“Sir,” the taller knight said, smiling tolerantly, “we have been sent by the current and rightful ruler of our shared homeland, who wishes you only good, to aid you in your passage. I regret any misunderstanding that might have led you to think ill of us before we are even correctly introduced. I am Vollird of Sournier, knight of the court; my companion here is Baerth of Charvin, also so ennobled.” Vollird swivelled fractionally and indicated the shorter man by his side with one hand as he spoke these words, though his gaze stayed fixed upon Ferbin. “We are here at your service, good sir. Grant us civility, I beg you, if for no other reason than that we are in front of our otherworldly friends here, and might risk demeaning the reputation of our whole people by seeming to squabble or fret.” Vollird waved at the brilliant, static forms of the Oct and Nariscene at their sides, his gaze still fastened on Ferbin.
“If you are at my service,” Ferbin replied, “you will remove yourselves from us at once and take this message to your master, who is no more the rightful ruler of our ‘shared homeland’ than my last turd, indeed somewhat less so: I go only to return, and when I do, I shall treat him with all the grace and respect he showed my father, at his end.”
There was the tiniest of jerking motions at one extremity of Vollird’s dark brow; it was the merest hint of surprise, but Ferbin was glad to see it. He knew he could say more, but also knew, with a sort of fascinated certainty, that this constituted one charge of powder he ought to keep aside for now. There might be a moment when some further revelation of his most detailed knowledge of what had happened in the half-ruined factory that evening would be of a use beyond just discomfiting these men.
Vollird was silent for a half-moment, then smiled and said, “Sir, sir, we still misunderstand each other. We would help you, escort you on your way away from here. That is our earnest wish and most specific instruction.” He smiled, quite broadly, and made an open gesture with both hands. “We all of us wish the same thing, which is to see you on your way. You have departed the land and level to which you have belonged with some urgency and dispatch, and we would merely assist you on whatever further flight you may be determined on. We ought not to dispute.”
“We do not wish the same—” Ferbin started to say, but then the shorter knight, Baerth, who had been frowning mightily for the last few moments, said, under his breath, as though to himself, “Enough talk. Sheath this, whore.” He drew his sword and lunged at Ferbin.
Ferbin started to take a step back; Holse began to move in front of him, his left arm making as though to push Ferbin behind him. At the same time Holse’s right arm arced across his body and out; the short knife tore through the air and—
And was whipped out of the air by one limb of the Nariscene at Baerth’s side, at the same time as one of its other legs tripped up the lunging knight and sent him sprawling to the floor at Holse’s feet. Holse stamped sharply on the man’s wrist and scooped his sword from his broken grip. Baerth grunted in pain. Vollird was drawing his pistol.
“Stop!” the Nariscene said. “Stop!” it repeated as Holse made to stab the prone knight with one hand and take his pistol with the other. The sword was knocked from his hand by the Oct while the Nariscene turned and snapped the pistol from Vollird’s grip, producing a sudden gasp. Sword and pistol went clattering to the floor in opposite directions.
“To stop, hostilities,” the Oct said. “Inappropriate behaviour.”
Holse stood, glaring at the eight-limbed alien, shaking his own right hand and blowing on it as though trying to get blood back into it on a cold day. He had moved the foot he’d stamped on Baerth’s wrist with so that it now lay on the man’s neck, with most of Holse’s weight on it. Vollird stood shaking his right hand vigorously, and cursing.
Ferbin had observed it all, keeping back and low and watching with an odd detachment who had done what and where all the weapons were at each moment. He found he still possessed a very clear idea of where both pistols were; one over there on the floor, the other still in Baerth’s side holster.
A device swung down from the ceiling. It looked like a bulky rendition of a Nariscene in an entire symphony of coloured metals.
“Fighting is not allowed in public spaces,” it said loudly in oddly accented but perfectly comprehensible Sarl. “I shall take charge of all weapons in this vicinity. Resistance will incur physical penalties not excluding unconsciousness and death.” It was already gathering up the sword and pistol from the floor, swinging through the air with a whooshing sound. The Nariscene handed it Holse’s long knife. “Thank you,” it said. It removed Baerth’s pistol from its holster — the man was still flat out under Holse’s boot, and starting to make gurgling sounds — took another, smaller gun from the prone knight’s boot and also found a dagger and two small throwing knives in his tunic. From Vollird, now holding his right hand delicately and grimacing, it took a sword, a long knife and a length of wire with wooden grips at each end.
“All unauthorised weapons have now been removed from the vicinity,” the machine announced. Ferbin noticed that a small crowd of people — aliens, machines, whatever one might call them — had gathered at a polite distance, to watch. The machine holding all the weapons said, “Nariscene Barbarian Relational Mentor Tchilk, present, is in notional charge here until further Authority arrives. All involved will hold approximate position under my custody, meantimes. Failure to comply will incur physical penalties not excluding unconsciousness and death.”
There was a pause. “Documents?” the Oct said to Ferbin.
“Oh, have your damned documents!” he said, and fished them from his jacket. He nearly threw them at the machine, but didn’t, in case this was taken as a violent act by the device hovering over them.
“So,” the glittering Nariscene said, floating slowly round about them a metre or so over their heads and between two and three metres away from them, “you claim to be a prince of this royal family of the Sarl, of the Eighth.”
“Indeed,” Ferbin said crisply.
He and Holse stood within a great, softly green-lit cave of a room. Its walls were mostly of undressed stone; Ferbin found this quite shockingly crude for beings supposedly so technologically advanced. The complex they had been taken to was set deep within a cliff which formed part of an enormous spire of rock sitting in a great round lake a short machine-flight from the concourse where they had first arrived. Once Vollird and Baerth had been taken away, apparently already adjudged to have been the guilty parties without anything as crude and time-consuming as a formal trial — as Vollird had pointed out, quite loudly — Ferbin had asked one of the Nariscene judicial machines if he could talk to somebody in authority. After a few screen conversations with persons distant, all visibly Nariscene, they had been brought here.
The Nariscene officer — he had been introduced as Acting Craterine Zamerin Alveyal Girgetioni — was encased in a kind of skeletal armour like that worn by the Nariscene who had been escorting Vollird and Baerth. He seemed to like floating above and around people he was talking to, forcing them to twist this way and that to keep him politely in sight. About him in the great cavern, at some distance, other Nariscene aliens did incomprehensible things from a variety of cradles, harnesses and holes in the ground filled with what looked like quicksilver. “This royal family,” the Acting Craterine Zamerin continued, “is the ruling entity of your people, and the executive positions are inheritable. Am I right?”
Ferbin thought about this. He looked at Holse, who shrugged unhelpfully. “Yes,” Ferbin said, less certainly.