The Steel of Raithskar (11 page)

I managed to keep my face straight, but inside I was gawping at him like an idiot. The Guardian shift was a third of a day—eight hours—and Thanasset had
never heard
of a case where a man hadn’t
known
of a fatal malfunction
at least eight hours before his death.

No doctors
, I thought, stunned.
No lab tests, no outside opinions. Just “inner awareness.” I must have it, too. Perhaps I would have the rare privilege of
twice
knowing beforehand that I’m about to die!

But
, I reminded myself,
that only works
for interior failings. My “inner awareness” is giving me no messages about whether or not I’ll be executed for the theft of the Ra’ira!

“How does the lock work?” I asked, to cover my surprise and confusion.

Thanasset shrugged. “It is not a thing generally known outside the Council, but I see no harm in telling you now that there is nothing to protect. The building is very old, and the lock on that door has never been changed. But it lacks nothing because of its antiquity—it’s the strongest door and most secure lock I’ve ever seen. The door is a pace wide and half a hand thick, solid wood, reinforced and nailed with rakor.”

Rakor.
Markasset’s memory came through. The word meant “most precious metal”—but the English equivalent was “steel.” Evidently iron mines were far from common in Gandalara.

“There is a set of five steel brackets,” he continued, “two on the door itself, two on the wall on the opening side, on the left, and one on the wall on the hinge side, on the right. A heavy wooden bolt slides in the brackets. When the door is unlocked, the bolt is pushed clear of the door, to the left. To lock it, you slide it to the right until it rests in the bracket on the hinge side. There’s a hole in the bolt that matches a hole in the bracket, and there’s a steel pin as thick as your thumb that goes in there. The bolt won’t slide until that pin is removed.”

“And you put the pin in?”

“I did. I remember it distinctly.”

I believed him. And not just because I liked him. It didn’t make sense to think he had left that door unlocked on purpose and expected to get away with it. He was not a stupid man, nor an irresponsible one. That the Ra’ira had been stolen from
his
care troubled him deeply, and his anxiety for the stone’s return was compounded by his bewilderment over this business about the lock.

Somehow, that door had been unlocked by the robbers themselves. But how? I had no better answers than Thanasset did. I’d read plenty of locked-room mysteries, but this was the first
un
locked-room mystery I’d come across.

“I’d like to take a look at that room,” I said.

“As I said before, there’s no harm now. Yes, we’ll go there tomorrow. I have this day off, and I need the rest.” He eyed me, and smiled wryly. “And
you
need a bath. You’re all over salt and dust.” We both stood up. “Bathe and change your clothes. Lunch will be ready by the time you’re through.”

A bath and some food! Suddenly nothing was more important.

I remembered where “my” room was. I rushed up the stairs that led upward from the street entrance. They were made of wood, but the stepping surfaces had been covered with rough-surfaced tiles—for safety, I presumed, and to protect the precious wood. A hallway led off to my right when I reached the top of the stairs, and the second door on the left side was my room.

Another of the tall, latticed windows in the far wall overlooked the neighboring garden. A cloth hanging was mounted above the window, and would cover it if it were allowed to drape naturally. But now its folds were gathered and drawn to the side of the window, held there by a long wooden peg mortared into the stone of the wall.

Beneath the window was a man-sized woven pad much like the ones I had seen in the Refreshment House. This one seemed larger and thicker, and it lay upon the floor of the room. A light, soft blanket was neatly folded beside the pad. This was to be my bed, and it looked comfortable enough.

I turned to one of the side walls, which was covered completely with narrow bronze-hinged wooden doors. When I pulled at the two handles in the middle of the wall, the doors folded apart, exposing room-length shelves spaced about two feet apart from floor to ceiling.

Wow
, I thought, looking at the contents.
Markasset does know how to dress!

Arranged on the shelves was an enormous wardrobe of brightly-colored tunics, trousers, and belts. And boots and headscarves. And sandals. And pins and rings and metal chains that were either belts or necklaces.

I picked up a bright yellow tunic and shook it out. It had long sleeves and a high neck, and reached to mid-thigh on me. I looked back at the stack of clothes and found a bright green sleeveless jacket about the same length. It was heavier and elaborately embroidered and bordered with yellow—they made a beautiful match.

But I put them back. For one thing, the fact that their colors were deliberately coordinated set them apart from the ordinary street wear I had seen so far. They must be Gandalaran formal dress. For another, though I admired them and longed to wear them, they were a little too … obtrusive for me yet. I was learning more and more about this world, but I was still a stranger here. Best, I thought, to attract as little notice as possible.

So I selected a relatively plain blue tunic and set it out on the woven pad with some sandals. Then, with relief, I stripped off the clothes I had found myself in when I woke up in the desert. They had been carefully washed by the Fa’aldu at the Refreshment House of Yafnaar, but three days on the trail had thoroughly dusted them up again. The boots I shook off and placed on the floor of the closet with the other footwear. The clothes I dropped in a pile in the corner.

On one of the shelves was a short robe of a soft, thick fabric. It was well-worn, and obviously designed as a bathrobe. I put it on and went downstairs, the rough tile pleasant against my bare feet.

I went out the back door and along the path I had followed before, toward the back buildings. I looked in on Keeshah and smiled. He was sound asleep on the floor, lying on his side and twisted just enough so that one huge foreleg was suspended in midair. I had a strong impulse to go in and scratch the lighter fur of his chest, but I knew it would disturb him.

Rest well, Keeshah
, I thought at him.
You deserve it.

As though my thought had reached him dimly, he moved in his sleep, lowered the hovering paw, and curled around to rest his head on one extended hind leg. I left him then, and hunted for the bath-house.

It was only two doors down in a long series of outbuildings that formed the rear wall of the estate. It wasn’t large, just a squarish room with a rectangular sunken pool long enough for a man to lie down in, and about as deep as the tubs I was used to. The tub was lined and bordered with pale gray tiles, each one decorated with fine blue traceries in an intricate design.

A ceramic pipe a couple of inches in diameter led down from the ceiling, evidently from a cistern on the roof.
No problem pumping water up there
, I thought.
The lake at the foot of Skarkel Falls is higher up the slope than the city—there would be plenty of pressure. And the water standing in the cistern would be sun-warmed.

There was a rope hanging beside the pipe. I pulled it tentatively and was rewarded by a flow of water into the tub. On a ledge in the corner was a stack of scratchy-looking towels and several bars of soap. I took one—its scent was odd but pleasant—and climbed down into the tub. The water was comfortably warm, and I slid down the smooth tile until only my head was above water. I simply soaked for a while, really relaxing for the first time since I had awakened in the desert. I let my mind wander.

It was apparent that the firm of Thanasset & Son were in a jam. Thanasset was suspected, at least in some quarters, of aiding and abetting in the theft of the Ra’ira. At the very least he had, apparently, been negligent in his care of it, thereby contributing to the felony. And one person—one very important Chief of Police Zaddorn—suspected Markasset of complicity in the same crime. Markasset could even be said to have a motive: a certain rogueworld character named Worfit was very anxious to have a large loan repaid.

Markasset was better off than his father in one way: all he had to do was get on his sha’um and ride off to another city. To my mind, that was exactly what he had been trying to do when he took up the job with the caravan—though he had obviously had sense enough to travel incognito, with Keeshah following downwind.

Had
Markasset been involved with the jewel theft? I just couldn’t make up my mind about that. All the evidence I had seen assured me that Markasset had been a pretty wild young man—but I didn’t want to believe that he’d pull off a robbery for which his own father would be blamed.

Besides, if he
had
been in on it, that meant that his job with the caravan had been part of the plan, and that the stone
was
going to Eddarta. That was more than robbery; that was treason. And I didn’t believe that treason was in Markasset’s character.

Or, no—
wait a. minute! Suppose Markasset had helped steal the thing for ransom and then the crooks double-crossed him? If they had threatened him, that would explain his flight with the caravan.

No. There hadn’t been a ransom request. And anyway, I didn’t want to believe that Markasset would run away from a fight.

But it seems certain that he was running away from a debt. What’s the difference?

I couldn’t tell. I was infuriatingly close to Markasset, but I still didn’t know him. But something—maybe, I had to admit, my own hopes—told me that no matter how it looked, Markasset hadn’t really been running away.

Could he have been chasing the stolen gem?
I wondered suddenly, then instantly rejected the idea.
No, the only way he could have known it was gone was to be involved in the theft himself.

And what about Worfit? Could he have demanded the Ra’ira as payment for Markasset’s debt? Or is he somebody else altogether, unconnected with this whole mess?

After chasing everything I knew through my brain at least ten times, I gave up. My sole knowledge of detective work came from extensive reading of detective stories, which is something like trying to learn the Latin language by reading
Quo Vadis?, Spartacus
, and
Ben Hur.
That won’t get you to
amo-amas-amat.

I considered myself a rational, reasoning person with greater than average intelligence, and better than half a century of training in using my brain. It had been a long time since my undergraduate courses in logic, but some of it stuck with me.
All A is B; no ? is C;
ergo
no A is
C. Perfectly true, but no help if you don’t know what
A
,
B
, and C are. It’s
impossible
to construct a chain of syllogisms when you don’t know the subjects or the operators.

It all boiled down to the same thing which had been plaguing me since I came to in Gandalara. Lack of information. Except this particular information was absolutely necessary for my survival and Thanasset’s.
Damn!

Thanasset couldn’t run from Raithskar the way Markasset could. The boy had been fairly footloose. But Thanasset’s business, his career, his friends, his life were all here in Raithskar.

And I couldn’t leave him.

I knew, then, that I had already made a commitment. Just when it had happened, I wasn’t sure about. Probably when I first met Thanasset. But I knew now that, however I had arrived in Gandalara, I was here. Raithskar was my home now, and I had a life to live. I would sure as hell live it as honorably as I had lived my life before. That meant sticking it out with Thanasset, come hell or damnation.

I sat up in the tub, scrubbed myself down, and rinsed off. Then I climbed out, and while the tub was draining I reached for one of the towels. They were fuzzy and stiff, and they scratched away the water, rather than absorbing it. They left my skin tingling. I put on the bathrobe and returned to my room.

While I was dressing, I heard voices from below. One of them was Thanasset’s, I was sure, but the others were higher-pitched. I couldn’t make out the words. One of the higher voices said very little, then stopped altogether while the other went on talking to Thanasset.

Then there was a rap on my door, and the voice which had stopped downstairs said, “Are you dressed, young man? I’m coming in.” I was startled—the voice might have belonged to my own father’s mother, Gra’mama Maria Constanza!

“Dressed,” I said, unnecessarily. She was already coming through the door.

For a moment, I froze. The thing that had come into my room was a creature out of nightmare.

The apish head was bald except for a black fringe around the edges, and the grayish skin was incredibly wrinkled. The deep-set eyes seemed to glitter evilly. The tusks in the half-open mouth gleamed whitely in the diffused sunlight from the window. An amalgamation of the Mummy and Dracula had somehow stepped down from the screen and into my presence.

The wizened horror spoke. “What ails you, boy? You sick?”

And the spell was broken. Ricardo’s mind had been receiving that startling first impression. As Markasset’s memories came flooding in, it was as though I turned from an image in a distorted mirror back to the original. And the person who faced me was a softly aging lady with a sweet, puzzled smile on her face.
Lavender and lace
, I thought, and smiled at her in real welcome.

“Milda, darling!” I heard myself say. “You startled me!” And I held out my arms.

She came forward in three quick steps and hugged me with a fierce strength. She was half a head shorter than I; she pressed her cheek to my shoulder as she very nearly squeezed the breath out of me.

“Oh, Markasset!” she said. “It’s so good to see you again! I thought you’d be gone for moons—maybe years!”