deceit, and mystery.
He wouldn’t have minded so much if he just had the faintest idea what was going on. No, that was untrue. He would have minded just as much even if he were in possession of a concise document entitled “What Is Going On.” He would probably have minded it even more, because then the motives for what was going on would have been clearly listed as bullet points, and their weak, pettifogging, infantile nature would be revealed. Cabal, famously not a gambling man, would have put money on there being politics involved. Politics frequently was involved in so much that was weak, pettifogging, and infantile, and Mirkarvia seemed to sweat the filthy stuff.
And where there is politics there is lying and deception. Cabal felt strangely let down that Cacon might not be Cacon, and that the transcendentally irritating man might not have been formed, as other men, by pressures of life and peers but as an exercise in creative writing for some clerk in an intelligence or security bureau. If he had to make a guess, he would say that “Cacon” was actually a member of Mirkarvian Intelligence. Marechal handled security, and Cabal could not believe that such a polished performer would find much satisfaction in working for a kick-the-door-down-and-shoot-them-in-their-beds merchant like the count.
Cabal reined in his hypothesising with difficulty. From a momentary change in Cacon’s expression, he had transformed the aggravating little man from an exasperant at the dinner table to a super-spy at large. The weight of probability remained firmly on the side of Cacon’s being exactly what he appeared to be, albeit with an unexpected and intelligent interest in true crime. This latter thought amused Cabal slightly; if Miss Barrow caused him any trouble, he need only tell Cacon that she was a criminologist in training, and she would never be free of him for the rest of the voyage.
No, that wasn’t quite true. The rest of the voyage was all the way to Katamenia. He was planning to jump ship in Senza, which was also Leonie Barrow’s destination. From what little he knew, Katamenia was not much of a holiday destination. He wondered how many of the other passengers were also going all the way there.
Mirkarvia, Senza, Katamenia. These little countries always seemed to have such long histories, usually full of extraordinary characters with horrible personalities. One would expect small places to breed small people, yet so many world changers had walked out of their minor nations, unblinking, onto the great global stage, where — as often as not — they messed it all up for everybody. These people … these great people, building empires out of blood, which collapse into cinders as soon as the inevitable reversals of fortune begin. Cabal loathed their every atom. If he had his way, a single scientific meritocracy would govern the world. Politics and economics were plainly too complex for the fuddled minds of politicians to take in.
He had been thinking all this as an alternative preferable to listening to whatever Cacon had to say. In this, at least, it really didn’t matter if Cacon was a phenomenally boring man or some variety of secret agent pretending to be a phenomenally boring man. The overall effect was still that of being talked at by a phenomenally boring man. Cabal found that he was phenomenally bored by him. Currently, he was detailing the denouement of a long list.
“I’m sorry, Herr Cacon, but I have work to attend to,” said Cabal, rising from the table. “I have some agricultural land-remittance discussion papers to work up to a fourth draft, and all this business with M. DeGarre and suchlike has put me behind schedule. If you will excuse me …?”
He walked off immediately before Cacon had any chance to excuse him or not.
Back in his cabin, he sat down to plan how he was going to escape from the aeroport tomorrow in Senza. His understanding was that the vessel would be laid up for some time while the Senzans went through her with a fine- tooth comb, looking for anything that might be construed as military aid for Katamenia. Miss Barrow would be sure to inform the Senzan authorities as soon as she could, and he would be arrested immediately.
Cabal played the likely sequence of events out in his mind. Miss Barrow leaves the ship as soon as she possibly can and denounces him to the Senzan authorities. The customs men or a police squad boards and arrests him. He is taken into custody, put on trial, and sent to prison for a period of, allowing for good behaviour, forever. This was a poor prospect.
Alternatively, she denounces him, the Senzan authorities attempt to arrest him but are confronted by Captain Schten, arguing that Herr Meissner is a Mirkarvian citizen and they can keep their stinking Senzan paws off him. Cabal liked this version. His liking for it deteriorated when he took the train of events a little further, however. The Senzans demand proof. Schten then wires to Krenz for corroborating evidence. Krenz wires back to say that Civil Servant Meissner has been discovered in a vegetative state at the aeroport — oh and, incidentally, has Schten got an infamous necromancer called Cabal aboard who happens to look a little like Meissner and is wanted for crimes against the state?
Cabal spent the next hour running through further alternatives and variants on the alternatives; each and every one of them resulted in life imprisonment or death. The only way out of this ring of fire was to move back a step and simply ensure that “Miss Barrow leaves the ship as soon as she possibly can and denounces him to the Senzan authorities.”
He took out his switchblade and opened it. The pivot still smelled of blood, and he doubted that the moisture was doing the steel any favours. He took a handkerchief from Meissner’s luggage and started to clean the blade carefully.
He could try and be off the ship and through customs before Miss Barrow had a chance to warn the officials, but this was fraught with difficulties, given that she would be intent on beating him to it. Or he could stop her being a problem now. She wouldn’t have to die; he was reasonably confident that he could injure her badly enough that she would be in no state to tell anybody anything about him until he was free and clear.
But … she had hinted at leaving a letter with the captain to be opened in case anything happened to her. No, then — too risky. It was not even worth considering if he could somehow steal the letter from the captain’s safe. For all his other accomplishments, Cabal had never attempted safecracking.
So, he had only one real option, which was to delay Miss Barrow in some non-lethal way at the very moment of disembarkation, and then scurry through Senzan customs with sufficient dignity to avoid suspicion. Simplicity itself.
But Cabal had problems with simple things. His was a complex life, and when something simple was called for he generally had to sidle up to it in a long series of lateral steps, circling it like a crab of the intellect. After some minutes of mental scuttling, his face was transformed by a smile. It was not a nice smile. It was the smile of a criminal mastermind who, on capturing his nemesis, decides to forgo the circular saws and piranhas and just shoots the man.
It was a good, elegant plan. He would spend a few hours using the official stationery Meissner had brought along to rustle up some convincing documentation to support the gross deception he would spin for the Senzan officials. It wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny, but it didn’t need to. All he needed was a few minutes of confusion. Chortling darkly, he unpacked Meissner’s travel typewriter and began drafting a governmental-agencies bulletin concerning a wanted criminal.
A necromancer called Cabal.
CHAPTER 9
in which Cabal discovers the future of bar snacks and trifles with the nobility
An hour or two later, the false documents completed to his satisfaction, and with an unaccustomed song in his heart and a spring in his step inspired by anticipation of the dirty deed to come, Cabal entered the ship’s salon in something as close to a good mood as he was likely ever to experience. Usually such mischief was not in his character, and it was partially the novelty as much as the sense of relief at having a workable plan that had raised his spirits so.
He sat at the bar and slapped his open palm on the wooden counter to attract the attention of the barman. The barman came over, polishing an already pristine glass, and smiled at Cabal’s evident good humour. “You seem in a very good mood, sir. What can I get for you?”
“I am, thank you. I shall have,” he started, and paused. He belatedly realised that he barely drank. Further, he also realised that the Mirkarvians set a great deal of store by what a man put into his glass. Asking for the wrong thing might well plant suspicions in people’s head. Sparkling water with a slice of lime, for example, would probably see him thrown overboard for crimes against masculinity. What was safe? He plunged for the manliest
