in any case. You must be sixty, aren’t you?”
“Sixty-six.”
“Did your former employers retire you, perhaps? Well, in any case, the Palace is not a village shrine for old men to gather at.”
“I didn’t think it was, but I can guarantee that I would have no difficulty in carrying out the job.”
“Ah, but there remains my fourth and final point, which is that we have no use for a headsman in any case. Were the Lord Executioner too old or feeble or ill or lazy to do his own work, or were there a hundred convicts a day to be disposed of, and were you forty years younger, we would still have no use for a headsman; the last beheading in this city was more than thirty years ago, when the first Lord Executioner was still in office and his son too young for breeches. Lord Azrad long ago decided that beheadings were too messy and too reminiscent of the Great War; we hang our criminals here. I had thought that custom had become the fashion almost everywhere by now. Our own headsman’s axe has hung undisturbed on the wall behind me for as long as I can recall. Now, are you satisfied that there’s no place for you here? Leave immediately and I won’t have you arrested.”
Dismayed, Valder stepped back. “A question, though, sir — or two, if I might.”
“What are they?”
“Who are you, and what have you got in your hand? How am I to know that what you say is true? I confess I don’t really doubt it, but I am curious.”
“I am Adagan the Younger, secretary to the Lord Executioner, and incidentally his first cousin. I hold a protective charm — you might have been a madman, after all, and you’re obviously armed. As for how you know what I say to be true, ask anyone; it’s common knowledge, all of it.”
“And you wouldn’t know of any place that does need a headsman? This sword I carry is cursed, you see; I can only remove the curse by killing nineteen men with it.”
“Perhaps you’re a madman after all...”
“No, truly, it’s cursed — it happened during the war.”
“Well, maybe it did; many strange things happened during the war, I understand. At any rate, I can’t help you; I know of no place that still beheads its condemned, let alone with a sword rather than an axe.”
Reluctantly, Valder admitted himself defeated. “Thank you, then, sir, for your kindness.” He bowed slightly and turned to go.
“Wait, old man; you’ll need a safe conduct past the guards on the bridge. Take this.” He held out a small red-and-gold disk. Valder accepted it, noting wryly that the man’s other hand still held the protective charm.
“Thank you again.” He bowed and marched off down the hallway. He heard the clunk of the door closing behind him, but did not look back.
The guard at the inner gate demanded the little enameled disk before allowing him into the tunnel under the bridge and gave him a slip of paper in its place, which was in turn collected by the guard at the outer gate when Valder knocked on the paving and was released into the marketplace once again. It struck him as odd that it was more difficult to get out of the Palace than in, though he could see the logic to the system; after all, someone with legitimate business might be unable to obtain a pass to enter, but anyone who departed without some sign of having had such business could be safely assumed to be a fraud or worse. It still seemed odd, though.
He managed to distract himself with such trivia for the entire trip out of the Palace and across the market square; it was only when seated in a quiet tavern and sipping cold ale that he allowed his thoughts to return to his problem.
One reasonably positive aspect of his situation had occurred to him rather belatedly. If he could not kill himself, but must wait to be murdered, then he might live for a good long time after he had killed all his nineteen victims; he had no intention of being a willing victim, and that meant that his killer might not be able to get at him until he had sunk irretrievably into senility, or blindness, or some other incapacity, by which time he thought he would prefer to die in any case. He would, he thought, be a rich enough victim to attract a cutthroat fairly quickly, once he was known to be helpless, so that he probably would not be left to linger unreasonably long. He might even leave instructions with Tandellin that he was to be killed when he had sunk far enough, without hope of recovery, to make his life miserable.
That was an interesting idea, actually; he rather liked that. The idea of suicide was one that had never really appealed to him, nor had he cared for the idea of allowing some scoundrel to do him in and take possession of Wirikidor. Allowing Tandellin or some other worthy fellow to put him out of his misery, however, was not so bad.
That still left him with the necessity of killing nineteen men. He might yet find a job as a headsman, he supposed, but it would mean travel, extensive travel, to find such a post. He was not at all sure he felt up to any such travel; he felt his age, though perhaps not as much as most men of his years. It would be far more pleasant to find his victims here in Ethshar.
A thought struck him. He was not able legally to dispatch condemned criminals, but if what Adagan had told him was correct, there were neighborhood vigilance committees that didn’t always bother with legalities. He might join such a group, perhaps — or perhaps he could simply track down criminals on his own and let their removal be credited to the vigilantes. That was an idea with great promise.
When the taverner came by with a refill, he asked, “What do they do with thieves around here, anyway? One almost got my purse this morning.”
“Depends who catches them,” replied the taverner, a heavy man of medium height, bristling black beard, and gleaming bald pate. “If it’s the city guard, by some miracle, they are hanged — assuming they can’t bribe their way out of it. Usually, though, it’s just the neighbors, and they’ll beat a little honesty into them, even if it means a few broken bones — or broken heads.”
“The neighbors, you say?”
“That’s right; the landowners have the right to defend their property, old Azrad says.”
“Landowners only, huh?”
“Yes, landowners; can’t have just anyone enforcing the law, or you’ll have riots every time there’s a disagreement.”
“So if I were robbed here — I can see you run an honest place, but just suppose some poor desperate fool wandered in off the street and snatched my purse — what should I do? Call you?”
“That’s right; we’d teach him a lesson, depending on what he’d stolen, and from whom, and whether we’d ever caught him before; if he lived through it, that would be the end of it — assuming he gave back your money, of course.”
“What if I caught him myself?”
“Well, that’s your affair, isn’t it? Just so you didn’t do it in here.”
Valder nodded. “Good enough.” It was, indeed, good enough. If he could contrive to be robbed or attacked, then he would have every right to defend himself. He was an old man, with a fat purse — or fat enough, at any rate. If he were to wear his purse openly, instead of beneath his kilt, and were somehow to make Wirikidor less obvious while still ready at hand, he would be very tempting bait. It would be unpleasant, and he might receive a few injuries, but it seemed the quickest and best solution to his problems.
He thanked the taverner, finished his ale in a gulp, paid his bill, and left. He turned his steps back toward Westgate; he was heading for Wall Street.
CHAPTER 29
Wall Street had changed in detail since Valder had spent a night there forty years earlier, but not in the essentials. The law still required that no permanent structures be erected between Wall Street and the city wall itself, and that meant that the Hundred-Foot Field was still there and still the last resort for the homeless. Those had been confused veterans when Valder had first seen it, men suddenly displaced from the only life they had known since childhood, but the majority had still been honest men who simply had not yet found their places. Now, however, all such had long since departed, either finding themselves better homes or dying, leaving behind the human detritus of the city and the Hegemony, the beggars, cripples, outcasts, and simpletons. The tents and blankets of the veterans had given way to shacks and lean-tos; where the soldiers had been almost exclusively
