“By the Nine Hells, a pinhead mike!”
“Precisely, kazar.”
An eagle-glance shot suddenly into clear canary imperturbable eyes.
“How did you know it was there?”
“Kazar—of gentility—I saw it placed.”
“Placed? By what man?”
Imperturbably. “A thin, sallow stick of a man in bottle-green, with a sour mouth and tnany rings, a black cap shadowing his eyes. He followed the kazar and brushed a hand against the cloak—thus—and it adhered.”
“Do you know this man?”
“Of honor, kazar, I do.”
Raul took a cup of chark, then a cup of clear water. “Name him—of gentility!”
“Name: Pertinax. A spy of the government—of P-5. A man who prowls amid reputations, sour-mouthed, smiling only when he feels pleasure, and feeling pleasure only when his hints and lies and whispers hurt a better man than himself, of which he has hurt many, bragging he hath spoiled ‘more little games than any man in Hercules.’ A filth of a man. A ‘Col-o-nel.’ ”
“Pertinax . . .”
Slowly, savoringly (feeling his blood begin to boil with rage and frustration), Linton rolled the name on his tongue, tasting it, a sour, dour quince of a name, bitter as lemon, stinging like salt.
He started to rise, fists balling—but Sharl halted him with a lifted palm.
“Not to be necessary, kazar, with honor—he will be here, presently.”
“How do you know this?”
A smile, warmly generous behind fine bristling whiskers. A brown hand produced a small crystal rod, beaded within by glinting points of sparkling filament.
“A dampener!”
“Aye. I have scrambled his circuits. He will be aching to know what ‘treasonous’ talk we are having here behind thin carpet-walls. Soon he will come snuffling and rooting around beside the tent, to try his naked ears, seeing if they do better than his tiny bead-microphone transceivers.”
Raul looked straight and level into the clear, candid canary-yellow eyes.
“Who are you—and what do you want?”
“Kazar, of honor, a man who is offering you—a job.”
The yellow eyes did not waver or flinch from his cold, hard stare.
“What kind of ‘job’?”
“Honorable employment. Not like the work of Pertinax.”
Raul snorted with disgust. “He is a sneaking swine!”
“Aye, kazar. And any minute now he will come rooting and snuffling about the tent, like a lank-thin red-eyed swine nosing about for some fine dirty mud to wallow in—ah!”
Beyond the tent-wall of carpeting they heard a thump—a grunt—a squeal of rage and terror.
Sharl’s lifted hand held the Herculian motionless, listening.
“Hah! A knife, is it? Well, you sniveling sneak-thief, try this on!” A hoarse, deep-chested voice came to them.
“My friend and servant, Gundorm Varl,” Raul explained in a low voice, answering an inquiring lift of Sharl’s brows.
A muffled thumping, thrashing sound followed, sharply punctuated with shrill squeaks and squeals, piercingly sharp, filled with outrage and pain.
Raul smiled faintly.
“Gunder always carries a riding-whip,” he said. Sharl grinned, a flash of strong white teeth.
For a while they listened comfortably to thumping, thrashing sounds. The squeals died to muffled sobbings.
“There! That sh’d teach you not to sneak and sniff outside closed doors—as it were.” (A thump, as of a boot-toe firmly planted to a gluteus maximus.) “Now be off with y and mind your manners hence, y sneakin’ little snake!”
The two men exchanged a cool, amused, gratified glance.
“Commander—are y there?” A bush-bearded blond head pushed in between the carpet flaps.
“Now, if I’m interruptin’ anything—”
“Not at all—I think. Come in.”
The burly, bearded, blond Bamassian clumped in, leathery tanned face gleaming with highlights of sweat. He cocked a thumb rearwards.
“A fat little Rilké met me yonder, saying y’ were here, and what do I find skulkin’ about the tent-flaps but a thin long fella in green suit listening at the rear wall. Naturally, I taught him better manners. I figured anything y’ were saying, Commander, to y’ friend here was in the nature of private, personal-type business, so I just up and showed him what courtesy was. I—uh—hope I did right by y’, sir?” Gundorm Varl said, a sudden expression of anxiety crossing his face.
“Was he ‘a thin, sallow stick of a man in bottle-green, with a sour mouth and many rings, a black cap shadowing his eyes’?” Raul asked, repeating word-for-word the description Sharl Yellow-Eyes had given him a moment or two earlier.
“He was, sir.”
“Then you did right, Gundorm, very right indeed.” Raul broke off, and changing from Neoanglic to High Rilké, addressed his host:
“Of honor, pray pardon my friend, who knoweth not the Custom nor the Tongue (over-well), but who is a good man and true, and does not mean dishonor. I go surety for him, of gentility.”
Sharl bowed and silently gestured Gundorm Varl to a nest of cushions, into which the great man sank with a weary sigh and a muttered, mispronounced phrase of thanks.
“Well, sir, and how did the interview go?”
Raul smiled lazily.
“Well enough, I suppose. I lost my head, and, instead of just keeping quiet and letting the Border Administrator do all the talking, I blew my mouth and said many things. Bad things. What with my loose mouth and your whip-hand there, I doubt not there’s a Monitor Squad looking for me within the hour, with a warrant for my deportation back to Bamassa—or even further.”
Gundorm Varl blew out his cheeks in a long, slow whistle.
“Is it true now, sir? And you a Linton of Bamassa, and of a line of government people, and with a chest-full of bright ribands in their stinkin’ wars, and all! But what does my ‘whip-hand’ have to do with it all, sir?”
Raul quirked a humorous eyebrow.
“The man you thrashed was a P-5 spy, set on my tail by Mather, the Administrator, who all but accused me to my face of being a traitor to the Empire, a seditious revolutionary, and an advocate of assassinating Arban IV Imperator himself.”
“Aw, for the love of Space! And I had to lash the beggar’s buttocks to jelly with my great whip! Forgive me, commander, I’d no notion in my head he was aught more than a low, sneaking, skulking snake of a thief!”
“You did all right, Gunder, for that’s just what he is.”
A woman’s face appeared at the flap, not young but finely boned, wearing an ashkar of seed-pearls. She whispered something to Sharl, whose eyes flashed dangerously. And then she vanished.
“What is it?” Raul asked as he of the Yellow Eyes rose lithely to his feet.
“Of gentility, kazar, I know not where the fault doth lie—either here”—indicating his crystal “dampener”—“or there”— indicating Gundorm Varl’s riding-whip—“but my servant sayeth a squadron of Monitors have entered the Bazaar of Queen Dagundha, led by that very Pertinax the Snake so well and neatly chastised by thy servant there. I doubt not they come for thee!”
Raul was on his feet in a bound.
“Right. Well, let’s be off, Gunder. You, sir, are not in guilt of this thing. It is me they seek, and my friend, here, so tell them—”