"Be seated, Earl." A hand gestured toward the chair facing the wide desk behind which he sat. "I'm sure there is no need to warn you of attempted violence. You have had time enough to realize its futility."
Too much time. Hours during which he had been locked in a cubicle, given food, water, allowed to sleep after bathing. Time enough for Melome to be swallowed into the circus, for Zucco and Valaban to be rescued.
Dumarest said, "Why did you send them to recover the girl?"
An unexpected question and Shakira paused before replying.
"Someone had to go and they were best suited."
"An old man and a sadist?"
"Coincidence."
"No," said Dumarest. "Not coincidence but intent. Did you want them both out of the way at the same time? Or did you hope I would do what you seem to lack the courage to do?"
"And that is?"
"Zucco is ambitious. He yearns for power and intends to get it. Resents having to take orders. You are old. Need I say more?"
"You imagine he thinks of killing me and taking over the circus?" Shakira lifted his hands in the sudden, upward gesture. As he lowered them he said, "Do you really think it would be as simple as that? For a barbarian, perhaps, but we are not barbarians. There are considerations of finance, administration, loyalties, contracts. Those who work for the circus of Chen Wei would not be eager to follow a murderer. Would you?"
"If I had the choice, no."
"You are bitter," said Shakira. "You are thinking of the pain. The agony you had to bear as the price of your disobedience. But why blame me for that? I warned you what could happen and you chose to disregard that warning. Or you thought it a bluff. A mistake-I never bluff. Those who know me would have told you that."
"Reiza, for example?" Dumarest watched as Shakira made no movement. "Krystyna? Valaban? Helga, even? Melome? Who knows you, Shakira? Who really knows you? Elagonya? Your tame sensitive. Does she know what you are?"
"Shrewd," murmured Shakira. "I sensed it from the first. Shrewd and cunning and with a primeval instinct for survival which operates on an intuitive level. Which is why I was glad when you agreed to work for me."
"Work," said Dumarest. "As yet I've done nothing but walk around and let myself be seen. You didn't want me for that."
"You are wrong, but there is more."
"What?"
"You will learn soon enough." Shakira rose and stepped from his desk. "But first let me introduce you to Elagonya."
She sat in a cubicle thick with the fumes of aromatic incense but despite the pungent smoke the air held an acrid stench. One based on corrosive acids, alien exudations and warning odors. A blend which caught at his nostrils and Dumarest wondered why Melome hadn't mentioned it.
Shakira gave the explanation.
"You are a stranger," he said. "A hostile intrusion into her environment. For the sake of your life, I warn you not to be violent. Do not even think of extracting revenge. Before you could act you would be dead."
"A telepath?"
"No, but with you she has a rapport. One built on fragments of your blood, tissue, muscle, bone. A focal point for her directed thought. Sometimes she incorporates it into a doll."
Small artifacts which Dumarest could see lying around. Crude things with vacuous faces and oddly distorted bodies. The product of unskilled hands or hands so disfigured that they were incapable of normal dexterity.
"I found her on Tomzich, a world in the Bannerheim Cluster. She was living in a cave at the edge of a village living on scraps and hiding from the light of day. A mutant, hated by those from whom she had sprung. At times she cursed them and, at times, those cursed would die. They called her a witch and would have killed her had they been able." Shakira stepped forward and rested one hand on the rounded hump of a shoulder. "My dear," he said gently. "Have I your permission to reveal your face?"
The masked figure turned to face Dumarest, the covered head seeming to tilt as if to question.
He said evenly, "As you wish, my lady. Here, at this time, I am at your command."
Shakira lifted the cloth.
Elagonya was a parody of what a woman should have been. The victim of cruel nature which, tormented by the blasting radiation which had distorted the pattern of genes, had taken a vicious revenge. The face was a jumble of features, one eye higher than the other, the mouth a twisted gash, the chin cleft so that it was forked, the nose the grotesque appendage of a clown. Lank hair hung like worms from a peaked skull and the eyes, muddy brown, flecked with yellow and red, looked like the dusty windows of an empty house.
"No surgery can aid her," said Shakira. "No drugs or treatment alleviate her condition."
It must have been a living hell. Dumarest looked at the warted encrustations on the skin, the puffed cysts marring the lines of the scalp. The gown she wore came high up the throat and covered the arms and legs to touch the floor but he could guess at the condition of the body it covered.
The whisper of her voice was the thin grate of a nail on slate.
"You look at me and do not cringe. Are you so accustomed to horror?"
"That is not what I see, my lady."
"You mock me?" For a moment tension stiffened the air and Dumarest heard Shakira's sharp inhalation, the touch of something like a feather against the naked surface of his mind. And then, as if he had been tested and had passed the test, the tension vanished. "No," she whispered. "You do not mock. Yet I do not need your pity."
"Something else, then?" A question to which she gave no answer and Dumarest continued, "We are what we are, my lady, and have no hand in our making. Therefore we should not be blamed for what we cannot help. Nor derided. Nor abused. But to deny pity is to reject what is good in a person. And there are those who, if they were you, would beg for more than pity."
"A quick and merciful end-you offer me that?"
"If I did, would you accept it?"
"No." The denial was sharp. "I live and while I live I serve. I can help those who have been kind." A sleeve lifted to reveal a knotted appendage which touched Shakira's hand. "Save your pity for those who need it. I do not."
Dumarest bowed, lowering his eyes.
"Yet you have been kind and merciful in your fashion. Tayu!" He lowered the cloth to hide the ravaged features, the fabric softening the harsh timbre of the whispering voice. "Therefore, from me to you, something to remember."
The touch came again, a feather on the mind followed by a wave of pleasure so intense as to send his mind spinning in a vortex of indescribable ecstasy. One which blinded him to the journey back and left him shaken and gasping in Shakira's office.
"Her talent, Earl." The owner offered him a glass of wine. "The reverse of the coin she can spin at will. Pleasure and pain. Reward and punishment. Ironic, isn't it, that such power should be housed in such a frame."
The price paid by most sensitives for their talent; physical weakness and deformity, but Elagonya had paid higher than most. How many others like her did Shakira keep in his private quarters? And how to break the hold she had over him?
Dumarest said, "In order to function she needs a focal point."
"That is so." Shakira lifted his own glass of wine. "You had no choice but others are more cautious. Also her ability is limited." He sipped and swallowed and, looking at his glass, added, "I wanted you to realize how helpless you are, Earl. Run and pain will torment you. Attempt violence against me and you will be rendered helpless. Elagonya's talent has fabricated an affinity between you. In a sense you are an extension of her body."
"And?"