The Left Hand of God

by Paul Hoffman

  “Riba, this is Mademoiselle Jane Weld, my niece. She is going to be looking after you for the next few days.”

  Mademoiselle Jane, still boggled, nodded slightly. Riba just smiled nervously.

  “Albin. Would you wait outside with Riba while I have a word with Mademoiselle Jane?”

  Albin ushered Riba outside and closed the door. Vipond looked at his startled niece.

  “Close your mouth, Jane. The wind may change and you’ll have to stay like that.”

  Mademoiselle Jane’s mouth shut with a snap that was almost audible, only for her to open it again almost immediately.

  “Who on earth was that creature?”

  “Sit down and listen and for once try and do as you’re told!”

  Resentfully Mademoiselle Jane did so. “You are to befriend Riba and to get her to tell you again everything she has already told me and anything else. Write it down and send it to me, omitting no detail, however trivial or strange . . .” He looked at the young girl. “And it will be strange.

  “When you have heard her story, you will see if she can be trained to keep quiet about it and pretend she comes from the Southern Isles or some such. She has manners enough of her own, but you will teach her ours. Perhaps if she does well, she will make a personal maid or even a companion.”

  “You expect me to train a maid?” said Mademoiselle Jane indignantly.

  “I expect you to do whatever I tell you. Now get out.”

  13

  Redeemer Stape Roy, pathfinder of the southern hunting party, rode into Memphis having left his hundred men and dogs in a town thirty miles away, his mind as uneasy as at any time in his life. This unease was no mean thing, given that Stape Roy had undergone many hellish experiences, and caused a fair number too. But now as he approached Kitty Town, he felt he was coming as close to hell itself as could ever be found on earth. As he approached the gaudily lit entrance to the nightmarish suburb of Memphis, he stopped, got down off his horse and led him the last few yards. Even this late there were still tourists and locals streaming past the guards, who ignored most, searched some.

  “You can’t bring that in here,” said one of the guards, gesturing to the horse. “Are you armed?”

  To the teeth, thought Stape Roy. “I don’t want to come in. I have a letter for Kitty the Hare,” he said.

  “Never heard of him. Now bugger off!”

  Slowly, watched intently by the guards, Stape Roy reached into his saddlebags and brought out two purses, one much bigger than the other. He reached out with the smaller one. “This is for you to share. The other one is for Kitty the Hare.”

  “Hand them over. I’ll see he gets them.” The guards, five of them, huge and carefully chosen for their lack of charm, began to move to encircle Stape Roy. “You come back tomorrow or, better still, the day after.”

  “I’ll keep my money till then.”

  “No. I don’t think so,” said the guard. “It’ll be safe with us.”

  He moved toward Stape Roy as quickly as any man of twenty stone could and reached for the money. Stape Roy seemed to have given in. His shoulders sagged as if in utter defeat. Then, as the guard pushed him in the chest, he simply folded his own hands across the guard’s and pushed them down. There was a not particularly loud crack! and a scream of agony as the guard fell to his knees. The others, taken aback at the suddenness of this, now rushed forward. But they had hardly moved when they saw that Stape Roy was holding a shortsword point at the guard’s neck. The scream from the guard to tell them to step back was hardly necessary.

  “Now bring me someone in authority and be quick about it. I have no intention of staying in this cesspit any longer than I have to.”

  Twenty minutes later Stape Roy was sitting in an anteroom, and despite the fact that it was one of the most pleasant rooms he had ever been in—lined with cedar and sandalwood, it spoke of rich simplicity and smelled of something so subtle and easing to the senses he considered trying to cut some of it out and take it with him—he remained uneasy. Not because of the fight at the gates of Kitty Town but because of what he had seen after he had been allowed inside. The man who had supervised the massacres at Odessa and Polish Wood, notorious even in the roll call of malice that characterized the wars in the Eastern Breaks, was unnerved by the things he had seen in the last few minutes. Then a door opened at the far end of the room and an old man stepped forward and said politely, “Kitty the Hare will see you now.”

  Even as the door slid open, a curious odor wafted toward him. It was only slightly unpleasant and even sweet, though a sweetness that raised the hairs on Stape Roy’s neck. He was certain he had never smelled it before, and yet something was warning Stape Roy, something was signaling and making him uneasy for all his vicious courage. Already deeply upset by the scenes in Kitty Town, he walked toward the door and then the old man, staying in the anteroom, closed it behind him.

  The room was dark but carefully lit so that the floor was easy to see. Above waist height nothing was properly visible except as the dimmest shape. There was someone sitting at a desk in the center of the room, but it was as if that person were made of shadow.

  “Please make yourself comfortable, Redeemer.”

  That voice. It was like nothing he had ever experienced. There was no cruel edge, no hissing sibilance of malice, no threat or menace, all tones of voice he was familiar with time out of mind. This was like the cooing of a dove, a sighing note as if of great sadness, a deep mewling. It was, by some way, the most horrible thing he had ever heard. The sound seemed to resonate in his stomach like the deepest unheard note of the organ in the great cathedral at Kiev. He felt that he was going to be sick.

  “You do not look well, Redeemer,” cooed the voice. “Would you care for water?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  The voice of Kitty the Hare sighed as if deeply worried. It was, to Stape Roy, like being kissed by something unimaginably foul.

  “To business, then.”

  It took all of the Redeemer’s strength of purpose to answer, a strength of purpose proved many times in the burning of apostates and the general slaughter of the innocent.

  To breathe deeply did no good. There was only more of that horrible smell of sweetness.

  “It is true,” said Kitty the Hare, “that the four young persons you are looking for are being kept in Memphis.”

  “Can you reach them?”

  “Oh, Redeemer, anyone can be reached. You want them brought out alive?”

  “Can you do that?” Poor Stape Roy could barely stop himself from fainting.

  “I do not choose to, Redeemer. It does not suit, you see.”

  Then he made a sound that might have been a gentle laugh, or might not. The door opened and the old man who had ushered Stape Roy in said, “If you come this way, Redeemer, I will finish our business.”

  Ten minutes later and still green around the gills, Redeemer Stape Roy was recovering from his horrible interview with Kitty the Hare.

  “Are you feeling better, Redeemer?” asked the old man. Stape Roy looked at him.

  “What kind—”

  “Do not ask questions that might be considered offensive,” interrupted the old man. “To be insulting about that kind of thing in this place is unwise.” The old man took a deep breath. “This is the score. You wish us to remove these four persons from the old city. This is possible, but it will not be done, because it will interfere with interests very close to our hearts.”

  “Then I will leave and inform my master. He insists on hearing bad news immediately.”

  “Don’t be unreasonable, Redeemer,” said the old man. “More haste, less speed. We will keep an eye on them. At some time they must leave the city. We will let you know. Then as a gesture of goodwill we will return them to you unharmed. This is a promise.”

  “How long?”

  “As long as it takes, Redeemer. We will do as we say—but let me be clear. If you make any attempt to take them yourselves, Kitty the Hare will c
onsider this an attack upon his interests.”

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Come in.”

  It opened and two guards entered. “These men will escort you to the gates of Kitty Town. Your horse has been fed and watered as a gesture of our good intent. Good-bye.”

  As Redeemer Stape Roy emerged from the building, the air of Kitty Town hit him like a blow to the face. The noise! The people! He felt like a blind man whose first sight was of the rainbows of hell, a deaf man whose hearing is restored to the sound of the end of the world. There were bawlers with their loozles, mawleys with their ya-yas hanging out for all to see; there were benjamins in jemimas calling out, “Yellow, come and get get.” There were burtons and their naked pikers, middlemen calling for agony, aunts with their bung nippers covered in rouge and shouting for a half-and-half. There were Huguenots selling bum-baileys to the highest bidder and nutty lads with long tongues looking for a pigeon in a packet of two.

  Struck by horror and stunned into immobility, Redeemer Stape Roy suddenly let loose a cry of utter loathing and disgust. Then, to the astonishment of the two guards escorting him, he took to his heels and ran his scorched soul to the gates of Kitty Town and out into the night.

  Thirty miles from the last village protected by Memphis, IdrisPukke sat in a ditch and was rained on. There was nothing dry with which to light a fire, and even if there had been, it was too dangerous to do so. All he had eaten in the last twenty-four hours was half a potato, and one slimy with rot at that. How had a man who had commanded three armies, had the ear of kings and emperors, disgraced almost an entire generation of the beautiful daughters of the Nabob of this, the Satrap of that—how had he come here, to this? A good question, but one to which IdrisPukke knew the answer. The luck that most people might push once too often, IdrisPukke pushed on an almost daily basis. He had reaped where he had not sown, been given an inch and taken a mile; he had made six fortunes and lost seven. His nine lives were long ago exhausted. There was no denying his brilliance as a soldier in the field, his wit, his skill at arms and his political judgment admired everywhere in the known world—which is to say everywhere there was a death sentence against him, not including all those places where such matters as trials and sentences were considered tiresome formalities. In short there was no state to which IdrisPukke could flee where he was not liable to be boiled, disemboweled, burned or hanged, and often all four several times over. The greatest mercenary the world had ever seen was now reduced to hiding from one of dozens of bounty hunters and soldiers in a ditch, wet, tired and suffering terrible indigestion after his last moldy meal.

  Twice in the previous month he had been captured and escaped almost immediately. But the real problem was that there was nowhere to escape to. All IdrisPukke had to do was close his eyes to hear the flapping wings of chickens coming home to roost.

  SNAP!

  Without thinking, IdrisPukke was on his knees and scrambling along the ditch as fast as he could go.

  “Torches. Lights. He’s seen us!”

  From all around the blaze of torches lit up the pitch black of the field. But what helped them helped IdrisPukke, and now he could see a cloud of trees thirty yards ahead. He scrambled on, fast as a dog, but slipping and sliding in the mud.

  “There!”

  He’d been seen. As he scrambled on, he could see the light of the torches moving together toward him. Anytime now—the arrow or sword and the agonizing death. Panting, afraid, he scrambled on. Still he was free and moving. He needed to break to the trees. He climbed up the bank, slipping and sliding, and just as he rose above its edge, a blow.

  CRACK!

  He stood for a moment. The world had stopped in a flash of lightning and pain. Then another blow and he was falling back. Before he hit the bottom of the ditch, fetching his head another terrible clout, he was already unconscious.

  When he woke up, a huge, hairy gorilla had both his feet gripped firmly in one hand and was swinging his head casually into a brick wall like a housewife wearily beating a carpet. Then it stopped and the gorilla raised him up, face-to-face, and stared him in the eyes. He knew it was a gorilla because he had seen one at a circus in Arnhemland. This one was much bigger—its breath was hot and wet and smelled of month-old rotting meat, and huge streams of green snot were pouring out of its nose.

  “Still alive, then,” said the gorilla. It was only then, and with some relief, that IdrisPukke realized he was still unconscious and dreaming. Then the gorilla continued lazily to bang his head against the brick wall.

  When he forced his eyes open, the scene around him dissolved and became a farmer’s cart where he was bound, hand and foot, with his head banging against the wooden sidewall with every jolt as the cart moved over rutted land.

  He breathed in deeply to stay conscious and moved his head away into the center of the cart. It was true, he thought: it is nice when you stop banging your head against a wall. Then the pain shrieked back and he stopped being grateful. He groaned.

  “You’re awake, then, are you?”

  It was a soldier and not a bounty hunter, which at least suggested that he had fallen into the hands of people who might want to go through some formalities before inflicting any unpleasantness. That meant a chance of escape. The soldier gave him a swift jab in the stomach with the butt of his short spear. “I asked you a civil question and I want a civil answer.”

  “Yes, I’m awake,” groaned IdrisPukke. “Where am I going?”

  “Shut your gob. They told me I wasn’t to talk to you, not on any account, but I don’t see why. You don’t look like much to me.” And with another jab to his stomach with the spear butt, the soldier sat back and did not speak again.

  14

  What do you want me to do with them?” asked Albin.

  Vipond looked up from his desk and considered. “They interest me. But I think it’s time we squeezed them a little more. I want you to oversee their questioning about the Redeemers. We need to create a better picture of the Sanctuary and whether what the Redeemers are up to has any significance for us. In the meantime put the boys out as apprentices to the Mond.”

  “Solomon Solomon won’t be happy about that.”

  “Good God,” gasped Vipond. “Doesn’t anyone do as they’re told anymore? If he doesn’t like it, he can lump it.”

  “The Mond are an arrogant collection, Chancellor. It won’t be easy for the three of them.”

  “I realize. But I want you to keep a close eye on them. I want to know how they react to their treatment. I don’t blame them for lying to me—I’d do the same in their place—but I want to get to the bottom of this business.”

  And that was how two days later Cale, Kleist, and Vague Henri found themselves in the Square of the Field of Excellence, along with forty-seven other apprentices, watching the same number of young Materazzi aristocrats warming up in front of Solomon Solomon, comptroller of martial arts at the Mond. He was a big man with a shaved head and bad-tempered eyes.

  The new apprentices stood and admired the young men, fourteen-and fifteen-year-olds, as they stretched and eased their muscles on the field. In general their appearance was uniform—they were tall, astonishingly supple, blond and slim. Confidence and self-belief shimmered in the air about them as they stretched their long limbs into impossible contortions or performed one-handed push-ups as if magical engines powered their lithe arms. Forty-seven of the apprentices looked on awestruck, the sons of wealthy merchants who had paid Solomon Solomon a good deal of money to allow mere trade the opportunity to have daily contact with the Materazzi. The late substitution of the three yobs from the Scablands had cost Solomon Solomon more than a thousand dollars a year. This was why his icy heart was very much icier than usual.

  Each of the apprentices had been placed under a different shield of arms, and while Cale had no idea what these were, he could see from the Materazzi warming up near him that each one had a badge on his chest and that they were the same as the coat of arms he could see
behind some of the apprentices. It was a while before he could make out the owner of the badge that matched his own shield. He was like the others, only much more so: taller, blonder, more graceful, stronger. He moved with great speed as he mock-fought several opponents, pulling his blows but still putting each one on his backside. Cale took a few seconds to look back and scan the vast array of weapons for each one of the Mond—half a dozen kinds of sword, short, medium and long spears, axes, as well as several other kinds of weapons he had never seen before.

  “You! YOU! STAND WHERE YOU ARE!” It was Solomon Solomon and he was staring at Cale. Solomon Solomon stepped down from the rough stage filled with combat dummies, from which he had been surveying the warm-up, and marched directly over to Cale, not taking his eyes from him for a moment, until he stood directly in front of him. On the field the warm-up came to a halt as the young Materazzi watched to see what would happen. They did not have to wait long. As soon as Solomon Solomon reached Cale, he fetched him a huge palm-open blow across the side of his head. Some of the Mond laughed in a kind of heartless sympathy, as you might on seeing an athlete take a terrible tumble in a race or a weak boxer walk into a punch that would knock him unconscious for hours.

  Although Cale staggered, he did not go down as Solomon Solomon expected. Nor, as his head came back into line, did he protest or look Solomon Solomon angrily in the face—Cale had too much experience of arbitrary acts of violence and the incomprehensible bad temper of those in authority over him to make either mistake.

  “Do you know what you’ve done?”

  “No, sir,” said Cale.

  “No, sir? You dare to tell me that you don’t know?” This was said with all the pent-up fury of a miser who had lost a thousand dollars a year without an acceptable explanation. He hit Cale again. When the third blow came, Cale realized his mistake. At the Sanctuary, falling down under a blow was only cause for another blow; here it was now clear that the opposite was true. He duly fell to the floor. “In future,” screamed Solomon Solomon, “you keep your eyes to the front, you watch your master and do not take your eyes from him. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”