by Keith Laumer
“Ah . . . whose aid, Milady?” he asked her.
The old lady grimaced and said: “The Lady Raire. She’s in mortal danger; that’s why her father ordered her sent away, on his deathbed! But none of them will believe me.”
“What kind of danger is she in?”
“I don’t know-but it’s there, thick in the air around her! Poor child, so all alone.”
“Milady,” I stepped forward. “I’ve come a long way. I want to see her before I go. Can you arrange it?”
“Of course, you fool, else why would I have lain here in wait like a mud-roach over a wine-arbor?” She returned her attention to Fsha-fsha.
“Tonight-at the Gathering of the House. Milady will be present; even Sir Revenat wouldn’t dare defy custom so far as to deny her; and you shall be there, too! Listen! This is what you must do. . . .”
Half an hour later, we were walking along a tiled street of craftsmen’s shops that was worn to a pastel smoothness that blended with the soft-toned facades that lined it. There were flowers in beds and rows and urns and boxes and in hanging trays that filtered the early light over open doorways where merchants fussed over displays of goods. I could smell fresh-baked bread and roasting coffee, and leather and wood-smoke. It was an atmosphere that made the events inside the ancient House of Ancinet-Chanore seem like an afternoon with the Red Queen.
“If you ask me, the whole bunch of them is round the bend,” Fsha-fsha said. “I think the old lady had an idea I was in touch with the spirit world.”
On a bench in front of a carpenter’s stall, a man sat tapping with a mallet and chisel at a slab of tangerine-colored wood. He looked up and grinned at me.
“As pretty a bit of emberwood as ever a man laid steel to, eh?” he said.
“Strange,” Fsha-fsha said. “You only see hand labor on backward worlds and rich ones. On all the others, a machine would be squeezing a gob of plastic into whatever shape was wanted.”
In another stall, an aged woman was looming a rug of rich-colored fibers. Across the way, a boy sat in an open doorway, polishing what looked like a second-hand silver chalice. Up ahead, I saw the tailor shop the old woman-Milady Bezaille her name was-had told us about. An old fellow with a face like an elf was rolling out a bolt of green cloth with a texture like hand-rubbed metal. He looked up and ducked his head as we came in. “Ah, the sirs desire a change of costume?”
Fsha-fsha was already feeling the green stuff. “How about an outfit made of this?”
“Ah, the being has an eye,” the old fellow cackled. “Radiant, is it not?
Loomed by Y’sallo, of course.”
I picked out a black like a slice of midnight in the Fringe. The tailor flipped up the end of the material and whirled it around my shoulders, stepped back and studied the effect thoughtfully.
“I see the composition as an expression of experience,” he nodded. “Yes, it’s possible. Stark, unadorned-but for the handsome necklace-Riv work is it not? Yes, a statement of self-affirmation, an incitement to discipline.”
He went to work measuring and clucking. When he started cutting, we crossed a small bridge to a park where there were tables on the lawn beside a small lemon-yellow dome. We sat and ate pastries and then went along to a shoemaker, who sliced into glossy hides and in an hour had fitted new boots to both of us. When we got back to the tailor shop, the new clothes were waiting. We asked directions to a refresher station, and, after an ion-bath and a little attention to my hair and Fsha-fsha’s gill fringes, tried out our new costumes.
“You’re an impressive figure,” Fsha-fsha said admiringly. “In spite of your decorations, your size and muscular development give you a certain animal beauty; and I must say the little tailor set you off to best advantage.”
“The high collar helps,” I conceded. “But I’m afraid the eye-patch spoils the effect.”
“Wrong; it enhances the impression of an elegant corsair.”
“Well, if the old Tree could see you now, it would have to admit you’re the fanciest nut that ever dropped off it,” I said.
It was twilight in the parklike city. We still had an hour to kill, and decided to use it in a stroll around the Old Town-the ancient marketplace that was the original center of the city. It was a picturesque place, and we were just in time to see the merchants folding up their stalls, and streaming away to the drinking terraces under the strung lights among the trees. The sun set in a glory of painted clouds; the brilliant spread of stars that covered the sky like luminous clotted cream was obscured by the overcast. The empty streets dimmed into deep shadow, as we turned our steps toward the gates of the estate Ancinet-Chanore.
My sense-booster was set at 1.3 normal; any higher set-ting made ordinary sound and light levels painful. For the last hundred feet I had been listening to the gluey wheeze that was the sound of human lungs, coming from some-where up ahead. I touched Fsha-fsha’s arm. “In the alley,” I said softly. “Just one man.”
He stepped ahead of me, and in the same instant a small, lean figure sprang into view twenty feet ahead, stopped in a half-crouch facing us, with his feet planted wide and his gun hand up and aimed. I saw a lightning-wink and heard the soft whap! of a filament pistol. Fsha-fsha oof!ed as he took the bolt square in the chest; a corona outlined his figure in vivid blue as the harness bled the energy off to the ground. Then he was on the assassin; his arm rose and fell with the sound of a hammer hitting a grapefruit, and the would-be killer tumbled backward and slid down the wall to sprawl on the pavement. I went flat against the wall, flipped the booster up to max, heard nothing but the normal night sounds of a city.
“Clear,” I said. Fsha-fsha leaned over the little man.
“I hit him too hard,” he said. “He’s dead.”
“Maybe the old lady was right,” I said.
“Or maybe Sir Tanis wasn’t as foolish as he sounded,” Fsha-fsha grunted.
“Or Milord Pastaine as senile as they claimed.”
“A lot of maybes,” I said. “Let’s dump him out of sight and get out of here, in case a cleanup squad is following him up.”
We lifted him and tossed him in the narrow passage he had picked as a hiding place.
“Which way?” Fsha-fsha asked.
“Straight ahead, to the main gates,” I said.
“You’re still going there-after this?”
“More than ever. Somebody made a mistake, sending a hit man out. They made a second not making it stick. We’ll give them a chance to go for three.”
The Lady Bezaille had given instructions to the gate-keeper; he bowed us through like visiting royalty into an atmosphere of lights and sounds and movement. The grand celebration known as the Gathering of the House seemed to be going on all over the grounds and throughout the house. We made our way through the throngs of beautiful people, looking for a familiar face. Sir Tanis popped up and gave a lifted-eyebrow look, but there wasn’t enough surprise there to make him the man behind the assassination attempt.
“Captain Danger; Sir Fsha-fsha; I confess I didn’t expect to see you here . .
.” He was aching to ask by whose order we were included in the select gathering, but apparently his instinct for the oblique approach kept him from asking.
“It seemed the least I could do,” I said in what I hoped was a cryptic tone.
“By the way, has Milady Raire arrived yet?”
“Ha! She and Lord Revenat will make a dramatic entrance after the rest of us have been allowed to consume ourselves in restless patience for a time, you can be sure.”
He led us to the nearest refreshment server, which dispensed foamy concoctions in big tulip glasses; we stood on the lawn and fenced with him verbally for a few minutes, parted with an implied understanding that whatever happened, our weight would go to the side of justice-what-ever that meant.
Milady Bezaille appeared, looked us over and gave a sniff that seemed to mean approval of our new finery. I had a feeling she’d regretted her earlier rash impulse of inviting two space
tramps to the grand soiree of the year.
“Look sharp, now,” she cautioned me. “When Milord Revenat deigns to appear he’ll be swamped at once with the attentions of certain unwholesome elements of the House; that will be your chance to catch a glimpse of Milady Raire. See if you read in her face other than pain and terror!”
A slender, dandified lad sauntered over after the beldame had whisked away.
“I see the noble lady is attempting to influence you,” he said. “Beware of her, sirs. She is not of sound mind.”
“She was just tipping us off that the punch in number three bowl is spiked with hand-blaster pellets,” I assured him. He gave me a quick, sideways look.
“What, ah, did she say to you about Sir Fane?”
“Ah-hah!” I nodded.
“Don’t believe it!” he snapped. “Lies! Damnable lies!”
I edged closer to him. “What about Sir Tanis?” I muttered. He shifted his eyes. “Watch him. All his talk about unilateral revisionism and ancillary line vigor-pure superstition.”
“And Lord Revenat?”
He looked startled. “You don’t mean-” he turned and scuttled away without finishing the sentence.
“Danger-are you sure this is the right place we’re in?” Fsha-fsha whispered.
“If the Lady Raire is anything like the rest of this menagerie. . . .”
“She isn’t,” I said. “She-”
I stopped talking as a stir ran through the little conversational groups around us. Across the lawn a servant in crimson livery was towing a floating floodlight along above the heads of a couple just descending a wide, shallow flight of steps from a landing terrace above. I hadn’t seen the heli arrive. The man was tall, wide-shouldered, trim, like all Zeridajhans, dressed in a form-fitting wine-colored outfit with an elaborate pectoral ornament suspended around his neck on a chain. The woman beside him was slim, elegantly gowned in silvery gauze, with her black hair piled high, intricately entwined in a jeweled coronet. I’d never seen her in jewels before but that perfect face, set in an expression that was the absence of all expression, was that of Milady Raire.
The crowd had moved in their direction as if by a common impulse to rush up and greet the newcomers; but the movement halted and the restless murmur of chatter resumed, but with a new, nervous note that was evident in the shrill cackle of laughter and the over-hearty waving of arms. I made my way across through the crowd, watching the circle of impressively clad males collecting around the newcomers. They moved off in a body, with a great deal of exuberant joking that sounded about as sincere as a losing politician’s congratulatory telegram to the winner. I trailed along at a distance of ten yards, while the group swirled around a drink dispenser and broke up into a central group and half a dozen squeezed-out satellites. The lucky winners steered their prize on an evasion course, dropping a few members along the way when clumsy footwork involved them in exchanges of amenities with other, less favored groups. In five minutes, the tall man in the burgundy tights was fenced into a corner by half a dozen hardy victors, while the lady in silver stood for the moment alone at a few yards distance.
I looked at her pale, aloof face, still as youthful and unlined as it had been seven years ago, when we last talked together under the white sun of Gar 28. I took a deep breath and started across the lawn toward her. She didn’t notice me until I was ten feet from her; then she turned slowly and her eyes went across me as coolly as the first breath of winter. They came back again, and this time flickered-and held on me. Suddenly I was conscious of the scar, two-thirds concealed by the high collar of my jacket, that marked the corner of my jaw-and of the black patch over my right eye. Her eyes moved over me, back to my face. They widened; her lips parted, then I was standing before her.
“Milady Raire,” I said, and heard the hoarse note in my voice.
“Can . . . can it be . . . you?” Her voice was the faintest of whispers. A hard hand took my arm, spun me around.
“I do not believe, sir,” a furious voice snarled, “that you have the privilege of approach to Her Ladyship-” He got that far before his eyes took in what they were looking at; his voice trailed off. His mouth hung open. He dropped my arm and took a step back. It was the man named Huvile.
“Sir Revenat,” someone started, and let it drop. I could almost hear his mind racing, looking for the right line to take. But nobody, even someone who had only talked to me for five minutes three years before, could pretend to have forgotten my face: black-skinned, scarred, one-eyed.
“It . . . it . . . I . . .”
“Sir Revenat,” I said as smoothly as I could under the circumstances, and gave him a stiff little half-bow. That passed the ball to him. He could play it any way he liked from there.
“Why, why . . .” He took my arm, in a gentler grip this time. “My dear fellow! What an extraordinary pleasure. . . .” His eyes went to Milady Raire. She returned a look as impersonal as the carved face of a statue. She didn’t look at me.
“If you will excuse us, Milady,” Huvile/Revenat ducked his head and hustled me past her, and the silent crowd parted to let us through.
Inside a white damask room with a wall of glass through which the lights of the garden cast a soft polychrome glow, Huvile faced me. He looked a little different than he had the last time I had seen him, wearing the coarse kilt of a slave in the household of the Triarch of Drath. He had lost the gaunt look and was trimmed, manicured and polished like a prize—winning boar.
“You’ve . . . changed,” he said. “For a moment, I almost failed to recognize you.” His voice was hearty enough, but his eyes were as alert as a coiled rattler’s.
I nodded. “A year on the Triarch’s rafts have that effect.”
“The rafts?” He looked shocked. “But . . . but . . .”
“The penalty for freeing slaves,” I said. “And not being able to pay the fines.”
“But . . . I assumed . . .”
“Everything I owned was on my boat,” I said.
His face was turning darker, as if pressure was building up behind it. “Your boat . . . I . . . ah . . .” he made an effort to get hold of himself. “See here, didn’t you direct, ah, the young woman to lift ship at once?” His look told me he was waiting to see if I’d pick up the impersonal reference to the Lady Raire. I shook my head and waited.
“But-she arrived a moment or two after I reached the port. You did send her?”
“Yes-”
“Of course,” he hurried on. “She seemed most distraught, poor creature. I explained to her that a kindly stranger-yourself-had purchased my freedom-and presumably hers as well-and while we spoke, a creature appeared; a ghastly-looking little beggar. The unfortunate girl was terrified by the sight of him; I drove the thing off, and then . . . and then she insisted that we lift at once!” Huvile shook his head, looking grieved. “I understand now; in her frenzy to make good her escape, she abandoned you, her unknown savior. . . .” A thought hit him, sharpened his eyes. “You hadn’t, ah, personally known the poor child?”
“I saw her for a moment at the Triarch’s palace-from a distance.”
He sighed. His look got more comfortable. “A tragedy that your kindness was rewarded by such ingratitude. Believe me, sir, I am eternally in your debt! I acknowledge it freely. . . .” He lowered his voice. “But let us keep the details in confidence, between us. It would not be desirable, at this moment, to introduce a new factor, however extraneous, into the somewhat complex equations of House affairs.” He was getting expansive now. “We shouldn’t like my ability to reward you as you deserve suffer through any fallacious construction that might be put on matters, eh?”
“I take it you took the female slave under your wing,” I said. He gave me a sharp look. He would have liked her left out of the conversation.
“She would have needed help to get home,” I amplified.
“Ah, yes, I think I see now,” he smiled a sad, sweet smile. “You were taken with her beauty. But alas . . .” his eyes held o
n mine, “she died.”
“That’s very sad,” I said. “How did it happen?”
“My friend, wouldn’t it be better to forget her? Who knows what terrible pressures might not have influenced her to the despicable course she chose? Poor waif; she suffered greatly. Her death gave her surcease.” His expression became brisk. “And now, in what way can I serve you, sir? Tell me how I can make amends for the injustice done you.”
He talked some more, offered me the hospitality of the estate, a meal, even, delicately, money. His relief when I turned them down was obvious. Now that he saw I wasn’t going to be nasty about the little misunderstanding, his confidence was coming back. I let him ramble on. When he ran down, I said:
“How about an introduction to the lady in silver? The Lady Raire, I understand her name is?’
His face went hard. “That is impossible. The lady is not well. Strange faces upset her.”
“Too bad,” I said. “In that case, I guess there’s not much for me to stay around for.”
“Must you go? But of course if you have business matters requiring your attention, I mustn’t keep you.” He went across to an archway leading toward the front of the house; he was so eager to get rid of me the easy way that he almost fell down getting there. He didn’t realize I’d turned the opposite way and stepped back out onto the terrace, until I was already across it and heading across the lawn to where Milady Raire still stood alone, like a pale statue in the winking light of an illuminated fountain.
She watched me come across the lawn to her. I could hear the hurrying footsteps of Sir Revenat behind me, not quite running, heard someone intercept him, the babble of self-important voices. I walked up to her and my eyes held on her face; it was as rigid as a death mask.
“Milady, what happened after you left Drath?” I asked her without preamble.
“I-” she started and her eyes showed shock. “Then-on Drath-it was you-”
“You’re scared, Milady. They’re all scared of Huvile, but you most of all. Tell me why.”
