“He was here waiting. He forced me—” Besi began. Gardeterark brought up his gloved hand, which featured several buttons, and struck her across the face.
“You are hiding this deserter on the premises,” he said. He took a step towards Odim, at no time glancing at the girl, who had subsided against the wall, clutching her mouth.
Gardeterark produced from one of his boxes a pistol, and pointed it at Odim’s stomach. “You are under arrest, Odim, you foreign sherb. Take me to where you are concealing Fashnalgid.”
Odim clutched his beard. Although the sight of Besi being struck had frightened him with its violence, it had also stiffened his resolve. He gave the major a blank stare.
“I don’t know who you mean.”
Prominent yellow teeth came into view, framed between lips which immediately squeezed shut again. It was the major’s patent way of smiling.
“You know who I mean. He lodged with you. He went on an expedition into Chalce with this woman of yours, no doubt with your connivance. He is to be arrested for desertion. A wharf hand witnessed him come in here. Lead me to him or I’ll have you taken to headquarters for questioning.”
Odim stepped back.
“I’ll take you to him.”
At the far end of the gallery was a door into the rear areas of the building. As Gardeterark followed Odim, he pushed aside one of the tables obstructing his easy passage. The chinaware fell to the floor and shattered.
Odim made no sign. He signalled Gagrim forward. “Unlock this door.”
“Your slave can stay behind,” Gardeterark said.
“He carries the keys during the day.”
The keys were in Gagrim’s pocket, secured by a chain to his belt. He unlocked the door with trembling hand, letting the two men through.
They were in a passage leading to the rear offices. Odim led the way. They went down the passage and turned left, where four steps led up to a metal door. Odim gestured to the slave to unlock it. An especially large key was needed.
Once through it, they emerged on a balcony overlooking a yard. Most of the yard was occupied by cartloads of wood and two old-fashioned kilns. The kilns were generally unused; one was at present being fired to meet an emergency order from the local garrison, for whom no great finesse was needed. Otherwise, most of the Odim porcelain came from companies situated elsewhere in Koriantura. Four company phagors stood about, tending the active kiln. It was old and inefficiently insulated, and the heat and smoke from it filled the yard.
“Well?” Gardeterark prompted as Odim hesitated.
“He’s in a loft over there,” Odim said, pointing across the yard. Their balcony was connected to the loft he indicated by a catwalk which spanned the yard. It was almost as ancient as the kilns below; its single wooden railing was rickety and sooted up by smoke from below.
Odim started cautiously across the catwalk. Halfway across, as the smoke billowed up, he paused, steadying himself with one hand on the rail. “I’m feeling ill … I’d better go back,” he said, turning towards the major. “Look at the kiln.”
Eedap Mun Odim was not a violent man. All his life, he had hated force. Even signs of anger disgusted him—his own anger not least. He had schooled himself to politeness and obedience, following the ex- ample of his parents. Now he threw away his training. He brought his arms round with a wide swinging movement, hands clasped together, and as Gardeterark glanced down, caught him on the back of his neck.
“Gagrim!” Odim called. His slave never moved.
Gardeterark staggered with his side against the rail and tried to bring up the gun. Odim kicked him on the knee and butted him in the chest. The officer seemed twice his size, the greatcoat impenetrable.
He heard the rail crack, heard the revolver explode, felt Gardeterark begin to fall, dropped to the catwalk on hands and knees to save himself from going too.
Gardeterark gave a terrible cry as he fell.
Odim watched him go, arms flailing, his animal mouth open. It was not far to fall. He hit the middle of the dual-chamber kiln which was being fired. The roof of the kiln was strewn with loose brick and rubble. Cracks ran across it, widening, flaring red. As the heat came up, Odim pulled himself flat on the catwalk to avoid burning.
Screaming, the major made an attempt to get to his feet. The greatcoat smouldered like an old shed. His leg plunged into one of the cracks in the roof. The arch collapsed. Fire spewed upwards like splashing liquid. The temperature inside the kiln was over eleven hundred degrees. Gardeterark, already burning, plunged down into it.
Afterwards, Odim had no idea how long he lay on the catwalk. It was Besi, with her split mouth, who ventured along the walk and helped him return to the gallery. Gagrim had fled.
She was hugging him and wiping his burnt face with a cloth. He realised that he was saying to her over and over, “I killed a man.”
“You saved us all,” she said. “You were very brave, my darling. Now we must get into the ship and sail as soon as possible, before anyone discovers what has happened.”
“I killed a man, Besi.”
“Say rather that he fell, Eedap.” She kissed him with her burst lips and began to cry. He clutched her as he never had before in daylight, and she felt his thin, hard body tremble.
So ended the well-organised part of Eedap Mun Odim’s life. From now on, existence would be a series of improvisations. Like his father before him, he had attempted to control his small world by keeping accurate accounts, by balancing ledgers, by cheating no one, by being friendly, by conforming in every way he could. At one stroke, all that was gone. The system had collapsed.
Besi Besamitikahl had to assist him across the quayside to the waiting ship. With them went two others, whose lives had been equally disrupted.
Captain Harbin Fashnalgid had seen his own face crudely portrayed on a red poster as he stepped ashore with Besi, after they had sailed the twenty miles from the jetty in the marshlands. The poster was newly arrived from the local printing works commandeered by the army, and still glistened with the bill sticker’s glue. For Fashnalgid, Odim’s ship served the purpose, not only of escaping from Uskutoshk, but of staying close to Besi. Fashnalgid had decided that if he were to reform his life, then he needed a courageous, constant woman to look after him. He stepped up the gangplank briskly, longing to be free of the army and its shadow.
Behind him followed Toress Lahl, widow of the great Bandal Eith Lahl, recently killed in battle. Since her husband’s death and her capture by Luterin Shokerandit, her life had become quite as disoriented as Odim’s or Fashnalgid’s. She now found herself in a foreign port, about to sail for another foreign port. And her captor lay already in the ship, tied down while he underwent the agony of the Fat Death. She might elude him; but Toress Lahl knew of no way in which a woman of Oldorando could return home safely from Sibornal. So she remained to tend Shokerandit, hoping to earn his gratitude thereby if he survived the plague.
Of the plague, she had less fear than the others. Back home in Oldorando, she had worked as a doctor. The word that inspired fear and curiosity in her was the name of Shokerandit’s homeland, Kharnab-har, a word which embodied legend and romance when spoken from the distance of Borldoran.
To acquire his ship, Odim had worked through intermediaries, local friends who knew useful people in the Priest-Sailors Guild. The money from the sale of his house and company had all gone to purchase the New Season. It now lay moored alongside Climent Quay, a two-masted brig of 639 tons, square-rigged on fore- and mainmasts. The vessel had been built twenty years earlier, in Askitosh shipyards.
Loading was complete. The New Season contained, besides such provisions as Odim could lay his hands on at short notice, a herd of arang, fine Odim porcelain services, and a sick man bearing the plague, with a slave woman to tend him.