Kregen is a harsh and cruel world for all its beauty, and there a man must protect his own, a woman protect her own. I had done precious little of that, lately, but I had supreme confidence in my Delia. She, at the least, would give me firm assurance that I did the right thing in thus helping to protect this unknown Zairian girl, this Lady of the Stars.
I felt sure I was right in this, and yet could give no real reason to myself. I have tried to explain as best I can the effect this maiden had on me, and although I intended to knock Gafard on the head when I could get him and the king together with a voller, I fancied I’d think of her as I hit him.
One night I went on duty earlier than usual, because I was fretful and wanted to get away from some of the diffs of the squadron who were playing dirty-Jikaida (a game I do not care for), and so I wandered along by the wall thinking of Delia and all manner of distant dreams. The guardroom door was open and I went in and almost stumbled over the body of young Genal the Freckles. His neck had been cut open.
The longsword was in my hand, a brand of fire in the torchlight.
The inner door to the off-duty room was shut and logs jammed it.
Three men in black swung about as I stumbled. They lunged at me. I shouted before I bothered to deal with them.
"Guards! Guards! To the tower! Treachery!" Then the blades met and rang in a glitter of steel. These three were good and they used Genodders. They would have had me, but I whipped out the shortsword and with that in my left hand fended a little, foining as I would with rapier and main-gauche. With a longsword and a shortsword this is not easy; but the second man dropped with the longsword slicing his throat out, and the third man screeched and tried to run as I chopped him as he turned.
The first man was clawing up from the floor, the shortsword still transfixing his throat where I had hurled it. He collapsed in blood and then Grogor burst in from the courtyard.
"Aloft, Grogor!" I bellowed.
We kicked the logs away and the men inside, alerted by the scuffle and baffled by the jammed door, poured out. In a living tide of fury we went up the stairs. The fight was not long. The kidnappers had posted three of their number to watch the guardroom and sent three aloft. We had no mercy on them. We did not wish to hold them for questioning. We knew who had sent them.
I did not see my Lady then, for she had taken her dagger and gone to her private rooms beneath the roof. We caught the kidnappers, but not before they had slain a beautiful numim maiden, her glorious golden fur foully splattered with her own blood. I cursed. When we trooped downstairs again, assured by an apim girl, a handmaiden to my Lady, that all was well, we took the three bodies and disposed of them along with the first three.
Gafard, livid, twitching, raced up the stairs without a word. He came back furious. I wondered what he would do. I knew there was nothing he could do — save send the girl to the king with a handsome note, a gracious gift.
"This is becoming expensive for the king," he said.
That was all.
I think I admired him then, as much as ever I’d done.
We kept the guard even more alert after that.
Three days later I had occasion to go into Magdag on an errand for Gafard. This was all a part of my duties as his aide. He was ordering a pearl necklace of many strands, an enormous pearl choker for his lady, and I was to deliver gold for the fittings and clasps. He trusted me in this.
The souks of Magdag are strange places, filled with all the clamor one expects of markets where all is bustle, but yet completely lacking the bright, cheerful sounds of markets in Sanurkazz. Dour people, the folk of Magdag, resting on a slave foundation for labor, giving orders and whipping and shouting "Grak!" and taking the profits for themselves. They have this marvelous way with dressed leather, as I have said, although the best leather comes from Sanurkazz. I found the jewelers’ arcade and the right shop, with its barred windows and narrow door, and transacted my business. Awnings stretched out overhead and the suns’ glare was muted into gentle saffron and lime and pink. The sounds of the souks penetrated in a buzz. The walls were yellow and bright, but few vines or flowers grew, where in Sanurkazz in such a place the whole area would have rioted in blossom.
I came outside, bending my head to duck under the low Magdaggian door, and a dagger presented its point to my throat, a hand gripped my arm, and a voice said, "We mean you no harm, dom. Just come quietly with us."
In the normal course of events I would not have abided this. To slide the dagger was not all that easy, for the point pricked just above my Adam’s apple; but I did so, anyway, and kicked in the direction of the voice as I gripped the hand and twisted up and back.
Then I was outside the door, dragging one screaming wretch over the stones, seeing another reeling away — most green and bilious and vomiting — and staring at a third who held a crossbow spanned and loaded and pointing at my guts.
"We said we would not harm you, Gadak. We are on the business of a man you would do well to heed. You will come with us."
A fourth man, dressed like the others in the usual green and white robes with tall white turbans, approached and bent to say in my ear: "You are an onker! This is king’s business."
The moment he spoke I saw the next few burs in all clarity — and damned awful they would be, too.
If I had been recognized — but this was very much an outside chance. As we went along the crowded streets where it would have been easy for me to slip away, I did not do so. I had already convinced myself that scar-faced Golitas had recognized me only because of the stark illumination as I’d climbed up into the voller. The corner of the eye and the quick, illuminating flash can often reveal far more than the long stare. So, as I went along, I wetted and pulled my moustaches down even more into that ugly soup-straining fungus the Magdaggians think of as proper moustaches. No — I did not think the king wished to see me because I had been recognized as the arch-enemy of Magdag, the notorious Krozair, Pur Dray.
In that — about the king seeing me — I flattered myself.
Everything was conducted in the chilling, efficient way of machine governments. The house to which I was conducted was not a villa, not a hovel. It was nowhere near the king’s palace. The king would not dirty his hands with the details of his desires. The man who told me what he wanted me to do was puffy and limp-fingered, with a green-swathed paunch, bloated eyes, and moustaches so long and thin and black I felt he could tie green ribbons in each side.
He did not condescend to tell me his name; he told me I might call him
gernu,
and if that was not sufficient, when I received my pay I might address him as Nodgen the Faithful.
It did not take a genius to understand what these cramphs wanted.
I was to arrange to open the guardroom doors, to arrange to let the kidnappers in, and this time when we jammed the door we would stand guard with more spirit and at a proper time. Of course, this Nodgen the Faithful had no idea of what had happened to his party of kidnappers. I told him, simply, they had all been slain.
"Then this time it is your neck, Gadak. We know you, renegade. You will sell your ib for an ob."
I might sell my soul for a penny — but not on Earth or Kregen.
"And young Genal the Freckles? Will you serve me as you served him after I open the door, as he did?"
"He was an onker. He would have talked."
"And I will not?"
He looked annoyed. I realized I had best not pursue that line too far, otherwise he would release me from the contract prematurely — with a free passage to the Ice Floes of Sicce. So I agreed. They had a lever.
"If you betray us, be very sure you will end up on the oar benches, pulling your guts out in a swifter, flogged . . . you will not relish that, I assure you."
"How would you know?" I began to say. I did not add, as I would have done were I not meditating great, evil joy, "You fat slug!"
We agreed terms. Fifty golden oars. A large sum. I managed to get them to give me ten golden oars on account. No doubt they thought they would take them back from my dead body after I had opened the doors to them. Arrangements were made, the day was set, three days’ time, and I was taken away and left in the souk. It would be useless to return to the house. That was a mere convenient place to meet; the owners were probably bound and gagged in the cellars. I returned to Gafard’s Jade Palace. As I went in I glanced up at the Tower of True Contentment. I did not smile. But I thought of my Lady.
Any man would do anything for the king to escape the galleys.
What was a mere slip of a girl besides my freedom to pursue my quest in the Eye of the World, to return to Delia?
Would not any sensible girl rejoice in the wealth and luxury the king would heap on her in return for her favors? The princess Susheeng was out of Magdag, visiting friends in Laggig-Laggu to the west. The king had a free hand. Would not any girl leap at the chance to become the king’s favorite, and use her wits to keep her head on her shoulders when he tired of her? Wouldn’t any beautiful girl of spirit leap at the chance?
I thought of the very real affection I knew existed between Gafard and the Lady of the Stars, an affection I fancied to be as true a love as any man and woman could be happy and fortunate enough to find on Kregen.
They loved each other. Whether or not Gafard deserved the love of so fine a lady I cared not. She wanted him. He might want her; that did not count. What she wanted mattered.
The king must be an onker of onkers to imagine he could tame so free and fiery a spirit as hers!
"It is him! I know! Pur Dray, the Lord of Strombor!"
I, Gadak the Renegade, spat juicily on my harness and laid into it with a will with the best polishing cloth. Tack and gear lay spread about on the old sturm-wood table. Others of the men in the loyal squadron likewise polished and spat, spat and polished. We all felt we needed to look smart when the hired kidnappers of the king came calling.
Gafard had smiled that smile of his that was nowhere ironic but all grinning leem-grin.
"So you come to me, Gadak, knowing the king very likely can send you to the galleys?"
"If that is to be Grodno’s will, that is to—"
"Aye, aye! And how do I know you have not made another bargain with the king’s man — this Nodgen the Faithful?" Here Gafard curled his fist in contempt. "The conceit of the rast. He gives himself a name that is an anagram of the king’s. Truly, he must he faithful, the cramph."
"I made the bargain I have told you of. I am to do as poor foolish Genal the Freckles did. To put poison in the wine of the guards and to open all doors."
Gafard’s fist made a circle in the air.
"And so ten of my best men are dead, poisoned, and Genal the onker is slain."
"And they will stand a better guard this time and it will be at the mid-time, when no guard changes take place."
As I spat and polished I thought of what Gafard had said, and I did not marvel that he had reached the position he had, Ghittawrer, King’s Striker, Sea-Zhantil. For he had produced a plan that should be foolproof — for a time.
In essence it was simple and brutal.
I was to do all that the fat cramph Nodgen the Faithful commanded. Except, I was not to poison the guards; they would feign sleep and death. But I was to open the doors and then stand well clear.
"You will have men hidden, to slay the black-masks?"
"No." He was enjoying himself. Had the stakes not been my Lady of the Stars, then I know for certain that Gafard would have enjoyed this game of stealth and wits with his king as much as Genod clearly did. "Oh, no! A slave wench will be bought from the barracoon, privately, before she is put on show for all to see. A beautiful shishi. A Zairian captive, no doubt I shall treat her with great kindness. I shall call her my Lady of the Stars. She will think herself most fortunate to be thus chosen by the King’s Striker."
I said, "And this girl will be taken by the king’s men?"
"Yes. If she holds firm to her story, and she is beautiful, the king will be happy. I do not hold it against him as a king, only as a man. He has the yrium, and what he does he does."
So I spat and polished and thought on about my part in this.
I must report in to Nodgen that all was ready for the day.
If there was room for any pity in my bleak old heart I do not think I spilled over much for the girl slave bought from the barracoon and taken straight up into the Tower of True Contentment. If all went well she would be the king’s mistress. If she pleased him, who knew how high she might aim or what her influence might be? Certainly, she would be far better treated than in many of the dumps and dives she might have been bought into.
Of course, if she failed to act her part and the king flew into one of the tantrum rages of which he was so terribly capable she might be strangled out of hand. But then, that was a risk, the risk of death, that everyone runs.
Thinking these and other equally odiferous thoughts on the next day, I made my way to the appointed rendezvous, a wineshop in the Alley of a Thousand Bangles. The gewgaws tinkled in the breeze off the sea, bright and sparkling, cheap and cheerful, and there were many women admiring the bangles and bartering for their purchase. The wineshop lay in a curve of the souk and I waited outside. If there was to be double treachery, I wanted a space to run and swing a sword.
Nodgen sent the same pack who had brought me to him. They eyed me with evident desire to get their own back. I said, "It is all arranged. Give me the poison."
They handed over the vial and refused my request for more gold, repeated their threats, and so strode off, pushing the girls out of the way. I turned and went in the opposite direction out of disgust and so found myself crossing an open area I had scarcely ever visited before, where they sold calsanys. No one loves a calsany except for his stubborn strength in carrying burdens — oh, and, of course, for another calsany.
The animals were quite peaceful, which was useful for the salubriousness of the quarter, and I went quickly along past the auctioneers and the crowds of men — merchants, traders, caravan owners and drivers — making their bids in the quick, incomprehensible ways of auctioneers two worlds over. The whole scene was alive with the movement of commerce and the glitter of money changing hands. The breeze puffed a little dust into the air. I reached to pull up the white scarf.