Denklar shifted uneasily. “How may I assist you?”
Ruiz allowed him to fidget, while Ruiz maintained a frown of officious suspicion. “Well,” he finally said, “I’ll tell you later. For now, I’ll stay at your inn, sell a little oil, and soak up the lay of the land. Acclimate. You’ve noticed the blackout from the orbital station?”
Denklar seemed startled. “Actually… no. We have spy beads active here, of course, beaming data up to the platform, but very little downlink traffic. This is an unimportant station, after all. Any child who shows any talent for conjuring is immediately sold off to a mage school in one of the major towns, so no serious collecting occurs here.” A light seemed to switch on behind Denklar’s eyes. “You’re here to investigate the poachers, aren’t you?”
Ruiz frowned more severely. “My mission is classified. Don’t be inquisitive. The blackout I mentioned now includes your uplink; my boat is monitoring the spectrum for violations. It’s a very good boat.”
“Of course, of course. Well, count on me. What shall I call you, by the way?”
“Call me Wuhiya. Don’t alter your behavior toward me, except to permit me to peddle my wares in your common room.”
“I wish you wouldn’t. Word may get around, and then I’ll have snake oil men infesting every corner.”
“You can handle it.” Ruiz was suddenly very tired. “Go away now; we’ll talk more in the morning.”
Denklar left, clearly unhappy. Ruiz barred the door, then set out various alarms and mantraps, which might preserve his life if enemies arrived while he slept.
Just before Ruiz was ready for bed, the green moth flew into the lamp and perished in a puff of twinkling sparks.
Chapter 8
A hundred kilometers away, in the stone town of Kobatum, a man sat at a table, eyes blank, mouth stretched into a shape of soundless pleasure. Occasionally he jerked and his eyes rolled. On the table before him was a small box of black plastic, from which a flat cable led to a strapped-on inducer at the base of his skull.
Far above, at the edge of the sky, a cloud of minute objects skipped through the first traces of atmosphere. Some took too steep a dive and burned up, but the rest eventually fell safely into the stratosphere.
When they reached thicker air, they sprouted tiny wings and shot off in all directions. An hour later they had scattered to every region of Pharaoh’s habitable plateau, seeking out pheromonic beacons.
One settled just inside the man’s window. It mated its tiny interface with the receiver that sat on the sill, activating a low insistent alarm, a pulsing note that could not be heard outside the man’s rooms.
When his pleasure device timed out, the man noticed the alarm and pulled off the inducer.
“What now?” he said tonelessly, addressing the empty room.
He went to the receiver and punched the button that shut off the alarm. The message from orbit fed itself onto the receiver’s small screen, and the man bent to watch it scroll up:
UBERFACTORIAL AGENT ON PHARAOH, PROBABLY DISGUISED AS ITINERANT SNAKE OIL MAN. EXTREME THREAT TO OPERATIONS. CARRIES GENCHA DEATH NET. IDENTIFY AND DISPOSE UNTRACEABLY. PROCEED WITH MAXIMUM CAUTION.
Following the message a grainy picture appeared. A lean handsome face stared boldly from the screen — a confident purposeful face.
“Maximum caution,” the man muttered irritably. He plucked the messenger from the device and crushed it between his fingers, rolling it into a tiny ball of foil. He flipped it out the window, and sat down to think. In all likelihood, the agent was working someone else’s sector, and thus was someone else’s problem. Just as well, he thought. He preferred his kills simple, direct, intimate. This assignment would require a frustratingly indirect approach.
Still, a kill was a kill, and he began to hope that the agent would be foolish enough to stray into his sector. He laid out his own disguise, which was also the ragged finery of a snake oil peddler. “Apparently,” he said to himself, “we think alike.” He checked his tattoos, which were bright. He made certain that his weapons were charged and in perfect repair. He set out his stock of snake oil and made sure that none of the vials was too far past its prime. He packed a few little pangalac luxuries — bootleg skinjectors, proscribed neural inducers, black market entertainment skeins — these he’d use to bribe other League agents, when their cooperation was necessary. All these things he arranged in neat patterns on his table, because he was a man who was careful and particular.
Finally, he went to the wall and opened a secret compartment in the stone. In the compartment he hid all the pangalac artifacts he would leave behind. Then he lay on his pallet and rested, waiting for morning. But he did not sleep; he lay in the dark with eyes wide open, his mouth fixed in a trembling smile.
At daybreak, Ruiz Aw awakened to the sound of jingling harness and shouting, sounds which drifted faintly through his window. There was some unusual quality in the shouts, some discordant vitality that attracted Ruiz’s curiosity. A glance through his window revealed nothing but the empty square, with its sinister boxes, and the waste, gray and empty under the dawning light. He rose from the bed and went out into the hall, though the mud floor was icy under his bare feet.
At the end of the hall was a curtained window that looked into the inn’s courtyard. Ruiz moved the curtain slightly and peered out.
A tall slender noble in black hunting leathers stood in the courtyard, shrieking at two ostlers, who were trying to saddle a huge striderbeast. The beast was highly strung, it appeared, and the noble seemed to be taking a perverse pleasure in making the ostlers’ job more difficult, shouting at just the moment the men were poised to clap the saddle on the beast.
“Hurry, can’t you, oafs? The sun’ll be down before you finish!”
The nobleman’s face drew Ruiz’s attention. It was typical of the Pharaohan peerage, narrow and fine boned — though in this case distorted by madness. The mouth pulsed, the eyes bulged, and two spots of hectic color emphasized the prominent cheekbones. Ruiz presumed that this was the local nomarch. Lord Brinslevos.
A moment later, when the ostlers seemed on the verge of success, Brinslevos darted forward and struck the striderbeast with his quirt, so that it curvetted away from the man who was trying to control it. The ostlers shot bitter glances at the noble, but made no protest.
Finally, relenting or growing bored, Brinslevos allowed the saddle to be cinched. He vaulted gracefully onto the beast. He made the beast rear and the ostlers scattered. “Good-bye,” Brinslevos shouted, mouth stretched wide with some fey emotion, and galloped forth. The sound of his going slowly died away.
Ruiz turned away from the window and returned to his room, unaccountably depressed. He sat on his bed and gathered his resolve. Finally he turned to making plans.
When he eventually appeared for his breakfast, the dining hall was empty and the porridge had gone stone-cold stiff, but a handsome young woman wearing a dirty shift bustled in and cut him a generous slice. He guessed she might be one of the “commoner doxies” Denklar had mentioned in connection with Brinslevos. She had a dusky bruise on her cheek and moved too carefully, but she seemed cheerful enough otherwise. She occasionally smiled at him, as she went about the dining hall collecting the dirty dishes, and he smiled back.