Paper lanterns, red, green and yellow, glowed everywhere, casting a dim fantastic radiance. By their fitful light were visible several ponderous, ribbon-hung barges rocking in the water, each one piloted by a tall, hooded gondolier who carried a long punting pole. Frank waved at the nearest boatman and the man pushed his barge to the padded dock.
“Passage for two,” Frank told him, “to Quartz Lane and back.”
“Two malories,” said the pilot. Frank handed him the five and got change. He helped Kathrin aboard, and they sat close together on the wide leather seat in the bow while the gondolier pushed away from the dock. Frank trailed the fingers of his left hand in the cool water, and eventually put his right arm around Kathrin, who obligingly snuggled up under his chin.
Neither of them spoke as the barge drifted down the tunnel; the only sound was the soft bump of the pilot’s pole as he corrected the barge’s course from time to time. As the distance grew between them and the dock, the paper lanterns became fewer; soon they were in total darkness. Then, gradually, dim moonlight began to filter through cracks and holes in the ancient masonry that passed by over their heads, for Timog Canal, in several places, reached the surface, and the roof that had been built over it in such places was in bad repair. Some of the holes were a foot across, and the stars were plainly visible; and once Frank saw, like a thin chalk line across a distant blackboard, the luminous vapor trail of a Transport freighter hanging in the night sky.
Without premeditation Frank leaned over and kissed Kathrin, and was half surprised to find that she didn’t object. Afterward she rested her head on his chest and he thoughtfully stroked her long brown hair.
At Quartz Lane, an abandoned stretch of once stately houses, the pilot laboriously turned the barge around and began working his way back up the slow stream, the thumping of his pole sounding regularly now, like a pulse.
When Frank got back to Orcrist’s place he found a courier nodding sleepily in the easy chair. It was after midnight.
“Are you ... uh ... Francisco de Goya Rovzar?” the courier asked as Frank shed his coat.
“Yes. Why?”
“I have a letter for you from his majesty King Blanchard, and I’ve got to deliver it directly into your hands. Here. Now goodnight.” Abruptly the courier put on his hat and left.
“Goodnight,” said Frank automatically. Blanchard wrote a letter to me! He remembered his only sight of the old king, burly and white-bearded and gruff, at the first meeting of the Subterranean Companions he had attended.
He broke the seal and unfolded the letter.
My dear Rovzar; I would be very pleased if you would drop round my chambers on Cochran Street this Thursday for the purpose of discussing and perhaps demonstrating fencing techniques.
I hear from various acquaintances that you are very good.
—BLANCHARD
Well, by God, thought Frank. It’s quite the social climber I’m becoming. I’ll show this to Orcrist in the morning. Right now all I want to do is sleep.
He put the letter on the table and stumbled off to bed. He woke up once during the night when a deep, echoing rumble shook the building; but it had stopped by the time he came fully awake, and so he just rolled over and went back to sleep.
THE next morning Frank put on his smoking jacket and wandered out to the breakfast room. The table was empty.
“Pons!” Frank called hoarsely. “Dammit, Pons! Where’s my breakfast, you lazy weasel?” He knew Pons hated to be yelled at.
Orcrist entered the room. It was the first time Frank had ever seen him unshaven. Something, clearly, has happened, Frank told himself.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“All kinds of things, Frank.” Orcrist sat down and rubbed his eyes tiredly. “There was a demonstration last night on the surface, near Seventh and Shank. Shopkeepers or something, a whole crowd, hollering and demanding that Costa break all connections with the Transport. And from somewhere, God knows where, came flying an airplane with the Transport insignia. The damned thing circled the square where this demonstration was taking place, twice, and then dropped a bomb right in the middle of it.”
“A bomb?” Frank was incredulous.
“That’s right. Wiped out most of the shopkeepers, of course, but more to the point it tore a hole through four understreet levels, and caused collapses in five below that. The Companions alone have lost an estimated hundred members. Pons’s wife was among the casualties.”
“Pons was married?”
“Yes, he was. She went insane about four years ago and was committed. He put her in an old asylum up on Seventh; this explosion shook loose the roof of her cell.”
“Bad business,” said Frank.
“You could say so. Well then”—Orcrist looked up at him—“any news on the home front?”
“Oh, yes! There is.” Frank went into the next room and got the letter from Blanchard. “Look at this.”
Orcrist blinked over the letter for a minute, then put it down. “Not bad, Frank,” he said. “I guess fencing has been your true calling all along.”
“Maybe so.” Frank stepped to the kitchen door. “Wait two minutes and I’ll make some eggs and toast and coffee,” he said.
“Thank you, Frank,” said Orcrist. “Why don’t you throw some rum in the coffee, eh?”
“Aye aye.”
Later in the morning Frank went to see the crater where the bomb had fallen. He approached it from a little alley about two levels below the surface, so that when he stood on the alley’s crumbling lip he could look down into a rubble-and-debris strewn valley in which workmen stumbled about, or up at the blue sky framed by the ragged outlines of the crater. Curls of smoke eddied up from the wreckage below, and fire hoses on the surface streets were sending arching streams of water into the abyss.
SIX men were in Orcrist’s sitting room when Frank returned; they wore muddy jeans and boots, and had a wet, mildewy smell about them.
“Who's the kid?” growled one of them, jerking his thumb in Frank’s direction.
“Partner of mine,” said Orcrist, who strode in from the hallway, knotting a scarf around his neck. “Hullo Frank. We’re going to go drop bricks on a party of Transport sewer-explorers. Want to come along?”
“Sure, I guess so. What is it you’re going to do?”
“Oh, the Transport cops are puzzled by all the underground tunnels this bomb has revealed. They didn’t know the understreet city extended that far. They’d be surprised if they knew how far it does extend! Anyway, they’re sending exploring crews down into the crater to follow any tunnels they find and arrest whoever gets in their way. So we’re going to go impede them.”
“Yeah, I’ll help.”
“Good. Get a sealskin jacket and boots; there are three branches of the Leethee spewing around down there looking for new channels. And take a good hunting knife out of that closet. There’ll be no room for swords, but there’s always room for a knife.”
Frank quickly slipped into a jacket and boots and put a knitted wool cap on his head. Then, after selecting a sturdy knife, he was ready to go.
The eight of them left Orcrist’s place silently and strode away down the low, torch-lit corridors. Bands of furtive, hurrying men were no unusual sight in the understreet city, and Orcrist and his companions caused no comment. They made their way northwest, filing down narrow walkways, going up and down stairs and walking along the sidewalks of big streets. These were areas unfamiliar to Frank, and he made sure to follow the others closely.