“Dismount, emperor, so that we may talk.”
“You might have killed me before this. I do not think you wish to talk without reason. Spit it out, Nath the Knife. There is much work to be done in Vondium these days.”
He sat up straighter. The power he wielded within the Old City was commensurate with the power I wielded in Vondium.
“There is a matter of bokkertu to be decided.”
“Once before you said that. You asked me to pay you gold so that I would not be a kitchew.” A kitchew, the target for assassination, usually has a very brief allotment left of life. But that matter had been settled with the death of the stikitche paid to do the job. That, I had thought, was finalized. Nath the Knife moved his hand. “No. It is not that.” He paused. There was about him a strange air of indecisiveness and I wished I could see his face beneath the mask so as to weigh him up better. “No. We had a bad time of it when those rasts of Hamalese captured Vondium.”
I said, “I heard how you held out in Drak’s City. You deserve congratulations for that. It has been in my mind to offer you masons and brickies, carpenters, so that you may rebuild and clean away some of the destruction.”
His head went up. “You are serious?”
It is damned hard to read a man wearing a mask.
“Yes. Perfectly serious.”
There seemed little point in adding that I wanted some of the mess in Drak’s City cleared up so as to lessen the risk of infection to the rest of the City. They policed themselves in the Old City; but I did not think they were too well-served by needlemen and once an epidemic got hold we would all be in trouble.
“You are not as other emperors-”
“No, by Vox!”
“And would you find men willing to enter here? Would not their tools be stolen, their throats cut?”
“Under proper safeguards and assurances, men would come in here and rebuild.”
“Because you told them to?”
I wondered what he was getting at.
“Not because I told them to. Because they understand the reasons. Anyway, I would pay them — pay them well — for the work will not be pleasant.”
“I think, Dray Prescot, they would do it for you.”
“They are not slaves. We do not have slaves anymore.”
Sitting the zorca, feeling the old itch down my back, darkly aware of that line of bowmen, I was all the time ready to get my foolish head down and make a run for it. But the trick of remaining mounted had given me just a little back of a hold on the situation. Nath the Knife waved his hand again. He wore gauntleted leather gloves; but a ring glowed in ronil fire upon his finger outside the glove. He came straight to the point, now, putting it to me.
“We have received a contract for you, emperor. Do not ask from whom, for that is our affair, in honor. I run perilously close to breaking the stikitche honor in this. But we stikitches remember the Hamalese and the aragorn and the flutsmen. We were cruelly oppressed. We rose when you and your armies broke into the city. Aye! We of Drak’s City hung many a damned Hamalese by his heels. We have seen what you have wrought in Vondium.” He pushed a paper that lay on the table. “The contract calls for immediate execution and the price is exceedingly large.”
I took a breath.
“And you wish me to pay you the price?”
Before he could answer, I went on: “You will recall what I told you when that was mentioned before-”
“No, emperor! By Jhalak! I know you to be a stiff-necked tapo; but will you not listen?”
I nodded and he went on speaking, and, I thought with a twinge of amusement, a little huffily. It seemed he could hardly understand just what he was saying, or why he was doing what he did. But he ploughed on, natheless.
The gist of it was that the folk of Drak’s City felt it would be to their advantage if I was alive and running Vondium. In this I fancied they did not put a great deal of store by the considerable army now at the disposal of the government. Their confidence in their own tumbledown city had been shaken by their defeat and enslavement by the Hamalese. What the chief assassin told me, quite simply, was that they intended to repudiate the contract, they would not accept it, and they wanted me to know. But-
“There is a chance that the client will bring in stikitches from outside Vondium. We frown on that; but it is known. I assure you, emperor, on the honor of a Hyr-Stikitche, that we will prevent that if it is in our power.”
What was odd about that was not the talk of assassins’ honor, which is just as real to them as any form of honor code to any other group of people, but the suggestion that in stikitche matters the khand of Vondium might not have the power to do what it willed.
“You have my thanks, Aleygyn. Vallia is sundered and torn, and our enemies press in on us from all sides. I think it is a task laid on all of us to resume peaceful ways. But that will not be possible until these invaders have been driven away-”
He did not so much surprise me as reveal that he, too, was a Vallian.
“Until they are all buried six feet deep and sent to rot in the Ice Floes of Sicce!”
“Agreed.” I chanced a shaft. “There are many fine young men in Drak’s City, men who have proved they can fight. They would be welcomed in the ranks of the new Vallian Army.”
The eyes within the slits of the mask glittered on me. The suns were shifting around and that mingled opaz radiance crept under the arch of the Gate and drove back the shadows.
“I will talk to the Presidio,” he said, whereat I smiled. The folk of Drak’s City aped Vondium and the whole of Vallia in holding their own Presidio, their governing body. It was a charming conceit. “There are men here who would form regiments that would show you soft townsfolk how to fight.”
“I await them in the ranks.”
“Not,” he said, a tang in his voice, “in the Phalanx.”
“No, I agree. As light infantry, skirmishers.”
“We have paktuns here-”
“I do not employ mercenaries. Many paktuns have become Vallian citizens. We are a people’s army. You are Vallians. Your young men will be paid the same as any other Vallians in our ranks.”
He digested that. And then we spoke of the practical side of the matter for a time until I felt I was getting altogether too chummy with a damned assassin, even if he was mindful of the welfare of the country. I twitched Grumbleknees’ reins.
“I bid you Remberee, Aleygyn. I shall send a Pallan to talk with you about the rebuilding I promised. I am serious. As serious as I hope you are in sending men to join the army. The quicker Vallia is back to her old peaceful ways the better. Remberee.”
“Remberee, Dray Prescot.”
But the old warrior did not stand up to say good-bye.
Chapter Four
“And you really had a long conversation with a stikitche! My heart — suppose-”
“But it didn’t.”
“All the same, you are just as feckless as ever you were. I wish Seg and Inch were here-”
“They’re just as bad.”
“True.” She sighed and then laughed. “You’re all as bad as one another, a pack of rascals and rogues!”
“There is a matter I must talk to you about and yet have not the courage to-”
“Dray! Oh — my dear. You are going away again!”
I nodded.
