Hour of the Octopus

by Joel Rosenberg

  “At this juncture, the tax collector arrived with the new schedule: twelve, one, and four for room and board, and two, two, and one of that to be paid as tax.

  “She paid him the two, two, and one, and repaid the deilist three, two, and two.”

  Edelfaule leaned forward. “Which means that there’s some money missing, as I discovered when I happened to investigate it. The deilist has paid twelve, four, and one; the Purse has received two, two, and one. We combine those numbers to find that of the deilist’s original fifteen, six, and three, we’ve accounted for only fourteen, six, and two.” He spread his hands. “Where are the vanished copper and shard?”

  Toshtai sat silent for a moment. “Which would,” he said, “seem to indicate that there is some strange magic afoot,” he finished. “Where did the extra copper and shard go? Kami Dan’Shir seems to be of the opinion that he knows where it is.”

  Edelfaule snorted. “I am sure he does. All bourgeois know about money; they can smell it out. Tell me, little Kami Dan’Shir, as you stand there reeking of trade, tell me where your nose finds this missing money.”

  I don’t generally like members of our beloved ruling class, and I’d taken a special disliking to Edelfaule. Not that I was going to be able to do anything about it.

  So I smiled genially as I held out my empty palm. “It’s right here, Lord,” I said, “as much as anywhere. It doesn’t exist. It never existed.” I turned to Lord Toshtai. “If it please you, would you have a servant bring fifteen coppers, six fille, and three shards?”

  It took longer than I would have thought, but, then again, money wasn’t much used within the donjon itself, although—despite the constant comments about how the lower classes stink of commerce—our beloved ruling class has always managed to tax the lower classes heavily enough to provide for their own needs. And wants. And whims. And whimsies.

  In a few minutes, a white-clad serving girl appeared, the silver salver balanced properly on her palm holding three stacks: one of fifteen oblong copper coins, another of six fille pastille, and three iron shards. Toshtai sent her to me with a finger gesture; I lowered the tray to the floor and arranged the coins carefully on the stone.

  I rolled my sleeves back. I had my own pouch at my waist, and it was too late to get rid of it. I didn’t want Edelfaule accusing me of having sleighted a copper up a sleeve. I could prove him wrong easily, mind, but I didn’t want to prove him wrong.

  “Fifteen coppers, six fille, and three shards,” I said. “The amount that the deilist originally paid to Madame Rupon, I believe.” I slid all three piles to one side.

  “But the new schedule came down, and he had overpaid by three, two, and two, so she rebated him the deilist three, two, and two to square accounts with him.”

  I slid three coppers, two filles, and two shards to my left. “She paid the tax collector two, two, and one.” I reached again for the pile representing Madame Rupon and slid two coppers, two fille, and one shard into a third pile.

  “Add it up: there’s nothing missing.” I stood. “I hope the puzzle has amused you.”

  Toshtai’s head inclined almost measurably, then straightened. “Lord Edelfaule did add correctly in the first place, though.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Lord Edelfaule is correct: after the adjustment, the deilist has paid twelve, four, and one; Lord Toshtai has received two, two, and one. When you add those two numbers together, you do get fourteen, six, and two.”

  “So where are the copper and shard?” Edelfaule snarled.

  “The numbers you report were entirely right, Lord Edelfaule; your addition was perfect. The only problem is that the sum of what the deilist eventually paid and what Lord Toshtai eventually received is a meaningless one. There were fifteen, six, and three originally. Of those, Lord Toshtai now has two, two, and one,” I said, indicating one pile, “the deilist has three, two, and two; Madame Rupon has the rest: ten, two, and none. All balances, and balance—”

  “Now, wait.” Arefai smiled. “You mean that my brother is as correct as he always is, always must be? But that his correctness is irrelevant as usual?” His smile was genuine, but malicious.

  And definitely nothing I wanted to either answer or ignore. I was debating how to avoid it when Lord Toshtai spoke up.

  “A pretty puzzle, Kami Dan’Shir,” he moved his chin ever so slightly toward the pile of coins. “You will please present the tray and the coin to Madame Rupon with my compliments, and then conduct her and her daughter back to their home.” He looked from Arefai to Edelfaule. “Arefai, if it please you, go now to tell the warden of the dungeon that I have increasing faith in Kami Dan’Shir.”

  He could have simply passed along the order that the two women were to be released to me, but he was deliberately if subtly raising my status. The warden would take the meaning, and so would Edelfaule.

  It took Arefai a moment to get it, but then he smiled, rose, and bowed. “At once, father,” he said, slipping his scabbard back into his sash as he walked quickly from the room.

  Toshtai nodded, again. “A very pretty solution, Kami Dan’Shir. And I am told you made a very pretty shot with an arrow today, despite a minor injury,” he said, with a gesture at my scabbed left forearm. “You will join us at dinner tonight, if you are free.”

  That was no surprise. Toshtai wanted me at dinner for reasons that he didn’t want to specify in front of anyone else, nor did he want to give me the status implicit in a private meeting. He had been intending to use the morning’s hunt as a pretext—a reward for a brilliant shot that had provided the venison—but this had proved a substitute, or at least a supplement.

  “Of course, Lord,” I said. It was a dismissal; I gathered up the tray and coins, Edelfaule’s eyes on my back all the way.

  Interlude:

  The Hour Of The Ox

  Edelfaule paced back and forth, slowly, through the inner garden. His father was impatient with impatience, and Edelfaule had been told to wait.

  So he waited.

  Midafternoon was the wrong time of day to be in the inner garden, though. The hour of the ox was a dull and obvious time of day, when the sun, while no longer directly overhead, simply shone down, casting no interesting shadows. Yes, the flowers were pretty, but their colors were too garish, too ordinary, too bourgeois in such direct light. Edelfaule preferred the hour of the dragon, when hints of the soon-to-be-rising sun would slowly give color and meaning to the showers of flowers and sprays of blossoms.

  It was much better late at night, on a clear night, when the stars and moon would turn dark greenery into shadow, barely alleviated with hints of color from the hanging lanterns. On more than one occasion, after his father had retired, Edelfaule had brought a favored concubine into the garden, and led her carefully between the plants to a soft and grassy spot before untying her robes and tossing them gently to the side.

  Having her in the garden was like having Den Oroshtai itself.

  Edelfaule felt at his neck. But Den Oroshtai had troops committed in the Ven, and it would soon be time for Edelfaule to rejoin them. A dangerous thing, that. Patrice in particular would much rather Den Oroshtai fall into the hands of a fool like Edelfaule’s brother than Edelfaule himself, and if an accident could be arranged—and such accidents had happened during a battle more often than not—that might well happen.

  What would Toshtai do without Edelfaule? Turn the realm over to Arefai and hope for the best?

  But, with Arefai married to that ViKay woman, ViKay of the large brown eyes and small red mouth, that would make the lord of Den Oroshtai also the husband of the favored daughter of Lord Orazhi of Glen Derenai. Orazhi was no fool, and Arefai would defer to his wife’s father on matters of strategy and alliance.

  Once Arefai was safely married, Edelfaule and Lord Demick would have a mutual interest in keeping Edelfaule alive.

  His fingers toyed with the thick leaves of a spiny fulminor, enjoying the way the bristles felt smooth as a cat’s fur when he stroked it toward the tip
.

  He had crouched to sniff at a crimson melrose when he heard his father behind him. The old fool.

  “Edelfaule,” his father said.

  He rose, one hand on the hilt of his knife, and nodded. All he had to do was draw, step, and slice. It would be so easy, so very easy, to become lord of Den Oroshtai in one smooth motion.

  Except that would never be allowed to stand, and Edelfaule didn’t seriously consider it. Dun Lidjun would not follow a patricide; Arefai would not permit him to live. Eliminate them, and there was still the delicate web of partial alliances and subtle affiliations that Toshtai had woven around Den Oroshtai and that were all attached to Toshtai. It would be possible to transplant them to Edelfaule, but that would have to be done slowly and carefully by Toshtai himself.

  No; he was his father’s heir in name only until and unless that could be changed. At the moment, and for the foreseeable future, Toshtai was not expendable.

  Edelfaule had no softness toward the filthy peasants or the middle class and bourgeois, all of them stinking of business and money. He didn’t care for his mother or his half-brothers, and while he enjoyed his essences and his concubines, he didn’t care for them. No weakness there.

  The only weakness was here. In all the world, there were two things that Edelfaule cared for: himself, and Den Oroshtai. The buildings, sturdy and homey; the south wall, where the land spread out below him like a quilt; the garden, where night whispered its pledge of troth to him in the dark.

  “Father,” he said. “It seems I made an error.”

  Toshtai’s head seemed to nod. “That appears to be so.”

  It was all that Kami Dan’Shir’s fault. Nobody except for the widow and her daughter would have ever known that Edelfaule had made an error, and they wouldn’t speak from the grave. The affair would have stood as yet another lesson to the lower classes that they must not try to cheat their nobility; that would have done no harm.

  But one thing had done harm. By exposing their innocence, Kami Dan’Shir had lowered Edelfaule in his father’s eyes. Unforgivable, unpardonable. He would have to be dealt with.

  “Not in your computation,” Toshtai went on, “but in your calculation. You were too precipitous, Edelfaule. Where would she flee? She was no traveling perfumer, here today, gone tomorrow, leaving nothing behind but a scent. No need to take action until you were sure. It’s every grain as important that the lower classes understand that good conduct will be rewarded as it is that they fear our swords and hands when they behave badly.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “I have no objection to punishing bad service, or theft, or insolence, as I trust I’ve demonstrated today, but it is bad practice to punish the innocent, eh?”

  Edelfaule lowered his head modestly. “Yes, Father. I am sorry.”

  Toshtai’s lips pursed once. “Very well. Let’s not mention it again. We have more serious matters to discuss. We leave for Glen Derenai in two days for your brother’s wedding.”

  That was one of Father’s cleverer strategems. Edelfaule was the oldest living son and therefore the presumed heir to Den Oroshtai. He had to be, what with Arefai being such a fool. So bind Den Oroshtai and Glen Derenai closer together with a marriage between Arefai and ViKay, but not so threateningly close as one between Edelfaule and ViKay would be. Always tentative, like a musician idly plucking the strings of his zivver while he thought of something else. Toshtai was patient, slowly knitting together a skein of alliances that would, someday, become a garrote around Demick’s neck.

  Patience was a virtue, and Edelfaule would be patient. He would even things with Kami Dan’Shir, but not now. Kami Dan’Shir was too clearly under Toshtai’s protection. For the time being. But that could change.

  Timing was everything.

  He would wait.

  Chapter 5

  Dinner, Tania, a puzzle, and other mixed pleasures.

  It’s by no means unknown for a bourgeois to dine in the Great Hall, but it’s not ordinary, either. Dining customs differ from one end of D’Shai to the other, but in no part of the country does convention regularly require our beloved ruling class to put up with the noisome presence of us lesser beings.

  The trouble, of course, was where to put me.

  The seats of greatest honor are the ones next to Lord Toshtai, and while other positions are in theory all also of honor, the ones next to a bourgeois would be the least so.

  The solution was elegant: I was put in the group at the foot of the right arm of the staple-shaped arrangement of tables, with Arefai on one side and Lady Estrer on the other. That made the right arm a perfectly acceptable place to be, nervous as it made me.

  The slow playing of the musicians kept us audibly isolated, although I’d heard better than this six-person group. The silverhorn was good, although he really should have had a backup player; the zivver was acceptable if too eager to show off his fast fingerwork; and the watercrystal player was very good, with a nice, direct way of hitting her crystals without keeping her fingernails on them for a moment more than necessary. The drummer, though, was a disappointment; he kept hitting at just the end of the beat, not the beginning, following the tempo, being dragged by it instead of driving it. I hate when that happens. The trompon was inoffensive if uninspired, and the bassskin player must have had an ingrown thumbnail, to judge from the way he kept declining to dig in and really bring out the notes.

  At least the music kept me from worrying about somebody else misinterpreting something I might say and taking offense.

  The three of us were physically isolated from the next group by a huge silver soup tureen in the shape of an inverted turtle shell. It had been raised high above the table on skinny but sturdy silver legs, staying slowly simmering over a dozen sputtering candles.

  There was no particular slight in that; the forty-some people spread out on the wall side of the table were broken up into smaller groups by food vessels: one serving tray heavily laden with crispy pork loins that had been stuffed with spicy Shalough sausage; a tureen of murky brown soup with bits of carrots bobbing gently at its roiling, oily surface; a huge onyx vat of chipped ice, indented to hold tiny glass plates, each topped with a small ball of fundleberry sherbet sitting on a circle of rose leaves; the remains of what had been a rack of venison.

  I didn’t mind the isolation; I would have preferred more. Slantwise across from me, right next to Toshtai, Minch’s eyes seemed too often pointed at me.

  Lady Estrer’s withered hands trembled as she manipulated a sliver of pheasant first to the bowl of green mustard, barely touching it to the thick sauce, then to her dry lips, following it quickly with a tiny mouthful of roasted barley. She chewed with an even rhythm, like a cadence, as though it was a matter of ritual and ceremony, as though eating had nothing to do with hunger or taste.

  She looked over at me and snorted. “Kami Dan’Shir, you eat as though this were to be your last meal.” Her eyes, staring out of dark pits in a lined face, watched me too closely.

  “It could be,” I said, after swallowing a large mouthful of the turtle soup to rinse out the taste of the marinated frog hearts in clotted cream. It is not one of my favorite dishes; hot dishes should be hot, cold dishes cold. This sort of lukewarm mush hiding lukewarm snippets of frog didn’t even have any spirit to its temperature. “If the rest of the food is like the frog hearts,” I added.

  Her thin lips curved up. Lady Estrer always likes a little audacity, as long as it’s only a little.

  “It’s a classic dish,” she said.

  I nodded. “I’m sure that is so, Lady.”

  She chuckled thinly, then subsided.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Arefai grinning as he beckoned to one of the servitors to spoon some more of the horrid green and off-white mixture onto his own plate, right next to his double helping of snails in aspic.

  The trompon blasted out an adequate arpeggio as the doors swung open. Stupidly, I looked up for the entrance of the jugglers, but there was no such
thing: no Gray Khuzud, balanced naturally on the balls of his feet, no Sala of the Rings, her costume always just about to slip open interestingly or fall from her bare shoulders, no Large Egda, no Eresthais, no Evrem, and there would never be an Enki Duzun. My sister was dead, dead, dead, and the fact that her murderer had died was as cold in my mouth as lukewarm frog hearts.

  No: all it was, was Dun Lidjun, escorting a pair of ladies, returning from a quick turn around the gardens. The old soldier brought them to their seats, then quickly reclaimed his own, the path only coincidentally bringing him around behind most of the foreign visitors.

  Of course. All is accident.

  He dug into a huge mound of the local version of Precious Rice, his eating sticks clicking like dice.

  “You were saying something, Kami Dan’Shir?” Lady Estrer asked.

  Oh, no. A bourgeois can’t afford to have his mouth working away when he doesn’t intend to. “I am sure Lady Estrer is correct, but I can’t recall what I said; I’m certain it’s of no importance.”

  “Pfah.” She lifted a goblet and drained half of it, as quickly as she could pour. “The truth is that you weren’t saying anything, that you’ve been sitting in insolent silence. This, Kami Khuzud, Kami Dan’Shir, or whatever you call yourself now, is a dinner. A dinner is a social event, at which one acts sociably. To act sociably, you make a comment every now and then; I do the same. Perhaps we find a matter to dispute politely, or possibly we find some other person, one not here, whose flaws to discuss in some detail.” She made a choppy gesture, a twist of the wrist that brought her hand palm-up. “Your turn.”

  I opened my mouth, closed it, then opened it again, reddening.

  Arefai laughed, which only made me more frustrated, but his laugh was friendly. Thank the Powers for small favors, eh?