The Ghost of Ardow had managed many a hair’s-breadth escape during the end-game of the New Eireann coup. He was a master of disguise and a knower of byways. But the byways he knew were light-years distant, and the disguises had depended heavily on the willingness of a great many people not to pierce them. He had, however, already pried partway open the grate in the archway and was himself halfway squeezed through the narrow crack thus wrested when the Fudir found him.
It was a bad position from which to make a fight. Like a fish caught in a weir, he must accept capture and await the proper moment to wriggle. All he needed was a nearby stream. He might be Little Hugh O’Carroll, but he was also Ringbao della Costa, and the slum-boys of New Shanghai did not grow up stupid, when they grew up at all.
The Fudir studied this unlikely catch, wondering how to play him. He finally decided on the approach direct, and said without the patois, “The assassin is caught. The Jehovan rectors have him.”
Little Hugh had not secured a senior executive position with Clan na Oriel—nor for that matter survived Venishànghai slums or Handsome Jack’s ambushes—without the ability to gauge people. Hugh sensed that the man spoke the truth; but that was all he sensed.
“And Red Sweeney?” he asked.
“Dead. The assassin burned him with a teaser. That was to be your fate as well.”
“Dead.” O’Carroll repeated the statement slowly as if the repetition itself were the confirmation. “Aye, there went a true friend, to give his life for The O’Carroll.”
It had not exactly gone down that way, but the Fudir did not hesitate. “Aye, he did that.” And in a way, the treacher had saved the fugitive by his death. Had the assassin not paused, the Fudir might not have intercepted him quite in time; at least not without enough “Terran confetti” from the rooftops as to prick the interest of the Jehovan rectors, an interest every entrepreneur in the Corner was anxious to avoid.
The Fudir helped extricate the younger man from the grating in which he had gotten trapped. “Sweeney had a word for you,” he said. “I suppose he must have told you. He said that the southern clans in the Vale await the return of The O’Carroll.”
The Ghost gave him a sharp look. “And ye know this, how?”
“I was in the Bar when he came looking for you.” He tossed his head. “And so was the assassin.”
O’Carroll nodded. “Was he? Sweeney was careless. The assassin must have found my trail by following him.”
Which would not have been the most difficult of feats. But the Fudir wondered if he gave the red giant too little credit. The fox-faced man may indeed have gotten the scent through Sweeney’s less than subtle inquiries, and may indeed have offered the thirty pieces of silver. But Sweeney may have decided that the assassin you know is better than the one you don’t, and taken the bribe as a ruse. In the mouth of the gulli, he had stepped aside; but who can say but that he meant to strike as the killer strode confidently past? It seemed an obvious enough maneuver, as was most every maneuver Sweeney had made, and the assassin was not thick. A man whose basic tool is treachery will see it wherever he looks.
It had made no difference in the end, least of all to Sweeney. What corpse remembers how nobly or ill it perished?
“And yourself,” said The O’Carroll. “I saw you climb down from the rooftops, so I know you are no drunk and this was no chance encounter. Why should you be taking sides ’tween me and Handsome Jack?”
“Two things,” the Fudir replied. “We Terrans hold a monopoly inside the Corner. Your assassin did not have our leave to ply his trade on our home ground.”
“And second?”
The Fudir looked around at the ramshackle buildings, at the stinking midden heaps, at the shuttered and barred shops across Menstrit, visible through the mouth of the gulli. “Second? You are my ticket out of here.”
The Fudir led him inside the warren of buildings and Hugh found himself quickly disoriented. Down these stairs; through that tunnel; take this branch; up this ramp. Doors opened to special knocks. Even on the flyovers, where he could at least glance through the windows at the streets below, he could get no bearings. In the dark, those fitfully lighted lanes seemed all alike, and he suspected that even daylight would make no difference. He wondered at the sudden impulse that had joined him to this stranger, for he had not missed the significance of his rescuer’s name.
The Fudir. The Stranger; the outlander. Obviously an office-name.
My ticket out of here, the old man had said, in as affectless a voice as if he had merely commented on the weather. On New Eireann, folk said “on the run.” Perhaps it was that tenuous bond, and not simple gratitude, that accounted for his agreement to follow the Terran’s lead. The older man was, after all, Hugh’s “ticket out of here,” as well.
He was not so naïve as to suppose that everyone who did him good was a friend; but at least for now his interests and this “Fudir’s” ran in parallel. Little Hugh did not believe that today’s assassin would be the last that Handsome Jack would send. “An arrow must be stopped at the bow,” ran an old Shanghai proverb and from time to time he remembered wisdom he had learned on the streets there.
Like rats in a maze, they scurried through the Corner. When they paused in the lobby of a long-vacant building, the Fudir broke silence. “There may be a way to restore the rightful government to New Eireann,” he hinted, “without more bloodshed.”
Hugh, wondering why a Terran should care who managed the Vale, made no answer. Who could say if words poured in this man’s ear might spill from his mouth? He thought the promise was meant as an enticement to return to New Eireann rather than report to Oriel headquarters on Far Havn. But Oriel would probably cut its losses, sell the contract to the ICC, and reassign Ringbao to another project. Neither they nor this Fudir could know that he had sworn by his father’s name that he would return. He needed no enticement, bloodless or otherwise.
The Committee of Seven were five in number, one of its members having been apprehended by the rectors and another being by direct consequence “in the wind.” The chairman was a hard-looking woman, thin of face, white of hair, pallid of hue. Her eyes were a bitter hazel. Those flanking her, two on either side, sat in shadows, as befit those who, though sought so much, were seen so little. They had regarded Hugh with brief indifference before demanding of his guide by what right he had brought a stranger into their presence. There was something in their question that caused Hugh to dread the answer; for should that answer prove unsatisfactory, both he and the Fudir might suffer. Yet, the Fudir’s response, when it came, surprised and puzzled the erstwhile tainiste of New Eireann.
“I can give us back the Earth.”
Delivered with confidence, that statement was the only one Hugh had yet heard the man utter that was accompanied by any depth of emotion. Almost as one, the Committee turned to a hologram painting that hung on one of the walls of the small, dark audience room. It portrayed a large, white, domed building with towers at its four corners, sitting behind a long reflecting pool.
The chairman, who alone had not turned, continued to study the Fudir with steady gaze.
“Can you now?” she said.
“Do you know the story of the Twisting Stone?”
That drew the attention of the other committeemen, one of whom expressed his opinion in a snort. “We are layink now hope on altar of fable?”