Eyes of the Calculor (31 page)

The foreman, the artisans, the apprentices, everyone who spoke to Dramoren was astounded by his knowledge, perception, and common sense. Many were refugees from Gentheist persecution, and they poured out their stories to him. At last Dramoren turned back to his galley engine, escorted by the foreman.

"There are long stretches of paraline in the former Calldeath lands, built by the aviads," said Dramoren as they walked over the rails. "The Overmayor has been thinking of enhancing and expanding them."

"They're piddling, three-foot-gauge thing; nowt can be done there," said the foreman bluntly.

"Well, indeed. But I have noted that there are many Great Western Paraline folk in the Commonwealth. I thought we might use their skills to do things properly in the new territories. They would be given a free hand, but apart from upkeep the payment could only be in land grants."

The foreman had already realized that a very senior member of the government was seriously sympathetic.

"Our people want only to build and maintain good paraline systems," he replied. "Given a free hand and resources, we'll build you the finest paralines in the world."

"Mind, I only want Great Western people," insisted Dramoren. "No riff-raff who have to be trained, or who would rather follow Prophet Jemli than Brunei's way."

"Ah, there's thousands of us, Highliber, we can spread the news and recruit the very best folk all the way to Kalgoorlie and beyond—"

"Discreetly, if you please. We must not risk persecution."

"The Authority has ways, Highliber. We look after our own."

Dramoren boarded his galley engine, which then slowly rumbled

between ranks of cheering Great Western Paraline workers, artisans, gangers, navvies, and engineers. Soon they were among the cottages and apartments of the outer city, gliding through the smoke and cooking smells of thousands of hearths and stew pots. Then they rolled out into the clear air over the lake as they crossed the bridge to the inner city. The Overmayor was waiting at the terminus as the galley engine came to a stop. Dramoren stepped onto the platform, the white cloth of his sling standing out against his jacket and long coat.

"You could have sent an envoy," Lengina said as they set off down the platform.

"I carry more authority than an envoy. That which I had to present required authority."

"But it was just an invitation, it could have been sent over the beamflash. You were shot, you might have been killed."

"Ah, but I am alive. How has the news been taken here?"

"With outrage. The Dragon Librarian Service is held in high regard in the Commonwealth, it—and you—hold the Commonwealth together more surely than I do. That you should be shot while under diplomatic immunity is barbarism."

"Well, then, I obviously had more impact than an envoy, Over-mayor."

The road to the palace was lined with even more cheering people than had been there to welcome him at Peterborough. Many had never before set eyes on the Highliber, but now he was highly popular, and known to be a hero.

IMot among the onlookers for the Highliber's return from the west were Marelle Glasken and Velesti Disore. Marelle's tavern was open for the night, but the floor wardens were keeping the patrons away from one particular table. Marelle sat at the table alone, sipping at a drink and tapping her foot impatiently. A woman appeared at the door and made to enter. The guard at the door stepped across her path. There was a brief scuffle and a shriek of pain. The guard

dropped to the floor. Velesti stepped over him, surveyed the interior, and made for Marelle's table.

"The night's compliments, Frelle Glasken; and your father sends his compliments," she said with a shallow bow.

"The night's compliments, Frelle Disore. Will you not have a seat?"

Velesti sat down.

"A drink?" asked Marelle.

"Actually, no."

The two women assessed each other across the table, Marelle with a generous cleavage on display and Velesti with her jacket and blouse both buttoned up to the throat.

"So, you say you knew my father," said Marelle.

"You were five years old when he caught you posing nude while Gerric Binkstym painted your portrait. He was six."

Marelle's mouth opened, and stayed open.

"When you were fifteen he surprised you with the Mayor of Cambala's son in the north tower's spare bedroom."

"But he had gone there with the Mayor of Cambala's wife."

"He thought fifteen was too young—" began Velesti.

"He was just fourteen when he first did it. John Glasken was a buffoon. Just what were you to him, that he told you so much?"

"We were on a long journey. He needed to learn my language, so we talked a lot as I taught him words."

"Including words of seduction?"

"Frelle, I could no more tolerate a man's embrace than Fras Glasken could have."

"Could have. So he is definitely dead?"

"Yes."

Marelle raised her glass and drank a toast to her dead father. Velesti sat motionless.

"He killed Warran," she added.

"My half brother is no loss. He was a monster."

"Fras Glasken said to seek out you and your mother, Varsellia, to tell you about many enchanting things he has seen."

"Doubtless all of them naked women."

"Oh no, they were snow-smothered peaks as far as the eye could see, canyons big enough to swallow cities, valleys carpeted in wild-flowers, and strange civilizations."

Marelle shook her head. "He'd have traded it all for one drunken revel, followed by a night spent bundling into some wench."

"You forget that he mellowed. After all, he married, became a successful merchant, and was even Mayor of Kalgoorlie for a time."

"During which he established the Kalgoorlie Beer Festival, featuring such events as the stolen keg in the wheelbarrow gymkhana, vomiting contests, team drinking races, and tag mud wrestling for drunks—both in pairs and mixed doubles."

"Well, yes, he never let himself outgrow a little revelry with his mates."

"Unlike the long-suffering women associated therewith," added Marelle coldly. "Ah, but you are a woman, Frelle Velesti, he would not have told you of all that."

"Your words ... do sour my memory of him," Velesti admitted reluctantly.

"If I asked you to name the ten most enjoyable moments of John Glasken's life—from what you now know of it—how many of them would involve getting a leg over some willing wench?"

"Then what are your best moments, if you are so superior to him?"

"Seeing my stepmother, Jemli, lose power as mayor, leaving home, establishing this tavern, being serenaded by a prince. All come before my most enjoyable night in bed with anyone. I treat sex the same as I do a bowl of whipped coffee cream and apricot liqueur sprinkled with chocolate chips. I hog it down when it is put within my reach, but I do not live for it." Marelle looked down at the table and shook her head. "Still, Papa was brave, loyal, generous, a good father to all his children, and—except for quite a few affairs—honest. That's why I love him still, and that's why he is still mourned by dozens today, if not hundreds."

Velesti's eyes had been flickering around as Marelle spoke, and now she fixed on someone. Marelle noticed that a young man wear-

ing an edutor's cloak had entered the tavern. Velesti stood up and bowed to Marelle.

"I must go," the librarian said brusquely. "Glasken's compliments to you—and mine."

"As you will."

Without another word Velesti strode away, straight to where the young man sat at a table beside a window facing over the street. She said something. He looked up but did not reply. She spoke again. He took out a letter and waved it at her. Velesti held out her hand for it. He shook his head, put the letter back in his jacket and folded his arms very tightly. She tapped the table several times with her finger. He shook his head. She strode out without another word.

"May I get you another drink, Mistress?" another jarmaid asked Marelle.

Marelle inclined her head to the lone man seated by the window. He was by now cradling a glass flute of some golden drink in his hands and staring into space.

"What do you think of him, Nereli?"

"Looks lonely," replied the jarmaid.

"Fetch me a spiced wine," said Marelle as she stood up.

Marelle minced over to the youth's table, stopping before him with much of her left thigh showing through her split robe and with her arms folded.

"The evening's compliments, Fras Edutor," she said in a husky voice.

He looked up slowly. "Evening's compliments, Frelle Mistress."

"Something seems to weigh heavily upon you. Would you like another drink?"

"What I have is enough, but I shall buy another if you let me sit here."

"The drink was to be provided by the house."

"Ah, thank you. That was generous."

"I own the house."

"Oh."

"May I sit down?"

"It is your house, Frelle Mistress."

"I am Marelle."

"And I am Martyne."

Marelle was given her spiced wine, and she sat opposite Martyne.

"I realize that I'm intruding," she began.

"You are."

"But if you had not wanted company, you could have bought a jar at the market and brooded somewhere more private."

The observation caught Martyne by surprise. He had not realized that he tended to drink alone but in public.

"I have a lot of unwelcome thoughts, Frelle," he admitted. "Perhaps you do provide a distraction from them."

"Ah. So should you not share them with me, and ease your burden?"

"No."

"What burdens can an edutor have? Have you rendered some student pregnant?"

"No." Martyne laughed.

"Then tell me who you are."

"I am an edutor in theology at the University. Before that I was a monk for five years. I am nineteen years old, and not a virgin."

Marelle considered. "That all raises more questions that I can begin to ask. So you were a monk. Were you caught with some girl and ejected from the order?"

"Not quite. I renounced my vocation to avenge my sister, who had been most brutally raped and murdered. Then I discovered that fourteen of her tormentors had been killed. It was sheer chance that reserved just one for me to exterminate."

Marelle tried to weather the intense onslaught of misery with composure.

"Do you share a bed with a Dragon Librarian named Velesti?"

Martyne laughed. "Velesti? Even a flea would not dare to share a bed with Velesti. No, I just teach her some fighting arts and try to keep her out of trouble. She tours the taverns, hoping for men to grope at her breasts or bottom so that she can maim them hideously. Last week one of her victims died from her attentions, I had to testify to the magistrate on her behalf. Being an ex-monk, my word is re-

spected. I felt like saying that unlike the five or six dozen others that she has killed, the latest slaying had in fact been an accident. Anyway, she was let off with a caution."

"Who does keep intimate company with you?" "Nobody. Mine is a strange, twisted, but interesting existence." Marelle began to laugh, but not loudly. Martyne shrugged, and took a delicate sip at his drink.

"Look about the room, Fras Martyne," she said. "What sorts of men do you see?"

"Prosperous men, happy men, drunk men, sullen men—" "Most are in search of amorous adventures. Most would cheerfully leap through hoops of fire to be sitting in your chair, speaking with me."

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize," Martyne began, standing up. "Sit down!" Marelle snapped, slapping her palm down on the table. Martyne slowly lowered himself to his seat again. "Fras Martyne, you are meant to be the hunter and I the hare, that is the way of things. This reversal business does not come easily to me." "Am I to understand that you wish to seduce me?" "Martyne, this is all wearing my patience a little thin—" Her voice failed her in midsentence. Martyne had seized the rim of his glass and was squeezing it between his thumb and forefinger. Small standing waves were set up on the surface of his mead, then the glass snapped. Most of the shards fell into the drink, but one fell onto the table. Martyne flicked it with his finger, and it embedded its point in the back of Marelle's chair, just below where her arm was draped. Nobody else noticed.

"Just because I am pathetic, Frelle Mistress, do not make the mistake of thinking that I am not very, very dangerous. I am enchanted by your quite delightful body, I certainly do admit that, but there is seduction in my past that has caused a great deal of grief for me. I am in no hurry to add the tribulations of yet another to my already burdened mind. Now, then, I believe that I have created a small disturbance and the sign above the serving bench says that patrons creating a disturbance will be asked to leave."

Marelle cringed back as Martyne reached over the table, but he merely plucked the silver of glass from the chair and dropped it into his drink. As he stood up he took a silver noble from his purse and placed it on the table.

"That should cover the cost of your glass, and now I must—"

"No!"

"No? How much do these new glass goblets cost, then?"

Marelle stood up too, but she hesitated to touch him.

"Martyne, I—I can't pretend not to be frightened of you."

"No need, my manners are awfully good. Now I really must be going."

"Martyne, stay with me."

"Frelle, as I have said, I have more burdens than I can manage already."

"Silly Fras, I own this tavern, I am not some wench in search of a husband to support her. I want nothing from you but company. Interesting company."

"I am hardly interesting."

"Look about, how many men do you see without partners?"

"Ten—no, eleven."

"Do any of them deserve my company more than you?"

Martyne spread his arms wide, then shrugged. "Frelle, if I want to make a fool of myself I need only walk outside and bare my buttocks at the first Constable's Runner that I chance upon. That will earn me three days in the public stocks, looking very foolish indeed. You are Rochester's most attractive and alluring tavern mistress, and I have no interest in humiliating myself in your bed. The evening's compliments to you, lovely Frelle, but I have business at the night market."

Martyne turned to walk away, but Marelle strode around the table to stand in front of him. He halted.

"Secret, dangerous business involving Dragon Librarians?" she asked.

"Groceries, actually."

Not far away, out of Martyne's field of view, Velesti was back

and watching. She was leaning against the jar rack and slowly shaking her head.

"Martyne, Martyne, do you know how hurt I would be if you stood me up for groceries? Come with me, let us talk easily."

At the word "hurt," Martyne's resolve buckled. Marelle took his hand and led him away. Velesti hurried out of the tavern but did not go far. Within moments she was on the roof of a building across the street, winding a light crossbow and looking at an upstairs window where lamplight was glowing. It was Marelle's room, and Velesti could see her with Martyne. By now his cloak and tunic were off and Marelle was running her fingers across the muscles of his chest. At a prompt that Velesti could not hear Martyne raised his hands to caress her shoulders. Marelle began to disrobe. Velesti raised the crossbow and took aim. She squeezed the trigger.

The tiny dart thudded into the frame junction of the window. The soon-to-be lovers looked around, startled, then went to the window and peered out. Velesti was given a quite intimidating view of Marelle's breasts for a moment as she drew the curtains. The librarian pulled a fine wire taut, a wire that reached all the way across the street to the dart embedded in Marelle's window frame. Velesti clamped the end of the wire to a metal diaphragm mounted in a conical earpiece horn.

For a long time there was only giggling, gasps, and moans in the earpiece, but they were gratifyingly clear. Velesti pulled her cloak about her and glanced to the sky, glaring at the gathering clouds. Presently a tinny scream overloaded the wire. Martyne said he was sorry, but Marelle assured him that he had nothing to be sorry about. For a time there was silence.

"Don't either of you dare go to sleep," muttered Velesti, rubbing her hands together.

"Tell me a secret," said Marelle, her voice low and barely audible.

"Would you believe that I have just been accepted as a member of the Confessors?" came Martyne's reply across the road through the wire. "It is a league of religiously inclined gentlemen who have

arrangements with selected innkeepers. For a small fee we watch the cavortings of sundry unmarried couples in rented rooms through strategically placed spyholes. Thus we witness the sins before they are confessed, all very efficient."

"You dirty little boy," commented Velesti.

Marelle and Martyne were laughing, and their laughter led into another bout of rather familiar sounds. Velesti drummed her fingers on a tile, then took out her telescope and began to follow the activities of streetwalkers and their patrons in the dimly lit street below. Eventually there was silence on the wire spanning the street.

"You hardly know anything about me," chided Marelle.

Velesti lowered her telescope hurriedly and pressed the earpiece hard against her head.

"Er . . . so?" replied Martyne.

"Fras Martyne, really! The way to really charm a lady is to get her talking about herself! Only bores talk about how rich or strong or important they are. With some men you could probably put a cow in skirts and snuff the lamp, and they'd not notice the difference, but really suave men treat us as more than enticingly dressed flesh."

There was a brief silence as Martyne assimilated this lesson.

"I had actually wondered how you managed to buy a tavern while being barely older than me."

"Ah, flattery, wonderful— I'm actually years older than you. It was family money, I am the daughter of Mayor Glasken of Kal-goorlie by his second wife."

"So you are stepdaughter of the Prophet Jemli?" exclaimed Martyne.

"Unfortunately, yes. I came here in September, to get away from her. My mother provided me with some gold to go on with, and I saw the need for an establishment where single women of middling to high social standing could mix with a more refined class of menfolk."

"True, it is a setting that ordinary taverns do not provide."

"And it has been an overnight success. I turn a profit of eleven gold royals per month, after expenses and taxes."

"And your code name in the Espionage Constables is Frelle Orchid, but he does not need to know that for now," whispered Velesti to herself.

"I'm bored with talking of me," said Marelle. "What was the terrible deed in your past?"

"A sordid, messy, thing, Frelle. It was—no, you would despise me."

"Did the cow have a name, did she have nice, brown dewy eyes?"

"Oh, Godslove no! She was a woman!"

"Ah, see how hard it is to shock me?"

"Shock there still is. She is Velesti's mother."

"My, my."

"I had been drinking rather heavily."

In your position, I would have too, thought Velesti.

"A letter from her arrived some days ago," concluded Martyne miserably. "In it she said that I had been a most ardent and magnificent lover. I remember being neither ardent nor magnificent, but nevertheless she is now pregnant by two months."

"It happens," said Marelle, apparently not shocked at all.

"She wants to marry me."

Really, Mother, I am surprised at you, thought Velesti.

"She will visit Rochester at Christmas. You can guess what she has in mind, but marrying my best friend's mother is not to my taste."

"I'm glad to hear it," agreed Marelle.

Your best friend, thought a very surprised and flattered Velesti. Why, thank you.

"What can I do?" moaned Martyne. "She's twice my age!"

"Well, / certainly shall not become pregnant by you, neither shall I demand your hand in marriage," purred Marelle.

Spoken like a true Glasken, thought Velesti, pressing against the lee of a roof as rain began to fall.

"Now you can see what weighs upon me," said Martyne.

"Well, for tonight you can do no good by thinking on it further.

Lie at ease in my arms, Martyne. Pretend that a beautiful guardian angel is listening to your troubles, and that she will set your life in order as you sleep."

Best friend, now guardian angel, thought Velesti, whipping the wire to free the dart from the window. Well, I probably should do something about Mother

I he following morning Martyne returned to his lodgings, used the communal bath, then dressed and dropped a bag of clothes with the university laundaric on the way to the refectory and breakfast. At the Faculty of Theology he took a discussion class, and finally arrived at his study just as the clock tower was striking the tenth hour. Velesti was seated in his chair with her boots on his desk.

"Well, how was she?" she asked as Martyne stood gaping at her.

"Who?"

"Marelle?"

"Should I bother to ask how you know?"

"No."

"I have had more humiliating experiences in my life, but just now I am having trouble recalling them."

"As good as that?"

"Worse."

"Too demanding?"

"I think the men in her past have done rather more prerequisite fieldwork than I."

"She was brought up to demand quality."

"Now you tell me."

"But she is compassionate as well."

"I'd not like to see her vindictive."

"Actually I heard that she had a truly excellent time, and holds you in high regard. Too many men want to prove things, few treat their partners as equals and friends. She has invited you back. You accepted."

"How did you know that?" snapped Martyne.

"We girls talk," replied Velesti.

"She didn't!" exclaimed Martyne, suddenly discovering new extremes covered by the word dismay.

"Actually Marelle said you were strong, fit, of excellent wit, intelligent, and most important of all, sexually deprived."

"You set this up with her!"

"More or less. Her place tonight?"

"As a matter of fact, yes."

"And sparring with me this afternoon?"

"Why not?"

"Merely checking."

Euroa, the Rochestrian Commonwealth

I he weekly meetings of the project masters of the Monastery of St. Roger were short and frantic, and run by the abbot. His position was one of absolute dictator. Five monks, one eunuch, and one Dragon Librarian hurried into Abbot Ashman's study, each with a chalkboard in hand. A scribe sat ready with a roll of poorpaper and a char stylus.

"Project masters' meeting for December seventh of the Year of Greatwinter's Waning 1729, and anno Domini 3961," declared Abbot Ashman. "Firstly, myself: astronomy. The twenty-inch telescope from Siding Springs has been installed, and is undergoing tests. It is expected to be operational in six days. A project has been initiated to make parallax observations of meteor strikes on the surface of Mirrorsun as a verification of the speed of rotation, but none have been observed yet. It is possible that only the biggest of the Siding Springs telescopes can resolve the flashes of such strikes. Project master Brother Varlian?"

"It has been speculated that the material used in a parachute from Mirrorsun, and preserved in an argon gas chamber for ten years, might be similar to that of Mirrorsun's body. A large frame to subject it to breaking strain tests is under construction, and will be ready by December."

"Why not cut off a small strip and test it in the laboratory?" asked the abbot.

"It cannot be cut. The parachute appears to be the strongest, lightest fabric currently on the face of the earth."

"Well, work as fast as you can, and call for laity help if you think it will speed up construction. Project master Brother Nikalan?"