"Not much. The Living are either felling apart or going undergroundcompletely. Probably both. And mostly felling apart in the Hahr."
"That's where al-Akla executed those men." "One sign of an impendingcollapse." "Al-Akla's little scheme is beginning to work, then." "Those guysmade it work. The thing that brought me in, it ain't much more than a rumor, but if it's true it's sure the Living is coming apart, at least in the Hahr."
"What's the rumor?"
"A guy named Ortbal Sagdet got himself killed down there last night. That's afact. I checked. The rumor is, he was the Living's number one boy down there.
Thieves got him, looks like. Thieves usually know enough not to mess aroundwhere there's gonna be comebacks that'll get them dead."
"How soon can you get a confirmation on whether or not this Sagdet was whatrumor says?" Cado's piggy little eyes were sparkling. "Never." "Eh?"
"How am I supposed to get your confirmation?" "You belong to the Living."
"I'm what they call a ground-level soldier. The bottom of the heap. And I'mnever going to be anything more."
"Why not?"
"The Living is an Old Boys outfit. I got three marks against me. The big oneis, I wasn't out there to get my butt kicked at Dak-es-Souetta. The other twoare I didn't get it kicked at the Seven Towers or on the Plain of Chordan, either. So it won't ever matter who I am or what I could do for them, I'llnever be anything but a spear carrier."
Cado got up and went to a window. Physically he fit the stereotype of theHerodian ruling class. He was short, bald, and plump. He could posture, bepompous, and was vulnerable to flattery. Like the rest. Unlike most, though, there was a razor-sharp mind under his shiny pate. "Where were you in thosedays, Rose?"
"Out of town."
"You did say you used to be a sailor, didn't you? That that was how youlearned Herodian. And there's little room on the seas these days forQushmarrahan ships. Well, no matter. We're here, and it's now. If there is away to identify Sagdet positively as a high officer of the Living, I'd begenerously grateful."
"If there's a way I'll find it, sir."
"I know you will. And what of our friend the Eagle? Anything to report there?"
"I screwed up. I got me a job grooming horses for them but the first day, oneof them got to mouthing off about city people and I broke both his legs forhim. I didn't figure it would be smart to hang around after that."
"You're a man of great violence, aren't you?"
"Sometimes that's the only way to get a message across. I never saw you guyssending out missionaries to spread the One True Faith."
"A point. I ..." Cado went red with anger.
Azel faced the window as an ensign invaded the room, so excited he hadn'tbothered to knock, so young he still had hair. "Sir!" he exploded. "Signalfrom the South Light. The new governor's galley is in sight."
"Damn! The bastard would have good winds coming across, wouldn't he?" Cadokicked a stool across the room. "Machio, don't you ever bust in here like thisagain. If it's the end of the world in five seconds you knock and wait.
Understand?"
"Yes sir."
"All right. Thank you. Get out."
The ensign went, tail between his legs.
"Our troubles redouble when we're least prepared to handle what we alreadyhave. Rose, I want you to stick with me today. I want you studying this Sullopig from the beginning. He's the first one they've sent who could be genuinelydangerous."
"Stay with you? For the public reception and everything?"
"Yes."
"Too dangerous. There are people who would recognize me. I'll have no value ifanyone suspects I work for you. Not to mention it might shorten my lifeexpectancy."
"I want to explore your thoughts about what al-Akla might be up to in the Shu.
I'll have you outfitted as a soldier in my personal bodyguard. You'll pass.
Nobody looks at the men behind the commander."
"In the Shu? He isn't up to anything in the Shu that I've heard, sir."
"He sent Joab and more than a hundred men into the maze down there this morning. You hadn't heard?"
"No sir. I was working the Sagdet angle." Azel was disturbed. This was notgood. He did have to find out what it meant. Soon. But it looked like Cado wasgoing to keep him tied up all day. Damn!
He should not have come.
Aaron removed the last of the clamping straps that had held the parts of themast step motionless while the adhesive between joins and around the holdingpegs had set. He waved to the men working the hoist. They began lowering theharness that would lift the mast step so they could swing it over and drop itinto the ship's half-completed hull.
The new Herodian foreman, Cullo, who had not yet been on the job two weeks, came to inspect the finished product. "Perfect," he pronounced it. "I've neverseen more perfect joins, Aaron. They're cabinetry quality."
"That's the sort of work I was taught, sir. And what I'd be doing if I waswell off enough to do whatever I wanted."
"Forget that. Stay with us. In five years you'd be a master shipwright."
"Yes sir." The way the Herodians were stripping the little forest on the hillssouth of Qushmarrah there would be no timber left in five years. Under the oldregime every tree taken had had to be justified and every ounce of it put tosome use. If he could find no other reason to dislike Herodians, Aaron coulddislike them because they were locusts, stripping resources and wealthwherever their armies were successful. He suspected greed moved them more thandid religious fervor.
He helped secure the harness, then stepped back. There would be nothing to dotill the laborers had the mast step ready to drop into the hull. Cullo was onto someone else, so he went and found Billygoat where he was pounding andtamping caulking rope into laps of clinker planks with a wooden mallet andwedge. The old man was quick and deft. He was ten feet ahead of his assistant, who was sealing the laps with hot pitch.
"That stuff stinks," Aaron told the old man. "Pitch? You get used to it. Gets to smell damned good if you're out of work for a while. You dogging it?"
"Hoisting the step."
"Uhm."
"They decided what to name her yet?" Billygoat knew everything before the foremen did. There was a battle going on at the top over the name of the ship.
A struggle between zealots and practical merchants who knew she would beentering ports where the Herodian god would not find a warm welcome.
"Nope. Something on your mind, Aaron?"
"Yeah." He did not know how to broach it without sounding like an old woman, so he just had at it. "Remember when you told me about they found those lost kids out by Goat Creek?"
"Uhm." The older man's hands never stopped moving.
"You ever heard about them finding any other ones?"
"Worried again?"
"Some. Not for me this time. Friend of my wife had her little boy taken yesterday. An only child." "Uhm." Billygoat paused to look at him directly. "You got one hell of a big determination to let this business fuss you, don't you, Aaron?"
What could he say? He couldn't mention the dreams and the nightmare certainty that something would happen to Arif. After all your precautions? they would ask. You have to be crazy. Maybe he was.
"Now you bring it up, though, Aaron, yeah, it seems I do remember hearing about two, three other kids that turned up the same way. Good clothes, good health, short on memories of what happened to them while they was missing." Billygoat's hands were busy again.
"They knew their families?" "I never heard anything said otherwise."
Aaron sighed a sigh that started right down in the roots of his soul. There was something to hang on to and nurture. "Good, then," Billygoat said. "And what else do you have on your mind this morning, young man?" Part of Billygoat's charm was his assumption of the old man's role, though he was far from elderly. Aaron was startled. Was he that obvious when he was troubled?