“He fell,” Dolmaero said quickly, before anyone else could answer, and Ruiz remembered to breathe again.
“He fell?” She turned to Flomel. “How well do you know this man?”
“Well, indeed, Lady. He was warded to our family when he was only three. A loyal man, who deserves your help.” Flomel stared at Casmin, taking in his injuries with growing puzzlement.
“Describe the part this man plays in one of your productions.”
Flomel looked defensive. “Ah, well, noble lady, he actually plays no direct part. His services are among the perquisites of my position. He provides protection against evil deeds, and instruction to recalcitrants.”
Now her amusement seemed definite. “In other words, he twists arms at your behest?”
Flomel made no answer for a long moment, and then nodded jerkily, features stiff with suppressed annoyance.
“Then he no longer performs any essential function,” she said, is that sweet clear voice. “Still, I’ll ease his discomfort.”
She bent over the litter. At the tip of her index finger, a shimmering tongue of disrupted air appeared. The burbling sound of a sonic knife came clearly to Ruiz’s ears. With a graceful sweeping gesture she sliced Casmin’s throat open, down to the spine, then danced nimbly back from the blood. The elders scattered like frightened chickens.
She nodded to the Moc. It pointed a midlimb at the corpse, which still twitched. A plasma lance whooshed white fire and heated the remains to crumbling incandescence. Most of the troupe fled indoors. Only Dolmaero and Flomel stood their ground, staring.
When nothing remained but smoking ash, Corean left without ceremony, taking along a pale Flomel. Before she passed out of Ruiz’s line of sight, Corean glanced directly at Ruiz’s place of concealment, expressionless.
When the slavers were gone, the Pharaohans came forth and stood about in the square in little arguing knots, avoiding the blackened spot at the center of the square. Dolmaero seemed not to be taking part in the general discussion. He sat on the low wall, staring at nothing in particular.
Ruiz waited a long while before he came out of the bathhouse and joined Dolmaero.
Dolmaero looked at Ruiz without speaking.
“I’m sorry about your man,” Ruiz offered.
Dolmaero made a gesture of dismissal. “Don’t be concerned. Casmin was always a jackal. Away from the restraining influence of his guild, it would have been only a matter of time before he’d have begun to practice his ugly pleasures on the innocent. And how would I have controlled him?”
“Still… I appreciate your not revealing the source of his injuries.”
“I told no lie,” Dolmaero said heavily.
“No, I suppose not. Did Master Flomel say what they intended for the Noble Person?”
Dolmaero looked at Ruiz, and Ruiz sensed that evil news was coming. Dolmaero seemed reluctant to deliver it. “Yes,” Dolmaero finally said, “he went into that a little. I’m not sure you want to hear what he said.”
“Tell me,” Ruiz said.
“Do you remember when I said my decision to put the phoenix to death was a mistake? Now I’m not so sure. It might have been a kindness, had you not interfered. Master Flomel plans to use her in an upcoming performance.”
“A performance?”
“Yes, so he said. It seems we will perform for an audience of the mighty, to whom the goddess-woman is simply an agent. I don’t understand the details, but there will be bidding for our services.”
Clever of the goddess-woman, Ruiz thought, sickened. She would put the troupe on the block, and they would do their utmost to bring her a high price, thinking it their opportunity to impress the influential of their new world. She practiced the slaver’s art skillfully.
“And so,” Dolmaero continued, “the girl will be required to die once more. I wonder; will she again be revived? How many times could that be done? Do you know?”
Ruiz was silent. Not in his most pessimistic appraisal of Nisa’s future had it occurred to him that he’d saved her only to play the phoenix once again. But now that he considered it, it made perfect sense. She had been brilliant in the play. And she could be so again, for many more performances, until her sensorium was so damaged by the death trauma that she could no longer act her part. Long before that, Nisa would lust for the peace of a real death.
“Many times,” Ruiz answered, giving much away, but at that moment not caring. “Tell me, Dolmaero, when do your rehearsals begin?”
“Soon, I think. Master Flomel mentioned that the stage would be brought within the week. There will be a period of repair and restaging; then we begin. Perhaps the girl will return then.”
Dolmaero watched Ruiz struggle with his thoughts, and Dolmaero’s small bright eyes softened in sympathy. He patted Ruiz’s arm gently, then heaved his bulk up and went away.
That evening, Ruiz filled only one plate. The house of the casteless seemed very empty. Just before dark, a boy brought a small oil lamp to the door. “From Master Dolmaero,” he said, and handed it to Ruiz. Ruiz was touched by the Guildmaster’s gift, and he burned the lamp far into the night, sitting on Nisa’s cot and watching the tiny flame. But when the last of the oil burned away and the lamp went out, he rose from the cot and went out to walk the wall. His nocturnal explorations were aided by the absence of any other explorers; the Pharaohans did not go outside their walls after sunset. On Pharaoh, many hungry creatures hunted by night. He went about his business under the assumption that no one watched the paddock; if they did, he couldn’t understand why he had not already been taken.
Again, he found the section of wall where the snapfields occasionally failed. The failure was random, occurring once or twice an hour. The duration of the failure averaged between fifteen and forty-five seconds. Twice that night, however, the failure lasted less than ten seconds. If Ruiz were caught at the top of the wall when the field resumed, he would fall off the wall in pieces. It wasn’t an optimum escape route, but it was, so far, the only possibility he’d found. Of course, the other side of the wall might just be another paddock, not an access corridor. Ruiz could think of no good way to tell in advance; the harsh buzz of the fields made listening impossible.
It took him all the next day to braid a rope from the leather fragments he found in the house of the casteless. That night, he tied to the rope a slender stick, weighted at one end with a rock. He went to the defective section of the wall. When the first failure occurred, he heaved the stick over the top of the wall, hoping that no one watched from the other side. He pulled the stick back slowly. By watching the arcing tip of the stick, faintly visible against the starfields as it tilted over the rounded top, he was able to determine that the wall top was smoothly curved, innocent of angles where a grapple might catch. He sighed and pulled the rope down.
On the next darkening of the field, he tried it again, and before the field returned he got a fairly good idea of the shape of the wall top. Just for good measure he tried it one more time, but this time the field returned prematurely, and the rope fell down minus the stick. Ruiz heard it hit the ground on the other side, and he cursed. He could only hope that no one would notice the stick, with its tag of homemade rope, or pay enough attention to it to wonder where it had come from.
His next task was to fashion a hook that fit the contour of the wall top closely enough to hold his weight. This took the better part of a day. Ruiz cobbled it together from bits of wood salvaged from the cots, and bound the hook into rigidity with strips of wet rawhide. He dried the assemblage on the roof, in the hot sun. When he was finished, he had an object that looked as if it had been sawn from the end of a giant shepherd’s staff. Ruiz attached the braided leather rope and his escape apparatus was complete.