Amazement at being served by the master of the house pulled the girl together, and she poured out her tale without preamble.
Trouble had arrived sometime in the hour before dawn, when she was already up to light the oven-fire behind its shield, and fetch the water for the bath-tanks from the public well.
The Hessek guard had been whispering together and acting oddly all night. (Most probably, I thought, they had got word I had been persuaded over the marsh. Just then, all Hesseks appeared to be in league against me.) However, despite their agitation, or because of it, their watch was not thorough. The outer gates were suddenly shattered, and the yard and courts
105
aswarm with men. They shouted for me, and getting no answer, routed the appalled household from their beds or from the places in which they had hidden. The girl did not see much of this. Accustomed to calamity from an immature age, she had taken refuge in the great tank that fed the faucets of the bath. She had long been acquainted with this tank, having had to fill it every day with nine pitchers of water from the well. Now it was only part full, and she crouched down in the dark and water, and heard indicative sounds as the strangers beat and took Kochus and the Hesseks prisoner, and presently ransacked the rooms, thereafter extending their quest to neighboring courts. Finding no trace of me, they at last turned their attention to my property, drank my liquor, and lay with the kitchen women, who, the girl prudishly declared, being loose hussies, were apparently audible in consent and approbation.
At length, silence encouraged my girl from the tank. She found the havoc much as I had found it, and no one on hand save the alarmed neighbors, most of whom fled for fear of further activity. She alone had remained to warn me.
Seeing she was braver and more quick than the rest of them put together, I gave her the silver flask to keep and some silver cash I had on me-makeshift reward for all her gallantry. But she blushed and gave me back the coins, saying she loved me and had done it for that. Poor little thing, I had scarcely noticed her, a skinny, small brown waif of poor Masrian stock, and not much above thirteen. Still, she did not try to give me back the flask. I imagine life had taught her already to put some prudence before sentiment.
I asked her if she could tell who the invaders might be, and she said at once, “They wore yellow and black-the guard of Basnurmon Hragon-Dat, the Heir of the Emperor. Everyone knows his wasp device.”
I sent the girl off to her home, after she had surprised me by insisting that she had one. Then I collected up any money-raising portable items that might have been accidently ignored by Basnurmon’s morons, and went straight out to the nearby hiring stables, dressed as I was in Bit-Hessee mud.
The man who opened up for me seemed innocent enough, but had heard the news of soldiers sacking my courts, and was nervous with questions to which I did not reply. A chain of cash got a mount from him, and an hour after the midnight bell I had crossed the bright streets of the Palm Quarter
106
and was hammering on the bronze Fox Gate of Pillar Hill, the entrance to the Citadel.
There were three or four decent rooms, the central chamber large and well furnished, more than a soldier’s cell, commander or otherwise. The lamps were the plain pleasant shade of the yellow wine that stood by in the crystal flagon. On the lime-washed walls were swords of damascened alcum, and a collection of shields, and bows and spears for hunting or war; and in one place hung a leopard’s pelt, something Sorem had taken himself and been proud of. I should not have been ashamed to have got it myself. There was an unMasrian quality in the lack of clutter, but neither was it unaesthetic. The woven Tinsen rug had all the jeweled colors the lamps did not, and the wine cups of polished malachite would not have looked amiss on any fancy table of Erran’s in Eshkorek.
A sleet-gray bitch hound lay before the open windows where the cool breeze of earliest morning crossed the stone veranda. Dim sounds rose up there from the garrison, mingled with the stir and shrill scent of lemon trees in the court below.
They bedded late in the Citadel, as elsewhere in eastern Bar-Ibithni. I had no difficulty in gaining entrance at the Fox Gate; it appeared Sorem had also heard news of the marauders. Some of his men had been sent out to try to intercept me, and the watch on the gate been primed to let me in. Altogether there had been extravagant events in the Citadel, as I was to learn, since we parted with our formal courtesies at the Field of the Lion.
Sorem came in, wide awake and fully dressed in the casual military gear of the jerdat. His face was tense, alert, and he grinned at me with a boy’s excitement, which told me more than anything that some fresh game was up. A girl poured us our wine and went away, and we stood to drink in silence, Masrian tradition with the first cup, to show the grape you honor his gift.
This done, Sorem said, “I owe you my life and I pledge you your safety. Beyond that, you had better know this is unlawful ground you’re standing on.” “Unlawful, how?”
“Word of Basnurmon’s tactics reached the Citadel, and the jerds have declared for me,” he said simply. “At least, my four brother commanders here in the garrison and my own
107
under-captains have done so, while I think the soldiery itself has no complaint against me and prefers me to Basnurmon. That puts all those five jerds, which currently occupy the Citadel, under my command. The astounding matter has remained secret from the city itself due to the loyalty of these men. They seem prepared to risk livelihood and life for me. But technically, Vazkor, Pillar Hill is now as much outlaw territory as Old-Hessek-over-the-marsh.”
I drank off the remainder of my wine at a gulp. This fitted so perfectly with the wild plan that had been jelling in me that I could almost swear someone’s god had a hand in it.
“And what do you know of Old-Hessek-over-the-marsh?” I said.
He was surprised, as well he might be.
“The name they give it here speaks for itself-the RatHole. A sink of wretchedness and corruption. They cling to the old faith of Hessek there, some foul magic, involving, reputedly, human sacrifice. Since the time of my grandfather, Masrianes, who conquered the south and built this city, Masrian rule has tried to stamp out such activities, bring these people from their swamp, and eradicate the villainies they practice.
“And instead of the swamp, you offer them what? Slavery under Masrian masters? Or the lives of beggars in your fine streets.”
“That’s not my doing, Vazkor. It’s the Emperor’s code that suppresses Hessek labor, and his tax of Bit-Hessee that insures Hessek slaves. Every year he creams off three hundred children from Old Hessek for slaves, mostly for use in the mines of the east. The priests of the Rat-Hole make no complaint, in fact I have heard it said their marsh could not support more children than they keep, that the tax prevents a famine. Still, it’s vile, not something I should want to put my seal on, if I were master in the Crimson Palace.”
I smiled at that. I had never seen his ambition before; no doubt he had learned to conceal it. Now, things being as they were, the malice of the heir Basnurmon naked in its intent at last, and the Citadel declared for Sorem, the voices that had been whispering in him twenty years made themselves heard.
This close, and in the steady light of the lamps, I could see him very clearly for maybe the first time.
He was a little shorter than I, perhaps by the width of my thumb joint, not much in it; in build we might have been brothers. Neither of us had lived soft. The palms of his hands
108
were welted in smooth callouses from handling sword, bow, and harness, and there was a jagged white scar I had noted on his forearm, the love token of a boar’s tusk, or I had forgotten my hunting. Reminding me of myself, he had taken on a look of familiarity. Even the blue eyes-which reincarnated, at odd instants. Ettook’s damnable krarl-Dagkta eyes set in the face of a Masrian prince. Which spelled other things from my past: Both of us saddled by a father, unloving and unloved; the mother thrust aside because she did not bear from his rutting; the birthright-of a krarl or an empire-withheld, and in his case given to another.