“With permission, kazar, but, of honor, I cannot. No. I am, truly, of guilt in this, for knowingly I permitted the Snake to come near and sat by while your great blond bear of a servant whipped him without lifting a hand. Nay —you must let me aid you in this thing.”
He bent and plucked away carpeting from the floor. Then, from a waist-pouch, withdrew a slender steel rod which he inserted into a tiny hole, scarce-visible it was so small. Raul knew at a glance what it was—an electronic key, the lock attuned precisely to the molecular alignment of the steel needle.
A click—and a black hole widened before their feet.
“Go quickly with me now—there is a ladder, and a tunnel which we can follow to safety. I will give you hiding from these searchers the Snake has so swiftly brought upon us—”
Raul faced him squarely.
“Nay. Of honor, I cannot permit that you do this thing. For I have not accepted your ‘job’ and am not willing, save that I hear more—much more—to enter your employ.”
Sharl’s yellow gaze flashed dangerously and his hand closed on the handle of a knife thrust through his girdle. His lips tightened to a thin white line, and Raul knew he was very close to death in that moment.
The moment passed.
The strong brown hand fell away from the knife-hilt, and white, tight lips relaxed. But the face was still stem.
“It is, with permission, not a time nor place to speak of ‘employ.’ It is of kazara, of honor. You have shared my water and wine. I am thy host, and you have made the Salute and the Obeisance. Now come—come quickly, with thy servant. Oh, do not be a great vokarthu fool!” he said, impatiently, meaning by vokarthu “foreigner,” that is an all-inclusive term for anyone not Rilké, variously renderable as Imperial, terrestrial, or “distant-born unclanly.” “Think you not they will seize me too, kazar? Guest-honor of the People precludes that we should have introduced ourselves before the sharing of water and wine. But I am the kazar Sharl ka-Nabon Tahukam, Chieftain and Heir of the Horvatham, the Fire Bird Clan, and agent-in-principle to her kazara, Innald, exiled Kahani of Valadon. I am a well-known spy and seditious trouble-causer, and yonder sour-mouthed Snake with aching buttocks will be hunting me, too, unless we be gone—of gentility, kazar!”
A Border-worlder knows when to shut up.
“Lead on, then,” Raul said tersely.
“A moment—”
While the two stood on the edge of the trapdoor, Sharl plunged with unchieftainly haste back through the flap into the front of the shop.
He reappeared just as swiftly, two seconds later, with the fat sword-seller in tow and a long bundle wrapped in carpeting thrust under his arm. He gestured wildly.
“Of swiftness, now! They are nearly across the bazaar—into the black hole, and trust me!” He blew a kiss from clean brown fingertips to the small, pert green-and-white bird who cocked an anxious eye at him from its bead-amber perch.
“Farewell, ylama—farewell, my sweet! Fear not, I shall send for thee, when all is well! Now—down—” He thrust them into the blackness. Raul’s booted feet poked down into emptiness—swung—found a ladder-rung, and he went down into pitch-blackness surefooted as a mountain charb.
Gundorm Varl followed, and behind him came the wheezing, fat sword-seller and, lastly, Sharl Yellow-Eyes.
The trap slid sleekly shut behind them, and, although they could not see or know, so cleverly was it draped, the thrust-up floor-carpeting folded down to hide their exit-place completely, perfectly—just as the heavy boots of a squad of beefy Monitors came tramping and clumping into the tent they had just vacated.
Utter blackness about them, above, below, to all sides. Then a flare—a soft welling-forth of pale, cold blue-white light, from something in the sword-seller’s hand.
They reached the bottom of the ladder. By the soft, clear light, Raul could see they stood in a chamber hewn from solid gray stone. But from one side of the chamber a black well showed—a tunnel branching out into the unknown. Raul felt the blood tingling through his veins from head to foot. The breath sang in and out of his lungs, heady as clear, cold mountain air. This was living! He did not know where he was going, nor why, nor what it was all really about, but surely, somewhere in it all, there were a few heads to break, and good comrades about him, and— somewhere, somewhere, a good fight—the Good Fight to join, a Cause to battle for, and thus to make an end to all this stifling inaction, this batting-at-shadows, this wasting and rusting of oneself!
Sharl caught his arm, pushing the carpet-wrapped long bundle into his hands.
“Here—she is thine—whether or not, kazar, you ‘enter my employ’—she belongs to thee!”
Heart thumping, joy like honey on the back of his tongue, Raul tore away the carpeting, unsheathed her and lifted her straight up into the light—
“Asloth!”
“Go forward, of honor!”
They thrust ahead of him into the black mouth of the tunnel, and, the golden sword clasped naked in his hands and joy singing in his heart, he went forward with them— into the black unknown.
FOUR
BRICE HALLEN, as Provincial Administrator, was Border Administrator Mather’s superior. As a senior government career officer—and as a genuine man—he very much disliked Dykon Mather. And, what’s more important, he loathed Nijel Pertinax, and everything about him, and hated having to work with the entire P-5 section—“the snoopers,” he called them, without affection.
The problem of Commander Linton and Sharl of the Yellow Eyes was too big, too potentially dangerous, to leave in the bumbling hands of Border Administrator Mather. When it came to his attention, he called a meeting of the full Staff—and let Pertinax have his say while he sat back, puffing on an old big-bellied Shamash-ware aquapipe, and peering up at the Colonel from time to time, piercing glances from under shaggy, heavy brows.
“So, what it filters down to, is that Linton tried to buy himself a sword,” he commented, after a while. “Dangerous things, swords. Sharp edges. Make fine weapons. I suppose you estimate Linton bought the sword so he could assassinate Lord Cheviot, eh, Pertinax?”
The lean, sour-faced agent flushed darkly.
“Arion! You’re the most suspicious man I’ve ever seen, Pertinax. And one of the most ingenious. Ingenious, that is, at seeing imaginary motives in the most casual and ordinary of acts. Buying a sword, indeed!”
Pertinax kept his expression wooden; inwardly he was seething, but smug.
“I have my job to do, Administrator, and it’s not an easy one. But it is, if I may say so, vital. I don’t ask for compliments. And, if I may say so, don’t the facts speak for the truth? You’ve heard the tapes—”
Staff meetings were held informally. Members strolled in as they were talking and took their seats around the large, low table of fine-grained harp-wood. Most of them, rather surprisingly, were younger men, relaxed, sober of mien, thoughtful, with shrewd tanned faces.
“Yes, yes—and they sound innocuous enough to me.” Brice Hallen grumbled peevishly. “Great Space, a man buys a sword—what of it? I bought one myself last month, on Pendalar. Damn good thing you weren’t there, Pertinax: you’d have deduced it as a treasonable act.”
“But, Administrator, what about the recognition-code I taped, between Linton and the Kahani’s agent?”