“No, you do. You inspire groundless hopes.”
“In whom?”
“In me. You have weakened my will, Don Rumata. I used to only rely on myself, and now you’ve made me feel your power behind me. I used to lead every battle as if it were my last. And now I’ve noticed that I save myself for other battles, which will be decisive because you will stand beside me. Leave this place, Don Rumata. Go back to the sky and never come back. Either give us your lightning, or at least your iron bird, or even simply draw your swords and lead us.”
Arata stopped talking and reached for the bread again. Rumata kept looking at his fingers, which no longer had any nails. The nails had been torn out with a special device two years ago by Don Reba himself. You still don’t know everything, thought Rumata. You still believe that you are the only one doomed to be defeated. You still don’t know how hopeless your cause itself is. You still don’t know that the enemy isn’t so much outside your soldiers as within them. You might still overthrow the Order—the wave of peasant rebellion will throw you onto the throne of Arkanar, you will level the castles of the noblemen, you’ll drown the barons in the Strait, and the insurgents will honor you as the great liberator. And you will be kind and wise—the only kind and wise person in your kingdom. And along the way, you will begin to give away land to your associates, and what will your associates do with land without serfs? And the wheel will start spinning the other direction. And you’ll be lucky if you manage to pass away before the new counts and barons emerge out of yesterday’s loyal fighters. That has already happened, my worthy Arata, both on Earth and on this planet.
“No response?” asked Arata. He pushed his plate away and swept the crumbs off the table with the sleeve of his cassock. “Once I had a friend,” he said. “You’ve probably heard of him—Waga the Wheel. We had begun together. Then he became a bandit, the king of the night. I didn’t forgive him for his treason, and he knew it. He had helped me a lot—out of fear and self-interest—but he never did want to come back. He had his own goals. Two years ago his people gave me up to Don Reba.” He looked at his fingers and curled them into a fist. “And today I found him in the Port of Arkanar. In our business, there’s no such thing as half a friend. Half a friend—that’s always half an enemy.” He got up and pulled the hood over his eyes. “Is the gold in its usual place, Don Rumata?”
“Yes,” Rumata said slowly, “it’s in its usual place.”
“Then I will go. Thank you, Don Rumata.”
He silently walked through the study and disappeared through the door. The bolt clanged softly in the entrance hall below.
Here’s one more thing to worry about, thought Rumata. How in the world did he get into the house?
Chapter 10
The Drunken Lair was relatively clean. The floor was carefully swept, the table was scrubbed to whiteness, and there were bundles of forest grass and twigs in the corner for fragrance. Father Cabani was primly sitting on a bench in the corner, sober and quiet, his clean hands folded in his lap. As they waited for Budach to fall asleep, they talked about nothing in particular. Budach, sitting at the table next to Rumata, listened to the mindless chatter of the noble dons with a benevolent smile and from time to time would give a start, dozing off. His hollow cheeks were burning from a vast dose of tetraluminal that had been discreetly mixed into his drink. The old man was very excited and was having trouble falling asleep. The impatient Don Gug was bending and unbending a camel shoe underneath the table, managing, however, to keep an expression of cheerful ease on his face. Rumata was crumbling bread and watching with tired interest as Don Condor slowly filled with bile: the Keeper of the Great Seals was nervous, because he was late for the emergency night session of the Conference of the Twelve Merchants dedicated to the revolution in Arkanar, at which he was supposed to preside.
“My noble friends!” Doctor Budach finally said in a ringing voice, stood up, and fell on Rumata.
Rumata gently put an arm around his shoulders.
“Is he done?” asked Don Condor.
“He won’t wake up until the morning,” Rumata said. He lifted Budach in his arms and carried him to Father Cabani’s bed.
Father Cabani said enviously, “So the doctor can indulge, huh, and Father Cabani can’t? It’s bad for him, huh? That’s not fair!”
“I have a quarter of an hour,” Don Condor said in Russian.
“I’ll only need five minutes,” answered Rumata, barely managing to control his irritation. “I’ve told you so much about it before that I might only need a minute. In full accordance with the basis theory of feudalism,” he furiously looked Don Condor in the eye, “this commonplace rebellion of the citizens against the barony,” he shifted his gaze to Don Gug, “turned into a provocative intrigue by the Holy Order and resulted in the transformation of Arkanar into a base of feudal-fascist aggression. We’ve been racking our brains, vainly trying to squeeze the complicated, contradictory, enigmatic figure of our eagle Don Reba into the ranks of Richelieu, Necker, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Monck, and he turned out to be a petty hoodlum and an idiot! He betrayed and sold out everyone he could, got tangled up in his own schemes, got scared to death, and ran to the Holy Order to be saved. In half a year he’ll be slaughtered, and the Order will remain. The consequences of this for the Land Beyond the Strait, and then for the empire as a whole, I shudder to think about. In any case, the entire twenty years of work within the empire has gone down the drain. There will be no room to maneuver under the Holy Order. Budach is probably the last man I’ll save. There will be no one left. I’m done.”
Don Gug finally broke the camel shoe and threw the halves into a corner. “Yes, we dropped the ball,” he said. “Maybe it’s not that bad, Anton?”
Rumata just looked at him.
“You should have removed Don Reba,” Don Condor said suddenly.
“What do you mean, ‘removed’?”
Don Condor’s face broke out in red spots. “Physically!” he said sharply.
Rumata sat down. “You mean killed?”
“Yes. Yes! Yes! Killed! Kidnapped! Replaced! Imprisoned! You should have acted. Not sought the advice of two idiots who didn’t understand a damn thing about what was going on.”
“I didn’t understand a damn thing either.”
“At least you felt something.”
Everyone was silent.
“Was it like the Barkan massacre?” Don Condor asked in a low voice, looking to the side.
“Yes, approximately. But more organized.”
Don Condor bit his lip. “It’s now too late to remove him?” he asked.
“It’s pointless,” said Rumata. “First of all, he’ll be removed without us, and second of all, it’s not even necessary. He, at least, is under my control.”
“How so?”
“He’s afraid of me. He guesses that there’s power behind me. He’s already even offered to cooperate.”
“Yes?” Don Condor grumbled. “Then there’s no need.”
Don Gug asked, stammering a little, “Come on, comrades, are you serious?”
“About what?” asked Don Condor.
“Well, all of this. Killing, physically removing… Come on, have you gone insane?”
“The noble don has been struck in the heel,” Rumata said very quietly.
Don Condor said slowly and emphatically, “Extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary measures.”
Don Gug, moving his lips, looked back and forth between them. “D-Do you… Do you know what this could come to?” he asked. “D-Do you understand what this could come to, huh?”
“Calm down, please,” Don Condor said. “Nothing is going to happen. Enough about that for now. What are we going to do about the Order? I propose a blockade of the Arkanarian region. Your opinion, comrades? And be quick, I’m in a hurry.”