Green quivered, and he held his breath as be waited for the Duke’s reply.
The Duke, a short, dark many-chinned man with white hair and very thick bristly salt-and-pepper eyebrows, frowned.
“Men? Demons, rather! Can men fly in an iron ship through the air? These two claimed to have come from the stars, and you know what that means. Remember Oixrotl’s prophecy: A demon will come, claiming to be an angel. No doubt about these two! Just to show you their subtlety, they claim to be neither demon nor angels, but men! Now, there’s devilish clever thinking. Confusing to anybody but the most clearheaded. I’m glad the King of Estorya wasn’t taken in.”
Eagerly Zuni leaned forward, her large brown eyes bright, and her red-painted mouth open and wet. “Oh, has he burned them already? What a shame! I should think he’d at least torture them for a while.”
Miran, the merchant-captain, said, “Your pardon, gracious lady, but the King of Estorya has done no such thing. The Estoryan law demands that all suspected demons should be kept in prison for two years. Everybody knows that a devil can’t keep his human disguise more than two years. At the end of that time he reverts to his natural mesh and form, a hideous sight to behold, blasphemous, repulsive, soul-shaking.”
Miran rolled his one good eye so that only the white showed and made the sign to ward off evil, the index anger held rigidly out from a clenched fist. Jugkaxtr, the household priest, dived under the table, where he crouched praying, secure in the knowledge that demons couldn’t touch him while he knelt beneath the thrice-blessed wood. The Duke swallowed a whole glass of wine, apparently to calm his nerves, and belched.
Miran wiped his face and said, “Of course, I wasn’t able to find out much, because we merchants are regarded with deep suspicion and scarcely dare to move outside the harbor or the marketplace. The Estoryans worship a female deity – ridiculous, isn’t it? – and eat fish. They hate us Tropatians because we worship Zaxropatr, Male of Males, and because they must depend on us to bring them fish. But they aren’t close-mouthed. They babble on and on to us, especially when one has given them wine for nothing.”
Green finally released his breath in a sigh of relief. How glad he was that he had never told these people his true origin! So far as they knew he was merely one of the many slaves who came from a distant country in the North.
Miran cleared his throat, adjusted his violet turban and yellow robes, pulled gently at the large gold ring that hung from his nose and said, “It took me a month to get back from Estorya, and that is very good time indeed, but then I am noted for my good luck, though I prefer to call it skill plus the favor given by the gods to the truly devout. I do not boast, O gods, but merely give you tribute because you have smiled upon my ventures and have found pleasing the scent of my many sacrifices in your nostrils!”
Green lowered his eyelids to conceal the expression of disgust which he felt must be shining from them. At the same time, he saw Zuni’s shoe tapping impatiently. Inwardly he groaned, because he knew she would divert the conversation to something more interesting to her, to her clothes and the state of her stomach and/or complexion. And there would be nothing that anybody could do about it, because the custom was that the woman of the house regulated the subject of talk during breakfast. If only this had been lunch or dinner! Then the men would theoretically have had uncontested control.
“These two demons were very tall, like your slave Green, here,” said Miran, “and they could not speak a word of Estoryan. Or at least they claimed they couldn’t. When King Raussmig’s soldiers tried to capture them they brought from the folds of their strange clothes two pistols that only had to be pointed to send silent and awesome and sure death. Everywhere men dropped dead. Panic overtook many, but there were brave soldiers who kept on charging, and eventually the magical instruments became exhausted. The demons were overpowered and put into the Tower of Grass Cats from which no man or demon has yet escaped. And there they will be until the Festival of the Sun’s Eye. Then they will be burnt…”