Majipoor Chronicles

surrounded by a park that was like a carpet of green. One more turn and Inyanna beheld something that resembled the loosely woven chrysalis of some fabulous insect, but a mile in length, hanging suspended above an immensely wide avenue. 'The Gossamer Galleria,' said Liloyve, 'where the rich ones buy their playthings. Perhaps some day you'll scatter your royals in its shops. But not today. Here we are: Rodamaunt Promenade. We'll see soon enough about your inheritance.'

The street was a grand curving one lined on one side by flat-faced towers all the same height, and on the other by an alternation of great buildings and short ones. These, apparently, were government offices. Inyanna was daunted by the complexity of it all, and might have wandered outside in confusion for hours, not daring to enter; but Liloyve penetrated the mysteries of the place with a series of quick inquiries and led Inyanna within, through the corridors and windings of a maze hardly less intricate than the Grand Bazaar itself, until at length they found themselves sitting on a wooden bench in a large and brightly lit waiting room, watching names flick on and off on a bulletin board overhead. In half an hour Inyanna's appeared on the board.

'Is this the Bureau of Probate?' she asked, as they went in.

'Apparently there's no such thing,' said Liloyve. 'These are the proctors. If anyone can help you, they can.'

A dour-faced Hjort, bloated and goggle-eyed like most of his kind, asked for her problem, and Inyanna, hesitant at first, then voluble, poured out the story: the strangers from Ni-moya, the astounding tale of the grand inheritance, the documents, the Pontifical seal, the twenty royals in filing fees. The Hjort, as the story unfolded, slumped behind his desk, kneaded his jowls, disconcertingly swiveled his great globular eyes one at a time. When she was done he took her receipt from her, ran his thick fingers thoughtfully over the ridges of the imperial seal it bore, and said gloomily, 'You are the nineteenth claimant to Nissimorn Prospect who has presented herself in Ni-moya this year. There will be more, I am afraid. There will be many more.'

'Nineteenth?'

'To my knowledge. Others may not have bothered to report the fraud to the proctors.'

'The fraud,' Inyanna repeated. 'Is that it? The documents they showed me, the genealogy, the papers with my name on it — they traveled all the way from Ni- moya to Velathys simply to swindle me of twenty royals?'

'Oh, not simply to swindle you,' said the Hjort. 'Probably there are three or four heirs to Nissimorn Prospect in Velathys, and five in Narabal, and seven in Til-omon, and a dozen in Pidruid — it's not hard to get genealogies, you know. And forge the documents, and fill in the blanks. Twenty royals from this one, thirty perhaps from that, a nice livelihood if you keep moving, you see?'

'But how is this possible? Such things are against the law!'

'Yes,' the Hjort agreed wearily.

'And the King of Dreams—'

'Will punish them severely, you may be sure of it. Nor will we fail to apply civil penalties once we apprehend them. You will give us great assistance by describing them to us.'

'And my twenty royals?'

The Hjort shrugged.

Inyanna said, 'There's no hope that I can recover a thing?'

'None.'

'But I've lost eyerything, then!'

'On behalf of his majesty I offer my most sincere regrets,' said the Hjort, and that was that.

Outside, Inyanna said sharply to Liloyve, 'Take me to Nissimorn Prospect!'

'But surely you don't believe—'

'That it is really mine? No, of course not. But I want to see it! I want to know what sort of place it was that was sold to me for my twenty royals!'

'Why torment yourself?'

'Please,' Inyanna said.

'Come, then,' said Liloyve.

She hailed a floater and gave it its instructions. Wide-eyed, Inyanna stared in wonder as the little vehicle bore them through the noble avenues of Ni-moya. In the warmth of the midday sun everything seemed bathed with light, and the city glowed, not with the frosty light of crystalline Dulorn but with a pulsing, throbbing, sensuous splendor that reverberated from every whitewashed wall and street. Liloyve described the most significant of the places they were passing. 'This is the Museum of Worlds,' she said, indicating a great structure crowned by a tiara of angular glass domes. 'Treasures of a thousand planets, even some things of Old Earth. And this is the Chamber of Sorcery, also a museum of sorts, given over to magic and dreaming. I have never been in it. And there — see the three birds of the city out front? — is the City Palace, where the mayor lives.' They turned downhill, toward the river. 'The floating restaurants are in this part of the harbor,' she said, with a grand wave of her hand. 'Nine of them, like little islands. They say you can have dishes from every province of Majipoor there. Someday we'll eat at them, all nine, eh?'

Inyanna smiled sadly. 'It would be nice to think so.'

'Don't worry. We have all our lives before us, and a thief's life is a comfortable one. I mean to roam every street of Ni-moya in my time, and you can come with me. There's a Park of Fabulous Beasts out in Gimbeluc, off in the hills, you know, with creatures that are extinct in the wilds everywhere, sigimoins and ghalvars and dimilions and everything, and there's the Opera House, where the municipal orchestra plays — you know about our orchestra? A thousand instruments, nothing like it in the universe — and then there's — oh. Here we are!'

They dismounted from the floater. Inyanna saw that they were nearly at the river's edge. Before her lay the Zimr, the great river so wide at this point that she could barely see across it, and only dimly could she make out the green line of Nissimorn on the horizon. Just to her left was a palisade of metal spikes twice the height of a man, set eight or ten feet apart and linked by a gauzy, almost invisible webbing that gave off a deep and sinister humming sound. Within that fence was a garden of striking beauty, low elegant shrubs abloom with gold and turquoise and scarlet blossoms, and a lawn so closely cropped it might well have been sprayed against the ground. Farther beyond, the land began to rise, and the house itself sat upon a rocky prominence overlooking the harbor: a mansion of wonderful size, white-walled in the Ni-moya manner, which made much use of the techniques of suspension and lightness typical of Ni-moyan architecture, with porticoes that seemed to float and balconies cantilevered out for wondrous distances. Short of the Ducal Palace itself — visible not far down the shore, rising magnificently on its pedestal — Nissimorn Prospect seemed to Inyanna to be the most beautiful single building she had seen in all of Ni-moya thus far. And it was this that she thought she had inherited! She began to laugh. She sprinted along the palisade, pausing now and again to contemplate the great house from various angles, and laughter poured from her as though someone had told her the deepest truth of the universe, the truth that holds the secrets of all other truths and so must necessarily evoke a torrent of laughter. Liloyve followed her, calling out for her to wait, but Inyanna ran as one possessed. Finally she came to the front gate, where two mammoth Skandars in immaculate white livery stood guard, all their arms folded in an emphatic possessive way. Inyanna continued to laugh; the Skandars scowled; Liloyve, coming up behind, plucked at Inyanna's sleeve and urged her to leave before there was trouble.

'Wait,' she said, gasping. She went up to the Skandars. 'Are you servants of Calain of Ni-rnoya?'

They looked at her without seeing her, and said nothing.

'Tell your master,' she went on, undisturbed, 'that Inyanna of Velathys was here, to see the house, and sends her regrets that she could not come to dine. Thank you.'

'Come!' Liloyve whispered urgently.

Anger was beginning to replace indifference on the hairy faces of the huge guards. Inyanna saluted them graciously, and broke into laughter again, and gestured to Liloyve; and together they ran back to the floater, Liloyve too finally joining in the uncontrollable mirth.

6

It was a long time before Inyanna saw the sunlight of Ni-moya again, for now she took up her new life as a thief in the depths of the Grand Bazaar. At first she had no intent of adopting the profession of Liloyve and her family. But practical considerations soon overruled her niceties of morality. She had no way of returning to Velathys, nor, after these first few glimpses of Ni-moya, had she any real wish to do so. Nothing waited for her there except a life of peddling glue and nails and false satin and lanterns from Til-omon. To stay in Ni-moya, though, required a livelihood. She knew no trade except shopkeeping, and without capital she could hardly open a shop here. Quite soon all her money would be exhausted; she would not live off the charity of her new friends; she had no other prospects; they were offering her a niche in their society; and somehow it seemed acceptable to take up a life of thieving, alien though that was to her former nature, now that she had been robbed of all her savings by the fast-talking swindlers. So she let herself be garbed in a man's tunic — she was tall enough, and a little awkward of bearing, enough to carry the deception off plausibly — and under the name of Kulibhai, brother to the master thief Agourmole, entered the guild of thieves.

Liloyve was her mentor. For three days Inyanna followed her through the Bazaar, watching closely as the lavender-haired girl skimmed merchandise here and there. Some of it was done as crudely as donning a cloak in a shop and vanishing suddenly into the crowds; some involved quick sleight-of-hand in the bins and counters; and some required elaborate deceptions, bamboozling some delivery boy with a promise of kisses or better, while an accomplice made off with his barrow of goods. At the same time there was the obligation to prevent freelance theft. Twice in the three days, Inyanna saw Liloyve do that — the hand on the wrist, the cold angry glare, the sharp whispered words, resulting both times in the look of fear, the apologies, the hasty withdrawal. Inyanna wondered if she would ever have the courage to do that. It seemed harder than thieving itself; and she was not at all sure she could bring herself to steal, either.

On the fourth day Liloyve said, 'Bring me a flask of dragon-milk and two of the golden wine of Piliplok.'

Inyanna said, appalled, 'But they must sell for a royal apiece!'

'Indeed.'

'Let me begin by stealing sausages.'

'It's no harder to steal rare wines,' said Liloyve. 'And considerably more profitable.'

'I am not ready.'

'You only think you aren't. You've seen how it's done. You can do it yourself. Your fears are needless. You have the soul of a thief, Inyanna.'

Furiously Inyanna said. 'How can you say such a—'