“Yes,” Zefla said, tapping the stylo on the conference table again. “These pieces of modern technology that the Kings purchase every now and again; I take it they have purely symbolic value?”
Travapeth shook his head. “Not even that, sweet lady; they are bought merely to remove any monetary surplus from the country’s economy. This, ah, apparently strange behavior is designed to keep the Kingdom stable by soaking up profit that might otherwise lead to progress and therefore instability. This is the very reason that Pharpech is also known as the Court of the Useless Kings.” Travapeth frowned and gestured with his hands. “This might strike us as a rather eccentric way to rule a state, but I think we have to respect the Pharpechians’ right to run their country the way they want, and certainly one cannot deny that it works; there has been no progress whatsoever in Pharpech for nearly eight hundred years. In its own way, that’s quite an achievement.”
Cenuij made an almost inaudible noise and jotted something in his notebook.
“Of course,” Travapeth sighed. “This practice can be taken too far; I was present in the Kingdom when His Majesty the present King took delivery of his radio telescope.”
“I thought the area was radio-opaque,” Cenuij said.
“Oh, absolutely,” Travapeth said. “And of course there’s no break in the canopy for hundreds of kilometers. But you miss the point, my dear sir. The telescope was not bought to be used; there was nobody in the realm able to operate it and no electricity supply available anyway. As I have related, modern technology—with the partial exception of the guards’ and the army’s weapons—is effectively banned in the Kingdom.”
The old scholar suddenly looked quite sad, and dropped his voice a little. “Even my own modest camera fell foul of this rule after the unfortunate business of the King being thrown from his mount while performing the annual capital boundary riding, during my last visit…” Travapeth seemed to collect himself, sitting straight in his seat and raising his voice again. “No, sir; the King bought the telescope because it cost exactly the amount of money the treasury had to spend and because it was totally useless. Although I believe he did enjoy sliding around inside the bowl for a while, which goes against the letter but not the spirit of the Uselessness creed…But no,” Travapeth said, and came close to scowling. “My complaint is with the site the King chose for his telescope, which was the old castle library; he had the library torn down and all the books burned.” Travapeth shook his head. “Disgraceful behavior,” he muttered into his wine goblet.
Sharrow stared at him, then made a small note in her own notebook, just to be doing something. Oh shit, she thought.
Zefla was shaking her head, making noises of polite outrage.
Cenuij had stiffened. “All the books?” he said, voice hoarse. “Burned?”
Travapeth looked up, eyebrows raised. “I’m afraid so,” he said, nodding sadly. “They went into the castle furnace; coated the whole city in ash and black, half-burned pages.” The old scholar shook his head. “Tragedy, really.”
“Terrible,” Zefla agreed.
“And for the townspeople, of course,” Travapeth said. “As I’ve said; Pharpech experiences rain only rarely, and the roof-tax tends to discourage people from covering the top-most floor of their dwellings, so all that ash made a quite terrible mess.”
“Were any very valuable books destroyed?” Cenuij said. He gave a small smile. “I’m something of an antiquarian book collector in my spare time. I’d hate to think…”
“To be honest, I doubt it,” Travapeth said, nodding to Zefla as she refilled his goblet with wine. “Thank you, dear girl.” He looked at Cenuij. “Pharpech is something of a desert for bibliophiles, dear sir. There is no literary tradition as such; only a very few of the top officials in the Kingdom, a couple of family tutors and sometimes the monarch can read at all. Though, as one might expect, this has led to a rich oral culture. But no, sir; the library was a Useless purchase, bought a few hundred years ago from an auction house here in Malishu; it had belonged to a noble family fallen on hard times.
“All the rare and valuable books had already been sold individually; what the King destroyed was merely the standard collected classics most noble families favor instead of wallpaper to line one room of their mansions, though usually the wallpaper is in more danger of being read. Its purchase as a Useless article was arguably a change of circumstance of only a very limited degree. I very much doubt that the system bibliocontinua lost anything irreplaceable in the vandalistic conflagration. But dammit, sir, it’s the principle involved!” Travapeth said loudly, banging his goblet down on the table and spilling wine over the holos and the patch of table in front of him.
“I couldn’t agree more,” Cenuij said. He made another note.
“As a result,” the old scholar said, dabbing at a patch of spilled wine on the table with the cuff of his robe, “the only book left in the whole castle is probably the one the monarch sits on during the coronation. Whatever it is.”
“Hmm,” Sharrow said, nodding.
“Right,” Zefla said, laying her stylo down. “Tell me some more about these festivals, Ivexton; which ones would you say are the most vibrant, the most colorful…?”
“So what do you think?” Sharrow asked.
Cenuij shrugged and stirred spice into his mullbeer. “I suppose it could be what we’re looking for,” he said.
They sat, all five, in a private booth in a café near the rented office. Miz and Dloan had their route organized; it would involve taking a flying boat from Malishu to Long Strand, a maglev express to LiveInHope, then two slow trains to the Pharpech outlands border, where there was a small settlement they could hire guides and buy mounts in. They hadn’t yet booked any tickets.
“I thought the book had been lost for a lot more than the eight cents since the Ladyrs,” Miz said.
“Anything up to two millennia, depending whose account you trust.” Cenuij nodded. “But that’s just since anybody admitted to owning it. Maybe the Ladyrs stumbled on it when they were dispossessing an uncooperative family or sacking a Corp that hadn’t paid its protection money quickly enough, maybe it had never really been truly lost. Maybe they didn’t know what it was they had—just another old unopened book that might come in handy one day.” Cenuij shrugged. “Anyway, sending it to a coprolite like Pharpech when the anti-imperial heat was on must have seemed like a neat idea at the time.” He supped his ale. “It worked, after all; nobody’s found it, though obviously old Gorko had his nose to the trail.”
“So do we go?” Zefla said. She sucked on an inhalant.
“Well,” Sharrow said, “I don’t see how Breyguhn or anybody else could have set up what happened to Bencil Dornay; the pattern he traced was pretty unambiguous, and it sounds like there is exactly one book in the castle at Pharpech.” She spread her hands. “I think we go.”
“Keeps you out of the way of the Huhsz, too,” Miz said, rolling trax spirit round in his glass. “Caught a recent news report? They’re saying two heavyweight missions left Golter yesterday, one bound for Tront and the other headed this way.”
“I heard,” she said. “At least they sound confused. Any more interesting race winners in Tile?”
Miz shook his head. “Nothing since Dance of Death.”
“How we doing for funds?” Zefla inquired, apparently trying to hold her breath and talk at the same time.
“Fluid,” Sharrow said. “Barely used a third of our allowance. The only drawback is response-time; shuffling the credit trail so it’s difficult to follow. But that shouldn’t be a problem unless we need a lot of cash very quickly.”
Miz held his small glass of trax spirit up to the light, frowning at it. “What sort of funds are we taking to Pharpech?” he asked.
“Cash, gold, diamonds and trinkets,” Sharrow said.
(“This looks cloudy,” Miz said, nudging Dloan and nodding at the trax glass. “D’you think it’s cloudy?”)
“Getting past the border guards m
ight swallow a fair amount,” Sharrow said to Zefla. “But once we’re in, everything’s supposed to be cheaper than dirty water.”
“Which is probably about all they have to sell,” Cenuij said.
“Think that’s what’s in this glass,” Miz muttered, squinting at the trax glass. He held it in front of Cenuij’s nose. “That look cloudy to you?”
“We’ll have to play it by ear regarding the gear we can take in,” Sharrow said. “Apparently it’ll depend what sort of mood the border guards are in.”
“No other way into this place?” Miz said, sniffing at the glass. “Struck me we’re doing all this horribly officially. I mean, I was standing in a holiday agent’s today talking about travel insurance. I mean, travel insurance! Have we really come to this?” He held the trax up to the light again, then waved it in front of Sharrow’s face. “Cloudy/not cloudy; what do you think?” he asked her.
“There are lots of other ways in,” Sharrow said, pushing Miz’s glass out of the way. “But they’re all even more complicated, too dangerous and involve walking or riding enormous distances in the company of people who kill, capture or rob other people as a way of life; the border guards sound like nursery wardens in comparison.”
“I still say a decent pilot could take a chopper or a VTOL in through—” Miz began, still frowning at his glass.
“Well, you try finding a plane,” Sharrow said, “anywhere on Miykenns. Flying boats or nothing; that’s your choice.”
“Yes, Miz,” Cenuij smiled. “I think you’ll find a lot of people felt the same way earlier in Miykenns’ history; that’s why there’s so little cable and membrane clutter around Malishu, and why the extensive Pilot’s Cemetery is such a poignant feature on the sightseeing circuit.”
“I bet I could—” Miz began.
“Something else,” Zefla said quickly, slapping the table. “We are not taking Travapeth.”
“He might come in useful,” Cenuij said.
“Yeah,” Zefla said. “So’s a broken leg if you want to kick yourself in the back of the head.”
“No Travapeth,” Sharrow said, then frowned at Miz, who had taken a small torch out of his jacket pocket and was shining it through the glass of trax spirit.
Zefla sighed. “The old guy’s going to be awfully upset when we don’t make the documentary,” she said. “He was talking about a book tie-in. And he could use the money.”
“He doesn’t think we’re going to get to make the thing anyway,” Sharrow said, brows furrowing as she watched Miz sniff at the trax glass again. “He’s got five grand,” she told Zefla, “for three days of sitting pontificating, flirting like a gigolo and having wine and food poured down him; easiest money he’s ever going to make.”
Miz made a tutting noise and put the trax glass to his ear. He flicked its rim gently with one finger, an expression of deep concentration on his face.
“Oh, give me that!” Sharrow said, exasperated. She took the glass from his fingers before he could protest, put it to her lips and drained it.
Then her face creased into a sour expression and she turned and spat the trax out behind her, onto the age-stained planks of the booth. She wiped her mouth with her sleeve. “What did you do; piss in it?” she asked Miz. “That was horrible!”
“Hell, I knew that,” he said, looking annoyed. “But was it cloudy?” He nodded at the stain on the planks. “We’ll never know now.”
“Oh, stop farting about and go and get us a bottle,” she told him.
“Not if you’re just going to spit it all over the floor,” he said primly, turning sideways in his seat and crossing his arms and legs.
“I’ll get us a bottle,” Zefla said, rising.
“Filthy peacemaker,” Sharrow said.
“Hey, Zef; make sure it’s not cloudy…”
The Entraxrln deep country was sinking into an early-evening purple gloom. The layers of membrane here grew closer and thicker and the trunks and stalks were thinner but far more numerous; cables looped and curved and hung everywhere, strung with great tattered lengths and folds of wind-torn leaf-membrane. There was no longer any real sense of there being ground underfoot; although the undulating landscape resembled a purple downland, it was a landscape in which great holes had been cut and huge suspended skeins of material added; some of the holes lengthened to tunnels and dropped into deeper, darker layers further down, while others narrowed and doubled back, and throughout this bewildering three-dimensional maze great roots and tubes ran, undulating across the maroon layers like huge blood vessels standing out on the skin of some enormous sleeping animal.
The captain stood in the doorway of the guard cabin and watched the group of riders and their pack animals as they plodded off into the slowly gathering darkness along the track to the capital.
The captain pulled on his pipe a few times, surrounding his head with a cloud of smoke.
The guard sergeant struggled up the steps toward the captain, holding two sacks.
“Claim they’re not tourists, sir,” the sergeant said. “Say they’re travelers.” He deposited the two sacks at the captain’s feet. “Not a sect I’d heard of, sir, must confess.” He opened the sacks up. “Least one of them’s dressed proper for a holy man; Order of the Book, he said; wants to try and give the King some books, sir. I told him the King didn’t hold with books, but he didn’t seem bothered.”
The captain stirred some of their booty with his foot. Bottles clinked; he could see the usual collection of cameras, a couple of sets of magnifiers, a civilian nightsight and some cash.
“Two of them were ladies, sir; veiled, they were. None of them fitted any descriptions of undesirables. Guides were known to us; regular fellows.”
The captain squatted down, boots creaking. He poked at a piece of mysterious-looking equipment with the stem of his pipe. The piece of equipment started to play music. He poked it again and it went quiet. He lifted it and put it inside his shirt.
“Quite generous they were, really. It’s all here, sir, naturally.”
The captain reached into a sack and pulled out a bottle, putting the pipe back in his mouth as he weighed the trax spirit bottle in his hand.
“Oh, dear; I wouldn’t touch that one, sir. Looks a bit cloudy if you ask me.”
* * *
She woke in the night. Her backside was sore. The room was very dark, the bed felt strange and the place smelled odd. There was somebody in here with her; she could sense breathing. A rippling blue-gray light flashed, jarring a confusing image of the room across her eyes. She remembered. This was the inn called The Broken Neck on the square beneath the castle; a haven after the long ride on the swaying, cantankerous and rank-smelling jemers and two nights in rough, communal guest-houses in the dark deep country. Cenuij had gained entrance to the monastery hospital while they had come here, to the two best rooms in the inn and suspiciously spicy food and strong wine which had made her fall asleep over the table. Zefla had put her to bed; it was she who was sleeping in the other lumpy bed across the chamber.
Of course, she thought, as another silent burst of lightning flickered through the windows, and she calmed.
I am in Pharpech.
She got out of the massive, creaking, bowed bed with its pile of coarse blankets and two slightly softer sheets, waited for another flash, then with the memory of the room’s image held in her eyes crossed to the tall windows. They had a balcony; she hadn’t thought it looked very safe when they’d first taken the room, but she would trust it. The window creaked a little when she opened it. She stepped outside, closed the window and moved sideways along the bark-clad wall to the cable-branch railing.
The darkness outside made her dizzy. She could feel, even somehow hear that she was in the open air, but there was no light anywhere; nothing from the sky, where the membrane cut out any celestial light, and nothing from—she couldn’t think of this place as a city—the town, either. Her fingers felt for the thin railing and found it, gripped it. Like being blind, she thought.
>
The air was a little colder than it had been earlier; she wore an extremely modest nightdress, and only her neck and ankles felt the breeze. She stood there, waiting for another flash of lightning, frightened of the balcony and the three-story drop to the alley beneath.
The lightning was there; far off in the distance, seemingly half above and half beneath the higher membranes. The light revealed part of the four or five kilometer-wide semi-clearing around Pharpech town, and the nearby composite trunks. The town itself was a half-glimpsed jumble of geometric shapes curving away beneath her.
And there had been something else, half-glimpsed to her right, level with her, only a few meters away. A figure; a person. Her heart jumped.
“Sharrow?” she heard Miz whisper, uncertain.
She smiled into the darkness. “No,” she whispered. “Ysul.”
“Oh, yeah.” Miz coughed quietly. “Your dinner repeating on you, too?”
“No,” she whispered, wanting to laugh. “The lightning.”
“Oh.”
She looked over, trying to see him. Eventually the lightning flared again. He was standing facing her, looking toward her the way she was looking toward him. She suppressed a giggle. “Forgot your jim-jams, huh?”
“Hey,” he said, his whisper close in the utter darkness. “These balconies aren’t that far apart. I bet I could get over there.” He sounded innocently delighted, like a small boy.
“Don’t you dare!” she whispered. She thought she could hear him moving; skin on thin, heat-cured cable.
She stared at where she knew he was, as if trying to force her eyes to see by sheer force of will. Then she looked deliberately away, hoping to see him from the side of her eye. She couldn’t.
“Miz!” she whispered. “Don’t! You’ll kill yourself. It’s three sto—”
Against a Dark Background Page 24
