The Gandalara Cycle I (65 page)

"I believe she
will
want to help us," I said. "But I'm not allowing myself to rely on her help until we know for sure."

That wasn't quite true. The fact of the matter was everything I had learned about Lord City made me realize that we
needed
some kind of inside help, and I had no idea where else to find it.

"All I'm really saying," I continued, "is that we should be cautious, even with Zefra. We can't tell her the real reason we're here."

She was silent for a few seconds. "I see the wisdom in what you say, Rikardon. I will not speak to Zefra of the Ra'ira. She will help us because Gharlas killed Volitar."

She set down her platter of fruit rinds and picked up the ledger again, the deliberateness of her movements revealing her tension.

"But there is a problem," she added. "These records show appointments in Lord City only at the request of the buyer."

"Something else I learned last night - there's going to be some kind of fancy ceremony in a few days, and Lord City is really stirred up about it. Do you see a recent commission from Zefra?"

She examined the book. "No. There was an appointment scheduled two seven-days ago, but there is no notation of it having been kept. Yoman and Rassa must have left before then." She looked up at me and smiled. "You are thinking that the High Lord's wife should have a new dress for this occasion?" I nodded. "But
she
will have to send for Rassa. How will she know -?"

"I'll tell her," I said. "It seems that each Lord has his own private guard. Whether that's traditional, or a defense against assassination by the next in line or another Lord, I don't know. But I should be able to get inside Lord City to talk to somebody about hiring on."

Her head tilted to one side. "That would leave you the entire city to search. Could Yoman and Rassa not simply present themselves at the gate with – say a gift for Zefra or Pylomel?” Tarani suggested

“They might, do we have such a gift, or could you make one in less than a day?”

She shook her head.

“No, I didn’t think so, and if my calculations are right, Gharlas will be here tomorrow or the next day it’s important that we get inside the city before he arrives.

“I’m going up this morning to try to get a job as one of Pylomel's mercenaries. That will get me into the right area. I'll just have to bet on having a chance to talk to Zefra and I’ll ask her to send for you.”

"I could of course come with you Rikardon If I projected the image of a man –“

“You need to conserve your strength, Tarani." I remembered how she had looked just after we arrived in Yoman's shop - washed-out, haggard.

She remembered, too. She nodded, reluctantly. “What if the guards are watching for you?" she asked.

"They won't be. That's one thing I'm pretty sure of. Gharlas has no army of his own, and Pylomel wouldn't do him any favors."

I hoped I was right. As I stood up I felt the surge of tension and alertness that made Markasset the excellent fighter he was.

"The sooner we get free of Yoman and Rassa, the better I'll like it," I said. "I'll go up to the gate. You just sit tight, and don't open the shop. If customers come by, make the excuse that you’ve just returned from a long journey, and Yoman is still recuperating. Promise them you'll he open tomorrow. If we aren't both inside Lord City by tomorrow, we may have to take up tailoring for a living.

She stared at me, then smiled a little, and finally chuckled, shaking her head. "There is surely no other like you in Gandalara," she said. "This seems less a plan than merely the start of one - but it does seem to be our only choice. I will spend the day selecting fabric samples to take with me when I receive Zefra's summons."

"The one major hitch to this plan," I said, "is that I may have to
take
that guard job, and I might get stuck inside the city. If I
don't
return tonight, and you don't hear from Zefra tomorrow, don't panic. Just sit tight, play Rassa, and cover for Yoman. If you haven't heard from me or Zefra by the time Thymas gets here, make whatever plans seem right. You'll have to find another way to get inside, but I'll be watching for you, and trying to get a line on Gharlas.”

She stood up, and for a second or two I thought – hoped - she would cross the few paces between us and let me hold her once more before we went our separate ways. But if that had been her impulse, she controlled it by stepping backward and hugging the ledger to her chest.

"Be cautious at every step, Rikardon," she said. "Eddarta is an unhappy place, and full of treachery. I feel it."

"Thank you for the warning," I said.

"I give it for my own sake,” she said. "You . . . are important to me.”

A foolish happiness washed over me. I had thought I'd destroyed whatever feelings Tarani was beginning to have for me. But those few simple words, spoken from all the way across the room, were a promise of another chance.

"As you are, to me," I said, and left the room.

I nearly ran down the stairs and out into the street. Then I paused to take a few deep breaths, and began to walk toward the boulevard that would take me up the hill to Lord City.

It's a little-known fact of life that, now and then, the odds have to turn in your favor. It might have been the warm feeling I carried away from Tarani, or it might have been the adrenaline surge of finally, after all this time, reaching the point of action - but I felt good about that short-notice plan as I climbed the zigzag avenue toward Lord City. I had a feeling things were going to work out right, for a change.

It was still pretty early in the day, and I walked up with a column of burdened wagons, dragged along by unhappy vleks. I looked back once or twice and was impressed; again, by the advantage the walled city would have in battle. This place had been built by frightened men hundreds of generations ago, and they had legalized and bequeathed their paranoia to its present occupants.

It seemed odd that any such unbalanced system could have survived so long but Gandalara was a world that changed slowly. Innovations had been made . the Gandalarans had a remarkably efficient economy and a respectable technology, hampered as they were by their lack of elemental iron. But they had an extra weight entrenching the natural conservatism of people who always feel the tentative balance of their survival. The All-mind

It wasn't just the “older generation” who set up the rules in Gandalara. It was the memory and experience of all previous generations - and that was a tough opponent to beat down. Gandalarans had struck a compromise between the need change and the need for stability. Trades were family property, passed along from one generation to the next, so improvements in irrigation techniques or the sand/ash mixture for glass were preserved each step of the way. Eddarta was the first place I had been in which each person was so strictly limited to his own trade; it reduced prideful occupations to the status of assembly-line construction.

Eddarta had another unique quality - the people of Eddarta used their river for transport of cargo and only cargo. There wasn't even a Gandalaran word to imply a
person
floating on water. Tarani and I had seen miles and miles of thick rope stretched along the riverbanks on our way toward the city. Vleks were tied to that line, and small, shallow-draft barges were tied to the vleks and hauled along. There was usually one person on the riverbank with a rear guide rope, and sometimes two or three other people with poles to keep the barge from beaching itself in the reedy growth along the banks.

The traveled areas of the river had their banks trimmed of the whitish reeds that grew taller than men, and the reed harvest served the secondary function of providing building material for the rafts. Bundles of reeds were cut, and then bound tightly together. The open ends of the reeds were sealed somehow to create a long, floating log. Several logs, lashed together, made a raft.

We had seen such rafts hauling stuff upstream and controlling speed downstream - only on the smoothest, slowest stretches of water. A few yards of rapids called for wagon transport beside the river until the current calmed down again.

A series of those rafts operated on the branch of the Tashal which flowed through Lord City. I saw two stone archways as I approached the high walls. One admitted only people; the other admitted cargo. The wagons which had toiled up the slope were unloaded onto rafts, and the goods were taken inside by Lord City boatmen, who were dealing with faster current, here, than I had seen out in the country - the cataracts above and below the city kept the water moving pretty fast. To counteract the speed of the current, the Lord City boatmen had contrived a pretty complicated two-bank system.

One vlek team did the primary work of hauling, while the team on the opposite bank kept the raft aligned properly. Both banks had two levels of pathways, so that while one set of vleks hauled a raft upstream on the higher paths, another set provided brakes for a raft going downstream. The downstream rafts were pulled toward the opposite bank, and the ropes were given plenty of slack. It looked to be a pretty tricky proposition, keeping the upstream raft from fouling itself on the downstream ropes - but I watched the operation go smoothly a couple of times.

"You got business here?" A voice at my elbow called me away from watching the river. I turned around to face a huge man with leather straps crisscrossing his bare chest. Bronze discs studded the leather. He was wearing desert-style trousers instead of a leather breechclout, but his muscles and stance and attitude reminded Ricardo of a badly researched movie about Roman gladiators.

I put a smile on my face. "I hope so," I said. "I'm just in from Chizan. A fellow I met in a bar last night said the High Lord might be in need of another sword. I could use the job."

The man looked me up and down. He was a brawny type, with very prominent supraorbital ridges, a low-slung jaw, and hair on his knuckles.

"Experience?" he snapped.

"Four years as a caravan guard, saw some action with the Sharith before the master gave in and paid the toll."

The guard snorted. "Them turncoats."

The subjects adopt the masters' politics,
I thought.
The original Eddartans had no reason to hate the Sharith. Or did they? After all the Sharith more or less drove Harthim into settling here, which hasn't done them much good

Hey pay attention!
I ordered myself.
Is he giving you advice?

That's exactly what he was doing. I reached back into my short term memory and recovered the words I had missed. "All the Lords are hiring," he had said, He went on: “But the High Guard has the best pay and -”He smirked. On that face it wasn't a pretty sight. “and the best extra benefits.”

"Sounds great," I said. "What's the catch -?

The big man roared out a laugh, then slapped me on the back so hard that I staggered away from him.”You’re a wise one you are. You gotta pass a test to land a job on the high guard”

"What kind of test?" I asked, bracing myself for a fight.

He saw me tense up, and laughed again. "You got the right idea, friend, but the wrong man." He pointed to his chest with his thumb. "I'm Sendar. The man you need to see is Obilin. And I'll give you this much warning - don't judge him by his size. Or," he added, sobering up, "by his smile."

"Well, I'm grateful for your advice, Sendar," I said. "I'm Lakad." It was an alias I had used so often that it felt natural now. "Where will I find Obilin?"

Sendar took my sword - it was the first time I'd been really glad that I'd left Rika behind - and said I could pick it up on my way out, if I wouldn't be staying. He gave me explicit directions on how to find Pylomel's guardhouse, and warned me to announce my presence quickly.

Here was the luck I had felt was waiting for me as I climbed the hill. It just so happened that Pylomel's guardhouse was located close to the High Lord's garden, a favorite place for the lady of the house to walk, of a morning. Sendar warned me that sneaking around the garden was an easy way to get killed.

I thanked him again.

"One more thing," he added. "I've got gate duty all day. I'll expect to see you come back through here, or to find you in the barracks tonight. If you're not one place or the other, I'll know you lied to me. And anybody who lies to me doesn’t live long."

"A-huh," I said. "Well, see you later, Sendar." I didn't feel the confidence I was trying to project, but I fooled the guard. He laughed and slapped me on my way.

I had wondered why the complicated river transport was necessary. I discovered the reason as I stepped through the stone archway and into Lord City. Except for the river animals, vleks weren't permitted inside the walls. The cargo was unloaded and delivered by an endless chain of slaves. Not
servants,
who could be categorized as people who practiced their trades - cooking, cleaning - in the exclusive employ of one individual or household. These were
slaves
- thin, dejected creatures whose only value seemed to be that they were cleaner and quieter and more cooperative than vleks.

I had known that slaves were used in Eddarta, particularly in the copper mines and the bronze foundries. Theoretically, they were criminals who were sentenced to a period of service. But Dharak had talked about
selling
slaves to the Eddartans as if it were a routine thing, so I assumed that there were less "official" ways of obtaining the muscle needed to mine copper.

I had felt a distant sort of sympathy for Eddarta's slaves, but I wasn't prepared for the shock of actually seeing such people. Somehow it seemed more deplorable for the Eddartans to use slaves for immediate, private service than to employ them for broad economic gain in the copper mines. In the shock of seeing slavery close up, I realized how unfair that distinction was.
Any
use of men and women as slaves was totally undefendable.

I didn't dare let my outrage show, so I turned my face away and aimed my steps in the direction of the large central building. It stood some five hundred yards away from the water, and looked to be two stories or more. It was octagonal, with one face opening on the stone-paved avenue which led through the entryway, and one face fronting each of the seven walkways.