The Enemy of My Enemy (9 page)

He consented to walk about the grounds, he approved of what he saw, and he gave good advice about the erection of out-buildings and the planting of trees, “ — so that the leaves will show to best advantage at sunrise, sunhigh, and sunset, according to classical methodology … .”

Atoral returned at night as she had said, and was followed in moments by Sarlamat — whom she was not overjoyed to see. The poise appropriate and customary to a Tarnisi seemed now stretched rather thin in her manner as she asked pointed questions about Hob’s lady and why she had been left alone, commented — stiffly — that Tonorosant did not abandon her, Atoral, to go and interpose himself between the other lady and her lover. As much to change the subject (Hob, however, not rising to be baited, merely smiling, casually, smiling) as anything else, Tonorosant told at some length of his afternoon’s visit and visitor. Atoral’s reaction surprised more than it gratified him.

She struck her hands together twice, cried, in obvious dismay, “Oh,
why
— why! did you say that? To agree to his plans? Don’t you see how he is using you?”

“No, not at all. I don’t see … how … ?”

“They do not care a snap for the exiles’ welfare. It’s all just a political gambit. When most of you — your fathers, then — were gone abroad, the Assembled Lords were the powerful party. Naturally it was they who had the dividing and allocating of the abandoned lands, the houses and estates. Naturally they helped their friends liberally. It is the Guardians’ intention to deprive the Lords in the name of helping the exiles! Can’t you see what turmoil this will create?”

He did, most clearly. “The last thing I want is to become involved in factionalism, I must hope,” he said, frowning. “I will send to tell him so.”

She smiled her relief, he smiled to see her smile. Then Sarlamat got up, crossed over, said firmly, “No, my mother’s child, you must and will do nothing of the sort.”

“Why not?”

“Why not?”

Sarlamat’s smile was briefer now, and no longer casual. “Because,” he said, “it would hurt the exiles most of all. Few of us were able to be leading lives of honorable leisure in foreign parts. Most of us were obliged to lead lives and to do things which could not easily be either understood here nor excused. I am certain, Tonorosant, that your withdrawing from the Guardians’ efforts would create a breach which would have to draw attention to the exiles in greater detail than would be at all comfortable. This will not happen, I must hope.” Atoral made impatient noise and gesture, but Sarlamat was ignoring her — and yet not ignoring her at all — as he went on to say, “There are interested parties and there are other interested parties. Some of them are less reluctant to reveal embarrassments than others. No. No, my mother’s and my father’s child. You will not escape one faction by fleeing into the arms of another. I can assure you of my certain knowledge of the fact that those to whom you have most reason to be grateful would not want you to.

“No, they would not. I swear it. I swear it by the Seven Signs we bear on our bodies … ”

Their green eyes met in a long and loveless look.

Tarnis Town clustered and glowed like a nest of jewels, domes and arches and music towers, ruffed about with gardens and with flowering trees. Tonorosant glided along on his tiny, scarlet, steam float and turned into the pond-spangled grounds of the Commercial Delegation. The Delegate himself, Mothiosant, received him alone in his office. His manner was strangely simple, strangely cold with an inner rather than outer chill, utterly simple.

“There are three men coming from over the sea,” he said, “and you are to host them for the time being.”

No polite murmurings of kinship terms, no civil expressions of I-must-hope.

So, though much astonished, Tonorosant said, equally simply, “I have other things in mind, and I don’t understand if I’m being asked or commanded. And if commanded, then by whom? Surely not you?”

Mothiosant said, “You were helped. Now you must help.” He looked at him, looked through him, looked away from him.

The chill was infectious. Feeling a slight shiver, a slight shudder, sensing rather than believing the unnamed inference, Tonorosant protested, “My debts to those in Pemath have by now been fully paid.”

Mothiosant lifted his dark and massive face. He smiled, thinly, briefly. “Such debts are
never
paid,” he said. “I paid mine a long time ago. But it is still not paid, do you see.”

There was no threat here. No warning. Just a simple statement of fact. “So … you, then, are the same as I … .”

The Commercial Deputy flicked his hand, as though to say: Of course. What then? What of it? Don’t be obvious, it is boring.

“You are. Well. What … do the Craftsmen never let go their grip?” asked the younger man.

“No, never. Why should they? Each link draws the next, and so the chain moves on. There is even a moral justification to it, if I must hammer the point home once again.
You were helped. Now you must help
. Of course, for them, it’s just a matter of business. So — we now return to the beginning: There are three men coming from over the sea, and you are to host them for the time being.”

Jerred Northi, annoyed, angered, dismayed, sank beneath the surface. Tonorosant, poised, suave, submissive, rose from out it. “Indeed, my father’s sib, they will look upon my house as their unique own, I must hope.” He bowed.

• • •

When it came to it, though, the three men dwindled into one man, one young man. Tonoro had said something about wishing that he had been supplied, in that case, with a young
woman
. … Mothiosant merely grunted, Sarlamat smiled, shook his head. The services of the Craftsmen did not, evidently, extend to the female sex — at least not as far as Tarnis was concerned.

The young man’s name (name from now on, at any rate) was Hob Tellecest. Tonoro wondered if he himself could ever have been so young, so delighted, so stricken with awe and novelty. Probably not. He had not only been older in years when the Craftsmen processed him, he had been much older than his years as far as experience and attitude was concerned.

He met Hob Tellecest on the threshold, bade him formal welcome. “Tarnis!” said Hob Tellecest.

He showed him his rooms, begged him to say immediately if there should ever be anything he desired which was not at once to hand. “Tarnis!” said Hob Tellecest.

Tonoro took him about the grounds, showed him the river, spoke to him of this and that: all that Hob Tellecest said, or, evidently, was able to say, was, “Tarnis!”

By and by, though, although he still seemed in many ways like a newborn creature bemused by the richness of the world of light, he found his tongue. “It’s not a dream … no, it’s really true. I’m really in Tarnis … .”

“I, too, am rather fond of it. The pleasures of the return do not, indeed, make the exile worthwhile. But they sweeten the bitterness of the memory.”

The look his new guest gave him had nothing of irony in it. Nothing but agreement. Understanding. Accord. He was so young, so touchingly enchanted, so grateful, that Tonoro’s resentment quite died away. But, like a child’s fulcrum board, as one side dropped, the other side rose. Was it really for money alone that the Craftsmen held on so, never letting go? It could hardly be. They did not, could not depend on word of mouth advertising by satisfied, Tarnis-endenizened, clients. And if there was a part of their system which was not based on money, might it not be that other parts of it were not based on money either? And, if this were so, then the possibility was a decided one that
no
part of it was based on money.

In which case the money paid to them was not a fee at all — but a pretext. The supposition was an interesting one, but when he asked himself, “Pretext for what?” he discovered no answers. So there was nothing to do but to shrug, and to do his best to make the young man more and more familiar with his new country. He never asked him what his old country had been, or why he had left it. Such questions, it was clear, never were asked. The reason for this was of the best, of course; he hardly desired that anyone be tempted to ask the same questions of him!

It did not escape his attention that in making acquaintances for Tellecest, he made them, also, for Tonorosant. Friends introduced friends, kinsmen desired to — and did — make him known to other kinsmen.
Each link draws the next, and so the chain moves on
. Mothiosant’s remark was proving to be perfectly true. But why the chain was intended to move, or why it existed at all: this he had yet to learn.

The thing he was next to learn had nothing to do with any of this. The Volanth — the word flashed like heat lightning, echoed like thunder — the Volanth had risen in revolt. And, as neither he nor Tellecest had ever served on a military levy, both were called out on duty to suppress it.

• • •

The country they were passing through, the lower Outlands, was sun-scorched and sullen, low and rolling hills and much flat terrain, broken often by dry river beds. Trees were few. The crops had already been gathered and nothing was seen in the fields but ragged stubble and here and there the swift, secretive movement and sudden, covert stop of some lizard-like creature or such small vermin. It was not a friendly terrain, not a happy one. Something harsh and nasty seemed to emanate from the hot, cracked earth … something droning and hateful.

“What do you think, Tonorosant, of all this?”

He looked briefly at the questioner — a lacklander named Cominthal — and shrugged. “I will do my duty, I must hope,” he said.

The floats hissed lightly, stirring up a faint dust as they sped along. Cominthal made a wry mouth. “You talk like a book of maxims. Page one, line one. That’s not what I mean. I — well. You will see soon enough.”

He saw sooner than any of them thought. The levy-lord in charge of the hundred grunted, gestured with a sweep of his hand; instantly the formation spread out into the form of a wide, thin crescent as they turned en a left oblique angle. The river beds, no longer full dry, converged into a sort of fen, full of tangled brush and towering plants and here and there a smear of flat green. Cominthal pointed out one of these. “Looks like good grassy turf, doesn’t it? Be nice and springy underfoot, you think?”

Understanding, obviously, that it was — must be — nothing of the sort, but wishing to allow the man to make the point himself, Tonorosant civilly said, “One would think so.”

“Oh, would one?” the lacklander sneered. “Then try it. Oh? Try it? No? Feet not so brave as mouth?” — then, as though losing interest in baiting him, or perhaps not wanting to try it too far, abruptly said, “Just don’t try it, brother-in-law. It would suck you in like a bubble of snot.” Once again and instantly his manner (if not his mood) changed, and he said, with a slight bow, “You will excuse the coarseness of my metaphor, I must hope. Sallying among the Volanth does little to promote the subtler niceties.” It was well done, of its kind. Draw your man out, let his decency involve him, cut him off, rub his face — then withdraw so that your tracks were covered and he could not follow.

Tonorosant should have liked to have tripped him off the float over the next green patch and seen him sink into slime over his sneering face. Of course it was not worth the try or thought. So, still civil, but with a hint, perhaps, of bugger-me-not in his voice, he said, “Thanks for your warning. My eyes will be always open … and my ears, too … .”

The lacklander carefully read nothing from or into this, but cleared his throat and looked away.

They passed fetid marshways where the earth seemed flatulent, and choked ponds iridescent with scum. “Don’t say that people can live in these places?” Tonorosant asked after a while.

The levy-lord heard him, scowled. “People, not people, no,” he replied without looking over. “Just Volanth. This is what made them … beds of warm muck, fermenting forever in the sun until the first ones crawled out up on the land to dry — Over. Down.” His voice fell to a whisper, his hand to an outstretched, downward-pointing claw. The formation wheeled, circled, closed.

“First fruit of the harvest,” someone said in a thick mutter.

She lay on her back, looking at them, one hand entangled in her dress, as though trying to pull it down. The initial glance fled at once, was forced back:
She’s black, she’s not from here
, was his startled thought. Realizing at once that the sun had made her so, realizing at once that she had not really winked at them. There was a maggot in her eye. There were maggots crawling in both her eyes, and in her ears and mouth and nostrils and in her vagina. The blackened skin had cracked as the corrupt flesh had swelled, revealing the yellow layer of fat beneath. There was a taste of bile in his mouth and the muscles of his chin tightened for a moment against overwhelming nausea. Then the moment passed.

He looked quickly at the other, circling faces. Here a mouth lay open, there one sagged loose and dull, some were blank as dumb masks, others almost bright with fierceness. “That dress,” the levy-lord said. He hawked something from his throat, turned aside and spet out behind covering hand. “You won’t see cloth like that on just any bitch-Volanth. She was a licensed servant, I suppose, to one of ours … and that’s why they served her as they did.”

Cominthal yawned, choked it abruptly. “Let them serve her as they like, and who gives a crack? Let’s get on and find out what happened to the people she worked for — ” Rather too quickly, rather too fawningly, he added, “The august levy-lord agrees with me, I must hope.”

The flies had settled back, buzzing, only to rise from the ravaged corpse again as the floats sped off without a backward look. And now the hundred was a long drawn-out line, each man scanning the ground with fierce concentration. It did not take them so very long to find the probable scene the Volanth woman had been fleeing away from when caught. But they might have dawdled by her longer, taken, even, had the ancient ways so much as considered — let alone demanded it — time enough to tip that first body into a hasty-dug grave, for all that speed had done of good.