On the other hand it was not his business to be speaking harshly of Count Mandralisca to this Metamorph, or to anyone else. It was Mandralisca whom he served, not the Metamorphs. If this creature wanted to find out how trustworthy Mandralisca might or might not be, he would have to do it on his own.
“The Count is an extraordinary man,” Thastain replied finally. No lie, that. “When this land of ours is freed at last from the oppression of the Pontifexes, you’ll see how well Count Mandralisca keeps his promises.” Which was also the truth, for what it was worth.—“Look there, sir,” Thastain said, desperately searching for some distraction. “How the early-afternoon light strikes the Crystal Boulevard.”
“Is so very beautiful, yes,” said Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp thickly, shading his strange eyes against the brilliant stream of radiance that batteries of revolving reflectors summoned from the Crystal Boulevard’s shining paving-stones. “Is the greatest of cities, your Ni-moya. I am thankful to your Count for permitting me to come here. Is my hope someday to bring my clansfolk here to see it as well, when your Count has won his war against the Pontifex and the Coronal. For such his promise is, that we will be allowed to come.”
“Such his promise is, yes,” Thastain agreed.
Jacomin Halefice was in the Movement headquarters building when Thastain returned to it after delivering the Shapeshifter to his hostelry. Thastain was glad to see him. Lately a friendship of sorts had come into being between Thastain and the aide-de-camp, based, apparently, on Halefice’s fears that Khaymak Barjazid was supplanting him in Mandralisca’s affections. Halefice, Thastain knew, went a long way back with Mandralisca—back to the days when the two of them had been in the service of Dantirya Sambail. They had fought together against the army of Prestimion in the Procurator’s rebellion.
But it was Barjazid, whom Mandralisca had known only a short while, who controlled the all-important helmets. Often, nowadays, the Count seemed to favor the little man from Suvrael over Halefice; and so, evidently, Halefice had decided to cultivate the friendship of the young and swiftly rising Thastain, forming an unstated alliance against a further increase in Khaymak Barjazid’s influence with Mandralisca.
Thastain, young as he was, was clever enough to know that Halefice was being foolish. There was no need for anyone to worry about the place he held in Mandralisca’s “affections.” Mandralisca had no affections, only schemes, desires, goals; he kept people about him who would help him in the fulfillment of those things, saw them entirely as instruments toward his intended purposes, discarded them if they were no longer useful. You were deluding yourself if you imagined that you were any kind of friend to Mandralisca, or he to you.
Even so, Thastain welcomed Halefice’s overtures. It was a nerve-wracking business, working for Count Mandralisca. You never knew when you would make some critical mistake, or even a minor one, and he would turn on you with all his terrible ferocity. Thastain had not really anticipated being thrust into such proximity with the terrifying Count when he had chosen to enter the service of the Five Lords. Jacomin Halefice softened that proximity for him. The aide-de-camp was a genial, easy-natured man, whose company was a pleasant relief after an hour or two with the Count. And perhaps Jacomin Halefice might even be able to protect him against Mandralisca’s wrath should he someday become its target. Sooner or later, after all, everyone did.
“Took the Shapeshifter home, did you?” Halefice asked. “That was a surprise, eh, seeing the Count invite one of those in for a conference! But he’ll ally himself with anyone and anything, will our Count, if he thinks it’ll serve his needs.”
“And will it serve his needs, do you think, to bring in the Shapeshifters in the struggle against Alhanroel? How can you trust such creatures?”
“They are a bunch of slippery serpents, yes,” Halefice said, with a grin and a nod. “I love them no more than you do, boy. But I see why Mandralisca would attempt to make common cause with them, just the same. They have much more reason to hate the Pontificate than he does, you know. And the enemy of your enemy, remember, is your friend. Mandralisca believes that when the time comes, the Piurifayne folk will do everything they can to make life difficult for Prestimion and Dekkeret.”
“So we have Metamorphs as our friends, now!” Thastain shuddered. “Stranger and stranger every day.—The Metamorph doesn’t trust the Count very much, by the way. Doesn’t entirely think he’s going to keep his promises about granting them equality once the war is won.”
“He told you that, did he? Very confiding of him. I wouldn’t pass that word along to Mandralisca, though, if I were you.”
“Why not?”
“What good will it do? If Mandralisca’s planning to doublecross the Shapeshifters when he no longer has any use for them, he’ll do it regardless of what they might suspect. He doesn’t expect anyone to trust him anyway, does Mandralisca. And if you tell him that the Shapeshifter’s been pouring things such as you’ve just told me into your ears, the Count’ll start worrying about how chummy you’re getting with his new Metamorph friends. Keep it to yourself, is what I say. Don’t even tell me. You haven’t told me. Understood?”
“Understood,” Thastain said.
“What about going out on the Promenade for some sausages and beer, now?” Halefice suggested.
Thastain welcomed the return to the bright warm sunlight. His head was spinning. He had not been expecting any sort of conversational intimacy with that Shapeshifter, and the fact that Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp had appeared to want to use him as a confidant was disturbing and unsettling. If the Metamorphs mistrusted Mandralisca’s promises, let them take that up with Mandralisca himself, he thought, not whisper it in the ear of his youngest and least surefooted aide.
And, though he had not found his brief moments of contact with the Shapeshifter as horrifying and repugnant as he had expected—had, indeed, begun in that brief conversation to look upon the Shapeshifters as actual people with actual grievances, rather than dread monsters—he still resented the fact that Mandralisca had thrust him so blithely into that contact. It had not been right to ask that of him. His old conditioning was still powerful. He did not crave the companionship of Metamorphs. He was not at all sure that he cared to be in the service of a man who thought it would be desirable to form an alliance with them.
Thastain was, in fact, getting weary of Mandralisca and his icy-souled ways. Mandralisca treated him reasonably well, even seemed to find his company somewhat amusing, but he knew how little that really meant. Even the Metamorph had been able to see the contempt behind the Count’s use of the mock title of “duke” for him.
“Do you notice,” Jacomin Halefice said, as they stood by the riverfront walk eating their sausages, “how tense the Count has become these days? Not that he was ever a man of easy spirit. But the slightest provocation now is enough to set him twanging like a tightly strung harp-string.”
“Indeed,” said Thastain noncommittally. He had learned long ago the great value of listening and nodding and saying very little of his own when Count Mandralisca was the subject of the discussion.
“Khaymak thinks he is overusing the helmet,” Halefice went on. “Night after night he roves the world with it, entering people’s minds and doing what he does to them. Barjazid says that the helmet is a wearying thing to use, when one uses it as much as that. And who would know better?”