The Virgin of Zesh & the Tower of Zanid (14 page)

IV

When Anthony Fallon walked into the armory, Captain Kordaq was sitting at the record table—his crested helmet standing on the floor beside him and a pair of black-rimmed spectacles upon his nose—writing by lamplight. He was bringing the company rolls up to date, and looked up over the tops of his eyeglasses at Fallon. “Hail, Master Antané! Where’s your squad?”

Fallon told him.

“Good—most excellent, sir. A deed of dazzling dought, worthy of a very Qarar. Take your ease.” The captain picked up a jug and poured an extra cup of shurab: “Master Antané, be you not the jagain of Gazi er-Doukh?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“Something you said.”

“Why—do you know her, too?”

Kordaq sighed. “Aye. In former times I aspired to that position myself. I burned with passion like a lake of lava, but ere aught could come of it, her only brother was slain and I lost touch with her. Might I impose upon your hospitality to the extent of renewing an old acquaintance someday?”

“Surely, any time. Glad to have you around.”

Fallon looked toward the door as his squad trailed in to report the prisoners, and witness duly delivered to the House of Justice. He said: “Rest your bones a minute, boys, before we start out again.”

The squad sat around and drank shurab for a quarter-hour. Then another squad came in from its round, and Kordaq gave Fallon’s crew its orders for the next round: “Go out via Barfur Street, then head south along the boundary of the Dumu, for Chillan’s gang of rogues infests the eastern march of the Dumu . . .”

The Dumu, southernmost district of Zanid, was notorious as the city’s principal thieves’ quarter. Those from other sections were loud in the accusation that the criminals must have corrupted that district’s watch to operate so freely. The Guard denied the charge, pleading that they were sadly undermanned.

Fallon’s squad had turned off Barfur Street, and was heading along a stinking alley that zigzagged toward the district boundary, when a noise ahead made Fallon freeze in his tracks, then motion his squad forward with caution. Peering around a corner he saw a citizen backed against a wall by three characters. One covered the victim with a crossbow-pistol, another menaced him with a sword, and a third relieved him of purse and rings. The holdup had evidently just started.

This was a rare chance. Ordinarily a squad of the Guard arrived on the spot to find only the victim—either dead on the cobbles, or alive and yammering about the city’s lawlessness.

Knowing that if he rushed directly at the criminals, they would duck into houses and alleys before he could reach them, Fallon whispered to Cisasa: “Circle around this little block on our right and take them from the other side. Just come on at full speed. When we see you, we’ll jump them from here.”

Cisasa faded away like a shadow. Fallon heard the slight click of the Isirian’s claws on the cobbles as the dinosaurian guard went like the wind. Cisasa, Fallon knew, could outrun two normal Earthmen or Krishnans; otherwise he would not have sent him. The holdup would have been over by the time a man could have circumambulated the block.

The click-click of claws came again, louder, and Cisasa burst into view around a bend, heading for the miscreants with Jabberwockian strides. “Come on,” said Fallon.

At the scud of feet, the robbers whirled. Fallon heard the snap of the pistol’s bowstring, but in the dimness he could not tell who had been shot at. There was no indication that the bolt had struck anybody.

The robbers leaped for cover. Cisasa gave an enormous bound and came down with his birdlike feet on the back of the crossbowman, hurling him prone to the ground.

The tall, thin robber with the sword, in a moment of confusion, ran toward Fallon, then skidded to a halt. Fallon thrust at the fellow with his bill, heard the clank of steel, and felt the jar down the shaft as the robber parried. Fallon’s two Krishnans ran past him after the fellow who had been frisking the victim, and who had bolted past Cisasa toward an alley.

Fallon thrust and parried with his bill, pressing forward, but watching warily, lest his antagonist catch his bill-shaft with his free hand and then close in. By a fluke, he got a jab home on the fellow’s sword-arm. The sword clattered to the pavement and the man turned to run. Seeing that he would have little chance of catching this lanky scoundrel in a chase, Fallon hurled his bill javelinwise. The point of the weapon struck the fellow between the shoulders. The robber ran on a couple of steps with the bill sticking in his back, then faltered and fell.

Fallon ran after him, drawing his own sword; but by the time he came up with the robber the latter was lying prone, coughing blood. The two Krishnans of the squad now reappeared from the alley into which they had chased the third thief, cursing the fellow for having given them the slip. They had recovered the citizen’s purse, which the robber had dropped, but not his rings, for which he loudly berated them for inefficiency.

###

Roqir was rising redly over the rooftops of Zanid when Anthony Fallon and his squad returned to the armory from their final round. They stacked their bills back in the rack and lined up to receive the nominal pay that the municipal prefect paid to members of the Guard for watch-duty.

“The stint’s adjourned. Forget not Fiveday’s drill,” said Kordaq, handing out quarter-kard silver pieces.

“Something tells me,” murmured Fallon, “that a mysterious malady will lay our gallant company low the day before the drill.”

“Qarar’s blood! It had better not! I shall hold you squad-leaders responsible for turning out your men.”

“I’m not feeling too well myself, sir,” said Fallon with a grin as he pocketed the half-kard due his rank.

“Saucy buffoon!” snorted Kordaq. “Why we tolerate your insolence I know not . . . But you’ll not forget that whereof I spoke earlier, friend Antané?”

“No, no. I’ll make arrangements.” Fallon walked off, waving a casual farewell to the other members of his squad.

Fallon was, he supposed, foolish to spend one night out of every ten tramping the streets for a half-kard—pick-and-shovel wages. He was too self-willed and erratic to fit into a military machine, having considerable talent for command but little for obedience. And as a foreigner, he could hardly hope to rise to the top of the Balhibou tree.

Yet here he was, wearing the brassard of the Civic Guard. Why? Because a uniform had an invincible if childish fascination for him. Trailing his bill around the dusty streets of Zanid gave him, if only fleetingly, the illusion of being a potential Alexander or Napoleon. And in his present state, his ego could use all of such support that it could get.

Gazi was asleep when he plodded home, his tired brain picking at the knots of the Safq problem. She awoke as he slid into bed. “Wake me up at the end of the second hour,” he mumbled and fell asleep.

Almost at once, it seemed to him, Gazi was shaking his shoulder and telling him to get up. He had had only about three Earthly hours’ sleep; but he still had to arise now to work in all the things that he meant to do this day. Knowing that he had to appear in court that afternoon, he shaved and put on his second-best suit, gulped a hasty meal, slouched out into the bright mid-morning sun, and set out for Tashin’s Inn.

###

The A’vaz District ranged from plain slums, where it adjoined the Juru near the Baladé Gate, to slums sprinkled with studios as it abutted upon the artistic and theatrical Sahi to the north. Tashin’s, near the city wall on the west side of the A’vaz, was a rambling structure built (like most Balhibou houses) around a central court.

This court was filled, this morning, with the histrionic characters who made up the inn’s regular clientele. A ropewalker had rigged up a rope stretching from one bit of architectural foofaraw diagonally across the court to another, and was slinking across, waving a parasol to keep his balance. A trio of tumblers were tossing one another about. On the other side of the inclosure a man rehearsed a tame gerka in its tricks. A singer practiced scales; an actor recited, with gestures.

Fallon asked the gatekeeper: “Where’s Turanj the Seer?”

“Second story, room thirteen. Go you right up.”

As he started across the courtyard, Fallon was forcibly bumped by one of a trio of Krishnans. As he recovered his balance, glaring, the burly character bowed, saying: “A thousand pardons, good my sir! Tashin’s wine has unsteadied my legs. Hold, are you not he with whom I got drunk at yesterday’s festival?”

Simultaneously the other two closed in on the sides. The man who had bumped him was saying something genial about stepping over to Saferir’s for a snort, and one of the two who had flanked him had laid a friendly hand on his left shoulder. Fallon felt, rather than saw, the razor-sharp little knife with which the third member of the trio was about to slit his purse.

Without altering his own forced smile, Fallon shouldered the Krishnans aside, took a step and then a leap, turning as he did so and whipping out his rapier, so that he came down facing all three in the guard position. He was not a little pleased with himself for still being so agile.

“Sorry, gentlemen,” he said, “but I have another engagement. And I need my money, really I do.”

He glanced swiftly around the courtyard. At Fallon’s words there came a ripple of derisive laughter. The three thieves exchanged glowering glances and stalked out the gate. Fallon sheathed his weapon and continued on his way. For the moment, he had the crowd with him—but if he had tried to kill or arrest the thieves, or had yelled for the law, his life would not have been worth a brass arzu.

Fallon found the thirteenth room on the second level. Inside, he confronted Qais of Babaal, who had been inhaling the smoke of smoldering ramandu from a little brazier.

“Well?” asked Qais sleepily.

“I’ve been thinking of that offer you made me yesterday.”

“Which offer?”

“The one having to do with the Safq.”

“Oh. Tell me not that further reflection hath braced your wavering courage.”

“Possibly. I
do
mean to get back to Zamba someday, you know. But for a miserable thousand karda . . .”

“What price had you in mind?”

“Five thousand would tempt me strongly.”

“Au!
As well ask for the Kamuran’s treasury entire. Though perhaps I could raise the offer by a hundred karda or so . . .”

They haggled and haggled; at last, Fallon got half of what he had at first asked, including an advance of a hundred karda to be paid at once. The twenty-five hundred karda would not, he knew, suffice in itself to put him back upon his throne. But it would do for a start. Then he said: “That’s fine, Master Q—Turanj, except for one thing.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“For an offer of that size, I don’t think it would be clever for anybody to take anybody’s word—if you follow me.”

Qais raised both his eyebrows and his antennae. “Sirrah! Do you imply that I, the faithful minion of great Ghuur of Qaath, would swindle you out of your price? By the nose of Tyazan, such insolence is not to be borne! I am who I am . . .”

“Now, now, calm down. After all, I might attempt a bit of swindling too, you know.”

“That, Terran creature, I can well believe, were I so temerarious as to pay you in advance.”

“What I had in mind was to deposit the money with some trustworthy third party.”

“A stakeholder, eh? Hm. An idea, sir—but one with two patent flaws, to wit: What makes you think I bear such tempting sums about with me? And whom in this sink-hole could we trust on a matter of business concerning us of Qaath, for whom the love of the Balhibuma is something less than ardent?”

Fallon grinned. “That’s something I figured out only recently. You have a banker in Zanid.”

“Ridiculous!”

“Not at all, unless you’ve got a hoard buried in a hole in the ground. Twice, now, you’ve run out of money in dealing with me. Each time, you raised plenty more in a matter of an hour or two. That wouldn’t have given you time to ride back to Qaath, but it would let you go to somebody in Zanid. And I know who that somebody is.”

“Indeed, Master Antané?”

“Indeed. Now who in Zanid would be likely to serve you as a banker? Some financier who had cause to dislike King Kir. So I remembered what I know of Zanid’s banking houses, and recalled that a couple of years ago Kastambang er’Amirut got into trouble with the Dour. Kir had got some idea that he wanted all his visitors to approach him barefoot. Kastambang wouldn’t, because he has fallen arches and it hurts him to walk without his corrective shoes. He’d loaned Kir a couple of hundred thousand karda some years before, and Kir seized upon this excuse to fine Kastambang the whole amount—and the interest, too. Kastambang has never dealt with the Dour since then, nor appeared at court. Logically he’d be your man. If he’s not your banker already, he could be. In either instance, we could employ him as stakeholder.”

Fallon leaned back, hands clasped behind his head, and grinned triumphantly. Qais brooded, chin in hand, then finally said: “I concede nothing, yet, save that you’re a shrewd scrutator, Master Antané. You’d filch the treasure of Dákhaq from under his very nose. Before we walk out further upon the perilous Bridge of Zung that connects heaven and earth, tell me how you propose to invade the Safq.”

“I thought that if we made our arrangement with Kastambang, he might know somebody who, in turn, knew the inner workings of the place. For instance if he knew of a renegade priest of Yesht—they exist, though they find it safer not to admit the fact—he or I might persuade the man to tell us . . .”

Qais interrupted: “To tell you what’s in the monument?
Cha!
Why sirrah, should I pay you in such a case? You’d run no risk. Why should I not pay the renegade myself?”

“If you’ll let me finish,” said Fallon coldly. “I have every intention of examining the thing myself from the inside—no second-hand hearsay report.

“But I shall, you’ll admit, have a better chance of getting out alive if I know something of the plan of the place in advance. Moreover I thought the fellow might tell us the Ritual of Yesht, so that I could slip into the temple in costume and go through a service . . . Well, further details will suggest themselves, but that gives you an idea of how I propose to start.”