Mikeraw, who was lowly in rank and non-Fastigat, had never been served by shadows. He contented himself with a murmured agreement as he helped the Procurator mop both himself and the tabletop.
This accomplished, Mikeraw bowed, murmuring, “I thought you should see this, sir. It seems to impinge—”
“What? What is it?” He reached for the proffered document.
“An agent upon Dinadh, sir. Reporting rumor, sir.”
“An Alliance agent?”
Mikeraw flushed slightly. “As a matter of fact, no, sir. We have an agent there, but he doesn’t report much. This is from a Gadravian agent.”
“The Gadravians take a lot on themselves!”
“They insist they are loyal members of the Alliance and are merely providing us with appropriate redundancy in intelligence matters. As in this case.”
“This case? Case of what, man?”
Mikeraw cleared his throat. “It is rumored the King of Kamir has sent assassins to Dinadh to eradicate the Famber lineage, sir.”
The Procurator sat down with a thump.
“Famber? Leelson Famber? Why in the name of all that’s holy and intractable …?” The King of Kamir was a joke, of course. Everyone knew of the King of Kamir. He was proverbial. “Useless as the King of Kamir.” Said of lackadaisical students and lie-about workmen, as well as of tools that didn’t function or equipment that fell apart. For the first time the Procurator considered that the king might rather resent this reputation. Might have resented it enough to have wished to put it behind him.
He gaped unattractively while thinking. Suddenly aware of this, he gave his mouth something to do, asking, “It was Leelson who found him, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, sir. When the king disappeared, the government of Kamir retained Fastiga to investigate, and Fastiga assigned Leelson Famber.”
“Excrement,” muttered the Procurator. “Oh, excrement.”
“I thought, inasmuch …”
“Quite right. Quite right. Good man. Well, it puts Lutha Tallstaff in the broth, doesn’t it? And any Fastigat with her. On behalf of the boy, of course. The assassins might not bother him, and maybe not her, but they will the boy. Unless Trompe Paggas gets in the way!”
“I’ve consulted the relevant documents, sir, that is, the laws of Kamir as they might apply in this situation. I came up with the thought that we might approach the king himself to obtain a royal writ.”
“Calling the assassins off, you mean?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And then what?”
“Send the writ to Dinadh …” His voice trailed off, and he shifted from foot to foot, uncomfortably.
“Assuming one could get such a writ, who would deliver it on Dinadh, and to whom?” asked the Procurator.
The underling shrugged. He didn’t know.
The Procurator sighed. “Fastiga,” he murmured. “Whoever goes to Kamir can’t be from Fastiga.”
“Why not from Fastiga, sir?”
“The bureaucrats would suspect a Fastigat. They do, you know.”
“Perhaps we could send another assassin, sir?”
“You say?”
“Send a corsair to catch a corsair, isn’t that the saying?”
“Not in my language, it isn’t.”
“In mine, sir.”
“And where are you from?”
“Far Barbary, sir.”
“Well, that explains it. All pirates there, aren’t they?”
“Not much anymore, sir. Once were, of course. My own great-grandfather, in fact.”
“And how did you end up here?”
The man stared at his boots, reddening.
The Procurator accurately read his embarrassment.
“Government is merely another kind of piracy, is that it?” The Procurator guffawed, tears welling in his eyes. “I take no offense. It’s true, my boy. Politicians are pirates, of a sort!”
“I wasn’t going to say so, sir. Though my father does.”
“And your grandfather, too, no doubt. Well. You could be right. Send a corsair to fetch a corsair, an assassin to fetch an assassin. In which case, who’s our assassin?”
“We’ll need to ask the King of Kamir, sir. He seems to have an inexhaustible supply.”
It was, as a matter of fact, Councilwoman Poracious Luv who went to Kamir on behalf of the Alliance. She demanded an audience with the king and received it without delay. Jiacare Lostre, King of Kamir, was so enervated by his day-to-day life, he didn’t even make her wait. He would have consented to meet with an offal-eater from Hapsobog to break the tedium, and he found little fault with this wallowing bulk, this monstrous bosom heaving at him, even though she insisted on boring him with a brief history of the Ularian crisis, which he cared nothing about.
His kingly prerogative allowed him to tell her so, yawning.
“I don’t think Your Majesty understands,” she said, growing quite pink about the jowls as she held out a pleading arm from which the quivering flesh hung in braceleted rolls.
“My Majesty does understand quite well,” he said. “I just don’t give a damn if we’re condemned a wee bit sooner than our present course will equally condemn us.”
She chewed her lower lip, wondering why in heaven’s name the Procurator had picked her for this mission.
“There are those who feel differently,” she murmured.
“Not I,” he said. “Not while I’m pinioned here!”
“Are you?” she asked, suddenly interested despite herself. “By what?”
Her obvious interest caught him by surprise, and he became expansive. “Tradition, madam. And the force of law. I am coerced in many divers ways, by suasion horrible to contemplate, by threats against the comforts of my kin, of whom, despite my boredom, I am fond. My mother’s life is hostage ’gainst my own, and so my sister’s—who, in happier times, was very dear to me.”
“You did have happier times, then?”
He snorted. “I had four brothers older than myself, all four of whom aspired to mount this seat. Efficiently they entered on the task of murdering each other, leaving me to sit upon a throne I much despised.”
“So much so you ran away from it.”
He flushed. “I planned escape, achieved it! Ah, but then I was dragged back to duty as bad boys are driven to their books by masters’ canes. Like them, I swot and grimace and complain….”
She gnawed at the inside of her cheek, a habit that gave her the look of some ponderous ruminant.
“Would you be more sympathetic if I could arrange for your … release?”
The king actually smiled. “Oh, madam, how my sympathy would wax, like
