Shadow's End

  "Hovolutes don't leave anyone alive," objected Chur Durwen.

  "Well, imagine one of the victims surviving and you'll have an idea what our waiting woman looks like."

  Chur Durwen was curious. He kept watch, and one day as the woman bent over to pick up something, the veil fell loosely at the side of her face. He, too, caught only a glimpse, but that was enough.

  These happenings were small in themselves, but enough to set both men thinking. They had assumed there were no predators on Dinadh, but now they began assessing certain phrases and silences, certain movements of avoidance, certain rituals of aversion.

  "It's them," Mitigan said to Chur Durwen one night as he looked through their barred windows at the pale forms assembled across the canyon. "Those flyin' things that hang about after dark. They're dangerous beasts."

  "Small ones," murmured Chur Durwen, unimpressed.

  "Chowbys aren't big either," said the other. "Or viper bats. But you get overrun by a dozen of either one and you're dead meat. And ants, they're tiny little old things, but people on Old-earth used to go in fear of their armies. Stingers, those were."

  "I'd forgotten about chowbys," mused the man from Collis. "And you're right. There's a considerable mob of those night fliers about. I must've seen several hundred, just last evenin'."

  "So."

  "So?"

  "Puts a bit a crimp in goin' lookin' for Fambers, dunnit? Stands to reason they're not comin' here, we got to go lookin'."

  "Must be a way." Chur Durwen stared meditatively at his boots. "Always has to be a way."

  Mitigan grunted. What his friend said was true. There was always a way to kill a man or woman. No matter how he hid, how he ran, how he vanished into another identity; no matter how she pleaded, how she bribed, how she threatened. There was always a way. So Mitigan's father's brother had taught him when he was a boy.

  "Always a way, boy. Study on the target, make him your book, make him your library, boy, and you'll find the way."

  "They say killin's wrong, Uncle Jo."

  "They! And who's they? They put power in your pocket? They buy festives for your women? Food for your children? Ha? Who's this they? Not Firsters, that's sure! No Firster ever said such a damn fool thing!"

  Which was true. A man who'd recently killed was considered blood guilty, but there was a ritual for erasing blood guilt. All Mitigan had had to do was pay a hefty price to the Firster godmonger in the district where the victim lived. Those who spoke against killing were only do-gooders, reformers, non-Firsters all. They were men who belonged to no tribe, swore allegiance to no hetman. Men who, it was said, would puke themselves inside out if told to go out and get an ear for the hetman, a hand for the hetman, or somebody's head in particular.

  Mitigan was born of the Dirt-hog tribe, and Uncle Jo sat on the hetman's right hand. Not quite next to him, true, but no more than three or four men down. Mitigan's pa, now, he'd sat right next to the Dirt-hog hetman, and when the hetman said go, Pa had gone. One time too many, as it turned out, but he died with his name bright, so Mitigan had no dishonor to live down.

  It was a good tribe to learn killing in, all the way from elementary mutilations right up to, so Uncle Jo sometimes said, a graduate degree in massacre: an MMA, Master of Mortial Arts. Mitigan studied his subject as Uncle Jo had advocated: studied it and practiced it, and got so good at it that when the Dirt-hogs were ambushed by the Lightning Bears one bloody night at Headoff Hill, only fifteen-year-old Mitigan escaped and survived. He'd sworn vengeance. He could not have lived with himself otherwise.

  The Lightning Bears had laughed at him, man and boy, laughed at him and hadn't even taken the trouble of killing him. They hadn't laughed five years later, after Mitigan had taken out the whole Lightning tribe, one man by one man, including every male child. That's why it took so long. That last infant he'd had to wait for, since it hadn't been born yet. Firsters didn't hold with killing babies until after they got born!

  A man with that history had his future pretty well laid out for him. There was always a market for assassins, especially assassins who could think. Mitigan could think, though he did not think much about his career. A man could get tied up in his own thoughts, worried over them, or guilty over them, or overly convinced of his own prowess. A man needed a clear head to survive. He had to be careful.

  Still and all, if a man really wanted to hit a target, Chur Durwen was right. There was always a way.

  It wasn't long before Mitigan put two and two together to come up with the same answer those at Cochim-Mahn had arrived at. The key to traveling on Dinadh was to have a structure or vehicle inside which one could be safe at night. Since the hover cars were controlled from the port city, they wouldn't do. Since any other structure would make too heavy a load for a man, it would have to be hauled by beasts, which meant the beasts themselves had to be protected. Travel on Dinadh required a wain and beasts to pull it. Or the equivalent.

  "You think I'm goin' to fool with animals, you got a fool's idea." Chur Durwen yawned.

  "Right," agreed Mitigan. "We'll do it our way."

  They'd brought certain items of equipment with them, the parts innocuously labeled and packaged as health monitors or retrievers and transcribers or library modules. Several of these items, taken apart and reassembled into a portable unit, would create a protective dome big enough to sleep in. Big enough to live in for a while, if necessary.

  "Though it'll be somewhat troublesome," Mitigan told his companion, "I think we'd be wise to take a pack animal."

  Chur Durwen didn't argue with him. In a pinch, Mitigan later told me, they could have carried their own provisions, but assassins preferred to stay unencumbered when engaged in their profession. Besides, at T'loch-ala, spring had not advanced so far as it had at Cochim-Mahn and there were many strong animals to choose from still in the caves.

  "So now we know how," muttered Mitigan over his evening meal as he stared out the window at the dancing Kachis. "All we have to figure out is where."

  The question plagued him as he ate, as he slept, as he did his weapons exercises morning and night. Chur Durwen, who preferred to get his daily exercise climbing up and down the ladders between hive and valley below, was bothered by the same question. Where?

  It was a conversation Mitigan overheard between two women at the well ropes that gave them the clue they needed.

  "Will you be going to Tahs-uppi with songfather?" one asked of the other.

  "Alas, no," replied the other. She was quite beautiful, Mitigan thought, with black hair that fell in a lightless flow almost to her knees. She was also very pregnant. "Songfather feels it is too near my time."

  "He's probably right," said the first, with a delicate shudder. "One should not be far from help the first time. Still, it's sad that you'll miss it. All the songfathers and their guests will be there, from everywhere in Dinadh. Another such opportunity will not come in our lifetime."

  Mitigan went at once to inform his colleague. "She said people would be there from all over Dinadh. Which means there'll be someone there who knows where Famber is, or was."

  "Fine," muttered the man from Collis. "So we go to Tahs-uppi. Where is it?"

  It took them some days of fumbling questions to elicit the information that Tahs-uppi was not a place but an event that took place at the omphalos, the navel of the world. Plotting a route that would get them there occupied them for scarcely another day. The morning after, very early, they stole a beast from a herd cave and departed T'loch-ala, leaving only one dead body behind them, that of an impertinent herdsman who'd wakened early and gone down to his flock without waiting on Lady Day. Had he waited properly, he would still be alive, a fact the songfather of T'loch-ala would later discourse upon at length.

  "Have you never married, then?" Poracious Luv asked the King of Kamir.

  Jiacare Lostre reflected. "I saw wedlock as wedded lock indeed, another set of chains binding me fast. Seeing what fate I saw for all Kamir, I did not wish for children."
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  "You can speak like common people if you like," she said, grinning at him. "You are no longer king."

  He flushed, started to say something, then stopped. The slow beat of aristocratic speech had become second nature when talking to any but intimates or servants—in which category he had always included his ministers, just to infuriate them. And yet, he had not spoken like that when he was Osterbog Smyne. Why should he as ex-king?

  Enjoying his embarrassment, Poracious thrust her seat back to the limit of the inadequate space the ship provided, stretching out her legs. She felt cramped. She was cramped. Her sleeping cubicle was the size of a disposal booth, and after spending several hours in it, she wished it were a disposal booth. One would travel more comfortably as ashes.

  Of course, the journey could have been passed in sleep. Most passengers had chosen to sleep until a day or two before they reached their destination, but the king wanted to savor every moment of freedom, and Poracious had thought it wisest to stay with him. On the well-established ground that men like best to talk about themselves, she had led him to discuss his life and times at great length.

  "What did you do for amusement?" she demanded. "Everyone has to have amusement."

  "One spends one's time—" he began, catching himself. "I spent a great deal of time in the gym. I used to retreat there as a child, and I've rather depended upon it. One is told … I'm told I acquit myself well."

  "In what sport?"

  "Bisexual heptathlon."

  She regarded him thoughtfully. He had the build for it, wiry and compact, and no doubt the energy for it, too, since he'd used it for nothing else. Or almost nothing. "I suppose they allow you women?" she said in a silky tone.

  "Oh, Lord Fathom, yes," he blurted, unthinking. "Women. Men. Animals, too, one supposes, if one liked. One's father had an insatiable appetite for little girls. So far as one is aware, his desires never went unfulfilled. There are middle-aged women all over Kamir living on pensions from the government. One supposes that's how the ministers managed it."

  "That and payment to the girls' families, probably," said Poracious.

  He sighed. "I always had trouble imagining what kind of family would … would … "

  "Many kinds," she said dryly. "Believe me, Your Majesty."

  "Jiacare," he said. "If I am to speak like a commoner, you must stop calling me Majesty. Call me … Call me Jickie."

  "Right. Jickie. As I was saying, I've seen families who would sell their children, their grandmothers, their husbands or wives. Sometimes out of desperation, sometimes out of greed, but I have seen it."

  "One's own life has been more circumscribed," he admitted. "One has only read of such things, and it is hard to know what is real and what is fiction."

  She nodded ponderously. "Most fictions turn out to be real. At least, such has been my experience. I no sooner hear some horrible story, told as a mere tale, than someone assures me it really happens, here or there. Sometimes it turns out the perpetrator heard the same tale and decided to copy it. Massacres, mutilations, murder, mayhem. There are worlds where all these things are everyday affairs. Asenagi, for example. From among whose people you did not hesitate to send an assassin after Leelson Famber. Surely Kamirian law does not countenance such activity."

  "Well," he mused doubtfully, "in fact it does. Though only for kings. Kings customarily do anything they like so long as it can be hidden from the public. One's father often said that public officials generally do so. People want to believe in their kings or presidents or procurators. They gild their leaders with brightest gold, as they do their idols, though both may be but clay. And so long as one does not rub our people's noses in one's filthier habits, one can lead them to the slaughter in war, one can squander their treasure for one's own aggrandizement, one can give preference and immunity to one's friends, children, and kin. One can let the poor starve and the sick die, and the people will still follow so long as they see one smile and wave and seem to be satisfied with the way things are going."

  "So long as taxes are kept low," Poracious rumbled.

  "That too. But mostly one has only to wear a kingly mask in public while seeming to be interested in the common man. It's easy to do. One simply watches for occasions when common men do something uncommon, then one notifies the news sniffers that one is gratified at this example. One has one's picture taken with the awed hero, who may, in fact, have done a very stupid thing. All his neighbors treat him with reverence for several days thereafter, and a holo of himself rests into perpetuity upon his altar shelf, along with the image of his god."

  "Your ministers cooperate in this effort?"

  "Oh, yes. Aristocracies conspire to keep their reputation clean. Though they fuss at one for not begetting sons, one has heard them privately say that a bachelor king is less trouble than royal offspring, who are, however one trains them, beset by the passions, ambitions, and rebelliousness of youth. One's own escapades have been minor. One was assured, for example, that word of the previous flight from Kamir never reached any further than the palace walls."

  "It reached the Fastigats," she said. "Obviously. May I make a suggestion?"

  "Of course."

  "It is not customary for commoners to refer to themselves as 'one.' If you are desirous of appearing less—"

  "Oh, one takes the point. I, that is. Do." He flushed. "It's difficult. I keep forgetting. When I ran away, I had a role I'd planned on. I'd practiced my speech, my gait, the clothes I would wear. I haven't practiced this." He fell silent, nodding to himself, before saying, "About the Fastigats. I didn't know that Famber's finding me was merely an assignment. I'm afraid I attributed to him some degree of personal malice. To one being pursued, the pursuer may seem motivated by something more than mere duty, and once he had found one … that is me … "

  "If you'd told him you didn't want to come back, he'd have left you alone, as required by Fastigat ethics."

  The king flushed. "I didn't ask. He didn't say."

  "It's of no consequence now," she said. "So, tell me, do you have a favorite mistress or sweetheart?"

  Jiacare smiled slightly. "I did. One or two."

  "But you didn't bring anyone with you."

  "No encumbrances," he said. "I wish to experience freedom. I've never had freedom before. The other time I was a fugitive, not a free man. By the Great God Fathom, madam, do you have any idea what it's like, being born to royalty? Every action scrutinized. Every word assessed. Every royal bowel movement inspected. Every royal sneeze worried over. I cannot say with any certainty that there were not several pairs of eyes looking through holes in the wall during my acts of sexual congress. The best I could do was draw the bed curtains and stay beneath the sheets!"

  "It would have a damping effect," she admitted.

  "Indeed. A very good word for it. All that attention put out one's, that is, my fires very well, madam, both physical and spiritual. Believe it."

  "I can see why you wanted revenge against Famber."

  "Well, yes. But I shouldn't have done it, even so."

  Poracious allowed him a moment of reflection before asking, "So, tell me what kind of woman you like? Assuming, that is, you do like women."

  "Women, yes." He stared at the curved surface above them as though he saw a picture there. "I have never paid much attention to appearance. My favorite woman—up until the time she married someone else in order to have children—was not at all attractive in a physical sense, though she had great vitality. I admire humor and intelligence. And, of course, patience. It takes a great deal of patience to be mistress to a king."

  "In future, perhaps your companions will need less patience. That is, if you are truly resolved to be no more a king."

  He shrugged carelessly. "If one went back, they'd have to depose Fenubel in one's favor. Such is Kamirian law. But if one … that is, I don't go back … Well. I am free not to go back."

  Poracious Luv nodded. He was indeed free not to go back. Perhaps he would stay on Dinadh. The Alliance ha
d offered him a vast sum for his help. The former king could live much as he would, if he would.

  "I've been wondering," he said. "What happens if we get to Dinadh and find that my assassins have already killed Famber's wife and child? What if they've found Famber himself and killed him?"

  She shifted her huge bulk uncomfortably. "Pray they have not. When this Ularian business started, there were four populated systems in Hermes Sector: Dinadh, with one world and a few storage installations; Jerome's system, with several settled worlds and moons; Goan's system, with several settled worlds and a homo-norm team on another one called … Perdur Alas; and finally Debair's system, with several settled worlds, one of which, Tamil's world, was wiped clean by the Ularians just before we left Kamir. Or, so I heard. I don't remember how many worlds that makes. Half a dozen or more, totally wiped clean. The losses are in the millions."

  He scowled at her, vertical wrinkles appearing between his eyes. "That's too many to keep quiet. You'll have a panic."

  "There's already considerable panic in the outlying areas, those nearest Hermes Sector."

  "The ship's library says the Dinadhi keep their foreign guests pretty well spread out. Will the authorities let us go directly to the Famber leasehold?"

  She grunted, a porcine sound. "They must. I bear letters of demand from the Procurator. All ships of the line are engaged in evacuation, but the Dinadhi don't know that. I'm to threaten them with invasion if they don't cooperate."

  "I shall follow your lead," he said carefully. "Lord Fathom, but I've messed things up."

  "Not your fault, lad," she murmured. "Not anyone's fault. How can you lay guilt for an enigma like the Ularians? We still have no idea who, or what, or why—"

  "Or when," he murmured.

  "Or when," she agreed. "All we can do is our best, and do it as quickly as possible."

  Among the scattered buildings at Simidi-ala was a small stone house occupied by Thosby Anent, the Alliance agent, and by Chadra Tsum, a Dinadhi woman. The moment Thosby took up residence, everyone in Simidi-ala knew what he was, for everyone knew who Chadra Tsum was, and she was assigned as his housekeeper. Chadra was an agent for Simidi-ala, assigned to find out things, which she did with one hand while busily keeping Thosby's house with the other. All in all, the functionaries of the Edge were thankful that Alliance interference was limited to one elderly individual, known to be addicted to imported tobaccos and liqueurs, who was, even when sober, more otiose than diligent.