“My cause, as you put it, is simply to stop your assassins, Majesty. My ultimate cause may be something else again, but for the nonce, it’s only that. The Famber lineage must not be worried by threats of assassination, not, at least, until we’ve found what we need concerning Bernesohn Famber.”
The king regarded his fingernails with gravity. “From all that lengthy tale you bored me with, it seems rather too late to look for him.”
“For Bernesohn, yes. For whatever information he had, possibly not. We pray not.”
“How would you think to get me out of this?” He gestured widely, including his kingdom, the planet, all the clutter and cumber of the monarchy of a dying world.
Poracious Luv shook her head. “I don’t know yet. I’ll have to think on it, perhaps seek some advice. We have excellent counselors. Sometimes they can be quite Machiavellian. Assuming we can think of something that will work, you’ll give me the writ?”
“Oh, Madam Luv, I’d carry it myself.”
She brightened with sudden inspiration. “Would you, now? Then, sir, that may be the answer you are seeking! Consider. It is likely the assassins will be turned aside only by you, true? It may be no one can save our desperate inquiry except yourself? It may be, therefore, that the saving of humanity is in your hands? Including the lives of all those upon Kamir? All the mamas and sisters and children of your ministers, for example?”
He stared at her from beneath swollen lids, startled once again from his ennui. “That would be true if ministers had kin. Reason declares that such men come from eggs abandoned by the deadly cockatrice, that they hatch forth among the desert sands, the word tradition peeping from their beaks e’en as they crack their shells. Myth has it that they strike their prey to stone, and that is true. This world will be but stone when they are through.”
She regarded him quizzically. “Your Majesty exaggerates slightly. When humans use up a world, there are usually some bacteria left, even some hardy plants. In any case, your ministers are not free agents. They are responsible to a larger constituency—to all the people of Kamir who lust for life, who have encumbrances of kindred and friendship. Such people will not willingly accept extinction, no matter how traditional it might be.”
“So much is true. I’ve heard that even weighty governors are wary of the people they abuse.”
“So! Use your people to gain your freedom! That is, if you’re truly resolved not to return to kingship. Our Procurator says the same man who will hail a leader in time of crisis will kill him once the crisis is over.”
“Again, true,” said the king with appreciation. “For though he’ll play at resolution when death hangs upon a hair, once danger’s passed, all his anxieties, like vicious fleas, do burrow bloodily. An itchy man is prey to discontent; he’ll suage his flea bites with the blood of kings.”
“Surely the common man wouldn’t want that!”
“What common men want most is beer and sex, without disturbances.”
“So if it were necessary for you, yourself, to leave Kamir in order to save the people from disturbance …”
“It is unlikely that the counselors would fight to keep me here. When all Kamir is threatened with despair, a king may make a kingly sacrifice!”
“One hopes such sacrifice may be relatively painless,” murmured Big Mama.
“Even pain,” said the king, with no intention of being prophetic, “even pain is preferable to dying of unrelieved ennui.”
“She has who?” the Procurator asked Poracious Luv’s messenger, believing he had misunderstood her.
“Jiacare Lostre, the king himself,” the messenger replied. “He and Poracious went before his ministers and told them Kamir was in danger. The council pooh-poohed the idea. The king told them that in that case they wouldn’t mind if he told the people of Kamir all about the Ularians being just next door in Hermes Sector. Poracious said the Alliance would help him publicize the matter.”
“Somewhat exceeding her authority,” murmured the Procurator.
The messenger muffled an undiplomatic snort. “As Madam herself said, it got the job done. The ministers knew there’d be widespread panic, possibly insurrection. They’ve let the king go. He and Madam were to have left for Dinadh the day after I left for Alliance Central.”
“Amazing.”
“Actually, the council of ministers didn’t fight as hard as Madam Luv thought they might. She felt they’d really wanted an excuse to get rid of Jiacare. He has a younger brother, Fenubel, who’s much easier to get along with. They’ve already installed him as regent.”
“Interesting,” the Procurator murmured. “You’re rejoining Madam Luv?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Talk to my adjutant outside. Make whatever arrangements are necessary. Things are getting complicated. I think I’d better go with you.”
In the hostel above Cochim-Mahn, Chahdzi woke Trompe very early, before it was quite light.
“It is not good to move before the daysong has been sung,” he told the Fastigat soberly, emphasizing his words with peckish nods, like an anxious hen. “Still, we must go all in one day, and we must leave now to accomplish that.”
Trompe got Lutha and Leely up, and they made a hurried meal before taking up their packs and moving toward the canyon trail, arriving there just as the sun peeked over the farther canyon wall. They heard the dawnsong as they had heard it before during their journey, a rising smoke of melody, wavering, expanding, until all the world could hear it.
The narrow trail led them on a winding way downward among forest trees, coming out of the trees again and again to make hundred-eighty-degree turns and move into the trees again. At the beginning of the journey, on the outer edge of one curve, they saw far off across the canyon a strange house rising above the rim, barely distinguishable from the natural rock around it. The house was laid with dry stone, without mortar, and had a pitched roof with openings beneath the
