suns were in the sky, and they were high in the meridian, and they did not jibe with my moss-and-tree deduction of the direction of north. The Khibil shared my curiosity.
He said, “Tell me, dom, where are we?”
Before I could answer, a sharp female voice from the coach window spat out: “Why, you knave, in Kov Pastic’s province, of course, and if you don’t put your clothes on at once I will have the kov’s guard arrest you the moment we reach Gertinlad.”
The Khibil and I stared at each other for a space. His reddish whiskers twitched. I thought of the Fristle on whom I had dropped from the sky. I thought of the occasion when I had given a helping hand to Marta Renberg, the Kovneva of Aduimbrev, with her luxurious coach that fell by the way. And, too, I thought of an earlier occasion when I had been transmitted to Kregen by the Star Lords to assist Djang girls against Och slavers. The two instances were strangely mingled here. Again that sense of machination troubled me, and by machination I mean wheels within wheels and not the ordinary interference in my life by the Everoinye. So the Khibil’s whiskers twitched. The woman in the coach was still screaming about our nakedness and her friend the kov. The Khibil was the first to laugh. And I, Dray Prescot, who had learned to laugh muchly of late in odd ways, I, too, laughed. The Khibil recovered first.
With the length of wood held just so, he approached the carriage. He spoke up; but the note in his voice was of a fine free scorn tempered by social observance.
“Llahal, lady. We have no clothes. They were stolen by these rascally Ochs. But we have saved your life.”
The woman was hidden from me by the jut of window; I could see her hand, thin and white, on which at least five rings glittered. Her voice continued in its shrill shriek.
“Onron! Give these two paktuns clothes! Bratch!”
The Rapa who had been running about, the one with the red feathers in whirlicues about his eyes and beak, went to the trunk fastened to the back of the coach and, presently, the Khibil and I were arrayed in gray trousers and blue shirts. I was beginning to have an idea of where I was, and not caring for it over much.
“See to the wheel,” said the lady, and the window shutter went up with a clatter. A mumble of conversation began within the coach.
I looked at the Khibil, prepared to get on with fixing the axle, for I conceived that the Everoinye wished this hoity-toity madam in the coach preserved for posterity. If she was anything like the couple I had saved in the inner sea she might pup a son who would topple empires. The Khibil said: “Lahal, apim. I am Pompino, Scauro Pompino ti Tuscursmot. When I saw the Gdoinye leading you on I realized you were a kregoinye.” He sniffed. “Although why the Everoinye should imagine I would need help against miserable little Ochs, I do not know, by Horato the Potent.”
I felt the solid ground of Kregen lurch beneath me.
A man, another mortal man, was talking of the Gdoinye, of the Star Lords! He knew! He called me and by implication himself a kregoinye. I swallowed. I spoke up.
“Lahal, Scauro Pompino. I am Jak.”
If I was where I thought I was the name of Dray Prescot would have that villain hog-tied and subject to an agonizing death.
About to go on to amplify the single name of Jak with some descriptive appellation — and it would not have been Jak the Drang for news travels where there are vollers — this Scauro Pompino ti Tuscursmot interrupted.
“You call me Pompino. On occasion it pleases me to be called Pompino the Iarvin.”
“Pompino.”
“Now we had best fix this shrewish lady’s axle and then see her safely into the town, which I take to be Gertinlad.”
“I agree. We are in Hamal, I think.”
He shook his head as we began on the axle. The lady made no offer to get out of the coach, and the Rapas gathered themselves to help.
“No. I am not sure; but not Hamal.”
Well, I thought, if you’re right, dom, thank Vox for that.
The Rapa called Onron scowled. “Hamal? You are from Hamal?” His fist gripped his sword, a thraxter, and he half-drew.
“No, Knave,” snapped Pompino. “We are not from Hamal.”
“The Hamalese,” quoth the Rapa, “should be tied up in their own guts and left to rot, by Rhapaporgolam the Reiver of Souls!”
“Quidang to that,” said Pompino.
A soft clump of hoofs drew our attention as a party of men riding totrixes rode up. There were ten of them and their six-legged mounts were lathered. Their weapons glittered in their hands, apim and diff alike. Pompino grabbed his piece of wood and prepared to fight; but Onron shrilled a silly cackle and said: “Peace, Knave. These are the lady Yasuri’s men, my comrades. They were decoyed away by other Ochs, may they rot in Cottmer’s Caverns.”
With the increment in our numbers we were able to repair the wheel and axle and so the coach started creakingly on its way to Gertinlad. Pompino and I rode perched on the roof, with Onron and his partner driving, and the totrix men resuming their function as escorts. We rolled through the mellow countryside and under the archway of the town and so into the familiar sights and stinks of a bustling market town and to an inn called the Green Attar. This was a high class hostelry such as would be patronized by a lady of gentle birth. The commander of her escort, a surly Rapa called Rordan the Negus, would have seen us off with a few curt words. He and his men wore half- armor, and were well armed with spear and bow, sword and shield. Pompino would have started an argument in his high-handed way; but Onron, who had carried the personal satchels from the coach into the inn, came out and yelled that the lady Yasuri would speak with us, and Bratch was the word.
So we jumped and obeyed on the run, which is what a serving man does when Bratch! is yelled at him. As we went in Pompino said: “I think the Everoinye wish us to continue to take care of this lady. I admit it is not an assignment I relish, but the ways of the Everoinye are not for mortal man to understand.”
I just nodded and so we went into the Green Attar and the smell of cooking and rich wines and stood before the table at which sat the lady Yasuri. The inn looked to be clean and comfortable, with much polished brass and dark upholstered chairs of sturmwood, with a wooden floor strewn with rugs of a weave new to me. We stood respectfully.
“You did well to drive off those rascally Ochs,” said the lady in her high voice. “You will be rewarded.”
She presented an outre picture, for she was tiny, and lined of face, with shapeless clothes that swaddled her in much black material like bombazine, shiny and hard, with a blaze of diamonds and sapphires, and with fine ivory lace at throat and wrist. She was apim, and her face looked like a wrinkled nut, with yet a little juice remaining. Her nose was sharp. She wore a wig of a frightful blond color. The rings on her fingers caught the oil lamps’ gleam and struck brilliants into our eyes. Pompino said: “We thank you, lady.”
She glared at him as though he had offered her violence.
“I am for LionardDen. The kov here is my friend; but he is away in the north helping in the fight against those Havil-forsaken rasts of Hamal. The land is hungry for fighting men. You are mercenaries. I offer you employment to see me safely through to Jikaida City.”
Pompino took a breath.
Before he could speak, the lady rattled on: “I can offer you better pay than usual. A silver strebe a day will buy a mercenary here. I offer you eight per sennight.”
With a dignity that set well with him, Pompino pointed out, “One does not buy a paktun. One pays him for services rendered.” As he spoke I received the impression that he was a paktun, probably a hyr-paktun and entitled to wear the golden pakzhan at his throat. “But, lady — are the silver strebes broad or short?”
She cocked up her sharp chin at this.
This was, indeed, a matter of moment. Coinage varies all over Kregen, of course, just as it does on Earth; but the common language imposed, so I thought, by the Star Lords, and the wild entanglement of peoples and animals and plants mean a creeping universality makes of Kregen a place unique by virtue of its very commonality. A short strebe, the silver coin known over most of the Dawn Lands, is worth far less than a broad strebe, and every honest citizen knows very well how to value the two in the scales. They may carry the very same head of whatever king or
