windows bright, its blue flags fluttering. People craned to see. The Deldar eased back to his men, keeping them face front. We moved to a vantage point and so looked on disaster.
They say Trip the Thwarter, who is a minor spirit of deviltry, takes delight in upsetting the best-laid plans. We saw the dismounted vakkas hauling out their prisoners. There were many swords and spears in evidence, and no chances were being taken, for these men being taken up into custody were notorious and possessed of fearful reputations. We saw Kov Konec being prodded out, dignified, calm, his hands bound. We saw Dav turn on a swod and try to kick him, snarling his hatred, and so being thumped back into line. The swords ringed in the important people of Mandua, Fropo the Curved, Strom Nath Resdurm, Nath the Fortroi and others. Only the lesser folk were not taken up. We stared, appalled.
“Treason against the Nine Masked Guardians,” a man in the crowd told us.
“A plot to murder them all in their beds,” amplified his wife, a plump, jolly person carrying a wicker basket filled with squishes in moist green leaves.
“Lucky for us Prince Mefto discovered the plot in time to warn the Masked Nine. By Havil! I’d send
’em all to the Execution Jikaida, aye, and put them all in the center drin!”
We stood as though frozen by the baleful eyes of the Gengulas of legend. Konec saw us.
With a single contemptuous jerk he snapped the thongs binding his wrists. He stuck both arms out sideways, level with his ears. Then he drew them in and thrust them out again level with his hips. He brought his hand around to the base of his spine and swept it in a wide circling arc up over his head. The pantomime was quite clear. Then — then he drew his forefinger across his throat, forcefully, viciously. I remained absolutely still.
The guards leaped on him then; but he did not resist as they tied his hands again. He had delivered his message, a chilling and demanding message. His eyes blazed on me.
Between files of the totrix cavalry Konec and his people were led away to imprisonment. The plot against Mefto the Kazzur was stillborn.
“What-?” said Bevon. He looked bewildered.
“It is all down to you, Jak,” said Pompino.
We were alone and friendless in Jikaida City, and it was all down to me to halt this glittering Prince Mefto the Kazzur in his ambitions and to prevent the total destruction of Vallia. As this thought struck in so shrewdly there rose up before my eyes the phantom vision of Mefto, brandishing his five swords and beating down in irresistible triumph.
Chapter Twenty
“You must be a fambly, of a surety,” said Nath the Swordsman, screwing up his scarred face in hopeless wonderment. “But if you wish to act against Mefto, that is suitable for me. I do not give the lady Yasuri more than one chance in ten.”
“You are finding the pieces for the lady Yasuri. Put me down on the list.”
“And me,” said Bevon, at my side.
Pompino had disappeared. I harbored no grudge; this was no affair of his and he was mightily conscious of his duty for the Star Lords. We stood in Nath the Swordsman’s room that looked out upon the inner square of his rambling premises. Men and women were being put through their paces out there, and the quick flitter and flutter of sword blades filled the dusty area. The room was plainly furnished and contained as its centerpiece a finely executed picture of Kurin, delineated as some long-dead artist of Jikaida City had visualized him, blade in hand, in the guard position and, as this was Havilfar, covering himself with a shield. The picture served as the focus of a kind of shrine, with flowers and atras and incense burning, which exuded a stink into the room.
“The lady Yasuri was fortunate in the misfortune of Konec,” said Nath. His gaze seldom left the people practicing out there, and he would suddenly leap up and go striding out, yelling, to reprimand some poor wight whose clumsy technique had aroused Nath’s displeasure. The women out there were all strapping girls, of course, for they fight hard in Vuvushi Jikaida.
“Yes,” said Bevon.
The league tables led up to the final tournament and Yasuri had placed third, because she had already lost to Konec. That was her only defeat. With the absence of Konec, who was due to play Mefto in the final, Yasuri had been switched in. We were here to act as two of her pieces. Neither of us could see any other way of getting to Prince Mefto.
I had, in my old intemperate way, started to make a sally toward his hotel and had fought a few of his folk trying to get through. I had not succeeded and the darker the veil drawn over that chapter of misfortunes the better. I had had the sense to wear a mask. Now we presented ourselves at Nath en Screetzim’s premises and he welcomed us like water in the Ochre Limits. Once we had been accepted, the formalities went through like sausages on a greased plate and very quickly we found ourselves joining the lumpen gaggle Yasuri had been able to find. We waited in a long, wide, tall hall with arrow-slits for windows far higher than a man could jump. We were in the heart of the Jikaidaderen. The game was to be a private one. The public would be able to see most of the other tournament games; but they would not be permitted here to see the final. That they were prepared to accept this indicates something of the obedience rife in Jikaida City. We rubbed shoulders with criminals, with men who had been delegated this duty, slaves fighting for their freedom and few, very few, men who fought for the lady Yasuri.
The atmosphere in that anteroom to the games clogged on the palate, the stink of sweat, the stink of fear
— and the silly bravado men put on in times like these to mask their deeper feelings. Well, Bevon and I endured.
We studied the Jikaida pieces waiting to go on. We tried to pick the stout from the weak, the brave from those who would be unable to perform adequately through fear — everyone knew the penalty for running. I said to Bevon: “One or two will run, I think, and welcome a Lohvian shaft through them rather than a chopped-up death at the hands of Mefto’s bully boys.”
“Yet some look capable. That Chulik, he’s here for slitting the throat of a Rapa. And that group of Fristles, and see those Khibils? They will fight.”
Rumors and buzzes swept through the men. There was weak ale to drink and no wine. There was ample food. We understood that the lady Yasuri had obtained the services of a lady Jikaidasta whose name, we gathered, was Ling-li-Lwingling, or something like that. Bevon listened to the swift gabble of a Fristle, and turned to me. I did not know if he was laughing or cursing.
“Who do you think Mefto has as his Jikaidast?”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, Bevon, now you have a personal grudge in it doubled.”
“Aye.”
Och slaves at last brought in the equipment. These formalities differed markedly for us from our previous experiences. Then we had been part of a noble’s entourage, playing for his honor and glory; now we were assembled from the academies of the sword and from the prisons and stews. The bagniossupplied their freight. The lady Yasuri apparently relied entirely on the resources of Jikaida City for her pieces, for we saw none of the small bodyguard she kept up. As for the equipment, that was simple. A blue breechclout, a thraxter and a shield. Plus a headband decked with varying numbers of blue feathers and, for some of the superior pieces, blue favors on sashes. Bevon and I each received a reed-laurium[6]with two blue feathers. This marked us as Deldars.
The swords were thraxters and Bevon and I, by arrangement as volunteers, received our own weapons. The shields were laminated wood, bronze rimmed but not faced, and were smaller than the regulation Havilfarese swod’s shield, being something like twenty-seven inches high by sixteen inches wide, and were rectangular.
The shields were painted solid blue with white rank markings as appropriate, and a fellow would take the shield fitting his position as a piece when he left the substitutes bench. The lady Yasuri had been obliged to play blue, as she was filling in and, no doubt, overjoyed at her own good fortune. She was a Yellow adherent, I knew; but the glory and profit of winning meant more to her, and it is proper that a Jikaida player should take either color
