kin, he’d offered himself to the Hoorka. They’d taken him.
He knew the area. He enjoyed its defiance of Neweden conventions.
Yet even the most familiar landscapes can hold a surprise.
As Eorl came to the intersection, he heard the low chant of a procession of the Dead. He shook his head in disgust—the mantra was coming from the street he wished to take. Eorl had no wish to waste time waiting for the procession to pass him, and the Dead had an annoying habit of blocking streets completely, knocking down those who stood in their way and weren’t nimble enough to dodge. The chant was louder—they were moving toward him, then. Eorl cursed and turned westward.
He strode into molten sun, his shadow long behind him. He shrugged at his nightcloak, tugging it into place over his shoulders. This street was narrower than the last—he thought he could reach out and touch the buildings on either side.
Eorl scowled, anxious to be home in Underasgard and irritated at the delay caused by the Dead. Their wordless chant pursued him.
There was no transition. One moment he was walking, and the next he saw vague shapes run toward him as his mind shrieked alarm. They came at him from all sides; a flurry of fists and limbs moved in a wash of dying sun. Hands grasped the Hoorka from behind. Eorl went with the attack immediately, planting his feet and pushing backward as he sought the vibro sheathed at his waist. Something (hot? That was his first impression) sliced along his back, followed by a sluggish wetness that was surprisingly without pain. He found his vibro and slashed at the attacker behind him, feeling the comfortable resistance of blade meeting flesh.
(Thinking: how deep is that back wound? How much time do I have?)
A man’s baritone yelped in pain, retreating as Eorl pivoted to meet the others. But his body failed to complete the turn. Sudden white agony arced across his waist and stomach—another vibro—and his face contorted. Eorl doubled over in torture. He tried to keep his footing, to hold the vibro out as a symbolic resistance as they closed in on him.
(How many? Gods, I don’t know. At least let one of them precede my soul when I stand before She of the Five le
t my blood stain their gods it HURTS . . .)
Something blunt and hard struck him from the side and his kidneys screamed. He saw with terrible clarity a hand holding a whining vibro (scarlet in the last rays of the sunstar, shining), watched with open, amazed eyes as it plunged into his stomach. Thick and full blood welled over the hilt and down a long, deadly canyon as the hand wrenched the vibro to the side. Eorl felt himself falling, saw the street slant and then rise to meet him. There were more blows, more stabbings. In the end he no longer felt them, only heard the dulling sounds as the darkness deeper than the coming night closed in around him.
Then even the sounds were lost.
Chapter 11
“WE HAVE VERY LITTLE choice.”
The eternal night of Underasgard: black cotton of darkness angry at being disturbed and held back by glow-torches guttering fitfully in their wall holders. And beyond where the torches glowed and people walked, the darkness spread its feather weight around rocks and slept.
In a room in the Hoorka section of the caverns sat the Hoorka: the Thane, Aldhelm, and a few others seated at a rough wooden table (made by a new apprentice whose true-father had been a carpenter. It was evident from the grinning joints between the boards that he had not inherited his true-father’s craft). Cranmer, as always, sat unobtrusively to one side, watching the meters on his recording equipment as if his gaze would provide assurance that it would remain functioning. Mugs filled with newly-made mead sat like islands in gold-brown ringlets of condensation. A pitcher held more of the drink within easy reach—beads of the liquor ran from the spout to the base. The scent of honey freshened the air.
“We can assume that Vingi will sign a new contract for Gunnar.” Aldhelm lifted his mug, sipped, wiped his lips, then set the mug down again. He wiped his hand on his thigh. “He’ll give us our second chance to kill the man. This time, the Hoorka can’t afford to fail.”
“Even if success means abandoning the code?” asked Valdisa. “You assume too much there, Aldhelm.” She shook her head. Ringlets of dark hair shivered in sympathy.
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