"To answer your questions in order, my lord: solitaire is a game one plays with oneself by means of little rectangles of stiff paper, called 'cards'. One can also use these cards for other Terran games. As for your second question, your men have loaded me with a chain weighing, I estimate, thirty or forty Gozashtando pounds, which renders rising difficult."
"Yes, yes, I understand. I have seen playing cards. Now I wish you to answer certain questions."
"I'll try to, sir," said Reith.
"What was your part in the disappearance of my betrothed, the Princess Vázni bad-Dushta'en?"
"I had no part in it, sir. I first heard of it after the event."
After a thoughtful pause, the Dasht said: "Your Terran colleague, Mr. Strachan, went to Hershid with us but did not return. He vanished from our ken about the time the princess disappeared. Was there a connection between these events? Did they elope?"
Reith shrugged. "As far as I know, Kenneth Strachan is living happily with his Terran wife at Novo."
"When and how did you hear that the Princess Vázni had disappeared?"
Reith thought fast. Any lie should be one that the Dasht could not easily check out. "I heard it said in Novo, sir, that the princess had paused there on her way to join her daughter in Suruskand. I did not see the lady." After a pause, he added, "My informant—a local lady, I forget which—said the daughter had written, urging her mother to come to her and promising her a fine new husband."
"Damn it to Hell!" snorted the Dasht. "If she marries many more husbands, she'll be too shopworn to be my consort. Now, Reith! Answer truly!"
"Yes, sir?"
"What was your part in that forged letter from Dour Eqrar, which sent us off to Hershid on a wild-aqebat chase?"
"I know nothing about it, Your Altitude." Reith's heart thumped. He was determined at all costs to hide Alicia's part in the hoax, lest a vengeful Dasht send assassins after her.
"Nothing whatever?"
"Absolutely nothing, my lord."
"Can you imagine why anyone should play such a foolish, wasteful, tasteless, embarrassing jest?"
"Well, Your Altitude, I do have a tentative theory."
"Yes? Speak up, man, speak up! I'll not hurt you for bringing unwelcome news. I always keep my word!" Gilan slapped his cuirass so that it rang like a door knocker.
"My suspicion," said Reith carefully, "is that the letter was not a forgery after all."
"Impossible!"
Reith shrugged. "As you wish, sir. But it could be that the Regent Tashian made that request through his ambassador at Hershid. Then, after the Dour's secretary had written the princess, Tashian changed his mind. He may have decided to seize the throne himself, or to promote one of his own sons to royal rank. Why should he care whether he embarrasses Your Altitude?"
"If our lands lay adjacent," snarled Gilan, "my sharpest sword would soon teach him to care!"
"Another matter occurs to me as well, sir."
"Say on!"
"As I understand it, when a woman of your kind weds for the second time and conceives, it's widely believed hereabouts that the second husband merely raises up the seed of the first, which has lain dormant in her. The egg, it is thought, is as likely to be the offspring of the first husband as the second, though the first may have been years in his grave."
"That's the common belief" said the Dasht. "But Terran scientists, I am told, consider it mere folk superstition."
"Your Altitude has known Terrans to advance contradictory beliefs, have you not?"
"Yes, yes. We had the Reverend Trask claiming that the prophet of his sect was the son of his God, and the Reverend Muhammad Basri telling quite a different tale. But what has that to do with this case?"
"Just a suggestion, sir, that you don't accept any one Terran doctrine as necessarily true."
"Hm," said the Dasht. "Strange, to hear a Terran admitting that the all-wise aliens from his planet are not always right! Do you imply that the old belief about raising up the first husband's seed may be true after all?"
"I wouldn't know, Your Altitude. But the possibility might raise questions of the legitimacy of any heirs you begot on the lady in question."
"Oho! I hadn't thought of that, Mr. Reith. In Ruz, or course, my word is final. What I say is right by definition. But in case we should be called to wider responsibilities ... You mean, any egg she laid might actually be sired by you or by the unfortunate Aslehán?"
"Not by me, sir. My sometime marriage to the Lady Vázni would not count, since we Terrans are never interfertile with your people. But she was married for years to Aslehán who, I am sure, performed his husbandly duties."
"I don't doubt that," said the Dasht. "She was a pretty thing."
"In any case," continued Reith, moistening his lips as he chose his words with care, "it seems to me that the chances of her ever becoming a significant factor in Duro politics is slight."
"Hmp!" the Dasht grunted. "You're hinting that I might find her, as wife, more liability than asset?"
"I would not presume to assert such a thing as fact, Your Altitude. I merely suggest that the possibility merits thought."
Gilan stroked his long nose. "Perhaps, perhaps. I'll think the matter over and consult my council."
"Another matter, my lord. What about the five hundred cavalry you promised for the motion picture?"
"They're ready to go, as soon as they know whither. Where is the work to be done?"
"Somewhere in western Mikardand," said Reith, deliberately vague. The more information he gave the Dasht, the fewer bargaining points he would have left to effect his release from the cell.
"How about our castles, which the Earthlings wished to rent?"
"I believe they chose a site in Mikardand."
"Putting us to all that trouble for nothing!" grumped the Dasht. "Well, less money is still money; so I'll command my cavalrymen to ride for western Mikardand. But how shall they gain admittance to that land? Without some arrangement, it would look like an invasion."
"That has been arranged, sir. The Grand Master gave me a letter to deliver to you, inviting your men into the Republic. I understand that he sent a confirmation to the commanding officer at Kolkh, instructing him to admit your regiment. Your soldiers took this letter."
The Dasht stood silently for a few breaths, looking fixedly at Reith through the bars. As the lamplight set little topaz highlights dancing in the Krishnan's eyes, Reith perceived Gilan's agile if erratic mind at work. Then the Dasht's antennae twitched.
"I must read this letter and think about it before taking further steps," said the Dasht. "I will not decide before consulting my council; I always follow a rational plan. This cannot be done before tomorrow."
"Your Altitude," said Reith, "did you ever learn who put one of my Terrans on a crazy aya?"
"We learned some things. This person gained access to the palace, passed himself off as a flunkey, and gave the horsemaster a message purportedly from me. Then he slipped out, went to the fair grounds, and began making speeches against you Terrans. When the fair-wardens made to arrest him, he disappeared."
"Was he one of Schlegel's gang?"
"Apparently not. We think he was a certain Nuchohr, once a follower of Schlegel but who, disaffected, started his own faction, with a much more extreme program. Where Schlegel merely would stop cultural interaction between Terrans and human beings, Nuchohr would kill or expel all Terrans from this world.
"But enough of that. I wish you to teach me some of those Terran games with cards, of which I have heard. I foresee increasing involvement with alien beings of your kind, and I shall have to learn their social customs in self-defense."
Reith smiled. "In the cell here?"
"Yes, yes; but you need not wear that burdensome chain." He shouted in his native tongue. "Herg! Come hither and remove this gyve from the prisoner ... Now fetch a table and two decent chairs. I, my good Herg, am about to learn the mysteries of Terran indoor games."