The sorcerer went to his apartment. Here I was presently disturbed by Kochus, coming back from his supper with a frightened face.
“Charpon, Lord Vazkor,” he blurted, his eyes darting nervously. He was about to betray his master to me, and the thought scared him almost as much as I did.
“What of Charpon?”
“It’s the ship, the Vineyard. The Hesseks say he means to get aboard tonight, very late, and sail with the dawn tide. That he means to tell you nothing. The other seconds are to be with him, and all the crew he can gather up so fast. The oar-slaves are still aboard. I hear he’s sent them starting rations-the meat and wine they’re given before a voyage.”
I let Kochus rattle on, explaining this and that to me, Charpon’s foolishness, his own willingness to serve me, how
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dangerous it had been for him to go against the master and bring me the news. I did not want to lose the ship and did not mean to. Charpon, who seemed almost deliberately to have set himself to be a thorn in my side, had reached his terminus. The onlv way to stop him and surely end his trouble to me was to kill him.
Having decided that, then I must face the other thing, that I did not want to kill him, or any man for that matter, not in that one infallible way I had, by use of my will. This was no ethic or moral stigma. It was pure fear. I feared the Power in me. At such times as I feared it, I felt some demon had possessed my brain, the sort of dichotomy that would drive me from my wits. So now I shirked it.
I sent Kochus out, thanking him, and he slunk away to the bed of Thei, furtive with his anxiety not to appear furtive.
Long-Eye, who crouched at my door immobile as a wooden sentinel, I called in. I told him of Charpon’s plans.
Before I need say anything else, Long-Eye said to me, “I follow Charpon and kill him.”
“He won’t be alone,” I said.
“No matter. All Hessek men reverence Lord Vazkor, before Charpon.”
“You know I could do this myself,” I said, goaded by the bizarre guilt of it. “Don’t you question that I ask you to manage it for me?”
He gazed at me blankly. Gods were inscrutable. He looked for nothing else. He slipped away into the night without another word.
He saved me in the sea from my death, that man; I sent him to his own.
I sat before the purple window till dawn rained indigo through the black, and red through the indigo, and the birds sang softly in their cages.
It had not been a night for sleeping. I had thought, Is it now he kills Charpon, or now? Maybe the Hesseks adhered to their master after all. Maybe judging Long-Eye a robber, they have killed him instead, perverse jest to round off this lunacy. For it is foul, it stinks. If a knife must be used, why not my knife? I have slain a man before, I suppose. This is delegated murder.
Eventually, a knock. The door opened, and I jumped to my feet as if it were I who awaited the executioner.
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It was not Long-Eye, but one of the Hesseks, who promptly groveled, obeising himself hands over face.
“The Lauw-yess-” he began, and broke into a gabble of ship’s argot.
That was how I learned that Charpon, walking with five Hessek sailors, had halted in a winding alley, a shortcut leading from the Fish Market into the docks, saying someone tracked them, some footpad, who must be dealt with. The Hesseks accordingly concealed themselves in the narrow mouths of warehouses that stood about, and Charpon stationed himself alone, facing the direction they had come. The footpad, presumably sensing trouble, failed to appear, so Charpon presently went back a way, with a drawn knife.
From the gloom of the street there rose suddenly a strangled animal scream, another, and another.
While it was true that most storehouses in the Commercial City employed guards, it was also true that they recognized their duties as being within rather than without doors. No one therefore emerged to interrupt Charpon as, leisurely and bloodily, he killed Long-Eye, the messenger he had been expecting.
Of the Hesseks, three took to their heels. Two stayed, gummed to the shadows, trembling and muttering. Eventually the cries, and the whining note that had replaced them, ceased. Charpon reappeared, a red-armed butcher, and he said to the Hesseks plastered flat in their fear to the doorways, “And shall I do the same for the slave’s master, this reptile Vazkor, someday when he sleeps?”
Then there was a noise, like a bird disturbed on a roof, and Charpon’s head darted up and met some swiftly moving thing that flew to him like a bird. The bird flew into Charpon’s eye.
When he was dead, which was not quickly, the Hesseks stole over, and saw this bird was a long piece of flint, filed sharper than a knife. They had been careful, prudent from years on the uneasy perimeter of law and safety, not to look for whoever had avenged Long-Eye from the warehouse roof. Yet I got from them, when I questioned them later, that it must be a Hessek, a pure Old Blood Hessek from the ancient city, Bit-Hesee, over the marsh, for such slingshot was what they carried there, to get duck or gulls from the reed-beds. Having been prohibited by Masrian law to carry blades, they had invented all manner of devious toys to compensate for the lack.
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The sailor, having recounted his tale almost on his face, now glanced up. The varicolored lights from the dawn window caught his expression, not of nervousness or secrets, as I had anticipated, but a curious sort of frightened pleasure.
“Find Kochus and the rest,” I said, “and send them to me.”
According to his story, he had not glimpsed the “footpad” Charpon had slaughtered. No doubt he had been particular in not glimpsing him, as with the unknown assassin on the roof. Any master of a galley was to a certain extent hated by his men, and Charpon was no exception. Probably one of the three who had run off had put the occasion to his own use in settling an account. A mystery not worth unraveling.
The master had owned his ship; it would be easy to supplant his rights with mine (a chain of gold cash in a suitable official area), hand the command to Kochus, who would puff up with the delight of an unwholesome and evil boy, and be my creature willingly, as even now he was.
The thorn, by whatever means, had been plucked from me. It was settled.
But for Long-Eye, what? Son of a short-lived people, he had lived no longer in my employ. He had saved me from the hurricane that I might give him to Charpon’s knife. He had believed me a god. Perhaps he died in agony, believing it
I sat and spoke with Kochus, and listened to the three terrified seconds summoned back from the ship. They had obeyed Charpon in spite of me, and begged me again and again to overlook the lapse. All the while I visualized LongEye’s hacked body in the alley near the docks. I knew that as I gave out my orders and my clemency, the mundane rats who dwell here and there about any port were coming from their houses to a feast.
4
That day I returned early to Phoonlin’s house, and cured him of the kidney stone. He railed against me, as before. He told me, as before, that I was a dog to bicker over his life. Still, he had had the papers drawn up, and got witnesses
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ready-he had no choice. His pain had come back, as I had meant it to, and I would not lay a hand on him till I was paid. I thought sourly then that he could not call me any worse name than I had already coined for myself the previous night. I told him he would not dare cheat his tailor, why should he expect to cheat me?
A crowd had gathered about the Dolphin’s Teeth soon after sunup. It might have been anticipated-the poor, the sick, the inquisitive. When I came in sight, there was uproar. My fame had spread faster even than I had reckoned on. Despite the efforts of Kochus and the Hesseks, I could make no progress for clutching hands. I stopped and looked around, moved by my shame and by disgust, at them, and at myself who traded on their desperation and naivete.
“I will heal none of you here. Go back to your homes, and at dusk you will find me in the Magnolia Grove. That is my last word.”