The city-dweller shrugged. “Don’t know; the Palace, I guess.” He turned away, losing interest.
Valder watched him go, wondering how the man had ever become an innkeeper when nature had plainly intended him to be a thug of some sort, then shrugged and departed. He glanced in the direction of the gate wistfully as his boots struck the packed dirt of the street, but headed for the Palace.
Half an hour later he stood in the Palace Market, on the only stone pavement he had yet encountered in Ethshar of the Spices, staring at the home of Azrad the Great.
The Palace was immense; Valder could not see all of its facade from where he stood, but it was several hundred feet long and three stories high for its full length. It was gleaming white and appeared to be marble, ornamented with pink-and-gray carved stone. It stood on the far side of a small canal from the marketplace, connected by a broad, level bridge; at each end of the bridge stood huge ironwork gates, and at each gate stood a dozen guards.
The gates were closed.
That puzzled Valder; surely, he thought, there must be some way for people to get in and out in the ordinary course of day-to-day business, without having to open the immense portals. He could see none, however; the canal turned corners at either end of the Palace grounds, wrapping itself all the way around. The bridge was the only visible entrance.
With a mental shrug, he decided that the direct, honest approach was likely to be the most effective. He walked up to the gates and waited for the guards to notice him.
When they gave no acknowledgment of his existence before he came within arm’s reach of the iron bars, he revised his plan and cleared his throat.
“Hello there,” he said, “I have business with the Lord Executioner.”
The nearest guard condescended to look at him. “Business of what nature?”
Valder knew better than admit the truth. “Personal, I’m afraid — family matters, to be discussed only with him.”
The guard looked annoyed. “Thurin,” he called to one of his comrades, “have we got anyone on the list for the Executioner?”
The man he addressed as Thurin, standing in front of one of the great stone pillars that supported the gates, answered, “I don’t remember any; I’ll check.” He turned and lifted a tablet from a hook on the pillar. After a moment’s perusal, he said, “No one here that I can see.”
Before anyone could shoo him away, Valder said, “He must not have known I was coming; Sarai sent a message, but it may not have reached him in time. Really, it’s important that I see him.”
The guard he had first spoken to sighed. “Friend,” he said, “I don’t know whether you’re telling the truth or not, and it’s not my place to guess. We’ll let you in — but I warn you, entering the Palace under false pretenses has been declared a crime, the punishment to be decided jointly by all those you meet inside, with flogging or death the most common. If you meet no one, it’s assumed you’re a thief, and the penalty for robbing the overlord is death by slow torture. And that sword isn’t going to make a good impression; we can keep it here for you, if you like. Now, do you still want to get in to see the Lord Executioner?” With only an instant’s hesitation, Valder nodded. “I’ll risk it; I really do have to see him. And I’ll keep my sword.”
“It’s your life, friend; Thurin, let this fellow in, would you?”
Thurin waved for Valder to approach; as the innkeeper obeyed, the guard knelt and pulled at a ring set in the stone pillar.
With a dull grinding noise, one of the paving stones slid aside, revealing a stairway leading down under the great stone gatepost; trying to conceal his astonishment, Valder descended the steps and found himself in a passage that obviously led, not over the bridge, but through it. He had never encountered anything like this before; in fact, he would not have guessed the bridge to be thick enough to have held a passageway and he wondered if magic were involved.
The pavement door closed behind him, and he realized that light was coming from somewhere ahead; he walked on and discovered that in fact the bridge was not thick enough to conceal the corridor, but that the corridor ran below, rather than through, the center of the bridge; this central section of the passageway consisted of an iron floor suspended from iron bars. It seemed rather precarious but gave a pleasant view of the canal beneath.
At the far side of the bridge, another set of stairs brought him up beside another stone gatepost, facing another guard.
“Destination?” the soldier demanded.
“I’m here to see the Lord Executioner.”
“You know the way?”
“No.”
“In the left-hand door, up one flight, turn left, four doors down on the right. Got that?”
“I think so.”
“Go on, then.” The guard waved him on, and Valder marched on across the forecourt.
Three large doors adorned the central portion of the Palace facade; Valder followed the guard’s directions, through the left-hand door, where he found himself in a broad marble corridor, facing ornate stone stairs. He could see no one, but heard distant hurried footsteps. As instructed, he went up a flight, turned left at the first possible opportunity into another corridor — not quite so wide or elegant as the first, but lined with doors spaced well apart, with figures visible in the distance. He found the fourth door on the right and knocked.
For a long moment nothing happened, save that the people at the far end of the corridor disappeared. He knocked again.
The door opened, and an unhealthy young man peered out at him.
“Hello,” Valder said, “I’m here to apply for a job as an executioner.”
The young man’s expression changed from polite puzzlement to annoyance. “What?”
“I’m an experienced headsman; I’m looking for work.”
“Wait a minute.” He ducked back inside, closing the door but not latching it; a moment later he reappeared, something clutched concealed in one fist. “Now, are you serious?”
“Yes, quite serious,” Valder answered.
“A headsman, you said?”
“Yes.”
“From out of town, obviously.”
“Yes.”
“Headsman, let me explain a few things to you that you don’t seem to know, though any twelve-year-old child in the streets could tell you. First off, the Lord Executioner is the only official executioner in the city and has no interest in hiring others; if he did, he’d hire his friends and family first, not strangers who wander in. Understand?”
“But...”
“But what?”
“This is the largest city in the world; how can there be just one executioner?”
“That brings us to my second point. The post of Lord Executioner is not a very demanding one; after all, no nobleman likes to work. It’s true that the Lord Executioner could hire assistants, as his father did before him, but there’s no call for them, because hardly anybody manages to require an official execution. Generally, captured thieves and murderers are disposed of quite efficiently by the neighborhood vigilance committees; they don’t come to us. All we get are the traitors and troublemakers who have contrived to offend the overlord himself, and the occasional soldier guilty of something so heinous that his comrades aren’t willing to take his punishment into their own hands and that can’t just be dealt with by throwing him out of the guard and out of the city. This comes to maybe one execution every two or three sixnights, and it will be a long time before the current Lord Executioner is too feeble to deal with that himself. Which brings me to my third point — you don’t look like much of an executioner in any case. You must be sixty, aren’t you?”