Eden grinned at him with an expression of genial familiarity. “This is Lemon, otherwise known as the Crawfish, for reasons civilized folk can only guess at in disgust. I understand someone from your bunch has been messing around with his sister.”
“Pay no attention to Eden,” said the Crawfish, leaning on his pommel. “She has her family’s gift for innuendo but hasn’t had an audience to practice on for years. Now she’ll be cutting loose with a torrent.” He ts’ked reprovingly and eyed her back. “The only messing about that was discussed was on the part of your brother, and not the one with the pleasant disposition, either.”
“You’d think as a freelance, currently beholden to me, you might have a little more discretion where you sling your insults.”
The Crawfish looked thoughtful. “Could that be why I’ve never held on to a regular job?”
“Freelance?” Tildamire said, feeling strangely like she was back watching the Karlinis again, only with the air of pleasant bantering that had slipped away from them toward the end here restored. “Freelance what?”
“Tends to change,” said the Crawfish laconically. “Usually without notice, like the drift of this conversation. So just what is the situation here?”
Shaa had been keeping a weather eye peeled on the goings-on around him, alert for a surreptitious effort on the part of the Hand to preemptively pounce with the aim of subduing him, or an initiative from the Monts designed to save him from himself, or a sortie from his besieged associates intended to do who knew what-all, or indeed any inspirational creativeness on the part of the world at large. The gathering convention around the Monts had thus not escaped his notice. Not that he could tell for certain, in the deepening gloom of evening, exactly who the newcomers were, but he thought that suspicion and deduction, not to mention analysis of timing and circumstance, had brought him reliably nine-tenths of the way to certitude anyway. What would they do, was the real question. “So you see,” he continued, addressing (as he had been) the Hand’s most wavering digit, Romm V’Nisa, “your employer is indeed using you as he has used all his tools, which is to say with callousness aforethought and meatgrinder dispensibility. Contrast with that the opportunity of gaining the undying favor of those who literally are undying, not to mention the approbatory eye of forces temporal including the Emperor and the ruling hierarchy, whose posteriors you will have de-slinged.” These were hard-bitten campaigners, after all; it was often necessary to employ saucy language to establish rapport with such fellows.
“We have a contract,” Gadol V’Nisa reiterated stubbornly.
“We didn’t sign up to dig our own grave,” said Romm, not for the first time on his part, either.
“I don’t like this,” said Chas V’Halila, shaking his head. “I don’t like any part of this. We’re mixed up in something way too big for us. I say we get the hell out quick as we can and dig in long as it takes till this thing blows over. Max was one thing, but now we’re talking serious -”
“Shut up,” Romm and Gadol told him simultaneously. Then they paused to glare at each other, a standoff Gadol broke first. “I won’t say there isn’t something in what you say,” he acknowledged. “I am no seeker for immolation. But neither do I wish to be on the losing side. If your brother has already achieved such a record of success, what better chance do we have through betting against him?”
“Now we’re talking tactics,” Romm said with satisfaction.
“No, we’re not,” snapped Gadol.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” said Shaa, in his most placating tone of voice. “My brother thrives on sowing dissension, and indecision too, for that matter. For years I refrained from seeking his destruction even though I had far better justification even before this than you will hopefully ever have if you work for him for a decade. It is now clear my reluctance has engendered dire consequences, beyond even those you already know - as if those were not themselves more than enough. I fear he intends to release a magic-bearing plague of such malign import as to insure that the world would never again be as we know it. Sir Chas, here, realizes this is possible.”
Chas had gone white. “Zinarctica?”
“Perhaps merely a warm-up,” Shaa intoned gravely. Of course that last was not, strictly speaking, true. As far as Shaa knew, his brother was not about to expunge civilization; there would be no one left for him to rule, so what fun would that be? If anyone was capable of deliberately releasing such a scourge, however, Arznaak was the man.
But that was not the reason for airing the possibility of such a pestilence. There was still the Karlini lab. If something had survived destruction and his most recent attempt at detection, the hazard might very well first reveal itself through being quite extreme; through being, indeed, beyond their own abilities to contain it. Accordingly, it seemed only prudent to begin lining up potential allies. “We don’t break contracts,” Romm was saying to Gadol, “but we don’t work for psychotics either. We seem to have blundered into a serious situation here.”
“This could all be a story he’s making up,” protested Gadol, although somewhat weakly, to Shaa’s ears. “It could be a diversion to rescue his friends.”
Romm shrugged. “If it is, so what? How important are these people anyway? Max is the powerhouse, you know that. Now that he’s out of the story what do we lose? Prudence would dictate we provide ourselves with insurance.”
“This could be a subtle plan for revenge,” Gadol ventured.
“Max is not dead,” said Shaa, “merely sequestered. No torture is involved, I trust? Then where is the incitement to revenge?”
“Enough talk,” Romm proclaimed. “Do we need a vote, or can we define what we intend to do for each other?”
“All right,” said Gadol, “all right. But I warn you, there better not be any tricks. The first sign of anything funny and your throat is the one running red.”
“That only seems fair,” murmured Shaa. “I had best inform my colleagues of our arrangement. There is an additional matter to discuss first, though; that of informers.”
Gadol drew back. “Informers?”
“You know my brother. Don’t you think he’s planted someone on you or suborned someone already in your Hand to report back to him on your activities?”
“What are they talking about all this time?” Jurtan Mont asked. “Don’t you think we’d better rescue him?”
“No,” said Eden Shaa sternly, “that is exactly what we shouldn’t do. Weren’t you the one talking about Zolly and his mouth? As long as they’re still talking he’s got them under control.”
To be sure, Jurtan’s music sense wasn’t giving any particular foreboding of alarm, either, and he did feel like he was learning significantly more about what had been going on. But why did they need to just keep standing here? “Don’t you have forces you could call in?” he said to the Crawfish. “Give them standoff for standoff?”
The Crawfish studied a nail. “I’ve never much liked fleet actions,” he remarked.
“Then what good are you? What do you do, just hang around?”
The Crawfish glanced at Eden. “You mean I’m not supposed to just hang around?”
“Sounds like a fine job description to me,” said Eden.
Tildamire knew her brother well enough to realize his next utterance was likely to be some sort of outburst, accompanied by a petulant accusation of being toyed with or taken for a nincompoop; of course his tirade would only underline how appropriate the accusation was. The way he’d been acting lately she had half a mind to let him make a fool of himself again, but there was still the chance they had some family honor left to uphold. “It sounds like you’ve done your share of traveling, Mr. Crawfish,” she inserted, while Jurtan was still opening his mouth and drawing air for his eruption. “Did you ever meet our father? The former Lion of the Oolvaan Plain?”