by John Barnes
Amatus nodded calmly. "Many things may go wrong and many surprises may be in store. But can we win, as far as you know?"
"We can beat what we know him to have, Highness, thoroughly enough to permit us to march across the mountains and take Oppidum Optimum. But I cannot say whether his moves are afoot now because he has found a new source of strength, or because he has come to fear he will grow weaker with time. Either could be the case."
Amatus nodded gravely, and—knowing he was imitating his father and no longer embarrassed by the fact—he added that Cedric's advice was particularly good because it was given with particular caution. And then, because he was still young, and so were his friends, he added, "And is there anything we can do tonight?"
"Highness," Cedric said, "your job is the difficult one of pretending that nothing is going on, and of scheduling a busy social schedule with a number of rounds to a variety of embassies. You might take the Lady Calliope with you."
"He might indeed," she said, smiling. Now that evenings had more light and warmth, she had been longing to be out and about.
"And what will it accomplish?" Amatus asked.
Cedric fought down his wish to say, "It might get us an unusually fine queen, one of these years," and instead replied, "It provides opportunities, Highness. You will force spies to move to follow you, and to communicate with each other, and this will expose them to the weapons of our friends here."
"So you will face danger while I attend parties? I won't hear of that—"
Sir John, to everyone's surprise, including his own, spoke first. "Highness, we will face those dangers because we must. You are the only bait that will draw them. The Duke and I could not lure four flies to a pile of manure. And though I trust it will not offend you, you are not the pismire shot I am, nor the Duke's equal with the pongee, nor do you truly match either of us with the escree. The work must be done, and my lord Cedric has been accurate about how and by whom."
Had it been as recent as a year ago, Cedric wondered, or had it been more like five, since he would have expected Prince Amatus to quarrel in defense of his honor? Now the Prince did no such thing, but nodded and spoke softly. "I shall try to be worthy of such service. And here, Duke Wassant, take this silver whistle from me, just for tonight, and blow it if you or Sir John are in trouble; it summons help, as you may recall."
And then, just as if the whole conversation had not passed at all, they returned to drinking wine, singing, and gossiping about the new wave of ladies in waiting, some of whom were not waiting very long.
2
An Affair of an Evening
The Hektarian Embassy, since time immemorial, had been noted for the quality of the tea given there; it was given late in the afternoon so that people would be all the hungrier, for the Hektarian Ambassadors wanted people to enjoy it, and Hektarian aesthetics are built around contrast.
The Hektarian Ambassador, who was unusually genial even among Hektarians, was particularly delighted today because Prince Amatus and the Lady Calliope, quite unexpectedly, turned up. Since the Hektarians serve tea as a buffet, so that people can converse and mingle more freely, there was no difficulty in handing them another plate, and it was with some delight that the Hektarian Ambassador also noted that Amatus, after accepting a plate of protons and simile and a glass of Gravamen, seemed to go out of his way to converse quietly with the Ambassador.
True, it was only pleasantries about the weather and family matters and so forth, but since one major aspect of the Hektarian foreign policy was to try to marry off one of their available princesses to Amatus, for the Ambassador to talk to the Prince about anything at all was desirable. And besides, he noted with some pleasure, one reason the conversation went on as long as it did was that one rather rude young man who seemed to be trying to work his way toward them—no doubt to petition for some favor or other—was intercepted by the Lady Calliope, who practically threw herself at the young fellow, standing very close to him and leaving him no courteous way to get closer to the Prince and the Ambassador. This was not the behavior of a woman who thought she was going to be Queen, and so some decision had plainly been made, which might account for the Prince's visit here.
If so the Prince was not rushing matters, whatever matters might be, for not long after he vanished from the party, collecting the Lady Calliope as he went.
As the two stepped through the archway, just out of hearing of the Hektarian guards, Calliope said, apparently to the air, "Young, blond, taller than Amatus, blue cloak and red boots, yellow star on the cloak, calls himself Miharry."
She said it softly, tenderly, as lovers do, and Amatus gently kissed her, so that even if the Hektarian guards had heard (and they did not) they would have thought the words they did not catch were endearments.
The two climbed into the Royal Coach and drove to the evening reception at the Vulgarian Embassy. The echoes of the clatter of their wheels were still sounding as Miharry himself strolled casually out through the gate.
He turned left, not in the direction the carriage had gone, and now he walked more quickly. As he did, he occasionally—at odd intervals—changed his gait, or turned around, but he saw nothing. If anyone had been looking back over his shoulder when Miharry was not, they might have seen a shadow that suggested a heavyset man, moving in a way that seemed improbable for one so fat, as gracefully and lightly as one of the girls who dance for flavins in the taborets.
Miharry stepped sideways into an alley. After a time he jumped out suddenly, looking wildly about him. There was nothing there. He stood in the dark street and sighed.
He was tilted backwards by the jaw. Something big was against his back. A blade as sharp as a razor lay on his throat.
"Where is your meeting?" a voice asked quietly.
Miharry did not speak.
"It does not greatly matter to me," the voice that went with the great bulk behind him added, softly. "You may struggle and die here, not struggle and be tortured until you speak, or speak. It is time to decide."
Miharry swallowed hard, and said, "I am sworn—"
"You are released from any oath at death," the Duke said, slicing Miharry's carotids and jugular and letting him fall forward, then wiping his blade on Miharry's triolet. He had always hated torture, and he hated to see honorable men break their word, and no doubt Miharry had some sort of honor. Spies usually did.
He made sure the spy was dead, and crept down the alley. Sure enough, he found a loose stone in a corner, behind which there was a piece of paper. He pocketed the paper and waited; from where Wassant sat, whoever moved that stone next would be silhouetted against the alley opening.
Then he drifted into the light sleep he had long practiced. Duke Wassant dozed pleasantly, his jaw tied lightly with a ribbon from his hat, because he knew that fat men often snore and even though he hadn't yet, he couldn't be sure when he might start. He woke without a start when there were footfalls in the alley.
The figure was muscular and well-built, and Duke Wassant knew it at once. He waited until the pismire was pointed off to the side, so as not to risk a snap shot, and said, "Sir John."
The figure did not move, except to let the pismire creep back toward the source of the sound. "Duke?"
"Yes."
"Give some sign."
Damn Sir John for his overcautiousness, anyway, Wassant thought, and then said, "No, you give sign. What birthmark does the Lady Calliope bear on her inner thigh?"
Sir John stood up straight. "I don't know that!"
'Then you are undoubtedly Sir John Slitgizzard. Anyone else would have made something up, being sure that you would know."
Chuckling, Sir John slid the pismire back into his swash—and then suddenly asked, "But we've only established that I'm me, Duke, what about you?"
"Who else would have asked you such a question?" The Duke came forward. "How was hunting?" he asked, putting his arm around Sir John's shoulder.
"Two of mine lying on top of your one. I'm ahead. I imagine mine
were coming for a message from yours?"
"Very likely. Where did you pick them up?"
"The first at the Vulgarian Embassy, following the Prince out; the second joined him at a tavern. I left a man to watch at the tavern, a fellow named Hark . . ."
"I remember him, a great deal of experience, and often there when things that matter a great deal happen." The Duke and his friend walked back up the alley, still alert, and the Duke said, "If you noticed the time—"
"A bit past the shank of the evening," Sir John said, "by the bell clock."
"Then we might go to the playhouse. The torchlight show should be beginning, and Amatus was planning to see it."
"Good, then," Sir John said. "Let us catch a carriage . . . we shall be less conspicuous and there will be fewer rumors flying about us that way than if we are seen walking the streets."
The Duke nodded, and at the next big corner they found an old carriage, much battered but clean enough inside, and told the driver to go to the Sign of the Rambunctious Gazebo.
"The Prince's own company is performing tonight, and several of his favorite troupials are in the principal parts," Sir John observed.
Duke Wassant had never much cared for the theatre, for it was a vulgar place, where like as not one might encounter a pickpocket or cutpurse. Besides, he loved good music, and theatrical orchestras were raucous; fine dancing, and theatre dance was anything but delicate; and truthfulness, and everyone in the theater was pretending to be someone they were not. Sir John, on the other hand, was passionate about theatre, and babbled on as they rode, of the fine troupials they were to see.
"It is really a surprise, I understand, to everyone except Cedric, that Roderick should turn out a playwright, but apparently he has been quietly pursuing it for years and they say that this is a remarkable piece of work," Sir John said. "It is called The Masque of Murder, and it is said to be about—"
"Please, Sir John, don't get yourself into a fret about it; what if we have to pursue someone before the show is over? You'll only be disappointed." The Duke shifted his bulk around, looking for a more comfortable spot on the bench seat of the carriage.
Sir John nodded. "Of course you are right. But it is hard not to, after what I have heard of this play—and to think that the artist was under our very noses—" But then Sir John sat bolt upright; in the dim light of the flaring candle sconces, reflecting from the oilpaper windows, he had a haunted, shadowed look.
"What is—"
Sir John gestured for silence and turned to raise the oilcloth shutter a crack. Keeping his head well back, he peeped through the opening, and whispered, as softly as he could above the din of the carriage wheels on the cobblestones, "We've just crossed Wend. Wherever he's taking us it's not to the Rambunctious Gazebo. I'm afraid that—"
The carriage lurched and stopped; Sir John leapt sideways, and there was a thud. Wassant saw the blade of the escree stuck through the oilpaper into the cushion where Slitgizzard had been, and was drawing his pismire before his mind said what had happened . . . kidnapped.
There was thumping on the carriage roof—the driver climbing back, or someone getting up there with a pismire to shoot them in the back if they burst out through the doors. With a slash of his escree, Sir John extinguished both sconces, and now it was darker inside the carriage than out.
In the pitch blackness there was nothing to see except the oval windows themselves shining through the oilcloth shutters, leaving a little square ring of light around themselves where the edge of the oilpaper was. There was no sound for a long moment, and then, very, very softly, the door lock began to turn.
Sir John cocked the chutney on his pismire, moved near the door whose lock was turning, and placed his hand upon the ceiling. He felt a little shift of weight, and now he knew where one of the foemen's feet was; pressed firmly along the ceiling, found the other by its resistance, and placed the pismire, muzzle against the ceiling, squarely between them. All this took far less time than it takes to tell, and during the bare quarter of a breath while it was happening, Duke Wassant had been cocking the chutney of his own pismire, and pressing his ear to the door to make sure that he knew from which side the unseen foe was turning the handle.
When he was sure, he placed his pismire close to the handle, in the spot where he knew the wrist must be, and watched the handle turn farther. It seemed to creep along, no faster than the minute hand upon a clock.
Wassant felt the soft tickle of a breath coming into his nose, and realized he was about to sneeze. He bit down on his lower lip as the door handle reached its full rotation.
So lightly as not to disturb him at all, and yet so firmly as to leave no mistake for its intention, Sir John's index finger touched upon the Duke's shoulder. With no jerk or tug to put the pismire the least off its mark, Wassant pulled the trigger, and both pismires bellowed like cannons in the enclosed space, their reports exactly overlapping.
The Duke kicked the door open, returned his pismire to his swash, and leapt through, drawing his escree in one smooth movement. He had footing on the cobbles and was whirling to check all sides before he realized that in the moonlight he had seen one man staring at the stump of his arm, and another slumped on the carriage roof, facedown, his hands jammed between his legs.
A dozen figures, all with escrees drawn, formed a semicircle around this side of the carriage.
A moment later Sir John was at his side. "Surrounded," Sir John breathed beside him. "All around the carriage. Wheels have been spoked—can't get it free and drive through."
Wassant nodded. Every one of the men facing them was hooded, and there were no torches to light them; they might have been statues.
They stood and waited, expecting the fight to begin at any moment, and when it did not, the Duke listened as the man who had lost his hand slipped into unconsciousness behind them, and then stopped breathing; listened longer as the ragged breaths of the man lying on his face faded away; listened and watched, and still the circle of silent swordsmen did not stir or speak.
His eyes had adjusted to the dark now, and he could see that their cloaks—gray-blue as all things were in the moonlight—were thick and hung with great weight on what seemed preternaturally slim bodies,
"What do you want with us?" Wassant demanded, when he began to fear that his attention might flag, yet did not want to begin the fight, for the numbers were so far against them that they would surely lose. "We are servants of the King and true liegemen to Prince Amatus. You have no right or power over us. Flee lest we slay you now."
The circle of men—if they were men—about them did not move or make a sound. Many fast heartbeats went by, and then all of them stepped forward, as if in unison, with their left feet first, and took a single step forward and to the side, so that the circle constricted by half a pace and rotated a few degrees. The line of escrees pointed at them never dropped.
Sir John drew a pismire and said, softly and casually, just as if he were debating a minor point in politics, "Since you have had ample opportunity to shoot us, and you have not, your behavior seems to suggest to me, my friends, that you have been ordered to take us alive. Would any of you care to elucidate on that point? It is plain from the deaths of our coachmen that you have been ordered not to avenge any comrades, or perhaps it has even been made clear to you that our lives are more valuable than yours. Perhaps we can just find out to what extent this holds."
Then he leveled his pismire at the figure most nearly facing him, cocked the chutney, took aim on a spot in the very middle of its body (for he had begun to wonder if it were anything human he faced), set the lovelock, and pulled the trigger.
The flash of the pismire's discharge seemed bright as day, and surely, Duke Wassant thought, this ought to bring help, and perhaps in any other part of the city it might—but this was the worst part, a place that few admitted was there, the section along Wend that was on no one's way to anywhere, where the houses had long since been abandoned because of fear of thieves and murderers, and whe
nce the thieves and murderers had fled because things whose names they feared to speak had come to live in the houses, and gunge leaked up through the very pavement.
The figure before them bowled over backward, and lay still for an instant. Then it seemed to raise its head, and then to writhe peculiarly as if its neck were broken. It lay twitching upon the ground for longer than it seemed it should have been capable of twitching.
Another figure stepped out of the murk, over the body of the fallen one, and joined the circle. They all stepped forward and to the left again, once again closing the circle and revolving it.
Slitgizzard said something under his breath that the Duke found a little shocking. Indeed, even Sir John thought it was exceptionally profane, but the situation had utterly exhausted his vocabulary otherwise, and no lesser oath could possibly do.
While they waited, Wassant quietly reloaded all three pismires, and then—eyes never leaving the sinister figures— moved his own swash over onto Sir John's shoulders, retaining his escree and pongee, so that the better shot had all six of the pismires.
"You might try a few again," Wassant said, "and see if it slows them at all."
Fast as thought Slitgizzard drew, cocked, fired, and bolstered four of the six pismires, so that Wend Street echoed with the booms and crashes, and the flashes seemed to stutter like a single great spark. Three of the foe fell, and then a fourth who was coming up to replace the first fallen one.
All four bodies began to twitch in just the same fashion as Sir John's other target had. Wassant watched this with the corner of his eye as he frantically reloaded.
