“Puberty’s what I’m in the middle of,” Thorog said, drawing himself up straight and looking challengingly at the mirror.
Shandie sniggered. “You mean like messing up a cravat?”
“No, I mean like growing hairs on my lip—and other places,” he added mysteriously.
“What hairs on your lip?”
“Well, once it starts it comes very quickly, Dad says. And it’s started!” Thorog looked even more mysterious.
“Where?”
“Down here.”
Now came the problem that had been really torturing Shandie. “Thorog, what color is it?”
Thorog stuttered and said brown, what color did he expect it would be?
“It isn’t . . . blue, is it?”
A very strange expression came over his cousin’s face. He clumped over to where Shandie was sitting on the edge of the bed. “Why, Shandie?”
Surprised, and a little nervous, Shandie said, “Well, it can be blue, cant it? Hair down there?”
“Who has blue hair there? I won’t say you told me, honest. Except to Mum, and she won’t tell anyone.”
“How should I know?” Shandie said quickly, alarmed now.
Thorog dropped his voice. “The only people with blue hair are merfolk. Their hair is blue, all of it. Very pale blue. Even eyebrows, I suppose. They’re very unhairy people, legs and arms, but I expect their grown-ups have hair down there like any others. If a man had some merman blood in him, he might have blue hair, and then he’d have to dye his hair so people wouldn’t know. But I don’t suppose he’d bother dying the bit down there. All right?”
Shandie nodded gratefully. That explained things, although it was odd that Thorog was so knowledgeable about merfolk. “And what’s wrong with having merfolk blood? I mean, is it worse than troll blood, or elf blood?”
“Nothing wrong with a little elf blood,” Thorog. said snappily. ”Dad says jotunn wouldn’t be too bad, either. But merfolk . . . you know why Grandfather doesn’t rule the Kerith islands, young fellow?”
“Because they don’t fight fair,” Shandie said. “Mermen won’t stand and fight. They pick us off with cowardly attacks in the dark, one at a time. It’s happened. . .”
“Fight fair?” Thorog went back to his mirror. Amazingly, he seemed to be satisfied with his cravat, for he set to work on his hair. “If someone invaded your country, would you care about fighting fair?” Shandie had never considered the question.
“And why do the centurions let the men run around to be killed one at a time in the dark? They don’t do it fighting dwarves in Dwanish, or elves in Ilrane. Why fighting mermen? Never asked your books that question?”
“No,” Shandie said in a small voice.
“Well, it’s the merwomen who do the damage. They sing, or dance, or just show themselves. And the army falls apart. You know how dogs flock to a bitch?”
“No.”
“Bees to a queen, then?”
“No.”
Thorog rolled his eyes. “You spend far too much time reading and hanging around court functions, my lad! You should get out of doors more. But that’s why you’ll never be Imperor of the Keriths, Shandie. Sex!” he whispered dramatically. “Men go crazy!”
“Oh!” Shandie said.
“And that’s why merfolk aren’t welcome, not anywhere. They bring quarrels. Why don’t jotnar ever trade in mermaid slaves?”
Shandie considered that, then said, “Why not?”
“Because they can’t bear to part with them!” Thorog crowed in triumph. “Now, who do you know with blue hair down there?”
“Oh, no one! Say, you don’t mind if I slip up to my room for a moment?”
He didn’t sleep with Moms anymore. He had a new room now, all to himself, and his medicine was there. He was beginning to feel scratchy-twitchy, and the only cure he knew for scratchy-twitchy was a mouthful of his medicine. He headed for the door.
“Why,” Thorog said, staring, “do you walk that way?”
“ ‘Cause I peed my pants on your bed,” Shandie said, and was gone before his cousin had finished making sure he hadn’t.
The ambassador’s decision to bring the reply himself had not saved it from being delayed by bad weather. Krushjor glanced at the sky, contemplated time and tide, and decided to hang around for another half hour in the hope that some of the imps might contract pneumonia. He, after all, knew for certain what they could only suspect that the documents in his pouch were worthless forgeries The safe conduct had been carefully phrased so that it became effective only when it was delivered, and there was not one chance in a million that his dear nephew Kalkor would blunder into a trap as obvious as this one.
3
Seven hundred leagues to the west of Hub, in a cold and clammy dawn, Ambassador Krushjor shivered under a fur robe on the deck of an Imperial war galley. Fog hung over the sea like a white mystery, and the sea roiled slowly and painfully below it, dark and menacing. In a pouch at his belt lay very imposing documents, rolls of vellum decorated with heavy wax seals—an edict granting safe conduct to the imperor’s trusted and dearly beloved cousin and a missive welcoming the thane of Gark to the City of the Gods. Aged clerks, well inured to hypocrisy, had muttered oaths as they penned the words.
If a jotunn felt chilled, imps froze. Rowers, archers, legionaries, officers . . . their teeth chattered like castanets all around him, and their swarthy hides were a livid blue in the dubious light. Moisture glistened on their armor as it glistened on plank and rigging and sword.
The possibility of treachery had been evident to both sides right from the start. Thane Kalkor had listed many possible days and sites at which he might appear to learn how the imperor had answered his arrogant request. This was one of the places and one of the days, but not the first, for the wheels of the secretariat had turned with glacial slowness, and even—
A long way to the south, in a fog even thicker, a bonfire crackled and steamed on a reach of rocky coast. A bowshot seaward, a rugged sea stack provided a notable landmark, although it was presently invisible. Shiny, lethargic swells drifted in to the shore, summoning just enough energy as they died to break the surface and slap small ripples of froth on the shingle. Seabirds like toy boats bobbed at the limit of vision. The rocks and grasses were as wet as the sea, the air heavy with scents of weed and the restless ocean.
Shivering, stamping his boots, and tending the fire, an aging jotunn named Virgorek cursed his vigil and the Gods who had brought him to such a pass. He was Nordland born, blue-eyed and blond like all jotnar, but burdened with a most atypical fondness for security. Long ago, at fourteen, he had killed a man who had raped his sister. And killed his sister, also, of course, for submitting. The incident might have boosted his career considerably had the man’s family not possessed more fighting men than his own. Discovering that his life was worth less than a cormorant’s egg, Virgorek had fled from his homeland and sought his fortune in the Impire; and in time he had found himself living in the capital, serving on the staff of the permanent Nordland embassy there.
The pay was excellent, for few of his countrymen could tolerate indoor work, and they pined without the smell of salt water in their nostrils. He had estimated that a couple of years of such drudgery would earn him enough to return to the sea and buy his own boat so that he could end his days in respectable fishing, brawling, and smuggling. He had overlooked the sheer impossibility of anyone but an imp managing to hang onto money in an impish city.
After five years of this degradingly honest labor, he was wiser, but also older and poorer and no more content. Indeed, when he contemplated his debts and domestic problems back in Hub, he could think of no sane reason why he should return there.
Meanwhile he must spend two hours at dawn here, on every one of eleven specified days, in the slight hope that Kalkor would choose this one time and place out of a handful of others. Virgorek had no way of knowing whether the documents he bore were the real ones or merely more of the forgeries. This was the seventh time he had gone through the same useless ritual, and the only good thing about this one was the fog. This was authentic orca weather.
The dory had crept almost within hailing distance before he saw it. His first sensation was annoyance that some stupid local fisherman had blundered into the rendezvous and would have to be killed in case he gossiped. Then he noticed the solitary rower’s gold hair. And finally he registered that the man’s back and arms were bare. In that weather, such deliberate discomfort ruled out any normal fisherman. Virgorek’s heartbeat speeded up considerably, and he began rehearsing the passwords.