The man pushed through the doorway into the common room, jostling a pair of departing farmers, who glared at his back. He went up to the bar and ordered a mug of ale from Denklar. Denklar served him with unusual alacrity, then glanced along the bar, to see that no one stood close.
“What brings you back to Stegatum so soon, Anstevic?” asked Denklar in a soft voice. “I didn’t expect to see you again for a threemonth.”
Anstevic gave Denklar a searching glance, which caused the innkeeper to recoil slightly. “Business.” He tipped up the mug and poured the ale down his throat, belched loudly. He leaned forward and addressed Denklar in a confidential murmur. “I’m going up to my usual room, if it’s available. You come to see me later, when no one will connect your absence with me.”
Denklar nodded, and a moment later the man was gone, leaving behind a stink of unwashed flesh and overheated striderbeast.
An hour later, when the supper rush was over, Denklar went back into the oldest wing of the inn, where Anstevic waited.
The man sat on the bed, smoking a pipe of raw gray oil, the cheapest and harshest sort. His narrow eyes shifted and glittered with visions, and Denklar was a little afraid. Anstevic had always seemed the most unpredictable of the agents-at-large that passed through on their information-collection rounds.
“Business, you said?” Denklar asked, struggling to keep any trace of mockery from his voice.
“Yes,” Anstevic answered slowly. His eyes focused on Denklar for the first time, and Denklar was a bit more fearful. What did Anstevic mean to do, with such a look on his face? It was the look of a man examining a dead reptile about which he was curious. For a dizzy instant, Denklar wondered when the agent would prod him with a stick, turn him over to look for the fatal wound.
Denklar shook himself. Crazy thoughts! Anstevic was a harsh man, addicted to the oil — and probably to more demanding vices — but for all that he was still a pangalactic, and a League employee. Denklar had no compelling reason to suspect him of uncontrollably violent impulses.
“What do you want?” Denklar asked, his uneasiness making him brusque.
Anstevic’s strange eyes veiled, and he looked away. “I’m hunting a man.” His gaze snapped back and he stared at Denklar with a luminous intensity.
Denklar instantly thought of Wuhiya, the Uberfactorial who had gone up to the Keep that morning. He dissembled, however, remembering the Uberfactorial’s emphasis on secrecy. “Oh? Who?”
Anstevic smiled, a curiously ambiguous expression, and then looked away again. “It’s nothing you need concern yourself with.”
Denklar heard these words with profound relief, and so immediately believed them. “Well, if I can help…”
“Of course. But for tonight, all I need is for you to keep the yokels out of my hair.” Anstevic smoothed his hand over his naked scalp and sniggered. “I’m traveling fast, and I’ve no time to devote to oil selling. If anyone asks, tell them I’m traveling to buy, not to sell.”
“Yes, no problem,” Denklar said, forcing enthusiasm into his voice. “We’re in luck there. Another oil man just came through and spent a couple of days. He took everyone’s money, before Brinslevos called him to the Keep.”
Anstevic stood and clapped Denklar on the shoulder. “Well, we’re sorry for the poor wog, eh? When did he go up to the Keep?”
Denklar laughed uneasily. “Just this morning.” He wondered why he had mentioned the Uberfactorial at all — he’d been too eager to seem friendly, he supposed. He was again uncomfortable. But he reassured himself that if by some unhappy chance Anstevic was looking for the Uberfactorial, then he might have learned Wuhiya’s whereabouts from any of the tosspots who frequented the common room. And this way, Anstevic might not think that Denklar had been deliberately uncooperative — just discreet. To change the subject, he said, “As I recall, you never had any difficulty with Brinslevos.”
Anstevic gave him a comradely hug, which made the bones of Denklar’s shoulders grate together painfully. “You’re right. Brinslevos and I always get along famously. That’s because we’re two of a kind, don’t you think?”
There seemed no safe answer to that question, so Denklar ducked his head and chuckled nervously.
“Well, now I must rest for a bit,” Anstevic said. “But I do have something for you.” Releasing Denklar, he went to his saddlebags, which hung from a peg. He rummaged briefly, drew forth a small package. “Here,” he said, handing it to Denklar.
Denklar unwrapped it, found a black datastrip, of a sort which the League prohibited to its agents on the surface. The sensie pornography encoded on the strip was Denklar’s one indispensable vice, and he smiled gratefully at Anstevic, who was his only source of fresh material. Anstevic had given Denklar the smuggled-in playback unit, years before. Denklar considered this vice to be the only thing that made his life on Pharaoh bearable.
“The latest and hottest from Dilvermoon,” Anstevic said. “Now, let me rest. I’ll have to be on my way in an hour or two — though you may see me again soon… or maybe not.”
Anstevic the assassin filled his pipe again, when the fat innkeeper was gone. The situation could hardly be more to his liking. Brinslevos was a notoriously volatile Lord. Who would suspect Anstevic of involvement in the death of the Uberfactorial? One day he’d punish the innkeeper for his imperfect helpfulness, but not tonight.
Denklar would have to live awhile, unfortunately. When the Uberfactorial met his end, there must be no associated violences for any investigators to find. They might question Denklar, but the innkeeper would be anxious to conceal Anstevic’s visit, lest they discover his contraband. And in a few months, Anstevic would return to Stegatum and snip off that loose thread.
The oil showed him pleasant visions — knives ripping soft bellies, garrotes sinking into soft throats, the innkeeper’s blackened face frozen in fear and disbelief. He enjoyed this satisfying picture for a few minutes, until his pipe had grown cold and stale.
Then he gathered his gear and went out to the stables.
Chapter 10
By midnight, Anstevic had reached the top of the mesa on which Brinslevos Keep was built, and hobbled his striderbeast in a small pocket among the rocks. He took a slipsuit from his saddlebag and exchanged his oil man rags for the near-invisibility of the suit. When he switched it on, he became no more than a flicker of shadow on the moonlit stone, and he walked boldly up to the mesa top sally port and picked the lock.
He gained entry without difficulty; the port was guarded only in times of siege, and since the League’s acquisition of Pharaoh some thirty generations past, no wars had been permitted to disrupt the smooth delivery of product to the League slave pens.
His knowledge of Brinslevos Keep was superficial, but in past visits he had left locator beacons in various parts of the Keep, and now he tuned his finder to the one in Brinslevos’s private chambers. He took an infrared safelight from his pocket and adjusted the slipsuit’s goggles, then set off through the red-gleaming darkness. He met no one else in the corridors.
Fifteen minutes later, he was opening the ark in which Brinslevos kept his pipes and his punkweed. The ark was a fanciful silver effigy of an arroyo lizard, all jaws and teeth, whose head split open to reveal a storage cavity. He lifted out Brinslevos’s humidor of punkweed.
From a pocket of the slipsuit, he drew an atomizer and sprayed the weed. He stirred it to distribute the poison evenly, then returned the humidor to its ark and closed the jaws. The ark made a tiny click, and Anstevic froze. From the Lord’s sleeping chamber came a mutter and a sigh. Silence.