“I have taken out the assignment upon you. You are my kitchew. But-” He paused. The chill menace of the situation was inescapable.
These men were assassins, dangerous, feral as leems. They would unhesitatingly kill — but they liked to get paid for their work.
Now Layton the Strigicaw said heavily: “Half the money was paid to me. So far I have not completed the assignment.” He paused again, as though expecting me to comment. Again I remained silent. “The irregularity is that the person hiring us is dead. We will not be paid the balance of our fee.”
I shifted back in my chair and leaned to the side a little, so I could get the exact position of the two guides fixed.
“That is nothing to me. Stikitches can be killed like anyone else.”
He went on, and again I detected the note of suppressed anger. “The Aleygyn is not pleased with the situation. The Stikitches of Vondium possess the highest possible reputation. Our honor is in question.”
“I will not ask you with whom this precious reputation is held in such great esteem.” I waved a casual hand. “Probably the rasts of the dunghills.”
They did not react. I give them credit for that, at least.
“You are a dead man, Prince Majister-”
I interrupted. “Ashti Melekhi is dead. Would you work for nothing?”
Nath the Knife, clearly a most important man here, letting Laygon do the talking because it was Laygon who had taken the contract but prepared to step in with all his authority, said harshly, bending the mask toward me: “We do not mention names.”
“You may not. But the fact remains. You are working for nothing.”
“Precisely. The offer is this: Pay us the balance of the fee and the contract is then closed. If you do not pay, we shall fulfill it ourselves.”
The instant intemperate indignation that flooded me had to be squashed. I took a breath. I said: “You have not mentioned the amount.”
“Ten thousand gold talens.”
I didn’t know whether to be impressed by the value put on my life or insulted.
“My life is worth more than ten thousand.”
“We abide by the legal contract. Pay us five thousand in gold and the contract is fulfilled and you live. Otherwise-”
I shifted on the chair again. It seemed to have a spongy feel to the legs, as though it was not firmly anchored to the floor. Probably it was a trick chair, with a trapdoor below. I’d have to be quick.
“I am not in the habit of paying gold to cramphs to save my life.”
“You can always start.”
This Nath the Knife was an intriguing fellow. He spoke evenly enough. He took no offense from my crude remarks. He wanted his money, or he would kill me.
“When do I pay?”
“At once.”
“I am due at the Temple of Opaz the Nantifer, as I told you-”
“Then immediately your kow-towing is done.”
With genuine curiosity, I said: “It is clear you know who I am, for your bowman delivered the message correctly. Yet I think perhaps you do not know me.”
This trembled on the brink of boasting; but I am who I am, Zair forgive me, and I was intrigued.
“We know your reputation is very high in certain quarters,” said the woman. She leaned forward and I caught the lamplight’s sparkle from her eyes in the eye-slots of the mask. “But we have certain information that this great reputation is a sham, a bolstered creation because you are the Prince Majister. Of course, the most puissant prince of Vallia must be a great warrior, a High Jikai, for anything less would demean the empire.”
“It’s a theory,” I said.
“So you will pay five thousand gold talens and you may live. It is settled.”
I pondered. It seemed clear they believed the story. They would never have taken out the contract to kill me if they did not. I have amassed a certain unsavory reputation, as you know, and there were places on Kregen where no one — not even a raving idiot — would even contemplate trying to kill me. But, here in Vondium, the capital of the Vallian Empire, I was not in one of those places. The four people at the table believed this business was settled. They began to stir, ready to take their leave. The two guides shuffled their feet and stepped back. I put my feet under me, ready for the leap, and looked across the table.
“Settled? Why, you onkers, I wouldn’t pay you a single clipped toc!”
The four figures stiffened as though I’d jammed a polearm up each one of them. These four formed the High Council of the Assassins of Vondium. Their powers were frighteningly great. For that single betraying heartbeat they could not believe they had heard aright.
The woman let out a gasp and leaned forward on her forearm and her hand splayed against me. Jewels flashed. Nath the Knife put a hand to her hand, and restrained her. Laygon the Strigicaw started to curse, his hand reaching to his belt. The fourth man, who had not spoken, yet remained silent. It struck me then that these assassins couldn’t see the funny side of all this. They didn’t think it was funny. To me, Dray Prescot, Lord of Strombor and Krozair of Zy, it was hilarious. What my ferocious Djangs would say of it — their King of Djanduin solemnly being asked to pay someone for being kind enough not to kill him! They would bellow their mirth!
In the instant of the ensuing silence, when everyone in the musty room remained fixed, static, enwrapped with their own personal turmoil of emotions, the heavy beating of rain pelted against the closed windows. The mineral oil lamps nickered.
Then, and only then, speaking in that iron voice, Nath the Knife said: “You will pay. You will pay — or you are dead.”
“Not,” I said, “a single clipped toc.”
As the instant action followed I commented to myself that my rhetoric was entirely false. A toc is a tiny coin, one sixth of an ob, and who was going to bother to clip that?
Then the chair groaned and grated and flapped back into a black and cavernous hole and I spring-heeled up and onto the floor, and naked steel flashed in the lamplights. This, then, was more like it. .
Five
The trick chair vanished with an almighty crash into the black maw gaping in the floor like the mouth of a chank. The two guides, flustered by my non-disappearance, flicked out their rapiers. They were stikitches and therefore expert with weapons. They rushed on me, silently, determined to cut themselves a little of Laygon’s fee.
My feet hit the wooden floor and dust puffed up. The whole floor groaned; the place was as rotten as the worm-eaten hull of the Swordship Gull-i-mo.
“Cut him down!” grated that iron voice. ‘“He refuses an accommodation in honor, now he must pay the penalty.”
My own rapier ripped out — a nice blade but not a top-quality brand in its decorations, serviceable, well-used, the kind of rapier a fellow might wear in Drak’s City — and the steel jangled and slid as the blades crossed.
The two assassins brought their four blades into play at once. I ducked and weaved and fended them off with the rapier alone. I did not draw the matching main gauche.
Before Barty and I had ventured in here I had insisted that he wear one of the superb mesh-steel shirts Delia and I owned. We kept them particularly well-cared for, on formers, well-oiled, safe in the armory of our Valkan villa in Vondium. One of those shirts cost more than even a relatively well-paid working man could earn in his entire lifetime.
The blades clashed and the lamplight glinted from the steel.
I vaulted back, slashed away, foined, and kept one eye on the four chief assassins at the table. They were the real danger.
One of the guides thought to play it clever and slid in below his fellow. His dark face glared up at me. He tried to hold his left-hand dagger up so as to parry any downward cut I might make, and thrust me through with his rapier. At the same time his companion pressed in strongly, seeking to pin me. I leaped, thrust, landing a high hit along a shoulder above any armor they might be wearing under their drab tunics, brought a yell of agony, withdrew, and so kicked the clever one in the nose as I went by. His blade hissed past. He sprawled back, his nose a crimson flower, spraying blood. I hit them both with the hilt — left and right, one two — and sprang away from the spot. A dagger whistled through the air where I had been standing.