Rap moved his knees aside to make room as the newcomer ducked into the cell and stopped, blind. The door boomed shut behind him and he flinched. He was slight, yet he could not straighten under the roof, and overall he seemed so like an adolescent that he might even be one. His clothes had a very homemade look to them, his golden curls needed trimming, but his fingernails were neat and clean.
“Rap’rian?” he said warily, peering straight ahead. “That’s me,” said Rap at his feet.
The visitor jumped and banged his head. “I’m Quip’rian.” He choked and slapped a hand over his mouth. “I think I’m going to throw up.”
“I shall certainly kill you if you do,” said Gathmor. Another shock. “Who? There’s more of you in here?”
“My associate, Captain Gathmor.”
“A jotunn? They locked you up with a jotunn? How can you stand this place?”
“I don’t have much alternative,” Rap said, beginning to feel better already. “Your name—Quip’rian?—we’re related?”
“I doubt . . . I’m an Aliel, cadet branch of the penultimate Offiniol sept. You?”
“No.” Rap was even further out of his depth than he’d thought.
For a moment the conversation failed. The youth reached out and felt for the walls. His face twisted in horror when he realized how small the kennel was.
“Master Rap’rian?” he whispered. “Are you crazy? Will you plead insanity?”
“No. Would I be any better off if I did?”
“They might just cut your head off.”
That classed as better off? “I did it right, didn’t I?” Quip’rian shut his eyes and shuddered. “You can’t believe that!”
“Well, it came unstuck later,” Rap admitted. “But I said the formula—`I spit on Valdonilth!’ That was right, wasn’t it? And then I slapped his face. I didn’t hit very hard. And the old boy said whatever it was he was supposed to say: `Foul varlet’ and so on. He did it rather well, I thought, as he couldn’t have been expecting anything like that. And then I said, `I kneel in the shadow of Lith’rian.’ That was all that was supposed to happen, I thought.”
The real elf wiped his streaming forehead. “How should I know? Nobody does things like that nowadays! If you’d picked anyone but Lord Phiel’, he probably wouldn’t have had a clue what you were raving about. I know I wouldn’t.”
Rap grunted noncommittally. When the silence became oppressive, he said, ”Who’re you? How do you get involved.”
“I was the nearest male kin when you challenged.”
“How old are you?”
“Fifteen. I’m a trainee waiter! I was clearing plates off the next table.” He seemed ready to weep.
“And what does the nearest male kinsman have to do?”
“You mean you don’t know all this? You utter the Sublime Defiance and you don’t know how it works?”
Rap thought a few unkind thoughts about Sorcerer Ishist and his sense of humor. “Tell me.”
Quip’rian’s lip trembled. “You’re really asking me? I only know what they’ve been babbling upstairs. I have to be your escort. I have to accompany you to Valdorian, if you get to go.” Rap’s insides lurched. “You mean there’s some doubt?”
“Doubt?” the elf yelled. “The lictor himself has a broken arm! The hall was wrecked, utterly wrecked! No one’s died yet, but eight legionaries were injured, and two or three dozen civilians. Poor Master Arth’quith had a fit. It was awful, just awful! There’s an almighty argument going on upstairs. It’s going to cost millions!”
Gathmor sighed happily.
Rap scanned and eventually discovered a meeting in progress on the third floor. He could not hear the words, but the ten or so men up there were doing a lot of arm-waving.
“Well, I admit the fight wasn’t part of the plan,” he said sadly. ”I was told—I mean, I intended—to find an important elf with other elf witnesses. I didn’t realize that imp witnesses might not understand what was going on. I should have chosen a time when there were only elves present. I’m truly sorry, because of course no elf would have spoiled a solemn ceremony like that by trying to hit me with a bottle.” It had been a sorry blow, and Rap had dodged easily, but . . . “My friends thought I was in danger, you see.”
Gathmor and Darad had come to his rescue like twin avalanches.
Quip’rian sniffled. “Well, the lictor himself was there. He was hurt, and his wife went into labor, and half his guests are still hospitalized.”
Now Rap began to grasp the enormity of the problem. “And he doesn’t recognize ancient elvish customs?”
“They don’t apply within the Impire.”
“No. I see.”
“He says he’ll bypass normal procedure with a summary edict—to save time, because you’re so obviously guilty.”
“And then?”
The boy moaned. “You’re going to be flogged to death in Emshandar Plaza at noon. The notices are being posted.” Rap recalled Kalkor’s odious cat-o’-nine-tails and his throat felt as if it were being squeezed. “And my friend here?”
“Him first, you second.”
“Then what’s the argument about?”
“Lord Phiel’nilth says his clan honor is involved. He’s delighted! No one’s uttered the Sublime Defiance in three hundred years, he says. He wants to go through with the whole ritual.”
Nothing was ever simple where elves were concerned, Rap remembered. “Can he swing that?” he asked hopefully.
For a moment the kid just wrung his hands. Then he whispered, “If they can find the lictor’s price.” He was looking sicker by the minute. What sort of a fifteen-year-old was he?
“I’d have thought,” Rap said, “that the chance of a free trip to IIrane would appeal to you. Better than dirty dishes, surely?” Quip’rian shuddered convulsively. “Go on a ship?”
“No? Well, cheer up! They may flay me yet, and then you can polish all the glasses in Noom in celebration.”
“Don’t mock me!” the elf snapped, showing a little spark at last. ”I didn’t ask for this.”
“True! I’m sorry,” Rap said, and meant it. “I suppose I’m just trying to whistle up some courage. Will the lictor blink?”
“How should I know? I’m a nothing . . . But that way the damage would be paid for. I think some important people like that idea.”
In Milflor Rap had cost Gathmor forty-six imperials. He was going to be considerably more expensive this time. “Who pays for all this?”
“Lith’rian, of course. You knelt in his shadow.”
Well, a warlock could create gold to order. If he wanted to. “I get taken to Lith’rian for judgment?”
The elf nodded, looking sorely puzzled again. “Then what?”
“Then he judges, of course. If he decides you were wrong to spit on the Nilths, then he sends your head to Valdonilth.”
“Literally?”
“In a gold bucket is the tradition.”
“And if he doesn’t? If he thinks I was right?” Quip’rian sniffled loudly. “Then you’ve started a war.”
6
Either the execution scheduled for noon was postponed or there was a last-minute change of cast, because arguments over the elvish affair continued all day in the lictor’s office. Rap watched the crowd there grow, but for information on what was being said he had to rely on Quip’rian.
The young elf was a loose ball in the game. The ancient rituals gave Nearest Kinsman a major role in all proceedings, but senior Imperial officials preferred not to discuss confidential financial matters in the presence of a trainee waiter, so they sent him off to attend Rap.
A short time in the cell was enough to make him nauseated, palsied, and likely to faint. At that point Rap would suggest he go and gatecrash the meetings again, and after some shouting for the jailers, he would be released. In an hour or so, someone would notice him in the lictor’s office and toss him out again. Then he would force himself back down to the dungeon to report to Rap, for he had an elf’s compulsion to perform duties conscientiously.
He told all he could, but young Quip’, while he was sensitive and willing, was clearly neither well educated nor especially intelligent, and he had no inklings of finance or politics. He did report that the entire elf community of Noom was involved now, rallied around Lord Phiel’nilth. If the distinguished visitor chose to regard the insult paid him as an honor, then he must be given every assistance. Arcane rites had an undeniable appeal for elves.
The imps were seemingly divided between those who saw the practical advantages of accepting compensation, and those who insisted that the law must be upheld—meaning that the two culprits should be disassembled as soon as possible, in public. Rap began to suspect that the contest was unfair, that the elves were outmatched in the bargaining, caught between two grindstones that opposed each other to a common purpose. As the day wore on, Quip’ was gasping out numbers even Gathmor could not comprehend.
And certainly the negotiations were only possible at all because the patron lord whose name Rap had invoked was a sorcerer. Lith’rian’s credit was infinite.