Half an hour later he stood in the Palace Market, on the only stone pavement he had yet encountered in Ethshar of the Spices, staring at the home of Azrad the Great.
The Palace was immense; Valder could not see all of its facade from where he stood, but it was several hundred feet long and three stories high for its full length. It was gleaming white and appeared to be marble, ornamented with pink-and-gray carved stone. It stood on the far side of a small canal from the marketplace, connected by a broad, level bridge; at each end of the bridge stood huge ironwork gates, and at each gate stood a dozen guards.
The gates were closed.
That puzzled Valder; surely, he thought, there must be some way for people to get in and out in the ordinary course of day-to-day business, without having to open the immense portals. He could see none, however; the canal turned corners at either end of the Palace grounds, wrapping itself all the way around. The bridge was the only visible entrance.
With a mental shrug, he decided that the direct, honest approach was likely to be the most effective. He walked up to the gates and waited for the guards to notice him.
When they gave no acknowledgment of his existence before he came within arm’s reach of the iron bars, he revised his plan and cleared his throat.
“Hello there,” he said, “I have business with the Lord Executioner.”
The nearest guard condescended to look at him. “Business of what nature?”
Valder knew better than admit the truth. “Personal, I’m afraid — family matters, to be discussed only with him.”
The guard looked annoyed. “Thurin,” he called to one of his comrades, “have we got anyone on the list for the Executioner?”
The man he addressed as Thurin, standing in front of one of the great stone pillars that supported the gates, answered, “I don’t remember any; I’ll check.” He turned and lifted a tablet from a hook on the pillar. After a moment’s perusal, he said, “No one here that I can see.”
Before anyone could shoo him away, Valder said, “He must not have known I was coming; Sarai sent a message, but it may not have reached him in time. Really, it’s important that I see him.”
The guard he had first spoken to sighed. “Friend,” he said, “I don’t know whether you’re telling the truth or not, and it’s not my place to guess. We’ll let you in — but I warn you, entering the Palace under false pretenses has been declared a crime, the punishment to be decided jointly by all those you meet inside, with flogging or death the most common. If you meet no one, it’s assumed you’re a thief, and the penalty for robbing the overlord is death by slow torture. And that sword isn’t going to make a good impression; we can keep it here for you, if you like. Now, do you still want to get in to see the Lord Executioner?” With only an instant’s hesitation, Valder nodded. “I’ll risk it; I really do have to see him. And I’ll keep my sword.”
“It’s your life, friend; Thurin, let this fellow in, would you?”
Thurin waved for Valder to approach; as the innkeeper obeyed, the guard knelt and pulled at a ring set in the stone pillar.
With a dull grinding noise, one of the paving stones slid aside, revealing a stairway leading down under the great stone gatepost; trying to conceal his astonishment, Valder descended the steps and found himself in a passage that obviously led, not over the bridge, but through it. He had never encountered anything like this before; in fact, he would not have guessed the bridge to be thick enough to have held a passageway and he wondered if magic were involved.
The pavement door closed behind him, and he realized that light was coming from somewhere ahead; he walked on and discovered that in fact the bridge was not thick enough to conceal the corridor, but that the corridor ran below, rather than through, the center of the bridge; this central section of the passageway consisted of an iron floor suspended from iron bars. It seemed rather precarious but gave a pleasant view of the canal beneath.
At the far side of the bridge, another set of stairs brought him up beside another stone gatepost, facing another guard.
“Destination?” the soldier demanded.
“I’m here to see the Lord Executioner.”
“You know the way?”
“No.”
“In the left-hand door, up one flight, turn left, four doors down on the right. Got that?”
“I think so.”
“Go on, then.” The guard waved him on, and Valder marched on across the forecourt.
Three large doors adorned the central portion of the Palace facade; Valder followed the guard’s directions, through the left-hand door, where he found himself in a broad marble corridor, facing ornate stone stairs. He could see no one, but heard distant hurried footsteps. As instructed, he went up a flight, turned left at the first possible opportunity into another corridor — not quite so wide or elegant as the first, but lined with doors spaced well apart, with figures visible in the distance. He found the fourth door on the right and knocked.
For a long moment nothing happened, save that the people at the far end of the corridor disappeared. He knocked again.
The door opened, and an unhealthy young man peered out at him.
“Hello,” Valder said, “I’m here to apply for a job as an executioner.”
The young man’s expression changed from polite puzzlement to annoyance. “What?”
“I’m an experienced headsman; I’m looking for work.”
“Wait a minute.” He ducked back inside, closing the door but not latching it; a moment later he reappeared, something clutched concealed in one fist. “Now, are you serious?”
“Yes, quite serious,” Valder answered.
“A headsman, you said?”
“Yes.”
“From out of town, obviously.”
“Yes.”
“Headsman, let me explain a few things to you that you don’t seem to know, though any twelve-year-old child in the streets could tell you. First off, the Lord Executioner is the only official executioner in the city and has no interest in hiring others; if he did, he’d hire his friends and family first, not strangers who wander in. Understand?”
“But...”
“But what?”
“This is the largest city in the world; how can there be just one executioner?”
“That brings us to my second point. The post of Lord Executioner is not a very demanding one; after all, no nobleman likes to work. It’s true that the Lord Executioner could hire assistants, as his father did before him, but there’s no call for them, because hardly anybody manages to require an official execution. Generally, captured thieves and murderers are disposed of quite efficiently by the neighborhood vigilance committees; they don’t come to us. All we get are the traitors and troublemakers who have contrived to offend the overlord himself, and the occasional soldier guilty of something so heinous that his comrades aren’t willing to take his punishment into their own hands and that can’t just be dealt with by throwing him out of the guard and out of the city. This comes to maybe one execution every two or three sixnights, and it will be a long time before the current Lord Executioner is too feeble to deal with that himself. Which brings me to my third point — you don’t look like much of an executioner in any case. You must be sixty, aren’t you?”
“Sixty-six.”
“Did your former employers retire you, perhaps? Well, in any case, the Palace is not a village shrine for old men to gather at.”
“I didn’t think it was, but I can guarantee that I would have no difficulty in carrying out the job.”
“Ah, but there remains my fourth and final point, which is that we have no use for a headsman in any case. Were the Lord Executioner too old or feeble or ill or lazy to do his own work, or were there a hundred convicts a day to be disposed of, and were you forty years younger, we would still have no use for a headsman; the last beheading in this city was more than thirty years ago, when the first Lord Executioner was still in office and his son too young for breeches. Lord Azrad long ago decided
that beheadings were too messy and too reminiscent of the Great War; we hang our criminals here. I had thought that custom had become the fashion almost everywhere by now. Our own headsman’s axe has hung undisturbed on the wall behind me for as long as I can recall. Now, are you satisfied that there’s no place for you here? Leave immediately and I won’t have you arrested.”
Dismayed, Valder stepped back. “A question, though, sir — or two, if I might.”
“What are they?”
“Who are you, and what have you got in your hand? How am I to know that what you say is true? I confess I don’t really doubt it, but I am curious.”
“I am Adagan the Younger, secretary to the Lord Executioner, and incidentally his first cousin. I hold a protective charm — you might have been a madman, after all, and you’re obviously armed. As for how you know what I say to be true, ask anyone; it’s common knowledge, all of it.”
“And you wouldn’t know of any place that does need a headsman? This sword I carry is cursed, you see; I can only remove the curse by killing nineteen men with it.”
“Perhaps you’re a madman after all...”
“No, truly, it’s cursed — it happened during the war.”
“Well, maybe it did; many strange things happened during the war, I understand. At any rate, I can’t help you; I know of no place that still beheads its condemned, let alone with a sword rather than an axe.”
Reluctantly, Valder admitted himself defeated. “Thank you, then, sir, for your kindness.” He bowed slightly and turned to go.
“Wait, old man; you’ll need a safe conduct past the guards on the bridge. Take this.” He held out a small red-and-gold disk. Valder accepted it, noting wryly that the man’s other hand still held the protective charm.
“Thank you again.” He bowed and marched off down the hallway. He heard the clunk of the door closing behind him, but did not look back.
The guard at the inner gate demanded the little enameled disk before allowing him into the tunnel under the bridge and gave him a slip of paper in its place, which was in turn collected by the guard at the outer gate when Valder knocked on the paving and was released into the marketplace once again. It struck him as odd that it was more difficult to get out of the Palace than in, though he could see the logic to the system; after all, someone with legitimate business might be unable to obtain a pass to enter, but anyone who departed without some sign of having had such business could be safely assumed to be a fraud or worse. It still seemed odd, though.
He managed to distract himself with such trivia for the entire trip out of the Palace and across the market square; it was only when seated in a quiet tavern and sipping cold ale that he allowed his thoughts to return to his problem.
One reasonably positive aspect of his situation had occurred to him rather belatedly. If he could not kill himself, but must wait to be murdered, then he might live for a good long time after he had killed all his nineteen victims; he had no intention of being a willing victim, and that meant that his killer might not be able to get at him until he had sunk irretrievably into senility, or blindness, or some other incapacity, by which time he thought he would prefer to die in any case. He would, he thought, be a rich enough victim to attract a cutthroat fairly quickly, once he was known to be helpless, so that he probably would not be left to linger unreasonably long. He might even leave instructions with Tandellin that he was to be killed when he had sunk far enough, without hope of recovery, to make his life miserable.
That was an interesting idea, actually; he rather liked that. The idea of suicide was one that had never really appealed to him, nor had he cared for the idea of allowing some scoundrel to do him in and take possession of Wirikidor. Allowing Tandellin or some other worthy fellow to put him out of his misery, however, was not so bad.
That still left him with the necessity of killing nineteen men. He might yet find a job as a headsman, he supposed, but it would mean travel, extensive travel, to find such a post. He was not at all sure he felt up to any such travel; he felt his age, though perhaps not as much as most men of his years. It would be far more pleasant to find his victims here in Ethshar.
A thought struck him. He was not able legally to dispatch condemned criminals, but if what Adagan had told him was correct, there were neighborhood vigilance committees that didn’t always bother with legalities. He might join such a group, perhaps — or perhaps he could simply track down criminals on his own and let their removal be credited to the vigilantes. That was an idea with great promise.
When the taverner came by with a refill, he asked, “What do they do with thieves around here, anyway? One almost got my purse this morning.”
“Depends who catches them,” replied the taverner, a heavy man of medium height, bristling black beard, and gleaming bald pate. “If it’s the city guard, by some miracle, they are hanged — assuming they can’t bribe their way out of it. Usually, though, it’s just the neighbors, and they’ll beat a little honesty into them, even if it means a few broken bones — or broken heads.”
“The neighbors, you say?”
“That’s right; the landowners have the right to defend their property, old Azrad says.”
“Landowners only, huh?”
“Yes, landowners; can’t have just anyone enforcing the law, or you’ll have riots every time there’s a disagreement.”
“So if I were robbed here — I can see you run an honest place, but just suppose some poor desperate fool wandered in off the street and snatched my purse — what should I do? Call you?”
“That’s right; we’d teach him a lesson, depending on what he’d stolen, and from whom, and whether we’d ever caught him before; if he lived through it, that would be the end of it — assuming he gave back your money, of course.”
“What if I caught him myself?”
“Well, that’s your affair, isn’t it? Just so you didn’t do it in here.”
Valder nodded. “Good enough.” It was, indeed, good enough. If he could contrive to be robbed or attacked, then he would have every right to defend himself. He was an old man, with a fat purse — or fat enough, at any rate. If he were to wear his purse openly, instead of beneath his kilt, and were somehow to make Wirikidor less obvious while still ready at hand, he would be very tempting bait. It would be unpleasant, and he might receive a few injuries, but it seemed the quickest and best solution to his problems.
He thanked the taverner, finished his ale in a gulp, paid his bill, and left. He turned his steps back toward Westgate; he was heading for Wall Street.
CHAPTER 29
Wall Street had changed in detail since Valder had spent a night there forty years earlier, but not in the essentials. The law still required that no permanent structures be erected between Wall Street and the city wall itself, and that meant that the Hundred-Foot Field was still there and still the last resort for the homeless. Those had been confused veterans when Valder had first seen it, men suddenly displaced from the only life they had known since childhood, but the majority had still been honest men who simply had not yet found their places. Now, however, all such had long since departed, either finding themselves better homes or dying, leaving behind the human detritus of the city and the Hegemony, the beggars, cripples, outcasts, and simpletons. The tents and blankets of the veterans had given way to shacks and lean-tos; where the soldiers had been almost exclusively young men, the current population came in both sexes and all sizes, shapes, and ages.
And among these derelicts, Valder had heard, hid the worst of the city’s criminals. The guard did not willingly come into the Hundred-Foot Field, and there were no land-owning vigilantes, since it was entirely public land, so that it served as a final refuge for scoundrels and blackguards who had been driven from all the more comfortable places.
With that in mind, it was Valder’s intention to stroll the length of Wall Street with his purse plain on his belt and Wirikidor serving as a cane. That, he was sure, would attract thieves, and any such lurking along Wall Str
eet might reasonably be assumed to be no great loss to anyone, should he kill them in self-defense. Whether he would be able to lure nineteen of them to their deaths he did not care to guess, but he did expect to make a good start.
He walked south from Westgate Market an hour or so after the sun passed its zenith, a good meal in his belly and feeling reasonably rested. The day was warm but not hot, and a strong wind blew from the east, tugging at his clothes and keeping him cool. He expected the first attack within an hour.
It did not materialize; rather than being attracted by the harmless old man, the people who noticed him at all stared and actively avoided him.
Perhaps, he thought, he was being too obvious about it. Thieves would suspect a trap of some sort. He tucked the purse into a fold of his kilt, as if he were unsuccessfully attempting to hide it, and trudged onward.
Another few minutes brought him to Newgate Market in the city’s southwestern corner; although far smaller and less active than Westgate Market, the square was lined with inns and taverns, and he stopped into one for a drink and a rest. He intentionally chose the one that looked worst, in hopes that a drunken brawl might start and provide an opportunity for swordplay. He promised himself he would not be the first to draw a weapon in such a situation and that he would not actively provoke a fight — but should one begin, he was ready and eager to join in, sixty-six or not.
No fight began, and after an hour or two he moved on, heading from Newgate into Southwark. This gave every appearance of being a quiet and respectable residential area, despite its proximity to Wall Street and the Hundred-Foot Field, where Westgate, Westwark, Crookwall, and Newgate had all been more colorful. The population of the Field seemed thinner here, and the shacks and huts fewer and more substantial.
Another hour found him still plodding along unmolested, well on his way to Southgate and inwardly fuming. He had decided that Wirikidor was too obviously a sword, rather than a cane. From what little he knew of the city’s geography, he judged himself to be nearing the southern end of the Wizards’ Quarter — assuming that district reached the southern wall, which he doubted. He began mulling over the possibility of purchasing a concealment spell or an illusion to hide Wirikidor or make it appear something other than itself.
The Misenchanted Sword loe-1 Page 25
