by Chris Bunch
“Yet there’s no outcry,” I said.
“We are doing our very best to keep the matter hushed,” Kutulu said.
“Why?” Tenedos asked.
“Those are the specific orders of the Rule of Ten.”
“What the hells good does that do?” I said angrily. “Ignoring it won’t make them go away. What the hells will it take — Thak dancing on their gods-damned skulls?”
“Thak?” Kutulu looked puzzled. Evidently the Rule of Ten didn’t even trust their lawmen with all the facts.
Tenedos looked at me.
“Go ahead, Damastes. We can’t follow the Rule of Ten’s orders anymore. The times are far more perilous than any of them … and perhaps we, as well … realize. Tell him everything.”
• • •
The next evening, I was riding to meet Marán when I saw a rider coming toward me. I recognized him before he saw me, and pulled Lucan behind a high-piled produce cart.
It was Elias Malebranche. He wore a hooded cloak, the hood pulled back. He rode close, but didn’t recognize me, since I’d slipped from the saddle and was pretending to examine one of Lucan’s hooves.
As he passed I chanced a look, and saw, above his beard and burying itself into it, the savage redness of a half-healed scar. I’d marked him well.
I wondered where Malebranche was going. We were in a shabby section of Nicias, a route I habitually took to make sure I had no followers. I wondered what devious business he had in this district.
As much as I wanted to see Marán, I knew what my duty must be, remounted, and rode after the Kallian. Of course there’d been several times we’d not been able to meet — the price of a clandestine affair. We’d even developed a device for such an eventuality, and would meet in the same place the following night unless advised otherwise.
His route twisted and turned, but eventually led to the river. We were almost to the ocean docks, as bad a part of the city as existed. I loosened my sword in its sheath, and my eyes darted around the shadows.
The cobbles were loose, and I had to walk Lucan, afraid of making a noise.
Malebranche turned his horse down a narrow alley. I counted fifteen, then went after him.
I could see clearly down the narrow way all the way to the water. But there was no sign whatsoever of the landgrave.
I rode all the way down and out onto the pier at the foot of the hill and back, but the Kallian had completely vanished. I looked for hidden passageways that would permit a horse to enter, but saw none. There was nothing but solid brick and then the dark water.
I was a failure as a spy. I looked up at the rising moon, and my disappointment fell away. I still had more than enough time to meet Marán.
• • •
I held Marán’s ankles stretched apart as we drove together, her body curled up, lifting from the bed, feeling the power of that great warm avalanche growing inside me. She moaned, pulled at me, and I released her legs and lowered myself onto her, her breasts flattened against my chest as her heels pushed against my buttocks, forcing me deeper and deeper into her.
My breath rasped as her body shuddered, shuddered again.
I opened my eyes and looked down into hers, staring at me, staring beyond me, her wet mouth gasping for air, head thrown back in sweet agony.
“Damastes, oh gods, Damastes,” she groaned as her hips thrust, “I … I …”
“Say it,” I said. “Say it!”
“I … oh gods, I love you! I love you!”
“And … and I love you,” I said, the truth as naked as our sweating bodies as the stars exploded in our roaring cry of ecstasy.
Now there could be no turning back.
“Interesting,” Kutulu mused. “Something I did not know about the good landgrave.”
“So you keep track of him as well?”
“Of course. I keep track of everyone that I … or the Seer Tenedos … thinks worthy of concern.”
“But what,” I said, trying a small jest, seeing if there was anything in this precise little man resembling humanity, “do you do for pleasure?”
“Why,” Kutulu said, “that is my pleasure.” He made a note on a small yellow card. His shambles of an office was already filled with a thousand of them.
“I’ll let you know what your friend is about. Assuming, of course, Tenedos approves.”
• • •
At first the city looked as it always had at dawn, but then, as the sun’s rays struck it, I saw it was terribly different. Now each building, each cobblestone, and — most horrible — each tree sent the sun’s reflection flashing back, and I realized the city had changed, had become a monstrous crystal, where nothing human could live.
But then I saw movement in the streets, and there were people, but they, too, had transformed, and the sun sent its rays bouncing from them into my eyes.
Each of them, man, woman, child, carried something stretched between his hands, and when I peered more closely I saw they all carried yellow silk cords.
As I saw them, they saw me.
At that moment, the lake in the center of Hyder Park boiled, and up from it rose Thak!
He saw what his people were looking at, and raised his head and “saw” me. The air shrilled as when a wet finger is rubbed around the rim of a crystal wineglass, but far louder, and I saw the crystal trees shake and the city itself tremble.
Thak took a giant step and another, coming toward me, and his arms lifted.
I woke, shaking. I don’t dream very often, and when I do, it’s almost never unpleasant.
I had to light a lamp, get out of bed, and go look out, across the deserted barracks square for almost an hour, composing myself, before sleep came back.
I knew this dream was more than a dream.
Thak was in Nicias.
And he remembered me.
• • •
“Your Kallian is not behaving as a diplomat should,” Kutulu said. “He has business with people, and in places, no proper envoy should.”
“Have him sent home,” I suggested. “Or, better yet, seized and tried as a traitor.”
“Ah, but then he would be replaced by someone who we didn’t know, and I’d have to start all over again trying to identify Charin Sher’s new agent.
“The practice is for us to let him run his course and then we’ll take appropriate action at the appropriate time.” Kutulu frowned. “That’s assuming, of course, my superiors will listen to me, and the Rule of Ten will listen to them.”
“So that is the way of police work,” I mused. “I’d never be suited for it.”
“Of course not,” Kutulu said. “Until you learn that no man does what he does for the reasons he says he is doing it, and then find there’s frequently yet another, real motive behind even his most closely held beliefs … you’d best remain a soldier.”
I looked closely at the small man to see if he was attempting a jest, but he was perfectly serious.
“At any rate, I’ve discovered where Landgrave Malebranche goes when he visits the docks,” Kutulu went on, “although I haven’t yet followed him all the way to his lair.
“I plan to do so this evening, since he’s not that devious a person, and holds to far too close a schedule. Tsk. He should know better.
“Would you wish to accompany me?”
“I’d like nothing better,” I said. “But won’t I stand out?”
“Not by the time I finish with you,” Kutulu said, and that was how I learned a bit about disguise.
First was finding me the proper clothes. Kutulu sent for a subordinate, and gave him orders. In a few minutes the man returned with a rather soiled uniform from one of the lesser infantry regiments.
“Since you are stamped a soldier, a soldier you’ll remain. But not an officer. No more than … oh, a sergeant The best mask is a partial one, Captain. No one would ever think a captain would appear as a warrant.”
“ ‘Damastes’ from my friends sounds better to my ears than ‘Captain.’ ”
I grinned at that last.
“Do you know everything?”
Kutulu sighed. “No, and there’ll never be time enough to learn it Worse, I won’t even be able to learn what I should be learning.
“We’ll further fool your friends,” he said, rummaging in a drawer. “Here. Stick this on your nose with some plaster you’ll find over there, under that skull with the ax blade in it.”
He’d given me a beautifully realistic duplicate of a boil. I stuck it into place, looked in a hand glass he gave me, and shuddered. Kutulu examined it, and nodded approval. “Anyone who sees your face will see Man with Terrible Boil, and be completely unable to distinguish or remember the rest of your features.
“Now for the final touch.” He picked up a spray bottle, and misted its contents over me. I curled my nostrils — now I smelled like a soldier who’d not been bathed in a month.
“A dirty, smelly warrant from a line unit who’s probably in trouble with his superiors,” Kutulu approved. “Exactly what we want. Just the sort who’d be skulking around the docks looking for trouble. And with your size, they’ll never notice the small mouse who’s creeping beside you.”
So I was going to be Kutulu’s “apron.” I grinned, then remembered my dream of Thak.
“We may need more than physical disguise,” I said. “I’ll bet there’ll be magic about.”
“Probably not a concern,” Kutulu said. “Wizards are as prone to let their eyes fool them as any common man. However … I take your point. I think we’ll drop by the Seer Tenedos and see if he can’t provide a bit of a foggy counterspell. There is no gain in being overconfident.
“Now, for arms,” he said, “although if we need to use much force it’s likely we’re doomed.”
“I have my sword.”
“Where we are going will not call for gentlemen’s tools, but those of a footpad or worse. Can you use a knife?”
“I can.”
“Here.” He passed me a flat-handled blade in a sheath. “Strap this to your forearm. You can shave with it — I had it sharpened this morning. What else? Ah. It’s chilly down by the water, so no one will question these.”
He handed me a pair of rather shabby gloves. I almost dropped them because of their unexpected weight.
“There’s a quarter-weight of sand sewn across the knuckles and an eighth in the palm,” he said briskly. “Slap someone and they shall stay slapped.”
He picked up a murderous-looking double-edged dagger whose sheath hung down the back of his neck along his spine, and we went looking for Elias Malebranche.
• • •
This time I was ready for Seer Tenedos when he said he wished to accompany us. Kutulu looked horrified, not yet familiar with the seer’s admirable habit of leading from the front.
“You are not going,” I said firmly. “You are not expendable, especially when all we intend to do is peer about. Don’t you think your face is well known to most of Nicias by now? Don’t you imagine Malebranche would be delighted to meet you in some dark alleyway? Don’t you think Chardin Sher would reward him well to have your pelt in front of his fire, sir?”
“You pick amazingly picturesque imagery, Damastes,” Tenedos grumbled. “Very well. I see your point. But can you tell me one reason why I shouldn’t try to use sorcery to spy out where the Kallian goes and what his business is?”
“Thak,” was all I said, and Tenedos’s shoulders tensed involuntarily as he remembered how the demon had almost risen out of the mercury pool to take both of us.
“Very well.” Tenedos sighed. “As Captain Mellet once said, I’ll stay and tend the home fires. But as for some sort of spell to protect you. Hmm. I’ll give you that, and something for emergencies.”
He dusted us with a powder, said unfamiliar words, while his hands moved in strange figures in the air.
“You don’t want to show up reeking of magic, but this is a simple spell that will encourage a sorcerous sentry to overlook you, without ever quite realizing why. Now for the other device.”
He went to one of his trunks and fished through it until he found a rather ornately carved box made of several different-colored woods. Inside I saw what appeared to be tiny, perfectly sculptured animals, animals such as I’d never dreamed of.
“Here,” he said, handing me one. It was like a tortoise, but with the edges of its shell spiked, and it stood clear of the ground on four stocky, clawed legs. Its tail was an armored mace, and its head was fanged and malevolent looking.
“What is it, a model of some sort of demon?” Kutulu asked.
“It’s not a model at all, but rather the creature itself, perhaps a demon, I was able to fetch from another world and then shrink and put into a suspended state. I think I’m the only sorcerer who’s come up with a series of spells that can do this. I call it, and the others I made, animunculi I’d never found a use for them until now, although I suppose it would be possible to shrink a guard dog, carry it as a charm on a woman’s bracelet, and she would be quite safe from any attack. So too with your small creature. In its normal state it is about ten feet long, plus the tail, and it has the temperament of a rabid bear.
“It will be activated by the slightest contact with water, so I’d suggest you keep it in this.” He handed me a bottle with a stopper, and I gingerly inserted the tiny figurine in it. “Please try to return it to me undamaged,” he said wistfully. “A great deal of probably wasted time went into creating it.”
“If we have to, er, activate it,” Kutulu wondered, “how do we render it safe?”
“You don’t. You can’t. Run like demons are after you, which they may well be. It will return to its own world after a few moments.” Tenedos thought about what he’d said and smiled a bit sheepishly. “It might be well to provide you with a weapon against your weapon, I just realized. Put the creature away safely first, since I am giving you a spell of water.”
He found herbs, and added them to a beaker of water. He took an oddly carved wand that more resembled a twisted bit of driftwood from a shelf, and stirred the mixture. He began chanting in another tongue, then his words became understandable:
“Water, guard
Water, help
Seek water
Find safety.
Varum take heed
These are now yours
Guard them
Help them
Now they are thine.”
As he spoke, he sprinkled the mixture on us. Then, in a normal tone, he said, “this should be a bit of help, I should think. Again, it’s a simple spell, and requires a bit of work on your part. If this creature, animal, demon, or whatever it is, does come after you, cross water. Any water will stop it. If the spell works as it should, you should be momentarily safe.”
“Momentarily,” I said. “That’s a fairly imprecise time.”
“You’re both in good health. As I said, run like you’ve never run before, and you’ll escape handily. I’m fairly sure of that.”
Kutulu was looking rather skeptically at Tenedos. I suspected this was the first time he’d ever realized his hero might not be able to do all things perfectly. I took the warden by the arm.
“Come on,” I said. “That’s but his way of making sure the hayseed can’t complain about the philter he purchased if it doesn’t work. Thank you, Seer.”
“Captain,” Tenedos said, “has anyone ever suggested you’re impertinent?”
“Frequently, sir. And they’re always right. We’ll report back to you as soon as possible.”
Tenedos turned serious. “Please do that, regardless of the hour. Be most careful. I do not know what you might encounter.”
• • •
“This is another
trick of the police,” Kutulu explained. “If you are following someone, someone who seems to have a regular route, and you lose him or he becomes suspicious, go to the last point you were able to track him, wait for his next appearance, then continue following.”
We were hidden behind barrels on the very edge of a wharf. About twenty yards away was the end of the alley I’d followed Malebranche down to find nothing.
The night was quiet, no sound except the splash of small waves as the river flowed past behind and below us, and the occasional hoot of a ship’s horn.
How much, I mused, of a soldier’s time is spent waiting in perfect silence, from peacetime formations to wartime ambushes, yet no one ever considers it a part of his lot.
I heard muffled hoofbeats, and crouched lower.
A dark figure rode swiftly out of the alley, and I thought for a moment that it was about to ride straight off into the water. But the rider dismounted, knelt, and suddenly, noiselessly, part of the pier lifted, a hatch, and the rider, who must be Malebranche, led his horse down an unseen ramp. As rapidly as it had opened the trapdoor closed, and all was as before.
“Interesting,” Kutulu said. “Shall we follow?”
It took a few minutes of close examination to find the round metal-lined socket in the wooden pier. It was made to accommodate some sort of tool, which we did not have, but I pried carefully with the haft of my dagger and suddenly the portal yawned open.
Kutulu took a tiny dark lantern from his cloak, lit it, and opened one shutter enough to illuminate the ramp. I spotted the closing lever not far along. He latched the shutter and we crept down the incline, closing the hatch, and darkness closed around us.
I started onward, but Kutulu felt my movement, and held me still. I obeyed. I thought my eyes were already night-familiar, and we would be forced to move by feel, but in a few moments realized they weren’t. We weren’t in total blackness, but there was enough light from the end of the tunnel to see dimly.
Kutulu tugged me onward. I made sure my knife was loose in its sheath and we went down the tunnel. About twenty yards along, we found an alcove, and here the rider’s horse was tethered. The tunnel leveled, and turned, away from the river, back under the hill.
