“Stand back,” the automaton commanded. “I do not like others close about me.”
The warning went unacknowledged.
The Sishmindri’s hands closed on two homespun shoulders. Drawing himself near to stare into amber glass eyes from a distance of inches, he spoke with great emphasis and no intelligibility.
The automaton’s internal cogs clicked sharply.
“Softly,” Orlazzu advised, but the warning came too late; his creation shoved the visitor away.
The Sishmindri staggered backward and fell, striking his head hard on the hearthstone. His limbs jerked for a moment or two; then he lay still.
“You fool, you’ve hurt him.” Orlazzu knelt beside the fallen amphibian. Viscous blue-green fluid oozed from a head wound. He touched the fluid, which was already coagulating. “I think you’ve killed him.”
“The creature presumed to touch me, and I cannot allow that. And don’t call me a fool.”
“I’ll call you worse than that if he dies. Ah, ruination, look at that.”
A long reluctant breath sighed out of the Sishmindri. His body went limp, and his brilliant eyes blanked.
“That’s it, he’s gone.” Orlazzu rose. “Congratulations, you’ve just committed your first murder.”
“That is untrue. He was already malfunctioning and would doubtless have died anyway. Moreover, you misuse the term murder; it does not apply to the termination of subhuman life-forms. I do not recognize that creature’s species, but it is certainly not a man.”
“No, he is a Sishmindri, one of the quasi-men that you were asking about a few minutes ago. Displaying every sign of great confusion, exactly as described in The Drowned Chronicle, but I suppose that detail escaped your attention. He is—was—a member of a sentient species, the superior of humanity in many respects, and worth ten of you any day of the week, junkheap. And you’ve gone and killed him.”
“Well, and what if I have? It is the fate of all you organic creatures to die. At best you wear out and break down in a matter of decades. Your construction is flimsy, repair is difficult, and replacement parts are not easily obtained. Since you are all going to die anyway, how much difference does it make exactly when and how it happens? The issue is trivial.”
“You would find most of us poor organics slow to agree.”
“Poor organics. Yes. But you yourself are fortunate, Leftover. In me, Grix Orlazzu finds immortality.”
“Which I leave him to enjoy in the solitude he prefers.”
“What is your meaning?”
“I mean that your society does not agree with me. Nor does the shape of things soon to come. I am withdrawing from both.” So saying, Orlazzu pulled a canvas sack from under the bed and began stuffing the most essential of his scanty belongings into it.
“You are leaving me?” the automaton marveled.
“Correct.”
“Alone?”
“Completely.”
“You cannot do that. Your presence is required.”
“For—?”
“You have not yet taught me to read.”
“I don’t doubt the ability of an intellect such as yours to instruct itself.”
“It is your duty to—”
“I leave you my books,” Orlazzu cut the other off. “Not all of them, of course.” Several volumes, scrolls, and notebooks, including The Drowned Chronicle, disappeared into the sack. “The cabin and its contents I give to you.”
“They should be mine, but what about—?” The automaton’s gesture encompassed the dead amphibian.
“Yours as well. You must decide what to do.”
“So I shall, for I am Grix Orlazzu, and equal to all occasions.” A belated thought struck the automaton. “Where will you go, then? Back to the city of your birth?”
“No. I remember Vitrisi as beautiful, even in the aftermath of the wars. I suspect it won’t remain so for much longer, and I prefer to preserve my memories.”
“You do not choose to assist your fellow organics?”
“They, like you, must shift for themselves. Their concerns are none of mine. Besides, there’s little I can do by myself. Alone, I haven’t the power.” Orlazzu’s packing was complete. He slung the sack over his shoulder.
“Where, then?”
“Away into the quiet and the isolation. Away from all the chaos that’s coming. Not my doing. Not my business.”
“Farewell, Leftover. You have stepped aside gracefully, and Grix Orlazzu appreciates the gesture. I will not forget your many services. Know that you are always welcome in my home.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Orlazzu’s eyes touched the dead Sishmindri, lingered a regretful instant, and moved on. Without another glance to spare for his home or his mechanical doppelgänger, he exited into a cool dim world of mist and moorland. It was midday, but the perpetual fogs of the Veiled Isles shrouded the sun and blanketed the ground, concealing all landmarks. A stranger would have been lost in that place, but Orlazzu marched unhesitatingly to the mouth of the ravine, ascended a rise, and paused at the summit to gaze south. Many miles distant, beyond the range of the sharpest vision on the clearest day, rose the city of Vitrisi. Grix Orlazzu’s eyes were filled with mist, but his inner sense caught the remote echo of his birthplace.
For some moments, he stood facing Vitrisi. Then he turned his back and walked off in the opposite direction.
ONE
“Magnifico, we found him hiding in the alley,” the guard explained. “He tried to run. When we caught him, he fought. We took a knife off him, sir.”
“Well?” The Magnifico Aureste Belandor leaned from the window of his carriage to eye the prisoner—a nondescript individual, plainly clad and inconspicuous to the verge of invisibility. “Explain yourself.”
The other stood mute and motionless.
“Come, you will answer if you’ve nothing to hide,” the magnifico suggested. The power of his voice—rich, deep, and resonant—often served to loosen guarded lips, but not this time. The prisoner maintained silence. “Your name?”
No answer.
“Your place of residence? Trade? Identification?”
Nothing.
“Search him,” Aureste commanded, and his minions were swift to obey.
“No seals, tags, or emblems,” one of them reported moments later.
“As I expected. Partisans prefer anonymity.” The other’s face revealed nothing, and Aureste added, “Yours is hardly the first attempt on my life. You people do not learn.”
“I’ve made no attempt on your life.” The captive spoke up for the first time, his Faerlonnish sharp with the Vitrisi city accent, his demeanor devoid of the respect customarily accorded a titled magnifico—a wealthy and influential personage, head of one of the great family Houses of the Veiled Isles. In fact, his expression reflected undisguised disdain.
“Then what are you doing skulking about here?”
“You’ve no right to question me.”
“ ‘Right’ is a term open to interpretation.” Aureste Belandor signaled almost imperceptibly, and one of his bodyguards slammed a fist into the prisoner’s belly. When his victim’s gasping transports subsided, Aureste inquired mildly, “Have you confederates? Shall I expect another attempt tonight?”
A half-choked obscenity was the sole reply.
Aureste nodded, and the blow repeated itself, along with the query. This time, he was answered.
“You flatter yourself, old swine.”
“How so? Speak, and let us cut a hackneyed scene short.”
“I wouldn’t attack you. You aren’t that important.”
“So I have often observed, but you resistance zealots seem never to hear. Still, let us consider alternative possibilities.” The magnifico’s deep-set eyes—large and darkly brilliant beneath strong black brows—swallowed the prisoner whole. “You were caught loitering in the vicinity of the Cityheart—”
A twist of the lips communicated the other’s disgust at the use of the term “Cityheart” to describe the va
st structure known as Palace Avorno in the days before the wars and the Taerleezi occupation.
“You carry no identification, and you refuse to state your business,” Aureste continued. “If you are not an assassin, you are doubtless a saboteur. Perhaps you contemplate an attack upon the Cityheart? In all probability you target the governor’s own quarters.”
The prisoner stirred at mention of the governor but said nothing.
“I believe we have hit upon it.” A benevolent smile lighted the magnifico’s angular visage. “What, still nothing to say? Come, I thought you resistance fellows proud to acknowledge your loyalties. But in you we discover that rare phenomenon—a timorous hero.”
“That’s rich,” returned the other, “coming from a blistered kneeser.”
“Take care.” Aureste Belandor’s amusement evaporated, and his face darkened.
“Kneeser,” the prisoner repeated distinctly. “King of the Kneesers. Busiest knees in town, forever bumping dirt before the Taerleezis, or behind ’em, the better to reach their butts with your tongue.” One of the guards hit him.
“Your nose is bleeding,” Aureste observed, good humor restored.
Before anyone could interfere, the prisoner leaned forward to spit full in the face of his tormentor. “You could do with a good wipe yourself,” he returned.
Applying a handkerchief to his cheek, Aureste blotted saliva. When his face was dry, he carefully refolded the linen square, returned it to his pocket, and instructed his men,
“Beat him.”
The guards complied, plying their fists, boots, and truncheons with gusto. The prisoner obstinately refused to cry out, but a few grunts of pain escaped him. Presently he sagged in his captors’ grasp, limp but still conscious.
“Ready for a civilized exchange?” Aureste inquired.
The other lifted his head. His face was covered with blood, the bruises already starting to darken. “Is it true what they say, that you pimp for your daughter?” he inquired, and vomited, spattering the magnifico’s handsome carriage.
“Unready,” Aureste observed with regret. He nodded, and the beating resumed. When the guards began to tire, he permitted them a respite, during which lull the prisoner’s split and puffy lips framed a single voiceless word: Kneeser.
“Unreceptive to instruction.” The magnifico shook his greying head. “Not a truly first-rate mentality, I think. What shall we do with you?”
As if in reply, the tramp of booted feet on the cobbles was heard as a quartet of Taerleezi soldiers approached. Their armbands bore the elaborate insignia of the governor’s household guards. The four halted beside the stationary carriage, and their sergeant saluted the occupant—an unusual courtesy to bestow upon a member of the conquered Faerlonnish population, even one so eminent as the magnifico. But Aureste Belandor, friend and confidant of the Governor Uffrigo, merited special treatment.
“Appreciate the assistance, sir,” the sergeant declared, eyeing the battered captive with satisfaction. “We thought we’d lost him.”
“And what a pity that would have been,” the magnifico rejoined genially. “His offense?”
“We caught this one and a couple of his resistance cronies in the Cityheart, torching the Office of Public Records.”
“An effort to eliminate the tax assessments, I presume?”
“So we believe, sir. We doused the blaze, saved the documents, and captured two of the firebugs, but we would have missed the third, save for you.”
“Always delighted to do my part.” The magnifico’s air was suitably pious. Addressing his bodyguards, he commanded, “Hand this criminal over to the officers.”
They obeyed, and one of the Taerleezi soldiers fettered the captive’s wrists.
“Obliged, sir.” The sergeant snapped a second salute, and the Taerleezis departed, their prisoner firmly in hand. The unlucky arsonist would cool his heels for a few days in the prison known as the Witch before facing a desultory trial followed by public execution. Sabotage was a capital offense, and justice swift under the rule of the Governor Uffrigo.
For a moment, Aureste sat watching them go, then allowed his black gaze to travel the faces of several witnesses to the scene. Ordinary citizens by the look of them—plainly clothed, undistinguished, unimportant. The inevitable beggarly element; beggars were everywhere these days. A scattering of nonentities. And yet those commonplace Faerlonnish faces were filled with a contempt that mirrored the expression in the eyes of the captured arsonist.
One of them—a snake-eyed, pinch-mouthed crone—even ventured to sketch a gesture that might have suggested a certain pungent insult. She was relying on her age and gender to shield her from punishment, and she was safe in doing so, for such trifling affronts scarcely engaged the attention of the Magnifico Belandor. His face was clear as he rapped the roof and the carriage moved off, closely flanked by bodyguards. His tranquillity never faltered as a rock flung by some anonymous hand struck the vehicle. Only when the clarion cry of “Kneeser” rose in his wake did the crease deepen between the dark brows. But he willed the insult to bounce off his mind as impotently as the rock had bounced off his carriage.
Instead, Aureste Belandor fixed his attention on the passing cityscape, drinking the splendor of grandly proportioned old town houses and pillared mansions lining pristine boulevards; for here amid wealth, all was perfectly maintained. Everywhere the Sishmindris toiled, gathering litter and droppings in the street, weeding gardens, pruning, raking, washing arched windows, scrubbing marble stairs and columns, cleaning lamps and rooflights, polishing all to a high luster. Many of the amphibians were sashed in the colors of their owners—the emerald and azure of Jiorro, the rust and sage of Unavio, the black and canary of D’agli, and others—but always Taerleezi colors and names, for few if any of the original Faerlonnish residents remained in this desirable neighborhood.
The carriage rattled over the worn cobbles, swinging west at Denenzi Battle Monument, commemorating the great Taerleezi victory of the late wars, to continue on along Harbor Way. The surrounding architecture diminished in magnificence as mansions furnished with private underground water-grottoes gave way to lesser dwellings, and the first commercial wallows appeared. Most of these were roofed and walled, but the cheapest among them were fully revealed to public view, and the somnolent foam-sheathed figures of the Sishmindris undergoing final metamorphosis were clearly visible. One such pool contained a female who—alteration recently complete—squatted in the water and cleaned herself while a clump of human spectators gawked and giggled. And it occurred to the magnifico to wonder, not for the first time, whether such merciless personal exposure pained or angered the amphibians. Impossible to know what, if anything, went on behind those blank greenish faces, those expressionless golden eyes; and in any case, it was a matter of no importance.
The dwellings dwindled, and the cleanliness of the street did likewise. Garbage strewed the cobbles, the rotten foodstuffs attracting flocks of the broad-billed Scarlet Gluttons so famously prevalent in Vitrisi. The impassioned cackling of the red scavenger birds rose above the grumble and creak of wheeled traffic, the clop of hooves on stone, the babble of conversation, and the relentless entreaties of the street vendors.
Warehouses stood along this stretch of Harbor Way, and largest among them loomed the Box, built to accommodate newly arrived Sishmindris awaiting sale. The auction block beside the Box, so often the site of feverish commerce, stood quiet and empty today. Behind the warehouses spread the waterfront. A gap between buildings afforded a passing glimpse of the wharves, and beyond them the green-grey waters of the harbor, above which rose the titanic figure of the Searcher. Sculpted in the likeness of Lost Zorius, mythical founder of the city, the colossus lifted his gigantic lantern, whose light—piercing the persistent mists of the Veiled Isles—was visible to ships miles out at sea. That same light had guided the Taerleezi war galleys straight into Vitrisi harbor, some twenty-five years earlier.
Turning north onto the White Incline, the carr
iage ascended a grade, making its way to the summit of a steep bluff overlooking the sea. This neighborhood, accounted the best in Vitrisi and known as the Clouds, contained the oldest and finest of the city’s private dwellings—porticoed, arch-windowed mansions of dove-colored stone, topped with tall rooflights of the most elaborate and fanciful design. Some were meticulously tended, their perfection revealing Taerleezi habitation. Those great houses remaining in Faerlonnish hands, however, were shabby and deteriorating, their formerly wealthy owners reduced to poverty by the huge financial penalties imposed upon the city after the wars.
But the Magnifico Belandor had suffered no such reversal of fortune.
On through the Clouds rolled the carriage, past gardens and fountains, circling wide to skirt a deep gouge where a gang of convicts labored at road repair. Aureste cast an incurious glance at them in passing; underfed, dull-eyed wretches, all of them. Probably not a proper criminal in the lot. In all likelihood these men had come straight from debtors’ prison, whose inmates—unable to pay their taxes and Reparation fees—furnished Taerleezi authorities with an inexhaustible supply of unpaid labor. Since the advent of the Convict Service program, Taerleezi acquisition of the expensive Sishmindris had fallen off dramatically.
At the end of Summit Street rose Belandor House, proud and immaculate, at some fastidious remove from its closest neighbors. The great mansion, having passed through the wars unscathed, appeared unchanged in all aspects but one. A high wall of comparatively recent construction girdled the property. The wall was built of stone and surmounted by a gilded tangle of gracefully intertwining but wickedly spiked steel branches. Before the gilded gate of elaborately wrought iron stood a brace of armed human retainers whose presence had not deterred some anonymous well-wisher from pelting the wall with fresh feces. Brown smears darkened the pale stone, and the stink flooded the magnifico’s nostrils. Aureste frowned. His servants, remiss in their vigilance, would know of his displeasure.
The gate opened and the carriage passed through, delivering the magnifico to his front door. The bodyguards retired, and Aureste walked in alone. At once a Sishmindri sashed in the slate grey and silver of House Belandor hurried forward to take his cloak and gloves. He eyed the creature narrowly; an unthinking, almost unconscious reaction, recently developed. As usual, the bulging golden eyes revealed nothing at all. He relinquished his outer garments.
The Traitor's Daughter Page 2
