After that, the boys were watched rather closely. There was nothing really obvious about it; it was just that there always seemed to be someone around to call a halt before things got completely out of hand.
About a week later, when the rains had passed and the slush had mostly melted off the streets, Errand and Kheva were sitting on the floor of a carpeted room, building a fortress out of wooden blocks. At a table near the window Silk, splendidly dressed in rich black velvet, was carefully reading a dispatch he had received that morning from his partner, Yarblek, who had remained in Gar og Nadrak to tend the business. About midmorning, a servant came into the room and spoke briefly with the rat-faced little man. Silk nodded, rose, and came over to where the boys were playing. “What would you gentlemen say to a breath of fresh air?” he asked them.
“Of course,” Errand replied, getting to his feet.
“And you, cousin?” Silk asked Kheva.
“Certainly, your Highness.” Kheva said.
Silk laughed. “Must we be so formal, Kheva?”
“Mother says I should always use the proper forms of address,” Kheva told him seriously. “I guess it’s to help me keep in practice or something,”
“Your mother isn’t here,” Silk told him slyly, “so it’s all right to cheat a little.”
Kheva looked around nervously. “Do you really think we should?” he whispered.
“I’m sure of it,” Silk replied. “Cheating is good for you. It helps you to keep your perspective.”
“Doyou cheat often?”
“Me?” Silk was still laughing. “All the time, cousin. All the time. Let’s fetch cloaks and take a turn about the city. I have to go by the headquarters of the intelligence service; and since I’ve been appointed your keeper for the day, the two of you had better come along.”
The air outside was cool and damp, and the wind was brisk enough to whip their cloaks about their legs as they passed along the cobbled streets of Boktor. The Drasnian capital was one of the major commercial centers of the world, and the streets teemed with men of all races. Richly mantled Tolnedrans spoke on street corners with sober-faced Senders in sensible brown. Flamboyantly garbed and richly jeweled Darwinians haggled with leather-garbed Nadraks, and there were even a few black-robed Murgos striding along the blustery streets, with their broad-backed Thullish porters trailing behind them, carrying heavy packs filled with merchandise. The porters, of course, were followed at a discreet distance by the ever present spies.
“Dear, sneaky old Boktor,” Silk declaimed extravagantly, “where at least every other man you meet is a spy.”
“Are those men spies?” Kheva asked, looking at them with a surprised expression.
“Of course they are, your Highness.” Silk laughed again.
“Everybody in Drasnia is a spy -or wants to be. It’s our national industry. Didn’t you know that?”
“Well -I knew that there are quite a few spies in the palace, but I didn’t think they’d be out in the streets.”
“Why should there be spies in the palace?” Errand asked him curiously.
Kheva shrugged. “Everybody wants to know what everybody else is doing. The more important you are, the more spies you have watching you.”
“Are any of them watching you?”
“Six that I know of. There are probably a few more besides -and of course, all the spies are being spied on by other spies.”
“What a peculiar place,” Errand murmured.
Kheva laughed. “Once, when I was about three or so, I found a hiding place under a stair and fell asleep. Eventually, all the spies in the palace joined in the search for me. You’d be amazed at how many there really are.”
This time, Silk laughed uproariously. “That’s really very bad form, cousin,” he said. “Members of the royal family aren’t supposed to hide from the spies. It upsets them terribly. That’s the building over there.” He pointed at a large stone warehouse standing on a quiet side street.
“I always thought that the headquarters was in the same building with the academy,” Kheva said.
“Those are theofficial offices, cousin.This is the place where the work gets done.”
They entered the warehouse and went through a cavernous room piled high with boxes and bales to a small, unobtrusive door with a bulky-looking man in a workman’s smock lounging against it. The man gave Silk a quick look, bowed, and opened the door for them. Beyond that somewhat shabby-looking door lay a large, well-lighted room with a dozen or more parchment-littered tables standing along the walls. At each table sat four or five people, all poring over the documents before them.
“What are they doing?” Errand asked curiously.
“Sorting information,” Silk replied. “There probably isn’t much that happens in the world that doesn’t reach this room eventually. If we really wanted to know, we could probably ask around and find out what the King of Arendia had for breakfast this morning. We want to go into that room over there.” He pointed toward a solid-looking door on the far side of the room.
The chamber beyond the door was plain, even bare. It contained a table and four chairs -nothing more. The man seated at the table in one of the chairs wore black hose and a pearl-gray doublet. He was as thin as an old bone, and even here, in the very midst of his own people, there was about him the sense of a tightly coiled spring. “Silk,” he said with a terse nod.
“Javelin,” Silk replied. “You wanted to see me?”
The man at the table looked at the two boys. He inclined his head briefly to Kheva. “Your Highness,” he said.
“Margrave Khendon,” the prince responded with a polite bow.
The seated man looked at Silk, his idle-appearing fingers twitching slightly.
“Margrave,” Kheva said almost apologetically, “my mother’s been teaching me the secret language. I know what you’re saying.”
The man Silk called Javelin stopped moving his fingers with a rueful expression. “Caught by my own cleverness, I see,” he said. He looked speculatively at Errand.
“This is Errand, the boy Polgara and Durnik are raising,” Silk told him.
“Ah,” Javelin said, “the bearer of the Orb.”
“Kheva and I can wait outside if you want to speak privately.” Errand offered.
Javelin thought about that. “That probably won’t be necessary,” he decided. “I think we can trust you both to be discreet. Sit down, gentlemen.” He pointed at the other three chairs.
“I’m sort of retired, Javelin,” Silk told him. “I’ve got enough other things to keep me busy just now.”
“I wasn’t really going to ask you to get personally involved,” Javelin replied. ” All I really want is for you to find room for a couple of new employees in one of your enterprises.”
Silk gave him a curious look.
“You’re shipping goods out of Gar og Nadrak along the Northern Caravan Route,” Javelin continued. “There are several villages near the border where the citizens are highly suspicious of strangers with no valid reason for passing through.”
“And you want to use my caravans to give your men an excuse for being in those villages,” Silk concluded.
Javelin shrugged. “It’s not an uncommon practice.”
“What’s going on in eastern Drasnia that you’re so interested in?”
“The same thing that’s always going on in the outlying districts.”
“The Bear-cult?” Silk asked incredulously. “You’re going to waste time onthem?”
“They’ve been behaving peculiarly lately. I want to find out why.”
Silk looked at him with one eyebrow raised.
“Just call it idle curiosity if you like.”
The look Silk gave him then was very hard. “Oh, no. You’re not going to catch methat easily, my friend.”
“Aren’tyou the least bit curious?”
“No. As a matter of fact, I’m not. No amount of clever trickery is going to lure me into neglecting my own affairs to go off on another one of your fishing expeditions. I’m too busy, Javelin.” His eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “Why don’t you send Hunter?”
“Hunter’s busy someplace else, Silk, and stop trying to find out who Hunter is.”
“It was worth a try. Actually I’m not interested at all, not in the least.” He sat back in his chair with his arms adamantly crossed. His long pointed nose, however, was twitching. “What do you mean by ‘behaving peculiarly?”‘ he asked after a moment.
“I thought you weren’t interested.”
“I’m not,” Silk repeated hastily. “I most definitely amnot.” His nose, however, was twitching even more violently. Angrily he got to his feet. “Give me the names of the men you want me to hire,” he said abruptly. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Of course, Prince Kheldar,” Javelin said blandly. “I appreciate your sense of loyalty to your old service.”
Errand remembered something that Silk had said in the large outer room. “Silk says that information about almost everything is brought to this building,” he said to Javelin.
“That might be an exaggeration, but we try.”
“Then perhaps you might have heard something about Zandramas.”