“Lahal Amak: Thank you for the wine and the bed. We will go hunting the graint together, on the plains.”
It was written in that beautiful flowing Kregan script, very pure, and instead of the usual Remberee was written Happy Swinging.
“Happy Swinging to you, too,” I said, and burned the note.
Chapter 14
Chido said, “Y’know, old feller, Wees ain’t half cut up about last night.”
“Did he roar?”
“By Krun! He roared like a chunkrah with hoofache!”
“Let us go and take the Baths of the Nine.”
So we went to the best establishment in the Sacred Quarter. The Baths of the Nine are extraordinarily decadent and luxurious in Ruathytu, as you may imagine, and we steamed and soaked. We found Rees moodily stretched on a slab with a Numim girl carefully brushing his glorious golden fur.
“Huh,” he said when he saw us. “You apims and your naked skins! Oil and strigils! Barbarous!”
So we imagined he was back to form, which was a relief.
“Anyway, Hamun!” he bellowed. “Who was that Havil-forsaken man?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “He cleared off quickly this morning before I was up. He didn’t speak much.”
“I’ll bet he didn’t.”
We stretched out next to Rees and two Fristle fifis started in on us with oils, unguents, and scrapers. I leaned my head close to Rees in the warm scented room.
Now nine is one of the most sacred numbers on Kregen. I was to perform wonders with the aid of a magic square based on nine, but that remains to be told. So I leaned toward Rees and I said, “The Nine have been asking questions.”
He looked at me blankly.
I said, “Do you know what I’m talking about?”
“No, by Krun! I do not.”
If he knew about the Nine Faceless Ones, he might not vouchsafe that information, bound by prior vows.
I said, “They are faceless, Rees.”
“Faceless! Bodiless! Specters! I need a drink!”
Later, as we sat on the terrace overlooking the largest pool and watched the swimming and diving, I said, very lazily, acting my part as a chinless goggler like Chido, “Do, you know anyone connected with the vollers, Rees?”
“Only that cramph Vad Garnath, and if he shows his face I shall kill him.”
Now I did not think Garnath was involved with voller manufacture. He had mentioned that he might form a skyship flight or a voller squadron. That was not what I wanted.
I tried for what I promised myself would be the penultimate time.
“I don’t mean that, Rees. I mean making the damned things.”
He looked over at me, his glass half raised. “Now, old son! You don’t want to go around talking about these things. It ain’t healthy.”
“Downright unhealthy,” said Chido, going red.
“I thought I could help the war effort.”
“If they want you to help, they’ll ask you to help.” He drained his glass and bellowed, “Fill her up, you little fifi! Run!” And, to me: “You ought to join the regiment. I’m reforming. Better than ever. This time no damn regiment of monstrosities will overset us-”
“Zorcas?”
He chuckled and watched as the Fristle girl filled the glass.
“No, Hamun. Totrixes! Damn contrary beasts, the most uncomfortable ride, apart from sleeths, that is.”
So how could I not say I would ride with him in his fine new regiment?
To get around that I shouted for more to drink. It was not wine but the fine sherbet-like drink much favored in the warmer parts of Havilfar. It was called sazz, from the fizzing, I suppose, and I drank half of it off before I spoke.
“Let me first go to Paline Valley. Nulty might welcome a visit.”
Chido snorted. “Since when has a Crebent ever welcomed a visit from his master?”
“Ah,” I said, “but Nulty is a special kind of Crebent.”
This was a mere interlude. I could not simply idle time away in Ruathytu now, ruffling and roistering, drinking and singing, carousing from tavern to tavern. Nor could I go with Rees and the new regiment he was forming, even though they were now to be mounted on totrixes. I knew my nikvove squadrons would have cut through Rees’s regiment at the Battle of Tomor Peak, totrixes or no totrixes, as they had in fact scythed down the three totrix regiments Hamal already had mounted. Poor Rees! This great blustering Numim, this Rees ham Harshur, Trylon of the Golden Wind, loved a good fight and a good laugh. This great golden lion-man had worn the Queen’s colors and fought for her during the rebellion which had seated her on the crystal throne, and now he was badly out of favor with that evil, scheming woman. Yes, indeed, poor Rees, for he had lost his way. I knew that. I do not think Chido could see it as clearly, for he saw with different eyes; but as we ate miscils and caught the crumbs as those tiny delicious cakes melted in our mouths, as we lazily picked up palines and savored them, I saw that Rees was troubled. Oh, he was forming a regiment and this time of totrixes, not zorcas. But for all the feeling I had for him I ached to see him acting so vivaciously to maintain his habitual lion-like bellowing and roaring.
Once again concern over a friend had seduced me from my true work. Concern over an enemy had made me forget he was a Hamalian, an enemy, a man who was fighting the men of my own country of Vallia. Curse all wars!
So, speaking, I admit, with a greater heaviness than I wished to show, I said, “I’ll ride out with you, old fellow, as soon as can be. We’ll see what a totrix regiment can do.”
It doesn’t matter, we are told, if you lie to your enemy. I’d lie and cheat and do the dirtiest tricks possible on my enemies to assist my friends. As we sat in the scented air overlooking the pool with the happy sounds of splashing and diving, though, and I looked across as Rees took up a handful of palines and I saw his pleased look, knowing I had lied to him, I had no love at all for the life of a spy. I must get on with spying, though. .
I had been in Ruathytu less than a day. Adding on our travel time from Pandahem I fancied Tom Tomor and Kytun would have the army on the move heading northwest, I judged they would only have gone a short distance. As for Pando and Tilda, they must wait on the icy slab of anticipation for my return. I had not shaved this morning, and resisted the attempts of a charming little apim girl to shave me during the bathing ritual.
Rees stood up, flinging the last paline into the air and catching it in his lion-mouth, his golden mane flowing. “You look as scruffy as the back end of a quoffa, Hamun!”
Chido guffawed and, in his turn, stood up.
But all the same, as Chido rose his eyes caught mine and he made a face which said, very clearly, “Poor old Wees is badly off color.”
The cause might be that idiot called Nath the Crafty and his obsessive hatred of diffs, but I was not at all sure of that. It could just be that Rees felt more than a little humiliated that his gorgeous regiment of zorcamen had failed again so disastrously. The first zorca regiment he had raised had been tumbled over by a regiment of Pandahem hersanymen. It could be.
Well, it was no use trying to saddle a fluttrell before you catch it. And, equally, I had my own zhantil to saddle.
Many of our old friends and acquaintances of the Sacred Quarter had gone off to war, and the place festered with a sleazy gaiety that displeased me, notwithstanding the place was the capital city of an enemy country. The presence of so many diffs also posed an unsettling problem: there were many more fights centered on racial differences than there had ever been. At the time — I admit with all due shame, now — this had no power to worry me. The more fighting men of Hamal who were put hors de combat at their own hands, before they got to battle with my warriors of Valka and Djanduin, the better. By Krun! Yes!