"Everything is clear. These two made a deal with the bandits and robbed and killed my servant — they didn't expect me recognizing the money. You were going to rob the manor together next but, since you were arrested, the bums went ahead on their own. Answer me — where did you bump into them? Imagine it, I was trying to protect you before your lord, turned your sister over to him, so that he would become lenient."
Here, the crowd moved and Kissur moved out of it surrounded by three sturdy chaps.
"Hey, Khanni! What was this girl you turned over to me?"
The headman went gray in the face with horror. The crowd reacted.
"How much, are you saying, they stole from me?" Kissur continued.
"Four hundred thousand," the headman fretted. Here Kissur took the sack of his shoulder and emptied it right out for everybody to see.
"Khanni," Kissur stated, "when I gave you this manor, I said, 'Don't oppress the people, only take one tenth.' Yesterday, I was passing by, with a friend, and I decided to check, how you obey my orders, and when you arrested the people I gave money to, claimed this money for yourself, and told them that I dishonored their sister that I haven't even met, it looked to me, that you obeyed my orders like a pig you are — that you sucked on the people's marrow and drank their blood. I decided to look in your safe and I carried away from it not four hundred thousand but, rather, six and half thousand and, secondly, I carried away from it the loan agreements signed with my signature — and this is a fake signature. Then I realized that I didn't waste my time poking into this safe, because you would doubtfully have shown me these faked agreements!"
The headman could not speak — he bleated and crawled at Kissur's feet.
"Spit it out," Kissur barked. "How many girls have you sold to the whorehouses in my name?"
"Twenty of them, at least," somebody in the crowd responded.
Here, Kissur leaped at the headman and crushed his nose and many other parts, and then ordered to "hang this fucker on the gate" — Bemish could barely persuade him to call the lynching off.
They still stuffed the headman in the stocks at the punishment pole. By mid afternoon, hundreds of peasants drifted into the manor.
"That's what happened," the peasants were saying, "the damned headman lied to us and cheated the master! Thanks to the master for coming here and sorting things out!"
Kissur ordered to set a table across the pole, sat down at the table and started to hand the loan agreements out to the peasants while the district head, happy to still have his nose whole, was certifying that the deeds were fake.
By the evening, the headman was taken away in the stocks and the satisfied crowd dispersed.
Kissur and Bemish stayed in the orphaned manor overnight.
"So, how was I?" Kissur inquired Bemish at the dinner. He reminded Bemish of a victorious fighting cock.
"If a society's fairness," Bemish said, "depended on the number of squashed noses, then your Empire would be the fairest place in the Universe. However, the situation is reversed."
Kissur frowned.
"The objective is," the Earthman said instructively, "not to break the corrupted officials' noses. The objective is to position the officials in such a way that they couldn't harass the people."
"How do you like this place?"
"Wonderful place," Bemish said, "one could build a heaven here or, at least, a wondrous chicken farm."
Kissur burst out in laughter and slapped him on the shoulder.
"It's all yours, then!"
Bemish was astonished.
"I can't accept such a gift."
"Why? You just stated that the goal is not to kick a bad owner's butt, but to find an honest one. You are all bark and no bite."
"But I don't even speak the language."
Kissur, however, wasn't even going to listen.
"Also, you need to live somewhere," he declared, "you will surely get this company in your pocket, don't worry! I will wheedle it out of the sovereign for you."
And he started enthusiastically treating Bemish with wine.
Bemish woke up late. The sun was pushing in the open window and dancing on a deity's jade mug, grinning above the door, on an ancient silver lantern where an electric light bulb bloated like a white bubble. With an effort, Bemish recalled yesterday events. "There was a fight… We drank… Oh, my God! He granted me the manor!" Bemish jumped up in the bed — the house deed and a note from Kissur lay on the table — he returned to the capital.
In an hour, Bemish thoughtfully consumed breakfast on a veranda. Frightened servants ran around. He could barely talk to the servants and was absolutely unable to understand their replies. He thought for a moment, went inside and called to Mr. Shavash's office.
"Mr. Shavash," the Earthman said, "could you recommend me a really honest administrator?"
The first finance vice-minister assured him, in a slightly ironic voice, that he would be happy to find for Mr. Bemish anything in the world — an eternal phoenix, three-headed dragon, and even an honest administrator.
At the other end of the line, Shavash hung up the receiver. He pondered for a moment and, then, he called the secretary and gave the necessary orders.
Soon, a young man, with a round face and pleasant but sad azure eyes, entered his office. The young man's face was unusually pale, a raw dough color. An Earthman or another ignorant person would think that the face's owner was unhealthy or hadn't left home for a while. A Weian would immediately suspect that the guy had been in jail.
So, the young man named Adini, approached to the official's table and froze three steps away, waiting for orders.
"Kissur," Shavash said, "bestowed to a Earthman, named Terence Bemish, a manor next to Assalah and the Earthman is looking for a manor's headman. I would like to bestow you to him."
"Yes, master," Adini said deferentially.
"You will watch him and report all his meetings and plans to me."
Shavash picked a sheet of paper with a personal seal out of a folder. "The moment Bemish leaves the planet," Shavash said, "this sheet of paper will be destroyed. It is in your best interests, to operate so that Bemish leaves the planet quickly. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, master."
"Terence Bemish is a smart man and he, most certainly, expects me to use this opportunity to send him a spy."
"Why did he ask you for a headman, then?"
"He hopes to allure the spy to his side. Once he has given you enough favors, you may pretend that it indeed has happened. Remember, however, that Bemish can give you money or a stipend but only I can get rid of this paper for you. Also remember that, if Bemish had this sheet, he would not act as a good Samaritan towards you. He will be kind to you only because he doesn't have another weapon."
Bemish was enjoying the ancient mosaic overlaying the walls on the second floor, when he heard a descending flyer's characteristic rustle. He walked out to the gallery — a white flyer stood in the yard, the last "rainbow" shimmers were beating above its wings. In a moment, the "rainbow" dimmed, the flyer's roof opened up like a poppy flower carpel, and two people got out of the car — a handsome lithe youth in a strict white suit and another guy, more scrawny than slim, in a checked shirt with torn-off sleeves and a red flower in his hair, following the contemporary rebel fashion.
"You can live here two months and more," the youth in the strict suit said loudly in English, evidently being sure that nobody could understand him, "no one will say a word. The local headman has sinned quite a bit and he won't even tell my brother about you."
"And how much has he sinned?"