The thirty thieves sheathed their swords and swaggered out of the hall, clearly pleased with themselves. Tom threw his mask onto the floor, sheathed his own sword and hurried out after them. He decided he didn’t have time to change out of his white fencing clothes.
He made his furtive way down a little-used alley that opened onto a stairway, which he followed down two flights. Moored to an ancient stone dock was a small skiff, in the bottom of which lay two oars, a wide-bladed axe and a bound and gagged man. Tom hopped in, shoved the tied man aside, loosed the rope and pushed away from the dock with an oar.
“So far so good,” he whispered nervously to the terrified prisoner. “Frank will get there about an hour after you and I do. Ha ha! You’re helping me into a high-paying Transport job, pal, so I guess the least I can do is kill you quick.”
Tom had decided that the way to handle this evening’s unthinkable work would be to evict his real personality and become, just for tonight, the kind of cold-eyed killer he had always admired in books; and he had found, to his somewhat uneasy surprise, that it wasn’t too difficult to numb his mind and act automatically, without thinking. I’ll just be a machine until this is over with, he kept telling himself.
The boat skimmed smoothly down the torch-lit Leethee tide, and none of the scavengers and beggars they passed gave the skiff a second look. Soon they passed through the last stone arch and found themselves in the harbor. The sun was only a hairsbreadth clear of the ocean’s horizon, and the sky was a cathedral of terraced red-and-gold clouds against a background of pale blue.
“We’re timing it well, my friend,” Tom said, grinning jerkily as he turned the boat north. “Old Redbrick’s ship ought to be just lowering anchor beyond the jetty. I’ll kill you, knock out poor Frank, cut out his tongue and eyes and row him out to the ship.” Tom thought he must have caught some subterranean ailment—he was nauseous and tense, and it required a constant effort to keep his eyes focused. “Redbrick will give me a hundred malories and take Frank away to the Tamarisk Isles. I’ll take your headless body to Duprey, and tell him it’s Frank, and he’ll give me a job. Everybody does well except you, I guess. And, hell, a slave is probably happier dead anyway, right?” The slave moaned through his gag. “That’s right,” agreed Tom.
He worked the boat north, around the anchored merchant ships, until Frank’s boat came into view. He pulled alongside it, relieved to see no other boats moored there.
“Up you go.” Tom cackled, hoisting the slave like an awkward piece of lumber onto the deck. He followed, carrying the axe. “Okay, you just lay there for a minute. This is complicated, I admit, but if we all do our parts it’ll work out fine.”
The slave turned his face despairingly to the cabin wall. Tom shrugged, put down the axe and went to the door, which was locked; he kicked it open and hurried into Frank’s room, where he picked up a gray shirt, a sword, a pair of shoes and a pair of white corduroy pants. He bundled these together and went out on deck again.
The bound slave still faced the wall, so Tom quietly set the clothes on the deck and picked up the axe. He raised it over his head, aiming at the man’s neck. He stood that way for a while, squinting at the horizon as if trying to remember something. Then his attention returned to his surroundings, and with a hearty grunt he swung the axe down with all the force he could add to the thing’s own weight, and he crouched as he struck to keep the blow perpendicular. He stood up a moment later, rocked the blood-splashed axe blade loose from the deck-wood it had bitten into, and flung it overboard. The severed head he tied in a canvas bag weighted with two sextants, which he also tossed over the side.
He cut the ropes loose from the body and stripped it of its clothes, and then pulled Frank’s pants and shirt onto it. The shoes were difficult—he pushed them and pounded on the slave’s feet, but to no avail. He finally tossed the shoes into the sea. The sword clipped easily onto the belt, and Tom stood up dizzily.
He picked up the slave’s bloodstained clothes, wrapped a large fishing sinker in them, and threw that bundle, too, into the water. It’s a messy ocean floor tonight, he thought crazily. I wonder how often the cleaning lady comes.
He stumbled to the bow and sat down in one of the canvas deck chairs to await Frank’s arrival. The sun was in Tom’s eyes; no matter how he blinked and shifted his gaze he frequently got an eyeful of glare. Black spots floated through his vision. For this reason he didn’t notice the approaching rowboat until it was only about fifty yards away.
“Oh no,” he muttered. He stood up and waved, and then dashed back behind the cabin, crouched beside the headless body and rolled it over the rail into the sea. “I’ll fish you out again real soon,” he giggled. Then he ran back to the bow and waved again, smiling broadly.
“That’s him,” said one of the three men in the boat. “Look at him waving at us, all dressed in white. He must have mistaken us for someone.”
“Yeah,” agreed another. “I wonder why he ran away when he first saw us, though? Do you think it’s a trap?”
“I don’t know,” said the third. “Best not to get too close, anyway. Move in ten yards more and I’ll pitch a bomb at him.”
A minute later the third man stood up, lit the fuse of a shot-put-sized bomb and hurled it at the larger boat. Tom still stood on the bow, waving. A moment later an explosion tore a hole in the cabin and flung pieces of lumber spinning through the air. The roar of the detonation echoed off the shore, and a cloud of smoke and wood splinters hung over the blasted vessel.
“Let’s circle and look for the body,” growled the man in the stem. The little rowboat made an unhurried circle around the smoking boat, and near the stem they found a headless body floating. They pulled it aboard.
“That’s him all right. Odd the way the bomb just took his head off and left the rest of him untouched, though.”
“Who cares?” said another. “It’s him. Look, there’s one of his shoes floating there. I’ve seen bombs do that. Let’s get his body back to Costa quickly, and get paid.” The other two nodded, and the one at the oars began leaning into his work.
AN hour later Frank wearily tied up his own rowboat next to Tom’s at the stem and climbed aboard. “Tom?” he called. “Sorry I’m late. Business, you know. Tom?” It was just light enough to see, and he looked in shock at the wreckage of his boat.
“Tom!” he shouted. “Where are you?” He leaped inside the cabin—and stared at the chaos he found. The bulkhead between the cabin and his own stateroom was split; the air was thick with the smell of gunpowder; his bed and desk lay shattered in the broken doorway, and stretched across this wreckage was a body. Frank crossed to it warily, and stared at the face.
He was just able to recognize it as Tom Strand’s.
Frank backed out of the cabin and sat down heavily on the deck. My father, he thought. Orcrist. Blanchard. And now Tom. I’m poison to my friends, beyond doubt.
After a while he stood up and stared out to sea, where a ship beyond the jetty was unfurling its sails and tacking south.
It must be the Transports who did this, Frank thought. They must have found out I was coming here frequently, and thought Tom was me. He went below and carried four bottles of Tamarisk brandy into the cabin, then broke them on the floor. After he dropped a lit match into the aromatic puddle and heard it whoosh alight, he strode out onto the deck, climbed into his rowboat and cast off.
HODGES lit a cigarette nervously. He liked times of quiet prosperity, leisure to spend untroubled days with his family and cats. It upset him to scent doom in the air, and tonight it almost masked the tobacco reek in his nostrils. He watched gloomily as Frank poured himself a fifth glass of scotch.