Suddenly something gleaned in the woman's hand.
'Terence!'
Bemish didn't remember how he dashed across the lawn. He remembered only Idari's voice and the dagger in her hands. The next second, Bemish pulled the official to the side. A fish scale flash of the dagger tore air right where Shavash had just sat. Idari leaped to her feet, lithe and agile like a sand lizard.
Shavash stank with cognac and palm tree wine — a killer combination. He was boozed up to the hilt — much more than he had been an hour ago in the tower.
'What are you doing?' the official rasped.
Bemish silently pulled a short jab at Shavash's jaw. The official closed his eyes and went down to the ground. Trevis rushed to Bemish, pale as death.
'Bye-bye your fund,' Trevis muttered.
'He will remember nothing,' Bemish objected.
'I hope that you will also remember nothing,' Idari said.
Bemish's heart was hopping like a mouse in a jar.
'Should I walk you?' he asked Idari.
But the woman only shook her head slightly and, in a moment, she disappeared in the bushes. The dagger had vanished even earlier in her blowsy sleeve folds. Shavash mumbled something, turned over on his back and started snoring.
'Why did you have to beat him?' Trevis got angry. 'Is she your lover or what?'
Furious Bemish turned around. Trevis pulled back.
'Just forget it,' Bemish muttered finally, 'otherwise we will all get a lot of problems.'
They were almost at the house, when Bemish, having kept glum silence all the way, suddenly said, 'If a civil war starts in this Empire, it will start on this woman's account.'
The morning after the reception, some guests signed a treaty of intent — about creating together with Shavash and Bemish several joint companies specializing mostly in export-import operations. Weian tariffs were quite high, but Shavash hinted to the people present that they probably wouldn't have to pay them.
The official was pale after the yesterday's binge and a huge bruise blossomed under his cheekbone, artistically masked by various powders. Bemish didn't have to torture himself long about whether or not the official remembered who socked him. Having returned to his room, Bemish discovered there a gift basket full of soft turquoise figs and Shavash's note. 'As you see, I can be grateful,' Shavash wrote in calligraphy. 'You had given me one fig and I gave you hundred.' A bruise was called a fig in Weian.
The next day after the investors had left Bemish returned to the villa and was stopped by a small peasant crowd.
'What's the problem?' Bemish asked.
A tall barefoot old man stepped out of the crowd.
'They told us,' He said, 'that the great Lord from the stars will build a magic city in this place.'
'More or less,' Bemish agreed.
'They told us that this city will be built on our lands. What will happen to us?'
'You will have the lands across the river,' Bemish answered.
'We are happy that the Lord from the skies gives out part of our land to us. But our old land was taken away from us without any payments.'
'You were paid by company shares,' Bemish said. 'You squandered these shares and you don't retain any rights to them.'
'Does it mean that the Lord from the stars has money to treat officials, but he doesn't have money to pay us for our land?'
'I will not pay you a cent,' Bemish cut them off.
Having learned about this accident with the peasants, Kissur said.
'You acted like a man, Terence. Why do Earthmen act like men only when it comes to money?'
The new headman approved of his boss altogether.
'These people are such,' he said, 'that if you show them a finger, they will devour the whole hand. They are but spongers!'
'Don't you come from the same people?' Bemish cut him off and the new headman shut up, offended.
Bemish had to see Idari quite often. A great number of the company's contracts — lumber, concrete, tungsten glass — in a nutshell, everything that was cheaper and more profitable to buy in the Empire, passed through Kissur's estate and his wife was in charge of it.
Only gradually Bemish realized how important a part this graceful fragile woman plays not only in the economics of Kissur's estate but in the economics of the Empire. Thanks to her and only to her, not a single oil well that the sovereign had bestowed on Kissur passed away or was sold to cover debts — to the opposite, every gift was preserved, multiplied and grew and this fragile woman controlled with an iron fist at least three banks and the second biggest Weian aluminum plant. They said that the applicants for the bank positions had interviews in front of a curtain — Idari didn't consider it possible to talk in private with a male stranger and Bemish had never seen her in anything other than Weian dress.
Idari had only one son and Bemish saw that it deeply hurt her, because in her view, a good wife should bring a litter every year. To conceive more children, she had even submitted to an Earthman physician but the physician had only raised his hands and said that nothing could be done. Three boys that Kissur fathered whoring around and a total orphan that Kissur extracted from under his own tank tracks were being brought up in the house.
A lot of maligners told Kissur that the Earthman visited Idari somewhat more often that the business contacts required but, since the people who said that wanted very much to obtain everything Bemish had from the Empire, Kissur ignored these words.
THE EIGHT CHAPTER
Where Terence Bemish pays taxes with fallen leaves while the rock with an ancient foretelling is dug out at the construction
Ashinik was born into a peasant family that was ruined during the civil war. His father was recruited into the local prince's army and killed there and his mother died just quietly. In the last year, Ashinik was also recruited, but by this time the prince's army had dwindled down to five hundred people and the prince was called a prince no longer but he was rather called a bandit. When the prince heard that nothing was left of Khanalai's army, conducting a siege on the capital, but two barns of ashes and that the new masters — the people from the skies — were giving orders in the capital, he was scared and rushed in to beg for peace. The sovereign forgave him and the people from the stars gave everybody a fancy can with a picture of meat in sauce drawn on it. Ashinik hid the can under his head and went to sleep and when he pulled the can out in the morning, he found out that it didn't have the bottom and was empty. Ashinik rushed to his friends that had just finished the breakfast and they burst in laughter and they said that it had been this way from the beginning.
Ashinik dragged himself from the city back to the village, to the land, but there was no land. A fence of brushwood and concrete was where the land had been and the Earthman was behind the fence. It came out that Ashinik's father bequeathed the land to the prince and the prince sold this land in the capital to a trust that dug a hole in the ground. Having heard Ashinik out, the Earthman went crazy and threw him out.
What happened was that the Earthman had long ago realized the prince cheated him and he hadn't held the title for all of the land. He gave money to the first petitioners and, having heard about it, all the locals rushed picking up their relatives and friends and testifying that they had held such and such piece of land. With their peasants' minds they instinctively sized Earthmen up as a power-to-be and held it for a virtue to cheat the trust that was so stupid that it was ready to pay for the land which had already been sold to it, even if the people that
