The Visitor

  And now he’d told her he would meet with her boss, who Dismé had called a good man. Did she know? Was she guessing? Or worse, was she taking it on faith. Or worse yet, was he something more to her than a boss? Despite his doubts, when morning came he kept the date with Colonel Doctor Ladislav, who glanced up to wave him to a chair.

  “Sit,” he said.

  Michael sat.

  The Colonel Doctor remarked, “Understand you’re a good man with horses.”

  “I was raised in that business, sir. Father’s a horse breeder, over along the Praise border.”

  “Did Dismé tell you what we’re going to be doing?”

  “Traveling, she said. I didn’t really get…”

  “Well, she doesn’t get it either.” He lowered his voice. “There are only a few of us who ah…explore up near the border. Prospecting, really. Finding things we can use. You wouldn’t mind going along?”

  Michael flushed and said, stiffly, “Sir, I heard a good bit about BHE traveling when I worked for the BHE in Apocanew. The men…they seemed to take a good deal of pleasure in it, but…”

  “Oh,” murmured the doctor. He rose, went to the door and shut it quietly. “You’re thinking of that kind of traveling. Going outside and kidnapping youngsters? Raping women before torturing them to death? Killing off this one and that one? Maybe drunken orgies thrown in, to bond the men together? Eh?”

  “Yes, sir.” And he gave the Colonel Doctor a straight look. “That kind of pack hunting, it doesn’t sit well with me, sir.”

  “Nor me,” murmured the older man. “You know why they allow it, don’t you? It defuses aggression. The Regime wants aggression used up out there, not in here. I would prefer to train it out or breed it out of our people, but my preference doesn’t govern. If a society thinks it needs weapons, it must accept killing. If it thinks it needs violent men, it must accept rapine and assault.”

  Michael found himself nodding. “I didn’t like to think of Miss Dismé in that kind of…affair.”

  “No. You like her, do you?”

  Michael kept his face carefully attentive, but only that, as he said, “I admire her, sir. Up there at Faience, she was like…like an owl among a clutter of hens.”

  The doctor blinked. He hadn’t thought of Dismé in quite that light. “Her sister—step-sister. A hen?”

  “No, sir. Not her. That one is a shrike. Cripple you and hang you out on the thorn tree to eat later.”

  “I see. Are you willing to leave your current job?”

  “You’ll have to requisition me, sir. This Turnaway bravo, he won’t just let me go. He doesn’t bear inconvenience.”

  “Which one is he?”

  Michael said, “Gars Kensy Turnaway.”

  The doctor made a face. “Another by-blow from on high. I think my requisition will suffice, nonetheless. Here’s how to find my quarters. Be there around noon.”

  “Your quarters, sir?”

  “Except for this one encounter, I don’t want you to be seen with me or coming and going from where I am. There’s a spy planted in my office, and I don’t want him getting his hands on anything real. When you get near my quarters, be sure no one is hanging about before you slip in. The door will be unlocked.”

  Michael blinked at that. It was a strange thing to say, unless, that is, the doctor knew more about him than he was letting on. “My duties, sir?”

  “Oh. This and that. You have my word that nothing you do for me will offend your conscience.” Jens wrote out a requisition slip, signed it with a fine flourish, and patted Michael on the shoulder before he opened the door. “I’m relying on your discretion, Pigeon.”

  “Who’s that?” demanded Captain Trublood.

  “Nobody much,” the doctor answered, yawning. “Someone reputed to be good with horses. The vet service needs some new men.” Which Captain Trublood knew, because he had been filing requisitions for the veterinarian service all span.

  “Ah,” said the captain, losing interest. Captain Trublood had lost interest in most facets of his job, which seemed to be either doing paperwork, running errands any ten-year-old could run, or following the doctor to see where he went. So far as Captain Trublood could tell, Jens Ladislav was just what he said he was, despite that almost heretical conversation they’d had.

  The doctor returned to his office where he added Michael’s putative veterinary service application to a huge pile of documents and then carried the pile out to the captain.

  “Trublood, I have some things that need to be filed,” said the doctor, with his usual pleasant smile. “I hate to ask you to do them…” his voice fell to a whisper. “…but quite frankly, you’re the only one here I can depend upon to do it absolutely accurately. While you’re doing so, look through them so you’ll have a grasp of the contents.”

  “What are they, sir,” murmured the captain, momentarily gratified.

  “All manner of things. Chair specifications. Agreements we’ve had in the past with our…suppliers. Inventories. Files on my informants. Staff assignments. That sort of thing, you know? Some of it not for the eyes of people who aren’t rock solid, you know.” He gave the captain a half wink and a nod.

  “Of course. Yes sir.”

  The doctor had spent part of one night collecting this pile from the stored files in the sub-basement. He had dusted them off, rearranged them, put some of the material in the wrong folders, invented several new folders to which he had added spurious documents concerning his movements and Dismé’s future assignments, plus an assignment sheet of Michael Pigeon to the Regime Horse Farm in Praise. He had capped it off by making a number of mysteriously significant notations on documents of no significance at all. It should take the captain several days to go through all this, sort it out, make up his spy report for the Colonel Bishop, and then find the right places to put them all back. When the doctor left Bastion, he would leave a long list of other useless work for the captain to do.

  Now, however, as a kind of capstone to this stratagem, he asked, “Oh, by the way, are congratulations in order?”

  “For what, sir?”

  “Oh, isn’t there something about you and the bishop’s daughter? Which one are you marrying? Mavia? Lorena?”

  The captain turned a peculiar shade of green and swallowed with some difficulty. “No sir. I’m sure you’re mistaken, sir.”

  “Oh. Well, sorry then. I was sure the bishop told me he’d picked you out, but perhaps he meant someone else.” And with a repeat of his charming smile, the doctor retreated. He had actually heard it from his barber, who had it from Scilla’s maid, who had it from Scilla, who had it from the bishop’s wife, but that was of no matter.

  The captain went to the toilets, where he shut himself in and put his head down. He had met both Mavia and Lorena. He regarded being married to either of them as equivalent to being married to the bishop himself, whom they much resembled, right down to the moustache. Either of the ladies outweighed the captain by a considerable margin. Mavia had a squint, and Lorena was afflicted with continuous catarrh. He could not possibly do a husbandly and Regimic duty by either of them. It was time, perhaps, that he develop some kind of physical problem. Something hereditary. Something the doctor could mention to the bishop that would make him ineligible for the great honor the bishop had in mind.

  Michael, meantime, made his way back to the house of Gars Kensy Turnaway, bastard son of the bishop and a Turnaway madwoman, presented his requisition, listened to the Turnaway git whine about it, then packed his things, which took only a few moments as he hadn’t liked the place well enough to unpack. He found a hostelry near the Fortress, the same one Dismé occupied for a few days on arrival in Hold, and at the appointed time was at Jens Ladislav’s quarters—walking past but not entering the last hallway until it was totally empty—where he shared a glass of wine with the doctor while the doctor explained his plans for almost immediate departure, information not to be shared with anyone except Dismé, said the doctor, particularly not with anyon
e in the doctor’s outer office.

  Perhaps imprudently, Michael asked, “Why do you figure they’re watching you, sir?”

  “Don’t they watch us all?”

  And with that, Michael had to be content. He was given a rather large purse and sent off with a great list of things to be bought and done and accomplished within the next day and a half. On his way out, he encountered Dismé in the vast main hallway and mentioned his errand. “We’re leaving morning after next, is that it?”

  Dismé nodded. “Yes, because Rashel is coming to Hold, tomorrow.”

  “Rashel! You’re not going to meet with her!”

  “The Doctor will be there. I think he has something surprising arranged.”

  He scowled and muttered. “I’ve known men like the doctor, people who will stir things up. I hope it’s not he—or you—who gets the surprise. Be careful, Dis.”

  The need for this was so obvious it required no answer. She left him, with a brave smile which was not entirely faked, knowing he was right; the doctor was like a boy pushing a stick between the bars at a huge, caged beast. Sometimes beasts broke the bars that held them. She would be well-advised to keep that in mind.

  33

  dezmai of the drums

  And what is he up to, Colonel Doctor Jens Ladislav? What wicked thoughts percolate in his eager brain, what mischief is he turning his hands to? His prancing feet dance a razor’s edge between the rigors of the Regime and his perception of the preposterous, an inborn and thus inescapable discernment which should have gotten him bottled long ago. The Regime does not allow itself to be thought ridiculous, and it is only the unaccountability of fate, thinks he, that is responsible for his impunity thus far.

  So, aha, says he, there’s this body that calls itself a Guardian Council, a body—so one is told—that maketh much magic, which magic the Regime has sought for a very long time, with only intermittent success—that is, if one doesn’t count the kind of practices General Gowl is probably accomplished at. And so, ahum, there’s this thing in the Fortress cellar that seems magical enough for whole rafts of sorcery, and also a sorcerous book that he, and himself alone, has found. And finally, aaah, there’s this woman Dismé, who, providentially and damn near miraculously, has turned out to be not at all weird or tongue-tied, as described by Major Marchant, but a sensible woman who has agreed to work with him.

  Now, thinks the doctor, Dismé has a sister, an inimical and dangerous kinswoman—not really kin, there’s no shared blood—who nonetheless continues to assert a kinswoman’s claims of courtesy and friendly-feeling with no return of same on her side. Also, the sister is an Inexplicable Arts functionary of the BHE, who talks a good line of jargon that the mossy-mouths in Hold have fallen for, or into, whichever! Most likely she’s coaxed them into her web with sexual wiles, for Major Marchant has that look about him, and according to the doctor’s spies, the major is not alone in sharing Rashel’s favors. The Warden of the College of Sorcery in Apocanew, Bice Dufor, has been mentioned, as well as Chief of the Department of Inexplicable Arts, the great Ardis Flenstall himself, which would explain why Selectivism has become so popular at BHE in such a very short time.

  And, chortles the Colonel Doctor, if this concatenation of persons and motives and myths isn’t a wonderful opportunity for mischief, then he’ll be a demon’s uncle.

  So down goes the Colonel Doctor by the main stairs, bowing to this one and that one, always smiling that wicked smile of his, the consequence of being born with lips that will not turn down, not so much as a smitch, not even in those times when he would trade his eyebrows for a good scowl. As for instance now, when a forbidding expression would save him a good deal of time spent in idle chit-chat and greetings when he is afire to leave the Fortress and get on with his conniving. He has shopping to do!

  So, it’s down the cobbled street leading from the Fortress, long enough to note if he’s being followed, which, today, he is not; then off to one side a couple of times this way and that, and then a straight trot along an alley where, half hidden behind a display of masks and bonnets, is the lair of Madame Ladassa Veyair, a dealer in wigs and costumes (sold mostly to Praisers), and, by virtue of long experience, an expert in disguise. The doctor often has need of disguise in his line of work and he has made a close friend of Madame Veyair by helping Madame’s people slip back and forth across the borders of Bastion. Madame and her people count themselves as rebels and could be chaired in a minute or bottled in less than that if the Regime knew what they were up to. It is in the doctor’s interest to be sure the Regime never catches on.

  Once inside, the Colonel Doctor, with a conspiratorial glance at the closed door of the shop, slips from beneath his cape the blocky shape of the book and moves toward the small office at the rear on jigging feet, beckoning Madame Veyair to follow. There he opens the book and points, eyes alight at her expression.

  She sees a woman wearing a complicated headdress of unmistakably arcane significance, all gilt and glass, with beaded tassels that hang about the ears; a woman whose forehead is painted a brilliant blue that shades to green along her jaws; a woman whose eyebrows, eyelids, lips, and hands have been gilded; who wears a long, high-necked dress of shiny blue and a sweeping velvety cape patterned all over in blue, green, and gold.

  “Who?” asks Madame, with what amazement she can summon, not a great deal. Madame has seen more of the world than would be supposed. “Who is this? Or, more likely, who is she who is to be got up to look like this?”

  “The latter, a woman who works for me.”

  She purses her lips, running a finger along the page that describes Dezmai of the Drums. “Is she at all like this?”

  “She is, I think, a mirror to this.” He looks upward in innocent wonderment, eyes wide, miming his own marvel.

  “And what is the so-what of that?”

  Now he focuses, whispering: “Sorcery, Madame. She is, I believe, a gateway into sorcery. Perhaps merely to a rivulet running from a sourceary, or a wee spigot from the mother of all barrels, or perhaps…”

  “I understand,” she crisply interrupts this flow. “When?”

  “The garb will have to be ready by tomorrow noon. We leave Hold early the following morning.”

  “What size is she?” she asks, busily making notes between glances at the pictured Dezmai.

  “She comes to here on me,” he says, placing his hand just below his chin. He is a tall man, indicating a taller than average woman. “Slender. Not a lot of…chest or hip. She says she climbs trees a lot.” Again his eyes are dancing as he contemplates Dismé up a tree.

  “With a free stride, then? And an erect posture.” More notes, referring to color, to size. A quick sketch of the headdress, done in colored inks, all within moments.

  “Exactly.”

  She hesitates, fixes him with imperious eyes. “Jens. You’ve given me barely enough time. Before I stretch myself and my people, tell me you’re not imperiling this woman for your own amusement.”

  For a moment, his dancing eyes grow wary, his prancing feet grow still. “I would never do so, Ladassa. Not this woman.”

  “And you do not want anyone else to know about this?”

  “Oh, we will all be much, much safer if no one else knows anything about this.”

  “I have notes enough. My memory is acute. We will bring the costume to your quarters before noon tomorrow.”

  “Do not be seen, Ladassa.”

  “You have trustworthy helpers, Jens. So do I.”

  “A final trifle,” he said, with a bow. “For myself I need a farmer’s outfit with a full beard, and paint for a horse, and for her a cloak, one that will cover her from head to toe.”

  After a virtually sleepless night, Dismé spent the morning cleaning her quarters and packing for the journey, reporting for work in early afternoon by going up the back stairway and entering the doctor’s apartment from the residential corridor, thus avoiding Captain Trublood’s minatory eye. So far, the captain had no reason to take an
y real notice of her. She was plain, she was seldom around and when present was always laden with dusty papers.

  The doctor was waiting for her inside, with a strange expression on his face. His hand rested on a rather large box.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, thinking immediately of Rashel.

  “Nothing at the moment,” he said, “beyond the usual wrongness that permeates most everything under the Regime.” He guided her to a chair and seated himself across from her, regarding her with a curious combination of curiosity and daring.

  “I need to discuss something with you seriously.”

  “Very well.”

  “You must not take offense.”

  “I will endeavor not to do so.”

  “Um,” he said, and again, “Um. Have you ever…have you ever thought that you might be someone else? Some other woman?”

  “What woman?” Dismé asked in astonishment. “Who?”

  “I have found a picture of a woman who looks remarkably like you, but she’s called Dezmai of the Drums.”

  “Dezmai? But that’s…”

  “I know. Very close to your own name. Even more interesting—a fact which I have found out only recently, due to diligent, even exhausting labors—is the fact that your father, Dismé, may have been great-great something grandson of Abnozar Latimer, whose drumming signalled the danger at Trekker’s Halt and saved the lives of a great many people.” He cocked his head, to see how she took this.

  She took it with a grain of salt. “He never mentioned it,” she murmured.

  He shrugged. “It is interesting, nonetheless. The picture resembles you greatly.”

  “Who is this person supposed to be?”

  “A member of the Guardian Council.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “You’re making an outrageous joke?”

  “No. I have a book picturing the members of the Guardian Council…”

  She put out her hands, fending him off. “No one has ever had a picture of the Council! The Dicta say we have angels, so we don’t need Guardians, and while I don’t necessarily believe that, nobody’s ever seen the so-called Council…”