He extended it in full, measuring along the glittering edge with a gloating, loving eye, feeling shoulder-muscles pull taut to hold the balance, feeling the fierce needle-point float feather-light, swift and agile to strike at a nerve’s flick, like a cobra.
He felt love heady in his veins, like wine.
The floating, singing balance was poetry and music and fire and the ache of purest beauty deep in the throat, touching on the verge of tears. Yet she had weight and drive enough to shear off an arm, cutting through meat and bone effortlessly.
Were the sword his, he would name her Asloth, “Golden- Girl.”
He returned her to the counter. But it hurt to give her back.
Against the background of his thoughts, he became aware that someone was speaking.
“It is a sharbaré, yes? A blade of beauty. The kazar knows good steel, I can tell from the way he handled her.”
“Yes … a fine weapon. A blade of beauty, as you say. Kashambar, himself, never knew a better,” he replied vaguely.
“Ah! Kashambar of the sagas! The kazar knows the epics of my people. He does honor to know them thus.” It was not the fat proprietor who spoke, but a taller, leaner figure, hard to make out in the deep shadows of the arcade. Clever how the fur pillow bearing the golden sword had been set out just far enough from the overhanging arch to catch the sun.
To catch the eye ….
“Aye, I know your tales, and love them well. But I would buy the sword. Name the price. I haggle not over that which is living perfection breathed by Mnardus the Gods’ Smith into steel of beauty.”
“Kazar, it is all the same, eh? With men—true men—and swords—true, blooded swords, sharbare. We are all one, with fine clean steel in our hands, the sun ablaze above us, women to watch—to applaud us—to be borne off by the victor, eh? Then we are men, steel against steel, sinew to sinew, and blood to blood. We have lived, striven to the utmost of flesh, the clean wind about us, the strong earth under our feet to bear us up, then we truly live … truly men sprung from the God-Race, eh? Of whatever world or hue of skin.”
“Aye,” Raul said, “the blood roaring through the heart and salt tears burning at the eye, and bright gaudy banners straining stiff against the wind. Wind of your Omphale—or my Bamassa—wind is wind. Steel is steel. Men are men, wherever met.”
“Ah, the kazar is Bamassa-born, then. Almost a brother, for gentility. My mother was Rilké of Bamassa.”
Linton blinked against the fierce sun. Gods, it was hot! “Of what Clan, to do honor?”
“Arglinassam, the Red Hawk Banner; her sire, the Chieftain Erngal Thrice-Wise.”
“I have shared wine and water with Emgal Thrice-Wise, and, when a boy, wrestled with his nine sons, and rode with them to hunt and Clan-feast. Aye, and fought with them, steel to steel, in war-season. They are pure-sprung from the Gods’-Race, fine men and fine women.”
The flash of white teeth against purple shadows.
“You do honor, kazar, much honor to my mother’s Clan, to my People, and, for honor, I would thou share my wine and water—for gentility.”
Raul Linton smiled warmly, and touched the back of his right hand to his brow in the Salute.
“Thou wouldst share wine and water with me; I wouldst that thou should share my meat and bread,” he said, in the High Rilké with the formula of Prince-to-Prince (a rare and noble mode of speech; a very high honor).
The tall man bowed, returning the Salute, and pulled aside the flap masking the entrance to the rear tent of the stall, a frame supporting finely-woven carpets. Raul entered.
Across the bazaar, his “rings” carrying to him every word picked up by the minute transceiver he had affixed to the lining of Linton’s cloak, Colonel Nijel Pertinax smiled a thinlipped and gloating smile, and pressed the “record” stud on a special brooch. All was going splendidly, splendidly. Surely Commander Linton knew he was speaking with Sharl the Yellow-Eyed, notorious spy and revolutionary agent of the Kahani of Valadon, exiled and outlawed queen of a key Border planet—all this ceremonial kak was obviously a recognition-code.
He bent to listen.
The transition from dazzling sun to deep shadowy twilight was blinding. Raul blinked and knuckled his eyes, peering about him. The rear of the stall, gorgeously carpeted floor, ceiling and walls, was strewn with nests of cushions, multicolored, pumpkin, cream, wine-green, checkered black-and-scarlet, soft gold, harsh crimson, palest blue. A wrought-silver sargala stood three-legged in the far comer, leaking perfumed threads of blue smoke through a hundred piercings. A small, fat bird with green-and-snowy plumage regarded him with a basilisk-eye of furious orange, from a swinging perch of amber beads. Against the farthest comer, on a hooded stand of milk-wood, seven figures stood, finely wrought with very ancient workmanship from jade, lava-stone, brass, white granite, red gold, kohn-wood, and iron. Raul Linton made the exactly-proper eight-motion Obeisance, indicating honor and gentility, respect and awe, as expressed by an off-world non-believer sympathetic to Custom and Belief, but not sharing.
Sharl watched him, a spark of admiration flashing in his canary eyes.
“Be welcome to what is mine; use all as all were thine.” He invited Raul in the time-honored phrase, legs scissoring and he seated himself Rilké-fashion on cushions of white, blue and black. Raul made the proper, polite response and seated himself adroitly—it is hard for a terrestrial to adopt the curious kneeling position of the Rilké, but Linton did it with familiar grace and ease, and again Sharl watched, and saw, and noted.
Now the fat sword-seller appeared, hands together in servility, painted eyebrows lifted in silent but eloquent inquiry.
Sharl clicked his fingers together.
“Chark. Stone-Bottle.”
“Of gentility,” Linton requested with one hand lifted, “I have a friend, a very large and big man with snow-blond hair and beard and deep-tanned face. He will be wearing Circassian violet, with flare-boots, and broiling about the bazaar, I doubt not, near the livestock-pens. Summon him thither, of gentility, to me.”
“The kazar wishes, and it is done.”
He vanished through the hanging rugs.
“With permission,” Raul murmured, drawing a packet of cigarels from his tunic and proffering the packet to his host, who nodded, withdrew one, and sat back.
They smoked in silence until the wine came, as was Custom. Then, over the smoking cups of green wine, poured from a rare, almost legendary vintage (for honor)—Raul knew very well the value, and implied compliment, of Stone-Bottle chark—he said: “Let us now talk swords.”
And talk swords they did, with much confusion to poor Colonel Pertinax sweating and smoldering in the fiery afternoon sun-blaze. Between alternate cups of chark and of water, which is how you drink chark, the Rilké suddenly said:
“Kazar, with permission, sword-talk is a wide gate throughout which much else may enter. Why are you being ‘listened’ to?”
“Am I being listened to by aught else than you? If so, I did not know it.”
“Kazar, with permission—” The crested Chieftain bent and, with one strong brown hand, laid open slowly a fold of Linton’s cloak, exposing a grain of darker substance.
Puzzled, Raul said: “And what is that? Looks like a splatter of road-muck.”
Sharl laughed. “Road-muck—with ears, kazar!” He pulled at it, and Raul’s eyes widened, then narrowed, as he saw how the ceramic bead adhered electrostatically to the fabric.