“It all seems clear enough. I wonder about the poacher who struck the other one, though. Whether he might have been tall and lean, with a death’s-head sort of face, all angles and planes and mean murderous dark eyes.”
“The Procurator’s poison-taster, is that the man you’re speaking of? A disagreeable piece of work, that one.”
“Mandralisca, yes. He’d be traveling with Dantirya Sambail.—Is there more to the story?”
“Nothing else. Haigan Hartha concludes his message by saying that he never heard from the Procurator one way or the other about a visit, and inquires as to whether he is supposed to expect one. Naturally, he is not. Why, I wonder, would a Procurator of Ni-moya be making a grand processional through Balimoleronda province, or any other place in Alhanroel?”
“Grand processional’s the wrong term, of course. He’s simply traveling privately through Balimoleronda on his way back from the Castle to Zimroel, I suppose.”
“From his imprisonment at the Castle?” asked Serithorn mildly. “He is, am I to understand, a fugitive on the run?”
“Terms like ‘imprisonment’ and ‘fugitive’ are ones that I wish you’d reserve for your conversations with Prestimion. But I can tell you, at least, that the Coronal is indeed trying to locate Dantirya Sambail. And, since Bailemoona is, as I recall, south of Castle Mount, Prestimion’s evidently not going to find him by going due east. I thank you on his behalf. Your report has been very useful.”
“I do try to be of help.”
“You have been. I’ll see to it that the Coronal is told of all this as quickly as possible.” Rising to his full considerable height, Septach Melayn stretched first his arms and then his legs, and said to Serithorn, “You’ll forgive me, I hope, for seeming restless. This has been a taxing day for me. Are there any other matters for us to discuss?”
“I think not.”
“I’m to the gymnasium, then, to work off the day’s stresses by belaboring some hapless new guardsman from Tumbrax with my saber.”
“A good idea. I’m going in that direction myself: shall I accompany you?”
They went out together. Serithorn, ever the soul of affability, provided Septach Melayn with a series of diverting gossipy tidbits as they made their way through the maze of the Inner Castle, past such ancient structures as the Vildivar Balconies and Lord Arioc’s Watchtower and Stiamot Keep, toward the Ninety-Nine Steps that led downward into the surrounding regions of the great amorphous conglomeration that was the Castle.
Their route brought them after a while near the awesomely unsightly pile of black stone that Prankipin, early in his days as Coronal, had inflicted on the Castle to serve as the office of the Ministers of the Treasury. As they approached it Septach Melayn caught sight of a curiously ill-matched pair coming toward the building from the opposite direction: a tall, strikingly handsome dark-haired woman, accompanied by a much shorter and stockier man who was elaborately overdressed in what seemed like a glittering parody of appropriate court costume, all sequins and flash and grotesquely intricate brocaded fabric. He, too, was of striking appearance, but in a very different way—inordinately ugly, with his most notable feature being the carefully coif-fed mountain of silver hair rising upright from his wide forehead.
It was no great task for Septach Melayn to recognize these two instantly: they were the financier Simbilon Khayf, no doubt on his way toward some maneuver of chicanery involving the Treasury, and his daughter Varaile. The last time he had seen them, some months back, it had been in Simbilon Khayf’s grand mansion in Stee, that time when he had been decked out in the coarse linen robes of a merchant, and had worn a brown wig and a false beard over his own golden hair, and had played the role of a country bumpkin to help Prestimion penetrate the mystery of that other and insane Lord Prestimion who was harassing the shipping of Stee. Septach Melayn was more grandly dressed today, in his true capacity of High Counsellor of the Realm. But after all the other complicated transactions of this day, he had no wish now to deal with the coarse and vulgar Simbilon Khayf. “Shall we turn to the left here?” he said quietly to Serithorn.
Too late. They were still fifty feet from Simbilon Khayf and his daughter, but the banker had spied them already and was shouting his greetings.
“Prince Serithorn! By all that’s holiest, Prince Serithorn, how splendid it is to see you again! And look! Look, Varaile, this is the great Septach Melayn, the High Counsellor himself! Gentlemen! Gentlemen! What a pleasure!” Simbilon Khayf came rushing toward them so hastily that he nearly tripped over his own brocaded robe. “You surely must meet my daughter, gentlemen! It’s her first visit to the Castle, and I promised her the sight of greatness, but I never imagined that we would so swiftly encounter this evening a pair of lords of the magnitude and significance of Serithorn of Samivole and the High Counsellor Septach Melayn!”
He thrust Varaile forward. Her eyes rose, up and up, toward those of Septach Melayn, and a little gasp of surprise escaped her lips. Softly she said, “Ah, but I believe we have already met.”
An awkward moment. “It is not the case, my lady. There must be some mistake!”
Her eyes did not leave his. And now she smiled. “I think not,” she said. “No. No. I know you, my lord.”
4
“And there we were,” Septach Melayn said, “right out in front of Lord Prankipin’s Treasury, her and me and Serithorn and that impossible simpering father of hers. Of course I denied any possibility that she and I could have had a previous meeting. It seemed the only thing to do.”
“And how did she react to that?” asked Prestimion.
They were in Prestimion’s private apartments in Lord Thraym’s Tower. It was Prestimion’s first day back from the east country. The long and fruitless journey had left him very weary; and he had barely had time to bathe and change his garments before Septach Melayn had come rushing in with his report on all that had taken place here in his absence. What a lot of stuff it was, too! This Hjort wizard of Abrigant’s who claimed to be able to turn trash into precious metal, for one, and then the alleged sighting of Dantirya Sambail down by Bailemoona, and Confalume apparently complaining that his Coronal was snubbing him, and new tales of widespread unrest and cases of greatly disturbed minds in this city and that.
Prestimion was hungry for more details on all of those things right away. And yet Septach Melayn seemed to be obsessed with this trivial episode involving the daughter of Simbilon Khayf.
“She knew I was lying,” he said. “That was easy enough to see. She kept staring at my eyes, and measuring my height against her own, and it was obvious that she was thinking, Where have I seen eyes like that before, and a man as tall and thin as this one is? Her mind could easily supply the wig and the false beard, and she’d have her answer. I thought for a moment she was going to hold her ground and insist that she knew me from somewhere. But her father, who may be coarse and vulgar but who’s very far from stupid, realized what was about to happen and obviously didn’t want his daughter to get involved in contradicting the High Counsellor to his face, and so he called her off. She was wise enough to take the hint.”
“For the moment, yes. But she suspects the truth, and that’s bound to lead to further complications.”
“Oh, she doesn’t just suspect the truth,” said Septach Melayn lightly. He smiled and made a graceful little two-handed flourish of his wrists. Prestimion knew that gesture of Septach Melayn’s very well. It meant that he had taken some unilateral action for which he was asking to be excused, but which he did not regret in any way. “I sent for her the next day and told her the tale of the whole masquerade straight out.”