“Hmm.” The peddler shrugged, smiling. “Good questions. Maybe we should ask the lords of Fyffe.”
Wim shook his head. Yet he had to admit that the city so far, for all its strangeness, had shown him no signs of any magic more powerful or grim than that he’d seen in the fields. Perhaps the lords of Fyffe weren’t so fearsome as the tales claimed; their warriors weren’t bewitched, but only better armed.
The street curved sharply, and ahead the clustered buildings gave way on an open square, filled with the covered stalls of a public marketplace. And beyond it—Wim stopped, staring. Beyond it, he knew, stood the dwelling of the lords of Fyffe. Twice as massive as any building he had seen, its pilastered green-black walls reflected the square like a dark, malevolent mirror. The building had the solidity of a thing that had grown from the earth, a permanence that made the town itself seem ephemeral. Now, he knew, he looked on the house for magic that might match the peddler and Sharn.
Beside him, Jagit’s smile was genuine and unreadable. “Pardon me, ma’m,” the peddler stopped a passing woman and child, “but we’re strangers. What’s that building there called?”
“Why, that’s Government House.” The woman looked only mildly surprised. Wim admired her stocking-covered ankles.
“I see. And what do they do there?”
She pulled her little girl absently back from the wagon. “That’s where the governors are. Folks go there with petitions and such. They—govern, I suppose. Lissy, keep away from that dusty beast.”
“Thank you, ma’m. And could I show you—”
“Not today. Come on, child, we’ll be late.”
The peddler bowed in congenial exasperation as she moved on. Wim sighed, and he shook his head. “Hardly a market for Sharnish wonders here, either, I begin to think. I may have outfoxed myself for once. Looks like my only choice is to pay a call on your lords of Fyffe over there; I might still have a thing or two to interest them.” His eyes narrowed in appraisal as he looked across the square.
At a grunt of disapproval from Wim, Jagit glanced back, gestured at the lengthening shadows, “Too late to start selling now, anyway. What do you say we just take a look—” Suddenly he fell silent.
Wim turned. A group of half a dozen dour-faced men were approaching them; the leader bore a crest on his stiff brimmed hat that Wim remembered. They were unslinging guns from their shoulders. Wim’s question choked off as they quietly circled the wagon, cut him off from the peddler. The militiaman addrased Jagit, faintly disdainful. “The Governors—”
Wim seized the barrel of the nearest rifle, slinging its owner into the man standing next to him. He wrenched the gun free and brought it down on the head of a third gaping guard.
“Wim!” He froze at the sound of the peddler’s voice, turned back. “Drop the gun.” The peddler stood unresisting beside his wagon. And the three remaining guns were pointing at Wim Buckry. Face filled with angry betrayal, he threw down the rifle.
“Tie the hillbilly up ... The Governors require a few words with you two, peddler, as I was saying. You’ll come with us.” The militia leader stood back, unperturbed, as his townsman guards got to their feet.
Wim winced as his hands were bound roughly before him, but there was no vindictiveness on the guard’s bruised face. Pushed forward to walk with the peddler, he muttered bitterly, “Whyn’t you use your magic!”
Jagit shook his head. “Would’ve been bad for business. After all, the lords of Fyffe have come to me.”
Wim crossed his fingers, deliberately, as they climbed the green-black steps of Government House.
The hours stretched interminably in the windowless, featureless room where they were left to wait, and Wim soon tired of staring at the evenness of the walls and the smokeless lamps. The peddler sat fiddling with small items left in his pockets; but Wim had begun to doze in spite of himself by the time guards returned at last, to take them to their long-delayed audience with the lords of Fyffe.
The guards left them to the lone man who rose, smiling, from behind a tawny expanse of desk as they entered the green-walled room. “Well, at last!” He was in his late fifties and plainly dressed like the townsmen, about Wim’s height but heavier, with graying hair. Wim saw that the smiling face held none of the dullness of their captors’ faces. “I’m Charl Aydricks, representative of the World Government. My apologies for keeping you waiting, but I was—out of town. We’ve been following your progress with some interest.”
Wim wondered what in tarnation this poor-man governor took himself for, claiming the Flatlands was the whole world. He glanced past Aydricks into the unimpressive, lamp-lit room. On the governor’s desk he noticed the only sign of a lord’s riches he’d yet seen—a curious ball of inlaid metals, mostly blue but blotched with brown and green, fixed on a golden stand. He wondered with more interest where the other lords of Fyffe might be; Aydricks was alone, without even guards…Wim suddenly remembered that whatever this man wasn’t, he was a magician, no less than the peddler.
Jagit made a polite bow. “Jagit Katchetooriantz, at your service. Merchant by trade, and flattered by the interest. This is my apprentice—”
“—Wim Buckry.” The governor’s appraising glance moved unexpectedly to Wim. “Yes, we remember you, Wim. I must say I’m surprised to see you here again. But pleased—we’ve been wanting to get ahold of you.” A look of too much interest crossed Aydricks’ face.
Wim eyed the closed door with longing.
“Please be seated.” The governor returned to his desk. “We rarely get such . . . unique visitors—”
Jagit took a seat calmly and Wim dropped into the second chair, knees suddenly weak. As he settled into the softness he felt a sourceless pressure bearing down on him, lunged upward like a frightened colt only to be forced back into the seat. Panting, he felt the pressure ease as he collapsed in defeat.
Jagit looked at him with sympathy before glancing back at the governor; Wim saw the peddler’s fingers twitch impotently on the chair-arm. “Surely you don’t consider us a threat?” His voice was faintly mocking.
The governor’s congeniality stopped short of his eyes. “We know about the forces you were using in the Grandfather Grove.”
“Do you now! That’s what I’d hoped.” Jagit met the gaze and held it. “Then I’m obviously in the presence of some technological sophistication, at last. I have some items of trade that might interest you…”
“You may be sure they’ll receive our attention. But let’s just be honest with each other, shall we? You’re no more a peddler than I am; not with what we’ve seen you do. And if you’d really come from the east—from anywhere—I’d know about it; our communications network is excellent. You simply appeared from nowhere, in the Highlands Preserve. And it really was nowhere on this earth, wasn’t it?”
Jagit said nothing, looking expectant. Wim stared fixedly at the textured green of the wall, trying to forget that he was witness to a debate of warlocks.
Aydricks stirred impatiently. “From nowhere on this earth. Our moon colony is long gone; that means no planet in this system. Which leaves the Lost Colonies—you’ve come from one of the empire’s colony worlds, from another star system, Jagit; and if you expected that to surprise us after all this time, you’re mistaken.”
Jagit attempted to shrug. “No—I didn’t expect that, frankly. But I didn’t expect any of the rest of this, either; things haven’t turned out as I’d planned at all . . .”
Wim listened in spite of himself, in silent wonder. Were there worlds beyond his own, that were no more than sparks in the black vastness of earth’s night? Was that where Sharn was, then, with its wonders; beyond the sky, where folks said was heaven—?