In Green's Jungles (3 page)

The sun is up, and I should look for another place to sleep. I slept very little last night, Inclito having brought me back here very late, and I having eaten too much of his good dinner. It was the first meal I have eaten since the soup in Cugino's village, I believe, and so I told myself that I would have to be careful, and found that I had not been careful enough when it was too late to do anything about it. Silk told us once that experience is a wonderful teacher, but one whose lessons come too late. I have found that true all my life.

Inclito drove up in a carriage, as I should say, and I got into it with him as soon as I had written arm, still waving the sheet to dry the ink. "You have the bird," Inclito said. He sounded pleased.

I said something about not being able to escape him, to which Oreb himself contributed, "Bird stay!"

"When I saw you at the river you had the bird, but it flew away. I thought I was wrong. It was not your bird."

"I'm his, if anything," I told Inclito, which is the simple truth.

"The people here," he laughed self-consciously, "they think you're a witch. It's because of your bird. They believe these things."

I said that they had been very kind to me, and that although I had been among them only two days I was already very fond of them. "People here enjoy their lives," I explained to Inclito, not particularly clearly, "and people who do are always good people, even when they're bad people."

"They like you too, but your clothes frighten them. The black color."

"This?" I was about to tell him it was an augur's robe, but there seemed little point in saying so.

"They think it means you hurt people if you want to. Your bird's black, too. Red like blood."

"Good bird!"

Inclito smiled. "That's what they hope. A good bird. Witches got pet animals. Cats mostly only not all the time. Familiares. You know?"

He looked at me inquiringly, and I shook my head.

"It means the animal's in the witch's family. Sometimes it's really his father or his mother. Something like that. You think it's funny. So do I. I got a pet too. A horse. Not one of those. He's not my father, just my horse."

I repeated that Oreb wasn't mine.

"You got that white hair, so they think sometimes you hurt people maybe, but bad people." He laughed. "Even if they're good."

I told him that I was too weak and sick to hurt anyone, and that I had no weapons in any case; it was a lie, of course, but the truth was and is that I have no intention of using Hyacinth's azoth.

By that time we had reached the town gate, I believe. It was closed and barred, as he tells me it always is after shadelow, but the guards saluted him and opened it as soon as he reined up.

As we clattered through, he said very positively, "I asked you to dinner because I like you."

Oreb muttered, "Good man?"

I nodded, having no doubts about that.

"You're here. You want to eat? I want to feed you. But there's more."

I said, "I was afraid of that."

"You got no reason. I want our people to see you with me. Then they think you're on our side. So they don't hurt you. What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing," I told him. "In fact, it's very kind of you. I understand the open carriage now, and your driving so that both of us are seated up here."

He laughed again, such a loud and booming laugh that I half expected it to be echoed by the dark fields around us. "I always drive myself. I got a coachman to do the work, but I drive. I like it. I like the open air. I like the sun, the wind."

"So do I, in fine weather like this. May I ask who's on the other side?"

"Soldo and a couple others." Inclito waved them away as beneath his contempt. "We fight like brothers. You know how that is?"

"I've had some experience of it."

"Most towns, they're the only one from wherever they came from up there." He pointed with the whip. "Where the sun goes clear across the sky."

"The Long Sun Whorl."

"That's right. Where you come from, they got any other towns down here?"

"Not on Blue."

"That's right," he repeated. "With us it's different, a lot come. Different landers. The leaders, they're different too. All of us from Grandecitta, though. It's a real big place."

"I suppose it must be."

"Too many for one town anyway. So four. Ours is Blanko. You say you like it. So do I. What I like most, the people run it. No duko. We get together, talk things over, and we decide. There's some people nobody listens to, though. Know how that is?"

"And some who are heard with respect."

"You're a wise man. I know that already. In Saldo they got a duko, Duko Rigoglio. He wants to tell us what to do. We don't like it. He's got a lot of troopers and he's trying to get more. Give them land, huh? Silver. Horses. Whatever they want. He's got a lot. Trouble is, there's not too many for him to hire. You know Silk?" This last was said with an intonation I did not entirely understand.

"I knew him once."

"I see." Neglecting his horses for a moment he turned his head to look at me. "I'm not going to ask you your name."

Thinking of Pig, I asked him to suggest a good one.

"You want me to?"

"Why not?" I said. "You must know a great many."

"Incanto. You like it? Make people like you."

I nodded. "Then my name is Incanto. Did you hear that, Oreb? Pay attention."

"Smart bird!"

"I hope so."

Inclito said, "You want to fight me?"

"No," I told him. "Of course not."

"I don't want to fight you either." He dropped his whip into its mounting, took the reins in his left hand, and offered me his right, which I accepted.

"Then I tell you," he said. "I had a brother with that name. He's dead. He's just a little baby when he dies. My mother, she remembers and maybe she likes you for it. I don't remember. I'm not born then. Only his stone."

"In Grandecitta."

"That's right. We come. The dead, they stay. Maybe not always, though. We read about Silk here, there's a book."

I nodded.

"We think probably he's dead. Then bang!" He cracked his whip over the horses' backs. "This Silk, he's in some town way down south. Mountain town they call Gaon. He's hiring men to fight for him. Troopers. So there's nobody for Duko Rigoglio."

Inclito laughed again, this time softly. "I tell my family, I say, Silk's here, he's come to help us. I don't know how he knows about us, Incanto."

"I doubt that he does."

"You're hurt. Not your eye, newer, under your clothes. Maybe a dog bite, huh?"

I told him it was not.

"Could be a needler."

I shook my head.

"Or a slug, maybe." When I said nothing, Inclito added, "You're a lucky man. Man that's hit by a slug, usually he dies. Silk's like you. That's what his book says. He's not a trooper, but he fights too. He's got a needler, sometimes. Or with his stick." He tapped mine with the shaft of his whip.

"I'm not Silk, whatever you may think. I don't want to lie to you."

"I don't make you, Incanto. You're my brother, but we don't fight." He launched into an account of his military career, which had been extensive.

When we had driven half a league or more, he said, "I want your advice here, Incanto. Your help. Maybe you don't know why I do that."

"I could offer several guesses."

"You don't have to. I'll tell you. I give everybody in Blanko advice. How to train. How to fight. We have the meetings, I told you. It's called the Corpo, when we all come together. They want to know. I reach into my head and I tell them." He gestured, pretending to pull something from his ear. "Now I got no more. It's empty up there. So I ask you."

"Wise man," Oreb muttered, and took wing, soaring over pasture and wood.

I said, "Then my first piece of advice is that you resist the temptation to ask the advice of those less familiar with the situation than yourself."

"Good advice." Inclito clucked to his horses and made a little show of looking thoughtful. "I can't ask your advice about the war in the south? You don't know nothing about that?"

"Much less than you do, I'm sure." Nearly a week had passed since I had heard any news.

"If I was to tell you what worries me…" He paused as the carriage jolted along a particularly bad stretch. "If I was to tell you, maybe I could think better. It's this Silk. Not in the book, a real man."

I agreed.

"He's been hiring troopers to help fight. I said that? He has."

"Mercenaries."

"I knew there was a word. You know something about them, I can see that. He'll win, this real man they call Silk. His town'll win. These mercenaries he hires will have to look for somebody new to collect from. Will he let them keep the slug guns he gives them? He does this in the book, Incanto. You think maybe he'll do it again?"

I said, "I would imagine that most of them have slug guns already. As for those who don't and may be given them, I simply have no idea." It would be Hari Mau's decision.

"They're risky either way, these mercenaries," Inclito mused, "whether they got slug guns or not. You'll say hire them yourself, but they're risky to the one that hires them, too, and we can't. We're not rich."

"Is Duko Rigoglio?"

"Pretty rich." Inclito cracked his whip. "He gets it from his people."

I recalled Councilor Loris's scheme, although I said nothing about it then. "If you can't hire the mercenaries yourself, I doubt that it will prove possible to prevent the Duko's hiring them."

Inclito nodded gloomily.

"You may, however, be able to postpone the fighting until he is no longer able to pay them." With more optimism than I felt, I continued, "As soon as they're in his service, time will be on your side. You said he had enlisted the help of other towns against yours?"

"Novella Citta and Olmo. They're farther than Soldo, and they got dukos or something too. That's one reason."

I nodded to show I understood. "What do they stand to gain if Duko Rigoglio wins?"

"He leaves them alone, maybe. I think they're afraid of him." Inclito pointed with the whip. "You see that hill?"

The night was clear and Green shown bright overhead; there is always something ghostly about an open, rolling landscape by Greenlight, and I believe I have never been more conscious of it than I was last night.

"We can see my place from there. We're going to pull up there awhile and you can look at it."

"Is that the only purpose? To look at your house?"

"I guess I got to tell you." He cracked his whip again, urging the horses to a faster trot, then dropped it across his lap and slapped his forehead. "I'm a fool."

I said, "I have manifold reasons to doubt it."

"A fool thinking I got to tell what you already know. I'm afraid I got a spy in my house. Yes, I am."

"Your coachman?"

Inclito shook his head. "He's a stupid one, so I don't think so." He shrugged and cracked his whip again over the sweating horses. "Maybe he's stupid enough to take the Duko's cards, huh?"

"Maybe he is. Since I'm going to have dinner with you and your family-thank you again for your invitation-it might be well for you to tell me who's in your house and whom you suspect."

"All right." We had reached the top of the hill, and Inclito reined up. "In a minute I'm going to let them walk. It's better for them to walk a little when they're hot like this, not just stand around."

I nodded.

"I got no wife. It's better I tell you that first, so you under stand. When we leave Grandecitta, she came with me. The lander you come on, some women died?"

"Yes. Quite a few women, and some men as well. And more children than all of the men and women combined. Please accept my very sincere condolences, however belated, upon the death of your wife."

Inclito was silent for a moment; then he inquired, "Where's your bird?"

"I have no idea. Scouting out the countryside, I imagine. He'll return when and if it suits him."

"It's better, maybe, that he's gone. That way my mother won't think you're a strego. That's a witch, it's what she calls them." Inclito smiled as he spoke, teeth flashing in his dark face; but I sensed that what he said was to be taken seriously.

"Your mother lives with you?"

He nodded. "I was going to tell who's in the house and who I can trust. So right off, my mother and my daughter. Maybe there's a spy, huh? But if there is, he's not them. You see my house?"

"If I'm looking at the correct one." It was not a single house, but a clutter of low, whitewashed buildings, half screened by a colonnade of graceful trees.

"I got good land when we come." Inclito's broad shoulders rose and fell. "They feel sorry for me because my Zitta dies. Then I help out everybody whenever I can. I help the town in a war, and after a while the corpo votes me some more. I can't use it, it's too far, so I trade with my neighbor. Two for one. He gets twice as much as he gives me." Inclito grinned for a moment. "Not a good bargain I make, huh? Always I'm a easy one when I do these things."

Feeling that I understood, I said, "Was it good land that you got from him?"

"Sure. Just like mine. Over there." He pointed. "What I give, it's not so good. A long way from Blanko, too, so I don't like it."

I said nothing, listening to the stillness of the night and waiting for him to continue.

"Back in Grandecitta we got a wise saying. You must know a lot of them."

"A few, perhaps."

"Mayo,: this is one. We say, if work's a good thing, why don't the rich tak _ it? But I'm a rich man now, and I do. As much as I can, huh?" Inclito rattled the reins and the horses ambled forward. "You still want to know who's in my house? Who do I trust?"

"Yes, if you'll tell me."

"The family is me, my mother, and my daughter. I said that."

"You didn't say that was everyone."

"It is. Everybody that's related to me. There's a friend of Mora's that's staying, vith us for now. Her father's away."

"Mora is your daughter?"

"That's right. Her friend is Fava. She'll be at the table with us. Seems like a nice

"Yet you suspect her?"