That Fristle possessed remarkably fine whiskers.
“They’re a poor lot of mercenaries, aren’t they, Naghan?”
Naghan kept the striped apron. He wanted to skip and jump and I put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him down.
“Yes,” he said at last. “Outside. But, inside—!”
“I know.”
Halfway to The Queen’s Head Naghan discarded the striped apron. He wore shabby old clothes, a holey tunic and a pair of sandals that were falling to pieces.
“Shove the tools into the bag, so they don’t show.”
Naghan pushed the hammer down and then, as we approached the inn, looked up. “You’ll never get me in there!”
“Not like that, no.”
We went around the back and I told Naghan to wait quietly as I dug into my urvivel’s saddlebag and produced the clothes I hoped would fit Naghan. He put them on, a decent dark brown tunic and a pair of almost brand-new sandals, and then he flexed his arms and hung his tool bag alongside the saddlebag, turned to me and said, “Now what?”
“I have hired a room in the inn. It is quiet. You can stay there without attracting attention. I’ll leave enough silver.” I spoke matter-of-factly, having worked all this obvious detail out already. “Now, tell me all you know of Oby. His whereabouts. You said he worked for the yellows?”
Naghan the Gnat put his hands on his hips. “No,” he said.
I glared, shocked. “You—” I began.
“You may be the prince majister of Vallia. All very well. But Oby and Tilly are my comrades, as well. I shall not tell you what little I know of Oby’s whereabouts unless—”
I managed to close my mouth. I said, “Unless?”
“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? I’m not letting you go running off to rescue them on your own.”
Talk about an echo, bouncing between Naghan the Gnat and those fearsome fellows of my Guard in Vallia!
Of the Eye of a Vollerman
There is little communication — for obvious reasons — between the four color corners. Each corner is a world to itself. And the area reserved for the queen’s kaidurs is, in those terms, a double world to itself. We found Oby flat on his back under a half-dismantled voller. He worked — as a slave — for one of the managers of the yellows who fought for the diamond zhantil.
Naghan kicked his foot. He bent down.
“Oby! Come on out — and quietly.”
“Go away, rast, whoever you are,” said Oby’s familiar voice. He had been a mere youngster, and now he was a man, nimble, strong, adept with a knife, obsessed with vollers.
I said, “I am Chaadur the Iarvin, and Naghan the Gnat kicked your foot, for he is no respecter of persons.”
Oby came out so fast he hit his head a crack on the rim of the voller. He rolled out and looked up, swearing. “By Vox! It is — but — but—”
Oby’s left eye was puffed and swollen and closed to a mere tear-oozing slit. It was a shiny purple color, with tasteful admissions of green and black.
“Damned overseer gave me that... Naghan? And...”
“Chaadur,” I said. “Make no great fuss—”
“But the guards?” Then Oby saw the four Fristle guards slumbering at the foot of the trestles on which the voller was supported. The wooden shed allowed a mingled radiance of the suns to fall through cracks between the warped boards.
“Precisely. Now gather what you want. We will leave here now.”
Oby’s wits had always been like quicksilver. He was off the platform, scooping up a raggedy cloak of off-cuts of ancient gray blankets sewn together. He, too, picked up a leather tool bag.
“D’you know the way?” He was, at once, apprised of the situation.
“Yes. Talk later.”
So, quietly, we went out from that area of the yellows. We did, this time, tend to leave a trail of unconscious guards. But I was in a hurry. A single quick question and a surly answer elicited that Oby had no chance, no chance in a Herrelldrin hell of stealing a voller.
“You’ll have to ditch that cloak.”
Oby looked annoyed. We walked not too close together along an alleyway between booths on one side and cages on the other. The wild-animal smell remained strong and evocative, but all the cages were empty. Tame slaves scurried with buckets and brooms and pungent ibroi. The disinfectant smell battled feebly with those primeval odors of the wilds.
“It took me a season and a half to collect all the scraps of blanket and sew them together. But if I must, I must.”
The multi-gray cloak went in an arc into a trashbin where the slaves dumped what they cleared out of the cages. We walked on. When, at last feeling free, Oby and Naghan reached my urvivel and I could fish out clothes for Oby that only just fit, they began to jabber. They could have talked all day and all night.
“Yes, I know,” I said, interrupting. “When you found yourselves sorcerously transported back here. But we aren’t out of the woods yet. There is Tilly.”
Oby looked up from the knife I had, as a matter of course, included in the kit I’d brought for him.
“I know where they took her. She is a serving wench in the household of a nulsh of a noble called Noran. Vad Noran.”
“I know him.” I felt the glow of successful accomplishment. “This is good news — if Tilly remains unharmed.”
“She has sharp teeth — and her nails.” Here Oby shook his head. “Fristle fifis can scratch a fellow’s eyes out.”
“If they’ve a mind to it,” added Naghan, comfortably.
“That is all well and good. Now you two will stay—”
“I have given you my thoughts on that, prince,” said Naghan, very stuffily.
Oby said, “I do not think I shall stay behind — prince.”
When these two princed me — for they did not know I had become the emperor — they were pulling my leg, being sarcastic, in modern parlance, sending me up rotten. I sighed.
“I own I am glad to have you with me, but...”
“That’s settled, then,” said Oby briskly.
You may be sure there was much to talk about, fathoms and fathoms of it, as we took ourselves off to the sumptuous villa belonging to Vad Noran. I wondered what I would do to him if he had harmed Tilly. I had no doubts at all what Oby and Naghan would do, no doubts whatsoever.
Our new clothes made us look respectable horters of the city, gentlemen with a purse of gold and a cutting way with slaves. Any searches for runaway slaves from the arena would take time to be mounted outside the Jikhorkdun. As Naghan said, “They’ll wonder, at first. They’ll not believe we could have won free. There is a little time.”
“We will make the time,” said Oby. I glanced at him, seeing in his dark, scowling face with the strong lines that suffering had etched there but a pale ghost of the sprightly lad I had once known.
Then he laughed and said, stretching his arms wide, “By Vox! What it is to feel free!” As he spoke his whole face changed, the scowling lines vanished, his mobile lips curved and he looked like his old self. Then he winced and swore again, feelingly. “My damned eye!”
When I explained that as soon as Tilly was with us we would have to take a voller to fly to Vallia, they treated it as the most natural thing in the world. Oby said he could fly anything that flew, and repair anything that was broken — always excepting the silver boxes.
Naghan said, “I suppose some fat notor of Huringa will miss his voller. I’d like to roast ’em all!”
When you looked at it like that, at the fact that the man from whom we would steal the voller sat in his plush seat in the amphitheater and howled with glee as some poor wretch was disemboweled or pierced through... That did tend to reorientate my pious doubts. All the same, and I did not confide the decision to these two, I would reimburse the man for his flier.
Even if he was...
I said, “It might be possible to seize a voller from this Vad Noran.”
“Capital!” said Naghan.
“Diashum,” said Oby. And, indeed, the thought was rather magnificent, rather capital. So we walked on in the strengthening rays of Far and Havil, and the hour of mid approached and I licked my lips and cocked an eye at them.
“There will be time,” said Oby.
“I am dry,” said Naghan. “And it is a long time, a very long time, since I have tasted anything respectable.”
So we went into a moderate eating establishment and I watched these two stuff their faces. The place was decent and doing a brisk trade and we attracted no attention. The clepsydra on the shelf dripped away.
As a simple precaution I had provided us with red favors. This might not fool the searchers for long if Oby or Naghan were recognized, but it might give us a mur or two in which to jump.
When we went out I began to feel itchy. I know that feeling. It comes over me when I shilly-shally, and yet I was not delaying now, was I? So why should I feel this unease?
There was no denying that uncomfortable sensation. I was in the throes of one of those itchy sessions when I shilly-shally. The suns shone, there was a pleasant breeze, we were comfortably filled with good if plain food, we could jingle silver in our pouches, we were armed with thraxters taken from slumbering guards. And yet... Yes, we walked the streets of a hostile city that would show no mercy if we were caught. The stink of the Jikhorkdun pervaded the place. But that should not trouble me overmuch, surely? A whiff of peril? Never...
Something was itching away at the back of my old vosk skull and I was too dim-witted to grasp it and drag it forward into the light.
Unmok!
I stopped.
Naghan and Oby stared at me.
“How would you two,” I said, “like to be slave again?”
I gave them just enough time to start reacting nicely, and then I said through their gapes, “We need to find three juts at once.” I did not specify the type of riding animal we would take, saying jut covered anything we picked up, from a totrix to a preysany. I started off walking rapidly toward the nearest tavern. They hurried to keep pace, and they did not expostulate or call out questions. We needed to remain inconspicuous, and they were probably more aware of that than I was.
We found three freymuls — the poor man’s zorca — their hides sleek and well cared for, tethered up at the side of the tavern. We slit the leather hitching thongs and mounted up. At a sedate walk we went out and along the avenue, mingling with the traffic. We looked so ordinary that no one was going to remember us, particularly as a Hyrklanan hat was hung over the saddle of my freymul. I put it on and pulled the brim down and slouched in the saddle, and we rode out to the camp where Unmok was busy working himself up into a frenzy.
“It seems to me,” I said as we reined up and dismounted, “that you, Naghan, had best be Nath the Long (which is another example of the warped Kregan sense of humor) and you, Oby, had best be Nalgre the Eye.” I started off for the tents and then swung back. “Oh, and I am Jak the Shot, here. Remember.”
People on Kregen do remember names. They know if they forget too often the chances are they’ll wind up with a length of steel in their guts investigating their backbones.
Unmok’s middle left stump quivered. His little Och body quivered. His face quivered.
“And you’ve come back, Jak, to—”
“I come in friendship, as ever, Unmok.” I made the pappattu, introducing Unmok and Nath the Long and Nalgre the Eye. The Llahals changed to Lahals. “There is no time for me to explain, Unmok. You know I have work to do.”
“Aye.” Unmok eyed my two companions, and Froshak eased nearer, his hand on his knife hilt.
“Your werstings. If you have not yet decided to sell them to Vad Noran, then I will buy them from you and sell them to him. I warn you — I will sell for more than I buy.”
“Naturally.”
He digested this. Then: “When?”
“Now.”
“Well—”
“Now. Right this instant — as soon as I take them in.”
“But, Jak, why?”
I breathed in, then out. “I have to see Noran and this is the surest and quickest way. You know how he hungers for the werstings.”
Unmok clasped his upper right over his stump. “Then we are still partners? You will make the next voyage with me?”
Now, as you know, I am a rogue, a reprobate, a sinner among men. I have done things for which I am heartily repentant; but in the same circumstances I know I’d probably do the self-same things again. I try not to hurt people. Now I thought I understood what that itchy feeling had been about. Struggling to answer Unmok’s unanswerable question, I saw. I said, “A moment, Unmok.” Then, to Oby and Naghan: “You came here together? You know what I mean. Tilly was with you?”
They nodded. “Yes. We were taken up into slavery together.” They had evidently decided not to risk names at all.
So that was it, that was the cause of my unease.
“There is no time to lose.” When you say that and mean it, it sounds damned different, let me tell you!
Oby saw it, and then Naghan. “They’ll know! They’ll put two and two together...!”
“Yes.” I turned back. “Unmok. We have been partners, we are still partners. I must see Noran —
at once!
— and the werstings will turn the trick. Please. We will talk about our future plans afterward.”
He did not look convinced. “Have I your word?”
I shook my head. “No, Unmok. For any one of the many gods in their mutual wisdoms might strike me down. I must go. I will take the werstings.”
My thraxter flicked out. Froshak halted at once.
“Froshak the Shine! I value your friendship. Do not seek to prevent this.”
Froshak said nothing, as was his wont. But his knife, that knife so like my old sailor knife, slid up and down in its sheath.
Oby looked shattered. “By Vox,” he said, and he spoke in a shaky whisper, staring up at me. “I’ve been saying we had plenty of time, speaking so grandly. We’ve plenty of time. Fool! Onker!” He began to curse himself then, and with a manic spring leaped for his freymul. He was up on the animal’s back and driving in his heels as I got to him.
“Still, Oby! Wait! Think!”
“I’ve waited too long — if they’ve — Tilly—”
“Think! This rast Noran will not let us in — he thinks I spy on him for the queen — we will only enter by a subterfuge.”
All the time I was holding onto him and dragging at the freymul. Naghan ran across and joined in. It took a little of the precious time we had been squandering; but we calmed Oby down.