"I was so anxious to get home."
The man's eyebrows rose. "If you dare make excuses to me."
"No excuses. I'm sorry, Hercуl, I failed. May I get up now?"
The man lifted a hilt without a blade from her chest, then rose and helped her to her feet. He was a slender, elfin-eyed man in middle years, with unruly hair and somewhat threadbare clothes. Now that he was no longer attacking her he assumed a cordial air, folding his hands behind his back and smiling fondly. Thasha looked at her chest: bits of a glittering something clung to her blouse.
"Sugar knife," said Hercуl. "A very popular candy. Boys across the city play with those foul things, more's the pity."
"I never thought my first fight would be with you."
"Be glad it was."
Hercуl Stanapeth was her old dance instructor, from the days before the Lorg. But Thasha had learned (from certain military cousins) that he also taught fighting-that he was, in fact, from Tholjassa, where princes the world over sent for bodyguards. The cousins whispered of great deeds at arms, long ago, but Hercуl would not speak of his past. He also refused to give her fighting lessons, until she began paying bullies in the street for black eyes and bloody noses. She did not fool him with this tactic, but she did convince him of her desire to learn. His price: strictest secrecy, even from her father. If there was no law against training girls to hit and kick and use knives, it was merely because such an outrage had not occurred to anyone.
"Let us be off," he said. "Even I do not linger here after dark."
They set off along the Ool. Bats skimmed low over the water, feasting on flies. In the south the countless stars that made up the Milk Tree were starting to wink above the hills.
"My letters reached you?" Thasha asked.
Hercуl nodded. "I commend your decision, Thasha. The Lorg is an abomination. And of course I am happy to see you myself. What's that you're carrying?"
Thasha handed him the leather pouch, now slightly muddied. "It's just an old Merchant's Polylex. The Mother Prohibitor just gave it to me. She told me a strange story from it as well, about a girl called Erithusmй and her Nilstone."
"She spoke to you of the Nilstone!" said Hercуl sharply. "I dare say you won't find mention of that in the Polylex."
"The Mother Prohibitor said I would," said Thasha. "But don't worry, I know the book can't be trusted. And this one's the thirteenth edition, so it's completely out of date."
Hercуl's hand froze. "You mean of course the fourteenth edition. Or the twelfth?"
Thasha shook her head. "The thirteenth. I saw the title page, before the Mother Prohibitor tore it out. Why she did that I can't imagine-she said it was one of the most valuable books in the school."
"The most valuable, I should think. And the most dangerous. Put it away." He handed it back to her.
They walked on, Hercуl frowning slightly. At last he spoke again.
"You're right, of course. A normal Polylex is a hotchpotch: the work of brilliant explorers and charlatans, geniuses and frauds, all bound together in a single volume. The newest version, for instance, declares quite seriously that Tholjassans cannot be harmed by Tholja stingrays. Trust me, we can.
"But the thirteenth Polylex is an entirely different matter. Each book is written by the Ocean Explorers' Guild, which is an ancient club of sailors and businessmen here in Etherhorde. His Supremacy the Emperor is their honorary president, and approves each new Polylex before it is sold. No one took the book seriously until a century ago, when the thirteenth Polylex was written. Its editor was a man named Pazel Doldur. He was the brightest historian of his time-and the first in his family ever to go to school. They were poor folk: his father and elder brother joined the army because no one starved in uniform. Both were killed in mountain campaigns. Afterward his heartbroken mother sent Doldur to the university, on 'gold the Emperor pays to widows and mothers,' she claimed. As I say, he was brilliant, and studied hard. But his mother soon grew ill and died. It was only decades later, when he was starting work on the Polylex, that Doldur learned she had given her body to lords and princes in the Emperor's court, night after night, in exchange for his school money. Her disease came from one of those men."
"How perfectly ghastly!"
Hercуl nodded. "Doldur lost his mind with guilt. But he devised a brilliant revenge. It took many years, but he transformed the Polylex into an honest book: honest enough to shame all the wicked men alive, his Emperor included. It told of slave profits and deathsmoke peddlers. It revealed the existence of the Prison Isle of Licherog-imagine, there was a time when no one knew of the place! It told how merchants buy children from the Flikkermen to work in factories and mines. It named the massacres, the burned villages and other crimes of war that kings had worked so hard to make their subjects forget.
"All this he hid, in bits and pieces, within the usual five thousand pages of flotsam. And the Emperor never noticed. Perhaps he never read a word. In any case, he quickly gave Doldur his blessing. The thirteenth Polylex was copied and sold.
"The scandal tore this Empire apart: others did read carefully, you see. Within a year, Doldur had been executed, and nearly every copy of his book tracked down and burned. Merely to speak of a thirteenth edition was dangerous. To be caught with one was punished by death."
"Death!" cried Thasha. "Hercуl, why on earth would the Mother Prohibitor give such a book to me?"
"A fine question. Twenty years have passed since I last heard of someone caught with that book. An old witch, I believe. On Pulduraj."
"What happened to her?"
"She was tied to a dead mule and thrown into the sea."
Thasha stared at the innocent-looking pouch. "I knew they didn't like me," she said.
They crossed the footbridge over the old millers' canal. Hercуl touched his closed fist to his forehead, as she had seen him do at the center of other bridges: a Tholjassan custom, he had told her, but what it signified he would not say.
After a few minutes the words burst out of her: "What should I do with this blary thing?"
Hercуl shrugged. "Burn it. Or read it, learn from it, live with the danger of possessing it. Or take it to the authorities and condemn the Mother Prohibitor to death."
"You're a big help."
"Moral choice is not my sphere of instruction."
Thasha's face lit up suddenly. "Hercуl! When can our fighting lessons start again?"
Hercуl did not return her smile. "Not soon, I'm afraid. Much is happening in this city, and for good or ill I have become a part of it. The fact is I must leave you in a few minutes, and before that I have something to say. Something it were best you told your father, and soon."
He led her away from the river and into a dark stand of firs. Stopping by a large tree, he crouched low and motioned for her to do the same.
"Your family is being watched, Thasha," he whispered. "The admiral, the Lady, Nama and the other servants-now you as well. Somehow they knew you were leaving the Lorg tonight. If one good thing came of your rash plunge into this park, it is that you lost your watcher. You very nearly lost me."
"Watching us? Why?" Thasha was astounded. "Is this about what the ward-sister mentioned? An ambassadorship?"
Hercуl shook his head. "Don't ask me to speculate. And the fewer people you speak to about your father's business, the better. Come now, if you tarry longer they will know you met someone in the park."
They rose and walked on, fir needles crunching underfoot. Ahead, the glow of fengas lamps pierced the trees.
"Hercуl," said Thasha, "do you have any idea who they are?"
Hercуl's voice was uncertain. "There was one, a man I thought I knew, but that is hardly possible-" He shook his head, as if dispelling a bad dream. They had reached the edge of the firs. "Tell your father," he said. "And Thasha: tell him when he's alone, will you? Quite alone?"