Chido, a young man who held a courtesy rank of Amak, for when his father died Chido would become a Vad, screwed up his chinless, watery-eyed, aimless face in a contortion expressing extreme amazement. We were in the throes of fencing practice and Rees was attacking Nath Tolfeyr with huge enjoyment. The high-windowed hall rang with cheerful shouts. Chido — well, Chido was Chido, a young man with much wealth, little sense, great charm, friend of Bladesmen, and with a burning desire to become a renowned duelist.
The only result of the night, I say. Well, four dead men, be they Rapas or not, are not so lightly glossed over by me. I have found a greater respect for human life than a casual observer of my carryings-on on Kregen might imagine, and although the Savanti must share a great deal in those initial impulses, the shedding of blood except in the direst of emergencies remains abhorrent to me. I think my Delia understands. And, Kregen is a world where violence can get out of hand unless a man seeks and holds on to a doctrine, whether from some easy and externally imposed religion, or from a much more difficult inner compulsion, which will make him understand that a human life is a human life no matter in what form the spirit is encased. The unpleasant religion of Len the Silver Leem thrived on violence and lust and cheap promises of fulfillment.
“Come on, Hamun, there’s a good fellow,” sang out Chido. “Take up your wapier and let’s have a set-to.”
“No, no, Chido. I feel too fragile just now.”
Chido always spoke like that, changing his R’s to W’s and affecting a high-pitched tone of voice, goggling eyes and all. I suppose no one can live in a country and fail to find someone for whom they can feel a spark of affection. Hamal was the bitter enemy of Vallia, and of my friends of Pandahem, and so that made Trylon Rees and Chido my enemies, too. But I did not hate them. They were jolly company. They amused me.
Excusing myself, I left the salle and strolled out into the city. My life had followed a strange path since I had come here, almost as though a curtain had gone up on a new act. No very great deal of time had elapsed since I had last been hurled back to Earth by the Star Lords, for I had been moving very fast; but there was no sign of anyone I had encountered in my previous sojourn in Hamal. The depredations of the wild folk from over the Mountains of the West continued. The estates of poor Amak Naghan had not burned alone in that endless and bitter struggle on the far frontiers. And the burnings had been savagely echoed here, nearer the capital, in the recent revolt. I had seen a city burn, I had fought in the ruins of a local estate. Now this local violence was over, the Queen in full power, the laws of Hamal firmly on her side. There might be bandit raids of flutsmen from time to time, but the flutsmen were a thorn in the flesh of all the countries of Havilfar. .
So now I strolled and watched the throngs of people, all busy about the essential everyday tasks that keep a great city alive. In the sacred quarter within the old walls and the curved helmet-shape of the fork of the rivers, the streets run higgledy-piggledy, often narrow and cramped, shadowed, lined with shops and stores and arcades, with the townhouses of the great ones secluded beyond iron-spiked walls. To the west beyond the old walls lies the new town, where the boulevards run arrow-straight, where the Jikhorkdun stands proudly, where the new temples rise, where the Horters and the lesser gentry sometimes mingle in the passing phases of social movements. The Walls of Kazlili encircle the city in a wide encincture, the new Walls, pierced by stupendous gates, enclosing all the hustle and bustle of a mighty city, proud and arrogant in its power.”
The little wheeled vehicles trundled on their tracks behind their amiths, up and down the broader avenues. I thought of my adventures with Avec and Ilter, and of the time when in just such an amith-drawn carriage I had plunged my face into a basket of ripe shonages. Well, still on the trail of the voller secrets, I was now embroiled with an entirely new set of people. By day I lounged with this raffish set, gambled, drank, swore, raced. By night I followed up the hints and revelations I had uncovered in my talks. Two other voller manufactories had been entered, with the same barren results. . dirt and air. Now I was going to find out what I could of the manufactories where the amphorae came from, which were used to convey this mysterious dirt, this infuriating air. I knew the dirt was very similar to that earth and mineral we quarried in the Heavenly Mines in conditions of utmost horror. There were additions to the earth before it reached the silver boxes. So there must be other mines, somewhere in Hamal, making their contributions to the mix in the silver boxes. In the manufactory called Zhyan’s Pinions — called that because an aerial view of the four blocks of brick-built buildings with their white stucco walls and roofs suggested the appearance of a zhyan in flight — the guls filled amphorae with this mysterious dirt. I had found that out from old Casmas, who had no ham in his name, was not of the aristocracy, and yet was tolerated — no, welcomed! — by these young bloods because his cognomen was Casmas the Deldy.
And Deldys he had too, in plenty. He was near enough to a banker for that to fit him as a description; but usuring ways were more to his predilection, more to his way of life, and those rich fat golden deldys he lent came back to him well multiplied — or the young bloods rued the day and ran the gauntlet of their fathers’ displeasure. Casmas the Deldy had ears and eyes everywhere. His corpulence fitted him. He wore a great black cummerbund swathed around his belly — and, I had more than half an idea, some kind of ribbed corset beneath to hold him in — and rich gem-encrusted robes, and he kept his smooth satiny skin oiled and sleek. Oh, yes, Casmas fitted his part in the hectic life of the sacred quarter of Ruathytu.
I had pumped him and gained information, but he had stonewalled on my request to be taken on a visit around the buildings of Zhyan’s Pinions. I was not to get in as easily as that.
“No, no, my dear Amak.” He was punctilious, was Casmas the Deldy, in his lubricious way. As I say, he fitted his part. “I am merely a poor money-lender scraping a living from young bloods. What those guls do down in Zhyan’s Pinions is a mystery to me. All I know or want to know is that I am paid my due for my lovely golden deldys.”
He shut up then. But I guessed the government of Queen Thyllis, desperate after the devastation and the expenses of the successful revolt, was borrowing money everywhere, as hard as it could. Damned war!
Always upsets the economy and makes it hard for a poor man to make a living. Just a simple straightforward fight between equals, one to one, as Trylon Rees had said, that should be the way of it. That would sort out the warmongers. But then, Hamal had the duel, developed to an art form and an entertainment.
So I spent my days, wandering, scraping up information, at the salle, circumspectly at the baths of nine, seeking to worm my way into establishments where it was clear Queen Thyllis and her Pallans wanted no one’s nose poking around. And, still, for all my working, for all my nighttime flittings over the rooftops, my cloak flaring under the moons, for all my smashing of amphorae, I came not a jot nearer. And, too, I guessed much more of this would arouse suspicions to the point where the Pallans must guess someone was after the voller secrets. They were sensitive about their vollers. They had already set heavier guard details. I had one or two merry fights to break clear, and left three more terchicks as evidence that the mischief was done by a man and not a demon with eight arms.
I had to cover my tracks somehow.
All the time these nocturnal expeditions were going on I ruffled my life away as one of the young bloods of the sacred quarter of Ruathytu. I had now practically perfected that blank look of docile imbecility -
and damned difficult it was, too, with a figurehead like mine.
The precautions I took in the baths of nine so as to disguise my muscular development and the breadth of those shoulders of mine that, as a boy, had wrought such havoc with my clothes, to the despair of my mother, the sheer animal strength of the body God and adversity have blessed me with — all these precautions make me look back now with amusement. At the time it was deadly serious. The baths of nine — and they are worth a book in themselves — had to be most carefully indulged in, and I pleaded all manner of ingenious excuses. Only with Trylon Rees could I feel reasonably comfortable, and that because the lion-man thought he knew me best of all of them, and understood the burning desire in me to be a Bladesman, a desire frustrated by nature.