I
. Having climbed out of the morass into which I seemed to have fallen, the atmosphere of the Citadel appeared to me as wholesome and sound. Two square miles of bronze-faced outer battlements, manned by sentries in the red and white of the jerds, were like a shining shield against Hessek. For, though I never quite admitted to myself my utter fear of Hessek, my fear of what it had brought me to-a powerless, blundering animal-it was a rare night hour that did not bring some dream of it. Finding a spider’s web in a crevice of the Ax Court wall, I crushed the undeserving beast and its sticky lace with a cringing malice, as a child would do it.
Another two days went by, my tenth and eleventh in this land. (Only eleven days, and so much in them.) We had our provisional plan as fine as we could get it now. Old maps were sprawled on the cedar-wood table, showing the thousand roads and avenues of Bar-Ibithni, from the marsh gate in the west to the old northern seawall beyond the eastern vineyards, and south into the folding suburbs. The campaign was plotted like a war, even before we knew for certain the routes the Hessek rabble would take. Bailgar, eating raisins, suggested to me that to draw the rats up one way would be to insure their decimation; Denades and Dushum demanded another ambush somewhere else; and Ustorth of the fifth jerd gave harsh voice to my own opinion that to sacrifice a little of the city to the rats would make certain of its gratitude after. Rescue, effected too soon, might as well not be a rescue. Against this, Sorem argued. I had mistaken the extent of his ambition, for his honorable nature and his basic compassion overruled opportunity. He did not want to see butchery and rapine in the streets, he said. And all the while he had half a
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hedonist’s ear and eye for the musician girl, with her hyacinth locks trailing on the Tinsen lute she played poignantly in a corner. There were several girls about the Citadel, but they were free women and well treated, though seldom alone at night, I imagine. I saw no girl-boys, but like most armies, this one would have had its own traditions in the matter of that.
Stupidly, my nerves like knife-points, I was looking for a signal from the marsh almost immediately after I sent Lyo to them, but, as yet, there was no stir. We heard only that Basnurmon had given over his search of me, and assumed he had puzzled out where I must be. At the close of my third daylight on Pillar Hill, we had the proof.
Sorem and I were on the mile-long racing track of the Citadel. Here I was riding “white” despite my earlier protest, and both of us putting a couple of young horses through their paces to pass the time and relieve tension. I had never ridden anything so fine, save once or twice in Eshkorek. It was a pure-breed white, one of the Arrows of Masrimas, as they called them, sleek and lean as a great racing dog, the color of snow in sunshine, and with a fountain tail like frayed silk rope. It bore me proudly, broken to its destiny, but unready for a fool. I could feel the steed waiting to see if I mistook myself, or it, but finding I would master it and yet be courteous, it accepted me as a woman will who is of that temperament. Presently I won our race and swung down. Yashlom slipped the red cloth on the stallion and gave it a piece of pomegranate. Sorem came up and laughed at the horse eating.
“If you care for it, it is yours,” he said.
For all my scheming, this caught me off balance. He gave as a boy does, charming, generous, and very casual. A rich boy, perhaps I should say, and to one who had grown up with little he did not wrest from others by dint of fighting it had a ring that set the teeth on edge. No fault of Sorem’s, nor of mine, and I had learned enough to get the knot from my throat, thank him, and accept
He said, nevertheless, as they led the horses off, “To give is easy, is it, Vazkor, but not to take.”
“Waiting on Bit-Hessee has soured my temper and made a clod of me. I beg your pardon.”
“No matter,” he said. “A horse is not much to offer a man who gives you your life. I was ashamed of my gift not
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matching your own, but since you thought it large enough to be angry over, I feel better.”
Just then we saw the sentry running up. He came from the Fox Gate, where a small party of Basnurmon’s men had apparently craved admittance in the most polite manner. It was no trick, the sentry avowed, merely a steward in the wasp livery of black and yellow, mounted but unarmed, accompanied by two servants with a box of carved wood, which all three claimed was a present from the heir Basnurmon to his royal brother Sorem.
Sorem looked at me, and grinned.
“And now, Vazkor, I’ll show you how to receive a gift. Let them up to the Ax Court,” he added, “and give them a royal escort-twenty men with drawn swords should be sufficient.”
We walked back to the court ourselves, and into the red pillared colonnade that ran behind the target-fence. Sorem’s bitch hound trotted up and flopped down among the tubs of lemon trees. Yashlom and Bailgar followed her out, but the court was otherwise devoid of men. It was coming up to sunset when no Masrian draws a bow unless he must, for the old superstition has it that the shaft might hit the eye of the sinking sun. This, though considered a joke, is adhered to, as men touch stones or wood in other lands to appease spirits in which they no longer quite believe.
Into the empty Ax Court there was shortly marched a nobleman, escorted by twenty jerdiers and their swords.
This being recovered himself as best he could, and bowed to Sorem.
“I approach you from the Crimson Palace, my lord, bearing the gift of your illustrious brother,” he rasped, “and am I offered rough treatment?”
“Not at all,” said Sorem, smiling. “The swords, I assure you, are for your protection. We’ve heard of treachery, sir, assassins abroad in the city by night, and we wish only to safeguard you.”
Bailgar laughed, and Basnurmon’s ambassador screwed up his face uneasily. With a snap of his fingers, he summoned the two servants, who hurried forward and deposited a box on the ground. It was carved oak, with handles of silver and inlay of mother-of-pearl, and I wondered if it contained some exploding matter-primed powder or the like, though the Masrians did not appear to use it-or maybe a nest of scorpions.
Sorem surprised me by asking the wasp steward, with fault-
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less civility, to open the box himself. But then, I thought, he had lived twenty years in the midst of this, and would not have lived five if he had not been schooled.
The steward, through confidence or ignorance, flung off the enameled lid with a flourish. What was revealed brought him up short and changed his color for him, after all. Not death, but insult. It was a porcelain statuette in the box, about eight inches high, painted and executed with intricate detail. I was interested as to how it had been done in the time, for it was almost an exact replica of myself, of myself and Sorem. The position in which it showed us was the one they name “Hare and Dog” in the male brothels of Bar-Ibithni.
I was angry enough. I would have been angry to see such a toy constructed of myself with a woman, and this I liked even less. I reasoned later, when I had got cool again, that it was a ready-made carving, with the heads smashed off and the new ones, Sorem’s and mine, fashioned overnight, molded and stuck on in place. I believe, too, that it was not so excellent a likeness, if I had studied it, though at that moment I was pleased to study anything but.
Sorem’s face went dark with blood, then pale, and I could hear Bailgar cursing. The steward, too, seemed far from joyous.
Having a premonition of this tableau going on forever, I said, as blandly as I could, “Basnurmon confuses our tastes with his own. For the workmanship, I’ve seen better in the Market of the World.”
“My lord-” the ambassador began to me; then, presumably recollecting tales of white rays and other magics, he fell on his knees to Sorem. “My lord-”
Sorem said in a voice I had never heard him employ before, “Take this filth and conduct it back to the filth that sent it.”