“Yes, yes, of course I remember. But what’s this about his taking a job with the Pontifical people? And why Suvrael, of all places?”
“He’s doing it as a penance, apparently.”
“A penance?”
Septach Melayn nodded. He gave Akbalik’s letter a quick glance. “They went hunting steetmoy up in the Khyntor Marches, apparently—that was my idea too, I have to admit—and there was some sort of accident, a local guide-woman killed during the course of the hunt, through some negligence of Dekkeret’s, I gather. Or at least that’s what Dekkeret believes is what happened. Anyhow, Dekkeret felt so bad about it that he decided to go off to the most unpleasant place he knew of in the entire world and carry out some difficult task under conditions of extreme physical discomfort, by way of atoning for whatever it was he felt responsible for causing while he was hunting in the northlands. So he bought himself a ticket to Suvrael. Akbalik tried to talk him out of it, of course. But it happened that the Pontifical people in Ni-moya were looking for some young official willing to undertake a ridiculous mission to Suvrael to find out why the Suvraelinu hadn’t been meeting their quota of beef exports lately, and when one of Dekkeret’s friends who worked for the Pontificate found out that Dekkeret was going to Suvrael anyway, he arranged to get him a temporary commission on the Pontifical staff, and off he went. He’s probably landed in Tolaghai by now. The Divine only knows when he’ll be back.”
“Suvrael,” Prestimion said, shaking his head. Fury was mounting in him. “An act of penance, he says. The young idiot! By all the demons of Triggoin, what’s wrong with him? He belongs at the Castle, not running around in that blasted desert wasteland! If he felt some need to atone, the Isle of Sleep’s the usual place for such things, isn’t it? And a much shorter trip, too.”
“I suppose the Isle seemed like too tame a place for him. Or maybe going there never occurred to him.”
“Then Akbalik should have suggested it. Suvrael! How could he have done that? I had plans for that boy! I’ll hold Akbalik responsible for this!”
“My lord, Dekkeret is very headstrong. You know that. If he had his mind made up to go to Suvrael, you could not have dissuaded him yourself.”
“Perhaps so,” said Prestimion, trying now without much success to get his irritation under control. “Perhaps.” Scowling, he swung about and stared out the window. “All right. I’ll deal with young Dekkeret when and if he gets back from this mission of penance of his. I’ll give him something to be penitent about! Reporting on Suvraelu beef exports for the Pontifex! There’s been a drought in Suvrael for years, and the pastures have burned out, and they’ve butchered all their cattle because they can’t feed them, that’s why the beef exports have fallen off! What need does the Pontificate have of sending a man all the way down there just to find out about the obvious? The drought is over, anyway, so I understand. Give them two or three years to rebuild their herds, and they’ll be shipping as much beef as they ever—”
“The point, Prestimion, isn’t what sort of information the Pontificate thought it needed to gather. The point is that Dekkeret has an exaggerated sense of personal honor and felt obliged to expiate what he believed to be a terrible sin by undergoing prolonged personal suffering. There are worse failings for a young man to have, you know. You’re being really unfair to him.”
“Am I? I suppose you may be right,” said Prestimion reluctantly, after a little while. “What about Akbalik? What else does he have to report, and where is he now?”
“He’s heading back from Ni-moya by way of Alaisor at the moment, and says he’ll rejoin us at any place you care to name. As for the Procurator, there’s been no sign of him in Ni-moya, and from what Akbalik’s been able to find out he doesn’t seem to be anywhere in Zimroel yet.”
“I suppose he’s somewhere on the high seas, then, between here and there. Well, so be it. We’ll deal with him when the time comes. Anything else?”
“No, my lord.”
Septach Melayn handed the despatch to Prestimion, who took it without looking at it and tossed it to a nearby table. Turning his back on Septach Melayn once again, he glared toward the water as if he could see all the way to Suvrael from here.
Suvrael! Dekkeret has gone to Suvrael!
Such foolishness, Prestimion thought. He had thought so highly of the boy, too, especially in the immediate aftermath of the Normork assassination attempt, when Dekkeret had seemed so stalwart, so quick, so fundamentally capable. And now this! Well, perhaps it could be chalked off to youthful romanticism. Prestimion almost felt sorry for the young man, off there in the sun-baked southern continent, which from all reports was a miserable arid place of sand dunes and stinging insects and scorching winds.
The memory awoke in Prestimion of his own disagreeable wanderings in the Valmambra Desert of the north after the great defeat at Mavestoi Dam, the darkest hour of the Korsibar war. He had suffered grievously in the Valmambra: had dropped finally into a delirium of fatigue and starvation, and would surely have perished if another two or three days had gone by before he was found. That journey through the Valmambra had been the most arduous event of Prestimion’s life.
And yet they said that Suvrael, any part of it, was ten times worse than the Valmambra. If so, then Dekkeret would certainly find there the ordeal that he craved for the sake of purifying his soul. But what if it took him the next five years to get himself out of Suvrael and back to the Castle? What would become of all his youthful promise, then? For that matter, what if he were to die down there? Prestimion had heard tales—everyone had—of inexperienced wayfarers who had strayed from some desert path and, lost without drinking water in Suvrael’s blast-furnace heat, met their deaths within just a few hours.
Well, Dekkeret was probably able to look after himself. And Septach Melayn was right: it was a pardonable exploit, at least in one so young. The Suvrael adventure might be the making of him, if he survived it. It would toughen him; it would give him a deeper perspective on life and death, on responsibility and obligation. The best hope Prestimion had was that the boy came quickly to forgiving himself, down there, for his northlands mishap, and returned to the Castle in a reasonable period of time ready to take on the duties that were waiting for him.
The main issue for Prestimion, here in golden Sippulgar, was Dantirya Sambail. And the Prefect Kameni Poteva lost no time sharing such news as he had of the Procurator’s whereabouts, although it was, alas, no news at all.
“At your request, my lord, we have raised an embargo against him at every port along the coast. Since we received word from you concerning the emergency, no ship has left Sippulgar bound for Zimroel without a complete check of the entire passenger manifest being undertaken by my port officials. Dantirya Sambail was not seen. We have also run checks on any ship leaving here for other ports along the Alhanroel coast that serve the Zimroel trade. The result was the same.”
“What ports are those?” Prestimion asked. The Prefect spread a map of southern Alhanroel before them. “They all lie west of here. We can eliminate the other direction. As you see, my lord, here is Sippulgar near the provincial border separating us from Stoien, and this, here, is eastern Aru-achosia. Running onward still farther to the east lie the provinces of Vrist, Sethem, Kinorn, and Lorgan. The only port of any significance along that entire coastal stretch is Glystrintai, in Vrist, and the only ships that sail out of Glystrintai come here. So if the Procurator had been foolish enough to go eastward when he reached the coast, he would only have come back here anyway, and we would have taken him into custody.”
“And to the west?”